Budget Magic: $35 Kavu Warp (Standard)
Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Budget Magic! Edge of Eternities (and also rotation) is here, and today, we kick off our exploration of our new Standard with a deck built around one of the coolest mechanics (and funniest creature types) of the set: Warp Kavu! The new warp mechanic lets us cheat creatures into play on the cheap, but they only stick around for the turn before going to exile. This means a warp creature doesn't do much on its own without some extra help. But things can get out of hand pretty quickly if we can give our warp creatures haste! How good is warp? Are Kavu playable, all on just a $50 budget? Let's get to the video and find out!
Budget Magic: Kavu Warp
The Deck
Warp Kavu is a unique take on a red aggro deck, with the plan being to warp creatures into play on the cheap, give them haste so we can immediately smash in for damage, and then eventually play them again from exile. Plus, we have a bit of direct damage to close out the game once our opponent gets low on life.
During Edge of Eternities spoiler season, I pretty quickly realized that Nova Hellkite might be the best warp card for one simple reason: it has haste. This means we can warp it for three mana, immediately hit our opponent for four flying damage, and then cast it again later for five mana to repeat the process, maybe picking off something like Llanowar Elves along the way with its enters trigger. The power of Nova Hellkite got me thinking, what if our warp creatures had haste? And that's what led to our deck today.
Our deck has a bunch of warp creatures. Possibility Technician offers card advantage as we play Kavu, Weftstalker Ardent gives a bit of extra damage as we play creatures, and Memorial Team Leader is just big with a low warp cost (plus, it can pump our other creatures). While these cards might look a bit janky (outside of maybe Possibility Technician, which is pretty solid), the main power of these cards is that we can get them into play for just one or two mana thanks to their warp cost, which means we're getting a massive amount of stats for the mana. The problem is that the stats don't really do anything because the warped creature will just exile itself on our end step. But we've got a plan for this...
...thanks to our endless stream of haste cards. Our best haste card is Full Bore, which is basically Monstrous Rage in a warp deck, giving a creature +3/+2 and, if it was warped, haste and trample. In practice, this means we can warp a Memorial Team Leader for two mana and then spend one more mana to Full Bore it and smash our opponent for seven damage. Even better, we can then play Memorial Team Leader again for its full cost later, which gives us a lot of weird virtual card advantage. Wild Ride is basically backup Full Bore, giving haste but no trample, while Tannuk and Enduring Courage give all of our creatures haste. Honestly, I'm not sure which of the two creatures is better in the deck. Tannuk, Steadfast Second is a little awkward because its warp ability doesn't do much in our deck (since our creatures already have warp), although being a Kavu helps power up Possibility Technician. Meanwhile, Enduring Courage offers more pumping, which is nice, but it sadly isn't a Kavu. Regardless, both are solid in the deck.
Rounding out our deck are Hired Claw, just because the deck really needs a one-drop, and some burn, which doubles as removal, including Plasma Bolt, which in our deck is basically a sorcery-speed but Standard-legal Lightning Bolt. These cards give us some reach so that we don't really need to get our opponent's life total down to zero; instead, if we can get our opponent down near five, we should be able to close out most games with some burn!
Wrap-Up
Record-wise, we ended up going 5-3 with the deck, although this was during early access (thanks to Wizards for the account to use!), so I don't really put any weight in the record. Still, the deck felt way more powerful than I expected. We were able to deal a silly amount of damage by surprise with some pretty janky-looking Kavu, which was hilarious! While I'm not sure warping Kavu will be stronger than playing other aggro decks like Mice, Prowess, or Burn, it does add a unique element of being able to play a longer game since eventually we can cast our four- and five-mana warp creatures to add some big bodies to the battlefield. This, combined with the super-fast warp haste damage in the early game, turned out to be a pretty decent way to win games! If you are a fan of Kavu or just looking for something cheap to mess around with in Edge of Eternities Standard, give the deck a shot! While I'm still not sure exactly how good it is, it was certainly a blast to play!
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today. As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
