Varina, Lich Queen - Esper Zombie Midrange

[Rframpt]

I've definitely looked at Vesper before. And, while I'm not quite brave enough I've always wondered how viable Lich Lord of Unx is as a mana sink win condition.

In a previous build I did play Lich Lord of Unx. The card is neat creating a token is nice even if it is a 1/1 zombie and having the potential to snipe someone with its second feels incredible. Sadly, it rare survived long enough for it to matter much as four colored mana can be steep. Still adjusting the knots here and there for Varina might prove that it is best in slot

[pzbw7z]

I've definitely looked at Vesper before. And, while I'm not quite brave enough I've always wondered how viable Lich Lord of Unx is as a mana sink win condition.

An extra Zombie a turn can't be a bad thing. If LLUnx sticks a turn per opponent, you should get ahead far enough to let Ol' Shep bring it home.

He also supports a go-wide approach with Lords. It's probably too big a shift for me to easily try, though.

[pzbw7z]

This is a Zombie.

The Flood of Mars.

[Reya]

This is a Zombie.

The Flood of Mars.

A really really bad zombie 🥲

[pzbw7z]

This is a Zombie.

The Flood of Mars.

A really really bad zombie 🥲

A Zombie with Islandwalk that can make Islands, and give other creatures Islandwalk and the ability to make Islands and give other creatures Islandwalk. Also the ability to turn your opponents fatties or stax creatures into 3/3 Zombies.

It's a very interesting Zombie, actually.

[toctheyounger]

Yeah I don't think it's terrible by any stretch. Flavor wise, it's amazing.

In terms of play lines you can beef your creatures a little, neutralize threats on the opposing boards, island lock your opponents or color fix yourself. It is slow, for sure, but there's something there.

[pzbw7z]

Yeah I don't think it's terrible by any stretch. Flavor wise, it's amazing.

In terms of play lines you can beef your creatures a little, neutralize threats on the opposing boards, island lock your opponents or color fix yourself. It is slow, for sure, but there's something there.

It can snowball if not nipped in the bud. One Flood of Mars this turn, two next, four after that. . . If you have to make an Island it'll obviously slow you down. And unless they all are removed, it can pick right back up.

It seems awesome for an aggro or token build; I'd have to pretty much completely rebuild for it to be worthwhile. Obviously it's one card and it can't be the sole strategy, but, man!, it looks like fun!

[Rframpt]

I will prefix this that I don't know much about Dr. who but I am not entirely fan of the art on this card. I prefer my army of the undead to look like an undead army rather than a bunch of people in a weird pose. I know that is somewhat the charm of Dr. Who but if I add the card I will wait till the universes within in around 10 years before I will think about adding it to my deck

[devilcatz]

Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx has been so bad for me. Lots of games have wipes so nothing much stays.. lol.

And I won a game w no Varina casts and a land f situation with. lol.
Been getting land f situations frequently these days.
Definitely need more land.

[pzbw7z]

Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx has been so bad for me. Lots of games have wipes so nothing much stays.. lol.

And I won a game w no Varina casts and a land f situation with. lol.
Been getting land f situations frequently these days.
Definitely need more land.

Flawless Maneuver is a card you can try. Teferi's Protection is another. Generally, I just bring them back! So I don't bother with things. Indeed, I often wipe the board myself.

Land Tax and Tithe help with the land. Gift of Estates is a budget version.

Card draw of course also helps with hitting the land drops.

[devilcatz]

Yeah.
Flawless don't help much since Varina almost gets no chance to be casted w land f situations. Lol
Then again, a Phyrexian altar and Gravecrawler with Plague Belcher saved the slow moving game.

[Falkenbach]

Feral Ghoul looks okish aldo the drain might be slow?

[pzbw7z]

Feral Ghoul looks okish aldo the drain might be slow?

It's not like we couldn't pump him, so it could do some damage.

[toctheyounger]

Feral Ghoul looks okish aldo the drain might be slow?

I wouldn't personally look at it in any other context than loops. Mill is iffy in terms of an in game advantage weapon, there's lots of decks out there that want their yard stacked (look at us heh). If we can keep looping other creatures in an out of play it'll get arbitrarily big then we can pop the table in one go, otherwise I don't think it really gives us enough to work with. The rad counters are a weird diminishing return, and the fact that the trigger happens on the opponent's precombat main gives plenty of time to nullify them, somehow.

