Yawgmoth
Holy shit
Yawgmoth
I've waited 15 years or so for this card and it does not disappoint. Yawgmoth is dripping with black mana. Whenever I write an article I like to spend some time dissecting the card.
We start at the mana cost. 2BB is quite reasonable on color requirement, and is low enough where we can expect to cast him 2-3 times in a game. You shouldn't be afraid of just running him out on 4 and then recasting him if someone has an answer. BB is also reasonable to put in multi-color deck, so we'll see Yawgmoth in other strategies that want him in the 99.
Protection from humans probably won't come up often. It's not irrelevant but it's also not going to be something that you can proactively build around.
This is the meat and potatoes ability. He's an unbound sacrifice outlet that trades life for cards. This is an absurd text-line and the community would probably have been satisfied if it's all Yawgmoth did. There are tons of sacrifice oriented abilities in black, and trading life for cards has similarly been a consistent theme of black since Necropotence. Both abilities are powerful powerful enough that in modern design they're usually bounded by a mana cost. Yawgmoth gives access to both at no mana cost. This lets him slot into established strategies like Ghave, Teysa, or Grimgrin. Access to his ability on demand is a powerful incentive to put him in the command zone. While the -1/-1 counters are not the draw of this ability, they are quite relevant. There are plenty of low toughness targets at an EDH table. Even just picking off tokens has value. This part of the ability also enables loops with undying creatures or blowfly infestation to get tons of extra activations.
His discard is on demand, enabling madness, flashback, and reanimation. There are relatively fewer strategies where this slots in. Atraxa, obviously, and some others will want this either to beef up creatures or get people dead with poison counters. There is value in having a repeatable discard outlet for graveyard commanders, but this ability on its own won't carry the card the way that his other activated ability will.
Taken together, these abilities paint a picture of a card that completely dominates a game. You sacrifice creatures to draw cards and spread out -1/-1 counters. Then you use the cards you draw to either play more spells or proliferate your counters and maintain control of the board. The problem is fuel. Yawgmoth is constrained more by fueling his abilities than anything else. The challenge is coming up with enough creatures and life.
Yawgmoth
I've waited 15 years or so for this card and it does not disappoint. Yawgmoth is dripping with black mana. Whenever I write an article I like to spend some time dissecting the card.
His discard is on demand, enabling madness, flashback, and reanimation. There are relatively fewer strategies where this slots in. Atraxa, obviously, and some others will want this either to beef up creatures or get people dead with poison counters. There is value in having a repeatable discard outlet for graveyard commanders, but this ability on its own won't carry the card the way that his other activated ability will.
Taken together, these abilities paint a picture of a card that completely dominates a game. You sacrifice creatures to draw cards and spread out -1/-1 counters. Then you use the cards you draw to either play more spells or proliferate your counters and maintain control of the board. The problem is fuel. Yawgmoth is constrained more by fueling his abilities than anything else. The challenge is coming up with enough creatures and life.
I like to create an 80 card “Core” deck that uses all the parts of the buffalo and showcases all the aspects of a new Yawgmoth commander, and then explores several 20 card “Packages” that lean in one direction or another. Yawgmoth is an expansive card in this regard. He touches on almost all of black's major strategies. I made an effort not to reuse cards between the packages. In reality, I expect there would be crossover between these decks, but as a thought exercise we want to explore more cards.
This is what I would consider the "Core" of a Yawgmoth deck. It has removal, mana, and cards that are specifically great with Yawgmoth. -1/-1 counters annihilate with +1/+1 counters like antimatter and matter. This interaction makes Undying creatures fantastic with Yawgmoth.
It is possible to generate a loop with two undying creatures and Yawgmoth. Let's say you have Geralf's Messenger and Butcher Ghoul. You sacrifice the Messenger to Yawgmoth putting a counter on nothing. It comes back with a +1/+1 counter on it. Now you sacrifice the Butcher to put a -1/-1 counter on Geralf's Messenger. The Butcher comes back into play. Now you sacrifice the Messenger, it will come back because it doesn't have a +1/+1 counter on it anymore. You put the -1/-1 counter from sacrificing the messenger onto the Butcher and you have now demonstrated a loop. You can repeat the loop for each life you have or card in your library.
Undying is not a common keyword, so our choices are pretty limited. We're only including the ones that I think are good enough: Mikaeus, Messenger, and Butcher. Mikaeus grants Undying to lots of creatures that would not otherwise have it. Mikaeus is also the source of a lot of the combo wins you accomplish with the deck, the most obvious being his interaction with Triskellion.
This is what I expect many of those that are looking at Yawgmoth are imagining he'll turn out. This is a pretty cutthroat list. It tries to efficiently set up loops and kills through infinite combos. Mono-black loses many of the combo enablers from other colors, but makes up for this by having significantly more redundancy with multiple tutors. This package has a number of auxiliary engines in case Yawgmoth gets locked out. Doomsday sets up several kills on its own as a form of super tutor. Since we're more on the sacrifice plan, Grave Pact adds a layer of defense to the deck. Bitter Ordeal is a combo kill card, which I usually avoid. In general, cards should have functions aside from just killing the opponent. I’m making an exception for Bitter Ordeal because while it's mostly just a win condition, but it can be fired off for lower numbers and cripple an opponent's strategy. Since it is a form of storm, each copy can also target different opponents in Commander, letting you snag multiple answers from the whole table. Endling makes it into this iteration of the deck that leans on Undying the most. Sanguine Bond and Exquisite Blood make a two card combo, but also function as powerful engines on their own. I am including them in this package due to the larger number of tutors and card draw this version is running.They as make for an excellent backup plan in case the main engines get removed. Bolas's Citadel is another strong engine, using the various life gain cards in the deck to fuel its free-spell shindig. Citadel also pairs well with Aetherflux Reservoir and various tutors like Doomsday and Vampiric Tutor.
So, we add reanimation cards to take advantage of having essentially a larger hand.
I also added madness cards because of how well Yawg can take advantage of the madness keyword. There's relatively few of them, but only because there are relatively few madness cards that are worth the inclusion. I think this version is the least combo version of Yawgmoth.
However, it relies on him quite a bit to enable the madness and graveyard effects.
Strands of Night is an odd card. Its simultaneously great at converting excess lands into action, and incredibly dangerous to activate too much in a deck with Cabal Coffers. I like it but it's also one to be careful activating. Given the increased use of the graveyard, adding Crypt of Agadeem gives us another target for our Expedition Map. Crypt replaces a land slot. Crypt takes longer to get going in most cases, put its a late game power house in the vein of Cabal Coffers once you get there.
Proliferate: https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/yawg-proliferate-1/?cb=1570323631
This version leans on the second ability of Yawgmoth, but this one wants to build big board states. This iteration wants to be pouring its mana into accruing permanents. Planeswalkers are the name of the game here. Getting tons of mileage out of their repeated activation and fueling them with proliferate. While not explicitly combo, it's still going to feel that way when you play Liliana and pump her to ultimate on the same turn.
While the majority of these cards are ones that directly benefit from the proliferate ability, I also included Necropotence and Arguel’s Blood Fast. The deck will likely not have as much fodder for the first ability. Necro has the disadvantage of discard being exiled, but that’s a small price to pay for always having cards to pay for proliferation. Thrilling Encore is also not a direct recipient of proliferate. Encore, however, feeds on the -1/-1 counter proliferation killing wide swaths of the opponent’s battlefield. Given that proliferate is a may ability, you can also put lots of creatures down to one toughness then wait to capitalize on the deaths all at once.
Infect is not a particularly well viewed strategy in EDH so play this version at your own risk. Proliferate can win you the game outside combat, which is something that the deck has needed for a long time. However, getting the initial counter on the opponent outside of combat is a challenge. That pushes this version to be more about the combat step and getting things out of the way. Given the importance of infect, and the scarcity of creatures with the ability, we are running some cards that would normally be sub-optimal. The deck is chasing the dream of getting one counter and then proliferating your way to victory.
The highlights here are Traitor’s Clutch and Dauthi Embrace. Traitor’s Clutch is a fairly unremarkable card in most places and I first noticed it while building Mimeoplasm, which also had an infect sub-theme. Shadow is virtually non-existent, making it essentially unblockable. Traitor’s Clutch in particular is interesting because the flashback is so cheap, and discarding it via Yawgmoth’s second ability lines up with the deck’s game plan. Dauthi Embrace is a similar effect that you can’t cheat like Traitor’s Clutch, but it repeatable, and you can target any creature. Turning off blockers can be more efficient than turning on attackers, and you can use it politically on other peoples' creatures. The other highlight is Unspeakable Symbol. Symbol converts life into damage and has popped up in decks with powerful lifegain creatures from time to time. Here, we wouldn’t be getting the life back quickly, but it gives us a base to proliferate from.
This is the bare minimum of what you would need to make infect your strategy. I would suggest trimming some cards out of the Core deck for more removal and unblockable if you want to go all in on the infect theme instead of just having it as a sub-theme the way its presented here.
I am so happy they finally printed the big man.
I hope you enjoyed the exploration of The Lord of the Wastes.
Undying is not a common keyword, so our choices are pretty limited. We're only including the ones that I think are good enough: Mikaeus, Messenger, and Butcher. Mikaeus grants Undying to lots of creatures that would not otherwise have it. Mikaeus is also the source of a lot of the combo wins you accomplish with the deck, the most obvious being his interaction with Triskellion.
This is what I expect many of those that are looking at Yawgmoth are imagining he'll turn out. This is a pretty cutthroat list. It tries to efficiently set up loops and kills through infinite combos. Mono-black loses many of the combo enablers from other colors, but makes up for this by having significantly more redundancy with multiple tutors. This package has a number of auxiliary engines in case Yawgmoth gets locked out. Doomsday sets up several kills on its own as a form of super tutor. Since we're more on the sacrifice plan, Grave Pact adds a layer of defense to the deck. Bitter Ordeal is a combo kill card, which I usually avoid. In general, cards should have functions aside from just killing the opponent. I’m making an exception for Bitter Ordeal because while it's mostly just a win condition, but it can be fired off for lower numbers and cripple an opponent's strategy. Since it is a form of storm, each copy can also target different opponents in Commander, letting you snag multiple answers from the whole table. Endling makes it into this iteration of the deck that leans on Undying the most. Sanguine Bond and Exquisite Blood make a two card combo, but also function as powerful engines on their own. I am including them in this package due to the larger number of tutors and card draw this version is running.They as make for an excellent backup plan in case the main engines get removed. Bolas's Citadel is another strong engine, using the various life gain cards in the deck to fuel its free-spell shindig. Citadel also pairs well with Aetherflux Reservoir and various tutors like Doomsday and Vampiric Tutor.
Yawgmoth's second ability gives you an on-demand discard outlet. While there are many commanders that play in this space, the efficiency of Yawg's discard is hard to match.
The real trick here is that Yawg draws so many cards that you are far more likely to want low cost ways to turn the excess cards into value. If we're planning on using the ability to generate value, making use of the graveyard is a great way of extending the purpose of the cards you draw. Until the proliferate portion of the ability, you don't need permanents to make use of the ability either. The graveyard is conserved much more regularly that permanents.So, we add reanimation cards to take advantage of having essentially a larger hand.
I also added madness cards because of how well Yawg can take advantage of the madness keyword. There's relatively few of them, but only because there are relatively few madness cards that are worth the inclusion. I think this version is the least combo version of Yawgmoth.
However, it relies on him quite a bit to enable the madness and graveyard effects.
Strands of Night is an odd card. Its simultaneously great at converting excess lands into action, and incredibly dangerous to activate too much in a deck with Cabal Coffers. I like it but it's also one to be careful activating. Given the increased use of the graveyard, adding Crypt of Agadeem gives us another target for our Expedition Map. Crypt replaces a land slot. Crypt takes longer to get going in most cases, put its a late game power house in the vein of Cabal Coffers once you get there.
Proliferate: https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/yawg-proliferate-1/?cb=1570323631
While the majority of these cards are ones that directly benefit from the proliferate ability, I also included Necropotence and Arguel’s Blood Fast. The deck will likely not have as much fodder for the first ability. Necro has the disadvantage of discard being exiled, but that’s a small price to pay for always having cards to pay for proliferation. Thrilling Encore is also not a direct recipient of proliferate. Encore, however, feeds on the -1/-1 counter proliferation killing wide swaths of the opponent’s battlefield. Given that proliferate is a may ability, you can also put lots of creatures down to one toughness then wait to capitalize on the deaths all at once.
The highlights here are Traitor’s Clutch and Dauthi Embrace. Traitor’s Clutch is a fairly unremarkable card in most places and I first noticed it while building Mimeoplasm, which also had an infect sub-theme. Shadow is virtually non-existent, making it essentially unblockable. Traitor’s Clutch in particular is interesting because the flashback is so cheap, and discarding it via Yawgmoth’s second ability lines up with the deck’s game plan. Dauthi Embrace is a similar effect that you can’t cheat like Traitor’s Clutch, but it repeatable, and you can target any creature. Turning off blockers can be more efficient than turning on attackers, and you can use it politically on other peoples' creatures. The other highlight is Unspeakable Symbol. Symbol converts life into damage and has popped up in decks with powerful lifegain creatures from time to time. Here, we wouldn’t be getting the life back quickly, but it gives us a base to proliferate from.
This is the bare minimum of what you would need to make infect your strategy. I would suggest trimming some cards out of the Core deck for more removal and unblockable if you want to go all in on the infect theme instead of just having it as a sub-theme the way its presented here.
I am so happy they finally printed the big man.
I hope you enjoyed the exploration of The Lord of the Wastes.
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