Yawgmoth Gravestorm cEDH (with Primer)

Commander / EDH* Competitive Infinite Combo Mono-Black Sacrifice

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Creature (22)

• 1x Blood Artist
• 1x Blood Pet
• 1x Bloodghast
• 1x Butcher Ghoul
• 1x Chittering Witch
• 1x Dark Confidant
• 1x Evernight Shade
• 1x Geralf's Messenger
• 1x Gravecrawler
• 1x Hope of Ghirapur
• 1x Initiates of the Ebon Hand
• 1x Nether Traitor
• 1x Ophiomancer
• 1x Opposition Agent
• 1x Overeager Apprentice
• 1x Pawn of Ulamog
• 1x Phyrexian Revoker
• 1x Putrid Imp
• 1x Sheoldred, the Apocalypse
• 1x Sightless Ghoul
• 1x Soldevi Adnate
• 1x Zulaport Cutthroat

Sorcery (10)

• 1x Bubbling Muck
• 1x Demonic Tutor
• 1x Diabolic Intent
• 1x Feed the Swarm
• 1x Ill-Gotten Gains
• 1x Imperial Seal
• 1x Night's Whisper
• 1x Reanimate
• 1x Toxic Deluge
• 1x Yawgmoth's Will

Artifact (16)

• 1x Bolas's Citadel
• 1x Chrome Mox
• 1x Defense Grid
• 1x Genesis Chamber
• 1x Grim Monolith
• 1x Helm of Awakening
• 1x Jet Medallion
• 1x Jeweled Lotus
• 1x Lotus Petal
• 1x Mana Crypt
• 1x Mana Vault
• 1x Mox Diamond
• 1x Mox Opal
• 1x Sensei's Divining Top
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Torpor Orb

Instant (12)

• 1x Ad Nauseam
• 1x Cabal Ritual
• 1x Culling the Weak
• 1x Dark Ritual
• 1x Entomb
• 1x Force of Despair
• 1x Mausoleum Secrets
• 1x Rain of Filth
• 1x Sacrifice
• 1x Shred Memory
• 1x Slaughter Pact
• 1x Vampiric Tutor

Commander (1)

Land (32)

• 1x Ancient Tomb
• 1x Blast Zone
• 1x Bloodstained Mire
• 1x Cavern of Souls
• 1x Ebon Stronghold
• 1x Gemstone Caverns
• 1x Lake of the Dead
• 1x Marsh Flats
• 1x Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
• 1x Phyrexian Tower
• 1x Polluted Delta
• 1x Prismatic Vista
• 17x Swamp
• 1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
• 1x Vault of Whispers
• 1x Verdant Catacombs

Enchantment (7)

• 1x Animate Dead
• 1x Bitterblossom
• 1x Bridge from Below
• 1x Contamination
• 1x Gate to Phyrexia
• 1x Necropotence
• 1x Oppression

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The Deck

This is a fast, flexible, non-linear, and consistent combo deck that aims to kill the table with infinite drain life using Yawgmoth's first ability. Because the combo pieces are so redundant, more flex slots are available and it can double as a pseudo-stax deck relying on disruption to protect from other combos or limit interaction from opponents before comboing off.

Pros:

• Consistent turn 4-6 kills (turn 2-3 kills are possible but rare).
• Mulligans well with redundant combo pieces, the combo doesn't require a critical mass of cards in hand, and the commander is a powerful draw engine
• Can utilize a lot more interaction compared to most combo decks.
• Can flex into a stax deck when necessary to limit opponents interactions or protect from other combos.
• Plays similarly to storm with your draw source being sacrificing and a lot of black rituals.
• Draws less attention than you might think, especially in blue heavy metas.

