Deck Diaries: Varina Week 3

Salutations!

Welcome to Deck Diaries, the series where I tune a list over the course of many weeks and track the changes.

The previous week can be found here: https://lefowens.blogspot.com/2019/10/deck-diaries-varina-week-2.html
This is Week 3 of Varina tuning and this is the list I was running: https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/varinaweek3/

I didn't get too many games in this week, but not from lack of trying. I wound up in several marathon games that went to 2+ hours. Some players prefer that game length but for me the optimal length of a commander game is 30 minutes. I prefer more shorter games to games that drag out. If the game is intense and interesting the whole time then I don't mind going long, but many games over the hour mark are that way because they're bogged down and boring. The marathons from this week are no exception and are prompting me to make some adjustments. I won't list all the games where I felt things went wrong, but two games in particular stand out in my mind.

In the first game, a Rankle player opened on Leyline of the Void. That is obviously pretty bad for me, but I was holding Mortify so I wasn't too concerned. Until he cast Specter's Shriek and took it. My hand had no other answer for the Leyline, and I was stuck playing draw-go. I took virtually no game actions until it was just me and the Rankle player. I had drawn an Esper Charm a couple turns earlier, but decided to hold it until Rankle would have to be attacking me anyway. I'm not sure if that was the right decision as I wound up being too far behind to come back. While Varina definitely uses the graveyard, I think Tormod's Crypt or other 1-shot graveyard hate doesn't effect her as much as say, Mimeoplasm. You play on the battlefield quite a bit and you can refill your graveyard quickly. Persistent graveyard hate like Leyline or Rest In Peace is another matter. You don't get Skullclamp triggers, your Delve spells cost retail, and Varina can't generate more bodies.

In the second game I got off to a strong start with a flashback of Dread Return on Elesh Norn. An opponent on Tuvasa cast Winds of Rath and wiped my board. Two subsequent attempts to resolve Varina got countered. There was a player on an Emry deck who was terrified of the possibility that I would reanimate Elesh Norn. So much so that even though he had an Inventor's Fair in his graveyard, he continually bought back his Strip Mine with Scaretiller to put me in a strip lock. At this point, I have nothing in play except lands. I get Varina down just before I'm out of mana to recast her. He casts Stolen by the Fae on Varina, then strips me down to 1 blue source. I recast Varina, who gets stuck under a Fiend Hunter, but I manage to land a Cryptbreaker.

The turn rotates a couple of times with me just making a couple zombies. I cast an Ashnod's Altar, but I don't have anything to do with it yet since I don't want to eat the 4 zombies I've managed to make. On my turn I draw From Under the Floorboards. I get stripped again by Emry who has fallen to 6 life from getting pummeled by Derevi and a couple fliers. At the end of Derevi's turn, I activate Cryptbreaker to discard From Under the Floorboards. I eat all my zombie tokens with Altar to fuel it and make 10 zombies and gain 10 life. Let me tell you, attacking Emry to kill him with those zombies is maybe the most satisfying attack of my life. Now that I'm doing stuff, Tuvasa, Derevi, and I start battling. I manage to pull it out in no small part due to Cryptbreaker drawing a bunch of cards.

What did we learn from the games this week?
Games like the first game are a clear lesson that even though I'm trying to be less reliant on specific cards in the graveyard, I'm still leaning heavily on it existing. Rest in Peace, Leyline, Planar Void, etc, can shut me off from that resource altogether. I have answers for these permanents, but I also might not have them available. Games like the second game showed that while the deck can go long it struggles under consistently being denied Varina. Under the withering assault on mana it would have been easy to just not have access to Varina at all for the rest of the game.What they have in common is that they are resources that drive the engine of the deck and without them it flounders. What I need is a suite of cards to get ahead on resources when I can't lean on my primary game plan. In particular, I noticed that there isn't a lot of card advantage in the deck. It has a significant number of cantrips but few cards that do more than replace themselves. Cryptbreaker was one of the best draws in that game because its one of the only repeatable ways to draw cards. At the same time we don't want to ignore the foundational principles of the deck.

OUT:

Esper Charm

Commander's Sphere

Crib Swap

Pilgrim's Eye

Portent

Predict

Return to Dust

Syphon Flesh

Bojuka Bog

Portent being a slow-trip makes it much worse than other options for deck manipulation.

Predict hasn't been removed up until now because its relatively decent, but I'm at the point where I can cut it for options that will more definitely put me at +1 card. 

Esper Charm was primarily used for its draw two cards mode, but it was nice to have it for picking off enchantments in a pinch. I'm cutting it mostly because its mana cost is kind of annoying in some situations, and while its a good all-rounder, I really need cards with a bit more punch to them.

Commander's Sphere is an odd card to cut, but I have not particularly liked the three mana accelerant in this deck. A four mana general wants you to play a two-drop mana rock to play your Commander a turn early. Commander's sphere is in an awkward spot due to that. I'm not adding them this week, but I expect I'm going to eventually get the other Talismans in the deck over some of the other acceleration.

Pilgrim's Eye has been a decent body to help smooth out mana, but I never intended to keep it around for too long. With the number of cantrips already in the deck, and the additions I'm adding for the next iteration, I think its time to wave goodbye to the little guy.

Return to Dust is a strong card. Being able to eat two problems is strong. The problem I was running into is that if I used it on my turn it took up almost all of my mana. If I cast it as an instant it was just a worse version of Utter End. I'm cutting it for now, but its on the back burner of cards to keep in mind if I want to add more ways to deal with artifacts/enchantments back into the deck.

Syphon Flesh is pretty sweet. I liked its ability to generate several bodies on its own and that it was a form of resource denial. The problem, like with Return to Dust, is that five mana at sorcery speed could be spent on better cards. If I were to play Demonic Tutor, I don't think I'd ever tutor for this card. I'm going to cut it to make room for more powerful cards.

Bojuka Bog is a low opportunity cost way to mess with opposing graveyards. I was planning on keeping it, but the utility it provides is not as large as the forward momentum provided by the land I'm replacing it with. In an effort to keep the number of lands that enter tapped to a minimum, I'm cutting the Bog over a basic. Like Return to Dust, Bojuka Bog is on the bench of cards that might get re-added if opposing graveyard decks become a problem in the future.

IN:

Compulsive Research
Chemister's Insight
Deep Analysis
Night's Whisper
Consecrated Sphinx
Erebos, God of the Dead
Castle Locthwain
Frantic Search
Chart a Course

Compulsive Research, Chemister's Insight, Deep Analysis, Chart a Course, Frantic Search:

The main thrust of this week's update. I went looking for draw spells that fit with the deck's overall strategy. Chemister's Insight and Deep Analysis are not exciting to pay retail for, but when in top deck mode they serve the point of getting some velocity going. They are also active from the graveyard so when I am playing without impairment they give extra options for what to discard to Varina triggers. Compulsive Research and Chart a course let me dig out of situations where I'm behind while also providing discard outlets when I'm ahead. Frantic Search is not card advantage. Its essentially Careful Study, but it costs 0 mana. Search is banned in a lot of formats because getting to dig two cards without spending mana is incredibly powerful. Search, like Compulsive Research and Chart a Course, also functions as an additional discard outlet for when that matters.

Night's Whisper, Erebos, Castle Locthwain:

Black has a long history of providing cards for life. One of the aspects of Varina that I haven't talked about much is that her attack trigger provides quite a bit of extra life. When behind, black draw might end up being a liability. I'm gambling that if it catches me up then I'll probably get my life back from Varina. Unfortunately Necropotence, the classic life-for-cards engine, has a clause that discarded cards are exiled. I'd absolutely run it in this deck otherwise. As is, I chose the above as my foray into black draw effects. Night's Whisper is efficient draw that I was going to find a home for in this deck eventually. It mana efficient, and two life is paltry to pay in EDH. Castle Locthwain has potential to hit for more than 1 life per card, but if I have 3+ cards in hand, I'd probably rather be doing something else with my mana. Its also a land, so it gets more leeway. 

Erebos is an interesting card that I don't think see's enough play. His activated ability is solid if a bit expensive. However, it comes bundled with an extremely powerful hate effect. One of the problems of an aggressive fair deck is that there so much life you have to get through. Your cards are made with the idea that you need to do 20 damage, when you need to do double that to kill one player, and six times that to kill most pods. This is only aggravated by someone flipping over Trostani and gaining an extra 40 life. Erebos shuts down those lines while providing repeatable card advantage. Indestructibility makes him pretty hard to get rid of without specifically targeting him with an exile effect. Infrequently, he comes alive and can get in on the beatdowns.

Consecrated Sphinx:

When I built the deck I talked about my goals for it. I want it to be an aggressive fair deck that uses its graveyard as part of a feedback loop with Varina. How does Consecrated Sphinx play into that? Realistically, it doesn't. Part of deck building, especially when you are building towards synergy, is knowing when you just need some Goodstuff. Goodstuff, to me, are cards that are generically powerful and can slot into just about any strategy. Sphinx, Cyclonic Rift, Sylvan Library. Cards that you'd probably put in just about any deck that can run them. I tend to run more niche, synergy driven cards, but sometimes you just need those pillars to fall back on.

