Gore Vassal
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Legality

Format Legality
1v1 Commander Legal
Archenemy Legal
Block Constructed Legal
Canadian Highlander Legal
Casual Legal
Commander / EDH Legal
Commander: Rule 0 Legal
Custom Legal
Duel Commander Legal
Highlander Legal
Legacy Legal
Leviathan Legal
Limited Legal
Modern Legal
Modern Beyond Horizons Legal
Oathbreaker Legal
Planar Constructed Legal
Planechase Legal
Quest Magic Legal
Tiny Leaders Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Gore Vassal

Creature — Phyrexian Dog

Sacrifice Gore Vassal: Put a -1/-1 counter on target creature. Then, if that creature's toughness is 1 or greater, regenerate it.

Mortlocke on New hubs to be added

3 years ago

Hello legendofa,

I propose a new hub to be added: Phyrexian. During Modern Horizons 2, 225 creatures were retconned into having the Phyrexian creature subtype to join Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider . Additionally, there were a smattering of Enchantments, Artifacts and etc that ether have the Phyrexian subtype or create creature tokens that do. Thanks to this retcon I now have a deck that has a Phyrexian tribal theme. For your reference, below is a full list of spells that were affected by WotC's Phyrexian errata.

Source: https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Phyrexian

StopShot on StopShot

5 years ago

@TypicalTimmy, Ah, I haven't changed my blurb in years. (How embarrassing.)

As for why the preference on the color pairing; I don't have a simple answer to it, but if there was a good number of colors to focus on, three always seemed ideal.

There are 10 three-color deck combinations to choose from. Before sticking to one color set I experimented with other color combinations using guild gates as the backbone of my manabase when I first started out playing Magic. I ended up playing against a lot of other decks that were absurdly more costlier in terms of money than my own decks back then which made losing a constant, but what made Magic most enjoyable for me was more so on the deck building and creativity. For me it kind of felt like a form of personal expression that was unique. My opponents were those who wanted to play competitively and they'd net-deck in Standard, Modern, and EDH playing sometimes with mirror copies of tournament-winning decks. For me that style of playing Magic was never appealing as it felt like you had to take someone else's idea or deck-concept to play seriously, and that net-decking was just an absurdly, non-ending, recycling of the same deck with only minor changes until it's as optimized as it can be. (Not saying it's wrong to play like that, it's just not something I would ever enjoy doing as it feels so unfulfilling to me.)

My Theros standard deck only consisted entirely of cards I had opened from a couple of packs from the various standard sets at the time, but I started picking up Modern when a friend of mine bought out a random person's collection online. This friend of mine was generous enough to let me have any of the worthless commons and uncommons he didn't mind parting with, so I built a kitchen table Modern deck that consisted of Gore Vassal and Feral Ridgewolf as it's signature cards. (This deck was crumby, but was way better than my excuse of a standard deck I was using and I liked it a lot more too because I had a bigger selection of cards to choose from which meant more creativity.)

I eventually got a part-time job after high school where I was actually making some money for once, but the pay wasn't amazing either. If I was going to financially invest into building a more serious deck I'd have to stick to a single three color-set as I did not have an intown local game store to trade one mana-base out for another. I decided on Mardu for a few reasons. One was that this was before the Khans of Tarkir block debuted, so I was limited to the original Zendikar fetch-lands to choose from and it seemed more ideal to build a three color deck that had a "wedge" color pairing as opposed to a "shard" color pairing. This meant I could run two sets of in-color fetches as opposed to just one; Arid Mesa and Marsh Flats . Second, I believe at the time those two fetch-lands were the cheapest to buy which also made them more favorable. Lastly none of the competitive Modern decks back then ever ran a true Mardu-color deck. ("True" as in not splashing into that pairing just to run a singular card.) The color combination just seemed as though it was ripe with potential to build around with and if I did make something really competitive it would give me a sense of pride and ownership that I didn't have to borrow someone else's idea or concept in order to win against my competitive friends.

I eventually did make a high stakes Modern deck in which used an Evershrike + Spirit Loop synergy to create a nasty end-game for my opponents. At the time other Modern graveyard strategies were nowhere near as prevalent or fast either so graveyard-hate was little to no concern as well. The issue with the deck was consistently pulling off that synergy just wasn't good enough at the time with the cards that were available, and so the other half of my deck consisted of good-stuff like Boros Reckoner and Vampire Nighthawk which generally made the focus of the deck an all-rounder as opposed to aggro, control, or midrange - good at everything, but not the greatest for any given one. That deck probably would have been tier 2.5, (higher tiered if I could land the signature combo,) but even though it wasn't the best the personal enjoyment I got out of giving my friend's net-decks a real struggle made it exhilarating to play with as if I was on the verge of creating a new Modern archetype all by myself. (It was pretty strong against the Splinter Twin and Jund match-up which is part of what made it so promising in the first place.)

That never worked out though. I spent exhaustive nights pooling through gatherer, but I had hit the limit. There was no real way to make the end-game combo anymore consistent than I already had it. The deck was scrapped, because the best way to improve it was to either drop red or white for green to run Commune with the Gods and Rancor . Seeing how the Splinter Twin archetype was later banned out of modern and with the rise of faster, stronger graveyard decks made graveyard hate more common, had I changed out of my color set to include green that Evershrike deck would have needed to eventually devolve into yet another Zoo, Dredge, or Jund deck just to stay in the meta. I digress, with the level of care, spending, and testing dedicated to just that one color-combination I would have gone absolutely nowhere had I abandoned my personal color combination.

In return, I canned Modern for EDH dedicating all my time and focus on the same color set - the same style of deck - the same business as usual. I already had the cards, the experience, and whatever I didn't have was just convenient to obtain for the circumstances at the time. Mardu OG dual-lands were still in the $50 price range while others were over $100, my college offered a playgroup consisting heavily of a competitive no-nonsense-styled EDH meta that forced me to rely on what I already did best to just to keep up, and by constantly being pitted against the decks that were already pushed to their limit I was able to do the same for my own.

In the end what I learned is you could spend your time playing in different colors and different strategies, and develop a flexible understanding on how to pilot just about any deck, but at the same time you only ever play each game one deck at a time. In each game how well you have crafted and piloted that deck is reflective only on how much time you've spent with that deck itself. I can't switch over to other colors as it would be like asking an artist who has dedicated all his time to painting to pick up a musical instrument or to write novels. For me all my experiences and thoughts are placed in one color combination, so whenever I play a game I'm going to be coming out throwing everything that I got into it. That's why I value above all other color combinations, but only for personal reasons. (I don't think it's fair to say any color combination is truly the strongest though, but even if there was one I would have no interest in playing it because I would like to be the one who proves that claim wrong.)

There's a quote from Bruce Lee that sums it up pretty well:

"I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times."

If you're curious my sole EDH deck is Flame Haze. The other decks are concept works I haven't even acquired the cards for. (Flame Haze's deck description is currently outdated at the moment however.)