#varina lich queen

[esperchallenge]

Deck 10 - Ain't No Party Like a Zombie Party Cuz a Zombie Party Includes Up to One of Each of Cleric, Rogue, Warrior, and Wizard

The Commander

Varina, Lich Queen was first printed as an alternate commander in the Subjective Reality precon released as part of Commander 2018. Up until very recently, Varina was one of your only on-theme choices if you wanted to combine the traditional Innistrad UB zombies with their WB Amonket cousins.

(more after the cut)

The Decklist

I decided that simply building a generic zombie typal deck didn't interest me. Instead, I took it in a goofier direction - what if all the zombies in the deck could be part of a party? That is, what if we limit ourselves to only wizards, clerics, warriors, and rogues?

Zombie wizards are by far the most abundant, with clerics in second, warriors in third, and rogues trailing far behind. Thankfully, OTJ introduced the zombie rogue token and several methods of creating them, so we can supplement our rogue count that way. In addition, we have honorary zombie-to-be and party payoff Nalia de'Arnise to help increase that count a bit more.

The Standout Cards

Coveted Prize is probably the strongest party payoff card ( it's between this and Nalia). If you have a full party, you have a tutor for any card for a single black mana that then also lets you cast a four drop for free.

I love Havengul Lich. It lets you cast creatures from any graveyard, and gains their abilities for the turn. Snipe your opponents' reanimate targets, steal their dead utility creatures, recast your own stuff, and have a blast doing it.

The Win Conditions

The main win condition is zombie beats, supplemented with lord effects and Calculating Lich. But in case of a board stall, we have Lich Lord of Unx and Shepherd of Rot to help seal the deal.

Final Thoughts

Zombies are a fun creature type. They have so much resiliency, and their card pool can apparently even support a less than ideal build like this. Thanks, Zombies!

[mtg-cards-hourly]

Ghoul's Feast

"Sumptuous, carefully fermented, and served with a silky ocular puree. You simply must try a bite." —Varina, Lich Queen

Artist: Ovidio Cartagena TCG Player Link Scryfall Link EDHREC Link

[jolyneart]

This'll be a long-ish post about my The Locked Tomb themed MTG deck and how I made like 20 versions of it before I decided to build it (and how I'm still working on it).

(I want to do legit art for this card)

If you are part of the Venn diagram of these two interests, or you want to see my slow descent into madness ovear a year of trying to put cardboard together, check the spoilers below.

So, I haven't been playing Magic for too long (a bit over a year). Weirdly I have owned cards since original Ixalan, but I never bothered learning to play until a friend invited me to play commander. I just wanted them for the pretty pictures, I have always admired Magic artists and they have been a huge inspiration on my art career.

Anyways, not too long after I started to play, I got this idea into my head that I should do a Locked Tomb commander deck.

"That'd be fun!" I thought

Well

All of these are over a year old (and are not my only first attempts, but I'll talk about those later).

I had two main issues when starting to build this deck:

1- I have never been interested into deck-building before in a card game

2- I have no fucking idea of what I'm doing

The first commander I chose to lead this deck, that I still think thematically fits within TLT universe, is Ratadrabik of Urborg

This Rat of a man has given me so many headaches, I'm sure that now I'd be able to do make a half-decent deck with him in the lead, hell I do have a black/white aristocrats deck that he could command just fine.

But my issue was that I had no idea how to balance his legends theme and zombie kindred theme at the same time, in the same deck. I was just incapable. And all of my results, budget or not, were jank piles that did very little or exploded into an infinite combo with cards like Boromir, Warden of the Tower or Nazgul. It just didn't feel right and the Locked Tomb theme was barely holding on by a thread with the things I was putting in there. There were barely ANY skeletons in any of these! (this will keep happening)

Anyways, after giving up on Ratadrabik (which btw I think would make for a great Ianthe proxy) I moved on to find some other commander and color combination that'd enable something else that wasn't a pile of legendary creatures.

Queue in Varina, Lich Queen

It's a Zombie Wizard! She cares about zombies, those are kind of early skeletons! She raises the undead herself!

Well, I do think Varina is great, and in other world where I knew how to build decks back then, she might just have been my Harrow commander deck

I don't even think the decks I made for her were that bad at all, just extremely expensive. And also the zombie theme, while much better supported mechanically, I didn't feel really represented the kind of necromantic powers we see in the books at all.

Shoutout to Mikaeus, he'd make for a great Jod if anyone wants to make a deck about our lord and savior the undying emperor.

Ok, now I'm going to take a bit of a detour to talk about what I actually like playing in mtg (not just commander). I predictably really enjoy playing black and graveyard strategies, but also really love putting big idiot beaters into the field with those strategies .I know, groundbreaking. But it is what it is, two of my favourite decks do this in one way or another.

God's perfect deck, my Sauron deck, was my first precon, that has left the lands of preconstruction long ago and is my dearest possession. Is it my most powerful deck? nope. Is it unbeatable? Not really, I almost never win with this deck.

What BIG Sauron does is, in an extremely thematic way, become a problem for everyone at the table, do evil things, and have everyone beat me down for my reanimation crimes.

