Vivien's Grizzly MTG Card


Vivien's Grizzly - War of the Spark
Mana cost
Converted mana cost3
RarityCommon
TypeCreature — Bear Spirit
Released2019-05-03
Set symbol
Set nameWar of the Spark
Set codeWAR
Power 2
Toughness 3
Number182
Frame2015
LayoutNormal
BorderBlack
Illustred byLius Lasahido

Key Takeaways

  1. Vivien’s Grizzly aids in deck filtering, enhancing draw quality by revealing key cards.
  2. The card’s activation can optimize resources, keeping opponents on their toes.
  3. Vivien’s Grizzly’s abilities are most advantageous when timed strategically to disrupt or pressure opponents.

Text of card

: Look at the top card of your library. If it's a creature or planeswalker card, you may reveal it and put it into your hand. If you don't put the card into your hand, put it on the bottom of your library.


Card Pros

Card Advantage: Vivien’s Grizzly can sift through your deck to reveal creatures or lands, enhancing your chances of drawing into more impactful cards and building a solid hand that can respond to an evolving battlefield.

Resource Acceleration: The card’s ability may not produce mana, but it accelerates your resources by potentially putting valuable creature cards on top of your library, preparing you to draw them for future turns and keeping up the pressure on your opponent. This optimizes your deck’s efficiency and can lead to a strategic advantage.

Instant Speed: While Vivien’s Grizzly itself doesn’t operate at instant speed, its ability can be activated at the end of your opponent’s turn or in response to actions during their turn, ensuring you are maximizing your mana each round and staying adaptive to the board state without sacrificing tempo.


Card Cons

Discard Requirement: Vivien’s Grizzly prompts you to spend mana and discard cards to use its ability. In situations where card advantage is crucial, the mandatory discard can set you back, especially if your hand is already depleted.

Specific Mana Cost: This creature requires both green mana and generic mana to cast. Although the specific green mana cost synergizes with green-focused decks, it may not seamlessly fit into multi-colored deck strategies that are tight on mana diversity.

Comparatively High Mana Cost: With an activation cost that requires a significant mana investment to look at the top card of your library, players might find Vivien’s Grizzly a bit too expensive for its potential return. There are other creatures or spells in the same mana range that might provide more immediate or guaranteed value.


Reasons to Include in Your Collection

Versatility: Vivien’s Grizzly can be a strong addition to creature-based and green-centric decks. With its ability to dig for creatures or planeswalkers, it provides a reliable way to find key pieces of your strategy.

Combo Potential: This card boasts compatibility with decks built around creature synergies. Its activated ability scales with the game, allowing you to sift through your deck late in the game to trigger powerful enter-the-battlefield effects or to assemble a winning combo.

Meta-Relevance: In a meta where library manipulation and creature strategies prevail, Vivien’s Grizzly offers an edge by consistently serving up essential components of your deck. Its relevance grows as it helps navigate through potential dead draws, keeping pace with the ever-shifting battlefield.


How to beat

Vivien’s Grizzly is a notable creature card in Magic: The Gathering that allows players to filter through their deck for creatures or lands. Its look-ahead ability is a strategic component that provides an edge, helping to ensure smoother draws and maintain momentum on the battlefield. The grizzly’s adaptability is also a factor, as it can potentially reveal a creature card and put it directly into a player’s hand.

Overcoming this card requires disrupting the look-ahead strategy. Using instant-speed removal can prevent the accumulation of deck knowledge and hand resources. Counterspells are equally effective, nixing the grizzly before its ability can be activated. To minimize the grizzly’s impact, save your disruption for key moments when your opponent is likely to activate its ability, ensuring that they spend resources without gaining the anticipated advantage.

Ultimately, proficient deck management and timing your removal or counterspells are pivotal in neutralizing the strategic potential of Vivien’s Grizzly. Negate its ability to sculpt the opponent’s hand and deck, and you’ll suppress one of their avenues for gaining the upper hand in Magic: The Gathering matches.


BurnMana Recommendations

As MTG players strive for victory, Vivien’s Grizzly emerges as a sleeper hit, perfect for those cunning enough to harness its deck-filtering prowess. Its look-ahead potential paves the way to draw powerhouses that tilt the scales mid-battle. Are you aiming to outmaneuver your opponent with strategic foresight or refine your creature-centric deck to its peak? Vivien’s Grizzly might be the card you’re seeking. With every game being a blend of skill and knowledge, Join us to further understand how to optimize your deck and embrace the tactical nuances that could lead to commanding wins with this intriguing creature card.


Cards like Vivien's Grizzly

Vivien’s Grizzly is an adept creature within the Magic: The Gathering realm, focusing on filtering through the top card of your library. It shares similarities with creatures like Duskwatch Recruiter, which also allows players to look at the top few cards of their deck and potentially put a creature into their hand. Both cards provide a form of advantage by filtering for critical pieces in a deck.

Another card in this space is Fauna Shaman, offering the ability to search for a creature card in exchange for discarding a creature card, giving more control over the choice of creature obtained. While Vivien’s Grizzly relies on random top-deck presence, Fauna Shaman ensures the exact creature needed in a situation is accessible. Lastly, we have Garruk’s Horde, which operates on similar principles, allowing you to cast creatures from the top of your library. The Horde shines with its ability to put any creature into play directly, bypassing the need to draw it first.

Each of these cards has its unique role within MTG, but in terms of developing board presence combined with an element of card advantage, Vivien’s Grizzly competes nicely by offering a consistent, albeit luck-based, method of ensuring creature flow in a game.

Fauna Shaman - MTG Card versions
Garruk's Horde - MTG Card versions
Fauna Shaman - MTG Card versions
Garruk's Horde - MTG Card versions

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Where to buy

If you're looking to purchase Vivien's Grizzly MTG card by a specific set like War of the Spark, there are several reliable options to consider. One of the primary sources is your local game store, where you can often find booster packs, individual cards, and preconstructed decks from current and some past sets. They often offer the added benefit of a community where you can trade with other players.

For a broader inventory, particularly of older sets, online marketplaces like TCGPlayer, Card Kingdom and Card Market offer extensive selections and allow you to search for cards from specific sets. Larger e-commerce platforms like eBay and Amazon also have listings from various sellers, which can be a good place to look for sealed product and rare finds.

Additionally, Magic’s official site often has a store locator and retailer lists for finding Wizards of the Coast licensed products. Remember to check for authenticity and the condition of the cards when purchasing, especially from individual sellers on larger marketplaces.

Below is a list of some store websites where you can buy the Vivien's Grizzly and other MTG cards:

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Legalities

Magic the Gathering formats where Vivien's Grizzly has restrictions

FormatLegality
HistoricbrawlLegal
HistoricLegal
LegacyLegal
PaupercommanderLegal
OathbreakerLegal
GladiatorLegal
PioneerLegal
CommanderLegal
ModernLegal
PauperLegal
VintageLegal
DuelLegal
ExplorerLegal
TimelessLegal

Rules and information

The reference guide for Magic: The Gathering Vivien's Grizzly card rulings provides official rulings, any errata issued, as well as a record of all the functional modifications that have occurred.

Date Text
2019-05-03 The ability of Vivien’s Grizzly has you put the card on the bottom of your library if you don’t put it into your hand for any reason, whether it’s not a creature or planeswalker card or whether you choose not to put it into your hand.

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