Varina, Lich Queen - Esper Zombie Midrange

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toctheyounger
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Post by toctheyounger » 1 year ago

Arebennian wrote:
1 year ago
Eburon wrote:
1 year ago
Has anyone here tested Body Count or Smuggler's Share yet? If so, do you have any useful feedback?
I'm interested in people's experience with Smuggler's Share for other decks I run, rather than this one. Specifically, I'm interested in its performance vs Black Market Connections.

I can't see either of the above cards really being better than Rhystic Study or Mystic Remora if you have access to blue and you want repeatable enchantment based draw. Even if they do offer mana as an upside and a body in Black Market Connection's case.
Agreed, they are both a lot more conditional. They potentially can do more, but Rhystic and Remora being as simple as they are just makes them very effective. I'm more or less happy with them at present and I'm probably not looking at either of the newer options for my build.
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pokken
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Post by pokken » 1 year ago

I just see almost zero reason to play enchantments for draw. I don't even get rhystic study and mystic remora in this deck.

Land tax is for guaranteed land fixing and huge card draw, kindred discovery is a combo piece and a bomb that draws a game winning pile of cards regardless of what your opponents do.

These make sense to me. Random nonzombie enablers that wind up soaking up mana and slots that could be zombies are a meh from me. I'd rather play fact or fiction or epiphany where I can get guaranteed cards now.

But none of these new options compare to rhystics so if you want that effect play that I guess. Personally I won't rely on people misplaying to help me hit my land drops. :P

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toctheyounger
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Post by toctheyounger » 1 year ago

I'll admit, of late I've questioned the inclusion of Rhystic et al of late, purely from the perspective of what makes sense to cut. As of right now I've nothing else I especially need to make room for so I think they're OK as is, but I guess time will tell moving forward.

I think the further the deck moves towards a tempo based looting machine the less they're needed. I think the rhystics tend to shine best in a grindy midrange shell where the decision not to pay the 1 or 4 adds up over time to wear your opponents down. The faster we go the less we need it.
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Eburon
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Post by Eburon » 1 year ago

I think Remora will always have a place since it is a low cost enchantment with an immediate impact (even if we don't draw and we delay ramping, it is a positive for us). I think an argument could be made to replace Rhystic with more aggressive immediate draw effects.

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pokken
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Post by pokken » 1 year ago

Think about your sequencing with remora. If your deck can afford to take turns 1-3 off to help hit your early game cards, maybe yeah. Me, I'm curving out on those turns not wanting to pay cumulative upkeeps. So ponder works but remora not so much for my sequencing.

In a very high powered meta remora can also put in work defending combos but I don't play enough countermagic personally for that to work in my favor - drawing two cards because they counter my counter of their counter doesn't usually pay enough.

And if you're in a mid power meta remora is very swingy card that has a floor of dead, an average of 2:draw 2, and a ceiling of 2:draw 4 (generally). It's only good enough when the dice come up draw four, but you'll wish it was ponder a high percentage of the time.

Very very meta dependent. In my meta people will aggressively punish the fish player by playing around it or pausing and swinging out at them.

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Post by pzbw7z » 1 year ago

Even though I currently run both Mystic Remora and Rhystic Study, I think @pokken is correct. But my deck is pretty casual and I'm just not as focused as I am with that other deck.

I would never throw Remora out turn 1 and hope to draw cards; I have cards and I want to play Zombies. Most of the kids I play with drop a land and pass on turn one anyway. Remora would come down after Varina for me in the hope of refilling the hand and fueling the strategy. It's quite likely there are better cards for that. But the initial investment is cheap and, by turn four or five, kids are usually playing spells.

Rhystic is in the deck because I know I need card draw and it is one of the staple cards that the cool kids use. That is, I have learned the hard way, a bad strategy for deck building unless one correctly determines who the cool kids really are! They are not the people driving the numbers on MTGGoldfish, for example. That's a horrible place to get ideas for deck building if competitiveness is at all a factor.

