MTGNexus

pokken wrote: ↑

1 year ago

For me like...a no zombie slot needs to be Kindred Discovery or
Land Tax level. Or a removal spell.

I do have a small query somewhat related.

I have been considering ways to deal with enemy aggro lately. I got absolutely roasted by an arcades wall deck full of fliers and counterspells. To be fair the player basically full on targeted me and then lost both times but I have seen the same issue otherwise.

I'm thinking about maybe adding Wonder as an honorary zombie possibly along with a Entomb package. Have people had good luck there?

I have Wonder currently, but not Entomb. I do have Buried Alive but I've not used it for Wonder the few times it's come up. Wonder provides some possibilities, and people take notice of and direct hate at a flying Zombie army pretty quickly.

To be honest, I'm probably going to cut Wonder, but I don't have a set playgroup with a recurring issue like that.

I'm thinking of it more for having flying blockers but Yar I could see the threat.

Maybe adding a modal sweeper like Damn would be decent.

pokken wrote: ↑

1 year ago

I'm thinking of it more for having flying blockers but Yar I could see the threat.

Maybe adding a modal sweeper like Damn would be decent.

I have Damn in the list and - so far - I've used only the overload mode. WW can be challenging early, but it usually works out. I've given some thought to swapping it for Winds of Abandon, but I haven't looked for one yet.

I have Wonder in mine deck. It and Archfiend of Ifnir are the honorary zombies of my deck. Both proved their worthyness

Archfiend of Ifnir should be a staple in Varina. Noxious Ghoul is another good board wipe. I'm currently testing out Toxrill, the Corrosive as well.

I've had Noxious Ghoul underperform personally. Ifnir never did though, and I think with any sort of wheel or instant discard outlet variety in the list it makes a good inclusion. I'd actually be really happy to see it in my build again, card is gross. Even if it doesn't wipe the board entirely the fact that the counters stick around means a severely diminished opposition.

Toxrill I haven't tried myself but short of getting some spot reanimation in my guess is it would end up being quite costly. I do like the slug draw though.

Yeah I wouldn't play Toxrill without the spot reanimation. I understand you guys lean towards mass reanimation, so he wouldn't be as effective. Personally, I can't play a black deck without Reanimate, Animate Dead, Dance of the Dead and Victimize. I do love cheating in some fatties.

I'm also trying out a new-ish card called Incarnation Technique, anyone else used it? I think it's pretty sick. 'Demonstrate' for an opponent without any good targets in their graveyard (or choose the spellslinger player in your pod), they're likely to whiff on the mill 5. You, playing a graveyard deck, are likely to be set up already, and you get to mill 10 just in case.

I feel like Varina is really mediocre as an esper goodstuff reanimator general. She turns cheap zombies into crazy fuel. Her make zombies ability is pretty inefficient--nice backup but not a game plan.

Milling and reanimating nonzombie fatties feels like much better accomplished with another general.

Just my two pence of course.

I've seen her compared to Raffine, Scheming Seer as an Esper goodstuff reanimator. Just my opinion, but her ability to make 2/2 zombies for (2) is her edge. Cards like Raffine can't do anything with an empty board/hand; Varina has a built-in mana sink.

Of course, I do understand the importance of flavor to a lot of EDH players (this is a role-playing game, at heart), so I totally get wanting to stay pure zombies.

Her making zombie tokens ability has proven valuable since they trigger her looting abiltiy afetr all, plus the zombie synergy.

Yeah Raffine is a delifferent beast, and much better suited to spot reanimator than Varina. In terms of best analogies I personally compare Raffine to a decent Razakats cedh build in terms of what it can do; Varina is more of a Tymna midrange shell, for obvious reasons. They're just different decks, each strong in their own ways.

I like Technique personally, its a decent spell. I just don't think there's the depth of decent targets to justify inclusion at this point, so unless it catches a ton of creatures, to me, the juice isn't worth the squeeze.

As far as the looting ability goes, its never the first thing we want to do, but you can definitely do worse for mana sinks.

Anyone tried Haunted One ?

I played it one time. The +2/+0 was really solid but I don't think it deserves a slot. Problem is, we cannot use the undying if Varina cannot attack so it could be a bad draw pretty often. Plus, it's hard to combo of with it since the trigger is only if our queen being tapped. If we absolutely want something to guarantee an attack, we can rather count on Wonder or Master of Death .

Reya wrote: ↑

1 year ago

Anyone tried Haunted One ?

I played it one time. The +2/+0 was really solid but I don't think it deserves a slot. Problem is, we cannot use the undying if Varina cannot attack so it could be a bad draw pretty often. Plus, it's hard to combo of with it since the trigger is only if our queen being tapped. If we absolutely want something to guarantee an attack, we can rather count on Wonder or Master of Death .

I concluded that in do not want that effect. We don't do ourselves a lot of favors becoming even more commander dependent. It's one of the things I like about Kindred Discovery vs Teferi's Ageless Insight

Yeah I made a slot for it but haven't trialed it yet. I am skeptical. Having to be tapped is rough, although I usually don't care, I'll attack with Varina almost any time I can. Theres lands that'll tap her to fix for mana, but I don't know that its worth a slot based on that.