After these updates, this is the week 4 decklist: https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/varinaweek4/?cb=1571013387

I'm hopeful that this version gives me more stuff to be doing if I can't get Varina going. I think I might have some more work to do to have a consistent plan B, but for now I'm happy getting some of the random leftovers from the pre-con out for more card advantage.

Week 4: https://lefowens.blogspot.com/2019/10/deck-diaries-varina-week-4.html

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

Constructing Commanders: Yawgmoth, Thran Physician

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.

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.

https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/30-05-19-WHi-yawgmoth-thran-physician/

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.

Sacrifice: https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/yawgsac/?cb=1570319804

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.

Graveyard: https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/yawg-graveyard/?cb=1570321787

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

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: https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/yawg-infect/?cb=1570324165

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.

Deck Diaries: Varina Week 1

Welcome to Deck Diaries. In this series I'll be taking a deck and giving updates on the deck's performance and the tuning process to get the deck into shape.

I used to play EDH multiple times a week, but life forced me to take a pretty long hiatus. While I sold quite a bit of my collection, I held on to my two favorite decks. Kess and Mimeoplasm are really fun and engaging, but they're a bit rough for fair tables. I wanted something a bit softer so I have more options when I sit down. Due to budget constraints, I decided to get a Preconstructed deck and update it over time. I figured out I can put 50-100$ into the deck each month. All I had to do to get started was pick a deck.

I settled on Varina. I chose Varina as my first build on returning to Magic for a few reasons. I like U/B as a color combo and Varina rounds out the three color combos with U/B. Looking for a slower, fairer deck also naturally pushes you towards white. Orzhov has the best answers with Vindicate, Anguished Unmaking, Utter End, etc. This would be true about any Esper legend, but Varina caught my eye.

People generally build her as zombie tribal. While she is good in that role, it overlooks that she can feed her own abilities. Varina is an engine card. She converts cards in graveyard to creatures. Then she uses those creatures to fill the graveyard. Cantrips are a way to generate some initial velocity and smooth your draws while simultaneously filling the yard. Varina works along the same axis as Delve. Generating cards in the graveyard as their own resource to be exploited and putting less emphasis on the value of specific cards in your graveyard. Zombies that are good for the plan still make the grade since they're all looters. What I don't want to be doing is including zombies for the sake of it. I want to stay true my vision for the deck.

Varina also rewards being aggressive and attacking. While I'm not averse to having some combos in the deck to get games over with, a deck that's aiming to be fair needs to have a proactive plan for getting people dead. Varina has a built in plan to snowball the game. You get a couple zombies, which loot cards, to make more zombies, to loot ever more escalating numbers of cards. She also makes racing situations awkward since she gains you a significant amount of life.

I started with the Pre-constructed deck:
https://mtg.gamepedia.com/Commander_2018/Subjective_Reality

I played a few games with just the precon to get a sense of what should get replaced first. The deck did surprisingly ok given its low efficiency. I was expecting to get creamed playing a precon, but I won a few games. I think a big part of why was that Varina gave me a lot of value during games that when long. The steady stream of zombies and looting continuing to present threats even while everyone else ran out of gas. I still identified quite a few cards that need to get swapped out.

The first pass: https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/varina-week1/
This is the deck after a pass with cards I already owned or was able to trade for at the shop. I played 10-15 games with this version to give me an idea of what I wanted to pick up on my first order. Its a bit more 'on brand' for the goals of the deck. I got in some more enablers and some cheaper zombie bodies to get the party started. While I was a still a dog in most of the games I played, Varina is proving her strength in matchups that go long. She kept being recast and making 3-4 friends to start the party again. The largest problem is the number of tapped lands. A 3 color deck needs a lot of fixing, especially one that wants to have 3 colors by turn 4. Thankfully, cantrips are really useful at fixing mana early and slot directly into our Delve-esque strategy.

However, when most of our multi-color lands enter tapped we get compounding issues. The enablers are there to help smooth your draws and find what you need. If you can't make early plays and get a foothold in the game then slower more powerful decks will be able to capitalize on you.  Priority 1 then is to update the mana base to include as many dual lands as our budget will allow.

The second thing that I noticed is that the average cost of the deck is way too high. EDH does lean towards the Timmy, but many of these high cost cards are superfluous. Things like the Entreats or Sphinx of Uthuun are there for Battlecruiser magic which is decidedly not Varina's game. We don't want to be ramping to 8 mana, we'd rather be filling the yard and attacking. We also don't have a high enough density of zombies. While the deck is not built as zombie tribal, each zombie is a natural looter. We want to be able to fill our graveyard and reduce the average cost of the deck. Priority 2 is to drop some of the monsters for cheap enablers.

