Deck Diaries: Varina Week 2

Salutations!

This week we're continuing with the tuning process for Varina.
Here is a link to last week's article for reference: https://lefowens.blogspot.com/2019/09/deck-diaries-varina-week-1.html.

The deck performed much better in my games this week. Focusing on getting the mana base into shape payed significant dividends as the wheels started turning much earlier. There's still too many land in the deck overall, so this week I'm planning to cut the last of the lands that have to enter tapped, and picking up a Watery Grave and Hallowed Fountain. I likely would have gotten them last week, but I'm trying to stay under 50$ an order. It was the two shocklands or a bunch of cheaper untapped dual lands. I went with the larger volume of lands to get the deck into playable shape faster.

The proactive plan of the deck is working quite well. Varina is generating value through attacking and has plenty of cards in the graveyard to use as fuel. That's the good news.
The bad news is that the deck frequently was unable to interact with the opponents. One of the strengths of Varina is that like all commanders with an activated ability, you can leave mana up to interact at instant speed and then do something with that mana instead of spewing it off at the end of the last opponent's turn. The problem with the Week 2 incarnation is that its interaction is all prohibitively expensive. The instant speed cantrips are generally fine to leave up, but leaving up Utter End or Mortify is detrimental to your early game. So my goal with this week's updates is to introduce more cheap interaction.

Out:
Sejiri Refuge
Jwar Isle Refuge
Dismal Backwater
Scoured Barrens
Island
Aminatou's Augury
Altar's Reap
Mulldrifter

In:
Swords to Plowshares
Arcane Denial
Careful Study
Hallowed Fountain
Watery Grave
Path to Exile
Lazotep Plating
Anguished Unmaking

Last week's article was a bit more of a general update. I didn't feel like anyone needed to know why I wanted Zombie Infestation in my Varina deck. Now that the changes are going to be smaller and more focused on solving problems, I'm going to go into more detail about why the specific cards are coming out or going in.

Tapped lands need to have some reason to be in a deck like this. We want to be going enabler, accelerant, Varina as consistently as possible and tapped lands are awful for aggressive game plans. There are still a couple tapped lands in the deck, but they have enough utility where I'm going to leave them alone until I start looking to add the Fetchlands.

The rest of the outs are a bit trickier, but its mostly about cost. Aminatou's Augury is a strong card. Mulldrifter is a classic in value oriented blue decks. The problem they have in common is that they cost 5 mana or more. Mulldrifter can be cheaper, but the cheaper version is not much better than Divination, and we already have a lot of targets for our limited reanimation. Going back to my thesis for this week's changes, I want to have more mana available to cast my interactive spells. I want to limit the number of 5+ mana cards in the deck to leave more room open for casting interaction on my opponents' turns. These cards are good, but they don't line up with the values of the deck.

Altar's Reap isn't expensive and is an instant. I'm cutting it because we win through attacking people to death. Every zombie is a looter so we'll see more than two cards with the zombie in play. I don't want to reduce my zombie count unless the sacrifice outlet pays me back for something that the deck is lacking. Altar's Reap isn't repeatable, and it doesn't give you back enough to justify eating a body. It doesn't help that I just don't like the card. I would much rather this slot eventually become Night's Whisper or something similar.

The Ins mostly follow what I'm trying to introduce into the deck, point and click removal and defense against the same. My break point for the cost of interaction is two mana. A two mana card is an OR statement. I can cast this, OR I can activate Varina. You'd have to leave up four mana to play a three mana card to get two activations or you'll be wasting a mana. The card has to be outstanding to be included past two mana. I say this knowing full well that Anguished Unmaking is in the list of cards being added. I would argue that Anguished Unmaking is outstanding. Exile any non-land permanent at instant speed is absurd. The draw back of losing three life isn't that bad in EDH in general, and specifically isn't a big deal in a deck that gains as much life as Varina.

Our other answers, Path and Swords, are classic white removal. Arcane Denial is a mainstay in my EDH decks. The drawback has less meaning in multiplayer, and a hard counter at 1U that cantrips is some of the best protection you can slot into your deck. I am trying Lazotep Plating out in this deck. Blanket hexproof is a useful defensive tool, but I'd be lying if I said that the Amass wasn't what put it over the line for me. Its an instant zombie that gives all your stuff hexproof! It might not live up to my expectations, but I have high hopes that it does work.

The last card coming in is Careful Study. I generally don't like Careful Study. Its card disadvantage, and I think inferior to Mental Note and Thought Scour since they put the same number of cards in the graveyard and replace themselves. However, Careful Study has some properties that are good here when they aren't other places. The first thing is that we like the game action of discarding cards. From Under The Floorboards,  Bone Miser, Shadow of the Grave, Archfiend of Ifnir, and future inclusions are going to care about discarding cards. The second thing is that while I primarily just want to bulk up the graveyard, I do care about which cards are put there if I can choose. I'd much rather put Gravecrawler in my graveyard than Phyrexian Delver.

The Week 3 incarnation looks like this: https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/varinaweek3/?cb=1570383310
I think I'm going to have a lot more ability to break up combos and stop voltron shenanigans with the new additions and I expect axing four tapped lands is going to make the deck even better at hitting its benchmarks. I'm going to try to get in more games this week since I only got to play 7 or 8 last week. I'm excited to see what goes down with this iteration. I have a suspicion I may have gone under by one land but we'll see how it goes. See you next week.

Week 3: https://lefowens.blogspot.com/2019/10/deck-diaries-varina-week-3.html