Embarkation of Ulysses by Claude Lorrain (1646)

Daretti, Ingenious Iconoclast by Svetlin Velinov

Last week's Commanderruminations was an exploration of building a deck around the Jump-start mechanic and this week I decided to try the same approach with the new Guilds of Ravnica keyword "Surveil". When you Surveil, you look at cards on the top of your library you may put them in your graveyard. It's basically like Scry, but the cards go to the yard.

Surveil is exclusively in Blue and Black, which means we're going to look at Dimir (), Esper (), Sultai (), and Grixis () as possible color combinations for the legendary creature to lead this deck. Our general is going to have to care about having cards in our graveyard if our focus will be on making the most out of the Surveil mechanic.

Given these restrictions I was able to come up with one legendary creature that seemed like the best fit. Meet Varina, Lich Queen.

Varina is one of the alternate commanders out of the 2018 Subjective Reality Commander precon deck. Aminatou, the Fateshifter is the planeswalker that usually heads up that deck, but Varina uniquely benefits from having cards in our graveyard. She is a 4/4 Zombie Wizard who costs . Whenever we attack with one or more Zombies we get to draw and discard that many cards and gain that much life.

That first part will help to fill up our graveyard, but her second ability is what we care about the most. For two mana and the exiling of two cards from our graveyard we get to create a tapped 2/2 Black Zombie creature token.

Surveillance

A proper Varina deck would have a lot of zombies so that we could hit the ground running, start using Varina's ability to fill our graveyard and work our way toward our wincons and combat enablers. In preparing my decklist for this week's column, I found myself distracted by the idea of building a vaguely optimized Varina deck and plumb forgot about the plan to include Surveil cards in my list.

I think a dedicated Varina deck could be a decent casual deck. Stripping out a dozen or more cards to add in cards with Surveil may not make for a better deck, but it should still be viable. Before we get too down on this experiment, let's take a look at what Surveil cards we're going to be including.

Dimir Informant, Dream Eater, Watcher in the Mist, and Whisper Agent all have enter-the-battlefield Surveil triggers. Nightveil Sprite has an attack Surveil trigger and House Guildmage lets you pay and tap to Surveil 2. I'm also running Dimir Spybug, giving us a flyer that gets bigger when we Surveil. Unsurprisingly, none of these fine fellows are zombies.

The Surveil mechanic is also found across a variety of other spells. We've got a veritable Pu Pu Platter of removal, counter, and draw options with Surveil tacked on for that special Guilds of Ravnica flavor.

I'm also running Notion Rain, because nearly 20 years later The Matrix is still cool, and we're running Enhanced Surveillance, which allows us to look at an extra 2 cards every time we Surveil.

We've got a lot of ways to Surveil, but this focusing on this keyword is clearly going to take away from the number of Zombies we'll be running. Even if we only Surveil 1, if Varina is out we can exile the spell with Surveil and the card we dropped into the graveyard and turn the two of them into a 2/2 Black Zombie. It will enter tapped, so we'll want to do this on the end step right before our turn.

Extra Surveillance

If our goal is to make the most out of cards with Surveil, we are going to want to run some ways to get additional enter-the-battlefield Surveil triggers. I would normally run Panharmonicon in a deck that cares about "ETB" effects, but our commander doesn't happen to care about them so I think it's probably not worth it.

One creature that is worth including is The Scarab God.

Not only can we hurt our opponents and scry based upon the number of zombies we control on our upkeep with The Scarab God, we can also exile creatures from our graveyard and put 4/4 token copies of them onto the battlefield. Those tokens are Black Zombies so they'll synergize with Varina, and if they have an enter-the-battlefield Surveil trigger we'll get that too.

Our Zombie Army

I'm going to be running a combination of Zombie token generators and actual Zombies so that we have some ability to swing and get value from Varina even if we don't see any Surveil cards.

Zombie Lords will be an important part of this build. Swinging with 2/2 zombies may let us draw, discard and gain life with Varina on the field, but chances are good many will die in combat. If we can make them 3/3 or 4/4 Zombies, it should get a little easier to have them survive. In addition to the three cards shown above I'll also be running Death Baron, who will both pump our zombies and them deathtouch.