So, here is the change log for week 2

Out:

Halimar Depths

Meandering River

Orzhov Guildgate

Forsaken Santuary

Azorius Guildgate

Tranquil Cove

Dimir Guildgate

Submerged Boneyard

Jeskai Infiltrator

Entreat the Dead

Entreat the Angels

Adarkar Valkyrie

Telling Time

Sphinx of Uthuun

Ninja of the Deep Hours

Yuriko, Tiger's Shadow

Yennett, Cryptic Sovereign

In:

Glacial Fortress

Drowned Catacomb

Isolated Chapel

Caves of Koilos

Underground River

Sunken Hollow

Prairie Stream

Adarkar Wastes

Thought Scour

Mental Note

Carrion Feeder

Undead Augur

Zombie Infestation

Shepard of Rot

Shadow of the Grave

Tomebound Lich

Preordain

Now the deck looks like this: https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/varina-week2/?cb=1569896405

I've goldfished some hands with this version and its a lot smoother. It definitely has too many land, but I am erring on the side of too many for right now. When you have this much looting, you can usually turn them into real cards and they ensure you can get Varina down on time. I think the deck is starting to take shape. I am excited to smash this against other people at my store and see what shakes out.

Week 2: https://lefowens.blogspot.com/2019/10/deck-diaries-varina-week-2.html

How I Build EDH Decks

   For me the idea of an edh deck generally starts when I see a legendary creature that meshes well with a theme that I want to explore or re-live from something else in my magic career. For instance, I built Mimeoplasm in 2011 and the deck has been with me ever since. I am a fan of Dredge as a mechanic, specifically due to it being the first Extended deck I ever played. Mimeo gave me an opportunity to build a Dredge edh deck, which essentially didn’t exist at the time. What’s unique about him was that he was a dredge pay off card that could live outside the deck, giving you powerful options as time went on. Being an entirely graveyard deck presented a number of deck building challenges that were fun to solve. The deck doesn’t play Sol Ring or any of a number of staples from the format because they don’t do anything from the graveyard.

   As the deck evolved it took on a number of sub-themes. Its got a Big Dudes theme since Mimeo is often an enormous creature, and it feeds on huge creatures well. It took on a lands theme since Life From the Loam is so integral to a dredge deck. It has a minor reanimation theme, and its got a couple of engines that are good on their own, but infrequently assemble to allow the deck to have a combo finish. What I look for in decks I want to build is open ended abilities that let the deck evolve and take on new roles over time.

   There is an upcoming new legend that I want to build, Syr Gwyn. For a long time, I’ve been looking for a legend to accommodate my love of Mardu aristocrats. I played the original Aristocrats where the archetype takes its name from during the original Innistrad block. What was fun about Aristocrats was that it was a blend of aggro and combo. You had sticky creatures that were strong attackers, and had the potential to just get your opponent dead out of nowhere if your draw came together. I want to explore getting your fodder dudes and sticky creatures to generate value through attacking with cards like Sword of Fire and Ice.

   Regardless of how I settle on a commander, the first thing I do is dissect the card to understand its ins and outs. I’ll be using Gwyn as an example but the principles apply to any commander. The first piece to look at for a commander is the mana cost. Not only the colors, but also the cmc. Gwyn costs 6 mana. 6 mana is a lot. The commander rule lets you recast a commander, but at 6 mana its likely Gwyn will only get cast 1 or 2 times a game. If she cost 5 I’d say she could be cast 1-3 times a game depending on how long the game goes, and at 4 I’d say she could be cast 3 times a game. Mana cost is the single biggest factor in determining how likely it is your commander will be on the battlefield in a game. The second thing to note about the cost is the color. Gwyn is Mardu which means that your mana acceleration will have to be from artifacts. This makes the 6 mana cost all the harder.

   The next important bit to absorb is the text. Gwyn has quite a bit of text. The first line is her keyword abilities. She has Vigilance and Menace. Vigilance means she can be aggressive without leaving yourself open to attack. Menace means its harder to chump her, and might be impossible depending on what she’s equipped with. The next ability is the meat of the card to me, “Whenever an equipped creature you control attacks, you draw 1 card and lose 1 life.” This ability lets you gas back up after dumping your hand. It wants you to have lots of creatures and lots of equipment. Since you don’t get rewarded for stacking equipment, its better to have 3 creatures each holding something than to have 1 creature holding 3 things. This is what made me think of aristocrats.