If you are interested, you can check out that deck here.

Anyways sorry, back to the locked tomb, SO I like the graveyard right? Wouldn't it be nice that there'd be a famous woman necromancers in mtg? What if she leaded the deck?

Well, the most that I can say is that there really can be too much of a good thing. I'm talking about swamps.

Initially I had these two running around in the Ratadrabik deck. I still stand by the idea of having these flip walkers be young Harrow/Gideon and flip them into their "First House" versions. The Gideon/Kiriona and Kytheon/Gideon thing still drives me insane.

I was too sad discarding them, so I grabbed the Lilly card and tried to make it work, I really tried, I put on a lot of effort and care. But it didn't work, it wasn't her, it was me.

I built a pretty generic aristocrat shell, but I think that type of archetype really benefits of having more colors to work with (specially white).

So, with three commanders locked in the tomb (I also tried a Gut rakdos deck but I'm not even going to talk about it), what was next? I spent months on these and still had nothing to show for it. Was I the problem? Was I cursed with bad deck dissease?

No, that cannot be. I'm building other decks while this is going on and those are doing just fine. Lae'zel//Master Chef, Gandalf Big Artifacts. The issue might be that the head of the deck is always caring for just the one thing, there was not much diversity. I kept making Necromancers but had no Cavaliers to back them up.

If there could just be a way to have two little guys up there in the command zone. Wait a minute...

So, this was truly a jank fest. Partner is an extremely strong mechanic in commander, and Tymna is specially strong as a card to have access early. So I decided to justify using these to make the biggest pile of nonsense happen.

Equipment? check. Initiative? check. Skeletons? check. Zombies? check. Graveyard? check. Lifegain? check.

While goldfishing I realized that while the commanders do a great job to sustain the rest of the deck, the ammount of themes and archetypes made this a pile of cards that I can barely call a deck. And worst of all, they enabled two pretty strong commanders, and that didn't feel that'd be satisfactory at all in actual play.

I even prepared proxies for these! Feel free to use them if you want.

Also, I tried the whole partner thing swapping out Tymna for Ikra Shidiqi. Bringing out another whole color didn't help with the theme soup I was working with.

So I wholy abandoned the idea of both partners, and maybe even making this deck.

Maybe my hopes and dreams of having a functional silly lesbians and skeletons deck were doomed (yuri) from the beginning.

Months pass, I built 3 or 4 other decks in the meantime that work, can compete and be fun, sometimes all at the same time if you'd believe it. I had completely lost faith in this deck idea.

All until one day, were I was checking out a pile of cards I had pulled from the recent MH3 set to put them into my binder. And then I see it. There he was, this fucking guy with a shovel(?), looking at me.

I read again his fairly big wall of text, what does this guy do again?

Oh, he does necromancy stuff? attacks? wait wait, he draws POWER from the GRAVEYARD?? in JUND?

He really saved it. Not only I feel this perfectly represents the dynamics of Cavalier is in charge of creating enough thanergy for their necromancer, but ALSO does the necromancer thing, and ALSO loves having like 10 power and beating down face. This was a message, the dream was still alive.

So, I make a list, I order cards, I scrounge cards from my other black decks. And there it is. It's real

The Locked Tomb Griddlehark Commander Deck

But... that's not how my list looks right now. Yeah I know this deck is cursed into being always changing I think. But, the main issue here was what I said before. It had to pull cards from multiple decks to sustain itself. And I learned quickly that I don't like having my baby, my Sauron, being not functional, and that keeping track of what cards are where and swapping them out constantly sucks tremendously.

So, I pulled back most of the cards to their original decks. What was left was a corpse, a beautiful incomplete deck. So I selected cards from my collection, lower powered ones, niche ones, weird ones, and put them in for their more powerful counterparts.

It's function is extremely simple, it fills it's graveyard quickly, ramps, and with Coram on the battlefield, you turn that self-mill into card advantage, the graveyard into a power source and bring back powerful creatures like the Resurrection Beasts (Eldrazi)

There also are skeletons in there, of course.

This deck needed to die many deaths to exist. But isn't that the theme?

I'll make sure to put up the new decklist on my moxfield whenever I get a few upgrades.

[pixela7e]

Varina, Lich Queen

Sorry I'm late! But I finally got around to finishing this card, and ngl I'm pretty proud of it. Maybe I should start making phone wallpapers 🤔

[horademagic]

Varina, Rainha Lich/ Varina, Lich Queen

Tipo de criatura: Zumbi Mago

Custo de mana: 1 branca + 1 azul + 1 preta + 1 de qualquer cor = 4 no total 

4/4 de Poder e Resistência

Por que ela é interessante? Quando você atacar com um ou mais Zumbis, compre aquele tanto de cartas e depois descarte aquele tanto de cartas, depois você ainda ganha aquele tanto de pontos de vida. Como assim? Conta quantos Zumbis estão atacando, o número que der será o tanto que vai comprar, descartar e ganhar em pontos de vida. Sobre o descarte, são cartas da sua mão, não necessariamente precisa ser as que acabou de comprar. Pagando duas manas e exilando duas cartas do seu cemitério você cria uma ficha de Zumbi 2/2 pretos em seu campo de batalha. Posso fazer isso mais de uma vez no turno? Sim, pode fazer quantas vezes puder e quiser como sendo vantagem para você.

