Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Varolz, the Scar-Striped!

Varolz is a three mana 2/2 that gives each creature card in your graveyard scavenge, with the scavenge cost being equal to that creature’s mana cost, and you can sacrifice another creature to regenerate Varolz.

Scavenge is an interesting mechanic that exiles a creature from your graveyard to put +1/+1 counters on a creature you control for a mana cost equal to the power of that creature, but normally the downside of it being equal to the mana cost of the creature means that the higher the power the creature, the higher the mana cost.

However, throughout Magic’s history, there have been several creatures that are under cost with massive stats, but at a huge downside when they are in play. However, if we just don’t play those cards and get them into our graveyard, then that sounds like a better gameplan.

First we need to find cheap creatures with massive power, it doesn’t matter what sort of downside they have.

Force of Savagery is the perfect example of what we are looking for. On the surface, this is just a bad creature that dies immediately when it gets to the battlefield because it has zero toughness, but we get it into the graveyard and suddenly we have a way to give Varolz eight +1/+1 counters for three mana.

The same thing goes for something like Phyrexian Soulgorger, which has a cumulative upkeep of sacrificing a creature, but more importantly is a three mana 8/8 that we don’t need to play in order to make use of.

Death’s Shadow is an even better rate because it is a 13/13 while not on the battlefield, because its ability modifies its power when in play and does not determine its power based on other factors like Tarmogoyf or Maro and the easiest way you can tell is if the power of the creature has a number vs a star.

Now there are also some cheap creatures with high power that we can use because their downside can benefit us, like Shakedown Heavy, which whenever it attacks the defending player may have you draw a card and if they do then you untap it and remove it from combat.

There is also Groundbreaker, which is a three mana 6/1 with trample and haste and sacrifices itself at the end of turn, which we can use to attack and get into the graveyard so we can scavenge it later.

The next thing that we need to do is have ways to get cards into our graveyard, the more the better for us.

Hermit Druid is a way for us to potentially get a bunch of cards into the graveyard, but also has the chance of getting absolutely nothing into the graveyard and a basic land into our hand, but the benefit is that we can do it each turn to potentially get more and more things into the graveyard.

There are also the reliable dredge cards like Life from the Loam which can get some lands we milled into our hand, Darkblast for a bit of removal that we can get back into our hand fairly consistently, or Stinkweed Imp for a massive dredge of 5 while also being a cheap creature that can remove a creature if it deals combat damage.

We also can use cards like Mulch to look at the top four cards of our library to put lands into our hand and the rest into the graveyard, Winding Way to let us choose creature or land then reveal the top four to put the chosen cards into our hand and the rest into the graveyard, or Grisly Salvage to reveal the top five to put a creature or land into our hand and the rest into the graveyard.

If we want particular cards in our graveyard then we can use something like Jarad’s Orders to put one creature card into our hand and the other into the graveyard or Buried Alive to get three creatures into the graveyard.

Now all we need to do is make sure we can get damage through, ideally damage with Varolz to win the game.

Filth and its green counterpart in the cycle Brawn are both excellent ways for us to get damage through since Filth grants our creatures swampwalk if its in the graveyard and we control a Swamp and Brawn gives our creatures trample if it is in the graveyard and we control a Forest. We can achieve both of these scenarios if we happen to have a Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth and Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, the latter being quite pricey.

Since we are also exiling creature cards from our graveyard, we can take advantage of a card like Insidious Roots, which makes a 0/1 Plant creature token whenever one or more creatures leave our graveyard, while also putting +1/+1 counters on each Plant you control while also allowing your creature tokens to tap for mana of any color.

In a similar vein we have Chalk Outline, which makes a 2/2 Detective creature token then investigates, which when paired with Insidious Roots gives us two bodies for each creature we end up exiling, with one also making some of those creature bigger and the other allowing us to get a Clue token for extra draws.

Varolz is a pretty linear Commander in that you have a clear strategy in your mind and you know how to execute it. As with all graveyard decks this is susceptible to graveyard interaction, so keep that in mind when building the deck.

In my opinion, I believe that this deck is actually a pretty solid deck for newcomers wanting a straightforward graveyard strategy of getting things into the graveyard and exiling them for value. It’s not the most powerful by any means, but it can be made better over time as the new player acquires cards.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual