The Many Colors of Magnivore
Looking around the casual play and tournament rooms on MTGO, you see one creature time and again. Magnivore. In past metagames, the most common creature has been Ramosian Sergeant, or Nether Spirit, or Wild Mongrel, or Psychatog, or Meloku. Today, it’s Magnivore – a cheap hasty creature that gets bigger as the number of sorceries in all graveyards increases. Magnivore’s red – but he appears in a veritable rainbow of decks.
Let’s start with a base red version. This is the one I play most often, and it illustrates the basics of building a Magnivore deck.
Ruby Red Magnivores:
Obviously, Magnivore decks need lots of sorceries to make the Magnivore big and lethal. However, that does not mean just playing mana acceleration and a bunch of Lava Axes. You have to control what the opponent does, then win with the Magnivores. Fortunately, red has a traditional control strategy – and one built around sorceries. I’m talking, of course, about land destruction.
Several decks in the current Standard metagame rely on having a lot of mana available. Ghazi-Glare uses Vitu-Ghazi, the City Tree to pump out tokens – at a cost of 4 mana per token. Greater Gifts splices reanimation spells and relies upon Gifts Ungiven to find six casting cost legendary dragons. Other decks try to assemble the Urzatron. All of these decks struggle if they cannot get their mana.
Keeping the other decks off their mana involves firing off a lot of land destruction spells. The cheapest and best is Stone Rain, of course. It is the only three casting cost land destruction spell now available. (Sinkhole, we miss you!) After Stone Rain, the rest of the land destruction spells, including Wreak Havoc, from Guildpact, all cost four mana.
Demolish is a perfect addition since it also kills Umezawa’s Jitte, which is such a powerful, game altering spell that you need to be able to defeat it. Demolish also costs only one colored mana, which is irrelevant in the mono-colored deck, but a real concern when going multiple colors.
I am also running Seismic Spike. Seismic Spike produces an additional two mana when I cast it – and that does, on rare occasion, mean I end up mana burning. That is rare, however, since the deck also runs twelve spells costing two mana.
Two of the two mana spells are intended to take care of creatures that slip through before the land destruction does its thing. Volcanic Hammer can kill early Watchwolves, or be sent directly to the opponent’s head later in the match. Pyroclasm is necessary to deal with the host of Elves and Birds that opposing decks can drop early one. By casting these two spells together, they can kill even an Arashi or Iwamori.
Finally, the deck does need some mana acceleration. The best option I have found is Fellwar Stone, which has the advantage of coming into play untapped. It can be dead at times – if your opponent has no lands, Fellwar Stone produces no mana – but if your opponent has no lands you are probably winning anyway.
Finally, the best land destruction spell in Red’s arsenal has to be Wildfire. Wildfire kills four lands on both sides of the board – together with most creatures in play. This is not a big problem, since by the time you want to cast this, you probably have spare lands, but your opponent should have four or fewer. Wildfire is almost enough, but I also run one Thoughts of Ruin to complement the Wildfires. On rare occasions, I end up drawing a lot of lands and few to no land destruction spells, In that case, Thoughts of Ruin can often end up clearing out my opponent’s board while I can play lands from my hand to rebuild.
In addition to the Magnivores and Mountains, the deck also runs four Quicksands. The Quicksands help against fast attackers, as well as helping to make sure that I make my land drops. Twenty five lands and four mana artifacts may seem like a lot, but they are necessary – the main way this deck loses is if it does not start killing lands right away. Missing your fourth land drop can be a big problem. .
Finally, I have three Blood Moons maindeck, and the final one in the sideboard. Some decks run a huge number of non-basics, and many, like Ghazi-Glare, have no basic lands that can provide colored mana for their Seed Sparks. In some games, Blood Moon will be dead, in others it will just shut down your own Quicksands – but in the others, Blood Moon flat out wins the game.
Here’s the decklist:
Ruby Red Magnivore
4 Wildfire
4 Demolish
21 Mountain
I looked at a number of other sorceries when building the deck. Some are good, some look good but actually stink. And some, like Warp World, are just not relevant for this deck – I’ll skip even talking about those.