There is a risk in hewing too closely to the competitive line; after I drop Doomsday on turn three or four and kill a table, I usually feel compelled to put Prosper back in the precon-box and get out Varina. If I drop Intuition (which I would have to obtain first as I no longer own a copy) on them then and combo-kill the table, I've got nothing else to fall back on. My Dromoka deck is completely combo even if it isn't fast. Depending on the play group, I might be fine with trying for another quick kill, but there just aren't that many really competitive players in the stores I frequent.

So my Varina is not hard-core and probably will never be. I do hope to get another land or two for the mana-base and improve its reliability just a bit, and there are some very dubious cards - I'm looking at Containment Construct and Grave Scrabbler in particular - and I will tweak at the edges, but mostly, Varina will continue to rely on Living Death or one of the janky, multi-card combos to pull an occasional win out of nowhere.

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Eburon
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Post by Eburon » 1 year ago

pokken wrote:
1 year ago
Think about your sequencing with remora.
Sequencing is usually key with cards like Remora and Rhystic Study. Yes, people can play around it, but I see that in itself as a plus since you are still forcing people to "deal with the card". Also, I am not worried about becoming a target. I want to play powerful cards and the side effect is that it can paint a target on your back. That is where politics can come in too to resolve that issue.

Since you brought up Ponder: I am not a huge fan of cantrips (I'd rather play Night's Whisper or Painful Truths over Ponder). That is probably personal preference and can change depending on the deck I play.

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Post by pokken » 1 year ago

Ponder digs four for an out. It's significantly stronger than a draw two.l for two. But it only if your mana can support it.

I do like those draw spells in higher curve builds but they don't sequence right for me. And I'd play them before the situational draw spells (taxes) myself because cards now is important. That said I haven't really struggled with my layout at all. I kinda want to add teferis ageless insight sometimes as an extra explosive draw, or epiphany.

Random nonsynergistic good stuff draw that doesn't reliably fix low land hands is not gonna be where I am personally.

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Post by Eburon » 1 year ago

if you want to dig for an out, why not run a tutor instead of Ponder? It gets you the guaranteed out, Vampiric into looting with Varina is really good.

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Post by pzbw7z » 1 year ago

Eburon wrote:
1 year ago
if you want to dig for an out, why not run a tutor instead of Ponder? It gets you the guaranteed out, Vampiric into looting with Varina is really good.
There aren't many good reasons to not run Vampiric Tutor. The only really valid one from a competitive standpoint that I can think of is not having black in the color identity. I don't run it because of budget; I've got one in another deck so technically I could proxy it and stay within my personal standards, but I've decided to make do with some other tutors instead.

Many people eschew tutors to varying degrees to limit competitiveness and that's a perfectly valid lifestyle choice.

All that said, using Vampiric or Demonic to get a land feels really bad. Trust me, I know from experience. :)

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Post by toctheyounger » 1 year ago

Yeah, its the sequencing thats made me double think the inclusions to be honest.

Remora almost never feels good early game to me. People will just sandbag until its gone or it won't get you there, and thats a bit rough if you've put all your eggs in that basket.

Rhystic is more reliable, but falling at the magical number 3, as we've discussed time and again with 3 and 5 being the prime mana values for bomb zombies, it does definitely muck up your lines for combat and playing into Varina and/or making combat optimal.

Do we need them? I don't know. I'm not sure what would replace them, and to be honest part of it for me is I've definitely got other places that could use rhystic effects, I'm putting together a list for Tameshi, Reality Architect that would love them both dearly.

Ponder seems a fine replacement for one. Perhaps something like Lethal Scheme would work too? It lets us sculpt our hand, we can free cast it if needed, and it removes stuff we need gone, all at once. It does mean playing around combat, but conniving achieves much the same effect in terms of our library and hand, so it could work.

I think its a weird place to find ourselves, where these don't quite fit. They're mostly fine but do sort of conflict with curving into early Varina and yard sculpting. In a grindier midrange build I think they'd be just fine, but I don't know that thats what the deck innately wants to do.
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Eburon
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Post by Eburon » 1 year ago

toctheyounger wrote:
1 year ago
Yeah, its the sequencing thats made me double think the inclusions to be honest.

