A lot of Phyrexia: All Will Be One cards have been released recently, and the community is starting to brew some new decks! One new three-mana Planeswalker, in particular, has a lot of players excited to try new decks or rehash old strategies that haven’t quite been good enough to make it in competitive play. Let’s take a look at Tyvar, Jubilant Brawler!
Tyvar, Jubilant Brawler
Officially spoiled by the MTG Twitter page, Tyvar, Jubilant Brawler, is a three-mana Planeswalker in Golgari colors. Both of Tyvar’s abilities are interesting in the right deck, but this card is pushed over the top by its static ability. Tyvar allows you to activate creature abilities as though you had Haste. This makes a bunch of creatures that weren’t competitively viable into absolute powerhouses. As you might imagine, this card ‘breaks’ a bunch of different existing archetypes that see fringe play in various formats. We’ll take a look at the interactions that have MTG players excited about Tyvar!
Pioneer Vannifar Combo
Pioneer Vannifar combo was a bizarre deck that popped up at the beginning of the Pioneer Regional Championship circuit that passed last September. This was a four-colored aggressive Human deck with a twist. While the deck sported the Human package constantly seen in Mono White Pioneer decks, it also features a surprise instant kill line. This occurs whenever Vannifar sacrifices a one-drop in the deck. The deck ran Bloodlust Inciter as a way to try and speed things up by giving Vannifar Haste, but Tyvar may be able to upgrade the deck quality a fair bit, as it is a much better card than the Inciter overall. This would likely create an entirely different shell for the Vannifar deck.
In terms of how the combo actually works, its pretty straightforward, and holds some similarities to the Neoform combo seen in Historic:
Start with a Vannifar that can tap and a one-drop. You can start this combo at any stage as long as you can tap Vannifar.
- Use Vannifar to sacrifice a one-drop and search for Corridor Monitor. The Monitor untaps Vannifar.
- Sacrifice the Monitor with Vannifar to find Extraction Specialist. Target Corridor Monitor with Extraction Specialist’s ability. Corridor Monitor reenters the battlefield. Use its ability to untap Vannifar and sacrifice the Monitor to find another Extraction Specialist. Repeat this step until you’ve found all the Extraction Specialists in your deck.
- Once you have all your Extraction Specialists in play, continue this loop with Glasspool Mimic. This can copy Extraction Specialist, continuing the loop and giving you extra bodies.
- Once you have played as many creatures as you can, find Keldon Strike Team as your last card to give your board Haste. Attack with all your creatures (there should be 10ish, depending on how many targets are in your deck)
Notably, Tyvar may be able to create a combo with Vannifar that is not as restrictive on deck slots. Because Tyvar can untap Vannifar once, it can allow for more unique combo trees to win conditions. Tyvar can also -2 to get back the Corridor Monitor from GY, untapping Vannifar and giving it sacrifice fodder. Either way, players are excited about what Tyvar and Vannifar may be able to accomplish in Pioneer, maybe even Explorer!
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Modern Devoted Druid Combo
Devoted Druid combo is an older Modern archetype that has not seen a ton of play in recent days. This deck made a bizarre comeback out of nowhere this past weekend when it appeared in an SCG top 8. This old classic uses Devoted Druid, a creature known by many of the community to go infinite with… a lot of stuff. This mana dork can untap itself at any time at the cost of a -1/-1 counter. The catch here is that, under normal circumstances, you can only untap Devoted Druid once before it dies to its own ability. If you can get around this, you can untap Devoted Druid as many times as you want, making infinite green mana in the process.
While you can use a bunch of different cards to get around this condition and start making infinite mana, Vizier of Remedies and Luxior, Giada’s Gift are the two cards of choice in this particular decklist. Vizier of Remedies’ replacement effect makes it so Devoted Druid untaps without adding any counters to itself, and Luxior gives an equipped creature or Planeswalker +1/+1 for each counter on it, making it so Devoted Druid’s minus counters get canceled out by the equipment’s buff. Once you can create infinite mana, sink it into a Walking Ballista, Finale of Devastation, or equip your Devoted Druid with a Viridian Longbow to end the game.
So, what does Tyvar, Jubilant Brawler offer to a list like this? Like the Vannifar combo we looked at earlier, Tyvar can speed the combo up an extra turn. Because Devoted Druid needs to tap to add green mana, you cannot go infinite if the creature has summoning sickness. Tyvar’s static ability allows Devoted Druid to tap immediately.
Unlike Vannifar, which may need a new list to use Tyvar at its best, Tyvar fits like a glove in the current Devoted Druid builds. Sure, we may need to add an extra color of mana to the manabase, but that is typically not an issue in Modern. Tyvar can speed up the Devoted Druid combo, untap the Druid for additional mana and revive the most essential combo pieces with its -2 ability. This allows for Tyvar to replace other cards that have the same function within the deck, making it a strict upgrade to the deck that just topped a major tournament. If you’re a Devoted Druid fan, Phyrexia: All Will Be One Modern may be a lot of fun.
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Priest of Forgotten Gods
While this isn’t a deck, it is a card that a lot of individual players thought of when Tyvar was officially spoiled. Priest of Forgotten Gods does a ton of work alongside Tyvar. Not only can the Planeswalker revive a fallen Priest, but Tyvar’s static ability ensures that the Priest can be used immediately.
Priest of Forgotten Gods isn’t currently seeing play in a lot of decks, but there is one place where you can expect to see it: Bolas’s Citadel decks in Pioneer. These decks use a combination of sacrifice synergies combined with mana dorks to rush out an early Citadel and win through its ability. Tyvar can speed all this along, allowing mana dorks to tap immediately and bringing back dead creatures killed in an effort to slow down your Bolas’s Citadel.
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There’s More to See!
While these are some of the more obvious ways to utilize Tyvar, Jubilant Brawler, there are many more ways to use it. Priest of Fell Rites was a card I came across in my personal searches that has me interested since Tyvar can reanimate it, allow it to activate immediately. It can reanimate something else, creating a solid case for a reanimator Modern or Commander interaction. There are a lot of other neat interactions that can be found with Tyvar. Either way, this looks like a card that will make an impact.
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