Varina won't be our only way to generate zombie creature tokens.

Liliana's Mastery will give us two more Zombie creature tokens and will pump them from 2/2 to 3/3 because it also pumps our zombies +1/+1. If we can get to the late game, Army of the Damned will give us 13 Zombies and can be played out of the graveyard and exiled for its Flashback cost.

If things are going well, Endless Ranks of the Dead can definitely help keep our Zombie ball rolling. We'll need at least two Zombies to gain any benefit from this enchantment whatsoever, but if we've got a decent army it can be a huge help. This is the kind of card that tempts me to run Paradox Haze to get an extra upkeep, but I don't think we have enough upkeep triggers to really warrant its inclusion.

Playing Control

This list is going to be running an assortment of counterspells over and above the one with surveil, as we're in Blue and it just seems like a responsible choice. We're also running a range of targeted removal spells, as each of those can remove a threat and represents half a Varina Zombie. Esper gives us Pongify, Rapid Hybridization, Swords to Plowshares, Path to Exile, Mortify, and Vindicate, so we'll definitely have lots of answers.

Our boardwipes are not your garden variety sweepers, though we are running the obligatory Cyclonic Rift because we're in Blue, this is Commander and it's just too good to pass up.

Fell the Mighty should let us clear the board of anything bigger than Varina if we choose to target her with it. Hour of Reckoning will destroy all nontoken creatures, and we'll be able to tap Varina if she's out to help pay for the White mana, as Hour has Convoke. Solar Tide will destroy all creatures with power 3 or greater, making it perfect for this deck if we have Zombies but don't have any anthem effects or Zombie Lords on the field.

Since we want to find ways to get extra Surveil triggers, one way to do that will be to use cards that can bring creatures back out of our graveyard.

These are highly situational as they also affect our opponents, but there should be times where these cards will allow us to recover from a boardwipe, dump a bunch of Zombie Lords and Surveil dorks onto the field and rebuild faster than our opponents.

How We Win

We've got ways to make Zombies and we've got enough control elements in the deck that we should have a decent chance to present a threat.

One way to do that is through making tons of tokens, and Anointed Procession will double our token production. We're also going to run Training Grounds, to take that Varina activation cost and drop it from two mana to one mana. Going tall is another great way to push up our damage totals and Cathars' Crusade will put a +1/+1 counter on each of our creatures when we put another creature of any type onto our battlefield.

Our most interesting pump option is probably Mirror Entity. This creature is all creature types and will allow us to pay X mana to make our creatures X/X and gain all creature types until end of turn. Not only should that let us make our Zombies much bigger, it will turn all of our random Surveil dorks into Zombies so when we attack they will trigger Varina's draw/discard/lifegain ability!

If winning by combat doesn't seem realistic, and in some metas it really is a difficult thing to do, we have another option.

If we cast Approach of the Second Sun and then cast it again in the same game, we win. After the first casting we put it seven cards down in our library. The first casting doesn't have to actually resolve to count so we can use Memory Lapse to put it on top of our library, swing with a single Zombie and draw into it. If we don't have Memory Lapse available, we simply cast it in our first main phase, swing with at least three Zombies and on our next turn we draw, swing with at least three Zombies again and we should be able to cast it in that turn's second main phase to win the game. Protecting that second casting with Memory Lapse might be wiser than using that counterspell on the first casting, but my basic point is that this deck should be able to pull off the a Second Sun win.

To back up this wincon I'm including a bunch of counterspells and to try to get to it or whatever else we need at the time, I'm running Vampiric Tutor, Demonic Tutor, and Mystical Tutor. You can certainly run other tutors if these aren't options for your list.

If we weren't running our Surveil suite and were instead running another 15 or more zombies, I might suggest running Mortal Combat. It would be a sweet way to land a win, but it doesn't make sense with all the Surveil cards we've added into our list.

The Decklist

I'm running a number of spells I didn't mention, including the obscure 1-drop artifact "Sol Ring", all the signets that are in our colors and a favorite off-color ramp dork of mine - Dreamscape Artist. I'm also running Reconnaissance as a way to pull my attackers out of combat and untap them during the cleanup after combat damage has been dealt.

Varina Surveillance | Commander | Stephen Johnson

• Commander (1)
• 1 Varina, Lich Queen

• Creatures (17)
• 1 Aven Wind Guide
• 1 Cemetery Reaper
• 1 Death Baron
• 1 Dimir Informant
• 1 Dimir Spybug
• 1 Doom Whisperer
• 1 Dream Eater
• 1 Dreamscape Artist
• 1 Fleshbag Marauder
• 1 House Guildmage
• 1 Lord of the Accursed
• 1 Lord of the Undead
• 1 Mirror Entity
• 1 Nightveil Sprite
• 1 The Scarab God
• 1 Watcher in the Mist
• 1 Whisper Agent

• Instants (17)
• 1 Cancel
• 1 Counterspell
• 1 Cyclonic Rift
• 1 Memory Lapse
• 1 Mission Briefing
• 1 Mortify
• 1 Mystical Tutor
• 1 Path to Exile
• 1 Pongify
• 1 Price of Fame
• 1 Rapid Hybridization
• 1 Return to Dust
• 1 Sinister Sabotage
• 1 Swan Song
• 1 Swords to Plowshares
• 1 Unexplained Disappearance
• 1 Vampiric Tutor

• Sorceries (15)
• 1 Approach of the Second Sun
• 1 Army of the Damned
• 1 Austere Command
• 1 Deadly Visit
• 1 Demonic Tutor
• 1 Dread Summons
• 1 Fell the Mighty
• 1 Hour of Reckoning
• 1 Living Death
• 1 Living End
• 1 Mephitic Vapors
• 1 Notion Rain
• 1 Solar Tide
• 1 Twilight's Call
• 1 Vindicate

• Enchantments (8)
• 1 Anointed Procession
• 1 Cathars' Crusade
• 1 Endless Ranks of the Dead
• 1 Enhanced Surveillance
• 1 Intangible Virtue
• 1 Liliana's Mastery
• 1 Reconnaissance
• 1 Training Grounds

• Artifacts (7)
• 1 Azorius Signet
• 1 Commander's Sphere
• 1 Dimir Signet
• 1 Mana Crypt
• 1 Mind Stone
• 1 Orzhov Signet
• 1 Sol Ring

• Lands (35)
• 10 Island
• 10 Plains
• 10 Swamp
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Drowned Catacomb
• 1 Glacial Fortress
• 1 Isolated Chapel
• 1 Morphic Pool

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As with any list I throw together, you should view this as a starting point and adjust it to meet your budget and your meta. I'm not sure Varina could ever be truly competitive, but if you feel like playing with Surveil cards and want a commander that might work well with them, I think Varina is an interesting option to build around.

If Surveil doesn't seem to pull its weight in this list, your next steps would probably be to drop those cards out and replace them with Zombies. Getting early Zombies out in a Varina deck will likely make a big difference, though I'm sure this deck will need games to go long in order to have a shot at winning by combat.

Final Thoughts

Entering into this week I had planned to write about a deck that combined Surveil and Undergrowth, but wasn't able to latch onto a General that really sparked my interest. I have built Zombies before and didn't really feel like my decks worked that well. I really like how Approach of the Second Sun synergizes with Varina's draw/discard ability.

I'm probably going to throw together this deck in paper, though I haven't yet decided whether to go for a Surveil theme or build a Mortal Combat Zombie Tribal deck. I'm betting I'll wind up with the latter, as I've never won a game with Mortal Combat and I'd like to change that.

If you've built Varina I'd love to hear what you might think I missed in this experiment. Are there cards or synergies that I should have included that have worked in your games? Are there better commanders for a Surveil deck that you would build around, like maybe Lazav, the Multifarious?

Next week I'm planning on doing a "day in the life" column walking you through how my typical Saturday goes. That's the day I run our local EDH league, so it'll be an interesting view into what I contribute to our LGS's Commander community. Maybe it'll inspire some of you to give it a try. Maybe it won't. I definitely think it'll be fun to write and a nice break from my long series of decklist articles.

That's all I've got for you this week. Thanks for reading and I'll see you next week!