But Vivi Dies to Doom Blade!

What’s good, Spirit Squad!

Today we’re here to discuss maybe my funniest air ball of all time: Vivi Ornitier!

Back in our To Zanarkand article, I called Vivi Ornitier one of the most well-designed cards I had seen, and for what it’s worth I think I stick by that. The concept is neat, and at the time of writing that article it enjoyed a place as a slightly relevant but not overpowered piece of the Standard meta, with some *very* light play in decks like Modern Storm.

I also said it wouldn’t cost a million dollars, but I also thought it was a regular Rare in spoiler season instead of a Mythic Rare… my bad, y’all.

Then the Fire Nation (ban list update) attacked.

At the time, what we didn’t know is that a whopping SEVEN cards would be banned from the Standard format, leaving Vivi as the last-man-standing from a broken format past. The combo of Vivi Ornitier + Agatha’s Soul Cauldron had already been seeing play at an extremely high level, and now all of the decks that were more efficient than it (Mono-Red Mice, Esper Pixie, Cori-Steel Cutter Prowess, and Beanstalk Control) have been kicked out of Standard.

This decklist is from Paulo Vitor Damo de Rosa’s performance at Pro Tour Las Vegas back in June, but there’s two takeaways I want to highlight: this deck existed before Standard rotation, and before the 7-card Standard banning. Note that, other than Shivan Reef and Voldaren Thrillseeker, this deck lost nothing from June until now.

The way the Vivi deck functions is relatively straightforward in theory, but it’s got a deceptive amount of play to it thanks to the sheer power level of the available cards and the synergy between its three mini-archetypes.

In the early parts of the game, it can play aggressively with cards like Marauding Mako and Proft’s Eidetic Memory to take advantage of any time you draw or discard extra cards. Cards like Fear of Missing Out, Tersa Lightshatter, and especially Winternight Stories already make you both draw and discard cards, so you end up getting a ton of bang for your buck.

In the mid-game, you get to threaten the ridiculous combo of Vivi Ornitier + Agatha’s Soul Cauldron. This combo is so powerful that the deck doesn’t even play multiples of any creature other than Vivi with an activated ability anymore. Sometimes a single Draconautics Engineer, but that’s about it. Just Vivi is more than enough to make the combo worth the deck space.

Here’s the combo: put a Vivi in the graveyard, and exile it with Agatha’s Soul Cauldron. That’s it.

From there, each creature you have in play can threaten to tap for absurd amounts of mana. Profit’s Eidetic Memory puts counters on creatures, Marauding Mako puts counters on itself every time you discard a card, and all of a sudden you’re tapping for 10+ mana as early as Turn 3 on a regular basis.

The best part of playing with Vivi’s mana ability is the sheer number of cards you can see in a turn from just one resolved Creature. Cards like Fear of Missing Out, Tersa Lightshatter, and especially Winternight Stories can advance your gameplan to scary levels. I had a game on Magic: the Gathering Online recently where I was playing Azorius Control; I cast Day of Judgment on Turn 4 and then died from 18 life before I could take my fifth turn.

This wild mix of raw power and the best card selection in Standard reminds me of another of the best decks I’ve ever played with in Standard: Caw-Blade!

Seriously. Caw-Blade played a lot like a control deck instead of an aggressive deck, but both decks have an absurd amount of both card selection and advantage, both decks take up about 30% of their respective metas, and both decks regularly take up 75%+ of Top 8’s in big pro-level events. They even both exist in environments with an extremely good Mono-Red Aggro deck.

What I’m hoping to see happen soon also did happen to Caw-Blade: emergency bans! With the Spider-Man set dropping soon, the last thing I want is to see is a Standard format in which none of the new cards are good enough to see play. I’ve been saying for awhile now that Standard has been a bit too powerful as a format, and would love to see Wizards of the Coast turn the power level of it down a ton.