(currently there's not many ways to do that outside of Vampire Hexmage and Solemnity but if this set finds ways to give rad counters it's almost certain there will be tech to remove them with)

[Rframpt]

Feral Ghoul seems like a sweet card as it has a bit of evasion can get bigger of dying creatures and add that bit of extra damage to mess with people who do a lot of top deck manipulation. I will certainly get it but might wait to add it to my deck as my meta has some Grave diggers. However, I believe it might actually be great in my meta as there is an increasing number of players being more aligned with top deck manipulation

[pzbw7z]

This does not seem awful: Bitter Triumph.

[Rframpt]

This does not seem awful: Bitter Triumph.

Certainly, not a bad card to be sure. Though we have access to a lot of great removal in white as well. A lot of great cards that can hit more than just creatures and planeswalkers. Bonus point if it also exiles as much of the removal I tend to run has to be exile removal otherwise I know someone will recur the card

[pzbw7z]

Has anyone ever even heard of Dromar's Cavern? I stumbled across one of the other Lairs while rummaging through a bulk box, so I looked up Land, Lair in Gatherer and, sure enough, there's an Esper one.

The downside is significant, maybe too significant, but I'm still thinking about it

[IAMAfortunecookieAMA]

Hi Folks,

Thanks for the great reading. I went through about 50 pages out of the 128 and learned a lot about the deck. I've wanted to build a Zombie deck for a long time and the new Secret Lair printing with a nod to Evil Dead convinced me to run Varina.

My version of this deck is pretty similar to the excellent lists I've found in people's signatures and the primer itself on Page 1. The only choices I've made that are a bit different (or, not so different) are as follows:

Abusing the discard:

Dogged Detective -- Irrelevant type line, but when you're just pitching it to discard and getting it back for free, it's card advantage.
Priest of Fell Rites -- An Unburial Rites with the creature subtype instead of sorcery. Comes back with Sevinne's or unearths itself.
Call to the Netherworld and Grave Scrabbler -- Madness card advantage spells.
Decaying Soil and Oversold Cemetery -- Looking to turn Varina's discard into even more card advantage by running these alongside Phyrexian Reclamation . All of these also combo with Tormod, the Desecrator and Gempalm Polluter .
Vengeful Pharaoh -- A free rattlesnake/destroy effect to be pitched directly into the graveyard. Also a zombie!
Veilborn Ghoul -- This is Dogged Detective / Master of Death #3 to break Varina's Bazaar of Baghdad loot effect.

And last but not least, Carnival of Souls to essentially cut Varina's ability cost in half, and allow you more triggers on opponent's turns when they play creatures. Might die to it, but that sounds like kind of a sweet way to die. I'm hoping Varina's life gain offsets it.

Here's my decklist: https://www.moxfield.com/decks/xWVvpuBaDkGNPg2PPOI81g

Hope these ideas seem cool, definitely curious for everyone's thoughts. Thanks for putting in so much work into this deck!

[yeti1069]

Has anyone ever even heard of Dromar's Cavern? I stumbled across one of the other Lairs while rummaging through a bulk box, so I looked up Land, Lair in Gatherer and, sure enough, there's an Esper one.

The downside is significant, maybe too significant, but I'm still thinking about it

With how many options we have for multi-colored lands, I can't see playing the Lairs in any deck that doesn't specifically want to be returning lands to hand. Giving Varina an additional card in hand to pitch isn't enough value to warrant the lost of development that comes from essentially Stone Raining your own land. You also can't play this on turn 1, and if you play it before turn 4, you delay Varina by at least a turn.

[yeti1069]

Priest of Fell Rites -- An Unburial Rites with the creature subtype instead of sorcery. Comes back with Sevinne's or unearths itself.
Vengeful Pharaoh -- A free rattlesnake/destroy effect to be pitched directly into the graveyard. Also a zombie!
And last but not least, Carnival of Souls to essentially cut Varina's ability cost in half, and allow you more triggers on opponent's turns when they play creatures. Might die to it, but that sounds like kind of a sweet way to die. I'm hoping Varina's life gain offsets it.

I'll just share my thoughts on these 3.
Priest I like elsewhere, but I don't think I'd run it here. Not being a zombie means you almost never want to be casting this early in the game. Its obvious value alongside Varina also means that it's going to be a juicy target for removal, and activating at sorcery speed means the cost reduction vs Unburial Rites isn't that valuable. So the value comes from pitching it and then using the unearth portion. In that case, it's more expensive than Unburial, and provides 0 additional benefit.

