Now this, THIS is pod racing.
Yes, today we have a Snow themed Yarok, the Desecrated deck. Using many strong EtB effects combined with Snow synergy and powerful deck-searching cards like Birthing Pod, Neoform and Prime Speaker Vannifar, the deck aims to create stupid amounts of value by playing our best creatures and making their EtB triggers happen as much as we can. Yarok, the Desecrated, along with Panharmonicon and Strionic Resonator all give us the ability to make our enters-the-battlefield triggers go off again. This works well with Birthing Pod and its contemporaries, which sacrifice a creature on your field to trade it with a creature 1 mana bigger from the deck and dump it onto the battlefield. We want to be going up the Pod chain to maximize our value. Remembering which creatures are in what curve is essential to playing a deck like this, and knowing the cost of cards like Deadeye Navigator and Prime Speaker Vannifar (who does a beautiful job imitating the Pod) is essential to winning.
The mana curve for the Pod in this deck is as follows (and technically, Yarok, the Desecrated can be used to get a 6 drop):
1: Shrieking Drake (we only use this for combos anyway)
2: Baleful Strix, Cloud of Faeries, Elvish Visionary, Fauna Shaman, Ice-Fang Coatl, Lotus Cobra
3: Eternal Witness, Farhaven Elf, Fierce Empath, Reclamation Sage, Risen Reef
4: Abominable Treefolk, Bramble Sovereign, Gonti, Lord of Luxury, Prime Speaker Vannifar, Ravenous Chupacabra, Temur Sabertooth
5: Acidic Slime, Blizzard Strix, Mulldrifter, Peregrine Drake, Sidisi, Undead Vizier, Tatyova, Benthic Druid, Wavesifter
6: Deadeye Navigator, Greenwarden of Murasa, Muldrotha, the Gravetide, Prime Speaker Zegana, Sire of Stagnation
7: Avenger of Zendikar, Palinchron, Sepulchral Primordial
8: Archon of Cruelty, Craterhoof Behemoth
This deck runs an easy infinite mana combo that can be spent on various X spells we run. With Yarok or Panharmonicon in play, we simply drop Cloud of Faeries and float an extra 2 mana. Cloud of Faeries untaps four lands instead of two, and with one of that extra 2 mana we play Shrieking Drake. The Drake will return two creatures back to hand when it enters, which we use to target the Faeries and itself. With 1 mana free, both cards back in hand and 4 untapped lands, we drop the Cloud of Faeries again and repeat for infinite mana. What do we do with this mana?
Increasing Confusion can be cast twice thanks to flashback, and with infinite mana lets us mill out two opponents. Villainous Wealth can be used to either exile an opponents entire deck or - if cast for less than their whole deck - lets you just steal a bunch of stuff and play it for free. Blue Sun's Zenith can either draw us as many cards as we need or instantly deck an opponent out. Lastly, Torment of Hailfire when played this way just wins us the game by killing all our opponents. Even if we don't draw any of these, using Deadeye Navigator plus nearly any creature with an ETB ability in the deck can get us to a game-winning state if we use it with infinite mana.
Now we mentioned snow a fair bit. But what do we get for playing snow synergy and snow lands exactly?
Our snow package consists of some fairly well known cards, but also some hidden gems. One of the most important to this deck is Marit Lage's Slumber. It gives us small value in the form of scrying every time we play a snow permanent - which is every basic land we drop. Then, once we have enough in play we just get a 20/20 indestructible flying beatstick to bash our opponents with. Arcum's Astrolabe fixes our mana and can potentially draw us multiple cards for just 1 mana. Ice-Fang Coatl is a great early game creature that gets deathtouch for us playing snow lands. Into the North allows us to get either a basic or dual snow land into play early. Dead of Winter is a simple creature boardwipe that not only gets better the longer the game goes on, but also doesn't touch any of our snow creatures. Blizzard Strix is essentially a snowy Flickerwisp. These cards all make sense, but there are a couple of stranger ones.
Sunstone can be a life-saver in this deck. When you feel you're so close to winning but everyone knows it and wants to kill you, Sunstone has your back. For just 2 generic mana and the cost of sacrificing a snow land, you can Fog at instant speed and not have to worry about dying to that pesky creature damage. Even better, with Muldrotha, the Gravetide in play you can recur the lands you sacrifice every single turn for basically nothing.
Another strange snow spell we run is Winter's Chill. This is one of those cards that nobody uses because of its ridiculously over-complicated text box and silly restrictions, but in this deck it can potentially boardwipe an opponent attacking into us. What the hell does it do, exactly? Sigh, allow me to explain. You can only cast it before blockers are declared - usually when an opponent says "here, I swing at you with 5 dudes". You have to pay mana into X for the exact amount of attacking creatures you want to target with it (and that number can't be more than how many snow lands you have, for some reason). Then, unless the creatures' controller pays at least 1 or 2 mana, the creatures are destroyed, with 1 mana just Fog-ing them and 2 leaving them unaffected. It's like a really awkward Ghostly Prison that doesn't prevent attackers, and you have to cast in response to attackers, but the upside it that it outright destroys creatures that aren't paid for. A sneaky one off trick that, while janky, can save you from losing in a tight spot - and nobody will expect the sentence "I cast Winter's Chill" from a deck like this.
If you need a potent Pod-style deck, I heavily consider using Yarok, the Desecrated as your commander. Most creatures you want to be using with Birthing Pod et al. are usually ones with ETB abilities anyway, so even if you don't run the Sneaky Snow Synergy™, Yarok alone will make it powerful.
