Yawgmoth, Thran Physician
Yawgmoth, Thran Physician
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About the Deck
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
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.