These Yawgmoth’s cards don’t mess around.
Like, we’re talking some all-time bangers.
Oh?
Yawgmoth‘s, not Yawgmoth.
Okay, where was…
Well, you’re not just gonna let em sit there Karma’ing you without there
being consequences, are you?
Yawgmoth, the Ineffable, is back (for like the tenth time since dying); and
while there still is no Yawgmoth card (he really is dead, dead), his legacy
lives on.
Dominaria’s
Yawgmoth card is the first to reveal The Lord of the Wastes’ true
appearance, and it’s a doozy (both the card and his true appearance).
Yes, that is Gerrard Capashen offering Urza’s severed head to Yawgmoth as
offering. Look, it’s a long story.
Vile?
Indeed.
Yawgmoth’s Vile Offering is a helluva Rise from the Grave variant.
Basically, it’s a Rise from the Grave to start, but it can also get
Planeswalkers back…
…And you get a Hero’s Downfall thrown in for free.
That’s…well, that’s a lot.
How good is a free Hero’s Downfall? Well, it’s not just a “free card.”
You’re also getting a Black Lotus worth of mana, since you don’t have to
pay for the Hero’s Downfall. Both halves are even optional, so if you don’t
have anything to get back, but just need to kill something, or vice versa,
you’ve got those options.
I mean, obviously Rise from the Grave wasn’t as good as it gets, but it
wasn’t the worst either. The only added costs here are exiling itself (no
biggie) and needing a legendary creature or Planeswalker to play it, on
account of being a legendary sorcery.
Tougher, but very doable and not that big a deal.
How many legendary creatures and Planeswalkers do you need in order to play
legendary sorceries? There’s no easy answer, but I think it really depends
on which ones you’re talking about. For instance, if you’re relying
entirely on stuff like The Scarab God to play Yawgmoth’s Vile Offering,
you’re probably talking about battlefields where things are going pretty
well to begin with.
Resilient Planeswalkers that costs four or less might be just what the
doctor ordered. Besides, Karn seems like no joke. A colorless four-cost
Planeswalker that starts drawing cards immediately, he also puts a weird
sort of pressure on your opponent from the cards they don’t give you. Now,
there’s a growing list of cards they’ve got to play around, since you could
access them at a moment’s notice. Even if they kill Karn, you could drop
another one and get a Silver-ed card from the first Karn.
What’s more, Karn has a lot of loyalty, and while he doesn’t have a true
ultimate, his -2 ability is going to be amazing in some decks and a
reasonable added dimension in others.
Of course, opponents aren’t just going to sit around and let you Karn, turn
after turn. It’s not the same as relying on a The Scarab God (sic), but there are cards even better suited to enabling
legendary sorceries.
Gonti, Lord of Luxury is an absolutely awesome Yawgmoth’s Vile Offering
enabler.
-
It’s a very good card in its own right.
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It comes down before YVO.
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It gets a lot of its value from its enters the battlefield trigger,
making it much less attractive of a card for opponents to kill.
Even if they do kill it, it already got value and is a great card
to get back with YVO.
Now, it’s hard to say just how much we should be trying to leverage YVO as
a way to cheat mana, versus just looking for a reliable two-for-one. For
instance, there’s an undeniable appeal to using Yawgmoth’s Vile Offering to
get Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh down early.
Seriously, a turn 5 Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh is absolutely devastating. The
question then becomes what ways do we have to get Nicol Bolas into the
graveyard?
Two of the most attractive to me, at least out the gates, are Chart a
Course and Champion of Wits. They’re efficient enough that we’re not even
really paying a premium for having the option to get Nicol Bolas into the
graveyard reliably. They’re also likely to synergize well with a lot of the
other cards we might want to surround YVO with.
Strategic Plannings might be okay, too; it is a quality card. It’s just
better in decks with tons of graveyard interactions, decks that care about
quantity. If we’re trying to reanimate Nicol Bolas, we’re really going to
want to be able to discard exactly Nicol Bolas.
If we end up with a more dedicated form of reanimator, or perhaps if we’re
just not playing much blue, Tormented Voice and Cathartic Reunion are
reasonable options (assuming we can risk having them countered).