I’ve already mentioned Lava Axe. Lava Axe may look like a nice source of damage, but it is totally unnecessary, and you would almost always rather draw a Stone Rain or Pyroclasm. Once Magnivore is in play, you will usually be hitting for at least five per turn – often ten or more. Lava Axe damage is irrelevant. What is important is slowing the opponent down early, and clearing out blockers once Magnivore is on the table. Lava Axe does neither of these functions. Blaze is almost as bad: it can hit creatures, but only one. It doesn’t make the cut.
Sowing Salt was much closer to making the cut. Against decks with no non-basics, it is completely dead. Against others, those with nothing but non-basics, Blood Moon is much, much better. I have tried it, and occasionally play it in the sideboard, but that’s about it.
Feral Lightning is too expensive and not good enough. By the time you can cast this, you should be either playing Wildfire or bashing with a 7/7 Magnivore – or both.
Threaten
has some appeal, and I have tried it.
However, I would almost always prefer some removal spell. If I have a Magnivore on the table, there is
almost nothing I could Threaten that I could not just ignore or kill. It might be different if I could steal an
opponent’s creature during combat, then block another
creature to get a two for one – but that would require playing and instant, and
that would do nothing for Magnivore.
Finally, two other mass removal cards seem almost good
enough, but I don’t expect to play them anywhere but out of the sideboard. The first is Flame Wave. This is a super Pyroclasm, or a Wildfire that
doesn’t kill lands, with a bonus four points of damage to the opponent. That’s nice, but I rarely find myself
wishing for that effect. Magnivore is
almost always enough.
Flowstone
Slide is comparable, and it kills a lot of creatures that can otherwise
give you problems. Slide can, unlike any
other red card, kill Paladin en-Vec, or the new anti-beatdown sideboard hero Order of
the Stars, when that dude gets protection from red.
One option I have not yet had a chance to try is Bottled Cloister. The deck could use card drawing, and in a deck with nothing but sorceries, Cloister’s remove-your-hand downside is minimal. However, Cloister is a lot of mana for this deck. Worse, nearly all the good decks pack artifact removal, and if the opponent kills the Cloister, you will never get your hand back.
I have played this deck in the tournament practice room, and have played a lot of sideboarded games. Against control, such as it is, I like to bring in Genju of the Spires – a threat I can slip under their counters. Later on, I can Pyroclasm away blockers, and attack only if that clears the board. Against decks like Greater Gifts, I bring in the last Blood Moon. Against decks with Jitte or that rely on Signets, like Eminent Domain, I bring in Smash. Finally, against Enduring Ideal, I have started playing Aura Barbs. It isn’t always enough, but if they have Form of the Dragon and two other enchantments, it’s game over.
Guild Pact is fast approaching, and it is bringing a couple interesting additions. The most interesting is Izzet Guildmage. If you have the mana, copying a Stone Rain is really nice, as is copying Volcanic Hammer to kill a big creature. The down side, of course, is that he dies to Pyroclasm – but the one reason to include him is that you can then play Desperate Ritual over Fellwar Stone, and add a couple Lava Spikes. It’s unlikely to work, but if you have Izzet Guildmage in play, and mana available, you can cast Desperate Ritual, splice Lava Spike, then copy the spell (including the splice) with the Guildmage. You let the copy resolve, and the copy produces more mana. You can use that to copy the spells again (since they are still on the stack.) Infinite damage. It’s unlikely and clunky, but if you want to include an alternate win condition in the deck (not a bad idea), or just like having a fallback combo in a beatdown/control deck, go for it.
Okay, that takes care of mono-red Magnivore decks. It’s time to look at adding other colors.
Snow-Covered Magnivores
White is the first color on the color wheel – and the last color you would want to play in a Magnivore land destruction deck. White just does not add any interesting sorceries to the deck. Red-white does have some interesting cards, like Lightning Helix, but they just don’t fit in a Magnivore deck. I searched the Gatherer and compiled a list of all white or red-white sorceries currently legal in Standard. Just five (or seven, counting clones) cards are even remotely playable.