Cons:

• Struggles in heavy control metas.
• Because of this deck's dual nature and non-linear combo, role identification and mulligan decisions are incredibly important. If you find yourself frequently unable to start the combo before turn 6/7 mulligan decisions are often why.
• Hard graveyard hate like Rest in Peace or Grafdigger's Cage or hard storm hate such as Rule of Law shuts it down, especially when dropped early (creature based storm hate such as Ethersworn Canonist can be dealt with using Yawgmoth).
• Difficult to play. The combo itself is fairly straightforward but how you sequence your rituals with your tutors is extremely important when comboing as mana is often tight, stack interactions with undying can be critical, and any mistakes are punishing.

Combo

The basics of the combo rely on 3 things: sacrifice outlet (Yawgmoth) + undying creature (there are 4) + engine (There are 7). These 3 pieces start you drawing as many cards as you have life (Yawgmoth's Bargain anyone?) but to go infinite, you need to draw into an enabler (there are 3) to stem the life loss. The most important cards to have in your opening hand are combo pieces, fast mana, or a tutor. Having an enabler in play is not needed to combo off as you will draw into one, rituals to cast it, or a tutor.

How the combo works

• Step 1: Yawgmoth sacrifices undying creature (a target for the -1/-1 counter is not necessary unless utilizing 2 undying creatures)
• Step 2: Undying ability triggers and the creature re-enters the battlefield with a +1/+1 counter
• Step 3: Engine triggers either upon death (Bridge from Below, Pawn of Ulamog) or upon ETB (Genesis Chamber) and generates a token (using a second undying creature will act as the "token" with each creature alternating as targets for Yawgmoth's -1/-1 ability).
• Step 4: Draw card from Yawgmoth's ability
• Step 5: Yawgmoth sacrifices the token and targets the undying creature with the +1/+1 counter to remove the buff and re-enable the undying mechanic (this will not trigger the engine)
• Step 6: Draw card from Yawgmoth's ability
• Step 7: Repeat the above steps until you draw into an enabler (Blood Artist, Zulaport Cutthroat, Deathgreeter) or a tutor using any drawn rituals in your hand to cast. You need at least 1 land drop or available black mana to cast rituals (you can combo without this as there are 0 mana black sources in the deck but your failure rate will be much higher vs having a single black available).
• Step 8: Draw your entire deck and drain the table. If any players are not killed outright, you can play Elixir of Immortality using any rituals, mana rocks, or crack LED for black to shuffle your graveyard into your library to continue the loop for infinite mana, life drain, ETBs, and death triggers

Editor's Notes

• Do not use Yawgmoth's sac ability on an undying creature with Yawgmoth's Will active as it will exile the creature. Instead, use Yawgmoth's Will to rebuild your board and combo on your opponents upkeep or refill your hand.
• You cannot recur the deck infinitely with Necropotence active as the discarded cards will be exiled so only combo if you can kill the table with what is left in your library.
• DO NOT FORCE THE COMBO. If you need multiple tutors over several turns in order to combo you often become overextended and any interaction will set you back quite a bit. It is better to transition into stax and slow the game down in order to pick a more opportune moment.

Undying Creatures(4)

This mechanic is what fuels the combo and there are 4 creatures with it in the deck. Any of them + an engine card means Yawgmoth will go infinite if you have life to spare. While the combo with Yawgmoth is their main purpose, they can also lead to some creative play patterns. For example, with the undying ability on the stack, Songs of the Damned will generate extra mana mid-combo which is the main bottleneck. Mausoleum Secrets can be turned on as well to fetch entomb putting Bridge from Below in the graveyard (your best engine piece) and go off with only Yawgmoth and an undying creature on the battlefield. If you have 2 undying creatures in play, they will also go infinite with your commander.

In order of importance

• Butcher Ghoul: It is 2 cmc and the easiest on tight mana.
• Evernight Shade/Sightless Ghoul: More expensive cmc but same effect. The reason these are above Geralf's Messenger in importance is they have a lower black requirement (its often the bottleneck) to cast and they can also double as rituals with Sacrifice or Soldevi Adnate.
• Geralf's Messenger: Added damage can kill the most threatening player before an enabler is found to kill the table but requires the most black mana to cast.