   Aristocrats is aggressive. It wants to be attacking. It also has a lot of dinky creatures that don’t do much without their combo partners. Karmic Guide is a great card. It doesn’t do too much after it has come into play. Lingering Souls gives a ton of bodies, but they don't have much meaning in EDH aside from generating fodder. Equipment is a way to mitigate against that since it lets these creatures get a lot of value just by being in play. To go back to Gwyn, she caps off this style by digging you a few extra cards, letting you find missing combo pieces after you dump your initial solvo. The last line is also pretty good, “Equipment you control have Equip Knight 0.” This indicates a tribal theme, by letting you get your equipment onto Knights for free. While it certainly is better with other knights, she herself is a Knight, so the ability immediately has a target already.
Lastly, she is a 5/5 creature, which is pretty large though it isn’t huge for her cost or for what people can sling at 6 mana.

   From this dissection, we can start to see the shape of the deck. We care about the aristocrats package, we care about equipment, and we care about attacking. We want to include as many knights as make sense, but we don’t want to stretch for them. The deck will probably be weak to board wipes, and we’ll need a bunch of mana acceleration to be able to play Gwyn when the time is right.

That's all well and good, but how do I find these cards?
Well, now that we know what we're looking for, there are a number of tools to help find cards.
The primary tool used in Commander is EDHREC. Its a decklist aggregation site that compiles all of the lists of a given commander and gives you what the 'average' deck for them looks like.
It's useful to see the most common things people are playing with the commander so you don't overlook something obvious. However, its falls flat when you're doing something more niche.

   When you want to really look, you need to go to gatherer. Gatherer is a database of every magic card ever printer. It also has a strong search function. I bet you weren't expecting data science?
For Gwyn, I've identified a number of things that I want to compile. I want to see all the Knights in my colors to determine which match the concept. So I go to gatherer, I select RWB, exclude unselected colors. I check the box for "types" and "text" and leave name unchecked, and hit search. Then I look through the list of cards and pick out the ones I want to potentially include in the deck. Then I repeat this process with but I replace Knight with Equipment. This is a broad search so that we get an idea. But, there isn't a clean keyword to search for when compiling the list of Aristocrats.

For a Theme that isn't a keyword you can search for, EDHREC is your best resource.
Not only do they have the ability to sort lists by theme, it clues you in on patterns.
While the commander you're using might have limited lists, or pull towards the average, you can look at other commanders that are closer to your theme. In this instance, Alesha or Edgar Markov are the premier Mardu aristocrats generals. So, I go into their lists and compile cards that I think would work in the shell that I'm building.


   Unfortunately, this bit only comes with time. Since I've built so many decks, my brain has shortcuts about what belongs with what. For instance, this deck is R/W and has an equipment subtheme. To me, that instantly means Sunforger. And Sunforger comes with its own sub-set of cards that should included. Things like Anguished Unmaking or Wear//Tear are part of the Sunforger package. Sunforger is part of the equipment package. The Knights that are being included are ones that line up with the Aristocrats package.

A deck is a series of relationships.

   When putting a deck together, its not a matter of whether the card is good, but its weighted evaluation with the other components in the deck. Corpse Knight probably wouldn't make the cut in a different take on Aristocrats, but being a Knight raises his evaluation here. For an example of exclusion, I don't run Necropotence in my Kess deck. Necro has a clause where discarded cards are exiled, which means the core engine of the deck, Dream Halls, isn't filling the graveyard. Here, Stonehewer Giant is normally a shoe in for equipment decks.  I don't think it makes the cut in this deck. We aren't all in on equipment, and it needs a turn to come online, and we're hopefully curving into our commander at 6. Since his ability costs mana its likely that we'll have to choose between activating him or casting Gwyn.

   Now that you have a list of cards you want in the deck, you can start looking at metrics.
Common wisdom is that your deck should be 40% mana. It varies based on the average cost in your deck. A mono-red aggro deck can probably run 1/3 mana and be fine. A control deck with 6 mana finishers probably wants to tend toward more mana, maybe 1/2 of the deck. The calculation also changes based on how much cheap draw and acceleration you have. A deck with 4 Ponder 4 Brainstorm can probably run 4 or so less land since they have efficient card selection.

   Given that Gwyn costs 6 and is a card draw engine, its probably correct to make the deck 40 lands and 5-10 pieces of artifact mana. We can easily dump our hand to get to 6 mana, then refuel with Gwyn. That gives us 50-55 slots for cards. The next part is kind of mathy. So, we want to know how many Equipment we need in the deck for there to be one available when Gwyn is played. We can assume that we've drawn 13 cards by the time we play Gwyn.
This article explains what's going on here: https://www.channelfireball.com/articles/an-introduction-to-the-hypergeometric-distribution-for-magic-players/
Then, I plug the number into this calculator: https://stattrek.com/online-calculator/hypergeometric.aspx

   In the example above, if we have 10 ways to have an equipment on the table by the time we play Gwyn, there's a 75% chance that there will be an equipment for her to pick up. If that number goes up to 11 it goes to 80%, but the gains taper off after that and at 15 its 90%. The question is how important is this to have on time? I'd say about 75% is fine. Especially since the larger the sample size, the probability increases. At 14-15 cards seen we go up to 80-82 percent. I think the number I'm most comfortable with is 11 equipment/equipment tutors. That puts us at 85% by the time we've seen 15 cards. As the sample size shrinks the number of successes needs to rise to maintain the probability.
If I want to guarantee a mana accelerator in the opening hand, the number goes from 10 to over 30. 10 is a 50% shot, 30 is a 90% shot. This is where hedging against variance becomes a skill both in deckbuilding and gameplay. It is unreasonable in most decks to run 40 land and 30 mana accelerants. The question becomes what probability is reasonable to accept?

