Online Vanguard

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Captain Caveman

Guest
Online Vanguard, what a great idea. I think this is going
to be a lot of fun.


All the cards listed below are the Avatars(that we know
about so far)that are used within the Online program.
Each card allows you to start the game with its listed
ability. This idea seems like a casual players dream. I'd
love to have everyone's input on how to best abuse these
Avatar abilities.(for addition info check out Mtg.com)


First five are the base Avatars that come with program:

Name: Serra Angel
Hand: 7
Life: 19
Ability: Whenever you play a spell, you gain 2 life.
(same structure for all Avatars: Name, Starting hand
size, Starting life total, Granted Avatar ability)

Prodigal Sorcerer
8
22
At the beginning of your upkeep, look at the top card of your library.
You may put that card into your graveyard.


Grinning Demon
6
18
Whenever a nontoken creature you control goes to a graveyard from play,
target opponent discards a card.


Goblin Warchief
7
17
Attacking creatures you control get +1/+0.


Erhnam Djinn
6
23
Whenever you play a creature spell, put a 1/1 green Saproling
creature token into play.





Additional Avatars won through play:

Bosh, Iron Golem
7
18
X, sacrifice an artifact of converted mana cost X: Deal X damage to
target creature or player.


Platinum Angel
6
11
If you control an artifact, a creature, an enchantment, and a land,
you can't lose the game and your opponents can't win the game.


Viridian Zealot
7
22 ,
Sacrifice a creature: Destroy target artifact or enchantment. Search your
library for a card with the same name as the creature you sacrificed,
reveal it, and put it into your hand. Then shuffle your library.


Flametongue Kavu
7
14
When a non-token creature comes into play under your control, it deals
a random amount of damage between 0 and 4 to target creature.


Arcbound Overseer
6
23
At the beginning of your upkeep, you may put a +1/+1 counter on target
creature you control.
At the beginning of your upkeep, you may put a charge counter on target
permanent you control.


Raksha, Golden Cub
8
29
Creatures you control get +0/+1. Equipped creatures you control get
+1/+0 and have first strike.



Etched Oracle
8
16
You may pay BUGRw rather than play the mana cost for spells that you play.


Seshiro the Anointed
7
25
At the beginning of the game, choose a creature type.
Creatures you control, creature spells you control on the stack,
and creature cards you own that aren't in play or on the stack have
the chosen type in addition to their other types.


Eight-and-a-Half Tails
9
17
1: Target permanent you control gains protection from a random color
it doesn't already have protection from until end of turn.


Fallen Angel
7
15
Whenever a creature you control goes to a graveyard from play,
target opponent loses 1 life and you gain 1 life.


Higure, the Still Wind
6
23
Whenever a nontoken creature you control deals combat damage to
an opponent, take a random creature from your library, reveal it,
and put it into your hand.


Ink-Eyes, Servant of the Oni
6
13
At the beginning of the game, look at target opponent's hand and choose
a nonland card from it. That player discards that card.
X , pay X life: Put target creature card with converted mana cost X in an
opponent's graveyard into play under your control.



Thoughts,
 
D

Dark_Tira

Guest
Phage the Untouchable
7
15
Pay 1 life: Until end of turn, whenever a creature deals combat damage to you, destroy that creature.
Pay 1 life: Until end of turn, whenever target creature deals combat damage to a creature, destroy that creature.

Karona, False God
6
28
At the beginning of your upkeep, exchange control of a random permanent you control and a random permanent target opponent controls.

Two-Headed Giant
8
16
Each creature you control may block 2 creatures each combat. Each creature you control can't be blocked except by 2 or more creatures.

Elvish Champion
8
21
You start the game with a 1/1 green Elf token that has T:Add G to your mana pool.'

Royal Assassin
5
17
At the beginning of your upkeep, you draw a card and you lose 1 life.

Akroma, Angel of Wrath
8
27
When a creature comes into play under your control, it gains two of the following abilities at random: flying, first strike, trample, haste, protection from black, protection from red, or vigilance.
 
C

Captain Caveman

Guest
Thanks Dark.


Last night I saw Akroma played a lot. I'm not sure which of the basic avatars was played the most but Akroma was everywhere. Serra, might have been to most played basic avatar, maybe.


Akroma with White Weenie was big last night.

I'll be on Friday Morning if anyone was to play some basic avatar Vangaurd.

:)
 
D

Dark_Tira

Guest
Birds of Paradise
7
17
Lands you control have T: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool.'

