Welcome ladies and gentlemen to the fifth article of the series, Vanguard: Across the Formats!

Those readers who have read any of the previous 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!

Now normally for each article I would take two random Vanguard cards or Avatars (meaning I would cover both the original cards and the new online versions) as well as a random Magic format, and I would create a deck for each for your viewing pleasure; but this time I’m trying something a bit different – this time I’m choosing the format rules myself, but I’m still randomly choosing the avatars.

Now whilst this is a change from the status quo, I shall explain myself and hopefully you’ll appreciate my angle. As you all know by now; I am an alternate format junkie – I honestly can’t get enough of them. The change in rules brings new challenges, new surprises, interesting combos and unique playing experiences that you just can’t get from a T2 game.

I’m not trying to speak badly of those who stick to the normal rules; if that’s what’s fun for you, great! But for me, I need something extra in my coffee, you know – just a bit of sugar and cream to make it all taste great.

Well, as you can imagine I have tried most if not all of the alternate formats out there and have even played a part in the creation of some home-brewed formats – this is where the change in this article comes. Back in the day when I was blowing off my university course daily in order to visit my local game store, we all used to play a rather interesting rules variant which at the time really didn’t have a name but which I now refer to as Communal Garden.

The rules are pretty simple, but the game has produced some strange occurrences. Have you ever played in a game where there are around 2.6 million creatures in play; not all under the control of the one and only token player? Ever been able to deck-out twelve opponents in one turn? Ever burned someone for 45 points of damage with a Fireball in a mono-Red deck without acceleration cards before? I have, and now I’m going to give you a chance to do so too!

Below are the rules guidelines that we played with in my local gaming store:

• Each player constructs a 60+ card deck following usual rules
• Banned and Restricted lists are chosen by all players
• This format produces the best results when there are four or more players involved, though it can support any number of players above one.
• Each player chooses one “communal card” for his/her collection and places this card in the middle of the field of play. See extra rules below
• The last player standing wins the game

As you can imagine, this format has produced some amazing effects – especially when you are playing in an eight player game. That’s eight communal cards that affects everyone equally; if there is a Heartbeat of Spring in the communal garden then all players get the extra mana effect and by the same token all players get the benefit of the Anthem of the Rakdos where it a communal card.

So there are the rules, think you’ve got that? Alright, here’s how this will work with the changed rules: I’m going to produce six decks, each with their own Vanguard card; but to make this both fair and purely random, I have enlisted the help of my fellow clansmen in the Lorehold to choose the six communal cards for me. So my thanks go out to EpilepticCricket, Friend Mairsil, Michael_Zeora, Dazboot and Scion for their help in this matter; knew I could count on you guys. But in order to make this article a little bit more interesting; the decks will be constructed purely based on the Vanguard cards, and I will reveal one of the communal cards after each one.

And for reference, I’m going with the old staple of Gentlemen’s Casual – all but the five original moxen and THE lotus are fair game – yes, that includes Ancestral Visions and Library of Leng. Besides those mentioned, nothing is banned - although I sometimes consider banning the jitti (dirty thing)

Alright then; six decks aren’t going to create themselves – let’s get to it! Swinging over to the Hat of Fate, I draw forth our first Avatar:

Ok, we’ve got randomized creature pull which could either be really powerful or kind of weak depending on exactly what we draw. Hmmm, maybe what we need to consider is using creatures that grant us useful abilities; perhaps even ones that can work from our hand.

This deck plays for keeps and continuously applies the pressure. Unblockable creatures pave the way for the Ninjas, allowing you to control the field of play with card draw, creature bounce and even Ninja searching in the form of Higure’s own card. That doubled up with our Vanguard Avatar, we’re able to search out a random creature whenever a creature deals combat damage, which we can easily do every turn from turn three onwards. And to be honest, save in the case of mana screw, any creature is worth the pull so we don’t care about the random function.