   Generally I take 50/50 for opening hands to be acceptable.
So, now that we know some of the probabilities involved, we can set thresholds we don't want to go under.
I don't want to have less than 50% to have the following in my opening hand:
An accelerant
An equipment
A sacrifice outlet
A sacrifice payoff
3 land

That means we'll need to include at least:
37 land
10 mana artifacts
10 equipment/equipment tutors
10 sacrifice outlets
10 sacrifice pay offs
I am willing to count tutors as stand ins for the cards themselves. So 9 equipment and Stoneforge Mystic would be counted the same as 10 equipment for this math.

   Now that we have a pile of cards, we need to winnow it down. This is where card evaluation comes to the fore. Where the previous efforts are proactive statements, "I want to have enough equipment to make my little guys threats.""I want to have enough acceleration to play Gwyn earlier that turn 6." The next bit is all about questions. "Does this support my game plan of accruing value through attacking until I assemble a combo?" "How will I handle problem permanents?" "How do I rebuild when someone wipes a board?"
The best deckbuilders are the ones that consistently ask the right questions.


I’ll go through this process with one of the subsections of cards for brevity's sake.
These are the knights that I think positively reinforce the themes of attacking and value.:
Cavalier of flame
Cavalier of night
Corpse knight
Elenda, the Dusk Rose
Haakon, Stormgald Scourge
Hero of Bladehold
Knight of the last breath
Knight-Captain of Eos
Midnight Reaper
Olivia, Mobilized for War
Puresteel Paladin

   We know mana might be an issue so the first question is, do any of these cards cost what I would consider to be too much mana? I would say that Knight of the Last Breath is immediately too much at 7 mana. It made the list because of Afterlife and being a sac outlet, but 7 is too much to justify for this deck. The cavaliers and Knight-Captain of Eos are both under the cost of our general but might be too much at 5, especially since the cavaliers are triple of their color. I think I’m going to cut the Cavalier of Flame due to cost, but keep the Cavalier of Night since its both a sacrifice outlet and recursion. The Knight-Captain goes away since there are more efficient sources of food, and he only sacrifices soldiers.

   Are there any that don’t do enough for the deck’s game plan?
Olivia, Mobilized for War and Hero of Bladehold don’t seem to reinforce out theme as well as the other options. The Haste generated by Olivia has value, but I don’t think we’re doing anything with madness and we want all of our cards. Hero is such an enormous threat that we’re keeping it, it also produces food every turn, which is much better than Knight of the Last Breath.

   Are there any with special concerns?
Haakon requires you to put it in the graveyard first. If you can get him there, then he lines up with the deck quite well, turning every knight into a creature that you can sacrifice repeatedly for value. How will we get him in the graveyard? There are a number of options here. A discard outlet, Entomb, etc. I think he’s worth the trouble but he could end up getting cut if it doesn’t work out in practice.

So, the new list is:
Cavalier of night
Corpse knight
Elenda, the Dusk Rose
Haakon, Stormgald Scourge
Hero of Bladehold
Midnight Reaper
Puresteel Paladin


   Applying this method to my compiled list of cards, this is my rough draft: https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/gwyn-aristocrats/?cb=1568408773 It's a flexible aggro-combo list that might have trouble consistently generating enough mana to do all the things it wants to do. The only way to prove the concept is to build it and smash it against other decks. I can tell that there's some optimizing to be done already but its a decent starting point.

So...that's how I build decks and what I value.
I like to make decks that are on theme and explore a variety of synergistic cards.
I look at the proactive statements of what I want the deck to be and compile the cards I think match the mission statement. I use reductive reasoning to ensure that I'm asking questions about how the deck will handle problems and spot issues it might have in operation. Then, I put the deck together and tune it over time until I stop having fun with it or decide it isn't working and break it up.

