Eburon wrote: ↑2 years ago
Putrid Imp is definitely a card with it's uses. It is a 1-drop zombie, and it can help fill the yard. That said, that is all Imp does. Sure it can carry a sword and get through, but it is at the cost of a card. I prefer to keep my hand full so I can efficiently rummage with Varina.
Zombie Infestation is a bit different for me. If you have excess cards, you can dump a bunch of them and create several zombies. I can discard 6 cards and get 3 2/2's. If we do that with Imp, it gains flying 6 times which is kinda useless.
That said, if it works for you, keep playing it. That is the beauty of EDH: every "stock" list still has some flex slots to insert your own flavor.
toctheyounger wrote: ↑2 years ago
Yall are the best Endless Ranks a zombie lover could hope for.
Haven't we established that Endless Ranks gets outranked by Tombstone Stairwell???
I've been toying with adding the Imp back in myself of late. I've sort of found I've trimmed my actual tribal inclusions back a bit further than I'd like. And as far as Imp goes, it's the actual cheapest way to get things in your graveyard. Granted, the payoff is weak. But it's more the cost than the payoff you're here for. I want to wait for full spoilers before I make any sweeping changes, but I do want more critters in the fold. Fingers crossed for more juiciness.
And yeah, Stairwell > Ranks any damn day. You guys are the best tombspawn ever :D
Reya wrote: ↑2 years ago
Hello everyone!
First of all, thank you for making this thread so active! Varina is my first EDH deck and I choose it as my commander thanks to this forum, almost 2 years ago. Since that day, I often come here to seek thoughts and advices to tune the list and it's always very interesting.
I wanted to add a little bit to the discussion by talking about Putrid Imp.
From my experience with the deck, I think we realy want to lower the curve in general because we want to dig as much as possible, starting on turn 4 with Varina. Putrid Imp is really helpfull in many situations:
- it's a flying beater
- it can easely attack and survive equiped with sword of the animist
- it's a fantastic discrad outlet (more versatile than zombie infestation because you only discard one card and you can reanimate it in many ways)
- it's amazing with Bone Miser
I try it until I can maybe replace it by Champion of the Perished !
What do you think of this card ?
Welcome to the thread, I'm very pleased you've had some benefit from our ramblings, and you are most welcome to ramble yourself!
Honestly I'm still not sold on
Champion of the Perished. Am I asking too much for a low CMC zombie with actual decent utility? Maybe,
but maybe not. Like, the low cost suggestions are fine, but we're not in the blessed position of
Edgar Markov of having eminence. We need low cost I think, but we also need to be able to get more than a swing out of the creatures we play. If it was just about stats I have a pretty foil
Diregraf Ghoul that'd fit in that slot without having to consider new additions. I think Imp is a good possibility, I think Champion is defensible, but if there's better coming in either Midnight Hunt or Crimson Vow I'd still pop them in. Also I can't remember where but @Falkenbach mentioned that
Stitcher's Supplier wasn't really fantastic, which saves me a few bucks tracking one down.
I have a couple of asides:
Firstly, got some gameplay in yesterday. Played, or attempted to play, 4 games. 3 of them ended abruptly with one person or other having to leave and the whole thing falling apart, the last ended up a 3-man pod with
Scion of the Ur-Dragon and
Morophon, the Boundless.
I had rough mulls all day, but ended up with a 2 land hand with
Mystic Remora in it. I missed a couple of land drops and conveniently drew into
Land Tax. Remora lasted a couple of turns before popping, and I hilariously topdecked
Rhystic Study the turn the fish died. I got very little draw from it, but it taxed people the whole game. To be honest it was frustrating.
I managed to keep tempo up all game, but just didn't hit the dearth of critters I'd have liked, nor wipes to keep the board under control. I ultimately ended up getting stomped by
Atarka, World Render and Scion in an alpha strike purely for not having answers or a win. Up until that point I was in control, I just couldn't close it down. End of the day the tech I had performed well, I just didn't have enough actual 'game' to close it out. This is part of why I want to up the creature count. That being said I realise this is likely anomalous, with terrible hands and such, it happens. Variance is part of the format.
Secondly, board wipes and control again. I want to talk
Tragic Arrogance. The card has performed very, very well for me in
Bruna, the Fading Light, and I think it'd be a good addition here too. We sweep the board and save an aristrocrat or Varina, and we've absolutely boned our opponents for their deck architecture. I like that we make all of the choices, it makes it almost never a dead draw.
I'm also rethinking counters with
Memory Lapse and
Delay. They're both reasonable ways to nix a win con or take something crucial out of reach for an opponent and just bump someone off their timing. I don't think we need MORE counters or wipes per se, but I do want to rethink my control suite in the coming weeks.
I've also tinkered with the idea of a couple of recent pseudo-ramp releases -
Thaumatic Compass // Spires of Orazca,
Dowsing Dagger // Lost Vale,
Lotus Field. Again, not sure these are locks, but they're possible good drops. Field helps us trigger
Archaeomancer's Map and
Land Tax as well as being great for things like
Cosmic Intervention if anyone is looking at adding this, Dagger works with us swinging, and Compass fixes lands and protects our neck. Food for thought, I guess.
Ramble over
