by Johnny Cycles, August 9th, 2024

Modern Horizons 3 has completely shaken up the format, while also bringing established decks some new toys. Vengevine, which hasn’t been a tier 1 deck in several years, gets a boost with the addition of Psychic Frog.

Decklist – Sultai Vengevine

by Johnny Cycles
Format: Modern

Creatures (28)

4 Gravecrawler
4 Stitcher’s Supplier
3 Bloodghast
4 Psychic Frog
3 Souls of the Lost

2 Wight of the Reliquary

4 Prized Amalgam
4 Vengevine

Spells (11)

4 Otherworldly Gaze
3 Toxic Deluge
4 Creeping Chill

Lands (21)

1 Bojuka Bog

1 Breeding Pool

1 Cephalid Coliseum

1 Forest

1 Island

2 Misty Rainforest

2 Overgrown Tomb

3 Polluted Delta

1 Swamp

2 Undercity Sewers

1 Underground Mortuary

2 Verdant Catacombs
3 Watery Grave

Sideboard (15)

3 Rapid Hybridization
3 Strix Serenade
3 Damping Sphere
4 Tear Asunder
2 Force of Negation

In what is a hallmark of playable cards in Modern, as well as many of MH3’s all-stars, Psychic Frog has a block of text on it, all of which is highly relevant to our deck. In fact, to once again use a line from one of my favorite movies, Psychic Frog is the rug that ties the room together.

It’s the middle line of text that we get the most value out of, as we can discard our Vengevines, Gravecrawlers, and Prized Amalgams for extra value before bringing them back from the graveyard to overwhelm our opponent.

A frog, a zombie, and an elemental all walked into a bar…

Being able to fill our graveyard with creatures we want to cheat back in to play is what defines Vengevine as an archetype. Cards like Otherworldly Gaze and Stitcher’s Supplier are in the deck precisely for this reason. But, sometimes we just draw the cards we want in the yard, which is why the versions of the deck have played enablers like Insolent Neonate and The Underworld Cookbook.

Psychic Frog is a strict upgrade to the former, while certainly in competition with the latter for best discard outlet. The +1/+1 counter it gets with each card discarded can give us lethal out of nowhere if our opponent goes shields down.

The bottom block of text can be a bit of a non-bo with what we’re trying to do, but there’s nothing that says we have to give the Frog flying. We use it when it’s our best line, frequently exiling lands from our yard to do so. This does shrink Souls of the Lost, but…more on that card in a minute.

Note, the flying clause can be used on defense to not-so-sneakily block an attacking flier.

Finally, the first line of text needs no explanation. Everyone wants to draw cards.

Souls of the Lost is one of my favorite cards that I keep trying to kill opponents with, as anyone who’s followed this site for awhile knows. The 2-drop synergizes with more than just our full graveyard, however. It gives us another discard outlet to pitch our unwanted creatures with.

And, perhaps less obvious, it gives us a way to sacrifice something like Gravecrawler to make sure we have it to cast from our graveyard to get our Prized Amalgams back. Some of our most explosive turns will see us cast Souls of the Lost, sacrificing Gravecrawler in the process. We then cast the Gravecrawler and get multiple Vengevines back followed by multiple Prized Amalgams.

Of course, without another Zombie on the battlefield, this line isn’t possible. We already play Stitcher’s Supplier, but another MH3 card, Wight of the Reliquary gives us even more Zombies to play. But it does more than just let us cast Gravecrawler from our yard. It does a pretty good Souls of the Lost impression by getting very large, very quickly, while also functioning as a repeatable sacrifice outlet that lets us get up to the shenanigans described above.

The land we get out of this is gravy, but that’s not to say we can’t make room for some silver bullet lands. Bojuka Bog can hate out other graveyard strategies, as well as Murktide. Spymaster’s Vault has been impressive against me… Phyrexian Tower gives us another way to put Gravecrawler and Stitcher’s Supplier into the yard for value.

I will say this, however, about Wight of the Reliquary: it was sort of slow and unimpactful in the games I drew it. Over the course of the practice matches, I slowly trimmed the number from four to two. It’s possible we cut all of them, but I do like the synergies with the deck. In the games I had it in my hand, I more often than not pitched it to Psychic Frog or died before I could do anything with it.

As I write this, I’ve realized just how Green-light our deck is in its final version. We could easily go strictly Dimir or splash for Red and Inti, Seneschal of the Sun. This Red 2-drop gives us another discard outlet, while also preventing our Souls of the Lost from getting chump blocked for days.

Hmm…I’ll have to try this out for a second article I suppose.

By our final matches, I cut Fatal Push to make room for Toxic Deluge. The games we struggled in the most often came against go-wide strategies that could not only keep up with our creature output, but which had greater synergies or neater combos (Energy and a new Aristocrat deck featuring Warren Soultrader, for example).

