For today's deck tech, we're going to explore the options available to us from one of black's most underplayed, underrated, and overlooked commanders - a commander who creates a one-sided board wipe every single time he leaves the battlefield! I am, of course, speaking of the totally, insanely broken rare from Betrayers of Kamigawa, the almighty Yukora, the Prisoner!
What? You don't think he's insanely broken? I didn't say the one-sided board wipe was for your opponents! Being able to wipe your own board any time Yukora dies, is exiled, is returned to hand, or is returned to your library is, in fact, a very powerful ability under the right circumstances. While most may gloss over his massive amounts of unlocked potential, seeing him as a 5/5 vanilla creature with a huge downside who is, perhaps, "unplayable," here at Durdling in EDH we are going to try to exploit every aspect and implication of his "bad" ability. So, let's get started!
By far the most obvious way to make Yukora "better" would be to play an Ogre tribal deck, thus ignoring his ability and leaving you with a simple 5/5 vanilla commander. However, that's obviously not what we're going to be doing today. As far as exploiting his ability, there are, of course, many ways to make use of death triggers, as well as scary engines like Mikaeus, the Unhallowed plus Cauldron of Souls, essentially letting your team return to the battlefield twice per turn after being wiped (and more than that if you can untap the Cauldron). However, that is far too Spiky for my taste, so we'll be looking at some more obscure, more janky, but infinitely more fun combos today. (Although Cauldron of Souls is still included as a very solid card in its own right.)
There are plenty of black decks that look to return creatures from the graveyard, sacrifice them, rinse, repeat, etc. However, today we're going to explore another option--what if the creatures didn't actually go to the graveyard (well, actually, they will very briefly), but instead went somewhere else? No, not Planar Void! I'm talking about the incredibly janky enchantment, Mortuary!
With Mortuary out, any time Yukora leaves the battlefield, we essentially get to Footbottom Feast! (Or any of the other functionally equivalent versions of the card, that's just my favorite.) Okay, so it's actually only creatures that died to Yukora, not our entire graveyard, but still, pretty great. So what possibilities does this open us up to? Well, for starters, there's the wacky, non-competitive Little Eldrazi that Could, Deceiver of Forms! If we stack the top of our deck correctly, we can allow our team (once it's rebuilt) to be a copy of any chain of creatures during our subsequent turns, which can lead to some crazy shenanigans. Then there's Qarsi High Priest, who allows us to sacrifice creatures to bring our creatures back in the form of Manifested 2/2's, which we can later flip up, either by paying their mana cost or with other weird combos in the deck! There's also Treasure Keeper and Matter Reshaper, which can let us get our smaller utility creatures back for free.
Another route we certainly don't mind taking is stealing our opponent's creatures, then sacrificing them! There's no better black card for this than the recent Commander 2019 card, Thieving Amalgam! Not only does it give us creatures from our opponents' deck, it also lets us drain our opponents whenever one of their stolen creatures dies, even if we didn't get it from the Amalgam. This works with the few Control Magic-style effects available to us (these being Enslave, New Blood, Piper of the Swarm, and Ritual of the Machine). Techincally Captivating Vampire is available as well, but we won't be running enough Vampires to make him useful. There's also The Wretched, but it's kind of bad, even for us, as the opponent will almost always choose to take the 2 damage, and we aren't really running any forced blocking cards.
However, this also applies to cards we pilfer from our opponents' graveyard, such as with Puppeteer Clique, who also happens to have Persist, allowing him to stick around for another go after the first time he dies to Yukora's trigger. It even works on cards we steal from our opponents' hands, as is the case with the pretty much unique ability of Treacherous Urge. These "temporary" creatures can be kept permanently with the power of Conjurer's Closet, which also lets us clear our board at the end of each of our turns as long as Yukora is out. Voyager Staff works similarly, though sadly it's only a one-shot effect. Wait...what's that? There's a card that can tap to return Voyager Staff to the battlefield, and even untaps whenever one of our creatures die? Enter, Salvaging Station!
Since we're playing the Station, what other artifacts with CMC 1 or less, AKA Cogs, can we run? Wait, we need more? Isn't Voyager Staff enough on its own? Well, in case we get Station without the Staff, we will put in a few other options. Wayfarer's Bauble is an eternally solid choice, and we'll also grab the not-so-ubiquitously-played Despotic Scepter, which can kill any of our creatures at instant speed, including Yukora! Broken! Executioner's Capsule, Library of Leng (which allows us to stack our deck with discards as well!), and Myr Moonvessel round out the suite. Oh, wait, I almost forgot! There's also one of the all-stars of the deck, Pyxis of Pandemonium! This can send our board state from 0 to 60 immediately...and then right back to 0 again! And then..maybe back to 60? Ehh, whatever. It just creates some fun, explosive plays that seem well-suited to the deck. An obvious choice to the suite that I did not forget is Skullclamp - again, just a bit Spiky for my tastes. Card advantage is for the weak! I'm a durdle man for life!
That being said, we will still be running some cards that benefit us from our death triggers, although not as many as other decks likely would. To start, we probably want three of the same effect, because of how powerful it is, in Grave Pact, Dictate of Erebos, and Butcher of Malakir, which should wipe our opponents' boards whenever we wipe our own. We'll also throw in Black Market to make sure we always have enough mana. Ogre Slumlord also slots in quite nicely, making rats for Piper of the Swarm while also happening to be an Ogre, thus surviving all of our self-board wipes to make more rats! And Flesh Allergy is a fantastic spot removal spell that can sometimes end games by itself, capable of dealing upwards of 20 damage in many situations.
Not enough chaos for you? Don't worry! We're not done just yet! For my touch on a weird, chaos black deck, there's another key card in Endless Whispers. This does often provide our opponents with our creatures, but occasionally we will be able to break the symmetry. With Mortuary out, we can stack the death triggers so that the Mortuary trigger resolves before the Endless Whispers trigger, putting the creature safely on top of our library by the time we have to give up our creatures, while our opponents still have to give theirs up normally!
There are also a few cards in here to help fill our graveyard with reanimation targets--namely, Extractor Demon and the very underplayed Morality Shift, which, once our graveyard gets big enough so that we're not likely to deck ourselves, exchanges our graveyard with our library! Extractor Demon could also theoretically mill one of our opponents out if we get enough triggers.
Finally, there's just some good old-fashioned ways to recur and reanimate our creatures, from creatures that can bring themselves back (Bloodghast, Nether Traitor) to effects that do it for us (Balthor the Defiled, Dawn of the Dead). That gives us a decklist that looks a little something like this:
Commander
Yukora, the Prisoner
Creatures
Puppeteer Clique
Piper of the Swarm
Treasure Keeper
Matter Reshaper
Deceiver of Forms
Qarsi High Priest
Thieving Amalgam
Myr Moonvessel
Butcher of Malakir
Ogre Slumlord
Balthor the Defiled
Bloodghast
Nether Traitor
Pawn of Ulamog
Sifter of Skulls
Demon of Dark Schemes
Clone Shell
Sultai Emissary
Extractor Demon
Corpse Augur
Solemn Simulacrum
Graveshifter
Coffin Queen
Demonlord of Ashmouth
Golgari Thug
Warteye Witch
Burnished Hart
Skull Collector
Enchantments
Endless Whispers
Mortuary
Enslave
Black Market
Dictate of Erebos
Grave Pact
Dawn of the Dead
Open the Graves
Dark Prophecy
No Rest for the Wicked
Shadows of the Past
Infernal Genesis
Artifacts
Salvaging Station
Conjurer’s Closet
Voyager’s Staff
Wayfarer’s Bauble
Library of Leng
Executioner’s Capsule
Pyxis of Pandemonium
Despotic Scepter
Cauldron of Souls
Sorceries
New Blood
Ritual of the Machine
Gruesome Encore
Flesh Allergy
Ghastly Conscription
Beacon of Unrest
Morality Shift
Instants
Treacherous Urge
Wake the Dead
Thrilling Encore
Lands
Myriad Landscape
Field of Ruin
Shizo, Death’s Storehouse
Witch’s Cottage
Mortuary Mire
Phyrexian Tower
Barren Moor
Crypt of Agadeem
Dakmor Salvage
Everglades
High Market
Mutavault
Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
Polluted Mire
Sanctum of Eternity
Spawning Pool
Temple of the False God
Westvale Abbey
Warped Landscape
Evolving Wilds
Terramorphic Expanse
Memorial to Folly
Desert of the Glorified
Ash Barrens
Swamp x16
So now that we have a decklist, let's break down the deck by strategy, highlighting which cards help us, primarily, with which of our different strategies in the deck (some may help more than one strategy).
