Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Yarok, the Desecrated!

Yarok is a five mana 3/5 with deathtouch and lifelink, and if a permanent entering the battlefield causes a triggered ability of a permanent you control to trigger, it triggers again.

Playing with enters the battlefield triggers is a time honored staple in Commander, copying them is especially fun because this opens us up to a wide variety of directions.

Where I want to take this is to focus on a mechanic that most people won’t usually associate with these three colors, and that is Energy.

This came from me browsing Reddit one day and noticing a card that was in Modern Horizons 3 and got the ideas rolling in my head for an atypical Energy deck.

Finding the Commander was not easy, but looking at Yarok, this will work perfectly for what we’re going for, so let’s get to building.

This was the card that set my brain down a rabbit hole, and while it isn’t flashy and doesn’t trigger off of Yarok, it is something that we can definitely play with.

Chthonian Nightmare gives us three Energy and pay X Energy and sacrifice a creature and bounce it to our hand to return a creature with mana value X from our graveyard to the battlefield.

Repeatable creature recursion is wonderful and not the only source of recursion using Energy in black, which is Demon of Dark Schemes, which nets us an Energy when we sacrifice a creature and needs only four Energy and three mana to bring a creature from any graveyard back.

So our goal is to fill the deck with as many Energy making creatures we can to get a ton of Energy so we can bring back big creatures from the graveyard.

Minister of Inquiries and Thriving Turtle are one mana ways to get two Energy each, and Minister of Inquiries can mill us to get big things into the graveyard.

Now we need big things to get to the graveyard.

To make the most out of Yarok’s ability, we’ll ideally need creatures with fairly powerful enters the battlefield triggers, of which there are plenty to choose from.

Meteor Golem is a way to get rid of a problematic nonland permanent, two if we have Yarok, and is something we can easily cast if necessary.

One other thing to look at are creatures that can get themselves into the graveyard.

Wizards of the Coast has been adding a lot of high mana value creatures that have some form of landcycling attached to them, which we could definitely use to help smooth any mana troubles.

Mirrorshell Crab can be used as a soft counter spell that we can reanimate for a creature with Ward 3, Altanak, the Thrice-Called could be used to bring a land from the graveyard back, Nimble Obstructionist to counter activated or triggered abilities, and so many more.

Any creature that enters and mills is also a choice, just so we can have option in the graveyard. Some of the immediate ones to come to mind are creatures like Circle of the Land Druid or Deathcap Marionette which are cheap ways to get a bunch of cards into the graveyard.

If we have a preponderance of Energy, then we should look at other ways to utilize that Energy.

Gonti’s Aether Heart can give us an extra turn to potentially finish a game, Aetherworks Marvel as a way to cast a card for only six Energy and we gain a benefit for our permanents going to the graveyard in another Energy counter, or Architect of the Untamed that has a Landfall trigger we can use with Yarok and makes a 6/6 for eight Energy.

The unfortunate aspect of our color combination (at least prior to Aetherdrift) is that getting additional Energy counters is relegated to Innkeeper’s Talent, which is a little pricey, and Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider, which is very pricey.

Yarok is a versatile enough Commander that we can either build the deck as a self mill reanimator deck, an Energy combo deck, or a value based midrange deck that mixes both.

While having Panharmonicon style Commanders can be pretty boring, they can be made in interesting ways, especially using a combination of colors and deck archetypes people won’t be expecting.

Thank you for reading, see you tomorrow for the next Daily Commander!

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual