Varolz And His Happy Butcher Shop
Commander / EDH*
SCORE: 14 | 5 COMMENTS | 3137 VIEWS | IN 7 FOLDERS
Once again, my deck has changed quite a bit! —Aug. 19, 2023
Below is my old deck description. I've made quite a lot of changes (like 5 cards) which entirely change the whole dynamic of the deck.
OLD DECK DESCRIPTION
A History of the Butcher
After a year had passed and my thirst for a turn one kill was pretty much sated I started to reel back the competitive nature of the deck and started to shift it towards a competitive deck that doesn't try to win one turn one or two. Now after many years the deck is finally settling down into it's final form.
Deck Overview
1. You diddle about the first 3-4 turns building up resources and drawing cards
2. You find one of the many tutors
3. You find Protean Hulk
4. You sacrifice Protean Hulk
5. You win the game to the demise of everyone else at the table
Ah Mikaeus, the bread to my butter, and the very card responsible for amany degenerate combos, not just in this deck, but for all of commander. The only true infinite combo I have in the deck is with him.
The only card that is truly infinite is woodfall. You just keep sacrificing him until all the noncreature card you want to be deaded are deaded. Besides woodfall the other cards that I combo souly with Mikaeus are,
Sidisi and Shriekmaw are the only two cards that don't need a sacrifice outlet because sidisi can kill herself and shriekmaw dies when he's done his job. Everything else I've just listed is really just to get extra benefit from the additional ETB trigger.
The big baddie himself. He gets unbanned from the format and now any deck has an easy target for a free access pass to any creature combo they really want, and that's right, I'm included in that "any deck" so here's the combo, the showcase of my deck, the pièce de résistance if you will.
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Protean Hulk needs to become not alive. Doesn't matter how, just do it.
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Get Viscera Seer for a sac outlet if you don't already have one and Phyrexian Delver for recursion; target Protean Hulk to reanimate him.
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Sacrifice the hulk boy again with Viscera Seer or any other sacrifice outlet. Get Mikaeus, the Unhallowed.
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Sacrifice Phyrexian Delver, he will come back all snazzy with a new counter from undying with Mikaeus, the Unhallowed.
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Reanimate Protean Hulk (guess who back) shot him in the face with a sac outlet. He'll come back, (back again) but before he comes back get Gravebreaker Lamia and another 1 drop, then put Dread Return in your graveyard from Lamia's ability.
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Protean Hulk needs to die on more time, this time he wont come back with undying because he has a counter on him already. With this death grab Sidisi, Undead Vizier and another 1 drop.
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Use Dread Return's flashback by sacrificing all the one drops you've been grabbing and any other creatures without counters on them. Target...
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Protean Hulk is alive again. (Protean hulks back) sacrifice him again getting Gray Merchant of Asphodel and another one drop.
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sacrifice Gray Merchant of Asphodel to get another trigger from him with undying and kill Protean Hulk one final time getting Body Snatcher.
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reanimate Gray Merchant of Asphodel with Body Snatcher and get another two triggers with Gary.
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At this time you have probably dealt around 40-50 points of damage to each player while gaining around 3 times that life. winning the game or causing every other play to scope 10 minutes ago while you were goldfishing your deck.
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(Tell a friend).
In the previous two panels I've explained the main combo enabler and "the big combo" of the deck. In this panel I'll just be explaining a bunch of small combos that don't win the game, but are nonetheless, good ways to get ahead on resources
if you use Reanimate on Vilis, Broker of Blood he will actually see the damage from reanimate and you will draw the 8 cards from his ability and the life loss
Skirge Familiar and either Necropotence or Vilis, Broker of Blood is a good way to cast any spells you need the exile effect from Necropotence doesn't really matter as Riftsweeper can get you back any cards you absolutely need
of course Sensei's Divining Top and Bolas's Citidel is the good ol' build your own yawgmoth's Bargen
Ramunap Excavator and any fetch land is really more of a good happenstance rather than a combo, but it's going here anyway
really Bolas's Citidel and Vilis, Broker of Blood are just two cards that are absolutely broken and can start combos at the drop of the hat.
Eternal Witness + a sacrifice outlet that generates mana like Ashnod's Altar or Phyrexian Altar + Living Death allows you to cycle your board over and over for any ETB effects that you would want to abuse.
I've just recently put Liliana's Standard Bearer in the deck and I've found some convoluted combos that work with him and Ashnod's Altar. You if you can generate any card advantage with him he starts to combo extremely well with Skirge Familiar. Draw cards, discard them with skirge's ability, and then sacrifice the bearer and reanimate him to repeat the process. It requires a lot of pieces but it essentially allows me to draw my whole deck.
If you so happen to like my deck and would like to build it for yourself this panel will help if you ever feel like editing the deck. The cards below are central to deck and could be considered the core.
I would consider these card to be the baseline of the deck. Almost everything else I have in the deck just equates to tutors or additional draw for more consistent gameplay, but if you're trying to build on a budget or want to lower the power level of the deck but still keep the insane combo in then these are the card that are a must include.