Brightflame could be good – but it costs way too much. By the time you could afford this, you will either be dead or winning. Pyroclasm is a far better way to deal with weenies. Even Flame Wave is more cost effective, unless you are dealing with creatures with five or better toughness – and if you facing multiple 5 toughness creatures, you have problems that Brightflame cannot solve.
The next option is Gift of Estates - the best white land fetcher since Tithe. (Tithe – coming to MTGO in Visions!) Gift of Estates fetches Plains and Sacred Foundry – but only if your opponent has more lands in play than you do. Considering that Magnivore is a land destruction deck, if your opponent does have more lands than you do, something is seriously wrong.
Razia’s Purification is a pseudo-Wildfire – but it is too symmetrical. With Wildfire, you can play out six lands, then sacrifice four. Your opponent may also have played out six lands by that point – but you should have destroyed two already. That’s why Wildfire is good. You can build decks around Razia’s Purification – but they are not Magnivore / Wildfire decks.
The next option is Vengeance. Vengeance can kill opposing creatures – but it is just too situational to be worth the splash. Even cards like Flame Wave are generally better, and don’t require mucking up your mana.
Terashi’s Grasp is better – it is almost worth running white, since it can kill Jitte, Signets and enchantments – but it is not quite enough on it’s own.
The final white sorcery is Wrath of God, as well as the various Wrath clones like Final Judgment and Hour of Reckoning. Wrath is an amazing board sweeper – and can be good. Unlike Pyroclasm, Wrath cannot be used to eliminate chump blockers / pump Magnivore while it is on the table. More importantly, Wrath – and it’s clones - require double white in the casting cost. If there were other good, white sorceries to play, that might be worth building a mana base around, but since there are not, it’s not worth the pain of playing Battlefield Forge.
Coal Black Magnivores
Black, on the other hand, does offer some useful cards. It is a nice splash, and the only drawback is that the lands to support it are not yet in print. We do have Sulfurous Springs, but the Ravnica block R/B dual land won’t arrive until the third set. The R/B Signet would also help – and that is also a future card. Even so, black does give us some good cards, and my RB versions are a lot of fun to play.
The first black sorcery I included is Blackmail. Blackmail is an excellent card to cast on turn one. Generally, the opponent will give you the choice of three lands, or lands and a late game card. Taking the lands is not a bad thing when playing a land destruction deck, nor is forcing your opponent to discard counters, or even sorceries that will feed your Magnivore. The main problem with Blackmail is that you really want black mana early, and that can be a problem until Dissention arrives.
Cruel Edict is another useful sorcery. It can often handle creatures that Pyroclasm and Volcanic Hammer cannot – for example, I had an opponent play a both Blanchwood Armor and Moldervine Cloak on an Elf. Even with land destruction, the elf was huge – but Pyroclasm did in all his friends, and Cruel Edict finished him off.
The next sorcery on the list is Diabolic Tutor. In the past I had been playing Dimir House Guard, but I found that I never cast him – just Transmuted him. Diabolic Tutor is almost the same mana cost, and it pumps Magnivore. Diabolic Tutor is generally as good as House Guard, but Tutor can also get a Mountain, if you need the second red or sixth land for Wildfire. More importantly, Tutor can allow you to play single copies of a number of cards that are good in certain situations – but only certain situations. For example, I do run a single Sowing Salts in RB Magnivore – because I can get it, when needed, with Diabolic Tutor. The only downside is that Diabolic Tutor is so very slow.
The first tutor target is Cranial Extraction. Extraction is amazing against certain decks – and useless against others. For example, in the mirror match, casting Cranial Extraction naming Magnivore should be game over. Against a beatdown deck, on the other hand, you want to deal with the creatures on the table, not in the library. (That said, on rare occasions I have had Blackmail and Extraction become a devastating one-two punch, against beatdown decks, when I spot multiple identical cards in hand.)
