"Valgavoth, Harrower of Souls" EDH Deck Advice
Commander Deck Help forum
Posted on Jan. 19, 2025, 12:10 a.m. by Archon_Bel
I'm getting back into MtG after about one year and a half of not playing. Valgavoth, Harrower of Souls
interests me because of the awesome artwork and ability to draw cards and get stronger without necessarily being an instant combo commander. I'd say I'm a casual player, but I like any deck I play to be fine-tuned, resilient, and effective in what it does. I still want to win, after all!
For this deck, I'm naturally thinking some kind of burn route with cards like Underworld Dreams and Sulfuric Vortex to consistently trigger Valgavoth's effect on every opponent's turn. Effects that punish the opponent for doing anything will also be effective in triggering the effect and whittling their life totals down. Additionally, I'm wanting to add in an aristocrats strategy for more life loss triggers, value, and more importantly, board control. A discard theme might also be nice, but aristocrats seems like it has more support.
Problem is that I'm not really familiar with either burn/punisher or aristocrats strategies, so I have no idea what cards and engines to put in a Rakdos deck. I have a Yawgmoth, Thran Physician deck, but that doesn't really need a whole lot of investment seeing how the commander is its own sac outlet, card draw, and board control.
tl;dr Valgavoth burn/sacrifice deck for life loss and board control. What do?
This thread was moved to a more appropriate forum (auto-generated comment)
January 19, 2025 3:19 p.m.
Archon_Bel says... #4
I was aware of the EDHrec page, yeah. Been looking through it already. My hope in posting this thread was to learn of more cards, synergies, and strategies with Valgavoth not immediately apparent.
January 19, 2025 4:06 p.m.
TheoryCrafter says... #5
Welcome Back to Magic. I broke my description down to the three deck types yer seeking.
Aristocrats: Take advantage of death triggers to hurt your opponent. Examples of cards are Blood Artist, Dreadhorde Butcher and Zulaport Cutthroat. Graveyard recursion cards like Disentomb, Gravedigger, Mortuary Mire and Valgavoth's Faithful should be considered.
Burn: Spells, instants and sorceries, and abilities of permanents that deal noncombat damage. Examples include, but are not limited to, Blightning, Bonfire of the Damned and Lightning Bolt. Cards you should add to any Rakdos burn deck include, but are not limited to, Pestilent Spirit, Soul-Scar Mage and Toralf, God of Fury Flip.
Punisher: A Sophie's Choice in every spell. Examples include, but are not limited to, Book Burning, Dash Hopes, Killing Wave, Painful Quandary and Vexing Devil. I would also consider any creature with the Afflict ability, especially Wildfire Eternal to be punisher cards.
As for cards that will feed into your commander's static ability, I would recommend Burning Anger, Psychosis Crawler, Scrawling Crawler and Sheoldred, the Apocalypse.
Thank you for reading me out. I hope this helps give you a baseline of what you're looking for. Happy Hunting!
DarkKiridon says... #2
You can check out Valgavoth's EDHrec page here
Hope this helps.
January 19, 2025 10:04 a.m.