I have been testing two cards specifically and have been happy with them the first is Xantid Swarm it really helps as an early one drop and prevents them from countering buried alive as well as a 2nd main phase Ad Nauseam, I know that's not the ideal use but I have won a few games with it when I knew they were holding up mana for my spells. It's far better then Dosan or Hope since it forces them to use their counterspells on other people unless they can destroy it.

The second is Final Parting sure the card is not a competitive card but with 6 mana its an auto win with a sac outlet in play as well as being a tutor if you already have hulk in the bin, it's a better Jarad's Orders and to me it is slightly below Ad Nauseam in power level since they both win you the game if they resolve and are the same cost. I think it could be tested, sure Nauseam is an instant which makes it's better but can also lead to a difficult set of cards to work with something that I have encountered once or twice. Final Parting, on the other hand, is any card you need at any time as well as it helps you assemble a combo even being able to do it alone.

sickrobot How do you beat Praetor's Grasp?

Decided to give Thug a shot. Thanks for the primer on a suoer fun deck!

CanEx You start the beats plan! Really, grasp isn't really for taking combo pieces, because they're going to want to progress their own gamestate instead of just taking a single deck out of the equation.

MtgWhal0r Final Parting has definitely been a huge hole in the list for the last while, and you just made me realize that it never made it into the main list, thanks for the reminder! Xantid swarm is definitely a great meta tech into more controlly metas as well.

1. Do you ever had use for the Life part of Life//Death or it's just there for Death?

2. Do you ever felt the need to have Reclaim for Noxious Revival redundancy?

Thanks and great thing going on here. I'm a believer of Varolz in CEDH and I run a similar deck as well.

What's worldy tutor do exactly I have been playing a lot and doing a ton of testing and I really have never used it to grab anything other then Necromancer

I have recently built a varolz hulk list inspired by yours. One thing people have been doing to combat it is holding up one mana for a crop rotation into bojuka bog. Curious if this has become an issue for you and if so what are you doing to fight through it? Really enjoying the deck so far. And being able to turn 3 final parting after turn 2 varolz is just an awesome feeling man. Keep up the good work.

Thoughts on Drill Bit and Incubation Druid from Ravnica Allegiance? Drill bit seems like it could work well. I think Druid is a hint too slow though.

Whoo boy, this is a lot of comments, alright lemme work through em

chopsueyrice: 1. Never used the life part, it's just another reanimation spell, and 2. nope, noxious revival is really just in the deck over regrowth because it allows to you interact with other people's combos/turns for 0 mana sometimes, which is the main reason for it.

MtgWhal0r Worldly is mostly used in tandem with the discard outlets and mill outlets to get hulk in the grave, but can also just be used to get necromancer, yes. The creature tutors are probably the weakest consistency cards in the deck, but you just need the tutor density at this point, otherwise you have way too many dead hands that force mulligans.

Broganator101 if people are holding up mana for crop rotation, something that you can do to combat that is to slot in a Kitesail Freebooter or a Mesmeric Fiend to get off of the first hulk trigger along with Body Snatcher, in order to strip the crop rotation out of someone's hand in the same way that you'd name a single-shot exile card with Phyrexian Revoker. A neat trick with Mesmeric Fiend specifically, is that the way that it's worded, you can sacrifice it before it's trigger resolves, and you get to exile the card permanently.

CanEx Drill bit isn't really worth it, as it can't target your own hand to get hulk into the grave in a pinch, Incubation Druid isn't really that worth it IMO, although it might warrant testing. The reason being that even if we can get a counter on it consistently, it requires both another dork to sac and scavenge, and you can't turn it on before casting Varolz, so it just turns on too late to be worth it.

What do you think of Mox Amber, not the best mox by any means, but with your abundance of dorks to turn 2 a Varolz, dropping this right after makes it a 2 color mox, and can start casting spells pretty reliably by then, acting as, at worst case once Varolz hits, another land. It has worked well for me in my Selvala, Explorer Returned, Animar, Soul of Elements, and Thrasios, Triton Hero/Tymna the Weaver lists, but didn't do well in Najeela, the Blade-Blossom. Always is a card I want to try out in any deck where the commander costs less than or equal to three mana.

SynergyBuild unfortunately, Amber just isn't that good here. A large majority of the ramp in the deck is included to get to a turn 2 Varolz consisitently, and amber just doesn't do that. Because of the low land count, it also just can't really count as a 3rd land either, as you can't guarentee a hand with it will get you a turn 2 Varolz anyway. Mox Amber is a lot more suited to decks where you aren't necessarily ramping to a commander, but you are casting them anyway, such as partners or broadly 2cmc commanders.

