@vaughnbros said in Single Card Discussion - Lavinia, Azorious Renegade:

Nukes every single Vintage deck? Check.

Surely this is an overstatement. Outcome cares, Xerox and Oath are impacted to various degrees (but not overwhelmingly so), Shops/Dredge/Survival are surely happy to see their opponent running this card. Is there even a second deck where you could really consider this a hoser? The effect is (conditionally) powerful enough for this card to have a place, but I'm personally not very interesting in running this.

@brass-man Please explain why survival would be happy to see this card.

It's not Vintage that gets messed up by this card but Legacy. They just made Legacy Miracles a ridiculous deck. Vintage runs a lot of blue creature removal in general.

I am curious to see if this is all hype and no play like Damping Sphere. The card has great potential, and I like it against Dredge and Survival in a Xerox deck.

@brass-man does this turn off Rootwalla? Does paying 0 count as paying mana?

@p3temangus Based on established rulings for Nix (which uses the same wording as this), it does counter Rootwalla.

@topical_island said in Single Card Discussion - Lavinia, Azorious Renegade:

@brass-man Please explain why survival would be happy to see this card.

Simply that Survival decks aren't really impacted by this card in a meaningful way. Not that's it's actively good for the Survival player when it's in play - I just meant that you'd rather your opponent have this in their deck than something scarier.

@p3temangus said in Single Card Discussion - Lavinia, Azorious Renegade:

@brass-man does this turn off Rootwalla? Does paying 0 count as paying mana?

While I don't want to speculate on the rules of unreleased cards, I suspect that Lavinia does counter free Hollow Ones and Basking Rootwallas. However, Hollow Ones importance comes in the early game (literally turn 1), when Lavinia, Azorious Renegade is unlikely to be castable. Once you hit the midgame, it's not super important that your free creatures resolve - Lavinia counters them, but they'll still put Vengevines into play.

There will be games where you have a Bazaar of Baghdad but no Survival of the Fittest and Lavinia shutting down a turn 4 Basking Rootwalla would have more impact, I could be underestimating that sort of thing, but it doesn't feel like a winning sideboard plan to me (not without other cards to support it, at least).

For what it's worth, I think there's a fair (but not airtight) argument that this could be a better anti-Outcome sideboard card than Stony Silence, which would immediately put this into some existing 75 card decks.

@brass-man The thing is, i dont think this is a sideboard card. I think decks will play this card maindeck because it just impacts enough matchups (pretty much only goes out against Dredge and Shops i guess) and still have their sideboard cards ready.

@juice-mane said in Single Card Discussion - Lavinia, Azorious Renegade:

It's sad to see the manufacturer of this card game continue to explore the effects that amount to: 'you can't do this' plastered on creatures. Cards that reduce possible interactions between cards tend to contribute to boring games.

If they absolutely needed to print yet another prohibitive card like this, why make it a creature? It's comical to imagine a scenario where this creature with such powerful magical abilities is hitting/stabbing you for 2 life points a turn while simultaneously retaining enough focus to exercise her immense magical powers. At least add a clause where the abilities are turned off when the creature is tapped. Even comic book superheroes need to focus when channeling their powers.

I think I'm fine when they are symmetrical. These one way Leovold effects are stupid and lazy.

It's pretty good against survival. Most of the Hollow ones and rootwallas are not cast on turn 1, it also stops hands that have low land counts to have some progress, stops force of will, late drawn mox/lotus (which can be pretty relevant too). And it stops the half of the survival creatures that containment priest doesn't. Sounds like the card is amazing. If I was playing against survival with it, I'd definitely bring (or keep) it in

This card does make Wasteland relevant in blue decks again. StoneBlade might actually make a comeback (probably not)

This think is going to exhaserbate the mental misstep problem to new level.

Best answers for this card are bolt, plow, fatal push, and likely abrupt decay. 3 of them are countered by mm and then cannot be countered back because of her effect. Dismemeber gets affected by her abilities.

We may very well wind up in a meta where people need to run sudden shock and sulfur elementals to with these over the top hate bears.

@brass-man I think it's a one-sided CotV that hurts a lot of decks turn 1. Building a 4 Lavinia deck that tries to maximize the times it comes into play turn 1 is very viable (using even Petal, for example). Also, even in mid-late game, having Survival not able to chain Rootwallas and Hollow Ones is great. Although Vengevines still come into play if you cycle one Rootwalla into a Hollow One (even with Lavinia into play).

Against Shops, as I said, it's situational at best. If you're on the play having Lavinia turn 1 is great because it acts as a CotV on 0 AND stops turn 1 Spheres, which gives you a turn 2 free of disruption. Against Dredge it's the worst, since it only stops Dread Return, but we all know maindecks are not meant to beat Dredge anyway, so whatever.

@moorebrother1 why do you think it's even good in Legacy? What does this stop that makes you want to play it, even as a SB card?

@brass-man said in Single Card Discussion - Lavinia, Azorious Renegade:

For what it's worth, I think there's a fair (but not airtight) argument that this could be a better anti-Outcome sideboard card than Stony Silence, which would immediately put this into some existing 75 card decks.

I think it actually wants the Kambal slot rather than Stony's. Am I wrong?

This card isn’t useless against Dredge. In fact if I were running Lavinia maindeck I wouldn’t board her out.

She’s not a hate card on her own, but she substantially weakens the power of Cabal Therapy and Dread Return. Therapies can still be flashed back to generate zombie tokens, but preventing the Dredge player from stripping your hand of proactive hate cards should not be underestimated.

@evouga It does nothing against Therapy though, because they'll always have at least a Bazaar in play (unless you're also packing Wastelands, but then we're talking about Humans or specific decks, not broad application).

EDIT: oh scratch that. Flashbacked Therapies cost no mana so they get countered. Ok that's good, I didn't catch that

Just the simple fact that the player who has this in play first gets to play thier Fow/Gush/MM for free while the other cannot is so powerful an effect. Even if your opponent has all the removals, if you get to fire off MMs while they are tapped out with multiples in hand, ugh? I honestly like the "can't play spells with cc>lands in play" clause, but the no free spells, one sided nonetheless, insane.

There goes any chance of my bounty of the hunt deck to work

@fsecco depends on the deck but I would run one of each in my Kaya control list. People get too caught up in arguing about which card is better that I think they forget about diminishing returns and the advantage of card diversity when decks run tutors.

Also on cell so might have missed context. If so, mea culpa.

@chubbyrain If you have 2 slots I totally agree. But my point is: suppose you have 1 SB slot for either Kambal or Lavinia. Which would you play? I'm not saying it's Lavinia, but it's not a given which answer is right. I don't think the same is true for Lavinia x Stony. You'd probably play Stony in that SB slot before Lavinia, in the current meta.

@gutocmtt
All the more reason to keep Goblin Cratermaker around!