Well folks, here we are; the final chapter in this article. Now don't cry, you'll start me off. But the show must go on; so on it will go!

A token producer, and slivers at that. I must confess that I’m going to take the easy route with this card and make a deck that I have seen played before and have been informed recently was quite popular among the few vanguard players there were back in the day.

The tactic in this deck is cheap; in that it will win games but a large number of players are put off the deck by the ease it does so. There is no real effort involved in any sliver deck and this one is no exception. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you a deck capable of producing infinite colorless mana and so infinite Sliver tokens on turn five; that’s right, five. Simply play out your cheap slivers then put mana echoes into play. With at least three slivers in play you have started an infinite mana cycle, but the beauty of it is; is that you may gain the mana, it’s totally optional. And because it’s an instant speed ability, you can use it to create the tokens to block or even at the end of your opponents turn, so that the tokens are over summoning sickness in your turn. Use a little extra mana to play a couple of coats and topped off with the added abilities your other slivers coffer up, your laughing.

An optional card and sort ability; is this not the wish of all control players everywhere? To be able to draw faster, to hunt down that missing island you need so you can drop your combo piece? Well it is this combo-control player’s, and I’m not about to let this ability just walk me by!

Yes I know, I used wizards earlier; but I must confess I have a real affinity for them. But anyway, back to the deck! This deck has a particularly mean spirited way of winning the game: It tears your opponents’ deck to pieces and leaves them with no way to actually win the game. Once it’s done that, it just keeps going; till your opponent decks out. Twisted, I know; but great fun! And with Azami and Meishin you will have no fear of creatures; simply tap creatures until you have more cards in hand then they have power on any given creature. So what if they drop Marit Lage, with twenty cards in hand, he’s nothing more than a glorified kitten. Need more wizards? No problem! Simply drop a follow footsteps into play and you will never need worry about the number of cards you’re going to draw; or sort for that matter, thanks to the Information Dealers!

Holly molly this card rocks! Sorry for that outburst but come on; sac a creature to ping anything! Its Goblin Bombardment for free and we’re going to make use of that! No, not another fruity pebbles deck; but a deck that will drop the creatures needed to abuse this wonderful ability.

Drop them quick and sacrifice them just as fast! The key cards in this little deck are the Myr Servitors as they bring one another back, a constant source of renewal for our vanguard card. And at only one mana a go, they are the easiest creature to play in the whole deck; not bad for a combo piece now is it? Plus with a summoning station in there you can create even more creatures to full the firing machine that is Takara. And should you be in real straights, looking down the barrel of a rather large gun, just use a Myr incubator and really kick-start the party!

What we have here ladies and gentlemen is a slightly weaker version of Vedalken Orrery. So what do we do with our instant speed permanents? What kind of a deck would benefit from instant speed drops? Well, I might be crazy for doing this; but I asked my brother, known to you as Vincent-Miers of the MDV forum. And what he suggested shocked me initially, but once I stopped and considered his words, I realized the idea was actually a good one!

So you’re wondering what’s so great about this deck, right? Consider that you're starting hand is ten, which is one sixth of your total deck. Now consider that you could drop your entire hand in the first turn; suddenly you see my point. With eight zero costing creatures that boost your mana base thanks to Tolarian Academy, and a large number of low cost equipments; you’ll see the damage come flying out of this deck. But why does dropping things at instant speed help this deck. There are two main reasons; summoning sickness; if you drop a creature at the end of your opponents’ turn it no longer has summoning sickness in yours and for the purpose of dropping blockers. The myr servitors are great targets for grafted wargear as they can return one another, making the removal cost of the gear less harsh. Plus when you consider that would mean you have a 4/3 blocker each turn that returns to play for free if you control another at the start of your turn well, need I say more.

So we start off the game with a free copy of Exploration; but with a loss of one quarter of our life total. This is slightly better in some ways than Sissay, as you can make use of odd mana costs; but you need the lands in hand to take advantage of this ability.

Indeed it does! If you need this deck explained to you, well it’s a good thing I’m here! The centre theme is to abuse the playing of lands to the maximum; with enchantments giving you life gain, tokens and a permanent creature growth, as well as a creature that gets bigger on its own from the same thing; this deck can really cause a scene. Plus, there is a system here which can pull all your lands out into play in one go! But what happens if you do this then lose your big, bad Kudzu? Then simply return lands to your hand and play then again! You can even discard them to draw more cards, thanks to the crucible you needn’t worry. So once you have your big, bad Kudzu; how do you ensure that its damage gets through? With the fists and the Helium Squirter that’s how!

So the great and powerful Urza is best summed up by a ping card, and not a particularly strong one at that. But then, because it’s a vanguard card the damage has no colour so can’t be deflected by protection from abilities. And the added ten to life does help to keep us in the running. Maybe this isn’t such a bad card after all!

Now I know what you’re all thinking; that deck is never going to fly! And you’d be wrong. This deck can achieve what you want, Sasaya in play and seven land cards in hand. And once you do that, you essentially won, as you will have so much mana that you could easily kill three players in one go.

So at the cost of a set draw, my creatures cannot die; what is wrong with that ability? Nothing, that’s what! The fact we know our top card is actually a good thing, means we can abuse the fact. And there is a card in standard that loves your top card to be a creature card.

Now you’re all asking yourself, did he mean to make a Rakdos deck? Yes, yes I did; don’t let the crowns fool you. We’re not interested in the activated ability; we have a better mechanic for that. So why Rakdos; because the creatures are good if you can pull off Hellbent; but until then they suffer from poor stats. The crown gives them that little extra just by ensuring your top card is a creature; and with Lyzolda and our vanguard card we can pretty much guarantee it.

What the hell were wizards thinking with this card? Sack anything to regenerate your creatures; it’s just plan nasty! But it’s here, so we must abuse it; we need many permanents. You know what I’m thinking; token creatures. But I don’t want to reproduce the saproling deck from earlier so I need a new token type. Okay class, can anyone tell me the second best token type in existence? That’s right, their small with bushy tails, come in grey, brown, red, and on rare occasions white! You’ve just got to love……

What with the ability to regenerate your key creatures by sacrificing the tokens, this deck will stay in play for quite a while believe me. The aim of this deck is to pump out those tokens like made, with the aid of flashback and doubling season; so as to ‘Overrun’ your opponent (Pun intended). It’s not pretty, and doesn’t produce crazy amounts of tokens like the saproling deck, but then what does these days! But the main point is that it does what it does, and it does it well.

So there we go folks, a deck for each of the original vanguard cards! I hope that this gives you some ideas for some new decks, and I hope that these articles will spur more people to play vanguard; it’s a beautiful format that cost’s you nothing extra to play!

For the last time, this is Luthervamplord; signing off.

You can discuss this article in the MDV forums here.

Articles Spotlights from 2006
The Games People Play - Tactical Magic.
If I worked at R&D
The Beginner’s Guide to Rogue
Druid Week Primer
Opting In: Ravnica
MDV Idol: Finale!
Avatar Week Primer
Delusions of Mediocrity: Getting Stuffy in Here.
Raiding Ravnica: Guildmages and You!
Lands-More than Mana: Part One