Hello everyone ! This is my actual duelcommander for Yawgmoth, thran physician ! Sorry for the broken english, i'm french.
First of, why this commander ? Well i'm a big horror fan and had a lot of mono-B commander in the past and love aristocrats strategy. The fact that Yawg is the big original MTG villain is also a big plus ! The deck is, or at least was, relatively cheap (i had most of the cards already) being mono-colored you don't need fetchlands or bilands (i know fetch could still be used to filter my draws but i'm not a big fan of using them outside of their respectives colors combinaisons). Being a somewhat agro deck, it's not very dependant on Cabal Coffers (which is the only true monoB commander), but it give a nice edge, especially when Yawg start to become expensive (I had games where coffers allowed me to play a 12 mana commander after it being couple quite a few times).
The mana curve is very low. The first iteration of the deck had a higher ccm creatures and spells that interacted with -1/-1 counters or were juste really good but in my meta it was not viable. I quickly realized that i needed to have a few creatures on the board before i casted my commander in order to have instant value even if he was killed. If i have some of the best recursing black creatures cards, i know that there is good cheaper alternatives. All this cheap manacurve also allow for very agressive play and sometimes, playing Yawg is not even necessary. I find the deck quite versatile, able to be aggro, but sometimes being able to combo or to outlast other agro decks with recursion and card advantage. The deck strugle quite a bit against very fast agro, especialy since our life total is a ressource we intend to use, and against deck that don't play any creature (we can still draw with Yawg, but we lose a little bit of advantage by not being able to put the -1/-1 counter anywhere).
Cards i'm testing in the deck right now :
- Blight Mound : doesn't do something when it enter the battlefield, but can generate insane value, especially with the +1/+0 menace to attacking pest. Gaining life by sacrificing pests is also very nice.
- Bubbling Muck : can sometimes generate huge quantity of mana but i'm not convinced, sometimes it's a dead card in hand, especially when i draw too many nonbasics.
- Dauthi Voidwalker : just a good card by itself, i think it will stay in the deck for ever. Better than other creature based graveyard hate like Tymaret.
- Grief : a very good hand-hate card. Having the tools to reanimate it in the deck is also quite nice. The body is also good especially with menace. Will probably stay for ever as well.
- Sedgemoor Witch : good body with evasion and a nice ward. But i'm not sure the deck can really utilize it's pest generating effect very often. Will see.
- Lolth, Spider Queen : great synergy with the commander and the overall deck. Can create blockers which is nice and the ultimate could be pertinent in agro strategy. But high CCM. Might not stay long in the deck (but i keep her in mind for my Yawgmoth Superfiend deck).
Cards out of the deck for now :
- Nest of Scarabs : very nice card, a very good synergy with Yawg, but don't do anything by itself if he is not out. Too many times I had the nest in play, but no way to get value from it.
- Gravepact : very very good card but useless when there is now creatures on my oponent board, cost 4 and do nothing by itself.
- Eradicator valkyrie : good card, but quite slow and can die before it has the chance to attack. Compare poorly against other 4ccm creatures (Rankle have haste, Kalitas can generate zombie the turn it arrives and have graveyard hate, Grief delete an opponent card and Phyrexian obliterator is here to make monoR a nightmare and boost devotion).
Cars that might get axed :
- Damnation : a good boardwipe, but not a great boardwipe anymore. Toxic deluge is cheaper and better and Living Death reanimate a lot of thing generally. But i really like Seb McKinnon art.
- Deathgreeter : sometimes do nothing excepct being sacrified without me gaing life, might be better to replace it with Nested Shambler or Shambling Ghast.
- Liliana, Waker of the Dead : not the best Liliana and the moste expensive one, will see.
- Yawgmoth's Will : a very very good card, but i need a ton of mana to really use it. Can really turn games over though.