Varina

Commander / EDH WUB (Esper)

katsuma

Land (35)

• 1x Ancient Tomb
• 1x Caves of Koilos
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Deserted Beach
• 1x Drowned Catacomb
• 1x Exotic Orchard
• 1x Fabled Passage
• 1x Flooded Strand
• 1x Glacial Fortress
• 1x Godless Shrine
• 1x Hallowed Fountain
• 2x Island
• 1x Isolated Chapel
• 1x Marsh Flats
• 1x Morphic Pool
• 1x Path of Ancestry
• 1x Phyrexian Tower
• 2x Plains
• 1x Prairie Stream
• 1x Prismatic Vista
• 1x Raffine's Tower
• 1x Sea of Clouds
• 1x Shipwreck Marsh
• 1x Sunken Hollow
• 3x Swamp
• 1x Takenuma, Abandoned Mire
• 1x Underground River
• 1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
• 1x Vault of Champions
• 1x Watery Grave
• 1x Agadeem's Awakening  ^Flip

Evasion (5)

• 1x Death Baron
• 1x Haunted One
• 1x Lord of the Accursed
• 1x Zombie Master
• 1x Akroma's Will

Aristocrats (14)

• 1x Carrion Feeder
• 1x Champion of the Perished
• 1x Gravecrawler
• 1x Bladestitched Skaab
• 1x Corpse Knight
• 1x Shepherd of Rot
• 1x Wayward Servant
• 1x Withered Wretch
• 1x Ashnod's Altar
• 1x Diregraf Captain
• 1x Phyrexian Altar
• 1x Plague Belcher
• 1x Vengeful Dead
• 1x Gray Merchant of Asphodel

Removal (9)

• 1x Path to Exile
• 1x Swords to Plowshares
• 1x Counterspell
• 1x Mana Drain
• 1x Narset's Reversal
• 1x Fierce Guardianship
• 1x Murderous Rider
• 1x Void Rend
• 1x Overcharged Amalgam

Recursion (7)

• 1x Mission Briefing
• 1x Relentless Dead
• 1x Lord of the Undead
• 1x Liliana, Untouched By Death
• 1x Living Death
• 1x Patriarch's Bidding
• 1x Zombie Apocalypse

Tokens (4)

• 1x Tainted Adversary
• 1x Diregraf Colossus
• 1x Tombstone Stairwell
• 1x The Scarab God

Tutor (2)

• 1x Mystical Tutor
• 1x Scheming Symmetry

Commander (1)

CardDraw (10)

• 1x Cryptbreaker
• 1x Undead Augur
• 1x Liliana's Standard Bearer
• 1x Midnight Reaper
• 1x Raffine, Scheming Seer
• 1x Graveborn Muse
• 1x Teferi's Ageless Insight
• 1x Alhammarret's Archive
• 1x Kindred Discovery
• 1x Bolas's Citadel

Ramp (8)

• 1x Mana Crypt
• 1x Land Tax
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Arcane Signet
• 1x Azorius Signet
• 1x Dimir Signet
• 1x Orzhov Signet
• 1x Smothering Tithe

Boardwipe (5)

• 1x Cyclonic Rift
• 1x Damn
• 1x Toxic Deluge
• 1x Noxious Ghoul
• 1x Austere Command

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Maybeboard

Other (4)

• 1x And They Shall Know No Fear
• 1x Razorlash Transmogrant
• 1x Deny the Witch
• 1x Ratadrabik of Urborg

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This is the most fun Zombie commander in the world! It's a mid-range deck with a couple of different pathways to victory, and really good resiliency.

Early game: focus on getting out as many 1-3 drop Zombies as possible in the first few turns. I will usually not keep a hand that doesn't have at least one low-drop Zombie and two of the three colors needed to cast Varina, Lich Queen. The game plan early is to ramp and prep for Varina.

Once you cast Varina (on turn 2-3 usually), you'll want to have zombies out to trigger her ability. The primary goal for me is to fill the graveyard with as many zombies as possible. The beautiful part of Varina is that you will often see a huge amount of the deck through her looting. As a result of the filtering, I rarely miss land drops (you can just keep one land each turn to make sure that you'll hit it). Land Tax is so amazing for this reason -- you can use it as "draw three each turn," as you can trigger Varina and then just discard the lands, keeping the non-lands in your hand.

There are a couple of main win-cons or paths for the deck.

Mass Reanimation

My main goal in the deck is to fill up the graveyard as quickly as possible and land a Living Death or Zombie Apocalypse. That almost always wins the game between aristocrats and other things. One of the benefits of the filtering is that I'll usually see one or both at some point, and then just sandbag it for the endgame. Mission Briefing is also nice here for getting it back from the graveyard.

Aristocrats

There are ton of aristocrats payoffs in the deck -- Carrion Feeder + Corpse Knight + Diregraf Captain etc. Play out some zombies and sac them for value!

Combo

Related, there are a couple of infinite combos. Phyrexian Altar and Gravecrawler goes infinite with a zombie sac outlet, and you can drain out the table.

Tokens

Tombstone Stairwell is literally the best card in the deck. You get a ton of zombies (with all the ETB/death triggers)...... every player's turn. In one rotation around the table, you'll be getting easily 50+ ETB/death triggers from this one card. It's amazing and I don't think I've ever cast it and not won the game. Also, don't forget to read all of Vengeful Dead if you have it on the board...

Zombie smash

There are also 5/6 zombie lords in the deck, which can buff up a ton of tokens and you can always just attack for lethal (you want to be attacking every turn anyway). Zombie Master and Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth are a nice combo together.

Other cool things

• Kindred Discovery will draw SO many cards! I've never actually decked myself for what it's worth, but I have drawn 40 cards in one turn cycle with Tombstone Stairwell out.
• Archfiend of Ifnir is totally worth not being a zombie because you get to essentially boardwipe every attack.

Date added	4 years
Last updated	1 year
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	13 - 0 Mythic Rares 59 - 0 Rares 12 - 0 Uncommons 9 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.86
Tokens	Copy Clone, Treasure, Zombie 2/2 B, Zombie 2/2 B w/ Decayed, Zombie 2/2 B w/ Haste