Abrew Turns Fight Spells Into Ramp With Hexhaven Invigorator

Abrew has found a way to turn fight spells into the most powerful ramp spells in Magic: The Gathering’s history, and it involves a Phyrexian Obliterator that deals damage to your own creatures. The deck is called Hexhaven Fight, and it uses a color-shifted version of Phyrexian Obliterator to search for lands based on how much damage it deals. The trick is forcing your opponent to damage the creature, and the payoff is massive.

Core Mechanism

Hexhaven Invigorator is the centerpiece. It deals damage to one of your opponent’s creatures equal to its power, and it forces that creature to deal damage back to the Invigorator. That damage triggers the ramp effect, putting lands directly onto the battlefield tapped.

The problem is that opponents will avoid damaging the Invigorator in combat. Most foes treat it like a 6/6 unblockable, which is fine but not exciting. The deck solves that by using fight spells to force the trade. Cards like Bushwhack, Primal Might, Vigorbloom Charm, and Yoshimaru, Scrappy Stray all let you fight with the Invigorator and force the opponent’s creature to hit it.

Here is how the fight plan works:

• Bushwhack lets you fight with the Invigorator and force the opponent’s creature to damage it.
• Primal Might and Vigorbloom Charm work the same way.
• Yoshimaru, Scrappy Stray can be tutored up with Formidable Speakers.

If your opponent has a 5-powered creature, you fight it with the Invigorator. The Invigorator takes five damage, and you put five lands from your deck into play tapped. That is the core of the strategy.

Winning Paths

The deck has two paths to victory. The first is boring but reliable: Sapling Nursery. If you get it on the battlefield before you start fighting, each land you play makes a 3/4 Treefolk token. Five lands from a fight spell turn into five 3/4 tokens for free.

The second path is spicier. It uses Roiling Canopy from Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle. As long as you have at least five other Forests in play, Roiling Canopy Giant Growth-sizes one of your creatures every time a Forest enters the battlefield. Because every land in the deck outside of Roiling Canopy itself is a Forest, the fight spells tutor out a huge pile of Forests.

With four Roiling Canopy in play, each Forest entering gives a total of +12/+12, potentially split between up to four creatures. That is a massive swing. You fight down your opponent’s blockers, pump your team, and win by beating down in one turn.

Matchup Weakness

The deck is matchup dependent. Against a deck like Four-Color Control, it fails horribly. There is nothing to fight. Abrew suggests fixing this in best-of-three by playing a bunch of good-against-control creatures in the sideboard and simply removing all of the fight spells, turning the deck into a weird green stompy build in that matchup.

In best-of-one, the end result is a deck that is hilariously good against creature decks but equally bad against decks without creatures. The early-access performance was strong, but Abrew warns against reading too much into it.

There is also one card Abrew regrets not adding: Earthbender Ascension. He mentioned playing Bejeweled Warg partly because it has trample, but Ascension probably fills that role better by giving anything trample once you have a few land enters, which is exactly what Hexhaven Invigorator is good at. The deck is already light on two-drops, so the cut is not simple, but Abrew could see trimming fight spells to make room for it.

The Math

The math is simple. A 5-powered creature fights the Invigorator, the Invigorator takes five damage, and you put five lands into play. That is the base case. The Roiling Canopy plan compounds it.

With four Roiling Canopy and five Forests entering the battlefield, each Forest gives +12/+12, potentially split between up to four creatures. If you have a few creatures on the battlefield, you can fight down blockers, pump your team, and win immediately. The combo turn is the goal.

The deck is built around finding Hexhaven Invigorator quickly. Four Formidable Speakers ensure you can find it each game, and Abrew advises mullingiganing aggressively for one of those two cards. Without the Invigorator on the battlefield, the whole plan falls apart.

Verdict on the Card

Abrew’s verdict is positive. The card itself is pretty insane, he says. The fight spell plan puts you super far ahead or wins you the game on the spot with Roiling Canopy. The ceiling is off the charts.

But the floor is low against control. The deck is matchup dependent, and that is the cost of its power. Abrew expects more brews to come from this card in the future.

The combo possibilities seem almost endless. When it works, it does some incredibly explosive things.

The deck is a fun experiment, and it shows how a single card can reshape a format. Hexhaven Invigorator turns fight spells into ramp, and that is a trick worth trying.

The takeaway is simple. If you want to win with a weird green deck, Hexhaven Invigorator is the ticket. Just make sure your opponent has something to fight.

See the video the story is built around at MTGGoldfish.

Hexhaven Invigorator · Magic: The Gathering · MTG · ramp deck · Standard