Yahenni of the Endless Offerings (EDH)

Commander / EDH Combo Mono-Black Reanimator Theme/Gimmick Tokens Voltron

TehGrief EverForthright musicalsocks

Graveyard Recursion (14)

• 1x Apprentice Necromancer
• 1x Doomed Necromancer
• 1x Elixir of Immortality
• 1x Endless Cockroaches
• 1x Exhume
• 1x Grave Betrayal
• 1x Lifeline
• 1x Liliana, Heretical Healer  ^Flip
• 1x Nether Traitor
• 1x Phyrexian Reclamation
• 1x Reassembling Skeleton
• 1x Rise of the Dark Realms
• 1x Twilight's Call
• 1x Victimize

Voltron Support (7)

• 1x Assault Suit
• 1x Blade of the Bloodchief
• 1x Eldrazi Conscription
• 1x Eternal Thirst
• 1x Fallen Ideal
• 1x Sadistic Glee
• 1x Whispersilk Cloak

Removal (5)

• 1x Attrition
• 1x Minister of Pain
• 1x Retribution of the Ancients
• 1x Tainted AEther
• 1x Vampire Hexmage

Card Draw (4)

• 1x Grim Haruspex
• 1x Skullclamp
• 1x Smothering Abomination
• 1x Solemn Simulacrum

Token Generation (11)

• 1x Abhorrent Overlord
• 1x Animation Module
• 1x Captain's Claws
• 1x Carrier Thrall
• 1x Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder
• 1x Genesis Chamber
• 1x Ogre Slumlord
• 1x Pawn of Ulamog
• 1x Sengir Autocrat
• 1x Skittering Invasion
• 1x Weaponcraft Enthusiast

Land (36)

• 1x Barren Moor
• 1x Forbidden Orchard
• 1x Myriad Landscape
• 1x Nephalia Academy
• 1x Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
• 1x Reliquary Tower
• 1x Rogue's Passage
• 1x Spawning Bed
• 28x Swamp

Mana Sources and Modifiers (6)

• 1x Ashnod's Altar
• 1x Contamination
• 1x Crypt Ghast
• 1x Phyrexian Altar
• 1x Revel in Riches
• 1x Sol Ring

Sacrifice Synergies (1)

• 1x It That Betrays

Commander (1)

Forced Sacrifice (10)

• 1x Abyssal Gatekeeper
• 1x Archfiend of Depravity
• 1x Butcher of Malakir
• 1x Dictate of Erebos
• 1x Fleshbag Marauder
• 1x Grave Pact
• 1x Innocent Blood
• 1x Killing Wave
• 1x Merciless Executioner
• 1x Vona's Hunger

Tutor (5)

• 1x Beseech the Queen
• 1x Burnished Hart
• 1x Demonic Tutor
• 1x Diabolic Intent
• 1x Sidisi, Undead Vizier

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Maybeboard

Being Considered (7)

• 1x Blood Pet
• 1x Hex Parasite
• 1x Living Death
• 1x Massacre Wurm
• 1x Matter Reshaper
• 1x Soldevi Adnate
• 1x Treasure Keeper

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Mono-Black Voltron Combo EDH

Yahenni of the Endless Offerings

"The Consulate pushed me to my limit, Darling, and this is the result." - Yahenni

Introduction

Do you like your friends? No? Well, I suppose that is for the best... as by the end of the night, they won't be fond of you either; from endlessly forcing them to kill the very creatures they love to beating their face in with a Herculean Titan of an Aetherborn... the night is bound to go good for you.

Alongside the ordinary scents that permeate in your local card shop (which will remain unnamed...), death and victory are the aromas that will casually drift around the table, also perhaps the slight scent of fear as you swing with a creature whose power and toughness contains more digits than their debt from College tuition.

By the end of it all, you'll have your friends saying "I've seen enough Yahentai to know where this is going..."

Interested? I can already see you drooling. Below I've listed some of the decks interesting synergy.

Deck Tech

Why choose Yahenni as the commander?

Yahenni is a fast-paced commander that reliably has incredible built-in survivability.

• Costing only to cast, he is generally fully active turn three or four.
• With both Haste and Indestructible as an activated ability, Yahenni is a true Power House.

Time to get STRONK

The main idea behind the deck is to play with a "psuedo-Voltron" playstyle, pumping Yahenni with +1/+1 counters.

Yahenni's ability, "Whenever a creature an opponent controls dies, put a +1/+1 counter on Yahenni, Undying Partisan ", is where we are going to be getting most of our juice.

We focus on forcing Sacrifice triggers on our opponents creatures.

Yahenni's Source of Strength

We've already touched on Yahenni's "Whenever a creature an opponent controls dies, put a +1/+1 counter on Yahenni, Undying Partisan " ability, but now we are going to further progress with ideas to get more power.

Blade of the Bloodchief

Since Yahenni, Undying Partisan has the creature type Vampire we can unlock the full potential of Blade of the Bloodchief .

Because the ability is worded as "Whenever a creature is put into a graveyard from the battlefield, put a +1/+1 counter on equipped creature. If equipped creature is a Vampire, put two +1/+1 counters on it instead.", any time a single creature dies (both yours and your opponents), as long as Yahenni is equipped he will gain two +1/+1 counters.

Anytime you activate Yahenni's "Sacrifice another creature: Yahenni gains indestructible until end of turn." ability while Yahenni has Blade of the Bloodchief equipped he becomes stronger. Making him a huge threat while also discouraging removal attempts.

Eternal Thirst

Similar concept to Blade of the Bloodchief , and identical to Yahenni's own ability; Eternal Thirst is an aura that provides, yet again, more power for Yahenni.

Simply put, with its ability "Whenever a creature an opponent controls dies, put a +1/+1 counter on this creature.", we can effectively double Yahenni's original ability trigger.

However... Eternal Thirst makes Yahenni a beast by providing him with the Lifelink.

Keeping Yahenni Safe...

Despite having access to Indestructible, various other forms of removal can still be a threat.

We want to use Champion's Helm to provide the Hexproof effect and further give Yahenni a chance to remain on the battlefield. The reason we are using Champion's Helm and not something like Lightning Greaves is because we still want to be able to target Yahenni. Shroud will not allow us to do so.

While attacking is the main goal of the deck, we always want to prioritize the safety of Yahenni. By using Captain's Claws we provide an opportunity for Yahenni to always have Indestructible while attacking. Captain's Claws ability reads as "Whenever equipped creature attacks, put a 1/1 white Kor Ally creature token onto the battlefield tapped and attacking."; Yahenni attacks, spawning a worthy sacrifice, activates his ability, and... sigh of relief... Yahenni gets to live another day; the Kor Ally? Not so much.

Let no Man stand before our Lord...

So what if we've made Yahenni indestructible? So what that he has Hexproof? While the opponents may not be able to target or remove Yahenni, we still run into the issue of him being blocked by a foolish 1/1 token creature... or worse... a Memnite . To avoid such tedious encounters... Equip Yahenni with Trailblazer's Boots , granting the unique unblockable effect of "Nonbasic Landwalk".

As much as Landwalk isn't as reliable as unblockable is, we can pretty much assume in an EDH game everyone is going to have at least one nonbasic land.

Know when to quit

Yahenni needs to be reliable outside of Sacrifice triggers. There may come a time during a game where it is NOT beneficial to sacrifice your own creatures; whether the reason is you don't have many creatures left, or perhaps there is a negative effect on the battlefield regarding creature death. Yet, we still need to keep Yahenni safe.

Remember to try and keep a creature or creature token alive for your off-turns, just in case you need to quickly evade a possible attempt to remove Yahenni.

Yehenni, in turn, keeping us safe...

While we are entirely focused on the safety of Yahenni we can presume that we, ourselves, will be under attack or targets of cruel spells intended to remove us from the game.

By equipping Pariah's Shield we can provide an outlet for Combat Damage and Non-Combat Damage alike. With the effect "All damage that would be dealt to you is dealt to equipped creature instead." applied to an Indestructible creature (or, a creature with Regenerate applied), we can safely let vast armies or powerful titans slap our face while we laugh and wait our turn for domination.

Additional tools

We know that Yahenni is going to have a strong focus on attacking. It is advised to attack every turn if you feel it is safe. While attacking, we may as well be getting the most out of it;

• By equipping Conqueror's Flail we allow Yahenni to operate in a Counter-spell free zone during your turns; applying an effect similar to Grand Abolisher .

The Endless Offerings

We know that Yahenni gains power when creatures die; by focusing the rest of the deck to synergize with that theory we are able to craft a powerful, well-oiled machine.

We want our opponents to help fuel our cause, so we add effects that force them to pay into our madness:

• Butcher of Malakir
• Dictate of Erebos
• Grave Pact

For each of these effects that we have on the battlefield, our opponents must sacrifice a creature for each creature that we control that dies. Because of this, we will be activating multiple effects of on our side.

For example, Blade of the Bloodchief + Yahenni, Undying Partisan = Three +1/+1 counters for each creature an opponent sacrifices, adding two +1/+1 counters from our single creature that we sacrificed.

The Math - Blade of the Bloodchief Show

C = 2 + [ (3 x ) P ]

• C - Number of Counters Yahenni will gain once triggers resolve
• x - Number of additional creature sac effects triggered
• P - Number of Opponent Players who will be effected by this.

To keep numbers simple and yet to understand the grand value of this all...

• Single Trigger = ~(x5) +1/+1 Counters (PER OPPONENT)
• Double Trigger = ~(x8) +1/+1 Counters (PER OPPONENT)
• Triple Trigger = ~(x11) +1/+1 Counters (PER OPPONENT)
• Quadruple Trigger = ~(x14) +1/+1 Counters (PER OPPONENT)

Needless to say. Yahenni is going to be Quite Strong.

By using Eternal Thirst + Yahenni, Undying Partisan with the above combo we can add an additional counter for each creature sacrificed by an opponent.

The Math - Adding Eternal Thirst Show

C = 2 + [ (4 x ) P ]

• C - Number of Counters Yahenni will gain once triggers resolve
• x - Number of additional creature sac effects triggered
• P - Number of Opponent Players who will be effected by this.

To keep numbers simple and yet to understand the grand value of this all in addition to the previous combo...

• Single Trigger = ~(x6) +1/+1 Counters (PER OPPONENT)
• Double Trigger = ~(x10) +1/+1 Counters (PER OPPONENT)
• Triple Trigger = ~(x14) +1/+1 Counters (PER OPPONENT)
• Quadruple Trigger = ~(x18) +1/+1 Counters (PER OPPONENT)

Impressive, I know.

Worthy Sacrifices

While the theory behind sacrificing our own creatures seems straight forward, I want to focus on some of the ideas behind both non-token and token creatures in the deck.

The Non-Token Creatures

One of the major issues faced in sacrifice themed decks is truly running out of creatures to sacrifice. Since this deck is a Pseudo-Voltron playstyle, most of the creatures we have in the deck exist to be offered up to Yahenni as a fuel for the deck.

To reduce the issue of running out of creatures, there are cards in the deck focused around replenishing or replacing themselves as they die; creatures such as:

• Doomed Dissenter - Creates a 2/2 Black Zombie Creature Token when it dies
• Dutiful Attendant - Returns another creature card from the graveyard to your hand when it dies
• Endless Cockroaches - Returns itself to your hand when it dies
• Carrier Thrall - Creates a 0/1 Colourless Eldrazi Scion Creature Token when it dies

Other creatures will have similar effects when an opponents creature dies; such as:

• Ogre Slumlord - Creates a 1/1 Black Rat Creature Token when a non-token creature dies
• Pawn of Ulamog - Creates a 0/1 Colourless Eldrazi Spawn Creature Token when a non-token creature you control dies

Some creatures exist to die for other reasons, more as utility or card advantage; these are creatures such as:

• Abyssal Gatekeeper - Triggers an additional global sacrifice trigger
• Burnished Hart - Activated Sacrifice to search for two basic land cards
• Solemn Simulacrum - Triggers card draw when it dies
• Vampire Hexmage - Effective at reducing the power of large creatures with +1/+1 counters, or more importantly... killing planeswalkers

The Token Creatures

These creatures exist solely to be sacrificed. Besides the ones listed above, each of these cards is intended to create and maintain a board of creature tokens:

• Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder - Provides us 1/1 Black Thrull Creature Tokens anytime we cast a creature
• Animation Module - Creates 1/1 Colourless Servo Creature Tokens anytime a +1/+1 counter is placed on a permanent we control for the low cost of

Our main focus is to use the tokens in combination with cards like:

• Minister of Pain - causing a potential killing wave against 1/1 creatures your opponents control
• Rakshasa Gravecaller - creating more token creatures
• Vulturous Aven - triggering card draw
• Skullclamp - triggering card draw
• Victimize - graveyard retrieval
• Attrition - spot removal for pesky creatures that opponents are not willing to sacrifice
• Vampiric Rites - activated card draw

Spooky Scary Skeletons

Whether or not they send shivers down your spine is regardless... These creatures are wonderful for graveyard recursion combos.

Both Reassembling Skeleton and Tenacious Dead make excellent targets for sacrifice because both of them have ways to bounce back into action.

Using either of these cards would require a target that would benefit you. Try grabbing a creature with "Exploit" or another style of death trigger.

Despite being "2spooky4most", the skeletons are actually our friends, and are willing and able to sacrifice themselves to save you.

Notable Exclusions (in progress)

(in progress)

Sacrifice Triggers and Support

• Anowon, the Ruin Sage
• Sheoldred, Whispering One

• Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet

• Bloodline Keeper  

• Mikaeus, the Unhallowed

Life-loss triggers

• Falkenrath Noble
• Blood Artist

• Zulaport Cutthroat

• Gray Merchant of Asphodel (... boring...)

"Meta" Voltron Support

• Lightning Greaves

Card Draw

• Harvester of Souls
• Necropotence
• Phyrexian Arena

Mill & Discard

• Altar of Dementia

Mana Production & Lands

• Caged Sun
• Extraplanar Lens
• Crypt of Agadeem
• Temple of the False God
• Cabal Coffers
• Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

Again, something to consider before building or playing this deck is that it is NOT novice friendly. Though the deck is truly not intended to be played casually, Voltron decks tend to draw a lot of aggro from most players at the table; being able to out-play your opponents relies on the adept skill playing it.

This deck is fun (for you...) and fast-paced; it's great if by the end of the night you don't want to have any friends!

Pros and Cons

Pros

• Deck is fast paced and reliable while facing the average deck.
• Plays as a similar Voltron Hybrid style - Heavy Focus on Yahenni himself.
• Devastates most "Voltron" style decks (disregarding Sigarda, Host of Herons ).
• Heavy Combo Deck - Every play through will be different and the deck will always keep you on your toes.
• Board-Wipes are beneficial!

Cons

• Deck is Mono-Coloured, causing you to lack beneficial abilities from other colours.
• Yahenni's play style does not benefit from and can be severely hindered by non-creature decks.
• Does not do well against "Graveyard Hate" like Rest in Peace or Grafdigger's Cage .
• NOT beginner friendly - requires a good memory and pace to keep up with the combos.
• Currently only focuses on commander damage as a win-con. (will be updated in the future)

Additional Credits

• Original deck idea: EverForthright

Top Ranked	Achieved #14 position overall 6 years ago
Date added	6 years
Last updated	5 years
Exclude colors	WURG
Splash colors	B
Key combos	Blade of the Bloodchief + Yahenni, Undying Partisan Eternal Thirst + Yahenni, Undying Partisan
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	2 - 0 Mythic Rares 36 - 0 Rares 28 - 0 Uncommons 6 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.48
Tokens	City's Blessing, Eldrazi Scion 1/1 C, Eldrazi Spawn 0/1 C, Emblem Liliana, Defiant Necromancer, Harpy 1/1 B, Kor Ally 1/1 W, Morph 2/2 C, Myr 1/1 C, Rat 1/1 B, Serf 0/1 B, Servo 1/1 C, Spirit 1/1 C, Thrull 1/1 B, Treasure, Zombie 2/2 B
Folders	Combined Efforts (Friends), The Evil Deckthief Strikes Again, primer, Budget EDH, EDH, maybe, Budget, EDH Decks, Decks, EDH Decks to Build