Preço da carta: em torno de 0,60 até 10,00

Disponível em Português

"Essa carta tem algumas edições disponíveis, o preço pode variar a depender da edição que escolher adquirir"

Link: https://www.ligamagic.com.br/?view=cards/card&card=Varina,%20Lich%20Queen&aux=Varina,%20Rainha%20Lich

Até a próxima postagem, Ulli e Thiago

[haaaaaaaaaaaave-you-met-ted]

Varina, Lich Queen by Igor Kieryluk

[the-grave-ghoul]

Zombie queen. Fear my horde.

[pallidprincess]

From roughly left-right top-bottom:

Mulch, Chandra's Fury, Mistral Charger, Giltgrove Stalker, _____ Killbot, Daemogoth Woe-Eater, Guardian of the Gateless, capitol offense, Fatal Push, Lys Alana Huntmaster (?), Imperious Perfect, Dreamtail Heron, Crow Storm, Thermo-Alchemist, Citadel Gate, Zombie Token

Target Minotaur, Alley Escape, Aspect of Gorgon, Augury Owl, Circuit Mender, Azor's Elocutors

Senate Guildmage, Magic Word, Fleetwheel Cruiser, Mandate of Peace, Callous Bloodmage, Gigantomancer, Empty Card Sleeve, Magda Brazen Outlaw, Spire of Industry

Spirit Summoning, Fathom Fleet Boarder, The Ur-Dragon, Chandra Fire of Kaladesh, Kiora Sovereign of the Deep, Custom Proxy (unidentifiable), Plains (LCI), Varina Lich Queen, Nin the Pain Artist

Mountain, Mountain, Island, Forest, Island

Also from the later pics it's possible to determine that the card under The Ur-Dragon is a Birds of Paradise from Conspiracy: Take the Crown

Finally sorted through my whole Magic collection

[lucys-borough]

My current commander decks, some new, some old. I love them all. Super down for discussion of each deck, I love talking magic and EDH.

[esperchallenge]

Not sure why, but deckbuilding consumes so much less energy than writing said decklists up. Like, I'm completely done with all the regular commanders (except the two new ones, I'll get to them when Aetherdrift spoilers are finished) and am working on partner commander lists.

To give a sneak peek into the future, I ended up doing Ravos/Sakashima, Tymna/Malcolm (but not a cedh build), Silas/Alharu, and am starting on Ishai/Sengir. I even made a dumb meme edit for the ishai/sengir deck:

Anyway, I'm hoping to get to finishing the write up for Varina, Lich Queen today, so keep an eye out for it later in the day!

[soulofnamelessartist]

Can't remember what all I've posted. Here's some EDH Generals.

[mtgtips]

It’s actually for a deck that’s already done! I’m making the mana base of my varina deck entirely borderless :3

Greetings my loyal followers! I have a request to make of you: I am looking for the following cards in these specific printings in order to finish off the mana base of a deck! Please please let me know if you have any of em and would be willing to part with them, I am looking to make some trades!

[shockinglyshockey]

Zombie EDH

I'm trying to build a zombie commander deck, used to have a Gisa and Geralf deck, but now I'm stuck. Can't decide who to use, Varina, Lich Queen or Sidisi, Brood Tyrant.

Help with deciding which to use would be very helpful.

[girlsofalltime]

Varina, Lich Queen is a Girl of All Time!

[mtgbracket]

Round of 256 - Batch 1

The third round begins now!

This batch has a fun flavour matchup, with Ib Halfheart facing off against Zedruu, the Greathearted.  Plus we have Leovold, Emrakul and many more.  Voting is open for one week right here.

Today’s matchups are:

Marchesa, the Black Rose vs Breya, Etherium Shaper Anje Falkenrath vs Dragonlord Ojutai Varina, Lich Queen vs Adamaro, First to Desire Leovold, Emissary of Trest vs Gerrard, Weatherlight Hero

Maelstrom Wanderer vs Xenagos, God of Revels Ertai, Wizard Adept vs Sliver Hivelord Norin the Wary vs Feather, the Redeemed Ghoulcaller Gisa vs Lovisa Coldeyes

Dragonlord Silumgar vs Sharuum the Hegemon Mogis, God of Slaughter vs Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur Tuktuk the Explorer vs Karador, Ghost Chieftain Lyra Dawnbringer vs Emrakul, the Promised End

Ib Halfheart, Goblin Tactician vs Zedruu the Greathearted Memnarch vs Kami of the Crescent Moon Tinybones, Trinket Thief vs Borborygmos Enraged Mishra, Artificer Prodigy vs Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle

[geese-howards-transscriber]

Welp. My friend is getting me into MtG and building me an Esper Zombie deck with Varina, Lich Queen and The Scarab God. Something tells me I’m gonna have fun with it.