Depending on what the rest of your deck looks like, Gate to the Afterlife
could be a very strong option for looting. The only thing is, once you’re
going down the Gate to the Afterlife road, there’s a ton of incentive to
make your big threats creatures, so that God-Pharaoh’s Gift can get them
back.
It might be a little tricky to fit many counterspells, but not impossible.
If you play even a single one, you can use Baral to loot away Nicol Bolas
and set everything up. Also, Baral Chief of Compliance is a cheap legend
for YVO, and even makes it a mana cheaper.
Hazoret isn’t the most natural pairing with Nicol Bolas, but it is fun that
you can both use Hazoret as a discard outlet and as an indestructible way
to power up legendary sorceries. In fact, all of the Amonkhet
block Gods are very reliable ways to enable them.
Here’s a first attempt. Add a playset of YVO to this:
Creatures (11)
Planeswalkers (8)
Lands (23)
Spells (14)
Pia Nalaar is a similar sort of legend to Gonti.
They’re not going to want to kill it, and even if they do, you’re likely to
get the best of the exchange.
Blink of an Eye is a quality card to start with, but it also has some nice
synergy with Nicol Bolas’s discard ability. Besides, just bouncing your own
Champion of Wits, Pia Nalaar, or Gonti, Lord of Luxury can be a really
solid card advantage play.
While we probably want to sideboard Duress anyway, I just wanted to call
out that Duress can only target opponents, and as such, can’t be used to
discard your own Nicol Bolas or anything sweet like that.
I think Syncopate is a fine card, but Supreme Will fits better in a deck
with Chandras and Karns. Besides, you really don’t want to get stuck
holding Syncopates in a deck full of tapped lands.
Yawgmoth reanimating Nicol Bolas is obviously as awesome as it gets, but if
we wanted to instead look at grinding out value, maybe green’s the ticket.
Creatures (29)
- 4 Llanowar Elves
- 3 Gonti, Lord of Luxury
- 1 Verdurous Gearhulk
- 3 Servant of the Conduit
- 4 Winding Constrictor
- 4 Rishkar, Peema Renegade
- 4 Walking Ballista
- 4 Jadelight Ranger
- 2 Muldrotha, the Gravetide
Planeswalkers (3)
Lands (19)
Spells (6)
- 3 Forest
- 1 Island
- 2 Fatal Push
While this isn’t the Winding-est Constrictor deck of all-time, I’m not sure
what else we’d play, yet. Glint-Sleeve Siphoner, maybe? Besides, Winding
Constrictor is great with Rishkar, Peema Renegade, which is one of the
better Yawgmoth’s Vile Offering enablers.
Rishkar has some of the Gonti/Pia action going on, in terms of leaving you
with some value, even if they kill him. What’s more, the acceleration helps
a lot when we’re playing an above average number of fives and sixes.
Eleven sources of green on turn 1 isn’t all that much, but this card is
really good. Just thinking about Jadelight Ranger or Rishkar on turn 2
sends a shiver up my spine.
Yes!
While most of the response to Muldrotha, the Gravetide has been through the
lens of Commander, this card looks really exciting to me in Constructed.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s a ton of competition for expensive cards, and
it costs more than The Scarab God, so it’s going to have its work cut out
for it. Nevertheless, this is an incredible ability, and a 6/6 for six
isn’t exactly the worst body.
While we still have to pay for the cards coming out of the graveyard, it’s
like we’re drawing several cards a turn for “free,” in that we didn’t have
to pay to get the extra cards (which we would have had to pay for anyway if
they had been drawn).
Evolving Wilds and Fetid Pool can be replayed for free, meaning Muldrotha
played as a virtual “seven-drop” can get at least one extra card,
guaranteed. Evolving Wilds even gets a land out of your deck every turn
(though, how many more turns are there even going to be, really?)
Balancing the mana is tricky, but we might also consider some Deserts. They
make great lands to get back with Muldrotha, no question.