Perhaps the most casual friendly one too. (despite being worse than Mirri)

Akroma does seem to be the most popular avatar. With a nice life boost, additional card, and sometimes surprisingly devastating ability combined with the cheap market price I wasn't surprised when more than 50% of my opponents were using her.
What did surprise me was how good the Ink-Eyes avatar turned out to be. It takes a deck dedicated to it but both her abilities are perhaps the strongest of all the new vanguards. As a side note it completely punishes decks using sakura-tribe elder for acceleration.
 
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Istanbul

Guest
I tried Akroma, and she's just not that good. Half the time, the abilities she grants aren't even relevant. (She gave an opponent's BoP trample and first strike, for example.)

Now, you want an Angel...it's hard to lose when you're playing the Serra Angel avatar. SA + Control = Win.
 
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jorael

Guest
The Vanguard Avatars look more balanced than the old ones. Some of the oldies had too broken abilities while others were just not very interesting.

Hmm, Vanguard box-draft sounds like a good idea :D
 
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Captain Caveman

Guest
Istanbul said:
I tried Akroma, and she's just not that good. Half the time, the abilities she grants aren't even relevant. (She gave an opponent's BoP trample and first strike, for example.)

Now, you want an Angel...it's hard to lose when you're playing the Serra Angel avatar. SA + Control = Win.

Most of the games I saw, Akroma was throwing Haste out over half the time. That +1 card and +7 life was big in all the games too.

I'll be trying the basic Avatars out today.... :D
 
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Dark_Tira

Guest
Of the basic avatars the most popular seem to be Serra and the Goblin Warchief with the warchief slightly edging out the angel in my opponents. Both are fairly good with the Serra on average giving 14-20 life a game and the Goblin making an early game defense essential. The best basic avatar from my play experience was Prodigal Sorcerer. The extra starting card gives it a heads up over the others and the card quality advantage of his ability shouldn't be underrated. Using him I felt comfortable keeping 1 land hands while going first because I could use his ability twice before drawing a card.

Of the commonly available avatars Akroma wins pretty much hands down for all the reasons already mentioned. I must respectfully disagree with Istanbul about the relevance of the abilities she grants because from what I saw they are useful 85%-90% of the time and in some matchups game breaking. You don't want to be running mono red or black against her. The only other common avatar to see a fair amount of play was higure, who usually would fare quite well but collapse if his initial assault was repelled.

Of the rare avatars it's hard to tell which was the most popular. I can count my games playing against them on one hand. The most powerful, at least in standard, seems to be Etched Oracle who could completely dominate with a darksteel colossus or the like on turn 3. I feel Ink-Eyes should get a special nod though for practically having an auto-win agaisnt Higure and conclusively proving rats are the better ninjas.

The most disappointing avatars were Flame-Tongue Kavu and 8 1/2 tails. The Flame-Tongues ability is incredibly powerful but all too easily sealed by the opponent not playing early game or by playing saccable creatures, that combined with low life makes it hard for the Kavu to earn his keep. The 8 1/2 tails is actually fairly good and his ability is better than it initially looks. The problem is that he's hard to justify using when compared to Akroma who only has 1 card less, substantially more life, and a generally superior and less mana intensive ability.

Overall the online Vanguard is really fun and fairly well-balanced, though I expect Akroma and Etched oracle to be eventually be tweaked down in handsize or life. Also I feel I should give wizards props for a smooth if not bug-free implementation.
 
C

Captain Caveman

Guest
I 'd like to add something constructive but the result/opinion you post are similiar to my experience from Friday morning. Serra Angel was very popular in a lot of different decks. I kind of thought Ernie might see more play but in my twenty or so games I only saw him once.

I was totally destroyed by Etched Oracle twice. Colossus turn four is a beating. My first opponet was a nice guy and chatted awhile about the deck but the second guy just crushed me and moved on.

Fortunalty, I never went to the anything goes room and experienced the multi-Avatar crazyness. They are going to fix the Sideboard bug but it might still be possible to play Multi-Avatars in the anything goes room. I'm not really into that but I might ask my brother if he wants to try it a few times next week. Of course, that all depends whether or not they fix the bug in that room.

Vanguard will be a fun change of pace for me. I liked playing it pretty well. I need to build some new decks that try to exploit whatever Avatar I'm using.

I'll probably play in the Vanguard events just so I can get a BoP.

:)
 
O

orgg

Guest
The Open format 'ton o' avatars' is entertaining, but SLOW.

For the sake of people who like that, I hope they make the basic avatars tradable.
 
