Vorinclex from March of the Machine
- Card Name: Vorinclex
- Mana Cost: 3GG
- Card Type: Legendary Creature – Phyrexian Praetor
- Rules Text: When Vorinclex enters the battlefield, search your library for up to two Forest cards, reveal them, put them into your hand, then shuffle. {6}{G}{G}: Exile Vorinclex, then return it to the battlefield transformed under its owner’s control. Activate only as a sorcery.
- Illustrated by: Daarken
The Rate on Vorinclex
On its face, Vorinclex from March of the Machine is a pretty solid Magic: The Gathering card. A 6/6 creature for five mana with two combat abilities is already in the “not embarrassing” category; but in 2023, we do need a little more oomph to get excited.
Luckily, Vorinclex gives us something to get excited about!
This card has to more abilities! The first one is a Primeval Titan-like ability to search up two lands. A restriction to get Forests only (rather than any kind of land) does make this ability less powerful than Primeval Titan’s. Combine that with only putting them in hand rather than onto the battlefield, and it’s really less powerful!
That said, five mana is a mile less than six mana when you’re anywhere above four mana. So if you put it all together: Reach, Trample, and a double card-draw? Vorinclex gives you a solid return for five mana. It will often be the most powerful permanent on the battlefield upon resolution.
There is this additional ability as well. Vorinclex can transform into The Grand Evolution for an additional eight mana.
- Card Name: Enchantment — Saga
- Card Type: Enchantment – Saga
- Rules Text: I — Mill ten cards. Put up to two creature cards from among the milled cards onto the battlefield. II — Distribute seven +1/+1 counters among any number of target creatures you control. III — Until end of turn, creatures you control gain “{1}: This creature fights target creature you don’t control.” Exile The Grand Evolution, then return it to the battlefield (front face up).
- Illustrated by: Daarken
The Grand Evolution will come up less often than Vorinclex proper. Even with a two-land boost (from five), eight mana is a high bar in Standard. That said, the ability to search up two addition (often large) creatures, make everyone huge, then kill all the opponent’s creatures to death means that resolving this five-plus-eight will tend to end the game.
And if not? Vorinclex will put it all together again for you after Chapter III.
Golgari Test Deck
I initially tried some mana ramp decks into lots of copies of Storm the Festival. They had predictably high high-ends, but were woefully ineffective against beatdown.
Finally, I settled on this:
Ultimately this is a kind of mid-range Black Control deck in the vein of Hall of Famer Willy Edel’s Golgari lists from when Strixhaven was still legal in Standard. In the early game it has a lot of Black Control’s anti-beatdown DNA, but bridges a higher high-end via Vorinclex.
The nature of exploiting Vorinclex’s 187 ability means having to play a lot of Forests. There are some nonbasic Forests as well, to get late-game black mana (as well as cycle into spells)… But this deck can’t reliably support four copies of Invoke Despair. Instead we have a mix of game-ending bombs, including a solo Storm the Festival. You have to admit it is kind of cool to play both Invoke Despair and Storm the Festival in the same deck.
The sideboard allows the deck to shift into a number of different directions. It can slash the expensive stuff to play a lot of Parasitic Grasp… Combined with Cut Down and Go for the Throat, a full compliment of Parasitic Grasps will make a Red Deck’s life very difficult.
Lots of new decks enabled by March of the Machine play Battles. Other decks play lots of Planeswalkers. Both types of decks spread wide, but with powerful non-creature permanents. After sideboarding, we can both go bigger and fight their go-wide strategy with Karn’s Sylex. Together with more copies of Storm the Festival, Karn’s Sylex can appear early or late to help us take control of the battlefield.
Of course you can just watch how this new deck plays out!
There are tons of appearances from new March of the Machine cards — Battles, Legends duos, and Praetors on both sides of the battlefield. Check it out!
LOVE
MIKE