Much Abrew: Vivi Combo Hollow One (Modern)

Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Much Abrew About Nothing! This week, we're heading to Modern to play one of my favorite archetypes with a spicy Final Fantasy twist: Vivi Combo Hollow One! While the primary plan is the same as that of any Hollow One shell—discard a bunch of cards to play a bunch of 4/4 Hollow Ones for free—we also get a brand new line of attack since we're aggressively filling our graveyard: exiling Vivi Ornitier to Agatha's Soul Cauldron to give all of our creatures with +1/+1 counters Vivi's mana-making ability. This does some absurd things with creatures that naturally get counters, like Marauding Mako, Psychic Frog, and Orcish Bowmasters' Orc Army token. Once we get Vivi under Cauldron, we can have an almost Storm-style combo turn where we play through most of our deck, build a massive board, and possibly even win right away by eventually getting a Walking Ballista under Agatha's Soul Cauldron so we can remove all of the counters on our creatures to ping our opponent to death on the spot! Is Vivi Ornitier good in Hollow One? What absurd things can we do if all of our creatures have Vivi's mana-making ability? Let's get to the video and find out!

Much Abrew: Vivi Combo Hollow One

Discussion

• Record-wise, we finished our league 4-1, with our one loss coming to a new and (maybe?) improved build of Hammer Time. In general, though, the deck felt surprisingly solid.
• Most of our wins came from the Hollow One plan, although we did have a couple of games where we really got to see Vivi Ornitier pop off, and it was spectacular when it happened. The biggest upside of the combo is that it gives the deck something it really didn't have before, which is the ability to win the game immediately with a massive combo turn. I guess past Hollow One builds could almost do this with Detective's Phoenix, although in reality, it usually hits for a big chunk of not-exactly-lethal damage.
• As I mentioned in the intro, the deck has two somewhat related plans. First, we can simply use discard like Burning Inquiry, Faithless Looting, and Winternight Stories to cast free Hollow Ones, which can be enough to win the game by itself. Supporting this plan are Marauding Mako (which felt great in the deck, quickly growing into a massive creature by Turn 2 or 3) and Psychic Frog, which gives us another discard outlet and a way to use the card in our graveyard.
• On the other hand, the new Vivi plan mostly involves getting [[Vivi Ornitier] in the graveyard and exiling it to Agatha's Soul Cauldron to give all of our creatures with +1/+1 counters its ability. This is especially strong with Marauding Mako and Psychic Frog, which naturally can give themselves counters. But even just putting the +1/+1 counter from Agatha's Soul Cauldron on a Hollow One gives us a Hollow One that can make five mana, which is wild! At this point, we mostly just cast as many cards as possible to build a massive board and hope that we can pick up the win right away, either by finding a few Detective's Phoenixes to send our biggest creatures to the air and give them haste, or with the Walking Ballista combo with Agatha's Soul Cauldron, which lets us remove all of the +1/+1 counters from our creatures to deal a ton of damage!
• Is Vivi the new way forward for Hollow One in Modern? I'm still not sure. The deck worked really well and posted a strong record, although Vivi itself was sort of hit or miss. We had some games where it was easily the best card in our deck and others where it didn't really do anything. Thankfully, the cost to include the combo is pretty low, especially right now, where Agatha's Soul Cauldron doubles up as graveyard hate against decks like Esper Goryo's, which is apparently pretty popular at the moment, considering we played against it three times during our league.
• So, should you play Vivi Combo Hollow One in Modern? Based on our league today, I think the answer is yes! I love Hollow One anyway, and Vivi adds an interesting new twist to the archetype. If you like spinning to win with random draw and discard as well as weird combo lines, give the deck a shot!

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.