Vivien on the Hunt: Midrange Machine, Infinite Combo Enabler, or Both?

Hello everyone!

On the Streets of New Capenna, we’ve already highlighted what Elspeth Resplendent was up to and where Ob Nixilis, the Adversary ranks as new cards. Heck, we even covered Elspeth’s newest weapon with Luxior, Giada’s Gift! However, I’d be remiss if we missed out on the least appreciated of the flashback trio with Vivien on the Hunt!

Let’s start with the obvious, like I said with the other planeswalkers, generally you want to see the CMV (converted mana value) and the starting loyalty to line up, but unfortunately for Vivien, it does not. 4 loyalty at 6 mana is definitely a bit tenuous, but it’s certainly not going to make or break the card inherently.

For Vivien’s +2, we have a nice callback to one of the most contentious cards in Magic’s history: Birthing Pod. Birthing Pod was the cornerstone of many powerful decks both in Standard and eternal formats, and having that on a plus ability is definitely a welcome site. Obviously unlike Birthing Pod, this is going to be more challenging to get off as it’s significantly more mana, but even in a deck not optimized around it, trading up one of your smaller creatures for the best threat one CMV higher can be pretty valuable.

Vivien’s second ability is just a bread and butter Lead the Stampede, but this time it mills rather than puts to the bottom of the library. Like the +2 ability, this will work out the best in a deck with a lot of creatures so no matter the board state, you should have plenty of options with Vivien.

While it is sad to not see an ultimate ability on an expensive walker, we get an ability that may even be better! For the measly price of one loyalty counter, you can get a 4/4! This seems extremely powerful in midrange slogs as you can start building a big fighting force and if the opponent can’t answer Vivien, she can simply make FOUR 4/4s which should be more than enough to start demolishing the opponent in combat. You don’t even have to sacrifice Vivien to get all that value as the double plus abilities can keep Viv around for quite awhile. This does have the scary play pattern of the opponent can remove the token and then attack down Vivien, but unlike other decks, Vivien already asks you to play a lot of creatures so I feel it’s much safer to keep ticking down with Vivien than other comparable walkers like Wrenn and Seven and Mordenkainen.

I really like the potential applications of this in slower creature decks, but that hardly seems to be the most exciting application. In Modern, Vivien can now be part of a (pseudo) two card combo deck that can kill with just 4 mana! Let me explain.

So all you need for this combo to work is a Planebound Accomplice on board and a Vivien on the Hunt in hand. Pay a Red to activate Accomplice and put Vivien into play. Then you use Vivien’s +2 to sacrifice Planebound Accomplice to get a Felidar Guardian. Felidar Guardian will target Vivien, blinking it, and allowing you to activate it again. You +2 again sacrificing Felidar Guardian and find Karmic Guide which reanimates Felidar Guardian so you can blink Vivien again. Finally, you +2 once more, sacrifice Felidar Guardian, find Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker, copy Karmic Guide, reanimate Felidar Guardian, blink Kiki-Jiki, copy Felidar Guardian, rinse and repeat. This seems like a lot of steps, but considering you only need to resolve a single card makes this a very scary one card combo that’s extremely reminiscent of Splinter Twin. In fairness, you likely can’t pack your deck with interaction like Splinter Twin could and you’re locked into at least being in Naya colors, but this could be the resurgence of Naya toolbox in Modern which is a deck that hasn’t seen play in quite some time.

So where do I envision Vivien on the Hunt seeing play for Arena formats? Looks like a solid Gruul card to me!

Verdict

With a lot of utility in multiple formats, I think it’s pretty clear that Vivien on the Hunt will see some sort of play. For Arena formats, her ability to make a lot of tokens or draw a lot of cards, even at an expensive rate, should definitely not be underestimated for decks that can afford to utilize Vivien well.

Thank you for reading!