Vannifar, Evolved Enigma - Plot Twist #1

Vannifar, Evolved Enigma

Welcome to Plot Twist, the new article series where I build a Commander deck that starts out telling one kind of story only to throw out a plot twist mid-game. I'm Jeff Girten, and I've been playing Magic: The Gathering since you could buy (gulp!) Stronghold booster packs for $3 and Commander since War of the Spark. Today, I'm taking a brand new commander, Vannifar, Evolved Enigma

Part of what draws me to Commander is that games develop fascinating storylines in ways that 1v1 formats traditionally don't. How many times have you destroyed an opponent's commander when they started getting cheeky, only to watch them thwart your win attempt at the last possible moment in revenge? Have you ever left an opponent alive so their deck has a chance to 'do the thing' only to watch them become a massive threat just a couple of turns later? These types of storylines are what make memorable games of Commander, ones filled with plot twists and surprise endings. 

While a good portion of the 'story' in a game of Commander comes from our opponents' decisions, the table politics, and the luck of the draw, we can create interesting stories through our deckbuilding decisions as well. That's what ultimately inspired me to start writing this series and bring you today's decklist helmed by the new Vannifar, Evolved Enigma

How does Vannifar work?

This version of Vannifar offers us a choice between cloaking a card from our hand or placing a +1/+1 counter on each colorless creature we control at the start of combat on our turn. Cloak lets us put a card from our hand face down on the board and makes it a colorless, typeless 2/2 "mysterious creature" with ward 2 that we can turn face up at any time by paying its mana cost. It's important to note that Vanifar's ability doesn't require the card we cloak to be a creature or permanent, so if we're getting flooded with lands, we can turn them into extra 2/2 creatures. However, we can only turn creature cards that have been cloaked this way face-up.

What Does This Have to do with Morph, Jeff?

If these face-down, cloaked creatures sound familiar, it's because they're similar to the morph mechanic that's popped up several times throughout Magic's history, though there are cards all the way back from Alpha that reference placing cards face-down (Seriously, Illusionary Mask

Doing the Twist

When we sit down across from our opponents, it might be the first time they've seen Vannifar, Evolved Enigma

This is the moment when we hit our opponents with the plot twist: using Vannifar's ability to sneak creatures into play and then leave our opponents guessing if they're morphs or something much worse.

Here's the full decklist for you to peruse:

Since Cloak allows us to turn the creature face-up at any time, we're going to have a little fun with our opponents by not flipping our creatures over until after blockers are declared. We're running Dolmen Gate

This lets us take advantage of Vannifar's second ability by putting +1/+1 counters on any Cloaked/Morphed creatures we already have in play. Since flipping creatures face up doesn't cause them to change zones, they keep any +1/+1 counters we've placed on them.

Using Vannifar to make Morph busted

When Vanifar lets us place any card in our hand face down as a Cloaked creature, it lets us cheat on the three mana we'd normally have to pay to Cloak/Morph a creature. That makes creatures like Brine Elemental

We also have cards like Deathmist Raptor

Let's throw in a few surprises for our opponents...

Of course, we want to throw in a plot twist and keep our opponents guessing about what we're attacking them with, so this deck is also packed with creatures that have abilities that trigger on combat damage like Ancient Silver Dragon

We also have a few creatures that don't have on-damage abilities, but will still surprise our opponents when we turn them face up: Aggressive Mammoth

What do you mean +1/+1 counters are busted?

Vannifar also gives us the ability to put a +1/+1 counter on each of our colorless creatures at the start of combat, so we're also running Omarthis, Ghostfire Initiate

We'll want to make sure we get some +1/+1 counters on our creatures before overextending our board because a lot of our interactive spells, like Inspiring Call

A few extra twists for good measure

I love a deck that runs some oddball cards that don't really see a lot of play in Commander but will create interesting stories when we cast them. 

Brine Elemental

Roll the Credits

I hope you enjoyed reading my twisty story featuring Vannifar, Evolved Enigma

Stay tuned to see what other twists and turns are headed your way in the next edition of Plot Twist.