Varolz, the Scar-Striped can abuse all sorts of under-costed goodness in graveyards. Fortunately, the synergy gods have deemed standard a worthy place to manifest themselves. When you are trying to get something like
Boneyard Wurm
or Splinterfright past their boiling point, it often helps when you have something to push them over the edge. Since their power and toughness remain equal to the number of creatures in the graveyard while in the graveyard, you scavenge for disproportionately huge numbers. The first step is developing an engine that triggers the concept here.
Breaking
//
Entering
and Grisly Salvage are going to be your batteries.
Turns out eight cards is the exact number you want to mill in order to break the graveyard. The land count coming in at 22 with 8 copies of our battery cards leaves 30 slots left for creatures. When you octo-mill, you will average 4 creatures and stuff hitting the bin. I can't stress how much more 8 is then 7 when you are going for numbers. Unlike a dredge deck, you are often only going to get 1~3 chances to hit a jackpot yard. It's essentially to squeeze out every card. Grisly Salvage hand picks the creature thats going to go to market while the others play cheerleader. Think of the card it grabs as a 2.5 for every 1.0 that gets milled. Finding Varolz and his buddies in the top 5 happens often.
Deathrite Shaman is probably the biggest fan of what we are trying to accomplish. You'll often find him speeding up the deck by a turn, as he gets sole dibs on all lands that eventually got stuck in the yard. After he'll add to the impressive clock we will assemble. Here, your Deathrites will be nurtured into the perfect darling shamans that you could only find with fetches.
This also happens to be the "Build the Best Lotleth Troll Factory" you can imagine. Not only does he want you to pitch all those dudes, but your dudes want you to pitch your dudes. EVERYONE'S GETTING PITCHED. Your not just milling from your library, your milling from your hand!
Also note that Varolz and Lotleth are the best targets for breaking scavenge with different methods of regenerating. Troll hard or don't troll at all.
Varolz and his two buddies, the yard bards, are cheap enough to warrant a fast deck with recursion, so there is plenty of room for Gravecrawler. Hands don't stick around for long either, so a home is once again found for Blood Scrivener.
Lastly, sometimes plans go awry, and a Putrefy hits your troll and sends your dude to frown town. Back up plans need to open old scabs. In fact...they need to ruin them......the scabs......
Skaab Ruinator
.
Breaking also accomplishes a serious feat in our 30 creature deck! On average you will hit 4 creatures right? Skaab needs 3.
Over 50% of the time it works everytime.
Have fun Breaking Scavenge!