I've finally took out Greenwarden of Murasa I may feel a little sad about him leaving as he has been in the deck for probably as long as it has existed, but he's bad. His whole being is just a 6 mana Eternal Witness In his place I have put Woodland Bellower. As I continue to build the deck, having a creature that can get multiple answers from my deck is just overall better. A long time ago I used to have Bellower in the deck, but ended up cutting him because I wasn't able to use him all to much, now I think he will be a decent addition to the deck overall.
just look at all those juicy foils I've already collected.
Food for Thought
This deck did go through a phase in which is was much more toned for cEDH. It could consistently get the kill off on turn 2-3 around 60% of the time. I'm not the be-all end-all of cEDH, so you could just as easily go look up a primer for Varolz, (because some crazy people are playing him competitively for whatever reason) but I'll still leave this list of options just in case someone wants any suggestion on ways to take their deck to the next level.
These are all good mana rocks that supply a decent mana to cost ratio. After the artifacts there is "fast mana" as I like to put it.
These are generally spells that will get you ahead further than mana rocks but only once.
the odd one out, neither artifact or instant.
The standard here is cards that either protect your spells/permanents, strip the threats from others, or destroy hate pieces that are locking you out of the game. There are other cards out there that do the same as these cards, these are just the most played.
- Walking balista
but there are other cards that also are better win cons than contently sacrificing Gary for the eventual win.
I've just recently added some cards into my maybeboard, cards that I think would be better. I'm mainly looking at
I've played with Crucible of Worlds before, but that was back when I had just recently built the deck so I didn't really have any good lands to combo with it, but now I've got a better selection of lands such as Strip Mine and the fetch's. Wasteland is in there just for a better selection of utility lands.
The last thing I want to add is that I really need better selection of 4 drop creatures in my deck so if anyone has any suggestions I really need them. I feel like the 4 drop slot is not entirely full with creatures that can generate a lot of value, so if there are any fringe cards that are old please leave a comment.
I felt like I didn't have enough golgari spells in my deck so I thought I'd look up some on scryfall. I found Cadaverous Bloom and thought it would be a nice ramp effect. The downside is somewhat negatable with Riftsweeper.
They have been successfully added into my deck and have been performing amazingly.
Umezawa's Jitte Is a perfect card as it allows for life gain, creature removal, and explosive damage. The life gain and creature removal are especially relevant because of how much life I end up losing to myself in this deck and the lack of excessive and good removal in the deck as well.
Sylvan Safekeeper has been working well as unconditional protection. Being able to essentially equip Lightning Greaves at instant speed (minus the haste) to any of my creatures is amazing and really goes that extra mile when trying to do something impactful to the gameboard.
This panel is exactly what it sounds like, I need some big boys to put into play to replace a couple of cards that just aren't putting in work. I have these in mind so far.
I actually ended up buying Razaketh and put him in.
I've been thinking about adding a land package within the deck as kinda a subtheme of sorts. I already have a small land package solely with Ramunap Excavator + Dryad of the Ilysian Grove and any good land destruction effect, such as Wasteland. As I play more games though, I've been having less fun winning with Protean Hulk in one turn and instead have fun durddling with other effects.
So I've been thinking about actively adding a land package that I can use to control, destroy, and durddle even harder than before. The common cards I would start with are:
-Crucible of Worlds This is already in my maybeboard, because it's just a good card.
-Elvish Reclaimer (this one is only a maybe)
-Ashaya, Soul of the Wild this would only be if I lean heavily into the land package instead of just replacing a few cards.
The additional lands that I would be including to make the creatures more effective would be:
-Glacial Chasm (maybe, once again this would be if I lean heavily into the land package.)
That pretty much completes it. This tab will just be here until I fully test the land package. Comment on your thoughts!
Additional Information
It's been quite a while since I have heavily edited this deck on tappedout, around 2018 was when I was last actively editing the deck, and now I have been editing it quite frequently to create this layout. Of course that is liable to change as well. For instance I stopped really updating this for a couple of months while I was working but have came back. I want to keep this deck up to date because I really love it. It's my first EDH deck and I will probably never take it apart unless something tragic happens.
The other thing to note is that in my old build of the deck I had Walking Ballista which is the better OTK with Mikaeus, the Unhallowed which I talked about in the cEDH section. I got rid of this combo because it was extremely unfun for me and my friends in our play group. (it ended up not really mattering because I can just recur Gary like 5 times in one turn anyway, but I digress)
Everything in sideboard right now are cards that I want to cut or improve. Most of the other cards I have playtested thoroughly over the course of 3 years, and these cards are the new pizazz that I haven't really liked or seen preform well enough. I might put some cards I'm testing in the sideboard if they don't pan out the way I thought they would.
The maybeboard is a place where I store cards that I want to put into the deck or thinking about trying to implement somehow.
This is the deck that I mentioned before, the one that my friend plays which eventually lead to the ultimate creation and refinement of this deck. If you want to blame anyone for this thing then blame him.
The definitive Varolz primer, check it out even if it doesn't have Mikaeus (which is wrong)
there's a lot of cards that I think aren't super good in the deck, but I just haven't got around to getting rid of them because I just haven't been playing as much as I used to or I haven't found good replacements for them. I have to check out good cards from Ikoria and beyond because I haven't been keeping up with the latest sets, so if you guys have any good suggestions, please leave a comment with cards that would work well!