I see. time to find a Golgari Thug then. thanks for responding.

How do we deal with Cursed Totem? I had a game once I was able to cabal therapy sacrifice hulk I won because I had Nature's claim in hand. I'm wondering if we have a way to deal with cursed totem via hulk line.

Ashriel

Unforunately, there's no way to deal with cursed totem outside of finding a nature's claim or Abrupt Decay, it's just a card, like Rest in Peace, that is gonna be very hard to deal with.

Why no Exhume? and why crop rotation, just for cradle?

what card to add instead of grim tutor? cruel tutor? or is it to slow

Hey masond_d, thanks for taking an interest in the list

Exhume has been excluded from the deck because it's one of the worst reanimates because it can give other people access to their reanimation targets. We also have enough reanimates already, as our bottleneck is the number of ways to get protean hulk into the graveyard, so another reanimate effect wouldn't be beneficial

Crop rotation can get Bojuka Bog, Dryad Arbor, and Ancient Tomb as well, as well as Phyrexian Tower if you're running it, it offers a lot of utility and the ability to act as a ritual when needed.

Grim Tutor is a hard card to replace, but you can try Jarad's Orders which is a bit clunkier but serves about the same role.

How about Mesmeric Fiend? Hulk can grab alongside Body Snatcher and you can exile something possibly important. Thoughts?

Wouldn't Elfish Spirit guide be better then mox diamond as ditching a land in a 30 land deck sounds like a huge mistake sure it enables fast openings but spirit guide also works if you have no spare lands and draw a dead diamond.

MtgWhal0r 30 lands is actually a fairly good number of lands for a deck this fast, and Mox Diamond tends to be the better card most times because A: it can produce either color of mana, and B: it can produce an extra mana for multiple turns in a row, which can be valuable for games where you need to go t2 Varolz into t3 Natural Order/Pattern of Rebirth/Entomb+Necromancy

I just feel likes its not a necessary inclusion due to its price.

MtgWhal0r this is a no budget list, price does not factor into the decision making for card choices in this deck, if we're talking about building the deck with a finite amount of money, then obviously there are changes that have to be made, mox diamond being cut would be one of those. But the purpose of this list is to show a fully optimized Varolz list without any limitations for proxy/no budget/online play

Sorry I was not trying to be offensive. I just think this is a good budget cEDH hulk list compared to 4 color lists that run in the 4000-5000 dollar range.

I do have some questions about the deck though

1: What are your main tutor targets? Is it generally the goal to assemble the combo ASAP or is it better to wait until the opportune time to go off and try to avoid removal?.

2: What is the point of Necro and Ad, if there is a chance of getting your combo pieces into your hand and what card are you searching for when you are using them and when do you stop?

3:Whats you take on Assassins Trophy and either Dosan or City of Solitude even though you can't get Dosan with hulk they seem like good early game plays

4:And do you always get body snatcher with the first hulk search to get Safekeeper or is it better to save snatcher for later?

Sorry didn't see you already add assassins trophy xD

MtgWhal0r No problem, I'll go through your questions:

1. Your tutor targets are going to depend on what you already have in hand, but the breakdown is generally going to be Natural Order/Pattern of Rebirth if you only have the tutor, and Entomb if you have a reanimation effect already.

2. Necro and Ad Naus are for gas density, the deck can already have problems with just never getting a combo because you're going to be totally reliant on your opening hands, so they are there to just give you a better chance at the win. You're gonna want to stop whenever you have a combo line: remember that you're going to want to do Ad Naus on the end of turn of the person before you so you can untap with the mana to win on the spot. Necro is a bit more situtational, but I'll just remind you that necro's exile effect is a trigger, so you can use something like Necromancy on top of the trigger to win before anything gets exiled.

3. Assassin's trophy is great, autoinclude. Defense Grid and Dosan are incorrect in pretty much every deck, you can't play them and then pass the turn, because then you're just handing the game to whoever is next in turn order, and it's a lot of mana to have to spend 2 or 3 on a protection spell, because of how tight the mana is in the deck.

You're pretty much always going to be getting Body Snatcher as your first fetch, just to fit a utility creature into your hulk, unless you're in the case where someone has a one-shot grave hate effect, which is outlined in the primer.

What usually your go to extra creature in hulk piles that need one more Birds and Seer?

Always Safekeeper if you need to get viscera seer, otherwise, whichever utility creature you need at the time, or something like phyrexian revoker to blind name grave hate if you think it's more likely than removal

I like this deck it's very cool and not like other Hulk builds I've seen, If you can go off fast enough it looks very competitive. I may look at building a deck like this I only play cEDH decks and this is very different from my other decks.

The warrior is a good addition to the deck I really didn't like Sylvan tutor. I have been testing Spirit Guide instead of Mox Diamond and have really liked it I have tried also considering it to be a Mox Diamond at times and its not quite as helpful. Then again I haven't played the deck more then you. I will try out Mox Diamond when I get a spare I may also test Jarad's Orders because to me it seems like an auto win if you have 5 mana you can grab reanimate/hulk and if Varolz is out they never would see it coming.

Oops I always thought J Order let you get any two cards my bad

But you could get Body Snatcher and Hulk

Generally, if you're going to play Jarad's Orders (which I'll suggest against, I've done the testing for it and it didn't live up to expectations), your fetches are typically Hulk into grave and Apprentice Necromancer into hand, so that you can win later without casting any spells. It's just generally not worth the slot though, most of the time it's just a 4cmc entomb, where buried alive is already pushing what I'm willing to pay for the effect.

Final Parting is fun in a budget varient I run, I always get hulk and Animate Dead, but that is besides the point, I really just wanted to comment on my appreciation for this great list, and tell you there is a minor error in the primer, under the 'Being Unfair in General' sub-tab under the main-tab 'Getting To The Hulk', you wrote 'Colletive Brutality' instead of 'Collective Brutality' not huge, but it may want to be changed.

So is Golgari Thug just there to combo with discard to get combo elements out of your hand? Seems like kinda of a weird choice. Might be necessary with only the Melira combo. I run both Mikaeus and Melira hulk piles atm so it might be not as necessary.

CanEx it's useful for both piles, being able to combo with not extra mana or card investment with a piece in hand or graveyard is very powerful, and it makes the deck much more consistent.