Remora almost never feels good early game to me. People will just sandbag until its gone or it won't get you there, and thats a bit rough if you've put all your eggs in that basket.

Rhystic is more reliable, but falling at the magical number 3, as we've discussed time and again with 3 and 5 being the prime mana values for bomb zombies, it does definitely muck up your lines for combat and playing into Varina and/or making combat optimal.

Do we need them? I don't know.
I think we don't "need" them for the deck to function. Ideally we want early tempo plays to get the looting for Varina going. I also believe that if you get some early tempo followed by either effect T2 or T3, you are also in a pretty good place. If people sandbag around those effects, we are actually gaining more tempo in a way. No, it is not card draw, but we also don't have to answer threats if people sandbag.

With that said, other actual draw effects can be very effective and give us a bit more of a boost rather than a sustained effect. Sometimes that is more effective, depending on the game you are playing.

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Post by pzbw7z » 1 year ago

One card I'm a little surprised doesn't come up for discussion in Varina is Thought Scour. I'd probably be sold on it without the high-MV Enchantments I'm running.

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Post by Eburon » 1 year ago

I think I'd run Consider before Thought Scour so I can decide if I want to keep the card or not.

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Post by pzbw7z » 1 year ago

Eburon wrote:
1 year ago
I think I'd run Consider before Thought Scour so I can decide if I want to keep the card or not.
That's worth considering. :)

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Post by toctheyounger » 1 year ago

With a commabder that exiles from the yard, has anyone considered Dig Through Time? Its not necessarily an early game card thiugh, so this might not be the place for it.
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Post by pokken » 1 year ago

The uu mana cost of dig is what makes me not love it. Both it and treasure cruise have a bit of a win more bent. If you're comfortable exiling 6-7 cards from your bin you're probably in good shape.

I don't run vamp tutor cos I only own one right now personally lol :$. I'll be getting one at some point.

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Post by toctheyounger » 1 year ago

Yeah I'm ok without vamp tutor here to be honest, I'll save the one I have for a build thats specifically geared towards plays as tight as i can get em. For me thats most likely Tayam Druid.

Here, there's enough redundancy in the spells we want to see im ok with relying on shuffle variance and a strong filtering g effect to get me there.

Ultimately I think where I fall on rhystic effects is id be happy to replace them with options that dig deep. Ponder seems about as efficient as that gets, I don't know that preordain makes the grade though.
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Post by pokken » 1 year ago

Brainstorm and top have both been excellent for me. Top and varina with fetchlands is money in the bank hehe
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Post by toctheyounger » 1 year ago

Top does seem amazing here, abd the next couple weeks are gonna be the best time to buy.
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Post by RedCheese » 1 year ago

I forgot i had a top lol. Should put in Varinna

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Post by MaritLage » 1 year ago

Sometimes i feel like there are certain cards that were made for my library , instead of being made for my deck . When i scrub past four Catacomb Sifter and see their hands all liftng up , just feeling the flavor on the one-mana-too-expensive Tiana, Ship·s Caretaker saying great , she·ll be in the stacks , and the string-reading DihTech operator Varina quietly influencing thought from the back scenes .
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Post by RedCheese » 1 year ago

Haven't played since the pandemic started. Finally returned to gaming yesterday and boy did i missed playing this deck. So fun.

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Post by pzbw7z » 1 year ago

Does anyone actually like Wilhelt, the Rotcleaver in the 99? I've been quite disappointed. I think he's going to get the hook soon.

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Post by pokken » 1 year ago

pzbw7z wrote:
1 year ago
Does anyone actually like Wilhelt, the Rotcleaver in the 99? I've been quite disappointed. I think he's going to get the hook soon.
4 mana dudes have such a high bar since they conflict with varina on curve for me. It's basically Repository Skaab and Overcharged Amalgam for me iirc. A reactive spell and a combo piece.

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