A bit of spot removal was woefully overmatched in these games and I longed for a sweeper somewhere in my 75. We don’t really care if our things die, for the most part, and so I decided to try Toxic Deluge. This naturally incentivized me to make room for the Vengevine staple, Creeping Chill.

I’m not sure if this change is worth keeping, but it deserves more testing.

Our sideboard is geared largely to hate on the hate our opponent will bring in. Without our graveyard, we are woefully slow and underpowered in the best case scenario, and drawing dead in the worst.

Rapid Hybridization may seem odd, but the first time my opponent resolved a Sanctifier en-Vec, I looked at a hand full of Black spot removal like Fatal Push, Abrupt Decay, and Assassin’s Trophy and wept…

I’ve chosen Strix Serenade for it’s flexibility in targeting types of graveyard hate and it’s single . We don’t play a lot of lands, which means we can’t reliably sit back, draw, make a land drop, and pass the turn. We really want to be able to advance our board state while holding up protection as early as possible. Both of these Blue instants are great against some of the big threats in the format, as well.

Tear Asunder can snipe Leyline of the Void or other graveyard hate early, while offering flexibility should the game go long and we get to four mana. Force of Negation can answer our opponent’s hate when they think our shields are down.

Finally, we have Damping Sphere, which feels like a necessary evil against Storm, Tron, and Amulet Titan. It happens to slow us down considerably, as well, so be aware and get your sequencing correct (not that I ever make this mistake…)!

Can Psychic Frog put Vengevine back in the realm of the tier 1 decks? Will Wight of the Reliquary and Souls of the Lost function as a legitimate alternative win condition? Let’s find out!

Practice Match 1 vs. Hammer Time

Practice Match 2 vs. Jeskai Control

Practice Match 3 vs. Dimir Murktide

Practice Match 4 vs. Nadu

Practice Match 5 vs. Indomitable Creativity

Practice Match 6 vs. U/W Spirits

Practice Match 7 vs. Mardu Energy

Overall Record: 3-4

Our record is actually worse than this, as a few of my videos didn’t record the sound. We also lost to Amulet Titan, helmed by a very friendly opponent, KingDaddyy. Shout out to him and his wife, who are having their first baby! It was fun chatting with him, even though he got the match win. We were able to execute our game plan with the help of some timely Damping Spheres to win one of the three games, at least.

We also lost to Izzet Murktide in another video tragically made with the sound off… I really need to double check my headphones when I open my screen recording software. Guess I’m rusty on this front, as well. This match didn’t feel great, as I took some suboptimal lines, but overall the match-up doesn’t feel super bad.

Finally, we won against Affinity in a final match without sound. Sigh…

Thus, we finish with a 4-6 record.

Conclusion

Vengevine as an archetype hasn’t been a tier 1 strategy in several years, but it has the potential to spike tournaments thanks to its graveyard strategy. If opponents aren’t ready for it, we can get some free wins.

At least, that was how it used to be. With the printing of Modern Horizons 3 and the overall power creep of the format, we frequently lost our first game to decks built with MH3 cards, like Nadu and Energy. This is the game we’re supposed to win 90% of the time, since it’s unlikely our opponent will have graveyard hate in their main deck. Instead, what we found was our opponent’s decks were too fast and didn’t care about our graveyard recursion.

Against the decks that existed pre-MH3, we competed better and I could see us winning the matches we lost with a little better luck or different choices. This is the first time I’ve played Vengevine as a strategy and I found it challenging at times to sequence everything correctly. Many archetypes want to cast their spells in the second main phase, using combat as a way to tap down opponents. Vengevine almost always wants to do everything in the first main phase. This tripped me up a few times.

Another point of difficulty was in choosing what to put in our graveyard when we surveiled. Specifically, I almost always put lands in the graveyard. In hindsight, I think we should have frequently kept one on top. This, however, does remind me that our graveyard fillers, whether Otherworldly Gaze or Stitcher’s Supplier, rarely, if ever, gave us big hits. I don’t think we ever saw two Vengevines or two Prized Amalgams hit the yard with them. The best we got was a Bloodghast and a Prized Amalgam, if I remember correctly.

All that to say that I think the deck is still a tier 2-3 deck that, with a little better luck and a little cleaner piloting, can have a winning record.

Overall, the deck was fun to try out. Psychic Frog is legit, too. It really does everything we want in this archetype and then more. I’m eager to try it out in a Grixis build looking to take advantage of Madness and in a Dimir deck with Murktide Regent (the Frog grows the Dragon when it exiles cards to gain flying!).

What do you think of Pyschedelic Frog-Vine? How would you change the deck? What am I forgetting?

As always, thanks for reading and watching!