Two Great Tastes Of Dominaria

I’ve learned something about myself. As a brewer, when I read over a
spoiler, I’m not looking for the best cards. I’ll skim right over an Abrade
like it’s nothing. What I’m looking for is cards I want to try building new
decks around. Sometimes that might mean I’m just looking for the cards that
make me work the hardest, which might be a mistake, but I am who I am, I
suppose.

Given that I’m drawn to cards that make me work for them like an abusive
partner, it shouldn’t be hard for a legendary sorcery to catch my
attention. I was able to resist the first few of them, but Yawgmoth’s Vile
Offering may not be so easily rebuffed.

Zombify, but you can get planeswalkers or your opponent’s stuff for five
mana is the kind of card that’s good enough to tempt me, but never quite
good enough to play, but if you add destroying a creature or planeswalker
to it for free, now you have spell I’m willing to do some serious work for.

Yawgmoth’s Vile Offering – 4B

Legendary Sorcery

(You may cast a legendary sorcery only if you control a legendary
creature or planeswalker.)

Put up to one target creature or planeswalker card from a graveyard
onto the battlefield under your control. Destroy up to one target
creature or planeswalker. Exile Yawgmoth’s Vile Offering.

The other card in the set that really stands out to me in this set is
Lich’s Mastery.

This card seems to be doing it all right

. It has hexproof, so you’re not likely to get completely destroyed for
trying to play it, it gives you a nice buffer before you have to start
losing anything that matters because you can exile cards in your graveyard,
and it exists in a format where incidentally gaining life is remarkably
easy.

As it happens, these two cards play extremely well together, because both
are looking to play a long game and both want you to do some work to fill
your graveyard.

Given that, I think it’s reasonable to start by looking at how we’d want to
fill our graveyard in Standard. The options here are pretty
straightforward, there are other ways to do it, like Perpetual Timepiece,
but you don’t need to work that hard when there are better options with a
solid track record:

Minister of Inquiries has a lot of baggage associated with it. That’s not
necessarily a bad thing, because the cards it plays with all also have a
proven history of success, but it means we have a pretty good idea of what
we’re working with; we’re probably going to want Glint-Sleeve Siphoner,
Harnessed Lightning, Whirler Virtuoso, and maybe Glimmer of Genius if we’re
going down that path.

The other major block of enablers we need to be looking at are legendary
creatures and planeswalkers to allow us to cast Yawgmoth’s Vile Offering.
The best options as I see it are:

Some of these cards kind of have the opposite of a proven history of
success, but Jace, Cunning Castaway and Captain Lannery Storm are such
perfect fits that I have to consider them even if their power level is
known to be a little lower than we’d like.

Having gone over their mutual interests and Yawgmoth’s Vile Offerings
demands, I’d be remiss if I neglected the cards Lich’s Mastery would like
to bring to the table:

Aetherflux Reservoir and Lich’s Mastery is a real plot twist, but I’m
pretty sure Lich’s Mastery would have to decline Yawgmoth’s Vile Offering
to pursue that relationship, and I’m not ready to explore that world just
yet. The others have more potential with what we’re looking at here.

So, this is obviously a lot of cards we’re considering, and that’s before
we get to generically good stuff like Abrade and Fatal Push or other things
we might want to put onto the battlefield with Yawmoth’s Vile Offering or
Liliana, Death’s Majesty like Razaketh, the Foulblooded or Demon of Dark
Schemes. So how do we combine these?

Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh

Sam Black

Test deck on 04-04-2018

Standard Brawl

Creatures (15)

Planeswalkers (5)

Lands (18)

Spells (21)

Okay, yes, that’s a great way to get all the cards I want in the same deck,
and it looks sweet, although it’s unfortunate that Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh
has to be the commander, so we can’t get it easily into the graveyard for
Yawgmoth’s Vile Offering. I’m guessing you’re more interested in what we
can do with this in Standard though. Two Yawgmoth’s Vile Offering is where
I’d start in this one:

Grixis Offering

Sam Black

Test deck on 04-04-2018

Standard

Creatures (17)

Planeswalkers (5)

Lands (24)

Spells (12)

Sideboard

Okay, so it’s pretty clear from all the small numbers of cards that trying
to shoehorn these cards and Minister of Inquiries into Grixis Energy
doesn’t really work, from an amount of deck space perspective, so what if
we drop the energy theme? If we’re not attached to trying to reanimate
Nicol Bolas, which is probably a little excessive anyway; we don’t really
need red, and we could use quite a bit more space to work with:

U/B Offering

Sam Black

Test deck on 04-04-2018

Standard

Creatures (13)

Planeswalkers (4)

Lands (21)

Spells (20)

Sideboard

A little more space, but I still wonder if these two are too needy to be
together despite their shared interests.

