Sequencing and You
Varina is a unique 4-drop commander. Your typical 4 cmc commander will always want to come out on turn 3 if possible and start drawing you cards or doing whatever its effect is. Varina is special because she doesn't start doing whatever she's doing until she has a number of zombies to draw cards. By herself, attacking and loot 1/gain 1 is pretty unexciting. Loot 2/gain 2 is 1000% better.
Varina has a ton in common with
Winota, Joiner of Forces. Winota requires non-humans to be out to trigger her very powerful ability. Ramping her out early is almost actively bad because she's exposed to being removed at sorcery speed without having provided any benefit. Varina is the same; if you ramp her out on turn 3 and she dies before you untap, you get nothing *and* she's now 2 mana more expensive.
The important thing about both of these commanders is that because they are dependent on the combat step, creatures played after them are both exposed to sorcery speed removal before they can provide value and are delayed an entire turn from value.
That is the thesis of this deck; much like with Winota, zombies played before
Varina, Lich Queen are significantly better than zombies played after her; a 3-drop zombie played on turn 3 will trigger Varina on turns 4, 5, 6, and 7 for a total of 4 triggers. A 3-drop zombie played after Varina on turn 5 will trigger her on turns 6 and 7.
Varina has some tension with colored pips that Winota doesn't, needing 3 instead of 2, making
Mana Crypt effects worse. But most of the ideas still apply.
Sequences
Let's look at sequences if you ramp on turn 2 as many EDH decks are conditioned to do. We'll naively assume no interaction.
If you have a great hand with a 1 cmc zombie,
Orzhov Signet, and enough lands to hit
Varina, Lich Queen and a mix of 2 and 3 cmc zombies to allow playing 2 immediately after Varina, your sequence looks like this.
Turn 1: Zombie
Turn 2: Signet
Turn 3: Varina, +1 trigger
Turn 4: Play a 2 and 3 cmc zombie, +2 triggers
Turn 5: +4 triggers
So on turn 5 (the typical point at which interaction starts to become inevitable, we've generated 7 triggers, with Varina exposed to sorcery speed (usually sweepers) removal starting on turn 3.
Now, let's look at a sequence from a deck that is designed to curve out.
Turn 1: Zombie
Turn 2: Zombie
Turn 3: Zombie
Turn 4: Varina, +3 triggers
Turn 5: +4 triggers
We've got the same number of triggers, and Varina wasn't exposed to a turn 3 sweeper, and we played one fewer card out of our hand (3 zombies + signet vs. 3 zombies).
Both of these sequences are fairly optimal and don't often happen exactly like that.
But the point to look out for is that putting Varina out early doesn't really accelerate your gameplan all that much at the cost of exposing her to a sweeper and having to have one of your cards not be a zombie.
And both of these sequences absolutely pale in comparison to the
Chrome Mox /
Mox Diamond lines.
Optimal Manabase
I think the optimal manabase is basically the same as Winota, but with adding black cards of
Dark Ritual and possibly
Culling the Weak.
Sol Ring and
Mana Crypt are significantly worse with Varina than with Winota, but they help us power out endgame turns enough that I think they still belong.
Probably the strongest argument for playing
Arcane Signet and
Azorius Signet is the powerhouse plays you get from a turn 1 signet off of Ring/Crypt/Ancient Tomb. The problem with that is that signets are not zombies. You have to deal with the bad signet hands, and then you have to deal with explosive hands where you play all your mana rocks and then draw air.
Varina is pretty iffy if you don't play at least one zombie before her, and you wind up having to play an awful lot of air in your deck to support (1) 10 mana rocks, (2) card draw and cantrips to fix your mana rocks hands, (3) 35 lands to support the powerful endgame lands that Varina wants (
Unholy Grotto, etc.).
non-land mana sources I'd recommend where your deck is 'highest power but still trying to use Varina' (as opposed to just playing esper control CEDH):
I'd also play this set of lands:
and maaaaybe
Ancient Tomb (need to look at your zombie profile and see how many 2B and 2U zombies you have, mainly).
My deck is actively powered down to play nice in my meta, so the ramp/fixing package is smaller.
As you power down you have to look systematically at the mana and see what you can support; cutting fetchlands makes some things worse (e.g. harder to reliably cast
Tithe for 2 lands, and also harder to cast t1 black blue and white spells). Cutting coffers/urborg/nykthos most likely means map is not good. Not having enough cheap zombies means
Culling Ritual is kinda iffy. etc. etc.
I am pretty sure that belongs. One problem with it is that I don't have very many payoff zombies but it's certainly decent.
also the reason why I got inspiration from you to run Crucible of Worlds )