Engine Pieces(7)

These are the most important cards in the deck as they allow you to go infinite with any undying creature but will also let you gain additional value out of any creature during slower games. Nest of Scarabs can also work as a combo piece but is slightly weaker than the others in this build as it can only combo when other creatures are present vs an immediate combo with 3 pieces on the board (see notable exclusions).

In order of importance

• Bridge from Below: With entomb this is effectively 1 cmc and can be grabbed at instant speed.
• Genesis Chamber: Next lowest casting cost but cheapest when tutoring to hand.
• Pawn of Ulamog: Next lowest casting cost and can also be used to trigger itself.
• Undying Creatures: Butcher Ghoul/Evernight Shade/Sightless Ghoul/Geralf's Messenger.

Enablers(3)

Again, these are not necessary to have on the battlefield before comboing off as you will draw into them or a tutor. These simply allow you to infinitely loop Yawgmoth's draw ability without killing yourself (See notable exclusions section for why Vindictive Vampire and Falkenrath Noble are not included).

In order of importance

• Deathgreeter: Cheapest cmc to allow you to go infinite and eventually find one of the above pingers.
• Zulaport Cutthroat: Quickest way to kill the table and cheap cmc.
• Blood Artist: Same cmc but can only target one player at a time.

Protection(5), Disruption(7), and Interaction(4)

Even though this was designed as an explosive and resilient combo deck, it is still incredibly important to understand your role at the table. If the pod consists of faster combos that rely on specific cards in hand (Protean Hulk+Flash) this deck is better suited to run slower and grab combo pieces vs removing counter magic or removal. The counter suite in combo decks tend to be spell based (Flusterstorm, Dispel) and focus on stack interactions while their hard counters (Force of Will, Mana Drain) are overtaxed with our combo pieces (creatures & weird artifacts) not being prime targets like (Paradox Engine). Against, heavy control decks like Tasigur the deck is better suited to flex into a stax deck with disruptive permanents such as Contamination and Phyrexian Revoker. This will generally be the most inconspicuous deck at the table and our interaction tries to take full advantage of that.

Protection

• Defense Grid: Be careful when landing this more than a turn before you combo. If there are other fast combo decks at the table you might not get to untap. Other than that, there is no better protection on your turn.
• Imp's Mischief: This is basically black Misdirection and is best used against counters (Force of Will) or removal (Swords to Plowshares). Additionally, this can be drawn into/tutored for mid-combo which can result in 2 removal spells being required to disrupt you.
• Cavern of Souls: Added counter protection.
• Mindslicer: This can work as both protection and disruption since our combo does not require cards in hand to function. It can also overtax removal intended for Yawgmoth since it invalidates all cards in hand if left unchecked on the field.
• Helm of Awakening: This not only helps to chain cards for cheaper but is also protection against stax effects such as Sphere of Resistance.

Disruption

• Duress: This doesn't require life loss and hits just about everything you care about.
• Unmask: Same basic targets as Duress except its free. This can be substituted out for Inquisition of Kozilek or Thoughtseize if desired.
• Contamination: This is not normally a card I would include in a fast combo deck but it can work as both protection & disruption depending on how you use it. Dropping this a turn before comboing (or on the combo turn) can function similarly to Defense Grid making interactions difficult for opponents. If you find people floating mana in response, skip to your second main phase before comboing. It can also be used aggressively if there are multiple other combo decks at the table as it inhibits board progression from faster decks. Think of it as a temporary time walk instead of a hard stax piece although cards like Ophiomancer can facilitate a full lock.
• Hope of Ghirapur: This is easy to cast and can eliminate an opponent's interaction during a combo turn.
• Phyrexian Revoker: This is easy to cast and can block opponents combos.
• Shred Memory/Faerie Macabre: These are our two graveyard hate cards. Shred Memory doubles as an uncounterable tutor for any combo or protection pieces and Faerie Macabre is free to activate plus it can also be used with Yawgmoth.

