Welcome ladies and gentlemen to the second in my latest article series: Vanguard: Across the Formats!

Those readers who have read the first of these articles will be aware that the purpose of this article is to lift the illusion surrounding Vanguard; that it exists only as a standalone format. The beauty of Vanguard is that it is a Format enhancer; the rules can be applied to nearly any other format!

So every two weeks or so I will take two random Vanguard cards or Avatars; meaning I cover the original cards and the new, online versions; as well as a random Magic format and create a deck for each, for your viewing pleasure. I do this so that more people can learn to appreciate Vanguard as much as I do.

So what pairing will start us off this time around? Well, as always, just prior to writing up this article I used the old ‘paper and hat’ method to come up with the following pairing:

+

Tribal: there’s an interesting format to play with.

As a point of interest, Tribal is the first ‘alternate’ format I ever played; any guesses on the creature type I played? If you said Goblins; you’re wrong! I saw that three other ‘n00bs’ were playing Goblins so I decided to go a little different; I played Wizards and held my own pretty well for the first couple of games. It was an Elf deck which pounded me down in the end; couldn’t keep up with the life gain.

But back to our current situation; here we have a Vanguard card which gives us Spirit tokens for every non-token creature that hits the graveyard; this includes our opponents. This suggests that we should aim for a Spirit deck; as this will compliment the rules of tribal.

The Concept

We have already decided that we are going to aim for a Spirit deck as our Vanguard aids us in keeping our creature levels up. Well, because we have chosen Spirits; we will probably want to stay within the realm of Kamigawa; the poster block of Spirits. But the question is how do we make benefit of these tokens?

If I could use one word to explain this deck I would chose: Quirky. The sharp eyed among you will notice that this deck has a few ways to hit your enemies and hit them hard.

First let's start off with the obvious candidates for pain: Kodama of the Center Tree and Fling. Because the Kodama gets bigger and bigger with each creature we have in play, and with each token that comes in through Tesya when they die keeping him alive; he’s going to be a huge creature pretty quickly. Then throw him across the field for huge damage, possibly aided by Blademane Baku's ability and, if the situation permits you can return the other Kodama to your hand.

The Frostlings become a very good first drop thanks to our Vanguard, as the following scenario explains:

You: Turn 1, Drop a mountain, tap, play Frostling, end turn.
Opponent: Turn 1, Drop a Forest, tap, play Bird of Paradise, end turn.
You: EOT; Sacrifice Frostling, Targeting BOP, Vanguard Triggers, 1/1 White Flying Token. Untap, Draw...

You can kill off early tech creatures such as BOP’s and Sakura-Tribe Elder. Sure, in the case of the Elder you just force them to activate him sooner, but that still means a free swing!

So having completed our first deck I swung back to the hat of destiny are drew forth our second Vanguard card; and I must say, the result promises to be great fun!

So, we have a stackable double strike ability on all our creatures! Someone pinch me, but doesn’t this vanguard just scream soldiers? Well it did to me, so that’s where our next deck is heading.

The Concept

For starters, we know that all damage dealt by creatures is double; the ability doesn’t specify how the creature deals the damage, only that the creature dealt damage. This means that ‘ping’ and ‘come into play’ damage are also doubled should we go down this route. But I’m a simple man and I believe that soldiers should deal damage the good old fashion way: SLUGFEST!

Can anyone say pain? This actually happens to one of my personal Vanguard tribal decks and it’s pretty easy to see why.

Primarily there is just a large amount of creature specific pump in this deck, with a flipped Bushi equipped with a Konda’s banner coffering up +2/+2 to all other creatures, which due to our Vanguard equates to +4/+2 in terms of damage. Crossbow Infantry become 2 damage ping creatures for the small outlay of two mana and the damage that Catapult Squad can put out there is quite frightening -- believe me.

The ability to have double dealt to all creatures though is truly frightening; as if Kusari-Gama wasn’t a good enough piece of equipment.

The Loxodon Warhammer is what you could consider ‘insurance’ against burn decks, as you will be gaining obscene amounts of life if you equip this to the Punisher. He gets +5/+2 from having the hammer equipped which means +10/+2 in terms of damage! And then he gets trample; but that’s not really that important anymore now is it?

Well people, there goes the second installment of Vanguard: Across the Formats; I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. Tribal is a fun format on its own; I suggest that every MTG player take part in at least one Tribal contest if just to experience it!

This is Luthervamplord, Signing off.

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Articles Spotlights from 2007:
Lorwyn Theme Week Intro & Schedule of Events
Blink And Bounce: Timing is Key
Going Blind: XCB Metagaming - A Prolonged Conclusion.
The Science of Magic: Genetic Engineering, Part Two.
Shifting Lineaments: Casual Metagaming (Pt. 2).
The Dungeon Of Malefict: Pure Evil!
Combofusion: Legends Timeshifted.
Land Week Introduction & Schedule.
One Card to Rule Them All: Coastal Piracy
Irrational Love: Chimeras. The Lego's of Magic.