Vastwood Hydra

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Legality

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

Vastwood Hydra

Creature — Hydra

Vastwood Hydra enters the battlefield with X +1/+1 counters on it.

When Vastwood Hydra dies (is put into the graveyard from the battlefield), you may distribute a number of +1/+1 counters equal to the number of +1/+1 counters on Vastwood Hydra among any number of creatures you control.

Regulus_Rising on That Time You Got Reincarnated as an Ooze

1 year ago

Epicurus I think The Ozolith is a great card for any counter focused deck! I'll add it to the maybe board, but it's just a tad too expensive for the budget deck. It makes me want to create a deck focused around creating counters and then redistributing them if a creature dies, similar to Vastwood Hydra. Actually Ozolith and Vastwood would be a disgusting combo since you're distributing new counters for vastwood and taking the original ones for Ozolith, effectively doubling the number of counters on the board.

Fuzzy003 I do like Acidic Slime I just didn't include it due to its higher cast cost and that it didn't activate any +1/+1 counters. I am a sucker for versatility though so I will add it to the maybe board as well!

multimedia on Budget Gruul X spell slinger

3 years ago

Hey, well done on your first real deck. On less than $50 budget you have good card sense :)

Because of low budget all my card suggestions will be $1 or less each.

Cards to consider cutting:

  • 4x Mountain
  • 2x Forest
  • Ivy Elemental
  • Krakilin
  • Veteran Explorer
  • Llanowar Visionary
  • Gelatinous Genesis
  • Dictate of Karametra
  • Keeper of Progenitus
  • Boundless Realms

Good luck with your deck.

Simerix on Big Butt Big Mana

3 years ago

Cards to remove: Altered Ego, Horizon Chimera, Vastwood Hydra, Elixir of Immortality, Otherworld Atlas, Fog, Haze of Pollen, Respite, Kiora, Behemoth Beckoner, Prosperity, Wildest Dreams, Thryx, the Sudden Storm

Meh cards: Folio of Fancies, Beanstalk Giant, Hydra Broodmaster

Be carful with cards like Prosperity because you give your opponents a lot of cards. You pay a lot of mana for them to draw a lot of cards.

Your lands suck. I can help you find better lands to use if you would like. You will be fine if you don't change them, but better lands go a long way.

Thryx, the Sudden Storm is a decent card, but look at your mana curve. You don't have many cards over 5 cmc. In other words, he doesn't reduce the cost of many spells.

Cards like Fog don't work well in commander. When life totals are so high, you don't care about one individual combat, but gaining large long term value. This is a single use card. It will also likely sit in your hand as a dead card most of the game. Compare Fog to a card like Propaganda

JoJosMagic on Marwyn's Elves

3 years ago

This is an awesome deck ..I dig what you are doing...I know Most of these aren't elves but here are my main thoughts... maybe Aggressive Mammoth for universal trample what's cooler than an elf army that has trample..Majestic Myriarch because your creature output is off the chain and it doubles the power..and an elfy suggestion Presence of Gond most notable when paired multi color ie Midnight Guard but over all might fit well with this deck. For counter fun via Multani, Yavimaya's Avatar add counters etc so as expensive and frankly overused as it is Doubling Season may be helpful though you did say budget...so my suggestion would be some of the hydras instead Primordial Hydra, Voracious Hydra, Hungering Hydra, Vastwood Hydra which let you play early or build up and the The Ozolith to keep the extra..As for PlanesWalkers Any of the Nissa's would help you out tremendously but the one I thought for sure you would have for sure was Nissa Revane...the only potential problems I see with this deck in general is its lack of flying and or reach / protection from flying...so might want a few spiders etc Watcher in the Web is particularly gnarly and Arboreal Grazer has the benefit of low mana cost and land fetch.

Yesterday on Is there a set order …

3 years ago

A Vastwood Hydra is on my side of the battlefield with two +1/+1 counters on it. My opponent targets it with a Puncture Blast. After that spell resolves, before state-based actions are checked, there's a moment when the hydra is on the battlefield with two +1/+1 counters on it, three -1/-1 counters on it, at P/T -1/-1.

I was playing on MTGO a while ago and something similar to this happened (though I can't remember the exact cards involved), and the game handled it by default — the creature died before the +1/+1 and -1/-1 counters removed each other, and so the owner of the creature got the benefit of it dying with the two +1/+1 counters, rather than none.


