Mono-Permanents With Vaevictis Asmadi, The Dire!

Core Set 2019 continues to impress as I dig into the new and returning cards. For Standard, I have these cards in the forefront of my mind and I’m not entirely sure what to do with the idea. But I feel like there’s got to be something here.

The directions I’ve been exploring… stay mono-green; run four copies of Dunes of the Dead; work in explore creatures and Multani, Yavimaya Avatar and a miser’s Garruk’s Horde? Go multicolor with Evolving Wilds and Field of Ruin and go with Nicol Bolas, the Ravager as the big mana payoff? Has anyone else been exploring this?

Anyway, back to Commander. Last week I showed off the power of Chromium, the Mutable. This week I’m moving on to another new Elder Dragon that I also initially underestimated, Vaevictis Asmadi, the Dire!

Big V is a 6/6 flier for six mana, which is actually a subpar rate on its own, so the rest of the text box better be exciting. And I have to admit it didn’t really excite me at first blush. Its ability is an attack trigger that basically casts Chaos Warp for each player but instead of shuffling the permanent back in, it is sacrificed instead.

It seemed okay, I guess, hitting each opponent’s most problematic permanent for a random permanent off the top of their deck, and if that card isn’t a permanent, they don’t get anything. The randomness is fun, but didn’t strike me as eye-popping powerful. After all, you could potentially reveal something even more problematic off the top of their deck and make their instant-speed Vampiric Tutor or Worldly Tutor backbreaking.

But then I read the card more closely. The triggered ability doesn’t say “for each opponent” – it says “for each player.” That means it triggers on yourself! So not only are you hitting the best or scariest permanents your opponents have, but you’re hitting the worst permanent you have in the hopes of upgrading into something better! The only downside would be if you revealed a nonpermanent card yourself. That would leave you down a permanent.

So… let’s not play any nonpermanent cards. Hey, that might be awesome. Let’s get brewing!

Haste

Let’s start things off with ways to give Vaevictis haste so we can get the attack trigger party started right away. Outside of the omnipresent Swiftfoot Boots our color combination gives plenty of options. I’m particularly a big fan of Xenagos, God of Revels, since it can make our commander huge along with the haste.

Attack Trigger

Now that I’m a believer in the attack trigger, I want to trigger it all the time! Strionic Resonator doubles our fun for just two mana, and if we put Helm of the Host on Vaevictis, we can get nonlegendary copies to join in the fun. Of course, the old-fashioned way to get more attack triggers is to get more attacks with cards like Aggravated Assault and Combat Celebrant.

Sacrifice for Profit

Okay, so we’re getting attack triggers early and often. How are we going to leverage our advantage? Outside of being able to hit with every card in our deck, I thought it would be good to have cards that are easy to sacrifice without really losing them. Bloodsoaked Champion seems like a great choice, since Vaevictis’s attacking will go ahead and satisfy the raid ability to get it back. Reassembling Skeleton just comes back for its mana cost. Rancor comes back from the graveyard if we sacrifice it. Dragon Shadow and Dragon Breath will come back whenever there’s a big enough creature that enters the battlefield.

We can slap Journey to Eternity on a sacrificial lamb before attacking with Vaevictis to make sure it transforms and provides a sweet land for our trouble. Feldon of the Third Path can copy creatures in our graveyard with nice enters-the-battlefield abilities that you can then sacrifice to Vaevictis.

Mimic Vat is nice in that you can put one of your opponent’s best creatures in Vat after making them sacrifice it to Vaevictis, or it can make token creatures to feed to Vaevictis and upgrade to something more permanent from the top of your graveyard.

Fix Library

One thing we can do to make Vaevictis even better is knowing what permanent is on top of your library. Sensei’s Divining Top is fun, since if you’d rather just draw the top card, you can swap the Top and then put the Top back out on the Vaevictis trigger. Volrath’s Stronghold and Hua Tuo, Honored Physician put a favored dead creature from the graveyard on top of the library for Vaevictis shenanigans!