Interaction

• Slaughter Pact: Used primarily to remove problem creatures such as Ruric Thar, the Unbowed or Ethersworn Canonist but can also be used to remove opponent's combo pieces such as Thrasios, Triton Hero or Urza, Lord High Artificer. Critically, this can be tutored up at instant speed with Mausoleum Secrets as a 0 cmc black card so no creatures in the graveyard are required.
• Gate to Phyrexia: Removes problem artifacts such as Grafdigger's Cage or Trinisphere.
• Ratchet Bomb/Blast Zone: These are the 2 ways to remove problem permanents such as Rest in Peace. Additionally, since they require counters to function Yawgmoth's proliferate ability allows them to be activated quickly if necessary.

Notable Exclusions

Many of these are actively awesome when paired with Yawgmoth but are either too slow to set up, too expensive to cast, or the redundancy is unnecessary.

• Cabal Coffers: OMG HOW COULD YOU WHAT KIND OF A MONO BLACK DECK IS THIS?! Coffers is undoubtedly a powerful magic card and is an auto-include in just about every deck that wants an absurd amount of black mana. However, coffers is only positive mana after turn 4 (with Urborg) or turn 5 without (assuming all lands are swamps) and the deck wants to combo off at this point. With our early mana requirements being so tight and the use of utility lands like Lake of the Dead coffers not producing mana early is hugely detrimental to the speed of the deck. We are simply too fast for coffers to be effective and keeping it overtaxes our mana and tutors. Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx on the other hand is highly abuseable, especially with Deserted Temple.
• Gray Merchant of Asphodel: BLASPHEMY! I don't have to explain the power of Gary but he requires a lot of devotion and recursion in order to be abusable. The power of this deck revolves around having as little board state as possible and it does not have repeatable ways to recur him. The enablers the deck already runs are more efficient at generating the same effect.
• Mikaeus, the Unhallowed: This card is absurd with Yawgmoth in midrange or big mana decks but 6 mana is just too expensive for fast combo turns. One of the deck's biggest strengths is it can surprise kill the table from an unassuming board state. Mikaeus does not help sell this, he needs other creatures to function, and he paints an immediate target on you as no one plays him for fair magic. There are few creatures that eat removal quicker than Consecrated Sphinx and he is often one of them.
• Bitter Ordeal: This card was the reason I built the deck (hence the name) as it is an incredibly strong win condition that functions similar to Praetor's Grasp with storm. It can also double as a hate piece against other combo decks. What I found when playing is it is often redundant as I would simply drain the table (even if I had to loop through the deck) in the process of gaining a high enough gravestorm count. I can definitely see an argument for keeping this in and it remains as one of the prime targets for a flex slot but for now it is not in the build.
• Nest of Scarabs: This is Mikaeus levels of absurd with Yawgmoth, can single handedly lock creatures off of the board, and can act as an engine combo piece. The weakness of this card comes from the fact that there always has to be a target for the -1/-1 counter (my local meta is a lot of Teferi stax, Doomsday, and various storm lists). This means that to combo with Yawgmoth you need an extra creature to sacrifice + the undying creature in order to get the chain started (during the combo you target the undying creature when sacrificing the token) while none of the other engine pieces require an additional creature (you combo as soon as it resolves). This is another card that is constantly in contention for flex slots and should be an auto include in every Yawgmoth deck.
• Necroskitter: This was actually in a few earlier iterations of the deck due to its synergies with the commander but its abilities felt very lackluster in such a fast combo deck and I was never finding myself in need of the effect nor was I thrilled to draw it at any point. It is still incredibly powerful in tandem with Yawgmoth but not in this shell.
• Vindictive Vampire/Falkenrath Noble/Dross Harvester: These are excellent enablers and do exactly what we want to keep the combo going. However, the deck already has 3 versions of this effect at cheaper cmc along with a lot of cheap tutors so the redundancy is unnecessary. If you are building a more midrange version of this I highly encourage some/all of their inclusion.
• Smothering Abomination/Grim Haruspex/Midnight Reaper/Dark Prophecy: The bottlenecks of the combo are colored mana and sacrifice fodder not card draw. They are better suited for midrange versions and/or devotion builds.
• Bloodsoaked Champion/Gutterbones/Reassembling Skeleton: These are excellent for midrange builds but their recast abilities are too expensive to abuse during a combo turn. Gravecrawler and Nether Traitor are more efficient at 1 mana.
• Dreadhorde Invasion/Bitterblossom: These were tough to evaluate as they are cheap and repeatable effects that synergize with Yawgmoth but the faster the deck became, the more I disliked drawing them. They are just not as abusable in a storm-styled sacrifice deck but also fit into the more midrange builds.
• Liliana, Dreadhorde General/Everflowing Chalice/Hangarback Walker/Astral Cornucopia: Ah, the proliferate discussion. I firmly believe the proliferate mechanic is one of the most fun inclusions to EDH but it is not oriented towards competitive and is the significantly weaker of Yawgmoth's abilities. The list started with a few outlets for proliferation but the more I focused on the draw mechanic the less I had room for proliferating due to mana restrictions. The faster the combo, the tighter the mana, and the less I could activate it. Cornucopia is an inefficient mana sink even if it does produce colored mana while Chalice is more abusable but doesn't generate black mana which is the biggest bottleneck of the deck. Lux Cannon was included (still testing if Ratchet Bomb is better) to remove graveyard hate, Black Market can make setup/rebuilding much easier with low opportunity costs, Ichor Rats was in a flex slot allowing any resolved Yawgmoth to be potentially lethal, and Inkmoth Nexus for the same reason. I think the proliferate mechanic can be incredibly powerful (stax pieces with fading effects, planeswalkers, and more infect comes to mind) but it is not as effective as it could be in this style of combo.
• Extraplanar Lens: I had this (and several other of the same effect) in multiple iterations of the deck however it became too much of a 2-for-1 liability and was often an unnecessary card. This is most effective when you can untap with multiple lands after turn 5 or so but with the majority of our mana production coming from rituals (and early turn ramp) the effects of this are minimized, especially when we have to exile a land to do it.