Animar, Soul of Elements is a deck similar to this, always wanting to turn 2 the commander with a turn 1 dork or Lotus Petal, etc. They don't even run crypt/ring because colorless mana isn't necessary. Perhaps I was wrong about the similarities though, I may have misjudged this deck in that way.

sickrobot ok that actually makes a lot of sense. I guess meta would determine how many of those effects to run. And as for Mox Amber, I am running it and it performs very well. Allows me to play Varolz turn 2 then still have 1 mana for a dismember or nature's claim type interaction. Granted, mine is more of a budget brew as I don't own mox diamond, bayou or mana crypt. When I get off work today I'll upload my list to tappedout and maybe we can bounce ideas around. This is my first attempt at cedh and so far loving the deck and seeing good results against other fully tuned decks.

Quick question, what is your target for the Crop Rotation? Or what are you react to when you play it?

Just checked this again, wow it's getting a lot of attention

TuffGuy a bit late (sorry), but if you're still interested I'm always down to discuss the deck

speedy5812 Crop rotate is a toolboxy card, you're never going to be getting the same thing with it, but here are the main targets:

• Dryad Arbor when you need an extra body to put a pattern or order on
• Phyrexian Tower when you need to kill hulk
• Gaea's Cradle or Ancient Tomb when you need more mana
• and then Bojuka Bog if you're playing it still, but it's a bit iffy now that actual 4c hulk decks have come so much further in protecting their own combo

Hey there, I am doing a bit of research on The more competitive decks out there for my Stax deck.

• So the first question is: what kind of "Stax" or "Hate cards" would shut this deck down or make it impossible for you to win under certain singular or combined Effects?

• And the second question is about Sanctum Prelate as I am trying to gather as much information about the stopping power of calling specific CMC with this card vs certain strategies, Would you consider CMC ,, or CMC to be more effective here to disrupt your gameplan?

How do you feel about Lake of the Dead since a good majority of the cards in the early stages of most of the combo lines start with ?? If so would it make more sense to also play Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth I have had some explosive end step with these lands and Crop Rotation

Smurblefin I personally found that Lake of the Dead is unneeded, and can get pretty painful in the cases when you either don't need all the extra mana, or have a swamp-light draw, so I switched away from it a long time ago, although I'd encourage you to test with it if you're so inclined. I try as hard as possible to not play Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth , especially in 2 color, as we have all the fixing that we need, and it usually does more for fixing opponents' mana than it does for fixing our own.

sickrobot I see why now I looked harder into my own question and I agree with you. By not providing fixing for everyone else is a strong reason not to run the Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth might still test Lake of the Dead but on the fence thank you for your responce

How does this deck deal with grave hate or just a combo piece getting exiled?

Ethon either by removing it or Riftsweeper

Just seems so slow to first find the Riftsweeper, then shuffle the card back into the library and then have to find the combo piece thereafter. However, if you've found it works then I won't argue that point. I'm dipping my toes into cEDH and considering this deck as it seems the most fun to me. How do you find it performs in a blind meta?

Appreciate the response!

Ethon well you don't really have to find the combo piece afterward, as hulk does that for you, it's really just finding the Riftsweeper to deal with the combo, and even then, you can use Riftsweeper inside of a hulk pile to solve that problem without even needing to find Riftsweeper manually, as detailed in the primer.

To be completely honest, Varolz isn't the strongest hulk deck anymore, and there are a lot of strictly better options at this point, but if you're enthused about him, he can still do well into mixed blind metas, it's only really at the absolute top levels that he really loses his viability.

sickrobot I'm glad to see you still updating this list fairly regularly despite more favorable Hulk lists floating around in the current metagame. Might I ask why you're opting for the current Hulk pile? Wouldn't Mikaeus/Ballista be a more condensed package?

Dango The Melira pile is a card slot heavier, but it's a lot nicer in a couple of ways that I'm happy about: first of all, it can combo through Null Rod unlike MikeBall, which is very nice just to reduce your vulnerability to the effect, but even more importantly, opens you up to being able to run it yourself in artifact-heavy metas, so we just get more flexable in general. The other reason is that each of the pieces in the Melira combo are generally more castable than the MikeBall pile, as to pre-cast Ballista you have to spend 2 mana to make sure it doesn't just die immediately, and obviously Mikaeus is 6 mana, where the maximum amount you ever have to pay for the current pile is 3 mana, usually just 1 or 2. Basically, I'm more than happy to burn the extra card slot just for some small quality of life things.

sickrobot that makes a lot of sense. I figured the sacrifice of slot efficiency had that tradeoff of being more mana efficient. That can also make your hulk piles a lot more flexible if say, you have your Disciple of the Vault in play or in hand, but you don't have access to Varolz for a sac outlet for whatever reason (which would be an odd circumstance admittedly because you're likely sacrificing hulk to Varolz, but I digress), you could just grab a Viscera Seer instead and just hard cast your Disciple to assemble your combo for the win. It's extra spicy that this gets around Null Rod and Stony Silence effects, which at least should be commonplace to see in high level metas.

Overall, I think your list is brilliant. Have you been playing this deck recently? If so how has it been performing in the current metagame? I assume Shuffle Hulk outperforms this deck substantially with access to Flash , but Varolz seems like he's still a rather potent threat who may slip by under the radar if left unchecked. What are his good matchups and bad matchups usually if you don't mind sharing?