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This is a knowledge-dump/primer that includes the most useful and exciting information I have so far acquired about;

Volrath, the Shapestealer

Plus specifics on how Volrath works with other cards and how this Volrath deck in particular plays.

This is my favorite iteration I've yet made of Volrath, and this deck plays like a Voltron deck. In that the main win condition and what the deck does well is making getting hit by Volrath a problem. While also frequently making it impossible to not get hit by Volrath. Whether by changing him into unblockables like Invisible Stalker or other sources of evasion. Plus making it hard to remove Volrath by giving him sources of hexproof (like Sylvan Caryatid) to become a copy of. In this way, Volrath gives Voltron a unique surplus of recursion and flexibility to it's evasion. Instead of just playing a Alpha Authority onto Volrath, you can just pay to copy Gladecover Scout on the stack of things targeting Volrath, and if they respond with another spell, just stack the Volrath ability on top again. Then when they are forced to remove the Gladecover Scout, it is easier to retrieve creatures from the graveyard than enchantments and artifacts anyway (Reanimate).

‎‎‎‎‎‎The difference that separates it from a Voltron deck, is that all while you stack counters on your commander and make him as big as possible, you also turn him into creatures that do cool things when they deal combat damage. ‎All after your opponents are forced to declare no blockers of course.

Swinging with a (7/5) Mist-Cloaked Herald for commander damage becomes a lot cooler when it turns into a (7/5) Cold-Eyed Selkie before it deals that commander damage, drawing you 7 or maybe more cards if you have been stacking counters on Volrath.

The deck could be way more scary and competitive by taking out all the cards that do cool things when Volrath hits you while shapestealing (like Cephalid Constable) with creatures that easily kill you with infect instead (Blighted Agent). I don't personally run these cards as my frequent play groups are not competitive enough, and few people "enjoy" losing to poison counters. For the same reason, only the best sources of proliferate are run in the deck; and not run in any mandatory fashion since proliferating +1/+1's is a lot less strong compared to proliferating poison counters. Regardless, Infect is a strong archetype for Volrath, and if you change creatures out for infect creatures, you should also change out other cards for cards that spam proliferate.

To use Volrath effectively you need to have an understanding of when priority starts and stops in a combat phase. If you are going to tell people they can't assign blockers on your (7/5) Invisible Stalker when you attack, but that you can turn it into a card that is blockable like Mist-Syndicate Naga afterwards in the same combat, you might need to be able to explain how. Plus knowing the combat steps is convenient for settling disputes and avoiding confusion / having to look up the rules.

There are 5 total instances in a combat phase where priority is started and passed, starting with the active (attacking) player. Priority begins with you and passes when:

1. You move to combat (on the stack of beginning of combat triggers, including Volrath's first ability).

2. After declaring attackers (on the stack above attack triggers).

3. After the opponent declares blockers (on the stack above block triggers).

4. After combat damage is all dealt simultaneously.

5. At the beginning of the end of combat step, before "end of combat" triggers.

These are the moments you have to work Volrath's magic and change the text on your attacking commander to whatever you have available to you (on your board or otherwise). The rest of this primer will be discussion on Volrath's specific card interactions and deck archetypes.

Volrath is one of the only commanders that Blade of Selves works with. When he copies a creature, he loses his name and takes the non-legendary one he copies (copying a legendary creature with Volrath would instantly legend rule one of the two cards). In this case, the Myriad tokens do not legend rule each other; Although only the original Volrath (and not the copies) will deal commander damage, as being a commander is an attribute of a individual card and not a creature. However if Volrath had copied an infect card, all the copies would apply poison counters. You could potentially hit every opponent with a (7/5) Blighted Agent in one combat this way, and kill them all shortly after with proliferate. Important to note, the token copies do not see attack triggers, so you cannot use Blade of Selves to trigger attack triggers multiple times, as cool as that would be with something like Nacatl War-Pride.

Similar to the Myriad trigger, with Nacatl War-Pride, the copies of Volrath made with the attack trigger are not your commander and so do not deal commander damage. However they can be declared attacking at any of your opponents, not just the one you used to get the attack trigger.

Important to also recognize that declaring attackers triggers attack triggers and then gives you priority. So you can have Volrath attack as a copy of Nacatl War-Pride, and then before blockers can be declared, change him into something else like Spawnwrithe. This would put Volrath becoming Spawnwrithe on the stack of the attack trigger that creates attacking copies. This would create X, (7/5), Spawnwrithe's with Volrath's second ability that are tapped and attacking, where X is the number of creatures your original target has on the field, and those creatures may be declared attacking any opponent you choose. And yes, if those Spawnwrithe's get their damage through to players, you create copies of those (7/5), Spawnwrithe's with Volrath's second ability.

Using the above method, you can instantly win the game on your end step by attack triggering Volrath as a copy of Nacatl War-Pride and then changing him into a Biovisionary. If you attack a player that has 3 creatures or more with this combo, you generate enough copies of Biovisionary to win the game before the Nacatl War-Pride trigger would remove them.

For specifically combo's that go infinite, Volrath does an okay enough job at doing simple things like going infinite in mana with a select few creatures on the field. Think anything that a Experiment Kraj deck could do could also be done with Volrath.

