Heart of Darkness Challenge - Pt. II - Yarok
Commander / EDH
SCORE: 5 | 15 COMMENTS | 290 VIEWS
Second Draft —Feb. 28, 2025
Initially when I put together this construction, I had forgotten to include a lot of super important creatures. I had overlooked things like Dinrova Horror, and the importance of what has recently become one of my favorite Black spells- Saw in Half.
I'm having a lot of fun with the overlapping ETB synergies I've created here, and Balaam__ made great commentary about that necessity. I will only defend myself by saying I was tired and under-committed in the moment. After closely recombing over the build, I have found that the formula for success is pretty easy here!
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we lead with something something small, or do our best to ramp early with things like Rampant Growth or Farseek. Having out some punk dorks like Ulvenwald Captive could be pretty useful, but the hardest effort regarding this deck is the lack of... friendship.
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I was pretty spot on that Three Tree City is a flavor fail because none of these guys really have fun together. However, when you arrange them all around their favorite toys such as Panharmonicon, they tend to get along pretty well. Plus, a factor that normally represents card-death and dead-draws, not sure how i wanna describe it.. anyways that associated feeling is made moot by the prospect of Yarok's phrasing- we are increasing whenever a permanent we control does the thing, and not being just limited to creatures is a pretty big deal.
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My favorite formula right now is Tutor + Ramp/Mill + Creature + Saw in Half = Profit. This deck became a lot more fun once I had slept, and now that I've really laid out my decklist, I'm ready for the true feedback!
I don't have the time to review this tonight, but I'll try to take a close look at it tomorrow! And I've made some progress on my brew, too!
February 27, 2025 11:25 p.m.
@Andramalech hmm…the latest iteration leaves me scratching my head alright, but not necessarily in a good way. I figure since I have zero experience in the format (and my technical expertise in other formats is…questionable, at best) I’m probably missing something, so feel free to spell it out for me. I should probably have posted this to my profile page instead where I could easily delete it post-reply to hide my shame. Anyway, if I’m way off and there’s some high level technical brilliance at work here, feel free to let me have it with both barrels.
Right, so first things first. I love Reanimator. It’s my favorite archetype, far and away, so that immediately caught my attention. That said, I have concerns. Some (and by some, I mean a large number) of your creatures don’t actually have any ETB triggers that feed into your commander’s ability. Elder Brain, Ulvenwald Captive, Flip Wharf Infiltrator etc etc etc don’t do anything in tandem with the commander (Hunted Horror actually works against you). Same goes for many of the other non-creature permanents, like Crawling Infestation, Mirri’s Guile, Sylvan Library etc etc.
It’s not like there are no contenders that work with Yarok but there are far, far fewer than I would have expected. Perhaps there is a synergy or design motif I’m missing? I’m not sure. In any case, if the body of creatures function well together, separate and apart from the commander’s inherent trait, then all well and good. It’s possible I’m just naïve and assume that EDH builds always want the commander for the commander’s actual ability, when that’s not entirely true.
Secondly, and this may once again betray how little I know of EDH, but I was looking at your commander’s color identity (I hate that term, it sounds so ‘woke’) and by extension your chosen lands and spell pips and whoa boy—a single Blood Moon would be catastrophic. Cyclonic Rift could ‘take care of it’, by which I mean it would bounce it to be replayed the very next turn, and I only saw maybe one or two other ways to deal with any blood moon type effect. Does it see play in commander?
These are preliminary thoughts from someone with no EDH experience, so take them with an ocean’s worth of salt. I do like the deck in principle, but I think there’s work to be done.
February 27, 2025 11:33 p.m.
Andramalech says... #5
Balaam__ I was reliant on this type of feedback sure, but this is alas, a first draft with tomorrow on the horizon- I'll revisit this for sure and answer all questions more in depth tomorrow. I apologize for not having more in depth analysis available right now.
Andramalech says... #2
kamarupa, Balaam__. My secondary submission in the EDH category, I'll be sure to work on the Legacy/etc. build tomorrow. Cheers!
February 27, 2025 10:40 p.m.