Under Review

These are cards with powerful effects that I want to test out in the build for recursion, disruption, or redundancy.

• Withered Wretch: Pros: Targeted graveyard hate against fast gy centered combos, removes problem cards from control decks like Tasigur, helps with black devotion for Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, and can be sacrificed for card draw with Yawgmoth. Cons: Effect is expensive to hold up mana for which can slow combo development down in early turns along with taxing colored mana sources. Would be more effective in a more midrange style deck but I think it is powerful enough to merit consideration.
• K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth: Pros: The largest constraint on speed is colored mana. K'rrik helps with this by being a large burst of mana from Sacrifice or Soldevi Adnate along with paying life for colored mana requirements which also increases the effectiveness of our colorless rocks. Cons: Expensive to cast, bad to hit off Ad Nauseam, less effective the lower our life total considering Yawgmoth often uses it in large chunks to combo, and it will immediately paint a target on the deck which detracts from one of the main strengths of our strategy. The pros should outweigh the cons which is why I am testing it in place of Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder which is the weakest creature for the mana in the deck.

Date added	4 years
Last updated	1 year
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	6 - 0 Mythic Rares 46 - 0 Rares 17 - 0 Uncommons 14 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.00
Tokens	Eldrazi Spawn 0/1 C, Faerie Rogue 1/1 B, Myr 1/1 C, Rat 1/1 B, Snake 1/1 B, Zombie 2/2 B