Build-around cards (which create strategies):
Mortuary
Endless Whispers
Salvaging Station
Reset after a self-board wipe:
Ogre Slumlord (sort of)
Balthor the Defiled
No Rest for the Wicked
Cauldron of Souls
Pyxis of Pandemonium (sort of)
Ghastly Conscription
Wake the Dead
Thrilling Encore
Flicker or otherwise cause Yukora to leave the battlefield:
Demonlord of Ashmouth
Skull Collector
Conjurer's Closet
Voyager's Staff
Despotic Scepter
Flesh Allergy
Cards that accrue value from death triggers:
Treasure Keeper
Matter Reshaper
Thieving Amalgam
Myr Moonvessel
Butcher of Malakir
Ogre Slumlord
Pawn of Ulamog
Sifter of Skulls
Demon of Dark Schemes
Clone Shell
Sultai Emissary
Extractor Demon
Corpse Augur
Solemn Simulacrum
Golgari Thug
Warteye Witch
Black Market
Dictate of Erebos
Grave Pact
Open the Graves
Dark Prophecy
Shadows of the Past
Salvaging Station
Flesh Allergy
Cards that reanimate individual creatures (sometimes themselves):
Puppeteer Clique
Bloodghast
Nether Traitor
Demon of Dark Schemes
Coffin Queen
Dawn of the Dead
Beacon of Unrest
Treacherous Urge
Cards that steal opponents' stuff:
Thieving Amalgam
Piper of the Swarm
Endless Whispers (sometimes)
Enslave
New Blood
Ritual of the Machine
Cards that play with the top of your library:
Treasure Keeper
Matter Reshaper
Deceiver of Forms
Qarsi High Priest
Clone Shell
Sultai Emissary
Golgari Thug
Warteye Witch
Shadows of the Past
Infernal Genesis
Library of Leng
Pyxis of Pandemonium
Misc. Graveyard-related cards:
Extractor Demon
Graveshifter
Morality Shift
Ramp:
Wayfarer's Bauble
Burnished Hart
Solemn Simulacrum
Black Market
Misc. Value:
Executioner's Capsule
As far as lands are concerned, I'll explain a few of my more "specific to this deck" choices. Sanctum of Eternity is absolutely essential here, as it bounces Yukora to our hand if we have no other way to make him leave the battlefield, thus enabling our main strategy. Additionally, there are a lot of lands that tap for colorless to make sure we can cast Matter Reshaper and Deceiver of Forms when we need to. Other utility lands are looking to cycle themselves, ramp, sacrifice our creatures, and recur creatures. Shizo, Death's Storehouse lets us get our commander or our other legendary creature, Balthor the Defiled (yes, that's the only one in the 99, somehow) in for damage. Dakmor Salvage helps fill our graveyard, and Mutavault, notably, can become a Vampire for us to sacrifice to New Blood, since we actually only have four other vampires (including Graveshifter). Of course, as Mutavault is a tad expensive, on a budget you could easily cut both Mutavault and New Blood.
That's it for today's deck tech, please let me know what you think of it and what ideas you might have for a deck helmed by Yukora!
For my next deck tech, I'd like you to help me pick a "bad" commander to build around! In the comments, let me know which of the following Legendary Creatures you'd like me to choose for the next deck tech:
Daughter of Autumn
Taniwha
Shimatsu the Bloodcloaked
Rashida Scalebane
Rohgahh of Kher Keep
Thanks for reading! Can't wait to see you next time!
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