Yavimaya Granger

Creature — Elf

Echo (2)(Green) (At the beginning of your upkeep, if this came under your control since the beginning of your last upkeep, sacrifice it unless you pay its echo cost.)

When Yavimaya Granger enters the battlefield, you may search your library for a basic land card and put that card into play tapped. If you do, shuffle your library.

Legality

Format	Legality
1v1 Commander	Legal
Archenemy	Legal
Big Apple Highlander	Legal
Block Constructed	Legal
Canadian Highlander	Legal
Casual	Legal
Commander / EDH	Legal
Commander: Rule 0	Legal
Custom	Legal
Duel Commander	Legal
Freeform	Legal
Highlander	Legal
Legacy	Legal
Leviathan	Legal
Limited	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Pauper	Legal
Pauper Duel Commander	Legal
Pauper EDH	Legal
Planar Constructed	Legal
Planechase	Legal
PreDH	Legal
Premodern	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Tiny Leaders	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (51)

DreadKhan on Meren Sacrifice Shenanigans

5 months ago

I see that you are taking a pretty different angle than I did here, but there might be a few cards that I can suggest from my own Meren and the Golgari Queens. Would Savra, Queen of the Golgari make sense in your list? It's a slightly different Grave Pact, but at 4 mana and easy to cast she can come out earlier, the life gain is a lot less important other than offsetting the payment for the effect.

I think they're about as fun as an untreatable toothache, but Grave Pact effects in my experience like you to run several of the Merciless Executioner type creatures that exist, Accursed Marauder is a great start, but I think Plaguecrafter and Demon's Disciple might fit. I don't know exactly how many you'd 'want', but I'd run 3-5 creatures that exist almost purely to make everyone sacrifice a creature. IMHO if you only run one or the other the Executioners are probably the better include since you can get them out sooner, they stand alone (Grave Pact does nothing if you don't have a creature), and you can recur them with your Commander, but both are INCREDIBLY nasty when combined. In the decks I have that use edicts you really want to reach 'critical mass', so that you both have access to an Edict when it's necessary, but also have enough to continuously pare back the opponent's board.

This is a personal preference more than anything, but when I play Meren my fondest hope is usually to have a creature that ramps me that also kills itself; Sakura Tribe Elder is the 'gold standard' of the effect, but I think you could benefit from Diligent Farmhand and Dawntreader Elk, and maybe Yavimaya Granger. I even run Fertilid and Burnished Hart, but I don't think I'd recommend them to anyone else at this point! Anyways, the idea is you juggle one of these to both gain XP for Meren while ramping yourself, and when you draw something better to reanimate just reanimate that. The ramp is usually very useful to cast either Protean Hulk or Razaketh.

Speaking of Razaketh, I found it VERY useful to have mass untap effect to go with Life/Death, once Life/Death makes all your lands into weenies you can untap them with something like Vitalize or Benefactor's Draught. I also threw in a Songs of the Damned and Dark Ritual to help generate mana when I'm short. Lotus Petal is also a very good Razaketh card if you don't want to spring for Lion's Eye DiamondGC.

Just a little tip I stumbled upon, most Meren decks have very high Black devotion, but they rely heavily on early Green ramp; I really wanted to shave lands for creatures in my list, but since I can find Swamps with Forests via ramp, I ended up running WAY less Black sources than Green. I used 7 Basic Swamps and 2 Swamp/Forest duals, and I find I have very few fixing issues, even with a very low land count, since I almost never need more than 2 lands early on, and I found the deck absolutely hated drawing into them (Meren is a deck where I feel like you're supposed to run all the creature ramp you can, because Meren cares so much about Creatures and so little about non-creature spells, lands are dead draws).

I guess that brings me to the last point, I feel like you should really try to get more creatures into this list; your Commander does absolutely nothing if you don't have creatures in the graveyard. I have 57 in the 99 atm, I feel like having less than 40 in a Meren deck is too few. The nice thing about creatures is that Golgari has a LOT of creature synergies, I love using Lurking Predators or Heartwood Storyteller.

If you want more specific help feel free to ask!

RockIV on Golgari commander deck Opinions

1 year ago

ive been thinking and im probably taking out Desecration Demon, Spiritmonger and Skarrg Goliath and add Stonehoof Chieftain, Plated Slagwurm and maybe Hydra Broodmaster and Gleancrawler or Carnage Wurm or Yargle, Glutton of Urborg

im also cheking some other supporting cards like Binding the Old Gods, Bone Shredder, Yavimaya Granger

also Ghoultree and Unnatural Growth that have been recomended by some users could be good adds too

RockIV on Rocks Golgari power of death Commander

1 year ago

ty for the advice guys, Ghoultree could be a good add, it will always be cheap. Unnatural Growth seems to be a very strong add for every creature centered deck.

ive been thinking and im probably taking out Desecration Demon, Spiritmonger and Skarrg Goliath and add Stonehoof Chieftain, Plated Slagwurm and maybe Hydra Broodmaster and Gleancrawler or Carnage Wurm or Yargle, Glutton of Urborg

im also cheking some other supporting cards like Binding the Old Gods, Bone Shredder, Yavimaya Granger

thks for all the advices guys

RockIV on Golgari commander deck Opinions

1 year ago

interesting FormOverFunction, when i was a kid , i used to buy the urzas precon, remeber getting some eco cards in those decks.

Yavimaya Granger could be a good mana ramping card and it can die to help the commander, also Bone Shredder

is there any other interesting eco card that you remeber? ty for the advice, i will consider it

Tsukimi on Can't Catch Me, I'm the GingerBant Man! [Primer]

2 years ago

Crow_Umbra I am trying to fine tune the ramp- Yavimaya Granger and Topiary Stomper didn't work out as well as I hoped, at 3 CMC they usually just come out the turn before Brenard so they don't help the game plan much. They will be replaced with Nature's Lore and Three Visits. I'll be swapping Ao Dawk Sky for Kodama of the East Tree but at 6 CMC I'm not really sure if it can be counted as ramp at that point? If we include it as ramp, that's 13 sources of ramp. I am always conflicted about how many 1cmc mana dorks to include in a deck like this... Early game they are perfect but late game they're not great to draw. What are your thoughts on 1 cmc mana dorks? Not sure if I should keep the 3 I have now or go down to 2 now that I have Three Visits and Nature's Lore...

DreadKhan on 100 cards for Meren

2 years ago

I would look into stuff like Diligent Farmhand, Dawntreader Elk, Yavimaya Granger, Burnished Hart and maybe Fertilid, each of these not only finds a land for you, they will die for your Meren, meaning she can recycle them if you still want more mana for some reason. I think these creatures are much more synergistic than your mana artifacts. There are also cards like Wood Elves and Farhaven Elf that will also find a land but these require a sac outlet.

If you want to add a fairly strong card, Sidisi, Undead Vizier is a really good repeatable tutor (I usually sacrifice her to herself and reanimate her). There are flashier cards like Razaketh, the Foulblooded or Protean Hulk, either should win very quickly if they end up in play, but Sidisi is a bit lower to the ground, and the ability to find anything with no real drawback (and the ability to repeat it) makes this worse Diabolic Tutor very strong. If you want a cheaper version that has huge political potential (you can get a desired effect out of someone else's deck) you might like Varragoth, Bloodsky Sire.

DreadKhan on Meren, Clan of Nel Toth

2 years ago

One of my favourite things to do in Meren is to ramp (my deck is on the clunkier side, and it runs very few lands), and one of the better ways to repeatedly ramp is to use more stuff like Sakura Tribe Elder, variations include Diligent Farmhand, Dawntreader Elk, Yavimaya Granger, and maybe Burnished Hart/Fertilid. All of these can find a Swamp for you, each sacrifices itself and thus they have some nice synergy with Meren. I think the only Meren decks that don't want multiples of that effect is if they are building a very high powered list, where this kind of play 'isn't advancing your board' sufficiently. I often find that farming XP isn't a waste of time early, so these recursive ramp sources offer that as well. I think it's very hard to justify running land ramp Sorceries when you can run creatures that do the same thing, and arguably do a better job of it. I would also shave stuff like Arcane Signet or the Talisman for creature ramp, Meren can't recur your rocks for you when they get blown up. In addition to Meren there are tons of things that synergize with creatures, stuff like Beast Whisperer and Liliana's Standard Bearer can draw lots of cards via creatures, and you don't get that synergy with a 2 mana rock. Using Meren to recur Liliana's Standard Bearer is a pretty impressive bulk draw option.

Some generically good cards for a Meren list that I love are Buried Alive, Final Parting, and Jarad's Orders, each of these offers real tutoring power, and none are especially pricey. Buried Alive can find a whole combo for you to win with. Old Stickfingers is probably worth a look for the similar reasons, Meren feels really weak if you have no creatures in your yard to reanimate. I'm not sure if it's too high budget, but Fiend Artisan has a lot of synergy with Meren. You don't have to dig out a combo piece for the card to do useful things.

In my Meren deck it's a much better Rhystic Study (I run a very high creature count), but I suspect you'd get some value out of Lurking Predators. There is also Heartwood Storyteller, in my experience both belong in a deck with even more creatures but they could still be useful I think.

In my limited experience Callous Bloodmage offers pretty good graveyard hate on a very low budget, and if you don't need that it can do other stuff, it's a great card to use in infinite loop since it can do a few useful things.

Mitotic Slime offers you a ton of bodies for only 5 mana, it's not especially hard to go infinite with as a result. I like using it with Demon of Dark Schemes and Pitiless Plunderer (and a sac outlet) to win, the nicest part about using a combo like this is that each piece is independently good. Phyrexian Altar is better than Plunderer, but it's even more money (though the difference has dropped sharply).

Dawnstrider is an extra Spore Frog, one that doesn't require reanimation but offers a discard outlet, letting you put creatures in your graveyard. Silverglade Pathfinder is another discard outlet, but offers ramp instead.

I hope this isn't too try-hard for your deck, Meren is a very fun Commander to build.

DreadKhan on Meren of Clan Nel Toth Aristocrats (WIP)

3 years ago

I find mana sources can be a good way to generate XP while adding lands/mana, Dawntreader Elk and Diligent Farmhand are both recursive ramp sources for Meren. Yavimaya Granger is another option, but requires you to hit 3 mana, so it's a bit worse. I also use Blood Pet, and there are some bigger Blood Pets out there. All of these can add mana to your pool, are easily recurred, and add XP when they ramp you, which lets you play out the rest of your hand quicker. If you're adding lands, it also will let you recast Meren when you inevitably need to. These are all better IMHO than Satyr Wayfinder and Yavimaya Elder (one doesn't ramp you and the other can whiff, one doesn't even die on it's own). Solemn similarly has issues, coming in at 4 mana and also not being able to sacrifice itself. Any of these that work for 2 mana at most are strictly better than Rampant Growth in a Meren deck in my experience, you want creatures to do this. Golgari Signet (and even Arcane Signet) are also probably worse than creature ramp, again provided it's low enough to the ground. These suggestions are assuming your goals is to actively try to generate XP and ramp at the same time, possibly while using little (or none) of your mana to do it.

I like Sadistic Hypnotist if you can fit it in, it's an infinite sac outlet that also can Mind Rot people, that's real value even at 5 mana. Mitotic Slime is a good way to generate a lot of bodies. Dockside Chef is a reasonable sac outlet, as is Skullport Merchant. Buried Alive, Final Parting, and Jarad's Orders are pretty solid tutors in Meren. Also worth a look, Viscera Seer, if not also Carrion Feeder, B for an infinite sac outlet can be huge. Worst case scenario they can off themselves for Meren to reanimate (free XP is always good).