For months now, Vivi Ornitier has been terrorizing Standard. While Wizards of the Coast did ultimately move the upcoming ban announcement from November 24th to November 10th, that didn’t stop player turnout from plummeting at recent events. As we await inevitable changes to the Standard format, it appears Wizards is taking initiative to help address the card’s dominance in Arena-only formats a bit sooner.
As is customary for Alchemy, rather than just banning Vivi, Wizards has nerfed it instead. This process is designed to address issues in the metagame while still allowing players to make use of a powered-down version of the card. Alongside Vivi, 10 other cards are getting rebalanced, including some that were buffed.
Izzet Spells Nerfs
A total of five Alchemy cards are getting nerfed, and no archetype is taking a bigger hit than Izzet Spells. The goal is to cast Swiftspear’s Teaching early, then follow up with a copy of Vivi that enters with Prowess and Haste. From there, every spell you cast pumps Vivi considerably, which only nets you more mana to cast spells and enables a huge attack right away.
With this in mind, Wizards has nerfed both Vivi Ornitier and Swiftspear’s Teaching in hopes of diluting these combo draws in digital formats. Forcing Vivi to tap for mana removes the possibility of making mana the turn you cast Vivi unless you have a Haste enabler. Players can also no longer attack and make mana with Vivi in the same turn. Furthermore, Agatha’s Soul Cauldron becomes less effective of an engine in Historic, since you won’t be able to float mana with non-Hasty creature.
Meanwhile, Swiftspear’s Teaching’s one-time boon ability now makes you choose whether you want your next creature to gain Haste or Prowess, not both. This is a much more minor change compared to Vivi’s, but it makes curving this card into Vivi much less of a problematic play pattern. It also reduces the explosiveness of Izzet Wizards in Historic in games where you draw Teachings and your non-Hasty threats.
Even if these changes don’t kill Izzet Spells as an Alchemy archetype, there’s a good chance the archetype will need major deckbuilding tweaks to be competitive again. Despite the core of elite spells and Stormchaser’s Talent remaining intact, Vivi took a huge hit and may fall by the wayside.
Mobilize Nerfs
Beyond Izzet Spells, Mardu Mobilize looks in line to take a big step back. A lot of the deck’s power rested with Waystone’s Guidance, which made every follow-up creature an enormous threat. Reducing its triggered ability from gifting Mobilize 2 down to Mobilize 1 reduces your damage output a lot.
If that weren’t enough, Mardu Thunderkite also had its ability changed from Mobilize 2 to Mobilize 1. The card is still powerful individually, but when coupled with the downgrade to Guidance, it may struggle to find a top tier home moving forward.
Big Green Nerf
The final nerf comes to Fountainport Charmer, whose Offspring ability now costs an extra mana to use. Wizards stated that their goal was to make the card less ubiquitous in green decks by removing the curve of Llanowar Elves into Charmer. Unfortunately, in doing so, there’s a risk this card just won’t see much play at all moving forward.
Raising the Offspring cost forces this card to compete with other powerful four-drops on the curve. While it’s possible the card is still good enough to see some play even ignoring the Offspring ability, we’re skeptical.
Buffs
Moving onto the buffs, we have a handful of cards that received a stat boost. Candela’s power was raised from two to three, while Network Marauder and Xho Cai got toughness boosts. Unfortunately for Candela, the fact that the steep Station cost wasn’t addressed here makes it unlikely to see a huge play boost.
For Marauder and Xho Cai, though, the toughness boosts could make a big difference. Marauder now outsizes Burst Lightning, so it has a better chance of sticking around long term. It pairs perfectly with Pinnacle Emissary by buffing all of your Drone tokens, and Warping Pinnacle Emissary even triggers this card.
Xho Cai getting an upgrade to four toughness means it isn’t vulnerable to Illuminating Lash. The payoff for untapping with the three-drop is high, so maybe this is the boost it needs to see more play.
The last three rebalances emphasized buffing the abilities of specific build-arounds. Stoic Sky-Captain now makes it so your creatures Crew vehicles and spacecraft as though their power was 2 greater, rather than 1. It might not be enough to help the Spacecraft archetype lift off, but Stoic Star-Captain’s buff is rather significant.
Deviant Skytech now allows you to sacrifice it once you get to Max Speed without needing to invest any extra mana. The initial Thopter tokens are great at getting you there, and the upside of making four fliers for just three mana is quite high. Add Network Marauder as a way to pump all of your artifact tokens, and you’ve got a good gameplan.
In the case of Lurker in the Deep, it now has Impending 3 instead of Impending 4. The upgrade is small here, but with the range of nerfs to top tier archetypes, the door may have opened for some unique archetypal payoffs like this to get some love.
Reversions
In addition to a wide range of rebalances, Wizards also made the choice to take The Meathook Massacre and Fires of Invention and revert them back to their previous, non-nerfed designs. Neither of these cards are Alchemy legal anymore, and there has been a massive influx of powerful cards to Arena that have altered the Historic and Brawl metagames a bunch.
Neither of these cards seem too strong for those formats by any stretch, so this change makes a lot of sense. Fires was simply too clunky at five mana, but even at four mana, we doubt it will make an impact on Historic and beyond. The Meathook Massacre, meanwhile, lost a lot of its appeal as a sideboard option against aggro decks without the life gain package. Now, seeing Massacre pop up as a sideboard option against Boros Energy wouldn’t be too shocking.
Overall, we’re hopeful these balances help improve the Alchemy and Historic metagames. Vivi was in desperate need of a nerf, so we’re glad these changes came quickly. All rebalances go live tomorrow, so if you’ve been waiting for a good time to mess around with some cool Alchemy brews, the wait is almost over.
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