In a different scenario, I'm attacking an opponent in a multiplayer game with three vanilla 2/2s and I control a Blood Artist. The opponent only has 3 life and a vanilla 1/1, and decides to block one of my creatures. When combat damage resolves, as state-based actions are checked, the opponent loses the game for having 0 or less life (and therefore all their creatures are removed from the game), and also their creature dies. If the creature dies before my opponent loses, my Blood Artist would see it dying and trigger.

I've only ever handled it as the creatures seeing each other dying, as I think one intuitively would do if two 2/2s were trading with each other rather than just a 1/1 blocking the attacking 2/2. But if the defending player is able to influence the way the state-based actions resolve, I suppose this isn't necessarily always the case.


Is there a specific order in which these state-based actions always resolve? If not, who gets to choose the order in each scenario?

Monomanamaniac on The Hydra X

3 years ago

You should be running Elemental Bond and Garruk's Uprising you're almost always paying 3 or more into x so they're great. Vastwood Hydra might be a better creature than some of your choices. Curse of the Swine would be neat as creature removal. Capricopian is an amazing hydra that will bounce around your opponents getting bigger till they run out of mana. If you're not on a budget is suggest Doubling Season and Kalonian Hydra for obvious reasons. Then there's x card draw like Blue Sun's Zenith, Thassa's Intervention, Mind Spring, Pull from Tomorrow, or Stroke of Genius. Honestly I'd suggest any of the intervention cards, they're excellent. Think about replacing one of your non basics with Zagoth Triome and Opulent Palace and maybe Sunken Hollow

So as for cuts. Trophy Mage, Umbral Mantle, Basalt Monolith, Altar of Dementia, I'd suggest ditching some artifact rocks for some green land ramp like Farseek or Rampant Growth, and take out a few of your artifact rocks in general because you're in green and your ramp already is solid. Reclamation Sage, Elixir of Immortality, Vorel of the Hull Clade, Nimbus Swimmer. Now I would like to say that I'm not trying to hate on your deck, I quite like the concept, but I do think you need to hone in on your strategy, play an x card, make a hydra, draw into the next x card, cast that card, make another hydra. It's a great deck and I enjoy the way you built it, just trying to do as you said and help you cut some cards, and at the same time I wanted to point out a couple things you might've missed

multimedia on Otrimi Plays Hard

3 years ago

Hey, nice budget upgrades to the precon: Sea-Dasher, Reconnaissance, Brokkos, and Triome.

Elusive Tormentor  Flip and Troll Ascetic are two budget creatures who you want to mutate with Otrimi. Tormentor for Insidious Mist when mutated with Otrimi makes a 6/6 hexproof, indestructible, unblockable, trample Beast. Discard a creature with mutate to flip Tormentor and recur that creature with Otrimi. The combination of hexproof and regenerate of Ascetic is powerful with mutate.

Hexproof is key and it's wanted because it protects the creature you're mutating to from targeted removal before it mutates and then after it protects the mutate pile so you can safely mutate again. Swiftfoot Boots can equip to any creature you control giving it hexproof.

( > = could replace)


The manabase of the precon is not good and you haven't changed it much. The color fixing is not good enough to be able to consistently cast Otrimi. Needing three different colors and having 11x basic Forests is going to be problematic without more color fixing.

On a budget, a manabase change to consider is to add the Bounce lands: Simic Growth Chamber, Dimir Aqueduct, Golgari Rot Farm in place of other lands that ETB tapped. With Bounce lands have to return a land you control to your hand (bounce) and they interact well with a basic land to bounce. They help with color fixing since you tap them for two different colors of mana.

More Signets can help with faster ramp and color fixing. Arcane Signet is great, but there's three other budget Signets to consider adding: Simic Signet, Golgari Signet and Dimir Signet (Ravnica version). A Signet is helpful since any basic Forest or any other land can be used to make two different colors of mana.


Shared Summons is a budget instant creature tutor that can put any two creatures into your hand. Jarad's Orders is another creature tutor that puts a creature into your hand and any other creature into your graveyard such as one with mutate to recur with Otrimi. Primal Empathy can be repeatable draw source or repeatable source to make Otrimi bigger. Season of Growth can be another repeatable draw source, any time you cast a creature for it's mutate cost targeting a creature to mutate.

Good luck with your deck.

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