Forcing the Will: Vengevine Survival

Hello and welcome all to another edition of Forcing the Will!  Today, we will be covering the usual Legacy metagame as well as covering a deck that made quite an impression at GP Columbus.  I am talking of course about Vengevine Survival (known to some as UG Madness).  If you have been wondering about this deck be sure to check out the videos below to see the deck in action in a Legacy Daily Event, but before we do that, let’s kick things off with a look at the recent Legacy meta.

Legacy Metagame

8/17/2010 (Event #1484207)

• (4-0) New Horizon
• (3-1) Deadguy Ale
• (3-1) Bant
• (3-1) Death and Taxes (DnT)
• (3-1) Countertop/Thopter

8/19/2010 (Event #1505764)

• (4-0) Death and Taxes (DnT)
• (3-1) Deadguy Ale
• (3-1) Mono Black/Dark Depths
• (3-1) New Horizon
• (3-1) Dredge

8/19/2010 (Event #1505774)

• (4-0) Zoo
• (3-1) Deadguy Ale
• (3-1) Death and Taxes (DnT)
• (3-1) Dredge
• (3-1) New Horizon

8/21/2010 (Event #1505797)

• (4-0) Rbg Goblins
• (3-1) Zoo
• (3-1) Death and Taxes (DnT)
• (3-1) Red Deck Wins (RDW)
• (3-1) Rock Survival (Red Splash)
• (3-1) Deadguy Ale
• (3-1) New Horizon

8/22/2010 (Event #1505821)

• (4-0) Countertop
• (3-1) Countertop
• (3-1) Zoo
• (3-1) Red Deck Wins (RDW)
• (3-1) Dream Halls
• (3-1) Countertop/Thopter

8/28/2010 (Event #1529793)

• (4-0) Red Deck Wins (RDW)
• (3-1) Zoo
• (3-1) Deadguy Ale
• (3-1) Zoo
• (3-1) Ad Nauseam Tendrils (ANT)
• (3-1) UGW Control

8/29/2010 (Event #1529807)

• (4-0) Deadguy Ale
• (3-1) Show and Tell/Stiflenought Bridge
• (3-1) Red Deck Wins (RDW)
• (3-1) Zoo
• (3-1) BG Control

Top Legacy Decks Breakdown »

There’s not too much going on in the Legacy events these past few weeks.  The attendance of these Legacy events marks a sharp drop- more than 50% lower from what they were 4 weeks ago.  I expect the small number of players to be caused by the fact that for most college students Fall semester has started.  The good thing is that the Legacy events are still firing quite frequently, and as long as we can keep that up Legacy will continue to be a successful format.  I do encourage those who find themselves with some free time and a desire to play Legacy to jump in a Daily Event when they have the chance- the survival of Legacy depends on it.  I beg you to please, please join these events to keep the format from following the route of Classic- where players need to join events and drop right after just to get the event to fire!

Enough of my rambling about low attendance; let’s breakdown the latest decks in the Legacy metagame!  There’s a new contender in the Top Spot this week with Deadguy Ale.  This deck uses a variety of discard, disruption, and efficient low casting creatures to help wreck both your opponents hand and board.  I have been surprised at how little the deck has been played online, but I expect to see more players trying the deck out after seeing this metagame breakdown.  Tying for first place is another deck that is no stranger to the Number 1 spot, and of course, the deck I am speaking of is Zoo.  I was expecting Zoo to be played less after seeing Zoo at the Number 5 spot in my last article, but it appears the deck was merely taking a 2 week vacation.  I would expect to see a large pool of Zoo decks in every Legacy event until there is an efficient deck in Legacy that can dominate Zoo, Control, and Combo, but until then, we can only keep brainstorming and dreaming!  Back again in the Number 3 spot is Death and Taxes (DnT), a deck both new and experienced Legacy players can pick up and be successful with, and with the release of Sword of Body and Mind, the deck has even more answers to those pesky green Tarmogoyfs, Terravores, and Knight of the Reliquarys.  For those who are still pondering about jumping into the Legacy format- I highly suggest picking up Death and Taxes (DnT) and giving it a try.  It’s extremely hard to base what to play in the following weeks with such a small turnout of decks, but just by looking at the Top 3 spots, I would expect to be faced off against Aggro decks more than any other deck.

Vengevine Survival

The part of the article that you have all been waiting for: Vengevine Survival!  The deck came out of nowhere during Grand Prix Columbus last month and was able to finish in the Top 8 of the tournament, but how does the deck do so well?  Let’s take a look at the deck that finished 4th place at GP Columbus.

