Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Yawgmoth, Thran Physician!

Yawgmoth is a four mana 2/4 that has protection from Humans, you pay 1 life and sacrifice another creature to put a -1/-1 counter on up to one target creature and draw a card and for two black mana and discard a card you proliferate.

-1/-1 counters are not used so often for a variety of reasons, but there are still plenty of cards that make use of them. We have access to an Aristocrats strategy, which means we can sacrifice creatures to gain more value from the -1/-1 counters, as well as a discard strategy to make even more use out of the -1/-1 counters and other counters we decide to use.

We are going to slow roll our way to a victory, but we can definitely make it work.

First we need a way to generate a ton of bodies as well as ways to keep our life at decent parity.

Tackling the creatures first, Ophiomancer is an excellent choice in this regard because it creates a Snake token at the beginning of each upkeep if we don’t control a Snake, which means we can sacrifice a Snake on each turn to start distributing -1/-1 counters.

We can also make use of creatures that return themselves to the battlefield from the graveyard as repeatable sacrifice fodder, like Forsaken Miner which reanimates itself if we commit a crime and pay a black, which is what Yawgmoth does when it puts a -1/-1 counter on something.

Similarly, creatures with Undying like Butcher Ghoul and Geralf’s Messenger are also a good options because they come back to the battlefield with a +1/+1 counter, which we can proliferate with Yawgmoth.

As far as making sure we gain life, we have the various Blood Artist effects that drain our opponents 1, like Bastion of Rememberance, Zulaport Cutthroat, and Ayara, First of Locthwain.

Now that we have ways to make -1/-1 counters, we should have also consider other ways to make use of them and make more of them.

Nest of Scarabs is going to be our primary vector for making use of them, since if we put one or more -1/-1 counters on a creature we make that make 1/1 Insect tokens. Looking at the way this is worded, if you manage to spread some -1/-1 counters on a couple of creatures and proliferate, you would get a ton of Insect tokens to sacrifice.

We can also us something like Crumbling Ashes to pick off bigger creatures with -1/-1 counters, Blowfly Infestation to put a -1/-1 counter on a creature if another creature with a -1/-1 counter dies, or Lockjaw Snapper to put -1/-1 counters on creatures with -1/-1 counters when it dies.

Speaking of Lockjaw Snapper, it has wither and we can use a whole host of creatures with wither to spread the counters. My personal choice is Massacre Girl, Known Killer which gives all of our creatures wither and whenever a creature our opponents control with toughness less than 1 dies, we draw a card.

Since we are going to be killing a lot of creatures, we should be able to make use of those creatures to our advantage.

Liliana Vess is going to be one of our ways to reanimate creatures, and not only that but we can also pick off our opponents hands to start getting some more creatures into the graveyard or at the very least start depriving our opponents of resources.

In a similar vein, we can also use Rise of the Dark Realms in the late game as a way to mass reanimate creatures, Ghastly Conscription to soft reanimate a target opponent’s graveyard by manifesting them onto our side of the battlefield, and Virtue of Persistence to bring back creatures one at a time while also doubling as an early game removal spell.

There are some pricier option in reanimation that work in terms of flavor with Portal to Phyrexia, which not only has our opponents sacrifice three creatures, but at the beginning of your upkeep also brings back a creature to the battlefield from the graveyard.

Ancient Brass Dragon is the swingiest version of a reanimation ability because it needs to deal combat damage, then roll a d20 to reanimate up the mana value of what you rolled on the dice, which I like because I like the occasional random element, but your results will vary.

Yawgmoth is a slow oppressive deck that works to deprive your opponents of resources and killing their creatures while getting value from them. It can be a pain to track everyone’s -1/-1 counters and if you go up against a +1/+1 counters deck then it will be a struggle to deal with.

However, Yawgmoth is a strong Commander that can start turning the game to your advantage early if you manage to get him in play early.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual