Constant vigilance!

Vigilance is one of the strongest and probably most underrated abilities in EDH. Being able to attack and defend with the same creatures gets better and better with each additional opponent - making it good in star games and fantastic in free-for-all. I’d consider it generally underrated because the most playable vigilance creatures tend to have other, more noticeable abilities (stonehewer giant, twilight shepherd). If a creature just says “vigilance” its probably not great for EDH - although it’d be a nice 4th edition throwback to run yotian soldier in some kind of equipment or artifact deck.

In my early EDH days I actually ran a “vigilance” deck using Johan as my commander, capitalizing on cards like mossbridge troll and glare of subdual. As you can imagine a 6 mana serra’s blessing is not exactly the hotness and the deck was good for a laugh but not much else. I think Johan would be interesting if he was like a 1/7 defender with hexproof. As printed though he might as well have defender, dies to everything, and at 5/4 is a pretty lousy blocker.

Lately I’ve been musing over a true vigilance deck with something like Ith or Konda as a general. The problem is there are only about 20 EDH-worthy creatures that have vigilance, and while most are monowhite some of the best ones require red and green (godsire, megalanoth, bull ceradon). For the theme to be noticeable you’d have to expand the creature base to include crap like abbey griffin, and while it would be unexpected, it would also be crap, and a true macaroni card should be both unexpected and relevant.

While the vigilance deck isn’t quite there yet, I’m still thinking cards that grant vigilance are probably better than I give them credit for. The obvious one would be serra’s blessing, but there’s a much better option at half the cost and twice the power level that I’ve played in a few decks over the years:

I am pretty sure the printing of reconnaissance was a mistake. The reminder text on the card suggests wizards wanted you to have to choose between dealing damage and untapping your creature - not do both. But magic is a tricky, technical game with more phases and sub-phases than most players realize. “Combat” breaks down (roughly) like this:

1. Declare combat (no more sorceries until after combat, last chance to tap down possible attackers)
2. Declare attackers (“when X attacks” triggers go off)
3. Declare blockers (“when X blocks” triggers go off)
4. Damage resolves (does not use the stack, no responses allowed)
5. End of combat

You can cast spells and use abilities anywhere along the chain except step 4, but it’s the 5th step that matters for reconnaisance. At this point your creatures are still considered to be “attacking creatures” and thus still eligible to be untapped with reconnaisance. This will of course have no effect on damage dealt/received as that step already happened - effectively giving all of your creatures vigilance.

Although this step rarely matters, it was actually useful in scars of mirrodin limited with the card dispense justice. A player could block to kill off any small attackers, taking damage from a larger one, and then after damage (and death) cast dispense justice forcing the attacker to sac his big creature assuming it was the only “attacking creature” remaining. Not a frequent use of the card, but often a relevant one.

The end-step vigilance trick is of course an unintentional side-effect of reconnaisance. It still preforms its originally intended purpose of making you immune to combat tricks and able to swing with reckless abandon, removing anything in danger of dying from combat for the low, low cost of zero mana. On an enchantment that costs one mana, this is already a huge ability - the unintentional addition of serra’s blessing onto the card makes it bonkers.


Macaroni or Cheese

I like this card for how it enables a player to turn guys sideways with impunity, but I do not believe wizards ever intended the card to be able to do what it does. While it wasn’t banned or errata’d, its in the same club with jitte, mindsculptor, and rancor - even if it is by far the least offensive of the group.