Enters the Battlefield for Profit

So yeah, if we’re playing mono-permanents, we’ll want to have a lot of permanents that mimic “spells” for us and that will often mean enters-the-battlefield effects. Ravenous Chupacabra, Reclamation Sage, Massacre Wurm are all great cards that get even better when put onto the battlefield for free with Vaevictis.

Of course, the most absurd card to get going with Vaevictis is Spine of Ish Sah. You cast it – or put it on the battlefield with Vaevictis – and destroy a permanent. Then, when Vaevictis attacks, sacrifice the Spine to get another permanent on the battlefield, and so Spine goes back to your hand to cast again.

Ramp

Six mana isn’t the most outrageous mana cost for a commander, but it’s not cheap either, and once you start attacking with Vaevictis a few times, you can expect your opponents to start wanting it dead, so we want plenty of mana. A lot of green’s signature mana ramp spells are sorceries, so we’re a little bit constrained here, but I think we can still do some good work with permanents. Ulvenwald Hydra isn’t really “ramp,” since it costs six mana, but it’s helpful to be able to search up some of your special lands.

“Good Stuff” Permanents

Speaking of special lands, Arcane Lighthouse seems like a good choice to turn off hexproof so Vaevictis can target some cards that are harder to deal with. Magus of the Wheel and Magus of the Will are literally spells attached to creatures, so they seem like a good choice for mono-permanents. Spike Weaver gives you a permanent “Fog” to wave off alpha strikes. The Eldest Reborn gives you three “spells” attached to one permanent.

Sweet deck! But wait… there are too many cards! Let’s figure out where to make our cuts.

Let’s start by taking a look at our mana curve:

Converted Mana Cost	Number of Cards
1	7
2	15
3	14
4	11
5	10
6	6 (plus commander)
7+ / X-Spells	3

67 total cards, plus 39 lands, equals only six cards over the line. Not too bad! Let’s consider some redundant cards that might provide opportunities for cuts.

These three all basically do the same thing, so I think I’ll cut the Hellkite Charger, since it’s expensive to cast and expensive to activate. I do really like its large evasive body, but I think it’s an easy cut.

I have a lot of great spells at five mana, so I feel like I need to make a few cuts here. The Eldest Reborn is sweet, but in the grand scheme of things, what it does isn’t all that potent. Ghoulcaller Gisa is great in a deck with sacrificial fodder, but most of the things that are easy to sacrifice aren’t really going to provide a whole bunch of Zombies. Churning out two or three 2/2s each turn is fine and all, but unworthy of Gisa’s power and mana slot.

All of these do basically the same thing: give Vaevictis haste so we can attack right away so I think one of them can hit the chopping block. I think Bloodsworn Steward falls a little short, since it only works with our commander; the other two can give another creatures haste.

Two more cards need to go, and I think these are safe cuts. Of the three “Dragon parts,” Dragon Shadow is probably the least good. Magus of the Will is nice and everything, but I think there are other ways to bring back stuff from the graveyard and I don’t have Rituals and such to really leverage the Yawgmoth’s Will effect. What do you think?

Here’s how the deck ended up after the cuts:

Vaevictis Asmadi, the Dire

Bennie Smith

Test deck on 07-02-2018

Commander

Creatures (37)

Lands (39)

So, what do you think? Do you agree with the cuts, or would you have gone another way? Are there any great cards I overlooked?

New to Commander?

If you’re just curious about the format, building your first deck, or trying to take your Commander deck up a notch, here are some handy links:

Commander Primer Part 1
(Why play Commander? Rules Overview, Picking your Commander)
Commander Primer Part 2
(Mana Requirements, Randomness, Card Advantage)
Commander Primer Part 3
(Power vs. Synergy, Griefing, Staples, Building a Doran Deck)
Commander Starter Kits 1
(kick start your allied two-color decks for $25)
Commander Starter Kits 2
(kick start your enemy two-color decks for $25)
Commander Starter Kits 3
(kick start your shard three-color decks for $25)