So I've been trying to think up a couple of decks for Vanguard (originally inspired by the Vanguard portion at some year's Invitational), out of pure procrastination, and man, it's insane. Every avatar is its own "Break This Card", with the notable advantage that you are guaranteed to begin with the avatar, contrary to the familiar problem when trying to break cards, where you often don't even draw it, and are left with a crappy deck.
Here's two examples:
Momir Vig avatar
hand +0, life +4
, Discard a card: Put a token into play as a copy of a random creature card with converted mana cost X. Play this ability only any time you could play a sorcery and only once each turn.
4 Polymorph
2 Darksteel Colossus
4 Clutch of the Undercity
4 Lightning Greaves
4 Duress
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Psychotic Episode
4 Deep Analysis
4 Dark Withering
4 Ancient Spring
4 Sulfur Vent
4 Polluted Delta
4 Watery Grave
4 Underground River
2 Island
2 Swamp
Momir Vig is a free madness outlet and a free source of tokens. You exploit this by playing madness and flashback cards, and Polymorphing tokens into Darksteel Colossi. Your ideal draw is turn one sacland, turn two Lightning Greaves, turn three Polymorph a 0-mana creature you made somewhere along the way into a Colossus, swing swing.
And here's another:
Birds of Paradise avatar
hand +0, life -3
Lands you control have '
: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool.'
4 Innocent Blood / Condemn
4 Lightning Helix
4 Duress
4 Counterspell
4 Mindslaver
4 Triskelion
4 Compulsive Research
4 Gifts Ungiven
2 Demonfire
1 Life from the Loam
1 Oblivion Stone
4 Academy Ruins
4 Urza's Mine
4 Urza's Power Plant
4 Urza's Tower
3 Deserted Temple
4 Temple of the False God
1 Dark Depths
SB: 4 Tormod's Crypt
SB: 1 Jester's Cap
Birds of Paradise lets you use the most efficient cards in any colors to survive the early turns, and once you assemble Tron, it becomes Mana Flare. Then, you can start playing and recurring Triskelions and Slavers, or merely p.s. demonfire you. The two Temples are the "missing" fourth and fifth pieces of Tron. There's two particular Gifts piles of note: Tron, Loam and Academy Ruins, Mindslaver, Loam. (I'm not as experienced with Gifts piles as some others, however, so there's probably some tricks I've forgotten to include in the deck...)
This is so awesome I may even have to get a MODO account, knowing full well the grisly death of my spare time that'll represent. A list of Vanguard avatars is
here.