Varina and Co. pulled off a pretty epic sequence tonight. Varina had three other Zombies in play along with Phyrexian Altar and I had Rooftop Storm in hand. I cast Rooftop and played Haakon, Stromgald Scourge out of the graveyard. I swung the four Zombies and drew Gravecrawler and Corpse Knight and some other stuff.

I pitched Gravecrawler and three lands into the 'yard and played Corpse Knight. Then I played the 'Crawler. Once I started to sac Crawler, one of the other players tried to exile Corpse Knight. I sac'ed the Knight instead and proceeded to cast him out of the graveyard courtesy of Haakon - for free, courtesy of Rooftop Storm. Then I picked up where I had left off!

Rooftop Storm always seems to be behind the spectacular finishes and Haakon and friends provide some real value. Gravecrawler and Phyrexian Altar? I don't think I need to say anything about them, do I?

Haakon package is insanely resilient. They have to remove altar for it to work and a lot of times I have sevinnes in the bin or a way to get another altar (which goes off with universal automaton too).

Anyone had the chance to experiment with Necroduality ? The card looks really sexy but it does nothing the time it lands and 4 mana is a lot in this deck, especialy for a non zombie creature card.

It looks like an overkill card. But in the same time it should be so fun to stack like 200 triggers while playing online

But again, I didn't had the chance to play it.

Reya wrote: ↑

1 year ago

Anyone had the chance to experiment with Necroduality ? The card looks really sexy but it does nothing the time it lands and 4 mana is a lot in this deck, especialy for a non zombie creature card.

It looks like an overkill card. But in the same time it should be so fun to stack like 200 triggers while playing online

But again, I didn't had the chance to play it.

Honestly I've cut it. I tried to make it work, but every time I had it in hand it wasn't the right play to drop it in. So for me as cool as it sounds to have in play it just was never the right thing to cast.

One card that surprisinglly never disapointed me is Sorin, Vengeful Bloodlord. The lifelink and recursion actually helped alot in a couple of matches funny enough so always sticked around in my deck.

Reya wrote: ↑

1 year ago

Anyone had the chance to experiment with Necroduality ? The card looks really sexy but it does nothing the time it lands and 4 mana is a lot in this deck, especialy for a non zombie creature card.

It looks like an overkill card. But in the same time it should be so fun to stack like 200 triggers while playing online

But again, I didn't had the chance to play it.

For me it only resolved once and it got me two drain zombies after it got removed. I had it countered like 3 times so far. Last weekend it got countered which diverted the attention of the real threat being Tombstone Stairwell which i casted the turn after. Its a fun enchantment that I drop late game (with my build) when i have coffers, nykthos or crypt in play. I think to optimalize you should skip/cut it. But i rather have my own (semi) optimalized build with having two copies of a zombie is a fun thing to have

I had some great value with Archghoul of Thraben interacting with Tombstone Stairwell . Filling my graveyard every turn. When it got back to my turn i dropped Noxious Ghoul to clear the board and swing in with 20 hastey zombies

Reya wrote: ↑

1 year ago

Anyone had the chance to experiment with Necroduality ? The card looks really sexy but it does nothing the time it lands and 4 mana is a lot in this deck, especialy for a non zombie creature card.

It looks like an overkill card. But in the same time it should be so fun to stack like 200 triggers while playing online

But again, I didn't had the chance to play it.

I still didn't had a game where I can cast it, definitely will cut it and save it for another zombie commander.

Tonight I finally got some game out of Tombstone Stairwell! The first game, it got destroyed by the next player in sequence - boo! The next game was a different story.

Another player had cast Primal Vigor before I played the Stairwell. I was making eight tokens for the first rotation. On my turn, I swung with the tokens and looted more Zombies. That time around, I was making sixteen. On my next turn, I used Beseech the Queen to get Corpse Knight and suddenly everyone thought it was time to go. 😀😃😄😁😆😅🤣😂

The hilarious part - though not really relevant to the game - was I had Champion of the Perished in play from the start. He had something like 148 tokens when everyone figured the game was over.

Interestingly, Rot Hulk + sac outlet + Mikaeus + Plague Belcher with at least 2 opponents goes infinite. Hadn't realized til my opponents pointed it out.

yeti1069 wrote: ↑

1 year ago

Interestingly, Rot Hulk + sac outlet + Mikaeus + Plague Belcher with at least 2 opponents goes infinite. Hadn't realized til my opponents pointed it out.

Mike + Belcher + Sac Oulet + Any zombie that drain on ETB or Die also works. (Also happened by accident).

Zombo wrote: ↑

1 year ago

yeti1069 wrote: ↑

1 year ago

Interestingly, Rot Hulk + sac outlet + Mikaeus + Plague Belcher with at least 2 opponents goes infinite. Hadn't realized til my opponents pointed it out.

Mike + Belcher + Sac Oulet + Any zombie that drain on ETB or Die also works. (Also happened by accident).

Putrid Goblin works nicely.