As soon as I saw Yawgmoth, Thran Physician spoiled I fell in love with him. I've been dreaming forever of having s card say "Sacrifice a creature: draw a card" with no mana cost associated with it.
One of my favorite strategies in Magic is aristocrats. Ever since I learned of the archetype, I've wanted to make a good aristocrats build. something just speaks to me about killing my own creatures to draw cards and drain my opponents. Through the years I've built Ghave, Guru of Spores, Regna, the Redeemer+Krav, the Unredeemed and Teysa Karlov. But none of them managed to stand their ground, they were all to slow to set ut, as you needed tons of mana to get out the engine and the fodder, and I was often run over by other players before I could get going.
With Yawgmoth, Thran Physician it's different. Now I have access to a sacrifice outlet and card draw on one creature, which also happens to be my commander, so I can get going rather quickly. The curve on this deck peaks at CMC 2, and I only have a few cards that cost 6 or more.But that's enough for the background, how does this deck work?
The strategy
Well first and foremost we need small bodies to sacrifice to Yawgmoth, Thran Physician. Some great cards in this category are the creatures who can bring themselves back from the graveyard, such as Reassembling Skeleton. Another great fodder for Yawgmoth, Thran Physician is tokens, and we’re playing some great token generators like Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder and Dreadhorde Invasion. I would of course play Bitterblossom if I could, but it’s out of my budget for the moment.
Card Draw
Yawgmoth, Thran Physician is great card draw, but we can’t entirely rely on his ability, in the case that his commander tax shoots through the roof, or he gets turned into a forest (card:song of dryads). But lycky for us, black has a bunch of great card draw in the same vein as Yawgmoth, Thran Physician, like Grim Haruspex, Midnight Reaper and Smothering Abomination. I shouldn’t have to mention Skullclamp, and Ayara, First of Locthwain also gives us the ability to sacrifice creatures to draw cards, although only once per turn.
Dies Triggers
We are playing aristocrats after all, and it wouldn’t be aristocrats if we didn’t have ways to take advantage of our creatures dying. One of the best way to do this is to get more creatures whenever a creature dies. This is accomplished through Pawn of Ulamog and similar effects. Another way to get value from sacrificing our creatures is through killing our opponent’s creatures with Dictate of Erebos and Butcher of Malakir. And lastly, the main win cons in aristocrats, the Blood Artist effects, which allows us to drain our opponents when our creatures die. These last couple years, we’ve been getting some great additions to this category, the best of which is probably Syr Konrad, the Grim, since he triggers not only on our creatures dying, but our opponents’ creatures, as well as any mill, reanimation or graveyard hate we or our opponents may use.
-1/-1 Counters
But Yawgmoth, Thran Physician’s first ability does not only sacrifice creatures and draw cards, it also puts -1/-1 counters on creatures. This is great removal, but -1/-1 counters also have some great synergies. For one we’re running Necroskitter to steal all the creatures we kill.
Another great synergy is with Mikaeus, the Unhallowed. -1/-1 counters and +1/+1 counters have an interesting interaction, were if a creature would have both a +1/+1 and a -1/-1 counter, both the counters disappear. This is actually relevant when it comes to undying. When a creature with undying dies, undying will check if the creature has a +1/+1 counter on it. If it doesn’t it’ll come back with one. Now if you put a -1/-1 counter on that creature both the counters will disappear, and the next time the creature dies, it will return again. If you have Yawgmoth, Thran Physician and two creatures with undying, you’ll go infinite, paying 1 life and drawing a card per activation. So if you have Mikaeus, the Unhallowed, Yawgmoth, Thran Physician and two other nonhuman creatures and a Blood Artist to gain you some life, you will go infinite, draw as many cards as you want, and hopefully kill your opponents. I’ve made an active decision of excluding all other undying creatures from the deck, to lessen the chance of going infinite, as I don’t find that particularly enjoying.
Proliferating
Yawgmoth, Thran Physician also has a second ability I haven’t yet mentioned. He allows you to pay and discard a card to proliferate. This is great with all the -1/-1 counters we’ll be putting on creatures, but we can make use of this with some other cards. The best synergy with this is Archfiend of Ifnir. We can discard a card to Yawgmoth, Thran Physician and the proliferate trigger will go on the stack. Then the Archfiend will trigger, and put a -1/-1 counter on all my opponents’ creatures. Then the proliferate will trigger, and I can put an additional counter on each of those creatures. Other great cards to proliferate are mana rocks like Everflowing Chalice and Astral Cornucopia or token generators such as Orochi Hatchery. Then there is one last card relying on counters, and that is Font of Agonies. Font is great in this deck since we’ll be paying a ton of life with Yawgmoth, Thran Physician’s first ability, as well as proliferating with his second ability.
No tutors?
I’ve also made the choice to exclude tutors, since I find the lead to repetitive gameplay, and one of the things I like about edh is the randomness of the decks.
