"It wasn't a rock, it was Yarok lobster!" Hey all, this is my Yarok, the Desecrated deck tech. So, this boy is nuts. First saw him and the commander I immediately associated it with was Muldrotha, the Gravetide it just seemed like a commander that was as powerful was Muldrotha. Since brewing and playtesting, I can confirm that Yarok is stupid powerful, but nowhere near as busted as Muldrotha, the Gravetide. Yarok is essentially Panharmonicon on a creature, there's one significant difference though. Panharmonicon just triggers for creatures and artifacts entering the battlefield. Our boy Yarok triggers for any permanent entering the battlefield. So, def better. This is super awesome though for one reason. LANDFALL!! Yes, finally a commander in Sultai who really cares about lands entering the battlefield. I had been kicking around the idea of Damia, Sage of Stone landfall, but didn't build it because I have other Damia decks in my meta. Yarok, the Desecrated is the boi I've been waiting for and man it feels good to see this deck on paper.
We're gonna start digging into categories here soon, but I wanted to point something out right away. This isn't a combo deck, it can definitely do some gross stuff and potentially gun down the whole table, but that isn't the goal. It's casual(ish), just trying to have fun more than anything. I know you can build around this lands theme much more competitively, but this aint that. Anyway, let's get into it.
Now Entering
In this section I'm going to cover all the creatures that have enter the battlefield effects that DON'T involve land at all. The section after will be going over the ones that go and evaluating synergies. So, to start off we have a new card from M20 Agent of Treachery I saw this card and immediately thought it would be perfect in my Aminatou, the Fateshifter deck, but when looking through creatures I saw this guy and knew he'd be perfect in here. He's appropriately costed to steal one thing when he comes in, but when he takes two boy it's just so good. You steal them permanently too! Archaeomancer is in here for obvious reasons, he does a lot of work to protect us by getting by counterspells and removal. Augury Owl is a cutie pie and can help us even out our land drops in the early game as well as let us scry 3 twice for two mana once our commander is out, also a flying blocker. Craterhoof Behemoth is a card I've never run in any deck. This is the deck it goes into for such obvious reasons, he triggers twice. I mean, come on. Dream Stalker is here just to let us recur our ETB effects really. Duplicant is great removal, especially since he exiles two things. Eternal Witness is an obvious include in here, two things back to my hand for the price of one! Fierce Empath lets us double tutor, and by the time his effect will be triggering twice we'll likely be able to cast whatever creatures we grab. Hostage Taker will let us nab two things from opponents, just so sweet for four mana. Ravenous Chupacabra is exactly what it looks like, two for one again. Reclamation Sage follows this same pattern, as does Sphinx of Uthuun. Spellseeker is always a value card, but when it grabs us Pact of Negation and Cyclonic Rift it's beyond worth the slot.
Free Real Estate
Lands, lands. I've tapped them so many ways. This is the suite of creatures that interact with land cards in any way. The last section was just pure value, because I realized you can't build this deck without stocking up on some scrumptious value to get you through the cold winter. This section however, is the meat and potatoes of the deck. We'll start with Avenger of Zendikar, the amount of tokens he makes is doubled and the amount of counters that go onto them when a land ETB's is doubled too. It's just such a gravy train to value town. Cavalier of Thorns is another new card from M20 what I wanted to try out, and I'm very glad I did. It almost guarantees you two untapped lands to the field every time it ETB's, and it also loads our graveyard a bit, which can def be useful. It also has a baked on effect when it dies that reminds me of Greenwarden of Murasa, all in all I like this card quite a bit in the deck. Coiling Oracle is a cutie pie that puts us ahead two cards, whether they be on the battlefield tapped or in our hand. Lotus Cobra makes us two mana whenever a land comes in, which is honestly so silly. Ob Nixilis, the Fallen is one of the win-cons in the deck that can accidentally just kill people. His effect triggers twice for each land, so 6 damage for each land and he gets counters. He's very good. Rampaging Baloths seems pretty obvious haha. Risen Reef is like Coiling Oracle's sexy sister. It triggers off itself, our commander, and a handful of our other creatures. Let me tell you why it's such an incredible workhorse though: one card, Zendikar's Roil. With this card you make two elementals whenever a land enters, and when you make those two elementals you get four triggers off Risen Reef and if you hit a land in those four triggers, you get another two elementals, which gets you another four triggers. So on and so forth. You basically draw your whole deck haha. Honestly I need to put an Eldrazi titan in here so I don't deck myself when this happens. Risen Reef is probably the most powerful card in the deck because of this interaction. Sire of Stagnation lets us draw four cards and exile four cards from an opponent if they ever play a land. Springbloom Druid ramps us by two and also gets us four ETB's. Tatyova, Benthic Druid is such an obvious include. Tireless Tracker gets us two clues for every land we play! How useful those are is very situational because a lot of the time we'll be drawing a stupid amount of cards and won't need those clues. Finally Wood Elves either helps mana fix in the early game or gets us two ETb's later in the game.
Pictionary
We get a ton of value from using the cards in our hand, and we'll ideally have a lot of mana. It stands to reason that the more cards we have in hand, the better! In this section we'll go over the ways the deck can draw you cards and keep stoking that fire to keep our train on the tracks heading to value town. We'll start off with creatures. Baleful Strix draws a card on ETB, or two. Coiling Oracle and Risen Reef both do that cute little thing. Sire of Stagnation will draw us FOUR cards whenever someone plays a land (assuming we have Yarok out). Tatyova, Benthic Druid is a great card draw engine. Guardian Project will draw us two cards whenever we have a creature ETB that doesn't have the same name as anything else already out or in the yard. Rhystic Study has nothing to do with our commander at all, but it's just such a value card. Also if our opponents use removal for Rhystic Study we're SOOOOO alright with that, not at all a cog we need for our machine. Arcane Denial draws us a card on the next upkeep after we cast it, so card draw? Haha also Coveted Jewel draws us SIX cards and is a man rock for three mana.
Win are we gonna When?
We have a lot of value in this deck, but that value doesn't just inherently win us the game. Let's get into our Win-Cons and how we close the game out. Avenger of Zendikar easily makes us a huge army that gets big really quickly. Likely by the time we'll be casting him out we should have ways to get a bunch on lands into play on the next turn and start wiping people out with out plants. Craterhoof Behemoth is another win-con because the huge buff he normally gives is twice as big. Ob Nixilis, the Fallen can machine gun down the table if we have enough lands coming into play. Roil Elemental can just steal everyone's creatures and allow our team to swing in. Rampaging Baloths makes us 8 power for each land that comes into play. So, at this point we should all be well aware of how lands entering the battlefield wins us the game, what's one of the best ways to have that happen en masse? Boundless Realms is a card that enables all these other cards, and gives us the gas we need to fire up these engines. Another sorcery that can win us the game is Finale of Devastation imagine paying atleast 10 into this spell, grabbing Craterhoof Behemoth and then buffing with Finale as well as two Craterhoof triggers, giving everything Trample and Haste. Very good. Finally, Torment of Hailfire can help us close out a game, especially on an empty board.
That's gonna conclude this description I think. Yarok, the Desecrated is a really cool open ended commander. I had an absolute blast building this guy, and had the hardest time making cuts from this deck that I can remember in recent times. There were enough cards I cut from this deck to make another one haha, just goes to show how cool and open ended Yarok is. Thanks for reading if you made it this far, and I hope you enjoyed the deck!