Want to know how to do a random creature pull? The simplest way in this case is to roll a three D20's (twenty sided dice) and work your way through the deck that way - these means you avoid revealing how many creatures you actually have and gives a greater range.

The control aspect of this deck outside of the creatures is pretty powerful, and the counterspell department is supported by the Ghost-Lit Warder. Snap is an incredibly powerful card as it’s essentially Boomerang or Unsummon for free in this creature-based deck, which keeps those precious lands open for a counterspell.

Okay guys, here comes the first communal card:

Now it’s time to swing back to the old Hat of Fate and choose another Avatar:

Well that’s a sloppy ability for such a sweet card, but then again the damage has no color or type so the chances that it can be prevented are quite low. Anyway, no point complaining about it, best make a deck that uses mana acceleration.

This deck runs in a relatively straight-forward manner; if you can get Overlaid Terrain down by turn three you are set, and it’s not as hard to achieve as you may be led to believe. With the bountiful amounts of mana at your disposal and the ability to lay down multiple lands each turn, you can push those creatures out quickly in order to overrun your opponent. Now since we’re running lots of land creatures, flying decks could beat us sorely so we’re running Crosswinds to reduce their power and Dense Canopy so they can’t block our powerful land beasts.

Alright guys, the next communal card is:

Hmmm, I see some combos starting to emerge from the garden – but let’s carry on and talk about that later. As always I swing back to the old Hat of Fate and draw forth my next Avatar:

So whenever an opponent loses a creature, and indeed when we lose a creature, we gain a free 1/1 White flying creature? That is a pretty sweet trade-off in a six-way match, and we most definitely can make use of this ability.

Saprolings for the win ladies and gentlemen; Saprolings for the win. This deck is going for creatures in a big way, twenty or more to be precise. And seeing as the deck is sporting a play set of Sporesower Thallids and Sporoloth Ancients it shouldn’t be too long before you get there. The Orb of Dreams is there to buy you some time, as Thallids really don’t care if they are tapped down as they come into play, since all of their abilities can function in that state anyway. The Meekstones will protect you from beatdown, whilst allowing you to carry on rather unabated. The only downside to this deck is no real way to deal damage to your opponent’s creatures outside of combat damage, though you can sacrifice some of your Saprolings to Deathspore Thallid to similar effect. Whilst Teysa doesn't trigger for our token creature, she will trigger for the creatures we kill off with Deathspore; besides this deck regains it's numbers pretty quickly when it gets to full steam.

So now that this deck’s built, let us see the third communal card:

Ouch, that kind of hurts this deck a fair amount, essentially meaning this deck won’t get to attack. Luckily, that’s not the main win condition of this deck - Epic Struggle saves this deck in this game. Again, this indicates some kind of combo arising from the garden – I wonder what my fellow clansmen have unleashed upon this game? But enough postulating, time to grab the next Avatar:

The ability to let every player put something into play is quite powerful but could easily backfire, so we need to be careful. Having said that, this ability does allow us to put lands and artifacts into play during our opponents’ turns – this could be very helpful, but how to make the best use of it?

The aim of this deck is to play out the best solution to the enemies attack plan. And when you start putting out your creatures, enchantments and lands into play, you can reduce the benefit to your opponent for activating your Avatar’s abilities; whilst they may be able to put things into play you have already setup the solution in play. Due to the rather huge quantity of enchantments in this deck, the Enchantresses are a nice play here, but the best piece has to be Aura Shards – in play testing that one card saved my backside more times then I’d probably care to mention. The deck does run slowly at first though, so expect to fall foul to the quicker decks such as Burn, Zoo and Token decks.