Eradicate is another excellent card in certain situations. I had an opponent tap out to play Yosei, the Morning Star, and I Eradicated it. Eradicate is amazing against any dragon legend, since a dragon removed from the game does not trigger their going to graveyard effects.
Next, although there are very few mono-colored decks out there right now, when you meet one, Persecute can just destroy them – especially if you have spent a few turns destroying their mana, first. Once again, only a single copy is necessary, along with a couple Diabolic Tutors to find them.
Next up is Nightmare Void. Nightmare Void is another discard effect, but it can hit anything – even lands. More importantly, Nightmare Void has dredge, allowing you to reuse it. Even the dredge is good, since more than half the cards you dredge will be sorceries that feed your Magnivore. Again, you won’t always want it, but when you do, you will want it badly.
Black also allows you to run Zombify, which can recover a Magnivore that got killed, or that got dredged away. This is very situational, but I have played it, and have found it useful.
Finally, of course, black let’s you run Befoul. Befoul is flexible. It’s land destruction when you need lands destruction, and creature kill when you need creature kill. It’s quite good, and I play two. I will play three when the dual lands and signets arrive, to further fix the mana.
The one thing black is missing is a good sorcery card drawing spell. Night’s Whispers would be prefect – too bad it has rotated out.
Mossy Green Magnivores
Where white has an insufficient number of playable sorceries, green has, if anything, too many.
To begin with, if you are playing green, you can get rid of the artifact mana acceleration and play land search spells instead. Right now you can choose from Farseek, Kodama’s Reach and Rampant Growth. I have been playing a couple Rampant Growths and four Kodama’s Reach, because Kodama’s Reach provides two lands for one card. Farseek is not yet useful – but once I can get some of the new R/G duals – Stomping Ground – that will change. Absent the duals, though, Rampant Growth can only fetch forests, and sometimes I need a second forest.
In addition to the Magnivores, I play some additional creatures in R/G. I like Arashi, who can beat for five and can also kill Meloku and all her little illusionettes. I also like Kodama of the North Tree, who hard to kill with anything short of a pile of blockers, or a Flame Wave. I can even play silliness like Ryusei or Jugan – all because little sorceries like Time of Need can tutor for single copies. In practice, singles of Arashi, North Tree and occasionally Jiwari are about all I run, but Time of Need still works.
One green card that does not help the Magnivore decks is Life from the Loam. That is the bane of land destruction decks everywhere – but it is also a sorcery. It isn’t impossible to deal with – the land destruction is not intended to stop you opponent – merely slow them enough that you can get a big, fat Magnivore into action before they set up. If they waste a turn or two casting Life from the Loam, that isn’t all that bad. It’s not good, but you should still stay ahead on lands, and Wildfire should still set them back far worse than it does you.
Another highly useful green sorcery is Recollect. Recollect is almost as good as Diabolic Tutor – and it can be extremely useful in fetching Arashi if you need to cycle again, or Wildfire if they are rebuilding. Like Tutor, it is a bit more expensive than you might like, but it is still very good for what it does.
Of course, Creeping Mold makes the main deck in multiples. It kills Signets, Jittes, enchantments and lands – and it is a sorcery. It is almost as flexible as Vindicate or Desert Twister, but the mana cost is better than those two.
Green’s best sideboard card may be Splinter – which can really help against opponents relying on Signets or Spectral Searchlights to fix their mana. It is slow and clunky, but against certain decks it can be backbreaking. The slow and clunky is the issue – Smash may be better in so many cases.
Guildpact will bring us a couple new cards for this deck. Savage Twister is an amazing board clearer, and will fit the deck perfectly. Wreak Havoc is also a strong contender, especially out of the sideboard against control. Finally, of course, Guildpact will bring us some R/G dual lands, which should really help the mana. Karplusian Forest is nice, but not enough.
True Blue Magnivores
Finally, blue Magnivore decks are already quite good
(tournament winning good) and Guildpact is only going
to make them better.
PRJ
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