What about Aetherflux Reservoir? Was there anything to that?

U/B Mastery

Sam Black

Test deck on 04-04-2018

Standard

Creatures (4)

4 Baral, Chief of Compliance

Lands (14)

Spells (42)

Sideboard

This deck looks pretty interesting to me. Mox Amber with only Baral, Chief
of Compliance to turn it on is kind of weirdly good, because it’s doesn’t
require much work and it’s still good with Metallic Rebuke, Inspiring
Statuary, Reverse Engineer, Battle at the Bridge, Paradoxical Outcome, and
Aetherflux Reservoir just as a zero mana artifact.

Lich’s Mastery + Aetherflux Reservoir goes big enough that I’m not too
worried about whether we can make a lethal Aetherflux Reservoir storm turn.

The sideboard creatures are a backup plan in case of Dispossess, although
that card doesn’t seem very widely played. Other options include Efficient
Construction or sideboarding in Mastermind’s Acquisition and sideboarding
out an Aetherflux Reservoir. This deck could also splash Leave and Fateful
Showdown without too much trouble, thanks to Renegade Map, Prophetic Prism,
and Pyramid of the Pantheon, which would give it a backup combo kill in
case killing with Reservoir proves too difficult. That would work as a main
deck or sideboard plan that would not rely on any single other card to pull
off.

Chart a Course is another card I considered as very cheap card draw,
especially with Baral, Chief of Compliance that fills the graveyard well,
but I decided to focus on artifacts + improvise to maximize my Paradoxical
Outcomes.

While Lich’s Mastery is a direct homage to Lich, the card that it really
reminds me of is Yawgmoth’s Bargain. While Yawgmoth’s Bargain is most
commonly remembered as a combo card, my favorite Yawgmoth’s Bargain decks
were always the fair decks that just played it for value. Toward that end,
I’m also interested in Lich’s Mastery in a B/W control deck.

B/W Control

Sam Black

Test deck on 04-04-2018

Standard

Lands (22)

Spells (38)

Sideboard

I’m really excited about Authority of the Consuls in this deck; it buys
time to get Lich’s Mastery down and then once Lich’s Mastery is on the
battlefield, it ensures that your opponent won’t hit you for a bunch of
damage you’re not prepared to take, and it will be extremely difficult for
your opponent to get back into the game if you draw a card whenever they
play a creature.

I also just think Authority of the Consuls lines up well in the format in
conjunction with the more expensive removal like Fumigate and Vraska’s
Contempt, as Authority of the Consuls slows red decks down enough to let
you use the more expensive removal, and the expensive removal works well
against the slower decks. Meanwhile, the transform cards and the fact that
you’re blanking all of your opponent’s removal gives you game against
opposing control decks, although it still might be difficult to force
through a game-winning card before you can sideboard in Duress.

There’s one other deck I’d like to explore, and this focuses on Yawgmoth’s
Vile Offering without Lich’s Mastery, with the only card I might be more
excited to see the return of than Llanowar Elves: Siege-Gang Commander.

I think three Yawgmoth’s Vile Offering is the starting point for this one:

R/B Midrange

Sam Black

Test deck on 04-04-2018

Standard

Creatures (16)

Planeswalkers (4)

Lands (17)

Spells (20)

Sideboard

This is the kind of R/B Midrange deck that would kill for a Kolaghan’s
Command.

It may be sacrilegious to eschew Glorybringer and Rekindling Phoenix in
this kind of deck, but I want my expensive cards to line up relatively well
against Vraska’s Contempt. I’m definitely going out of my way to play
legends to turn on Yawgmoth’s Vile Offering and Mox Amber, so the question
is whether those are powerful enough to be worth it, and especially whether
Yawgmoth’s Vile Offering is good enough if I’m not doing anything to put
creatures in my graveyard and just relying on them getting there naturally.

I’m a little worried about this deck being too slow against aggro decks,
but I’m kind of counting on Siege Gang-Commander to do a lot of work to
catch me back up, and between Mox Amber and Captain Lannery Storm, it’s not
that unlikely that I’ll be able to cast it on turn 4.

That concludes my early exploration of two of the most exciting cards in Dominaria. It looks like they may not play as well together as I
might have hoped, but each of them individually look like they have some
potential. I suspect the best home for Yawgmoth’s Vile Offering will
ultimately be the deck that can most seamlessly play enough legends to cast
it reliably.