So now that decks built, it's time to reveal the fourth communal card:

Well now, that’s a hurtful card to say the least. For this deck, it makes combat a risky affair and the use of Phyrexian Vault just became a bit more costly. Having said that, when you consider that this will interact with the other communal cards a definite pattern emerges from the mad ramblings of my fellow clansmen... I can only imagine what the final and complete garden will look like! But enough of this, time to create the fifth deck:

Well that’s a somewhat twisted fellow isn’t it? He gives you a great gift with one hand in the form of a starting life of 50, but then takes it back by saying, “Oh yeah, you control a permanent and you will lose a point of life each turn!”. I consider this one a challenge to say the least, but that doesn’t mean I shall shy away from it – fate has chosen this card and who am I to argue with such a fickle lady?

Okay guys, guess what this one does! Why yes, smart fellows; it runs on as little mana as possible and tries to pull everything back to its hand each turn or simply let it die before our turn is out. The only costly thing there truly is the Djinn, but he’s there for one reason – Pact of the Titan. I’ll paint the scene that occurred twice during play testing: I’ve two lands in play, five cards in hand (a mass of acceleration and the Djinn) and my opponent was sitting behind a comfortable wall of around 18 1/1 Saproling token creatures. I top-decked the Pact, remembered that I had Mass Hysteria out, and proceeded to make the poor guy wail at the unfairness of it as I waltzed across the field with 50 4/4 hasted tokens – it’s good to be the king. This deck gains some considerable benefits from the garden as well, in no small part thanks to Enduring Renewal.

Now it’s time to see the fifth card of savagery my clansmen have chosen:

……Ummm, guys – are you trying to break the format on its first public viewing? So let’s get this straight: If a creature attacks it takes one point of damage, which now kills it. At which point, its controller takes 2 points of damage for his/her troubles and gets the creature back into his/her hand? This game would be crazy sick to play in, but that’s why I love the format so much! Before we start trying to consider the magnitude of sick logic behind the garden card choices, I better finish the sixth and final deck, so let us go grab an Avatar:

My, my, my; it seems that someone is having a joke at my expense. This ever-tasty little number seems built for this game; the abilities tie together so well. So now we must make sure that she plays well, and also that she plays mean!

Okay guys, I know it’s another Red deck, but man is this one mean in this game! Everything this deck’s got goes towards hurting something, and in this game we are just as happy to kill the enemies’ creatures as them since it accomplishes the same thing. There’s nothing fancy to this deck, it runs smooth enough and when adjoined to the garden makes for better board control than Wrath of God or Damnation. The nice thing is that you’re happy to let your own creatures die as well because that way you get them back and can recycle the system, making the Bowmen and Fanatics pure gold in this deck to say the least. Not to mention the Avatar’s trigger when your creatures die – and it only counts your creatures.

Now for the sixth and final communal card:

Well it’s got uses but not many in this game, though then again I could be wrong. Anyway, to demonstrate why this format is so much fun (especially when the Lorehold members are involved), these are the effects that ALL players are subject to:

• At the beginning of your upkeep you may choose a creature card in any graveyard and put it into play under your control.
• Play with your hand revealed.
  If you would draw a card, reveal it instead. If that card is a creature card, put it into your graveyard. Otherwise draw it.
  If a creature would be put into your graveyard; put that creature into your hand instead.
• Whenever a creature attacks, it takes one point of damage from an artifact source.
• Whenever a creature is dealt damage, it is destroyed.
• Whenever a creature you control is put into the graveyard from play, you take two points of damage from an artifact source.
• Whenever an opponent discards a card, you may draw a card.

If I can find enough people in my area; I hope to follow this article up with an actual play post of the game - is this something you as the reader would be interested in? Let me know guys; entertaining you is my one and only goal here. I'd also like to hear about your own home-brew formats; I'm always on the lookout for the new flavor and where better to get it then the casual scene where players are willing to mix it up in the name of fun.

Alright guys, this is where I’m going to have to leave you. Here’s hoping that you enjoyed the article, the new twist and the format concept. I’m always happy to talk or play this format with anyone who’s interested, just leave me a comment in the following thread or drop me a message via email or PM.

As always this is Luthervamplord, Signing off.

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Find other articles from this series here.

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