C

Captain Caveman

Guest
I really would like to figure out a way to abuse Seshiro. I don't want to use the infinite combo of Seshiro(set to zombie)Rotlung Reanimator, Nantuko Husk and some random creature.

If anyone has an idea, I'd love to hear about it. The deck would be for Online Extended.

Seshiro the Anointed
7
25
At the beginning of the game, choose a creature type.
Creatures you control, creature spells you control on the stack,
and creature cards you own that aren't in play or on the stack have
the chosen type in addition to their other types.


Here is one of the idea's I have.

Seshiro Avatar(set to Snakes)
----------------
4 Llanowar Elves
1 Sachi, Daughter of Seshiro
3 Eternal Witness
1 Sosuke, Son of Seshiro
2 Seshiro
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Troll Ascetic
4 Viridian Zealot
4 Wood Elves

3 Sosuke's Summons
1 Beacon of Creation
3 Diving Top
1 Umezawa's Jitte
3 Time of Need

21 Forest
1 Okina, Temple to the Grandfathers


Oh yeah, I'm open to other Avatar idea's too. If I think of something for the Avatar's, I'll post it too.

All idea's are welcome...... Brainstorm away :D :)
 
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Dark_Tira

Guest
I haven't given all too much thought to Seshiro. I've built 2 decks with him 1 is a Samurai deck which after getting 3 concessions in a row from my opponents without hurting them I've decided to burn it and forget it ever existed. The other is my Zubera deck which is currently this

Seshiro Avatar - Zubera
4 Eternal Witness
4 Myr Servitor
4 Dripping-Tongue Zubera
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Silent-Chant Zubera

2 Grafted Wargear
4 Second Sunrise
4 Spawning Pit
2 Sword of Fire and Ice
2 Sword of Light and Shadow
2 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Kodama's Reach
1 Baku Altar

13 Forest
10 Plains

Token zuberas are just evil.....
 
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Istanbul

Guest
Seshiro is easy. You play mono-black, choose to make all of your creatures Clerics, and go infinite with Rotlung Reanimator.
 

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
Didn't Capt. Caveman say he didn't want to go that route? ;)

Capt. Caveman said:
I don't want to use the infinite combo of Seshiro(set to zombie)Rotlung Reanimator, Nantuko Husk and some random creature.
(yeah, I know, he says Zombie...)
 
C

Captain Caveman

Guest
Opps, I messed up with that. I meant to say Cleric but it came out Zombie.

Seshiro/Rotlung is pretty kewl, I just wanted some other ideas to toy around with.

:) :D :eek:

Oh yeah, what was the Samurai Deck that caused the concessions?

:)
 
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Dark_Tira

Guest
You wouldn't like it. It's pretty much worked like a rotlung deck in standard.
 
C

Captain Caveman

Guest
I've heard rumors that the Fallen Angel Avatar and KCI were "broken" in extended. The Etched Oracle Avatar and Darksteel Colossus deck is rather amusing.

Does anyone know of other powerful Standard, Extended or KBC decks?

Well, spill the beans. Lets hear whats hot... ;)
 
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Captain Caveman

Guest
Well, I played a Rotlung variant today and got smoked. I'm not the greatest player so results may vary but most of the Extended vanguard decks are fast and powerful. Even the decks that appeared slow and not as powerful stomped all over me. I could have played better, of course, but mosts of the games were really decieded by turn three. Things happen so fast I can't ever remember what they were playing.

Sad but true,

:confused:
:(

Bam'
 
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Dark_Tira

Guest
The extended vanguard decks are indeed fast and powerful but only if the deck is serious and in that case they are pretty much just 1 turn faster than normal extended decks. I just spent the last couple hours in the tourney practice area playing extended vanguard and pretty much everyone was using the elvish champion avatar. The only one who I played that wasn't using the elf was a rotlung deck that couldn't deal a point of damage either game. I would say generally the ext vanguard games aren't generally decided by turn three though, as long as it's not a casual deck vs. a serious deck. The most vicious deck I played against was using the champion in what must have been at least a $500 deck (4 deeds, 4 spiritmongers, 4 birds, 4 cranial extractions, etc) and our games took over an hour (I'm proud to say I won with only using commons and uncommons). As far as decks in extended that seemed powerful I would say that fast green decks are at the top (though that $500 deck biased me but I was using green too), meanwhile Raffinity and Rotlung seem to be relatively weak. The most annoying deck I've seen so far is Elvish Champion LD. On the casual side I've been seeing a surprising number of Serra/Divining Top decks, they seem to be fairly strong if they can get going.
 
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