For example, if you get a counter on a Viridian Joiner and a Pili-Pala at the same time; Volrath can just bounce back and forth from being one to the other. Tapping to generate 7 mana as Viridian Joiner, then paying to become Pili-Pala to untap for and get back and then turn back into Viridian Joiner for again. Generating a net 4 mana each time, repeatable indefinitely.

Any combination of one persist creature (Putrid Goblin) and one undying creature (Young Wolf) on the field at the same time will also allow you to go infinite with a sacrifice outlet like Ashnod's Altar. As when Volrath is sacrificed as a creature with persist, he will re-enter with a -1/-1, and then can be changed into a creature with undying and sacrificed again to re-enter with a +1/+1, repeatable indefinitely.

As an outlet for all that mana, any cards that pay like Exsanguinate will let you win the game.

For infinite targeted removal instead, you can use Devoted Druid and Grim Poppet much like the other examples. This combo has Volrath generate a bunch of mana and -1/-1's as Devoted Druid, and then using to swap to Grim Poppet to dump all those counters onto the opponents creatures, repeatable until no targets are left.

The problem with the infinites that Volrath is capable of is that in order to run them you have to run many cards that only work with a certain few other cards in the 99. If I pull an undying and a persist creature, but I'm missing my Viscera Seer or Ashnod's Altar, I can't go infinite yet and have to tutor to get those pieces and become a threat. Plus those pieces are not very useful to have outright. At least in my playgroup, the use of very strong tutors like Vampiric Tutor is frowned upon as it makes decks extremely strong very quickly, capable of ending a game in one turn if no one is holding counter play. Without those tutors, jank combos aren't consistent enough, and with those tutors the combos are too linear and stale quickly. It may be different in other groups, but the majority of mine see infinites as cool but on the same bench as Infect combos. For these reasons, all the cards I run are good outright. In that they all have their own intrinsically strong interactions with just Volrath alone, and become even stronger when combined with most of the other 99. Pili-Pala alone on the field does almost nothing at all, and is a sad top deck if my combo is in my library or in exile. If I top deck Invisible Stalker however, I now have a new win condition, and it gets all my other creature's effects through as Volrath.

The best part of building the deck like this is that every game has the opportunity to put out a unique combination of cards without ever being too weak. Just card draw and recursion effects keep the deck pushing out threats and instigating unique interactions, and no one ever has a chance to complain about how "you always just tutor for Nacatl War-Pride."

Creatures with effects like Persist (Putrid Goblin) and Undying (Young Wolf) allow you to hold up to avoid board wipes that destroy all creatures. As long as they have counters on them to be valid targets for Volrath. As a note, it is always more likely that Persist is going to be successful as a source of evasion since you will very commonly choose to have +1/+1 counters go on Volrath for other reasons anyway. This makes him frequently incapable of triggering Undying. Sadly there are few cheap creatures that can be used as targets for Persist, and most are bad enough compared to other cards that they don't earn a place in the 99. For this purpose, cards like Kaya's Ghostform are usually better outright. Along with cards that phase out instead like AEtherling.

If you create a copy of Volrath using a trigger like Mist-Syndicate Naga, those copies have Volrath's second ability, but when that ability is used, they return to being (7/5) Mist-Syndicate Naga's at the beginning of your turn, instead of becoming Volrath again. It works the same way with direct copy effects like Clone. A Clone copy targeting Volrath while he is shapestealing will always be a (7/5) copy of whatever Volrath was at the time with his shapestealing ability. Essentially, you keep these Volrath's, they will never legend rule each other. These effects can be used to create a comical number of Volrath's, easily filling the board with many copies of your commander (although they don't deal commander damage). The way Volrath avoids legend ruling himself is the basis that many Volrath decks are built around, as clone/shapeshifter-tribal archetypes.

Since Volrath's second ability specifies "Until your next turn," the ability acts on a duration instead of triggering again on a step in the beginning of turn phase. This means you never have a chance to respond to Volrath becoming himself (or the what the original card was) to enable the use of upkeep triggers on creatures you are copying. Currently I know of only one way to circumvent this limitation through the use of Paradox Haze to have a second upkeep step on your turn. You could turn Volrath into another creature after your first upkeep, but before your second, getting the cloned upkeep trigger. In my opinion this method is not currently efficient enough to be worth building around, since if you wanted to put upkeep trigger creatures in a Volrath deck, you would have to run the risk of not being able to always play Paradox Haze; and that card shares it's effect with no other cards as of when this primer was written.

+1 Upvote

It's easy to do and I appreciate the support!

Good luck and have fun!


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54% Casual

46% Competitive

Date added 3 years
Last updated 3 months
Exclude colors WR
Legality

This deck is Commander / EDH legal.

Rarity (main - side)

5 - 0 Mythic Rares

54 - 0 Rares

24 - 0 Uncommons

12 - 0 Commons

Cards 100
Avg. CMC 2.78
Tokens Copy Clone, Dreamstealer 4/4 B, Insect 1/1 B, Manifest 2/2 C, Snake 1/1 G, Snake 1/1 G w/ Deathtouch, Spirit 1/1 C
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