Walking Ballista and Verdurous Gearhulk have synergy with lots of the other
cards, obviously, but when you get them back with Muldrotha, make sure to
say artifact, and then get back another creature in the same turn (and a
Planeswalker, and a land…)
I would have liked to find an enchantment worth playing in here, like Oath
of Nissa, but so far, nothing coming. I guess we could consider playing
Cartouche of Ambition, but I want to be careful not to bend over backwards
to support two copies of a card that has such a big impact, we’re probably
winning anyway. Still, that sounds like a solid sideboard plan to consider
anyway.
It would take a heavy commitment to a fourth color, but Cast Out would be a
pretty rad card to get back with Muldrotha.
Realistically, I think the most likely home for Muldrotha is as an
occasional one-of in midrange-y Sultai decks (Vraska sets a high bar).
Another interesting aspect of Yawgmoth’s Vile Offering is the possibility
of using its legendary status as an advantage.
Creatures (6)
Planeswalkers (7)
Lands (21)
Spells (23)
This version looks too slow, but there is something interesting about Board
the Weatherlight being able to hit cards like Yawgmoth’s Vile Offering and
Urza’s Ruinous Blast.
Urza’s Ruinous Blast kind of precludes our ability to play Cast Out and
Seal Away, but there are plenty of other options at this point. I
considered Inventors’ Fair, but I think it’s hard to run one without the
artifacts to get more out of it. There are just too good of other lands we
can play.
Colorless lands like Zhalfirin Void (and Inventors’ Fair, if we do end up
deciding we want it) are a lot easier to support now, thanks to Isolated
Chapel. A second set of good duals for the enemy color combinations is
going to really change some things. Clifftop Retreat is a big deal for Path
of Mettle. Hinterland Harbor might be a very important inclusion for
Merfolk.
There are some seriously sweet cards to get with Board the Weatherlight,
and we haven’t even gotten to the Icy Manipulator part of the brewing…
The second coming of Baneslayer Angel, Lyra Dawnbringer is absolutely
awesome. Even though we’re not making much use of her +1/+1 ability,
weren’t always making that much use of protection from Demons and Dragons
either.
This card is great with everything. It’s a resilient legendary sorcery
enabler, it’s a great combo with Urza’s Ruinous Blast, it can be found with
Board the Weatherlight. Basically, Gideon does it all.
There are some obvious overlaps in strategy between Yawgmoth’s Vile
Offering and Somebody’s Adjective Noun. This is another spot where we’ve
got to ask ourselves if we’re trying to push it, or if we’d be content with
a little value?
Darigaaz is a really exciting legend to reanimate, if you’re looking for a
one-hit kill. Such a deck might also consider cards like Samut, Voice of
Dissent and Garna, the Bloodflame (not to mention Nicol Bolas again).
Rather than go so hard on haste, we could also consider Karn’s Temporal
Sundering. You only get to play so many fives, sixes, and sevens, but some
of the above decks might want to consider one or more, as well.
Karn’s Temporal Sundering is a lot more than just a Time Warp for six.
Getting a free bounce spell is an awesome bonus, functioning as sort of an
extra card, and sort of a couple extra mana not having to cast the bounce
spell. What’s more, the extra turn makes the tempo from the bounce spell
doubly effective. Besides, just think of the combo with Nicol Bolas!
Bouncing and making them discard while getting two actions out of Bolas is
already awesome, but even just casting a turn 6 Sundering and then dropping
Bolas a turn early can be huge.
One last Yawgmoth’s Vile Offering deck I’d like to try my hand at today is
Mono-Black:
Creatures (16)
- 4 Gonti, Lord of Luxury
- 4 Glint-Sleeve Siphoner
- 1 Yahenni, Undying Partisan
- 4 Gifted Aetherborn
- 2 Tetzimoc, Primal Death
- 1 Josu Vess, Lich Knight
Planeswalkers (5)
Lands (25)
Spells (10)
I do like Cabal Stronghold in mono-black, but this list just doesn’t look
like it makes good enough use of Yawgmoth’s Vile Offering for how many
sketchy cards it’s playing.
Even though Josu Vess is kind of medium, it is a nice way to take advantage
of all that Cabal Stronghold mana. Speaking of using Cabal Stronghold
mana…
Creatures (8)
Planeswalkers (3)
Lands (25)
Spells (24)