Yawgmoth, Thran Physician - Lifeloss and Infections

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Ruiner
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Post by Ruiner » 3 years ago

Yawgmoth, Thran Physician

Yawgmoth, Thran Physician

Misc. Instants & Sorceries

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About the Deck

There are quite a few ways to go about building a Yawgmoth, Thran Physician deck. You can lean heavily into abusing proliferate with a more planeswalker oriented list. You can go with an aristocrats sacrifice theme. You can try to strike a balance between the two. There are a number of other options as well. Anyway, this is my list and I've enjoyed playing it since Yawgmoth, Thran Physician was released.

This deck generally strives to win through either a combination of life loss effects and creatures swinging for damage, or through infect damage. Neither of these two attack angles really compliment each other but I find that it works out pretty well anyway. Playing a deck like this, you tend to damage yourself fairly often so the lifeloss/lifegain effects are important for keeping you in the game, even if infect is the route you are trying. I enjoy not necessarily having a primary way to win, and have killed multiple people in a game using different angles.

Due to some of the equipment in the deck, it is not unreasonable to try to eliminate an opponent with commander damage. This generally is not the main plan to strive towards but if you have the opportunity there you might as well take advantage of it.

Haunted Crossroads is a card I never see in Yawgmoth lists that I have found to be incredibly useful and it has led to a number of wins for me. It is usually very tempting to tutor for this as quickly as possible or try digging for it through card draw if a tutor isn't showing itself. This enchantment has pretty great synergy with Yawgmoth's ability "Pay 1 life, Sacrifice another creature: Put a -1/-1 counter on up to one target creature and draw a card." as you can sacrifice a creature as the cost to activate the ability and then prior to the ability resolving you can activate Haunted Crossroads to place the creature you just sacrificed back on top in order to draw it. This can end up allowing you to drop something like Gray Merchant of Asphodel or Kokusho, the Evening Star multiple times in one turn. If K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth is in play it gets a bit crazy as well since you will save a ton of mana. This ability to loop creatures can be crucial in drawing a number of cards, especially if you are looping a token generator like Sengir Autocrat or Weaponcraft Enthusiast. Looping Ichor Rats can be a very strong move as well. Faceless Butcher loops can clear out some big threats permanently as well if you use the classic "sacrifice while the ETB is on the stack" trick.

Marionette Master generally wants to see a decent amount of artifacts and this deck isn't running a ton. However, with equipment to boost its power and it possibly bringing its own artifact tokens into play, it really isn't that hard to make it pump out some good damage. With the recursive elements of the deck, you can get a decent amount of artifact tokens from this, Weaponcraft Enthusiast and Hangarback Walker. Sacrificing Hangarback Walker and then all of the tokens it makes can potentially do a lot of damage in one turn. Pitiless Plunderer creating treasures to sacrifice can also add up fairly well. In a pinch, Hatred can also do some real work with Marionette Master.

This deck has an infect subtheme. I know some playgroups are not fond of infect but I haven't run into any issues in that regard. It can sometimes be a bit of a challenge for decks to win through infect damage if you aren't comboing off, playing Blightsteel Colossus or Triumph of the Hordes, as you are attacking from a totally different angle than every other deck at the table (generally) so no one is really helping you in this regard. You can abuse Ichor Rats as described above, often this will be a card I tutor for fairly early unless someone is playing a deck with a strong proliferate theme like Atraxa, Praetors' Voice (and even then you can make a judgment call to gamble that you might be faster and be able to kill them before they can proliferate the poison counter you gave yourself enough to be lethal). Once every opponent has at least one poison counter, you can start utilizing Yawgmoth's proliferate activated ability to speed things up (hopefully the token generators in the deck are allowing you to keep a hand that is pretty full of cards).

Playing Phyrexian Obliterator and giving it infect with something like Grafted Exoskeleton has been a fun move to make opponents have to decide between blocking and triggering the Obliterator's ability, or letting it through to take significant infect damage.

Vindictive Vampire, when given infect through an aura, equipment, or Tainted Strike can be another scary threat.

Hatred can be fairly brutal with any infect creature.

Blade of Selves is a bit of a pet card but it does some real work in this deck. There are a number of creatures in this deck that can be very rough if you keep getting multiples each turn such as Gray Merchant of Asphodel, Kokusho, the Evening Star, Massacre Wurm, Ichor Rats, or any of the ETB token generators. Faceless Butcher is pretty fantastic with this equipment as well since you can sacrifice the copies to permanently exile creatures while the ETB trigger is on the stack.

Further Notes

Necroskitter has some obvious synergy with Yawgmoth but it is a bit slow in practice. I haven't hated it but I haven't loved it. Sometimes it can get you something fantastic and other times you are getting lackluster stuff that just ends up being sacrifice fodder (not that that is a bad thing).

I've run Myojin of Night's Reach in the past and it is excellent with Yawgmoth's proliferate ability, allowing you to essentially keep every opponent from having a hand. This is a bit of an endgame strategy since you have to hard cast it. I've shifted my deck a bit but could easily see this returning at some point. Just know that as soon as you do this you will become the archenemy pretty quickly most likely.

A lot of monoblack decks include Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth as a means to make Cabal Coffers stronger and make colorless producing utility lands able to make black mana. I personally am not a huge fan as it instantly gives any black multi-color deck access to black mana if they might otherwise be color screwed. Those multi-color decks also tend to run Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth as well. This is definitely a personal taste thing and I can't fault others for doing it as I see the advantage.
Last edited by Ruiner 1 year ago, edited 2 times in total.

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Ruiner
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Post by Ruiner » 2 years ago

I made a few changes with cards released in MH2.

Added Cards
Profane Tutor
Unmarked Grave
Underworld Hermit

Removed Cards
Necroskitter
Dread Presence
Crumbling Ashes


One card that adds potentially a big quantity of tokens and then two more tutors for more consistency. I think these should overall be some positive changes.

Magus of the Bridge is another card I'm considering trying out. It could be decent and with Yawgmoth out you can sacrifice it to get around the downside to reanimate it later.

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benjameenbear
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Post by benjameenbear » 2 years ago

Your note about Haunted Crossroads is an awesome observation. Totally forgot about that card.

I've been searching for a copy of Phyrexian Obliterator for ages. At this point, I'm probably just going to have to buy a copy of the card since it's so Phyrexian in flavor. What are your thoughts about Kaldra Compleat? Looks AWESOME, even if it's too expensive CMC-wise.

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Ruiner
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Post by Ruiner » 2 years ago

benjameenbear wrote:
2 years ago
What are your thoughts about Kaldra Compleat? Looks AWESOME, even if it's too expensive CMC-wise.
The card brings up a lot of nostalgia from years ago when the original Kaldra pieces came out and me and my friends would keep trying to "assemble Kaldra" in jank 60 card decks. When it was spoiled I was pretty hyped about it although I haven't acquired a copy yet. I don't know that I'll be finding room for it in this deck (even though it is a big flavor win) but it will definitely find room in some deck, possibly my Nahiri deck where I can cheat on the casting cost and equip cost in a few ways. Card is fun and sweet, even if it has high mana costs involved.

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Ruiner
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Post by Ruiner » 1 year ago

Made a few changes for some newly released cards and an older card I wanted to try out:

Added Cards
+1 Defiler of Flesh - Cost reduction can be nice, it's like a mini K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth to some degree. Worth trying out in my opinion.
+1 Activated Sleeper - I think this is going to make some of the sacrifice loops go off more at a lower cost, and it's just a good opportunistic clone for opponent's creatures that get killed.
+1 Magus of the Bridge - I've been meaning to try this out for a while. It's got potential to create quite a few tokens and this deck gets around it's self-exile clause pretty easy with sac outlets.
+1 Scavenger Grounds - This should be in pretty much every deck and for some reason I didn't have it in here previously.

Removed Cards
-1 Swamp - Oh so sad to see such a brutal card go but there are more in the deck.
-1 Soul-Guide Lantern - I needed to make room to try some new stuff and Scavenger Grounds does fill the same role at least. I may regret this if someone starts going wild with the graveyard.
-1 Plague Engineer - I really like this card. It's flavorful and it has come in handy but I needed to remove cards to try new cards and this was one of the easier ones to drop.
-1 Faceless Butcher - This card has won me games doing dumb stuff with Blade of Selves, and in general just having the etb trigger comboed with a sac outlet to permanently exile otherwise indestructible creatures has been super good. Sometimes it has been a little lackluster though. This was probably the hardest cut and it will possibly return in the future.

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Ruiner
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Post by Ruiner » 1 year ago

Another quick edit due to some recently released cards:

Added Cards
+1 Saw in Half
+1 Tomb Fortress

Removed Cards
-1 Unmarked Grave
-1 Swamp


I think Saw in Half is going to be ridiculous for this deck, it has so many great targets like Kokusho, the Evening Star, Gray Merchant of Asphodel, Ichor Rats, Massacre Wurm, Marionette Master, and a few others.

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Ruiner
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Post by Ruiner » 1 year ago

Had a game this past weekend where both Saw in Half and Activated Sleeper totally proved their worth.

I dropped Gray Merchant of Asphodel into play and then equipped it with Blade of Selves. On my next turn I declared I was going to start combat and an opponent tried to Chaos Warp the Gray Merchant. I tried to Saw in Half the Gray Merchant, which would have hit the table for 18. That attempt was met by a counterspell of some sort, so I sacrificed Gray Merchant to Yawgmoth and then played Activated Sleeper as a copy of Gray Merchant. It was such an action packed turn, either card would have been useful but having both was awesome.

I ultimately lost that game (triple digit life totals are inconsequential to a voltron deck, oh well) but that was definitely one of the cooler moments I've had with this deck in recent memory. I doubt either of those cards is ever leaving this deck.

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