#kavu

Artists: David Auten Nash; Raymond Swanland

The Vaar. It is an old myth. It is the myth of a myth: the Vaar. The Vaar who ran from the Eldrazi. The Vaar who fled into their virtual world, the Hylderhigh. A virtual world so disconnected from this one that only a few spots of it remain in reality.

Nodes. Solid, physical spaces connected to the vastness of the Vaar's ancient knowledge. A billion times rarer than moxite.

An artifact worthy of all their sacrifices.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

With the revival of lifegain decks, I think there's still an interesting design space open to "Whenever an opponent gains life" triggers.

Albeit, it probably makes more sense in red than it does in green.

Art by  Chris Rahn

What is a Kavu (flavorfully)?

Kavu are Dominarian Dinosaurs. This isn’t to say that Kavu are biologically Dinosaurs, but that Kavu are ancient Dominarian lizard-beasts that were thought to be extinct. Then when the Phyrexians attacked, Multani declared “they’re not dead, just sleeping” and unleashed a bunch of Kavu on them. This worked out well for a while, but after the war was over nobody put the Kavu away, so now Dominaria’s just got a bunch of horse-sized reptiles running around.

Physically, a Kavu is a blend of crocodile and wolf, often with six legs, and occasionally with the ability to breathe fire for no apparent reason.

What is a Kavu (mechanically)?

Kavu are mid-sized Red and Green creatures, rarely with keywords, but always with some sort of ability. Due to their frequency in the Invasion block, Kavu have a high number of abilities with off-color activation costs or that reward you for playing other colors.

Can I make a Kavu deck?

Assembling a Kavu deck is reasonable, and there’s actually a fair number of Kavu tribal cards, but I worry about how much power such a deck actually has. The Kavu rewards all require an aggressive deck full of Kavu, but Kavu don’t really start getting particularly potent until higher mana costs. It’s not impossible, and it could certainly be done, but it’s definitely going to be a strictly casual deck.

In Commander, don’t even bother. Too many Kavu have color identities outside of Green and Red, and the tribal rewards are too small for a 40 life format. 

Is Kavu a good creature type?

Kavu has the makings of being a good creature type, but after making Invasion block so Kavu-heavy, Wizards just sort of… forgot them.  We’ve gotten a few random Kavu over the years since, but not many, so they’ve just been sitting there gathering dust. We’re likely to see more Kavu in the future every time we have a set on Dominaria, but only one or two each time, and sets on Dominaria are years apart.

In order for Kavu to work as a creature type, all we really need is a second set with a Kavu tribal component. A future Dominaria set with Kavu Tribal as a red/green mechanic would work fine, or maybe a core set. Alternatively, another world could simply have Kavu. In theory, Kavu could be folded into Lizard, Crocodile, or Dinosaur, but the fact that they’ve already got tribal rewards suggests that at this point it might be better for them to just expand on their own.

One of the big issues with Kavu right now is the question of how much of what we see in Kavu is Kavu and how much is Invasion Block themes. Would Kavu in other sets still have off-color activations? Would they care about you controlling lands of multiple types? Will they lean into Kicker?