Vengevine Survival by Caleb Durward – GP Columbus

Lands (21) 3 Forest 1 Gaeas Cradle 1 Island 4 Misty Rainforest 1 Scalding Tarn 4 Tropical Island 4 Wasteland 2 Windswept Heath 1 Wooded Foothills Creatures (24) 4 Aquamoeba 4 Basking Rootwalla 4 Noble Hierarch 3 Trygon Predator 4 Vengevine 4 Wild Mongrel 1 Wonder Other Spells (15) 2 Daze 4 Force of Will 3 Stifle 4 Survival of the Fittest 2 Umezawas Jitte Sideboard (15) 2 Faerie Macabre 3 Krosan Grip 4 Spell Pierce 3 Submerge 3 Wheel of Sun and Moon

The basic concept behind this deck is similar to those decks that abused Madness back in the day- using Survival of the Fittest to pitch a creature to find any number of Vengevines tossing them in the graveyard to find 2 Basking Rootwallas to enable the Madness ability to bring the Vengevines onto the battlefield and swing for some serious damage.  This strategy doesn’t always work, but when it does, your opponent is usually too far behind to catch up.  I won’t spend time covering cards that I used in my deck as I explain the reason for using them in my deck tech video, but I will take a moment to cover the cards that I didn’t use.

Gaeas Cradle – A land that will allow us to produce extra Green mana for the amount of creatures we have, enabling us to go crazy with our Survival of the Fittest.  I found this card was either a dead card or an unnecessary card about 90% of the time.  I went for more basic lands to have a more reliable mana source, but when Cradle works it’s pretty insane.

Aquamoeba – I have played with this guy in the deck and he’s good, but I soon found that Merfolk Looter did Aquamoebas job and then some.  While Moeba allows us to use the discard ability on the turn we cast it, Looter allows us to dig deeper into our library at the cost of waiting a turn to activate the ability.  Moeba also allows us to discard more than 1 card per turn, but after much testing, Looter proved to be more reliable in the long run.

Daze – If you’ve played or faced an opponent playing blue in Legacy chances are you’ve ran into this little counter.  While Daze is an amazing counter, it just didn’t feel right in this deck.  We want to be able to throw down some quick mana producers alongside a Turn 2 Survival of the Fittest to have the mana to enable all of our Madness shenanigans .  With Daze, I quickly found that the tempo lost was almost never worth the gain from playing the spell.  I decided to add maindeck Spell Pierces instead.

Stifle – Similar to Trickbind in my video.  The only benefit is that Stifle costs 1 less to play.  Watch the video for the full explanation of Trickbind.

Faerie Macabre – A card that helps disrupt an opponent’s graveyard at any time.  Macabre allows you to play as though you don’t have any graveyard hate and then surprise your opponent by ruining their plans to utilize their graveyard.  I decided to run Tormods Crypt instead so that I could remove my opponents entire graveyard instead of just 2 cards.

Submerge – An answer to Aggro decks.  If we had this card online, I would be playing it!

If you wish to see more on this version of the deck )as well as videos of the Top 8 of GP Columbus), check out the link here.

Let’s take a look at the deck I decided to run.

Vengevine Survival by KillerOwen

Land (28) 3 Forest 2 Island 4 Misty Rainforest 4 Polluted Delta 4 Tropical Island 4 Wasteland Creatures (32) 4 Basking Rootwalla 4 Merfolk Looter 4 Noble Hierarch 3 Trygon Predator 4 Vengevine 4 Wild Mongrel 1 Wonder Other Spells (21) 4 Force of Will 1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor 4 Spell Pierce 4 Survival of the Fittest 2 Umezawas Jitte Sideboard (23) 2 Counterspell 3 Krosan Grip 3 Pithing Needle 2 Tormods Crypt 2 Trickbind 1 Umezawas Jitte 2 Wheel of Sun and Moon

Click the arrow to download the above deck in .txt format

(To load a .txt deck into Magic: Online’s Deck Editor, click “Load”, select “Local Text Deck”, find the location of the downloaded deck file and double-click the deck.)

Now let’s cover this deck and see it action!

SURVIVAL MADNESS DECKTECH

Show Deck Tech »

LEGACY DAILY EVENT ROUND 1

Show Round 1 »

LEGACY DAILY EVENT ROUND 2

Show Round 2 »

LEGACY DAILY EVENT ROUND 3

Show Round 3 »

LEGACY DAILY EVENT ROUND 4

Show Round 4 »

There you have it folks Vengevine Survival.   I hope you found this article and videos useful and insightful.  As always, I appreciate any feedback you have on the deck along with any criticisms and mistakes I made while playing the deck.  As I stated in previous articles I don’t have time to go through my videos to find my mistakes at the moment, and won’t be able to for some time so I appreciate you finding them for me .

You Choose the Deck!

It’s back!  Thanks to all the votes I got last time I chose to do this I will continue to do this as long as my readers continue to contribute.

#1.   Baneslayer Control

#2.   Deadguy Ale

#3.   Dredge

#4.   New Horizon

#5.   Death and Taxes (DnT)

#6.  Aggro Loam

#7.  Show and Tell

Be sure to post either the deck number or the name of the deck in the comment section.  You can also send me a message on the boards or online at KillerOwen.  Please make sure to log in to cast your vote as I will ignore anonymous votes. Make sure to get your votes in fast, as I will only allow 2-3 days before choosing a deck to cover

That’s all for this week.  As always please leave any comments, questions, or requests you have good or bad, and I will do my best to respond to them.    Thanks for reading and watching my videos!    Until next time may the Force of Will be with you!

Owen Robbins