The Monoblack in Commander - Yawgmoth, Thran Physician

Hello, my dears! All right with you? My name is Fogaça and I'm here again to talk about Commander.

With the release of Modern Horizons, all major Magic formats have changed significantly, as well as EDH. The arrival of Urza, Lord High Artificer, shook the structures of the tables around the world and made the dream of many possible with access to a consistent deck that allows the essence of Mono Blue to be fully explored; but what is not being commented on is its existential counterpoint - Yawgmoth, the lore's iconic villain, has also received his long-awaited card to demonstrate everything a general Mono Black should be. Today, therefore, we won't comment on the famous good old man, but on the much loved and hated Thran Doctor.

INITIAL CONCEPTIONS

Considering the fact that many will likely assemble their Yawgmoth constructions based on nostalgia or love for the lore, I apologize for not getting into the historical merits of this article, as I don't understand much about it. But speaking of the aforementioned essence of color, our Human Cleric represents exactly what black wants: power. The card combines the mechanics of paying life for resources, as well as discarding "dead cards" for it with the inevitable death of creatures itself and a characteristic mechanics of the Phyrexian story; The fact that we trade what we consider expendable for what we want and the repetition generated by “greatness at any cost” will be the basis for our build and for this mono-colored existence.

DECK BUILDING

Analyzing the commander's own potential, we see his synergy with the Immortal mechanics, originating from Innistrad. Your sacrificial ability can be used to loop for its activation cost feature - initially we will pay a life point and sacrifice a creature with Immortal from the field so that it returns with a + 1 / + 1 marker - Then we will place the marker designated by our Yawg on the resurrected creature, nullifying the previous marker (so the next time it dies it will return to the field, continuing the loop).

Once we understand the initial combo involving our general, we will need to use it to finish the game, and for that we will use the double Blood Artist and Zulaport Cutthroat, which will allow our idea not be frustrated by the shortage of our lives. Alternatively, we can take advantage of creature-triggered effects to generate presence on the field, such as Ulamog's Pawn and Skull Sifter, thus using them to generate infinite resources (such as mana, in the case of Ashnod's Altar and Phyrexian Altar). Other cards will also provide drain and life gain, chip creation, mana generation and other options that can be used gradually to add value to our game.

To close the pack for our quest for power, various deck creatures can be cast from our graveyard, allowing us to take advantage of the Doctor's ability to draw cards and eliminate threats on the table even without the combo pieces. In the end, the whole build is based on taking advantages of the triggers to turn the tables in conditions that would be disadvantageous so that we can get our pieces or a tutor to get them.

We can see that we have the classic combination of Mikaeus the Damn, and Walking Ballista included in the list. This is due to the synergy that the zombie has with the rest of the cards, and a possible use of infinite mana to use the Ballista in case there is no combination of the two.

Please be aware of the possibility of an overdeck defeat, which can be solved by the presence of the Guide to Restlessness.

HIGH VALUE CARD REPLACEMENT

Like last week's deck, our building is a complete and synergistic package designed to match each piece individually and together, making it difficult the decision to replace cards and choose how to start searching for them. However, I suggest that cards like Demonic Tutor and others that can cause problems thanks to their value are replaced with pieces of the same function.

Where to start?

As stated above, deciding which cards to prioritize is difficult thanks to the nature of the list, but we can give advantage to the cards with Immortal and synergies with the death of creatures (such as Midnight Reaper) .

CONCLUSION

With all this information in hand, we can conclude that even if a commander is considered less powerful than others for appealing to the emotional and taste for lore, he will not necessarily be weak. Black commanders were placed as low level for a long time; Nothing fairer than a 25-year-old star of Magic changes this paradigm.

For today we stay here. Thanks to everyone who has been following this series of articles and I ask you to always leave your feedback so we can keep improving. Until next time, my dears!