Testing Vengevine Naya

Evan’s been pretty excited about Vengevine, as many are, and wanted to plug it into Boss Naya as soon as he saw it. For tonight’s session he got the list together, swapping out 2 Rangers, a Scute Mob, and Ajani Vengeant. Ajani seemed fine to swap out, as you can’t just go piling more 4′s in the deck without cutting some. Evan used the same reasoning in trimming some Rangers and this reveals one of the problems with Vengevine. His competition is extremely stiff. Not only is the new Mythic not as good as Bloodbraid Elf, neither is Ranger (though he’s much closer), but Vengevine probably requires you to lose some amount of one or both of these cards and he happens to work slightly better with the slightly worse option. Naya decks are facing a real clustercuss at the 4 spot, especially since Ajani Vengeant, while completely cuttable for the purposes of exploration, provides the deck with a different and effective angle of attack. It will all take some sorting out, though I wouldn’t be surprised if Vengevine ended up stuck on the bench.

Hardcasting Eldrazi

I attended GP Houston this weekend, and even though I only posted a 4-2-1 with Scapeshift Zoo, the juices are flowing again. The next round of relevant tournaments are Standard qualifiers for Pro Tour Amsterdam, so that’s what I’m going to be looking at for the near future.

Coming to the format with fresh eyes (I know Jund is good, but I don’t hate it yet), the first thing that strikes me is how awesome the mana ramp is right now. Saturday, Bdm asked me what officially-spoiled card excited me most. At the time, I said Joraga Treespeaker, but that’s only because I hadn’t seen Kozilek’s Predator yet. I’m pretty comfortable comparing this guy to Garruk Wildspeaker; it offers similar flexibility and slightly better defense, while providing a Veggies effect much more consistently and just a little less explosively. I know he doesn’t come equipped with Overrun, but if that’s the party you’re going to, his three warm bodies are more than welcome. Steve Sadin, in his column at dailymtg.com, predicted heavy block play for this card but was hesitant to vouch for it in standard. Personally, I have no doubts.