Armageddon Brand Trickster

Armageddon Brand Trickster - https://pastebin.com/qsPrBpHw

This was a starter build that I used for Synthesis. I was planning on it before the Trickster rework. I've always liked Ignite based builds and wanted to see where one could take me. I decided to go Trickster for the DoT nodes and for easy access to frenzy charges. Armageddon Brand was the application skill of choice due to its mobile play style. The rework gave the character strong defensive capabilities and honestly I have not hit the ceiling on this build. Its killed everything I've put it up against, aside from Cortex. That was more due to having the instance crash than anything else as I made to the Nightmare before getting unlucky.


Skills:
Armageddon Brand is the bread and butter of this build. It took a big damage hit in this patch due to its fire and forget play style. Thankfully, they did not change the 180% more damage with ignite. As such it still packs enough of a wallop to clear all the way through tier 16 maps. Combined with Brand Recall, Armageddon Brand(AB) makes for a fast clear with minimal stops.

Scorching Ray kills bosses and tougher map mobs. Getting a channeling skill into the build was even more important with the rework to Swift Killer to as a way to maintain charges during bosses. The high level version provided by Balefire is more than sufficient. While another support might offer more direct damage, Infused Channeling has synergies with your AB/ignite by providing an additional more damage multiplier to fire damage and gives you some additional damage reduction.

Lightning Warp is the movement skill of choice due to Decay in memories eating up non-teleport skills. Flame Dash is a fine alternative.

Cast when damage taken + Flame Golem + Flammability. These are all really low level to get as many procs off as possible. They're just some extra damage tools. I had a Witchfire Brew going for a while, but a level 1 Flammability is worth more damage than a perfect Witchfire even against Shaper.

I did not end up incorporating any Vaal Skills in the build. I tried out Vaal Discipline as an emergency button but it just didn't end up being necessary. If I were to keep playing the build I might try out Vaal Haste just for more speed.


Tree:
The tree it pretty straightforward. Pick up as much health and damage as possible. The only notable omission is Elemental Equilibrium. While its possible to utilize it, Armageddon Brand hits really frequently. Its also complete overkill for most of the content I was expecting to do with this character. If I was to move into a boss-farming build with this character I would attempt to incorporate EE for its damage boost.

I picked up 2 of the 30 Dex nodes so that I could equip my chest. Its sub-optimal and I would rather get the dex from some other source, but these points did the job. I had been using Carcass Jack, which is a completely legit alternative, but decided I wanted the higher life a rare chest could buy. It helps that I picked up my current chest for 70c already 6 linked. If I were to keep playing this build I'd look for other sources of Dex so I could move these points elsewhere.

A note about Patient Reaper. While Ghost Shrouds are getting all the attention, I have to point out that Patient Reaper is ridiculous. Not only is it a strong damage node, not only does the on kill restore mean you can go from pack to pack and always be at full health and ES, 70% recovery rate is insane. For a quick run down on what recovery rate does check out this wiki page, https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Recovery. Patient Reaper lets you do nonsense like this video that made it to the top of reddit. While this build doesn't focus on recovery to the extent in u/lauranthalasa's video, if I was to alter this build for doing bosses full-time I would bias it heavily in this direction.


Gear:
Balefire is a compact boss-killing tool. The damage from AB and ignite was substantial enough to deal with map mobs, but it would not kill bosses in a timely manner. Balefire gives the build a means to deal with harder mobs.

Ignite is calculated on the base damage of the hit. Any "Adds X to Y fire damage to spells" increases ignite damage. As such, Anger gives your AB/Ignite significant extra oomph. Malevolence is also excellent for the build as a more multiplier for your DoTs and the skill effect duration working with a variety of your effects. Wanting to use two 50% auras pushed me toward using Eldritch Battery. The Devouring Diadem seemed like a way to save 4-5 skill points and get EB. Diadem is surprisingly great. Feast of Flesh is a strong defensive tool. Pairing it with a Cast When Damage Taken-Desecrate setup has saved me numerous times. Its essentially a full restore on a short cooldown, though you do not have control of when it goes off.

The math worked out just right to be able to get an additional 25% reservation as well. I went with Herald of Ash. HoA gives significant damage and lends the build a feel similar to an auto-bomber. Herald of Ash chains can go off on their own and there is a lot of scaling for it. Specifically, I managed to get a Circle of Anguish craft with increased buff effect. I kept the one I made, though I would prefer to swap out for one with increased fire damage over reduced mana reservation.

As an ignite focused character, the Cinderswallow Urn is an important damage consideration. It also works really well in combination with Patient Reaper and Balefire to keep you topped up while mapping.

I bought a Watcher's Eye with "Damaging Aliments you inflict deal damage N% faster while affected by Malevolence." Hopefully you can get one paired with another good mod, either increased recovery rate or increased fire damage while affected by Anger. This is an important damage boost for the build.

