Death by large green plant

so, welcome to the new standard. apparently, vengevine is card worth building entire decks around. good thing they're so damned cheap and affordable. not like that !@#$%^& baneslayer... oh. nevermind. so, consider this a report on the mother ship's "decks of the week" feature.
from this last week, we have a few tournaments, paper and online.
vengevine's application breaks down along two pretty fuzzy lines; built in or built around.
the first place everybody thought to put him was naturally everybody's least favorite deck around, jund. however, including vengevine turns out to be a bit of a chore for what has become a pretty tight template.
so, while there have been attempts at adaptations to jund to make room for the deadly pile of dollars (seriously, i'm playing ancient zigguraut in a deck that also includes a planeswalker or two, if only to make sure i can cast the damned thing every time i want to hit someone repeatedly.), this has really fit in the "built-in" category, wherein the jund pilot is really hoping to just add a little reach to the deck. these particular jund decks showed up in small numbers this week, two to be exact and neither of them landed a 1st place finish. this is, in part, due to the struggle for room for both relevant removal and enough creatures to keep vengevine venging. other jund decks performed well all week in various tournaments, posting larger numbers and better finishes, including at least one 1st place finish.
now, i've already mentioned a deck this week that fits firmly in the second camp of vengevine deck building, next level bant, as it is being called (link to the list: https://rmtg.forumotion.com/standard-f11/patrick-chapin-does-it-again-t341.htm ). this deck is a dedicated midrange deck, using the power of vengevine's recursion to turn the game on aggressively as soon as necessary. it runs a hefty complement of planeswalkers to make the whole game really damn frustrating as well. after a huge 1st place finish at pro tour sendai, it is now on everyone's radar and it was played all over the place this week. it won one tournament and is probably going to win more.
however, NLB wasn't the first kid on the block to change it's frame to fit the new guy in. naya was already kind of a given for this guy because of the high creature count and the insanely powerful ranger of eos package *insert dick joke. the problems are the deck can run light on removal and be a little tough to pilot, i hear (and i heard it from alex, who i don't think i've seen have a hard time with an aggro deck... like ever.). next to the bant deck, it was the most represented vengevine deck this week. it won once and had a few loyal pilots out there. here's a table breaking down the vengevine lists that showed up in top 8's:

Deck	Top 8	1st place
Next Level Bant	6	1
Jund w/Vengevine	2	0
Naya, Boss or Whatever	4	1
Other (Bloodbraid Blue)	1	1

all of this silliness is to say a few things; it's a really good card, it's a really unfair card, and you should probably learn how to play with it or around it. it is surprising to see a creature so good it doesn't need bloodbraid elf. it remains to be seen how it will hold up once alara rotates, as both heavy recursion engines will go away, but it seems like it might have some real game on it's own.
uh, so the end and ****.

links to other lists:
jund (nearly the exact list i been testing): http://fivewithflores.com/2010/05/building-a-better-basilisk-collar/

scroll down to the bottom for this last week of ptq's: http://wizards.com/magic/magazine/events.aspx?x=mtg/daily/eventcoverage/amsterdam10ptq/welcome

i think it's a build-in not a build-around. esp at that price. With bushwhacker or Elspeth, fearsome, as well as bit blast, even ornithopters. But i remain skeptical.

Jason wrote:

i think it's a build-in not a build-around. esp at that price. With bushwhacker or Elspeth, fearsome, as well as bit blast, even ornithopters. But i remain skeptical.

though, i will say that the next level bant deck, being a built-around deck, is f-ing ridiculous, price notwithstanding.
as soon as the list dropped, it has been performing well both online and in paper.
it seems to be the real deal, at least until people remember how good jund charm is or notice how amazing suffer the past appears to be.

Love, love suffer the past! It won me a sealed event. Especially after October; have you SEEN the grave exile trend shift away, too?! Triple bonus card; 3 benefits for modfiable mana. SICK.