Vannifar, Evolved Enigma Commander Deck Guide

Vannifar, Evolved Enigma | Illustration by Jack Hughes

Vannifar, Evolved Enigma is a trap if you build the deck the way this Simic commander seems to want you to play it. You know what seems fun here; stack the deck with a bunch of huge Eldrazi, cheat them out with cloak, and then blink them to flip them!

You need to get your commander out, have a big creature in your hand to cloak, and a blink effect at the ready for flipping. This is prime glass cannon territory subject to so much disruption!

But there’s a better way, my friends. Read on!

The Deck

Master of Etherium | Illustration by Matt Cavotta

The Commander: Vannifar, Evolved Enigma

Look, I’m not going to ignore the first ability on Vannifar, Evolved Enigma, which lets you cloak huge cards, but I’m going to sprinkle that into the deck instead of going whole hog on that plan. Frankly, there’s not a creature good enough to win this way on a 4-player table. This means you need to deploy this after you whittle the table down to striking distance.

Let's pause and explain the idea there. When you cloak a card from hand, you turn it face down and can then turn it face up by paying its mana cost. That’s not all that great in some ways, as it exposes your valuable creatures to destruction by turning them into 2/2s. Ward is fine enough, but it’s not hexproof, and given how often there’s a board wipe on turn 4 or 5 in EDH, it’s also not indestructible. The only reason to do this is to be able to flicker or blink the creatures. They come back in on their front side.

If that all sounds janky, that would be because it is. This feels like the ancient days of trying to put a Lure on a creature with rampage to me. Don’t get me wrong. I’m still totally going to do it! But I think the deck needs to be built differently than I’ve seen a lot of people brewing their ideas.

In the meantime, let’s play into Vannifar’s second line of text, which allows you to mass-pump colorless creatures. That’s supposed to be cloaked creatures, I know. But instead you’re going to play this as go-wide artifact creatures and use your commander as a Steel Overseer for most of the game. Don’t worry. There’s a few tricks up your sleeve!

This plan also has the boon of allowing you just not to play your commander for a while and grind on with a fair game. Vannifar is way scarier than it actually plays out, so you want to avoid people targeting you because they think you’re dropping an Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger on turn 4.

The Biggies

If you’re going to lean into the artifact space, it makes sense that the big creatures you have to cheat with Vannifar are artifacts. And most of these drop tokens, which means you can play toward both ends at once:

• Ancient Stone Idol
• Blightsteel Colossus
• Cybermen Squadron
• Karn, Legacy Reforged
• Metalwork Colossus
• Mycosynth Golem
• Phyrexian Dreadnought
• Phyrexian Triniform
• Threefold Thunderhulk
• Triplicate Titan
• Wurmcoil Engine

You could have any number of other giant creatures that aren’t artifacts in here, but I’ve gone with Jin-Gitaxias, Progress Tyrant and the thematic Whisperwood Elemental to leave room for the other stuff. You can mix and match.

The Little Ones

Hangarback Walker won’t stay little, of course, but the rest of these are here for bodies and triggers, with some additional utility for Combat Courier, Haywire Mite, and Merchant's Dockhand.

• Combat Courier
• Hangarback Walker
• Haywire Mite
• Memnite
• Merchant's Dockhand
• Ornithopter
• Phyrexian Walker

The Typical (?) Artifacts Package

If you were looking to choose about fifteen of the typical blue artifacts and friends of artifacts to build out the midrange space in this deck, I think most of these would probably fit your menu. You’re spoiled for good artifacts-matter cards in blue and colorless, so it’s a tough squeeze. But I think this set of cards is good. A random selection of like five of these on the battlefield could start to snowball. The goal is to look as much as possible like you are this deck, so it’s gotta look convincing.

• Arcbound Crusher
• Chief Engineer
• Chief of the Foundry
• Cyberman Patrol
• Emry, Lurker of the Loch
• Etherium Sculptor
• Foundry Inspector
• Liberator, Urza's Battlethopter
• Master of Etherium
• Omarthis, Ghostfire Initiate
• Sai, Master Thopterist
• Sarinth Steelseeker
• Steel Overseer
• Urza, Lord High Artificer

Of course, you’ll likely play this deck more than once. Once people know the secret, does it still work? I think so! Just a bit less effectively. They still need to spend removal on the artifact creature suite, leaving the finishers a bit of breathing room. You could supplement here, and it was painful to cut Vedalken Archmage, but we’re trying to stay lean!

Blink Spells

There are a few more blue blink spells you might use, but I’m going for volume here, mostly, blinking two things with one card. You’ll have the mana for that by the time you get to that spot, and you want to flip two cloaked creatures if you can, or perhaps Vannifar and one of the cloaks, to save your commander. There’s Displace, Essence Flux, and Ghostly Flicker. Most decks have a few more of these, like Teferi's Time Twist, but I don’t see you getting the chance to do this more than once or twice, and you’ve got Thassa, Deep-Dwelling and Golden Argosy for repeated flickers.

Note that I don’t think you have enough spells in this deck to reliably trigger Displacer Kitten.

Commander Duplicates

Well, these aren’t exactly that, but they can serve similar purpose, especially if your blink options are available, allowing you to cloak and manifest away. Hide in Plain Sight, Cryptic Coat, Scroll of Fate, and Ugin's Mastery all earn a slot.

Tokens

You aren’t full steam on artifact tokens, but doing this in a few places to synergize with the artifact suite and to really pop off in certain situations with Vannifar’s second ability seems to add flexibility. Mirrodin Besieged, Thopter Spy Network, Animation Module, and Retrofitter Foundry can really add up.

This is in addition to the big creatures that generate tokens, like Threefold Thunderhulk and even Wurmcoil Engine.

Interaction

You’ve got just the bare minimum here, with Cyclonic Rift, Fierce Guardianship, Heroic Intervention, and Inspiring Call. Your blink spells are another form of commander protection, but even with that, you’re light in this space.

Recursion

Arcbound Reclaimer can really be a value engine in a deck of artifacts and +1/+1 counters. The others are the usual suspects here, Junk Diver, Myr Retriever, Scrap Trawler, and Workshop Assistant.

Ramp

Artifact creature mana dorks plus a few typical mana rocks is what’s going on here. You aren’t really ramping to the big spells here, so this seems a reasonable enough amount:

• Arcane Signet
• Copper Myr
• Ornithopter of Paradise
• Palladium Myr
• Silver Myr
• Sol Ring

Card Draw

Just a bit of card draw here. The recursion package helps to keep your hand full, as well, but you’ve also got Lórien Revealed, Reality Heist, and Thoughtcast.

Alt Wincons

There’s two alternative win conditions. Early in the game you’ll want to choose Mirran with Mirrodin Besieged to make those tokens. But late in the game, Phyrexian can win you the game on the spot. The second wincon is Simic Ascendancy, which plays on Vannifar’s +1/+1 counters ability. Because your commander can dish counters to the whole team, this is a reasonable option for the deck.

The Mana Base

In addition to the ramp, there’s a lot of dual lands as well as a few specialty lands. A few key ones to point out, aside from powerful staples like the channel lands, are Castle Garenbrig, which can just cast the big stuff, Inventors' Fair, which can tutor for you, and The Mycosynth Gardens, which is really pulling its weight when it copies Phyrexian Dreadnought!

Strategy

I’d wait longer than usual to bring out your commander, unless the board state demands desperate measures. You generally want to play a board of artifacts, using your recursion to keep a board presence. I’d generally wait out the first wave of board wipes while durdling around in this phase if I can.

Then you’ll often drop Vannifar and dish out counters to the team instead of cloaking a card. I’d be tempted not to play your commander until you can do that. The exception is if you have a blink package ready to go and something sweet in hand to cloak. But if the table is waiting for you, one blink effect won’t be enough to do what you want. And all the while you’re building up your mana to just start hard-casting powerful things.

You’ll likely have needed to ally with someone to get to this point. Vannifar is just a slightly underpowered commander at a 4-person table. One on one you can shift to the cloaking big things mode to win, but your goal is mostly just to survive until then by keeping a big enough board not to die while setting yourself up for the final push, even if that is just casting Simic Ascendancy and hoping it survives until your next turn.

One final note. You rarely want to do the thing you likely did in Limited with Vannifar, and that’s cloaking “extra” lands. Playing three-card monte with their spot removal and getting “value” from converting lands to 2/2s is a losing game. If you’re being targeted, you’ll need all the mana you can get to keep on casting Vannifar and eventually shifting to just hard casting your bombs.

Combos and Interactions

Blinking a cloaked creature to turn it face up feels like a combo, or at least a scam. Otherwise, there aren’t a ton of combos in this deck because there isn’t room!

I should just note how powerful Cybermen Squadron is in this deck. Myriad not only makes copies of huge creatures, but you can make copies of token generators like Threefold Thunderhulk and go nuts. Making copies of your recursion suite just feels broken when you do it.

Budget Options

Aside from the lands, which you can always cheapen up with temples and such like a precon, the budget here is in specific big creatures like Phyrexian Dreadnought or even Blightsteel Colossus. You can replace these with other big powerful Simic () creatures you happen to already have, even if they don’t synergize perfectly. Koma, Cosmos Serpent and Hullbreaker Horror are surprisingly affordable these days.

Other Builds

There are lots of them. I think this one makes more sense, but here the three other ways you can go.

First, there’s the “Hey, Remember Morph!” build which uses the cloaking suite with a bunch of old morph cards that didn’t have enough synergy to find a deck until now, like Trygon Predator, Willbender and the like. I’ve even seen some folks straight up Limited bombing it with Secret Plans and Trail of Mystery! I don’t think this is powerful enough, but if you have all those cards, I guess give it a try? It’s probably better to fold Vannifar, Evolved Enigma into the Kadena, Slinking Sorcerer deck you’d be taking those from, though.

Second, we’ve got the deck you thought of when you saw this card, which is every blink effect you can get in blue plus cards like It That Betrays, Void Winnower, Ancient Silver Dragon, Consecrated Sphinx, etc. I just don’t think that deck’s going to work, folks. If everything goes right, you get some powerful stuff out with no ETBs that die to Doom Blade. I’m sure it’ll happen sometimes, but I certainly don’t see investing in the cards for that if you don’t have them already on this tenuous plan.

Third, and honestly a pretty close runner up to my deck is basically a Simic control deck that runs lots of card draw and interaction, especially bounce spells, of the solo and mass variety with a blue and green suite of protection spells, counterspells, and the blink suite. You run a tutor suite to get a few key hits, like Hullbreaker Horror, like a Blightsteel Colossus, an Eldrazi, a big dragon, and you protect them. I don’t think you can fit everything you need for that with the Vannifar suite in the 99, but if you try, share the deck with us!

Commanding Conclusion

Scrap Trawler | Illustration by Daarken

I think this is a fun deck to pilot. It’s a bit meme-y and not as good as people think, which means you might just get beaten up on for a few weeks until people realize its actual power level. But once the hype dies down, I think this can be a solid player at casual tables, especially if a few more relevant artifact synergy cards get printed.

And if it turns out to be a bust, I think the whole thing can be converted to a philosophical upgrade of the Kadena deck, mixing in the “scam” cards like Not Dead After All to help fix the things you cloak when you tutor up Vannifar.

But before we go down that road, I think you’ll find that the artifact synergies in here are surprisingly powerful and that playing a Simic artifacts deck is just hilarious and worth it for that alone. Let us know in the comments or on the Draftsim Discord if you build this and how it went!

Happy brewing!