Those are specific gear choices, but in general you want to focus on Life, ES, and Evasion for defense, and increased fire damage, damage over time, burning damage, flat added fire damage, and spell damage in that order. Unfortunately, while scorching ray and the hit of AB are buffed by increases to spell damage, ignite is not. Ignite is our primary clearing tool so we want to ensure its always got the priority on damage mods.


Upgrades:
There is a much higher ceiling to this build than I'm willing to pursue. Getting Synthesized gear with multiple implicits would be my preferred route. Getting Onslaught boots, Curse immunity shield, a better chest with natural ES, etc. The build is heavy on rares so there's always room for improvement if you want to invest the currency. I wanted to get an Arcane Surge ring since the build is EB, doesn't run Zealotry, and uses a unique weapon. There's some funky ways to enable it, but in the end we don't use the mana regen and don't make the best use of the spell damage so it was never worth the cost.

Since I've put the build down, they have enabled fossil/essence crafting on fractured items. My number one want for the build now would be a flammability on hit implicit on gloves or rings, which would ensure a more even application than the codt setup currently in use.


Conclusion:
Overall, I liked this build. I think its reasonably fast and much tankier than initially assumed. I think Winter Orb builds are faster and potentially tankier, but WO gear is pretty expensive and this build was absurdly cheap to get going. Even at this point its maybe 5ex total value for the gear on it, most of it being the Watcher's Eye and the Circle of Agony, neither of which are necessary. The build has two weaknesses, chaos damage and really strong dots. Interestingly, chaos damage does not interact with energy shield even if you have mind over matter. So for this build, which is leaning on mom for a permanent 30% damage reduction, it came as a hell of a surprise when I got demolished by a Chayula breach. This prompted a rejiggering of the build to incorporate more life and to pump up the chaos resistance to an acceptable level. Strong dots are a problem due to its interaction with EB. Since EB won't start recharging until you've stopped taking damage, you can find yourself without a way to cleanse the dot if the application is frequent enough and then you have no ES to cast spells.
Those issues aside, running around at full speed with phasing and watching health bars melt under the withering fire of ignite is tremendously satisfying.

Sigarda, Heron's Grace

Sigarda has been a bit maligned. The fact that she's a 5 mana commander that doesn't protect herself is a bit awkward. Her abilities also seem a bit odd. Ostensibly she's protecting her tokens, but 1/1s generally aren't the target of spells or abilities beyond Goblin Sharpshooter. There's an underlying strength to her though that I think people are looking past. She combines an effective hate ability, hexproofing yourself, with a solid token generation ability. She doesn't ask much for either, and if you go big on mana doesn't have to be in play long to get you an army.

One of the reasons I held off on Sigarda is that I think she only functions if she's backed up by legacy level cards, specifically Gaea's Cradle. However, with the recent release of Eternal Masters, I thought I'd celebrate with a couple of lists that are a bit more expensive. Sigarda was a prime candidate since she scales really well into the amount of money you spend on her. The two lists presented are a more normal ramp and tokens list that leans more heavily on tokens and lands. The second is a hate list that takes advantage of Sigarda's ability to protect human lock pieces and giving you protection. There was a third list that I had originally planned on, which took advantage of the fact that most Enchantresses are humans. However, that list felt weaker than the version built around Sigarda, Host of Herons.

Sigarda Tokens: http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/19-05-16-sigarda/

This list has many different axis. With 40 lands, Crucible/LftL/Restore/KotR/etc, the deck can play a solid Land's game of incremental advantage. With Sigarda and the token support, the deck plays a solid Token's game. It combines several different parts to form a deck resistant to disruption that gets ahead on mana and ends the game with huge plays.

Token Support:

Anthems and ways to eat tokens for value.

Lands:

Some of the lands that the deck is built around and other lands based ramp. Knight is a great engine.

Ramp:

The deck is built around lands and eschews artifact ramp. I didn't put Null Rod/Stony Silence in this shell, but its set up in such a way that you could slot it in without a hitch.

Value:

Card advantage engines and value creatures to smooth out some of the deck's rough patches.

Tutors:

A suite of tutors to find what you need. 

Sigarda Hate: http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/sigarda-hate/
Hate decks tend to include white since cards like stony silence and rest in peace and quite strong. Pairing with green means that you can still ramp efficiently with creatures. Sigarda has a relevant hate ability, giving you Leyline of Sanctity. It so happens that several hate bears are humans, like Containment Priest and Ethersworn Cannonist. Extending the hexproof to a few high impact creatures. The tokens don't get a lot of support in this list, but they're mostly to suppliment Sigarda's aggression and help close out games. There's some anti-synergy, as there is in most hate decks. For the most part you just play efficient creatures and try to beat people to death.

Humans:


Hate:


Mana:


Tutor:


Misc: