Welcome to Deck Diary, the series where I tune a deck over the course of several weeks.
Last week can be found here: https://lefowens.blogspot.com/2019/10/deck-diaries-varina-week-5.html
The decklist I played this week: https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/varinaweek6/?cb=1572322691
This past weekend I got to go to CommandFest Seattle. It was a good time, and I got in a ton of games with Varina. I think the deck is where I want it to be. I played at casual and competitive tables and ran the gamut of environments. The deck played well all day. Just having a high level of interaction in the deck let me frequently disrupt combos, and having a strong clock that finds more answers let me chain removal together to keep opponents off-balance.
Generally, the games played out that I would land an early drop and deal with a problem. Then I would land a card advantage engine, Varina, Archive, Discovery, etc. Then I would use cantrips and looting to find the right action for the board. If games went long, turning my graveyard into zombies usually out-attritioned my opponents. I think if I was willing to make the deck more unfair with Altars and other combo elements it would be really mean.
One particular game stands out. The game had gone on a long time. I had Kindred Discovery and Alhammaret's Archive in play. I had 20 mana in play. The plan was to Unburial Rites on Wayward Servant to draw some cards. Well, one of the cards I hit was Army of the Damned. So I drew 26 cards, which left me with 1 card in my deck and drained everyone for 13. This knocked out two players but there was a Karlov player at 80. With the rest of my mana, I cast Zombie Infestation and then Bone Miser. I proceeded to make zombies with the lethal Kindred Discovery trigger on the stack. Not letting the draw triggers resolve while letting the mana and zombie making triggers resolve from Miser. Stacking more and more mana until casting a From Under the Floorboards for 15, then casting Shadow of the Grave to buy all the cards back, doing it again, then casting Empty the Pits for turbo lethal. It was pretty sweet
I actually liked that aspect of the deck quite a bit and may explore it further in the future. I like that its a way to end the game but only works when I've got a lot of pieces. Its also fairly unique. People don't mind being combo'ed out the more novel the combo. Killing everyone with Zombie Fireball definitely feels different.
OUT:
Yawgmoth, Thran Physician
Scourge of Nel Toth
Brainstorm
Yawgmoth is fundamentally not a fair card, and it also follows the same pattern as the Altars.
I'm benching him, but he may come back.
Scourge of Nel Toth is a neat card. Its a zombie. It gets into the air. Its castable from the graveyard. It checks boxes that make it seem like a good idea. In practice, I have almost always ignored it. I'm benching Scourge for now.
Cutting Brainstorm feels like sacrilege, but I don't have many ways to get rid of the cards I put back. Once I get the fetchlands in the deck Brainstorm will make a triumphant return, but until then I'm going to bench it to make room for other cards.
IN:
Dig Through Time
Vampiric Tutor
Demonic Tutor
Dig Through Time is a classic Delve spell. Its probably going to be the last delve spell I add to the deck since the others don't look interesting. I was hoping it would get banned in Pioneer before ordering one, but in the end the 3-4 dollars I might save isn't worth waiting it out.
Vampiric Tutor and Demonic Tutor. Tutors are somewhat contentious in EDH. 100 card singleton is supposed to heavily increase variance. Tutors undercut the replay-ability of the format by being wildcards for the same set of targets. If I wanted this deck to be competitive I would likely be adding way more tutors. As is, I wanted to wait till I identified what I would be tutoring for before adding tutors to the deck. Now that I know what cards I want in a given situation, I'm adding the two best tutors and leaving it at that. I may eventually add more tutors as the deck continues to improve. I expect Varina may come in a bit higher than I anticipated.
The list as it stands now: https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/varina-final/?cb=1573003424
I feel like I've gotten there with Varina, and this is likely my last entry specifically about her. There are some upgrades left to be made. The mana rocks could include more expensive options like Mana Crypt. A commenter on a previous article pointed out that Land Tax would be quite excellent. Given the cost of further upgrades. the week to week changes are going to be much fewer now. Worry not! I intend to write a monthly recap of changes and games from all my current decks. I have a plan for the next deck. I'll give you a hint, it shares two colors with Varina and also likes to attack. Cheers!
Back to Week 1 if you want to see how I got here: https://lefowens.blogspot.com/2019/09/deck-diaries-varina-week-1.html
One particular game stands out. The game had gone on a long time. I had Kindred Discovery and Alhammaret's Archive in play. I had 20 mana in play. The plan was to Unburial Rites on Wayward Servant to draw some cards. Well, one of the cards I hit was Army of the Damned. So I drew 26 cards, which left me with 1 card in my deck and drained everyone for 13. This knocked out two players but there was a Karlov player at 80. With the rest of my mana, I cast Zombie Infestation and then Bone Miser. I proceeded to make zombies with the lethal Kindred Discovery trigger on the stack. Not letting the draw triggers resolve while letting the mana and zombie making triggers resolve from Miser. Stacking more and more mana until casting a From Under the Floorboards for 15, then casting Shadow of the Grave to buy all the cards back, doing it again, then casting Empty the Pits for turbo lethal. It was pretty sweet
I actually liked that aspect of the deck quite a bit and may explore it further in the future. I like that its a way to end the game but only works when I've got a lot of pieces. Its also fairly unique. People don't mind being combo'ed out the more novel the combo. Killing everyone with Zombie Fireball definitely feels different.
OUT:
Yawgmoth, Thran Physician
Scourge of Nel Toth
Brainstorm
Yawgmoth is fundamentally not a fair card, and it also follows the same pattern as the Altars.
I'm benching him, but he may come back.
Scourge of Nel Toth is a neat card. Its a zombie. It gets into the air. Its castable from the graveyard. It checks boxes that make it seem like a good idea. In practice, I have almost always ignored it. I'm benching Scourge for now.
Cutting Brainstorm feels like sacrilege, but I don't have many ways to get rid of the cards I put back. Once I get the fetchlands in the deck Brainstorm will make a triumphant return, but until then I'm going to bench it to make room for other cards.
IN:
Dig Through Time
Vampiric Tutor
Demonic Tutor
Dig Through Time is a classic Delve spell. Its probably going to be the last delve spell I add to the deck since the others don't look interesting. I was hoping it would get banned in Pioneer before ordering one, but in the end the 3-4 dollars I might save isn't worth waiting it out.
Vampiric Tutor and Demonic Tutor. Tutors are somewhat contentious in EDH. 100 card singleton is supposed to heavily increase variance. Tutors undercut the replay-ability of the format by being wildcards for the same set of targets. If I wanted this deck to be competitive I would likely be adding way more tutors. As is, I wanted to wait till I identified what I would be tutoring for before adding tutors to the deck. Now that I know what cards I want in a given situation, I'm adding the two best tutors and leaving it at that. I may eventually add more tutors as the deck continues to improve. I expect Varina may come in a bit higher than I anticipated.
The list as it stands now: https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/varina-final/?cb=1573003424
I feel like I've gotten there with Varina, and this is likely my last entry specifically about her. There are some upgrades left to be made. The mana rocks could include more expensive options like Mana Crypt. A commenter on a previous article pointed out that Land Tax would be quite excellent. Given the cost of further upgrades. the week to week changes are going to be much fewer now. Worry not! I intend to write a monthly recap of changes and games from all my current decks. I have a plan for the next deck. I'll give you a hint, it shares two colors with Varina and also likes to attack. Cheers!
Back to Week 1 if you want to see how I got here: https://lefowens.blogspot.com/2019/09/deck-diaries-varina-week-1.html
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