Vengeful Pharaoh never struck me as being a very good card. Yes, it's something of a rattlesnake, but you don't get to control when to use it, so if someone tags you with just a useless token you couldn't block, you lose the threat until you draw and pitch it again, and it ensures you're not drawing a (potentially) more relevant card on your next turn until you trigger Varina.

Carnival of Souls has always seemed risky to me. One deck chucking out a bunch of tokens can kill you out of nowhere, and there isn't much you can do about it. If you're lookiung for a cost reduction to Varina, you could run Training Grounds, which has no downside, and costs less. Carnival has some other benefits, of being able to dump your hand a bit, but I don't know if that's valuable enough.

[IAMAfortunecookieAMA]

Wouldn't Priest of Fell Rites being a lightning rod for removal be a vote in favor? I would think the card being powerful enough to be an obvious threat would be a good indicator that it's a good fit for the deck and a solid card. if they want to kill POFR instead of Varina that's great for me. I mostly wanted another reanimate that I could discard like Dread Return, but POFR being a creature synergizes with everything.

Definitely agree on Carnival of Souls, but dying to it sounds kind of hilarious. Unlike Training Grounds, there's potential upside of benefitting off your opponent's token swarms, and the life loss could be negated by one of the life gain effects. I'll test it and report back.

[yeti1069]

Wouldn't Priest of Fell Rites being a lightning rod for removal be a vote in favor? I would think the card being powerful enough to be an obvious threat would be a good indicator that it's a good fit for the deck and a solid card. if they want to kill POFR instead of Varina that's great for me. I mostly wanted another reanimate that I could discard like Dread Return, but POFR being a creature synergizes with everything.

I figure, if I'm playing a reanimation spell, it's to get back something valuable from the yard. Now, sure, it eating removal instead of Varina can be worthwhile, but if it looks strong enough to eat removal, it's likely you have something in the yard you want to recur, in which case, it's not serving as a very good reanimation spell. What does it synergize with in the deck? The front end ability can trigger some death triggers, but the back end won't, since it goes to exile. Also, if you have any ETB effects that go on the stack when it enters, it's possible to remove it before it can even activate to recur something. I run Priest in my Sefris deck, because that does want this sort of effect on a creature, and has numerous ways to benefit from discarding it, having it enter or leave play, as well as a few different ways to recur it without using unearth. Plus, that deck has much juicier targets than Varina does. And even there, it being a sorcery speed activated ability, and often having to wait a turn cycle to activate, have been issues at times.

Here, I'd much rather run the cleaner reanimate spell, especially if your goal is simply to discard it and cast from the yard, since Unburial will be a mana cheaper, and will have fewer points of interaction to ruin your day. Varina doesn't really want to be spending mana on non-zombie creatures before she's down.

[IAMAfortunecookieAMA]

What does it synergize with in the deck?

Good question!

The main synergy for Priest of Fell Rites is with Phyrexian Reclamation , Oversold Cemetery , and Decaying Soil . It becomes a 2-mana repeatable reanimation engine until it gets disrupted. These are the main card advantage engines of my build so my creature count matters a lot. If I have Phyrexian Reclamation, I can even play around some GY hate. This is assuming I haven't unearthed it yet.

It increases my "creatures in GY' count for two out of three of those enchantments. It is also a permanent with CMC 3 or less for Sevinne's Reclamation . Of course, Priest of Fell Rites also comes back to play with Living Death and Balthor the Defiled for extra value.

If I loot a big chunk of my library with Varina, it can bring back Balthor the Defiled for a mass reanimate effect even if I have zero cards in hand (albeit, things are going well if I have 8 mana).

It can also be returned to hand with Call to the Netherworld and Grave Scrabbler since it's a creature.

I am running some "typical" reanimation spells but this repeatable synergy with my "return to hand" suite is the main reason why being a creature is much more relevant than the sorcery Unburial Rites . Unearth and Flashback are roughly equivalent in utility here, but it being a creature has a LOT more upside. Every time I activate the Priest and reanimate something else, or return it to hand after drawing and discarding Varina, I'm getting about one card's worth of value - with so many similar effects, this turns Varina's discard ability into a card advantage engine.

I don't think everyone will want to run it, or SHOULD run it necessarily, but you have to admit, it is strongly synergistic with all aspects of the deck. I wish every creature in my deck was at a power level to demand removal from my opponents!

Imagine if it was a Zombie too (not that we ever attack with it).... yeesh!

[yeti1069]

Ok, alongside multiple Raise Dead effects, I can see if being more valuable.