by Johnny Cycles, February 13th, 2026

Hello! Welcome to another edition of Keeping Modern Janky! This month, I’m testing out my pick for top Modern card from Lorwyn Eclipsed, Moonshadow! But that’s not all! Alongside this eye-popping 1-drop, I’m trying another Lorwyn Eclipsed card in the 60…

Have you guessed what archetype I’m slotting these two cards into?

That’s right! It’s Vengevine! Here’s the decklist:

Decklist – Moonvine

by Johnny Cycles
Format: Modern

Creatures (32)

4 Gravecrawler
4 Moonshadow
4 Stitcher’s Supplier
4 Bloodghast
4 Psychic Frog
2 Kiora, the Rising Tide

4 Prized Amalgam
2 Twilight Diviner
2 Wonder
4 Vengevine

Spells (8)

3 Fatal Push
4 Otherworldly Gaze

Lands (21)

1 Forest

1 Hedge Maze

1 Island

3 Misty Rainforest

1 Overgrown Tomb

4 Polluted Delta

1 Swamp

2 Undercity Sewers

2 Underground Mortuary

3 Verdant Catacombs
2 Watery Grave

Sideboard (15)

4 Consign to Memory
4 Assassin’s Trophy
4 Cosmogoyf
3 Force of Negation

Deck Tech

Primary Game Plan

This isn’t my first time playing a Vengevine deck. You can read a more detailed write-up of the deck and its strategy here. The TL;DR, however, is that we’re looking to fill our graveyard with threats, then bring them all back to overwhelm our opponent’s defenses.

Psychic Frog, Stitcher’s Supplier, Kiora, the Rising Tide, and Otherworldly Gaze fill our graveyard, while Gravecrawler, Prized Amalgam, and Vengevine are the cards we’re bringing back.

Where do Moonshadow and Twilight Diviner fit in to all this? Moonshadow synergizes with our gameplan of filling the yard with permanents. Furthermore, it serves as a must-answer threat that will draw out a kill spell that may otherwise have hit our Frog. Finally, it makes our deck less reliant on the graveyard to win.

And don’t sleep on its menace!

Twilight Diviner‘s synergy with the deck is more apparent. Sure, we aren’t copying Archon of Cruelty or Atraxa, Grand Unifier, but the additional value we get from a copy of Prized Amalgam or Vengevine will hopefully snowball our advantage into victory.

Finally, Wonder gives our team the evasion it needs to close out a game that has stalled out on the ground.

Secondary Game Plan

We’re playing a little bit of a transformational sideboard to get opponents who bring in a lot of graveyard hate. Leyline of the Void? That’s Cosmogoyf‘s best friend.

Originally, I was running two copies of Abigale, Eloquent First-Year as a way to make Moonshadow even more scary, but with Wonder in the deck and the fact that Moonshadow‘s -1/-1 counters stay regardless of if Abigail takes away its abilities means we aren’t really the deck to take advantage of this new rare.

Assassin’s Trophy and Force of Negation give us ways to interact with graveyard hate and the unfair decks.

Final Thoughts Before Gameplay

Vengevine is an archetype that has been around for awhile now, though it’s fallen out of favor in recent years. If you’ve never played it or seen it played, the deck does not function the way normal decks do. Sequencing, in particular, is almost the opposite of what I’m accustomed to.

For those players proficient in it, I salute you. And go easy on me for my punts and oversights!

Hopefully, since this is my second time around playing the archetype, it’ll come more naturally to me.

Game Play

Overall Record: 2-2-1

Reactions

Moonshadow is a great addition to this archetype! As a 1-drop that presents a real threat, it shores up one of the weaknesses of the deck, in my opinion. Too often, Vengevine‘s turn 1 play is set up for the future where we will have a very explosive turn or 2 and win. Unfortunately, the 1-drops that fill our yard whiff as often as hit, so sometimes we’re left durdling.

Moonshadow gives us a must-answer threat, just as I thought, that grows very easily in our deck.

Twilight Diviner was a ton of fun, too. I’m not sure we really need it to win, but I wanted to try it out. Overall, I was pleased with it.

Truth time.

Vengevine as an archetype is no longer tier 1 for a reason. Power Creep has left the strategy behind.

So.

Many.

Solitudes.

And, in general, a ton of exile-based removal cards that are played in seemingly every deck make our goals much harder.

Of course, we can (and did) fight through this, but it does mean we’ll probably end up with a 50-50 win rate on average.

Conclusion

Vengevine is a fun archetype with the potential for super explosive turns. Both Moonshadow and Twilight Diviner are powerful new tools for the deck to play with. But is this Moonshadow‘s best home? I don’t think so.

Stay tuned for more Moonshadow in the future! I have at least two other decks to try out. Thanks for reading and watching!