While Commander is, theoretically, a format with endless scope for creativity, the reality is a lot more limited. A handful of archetypes dominate in most circles, and most new legends are designed with these archetypes in mind. Every so often, however, a truly unique legend comes along, allowing you to pursue a new kind of game plan. Yarus, Roar of the Old Gods is one such legend, leveraging the rare face-down mechanic in MTG to devastating effect. If you want to catch your pod off-guard, this is the ideal Commander with which to do so.
Yarus, Roar Of The Old Gods MTG
Yarus, Roar of the Old Gods has a ton of text for a four-mana MTG Commander, and most of it cares about face-down creatures. Getting a draw each time a face-down creature connects is a huge advantage right away, rewarding you for spreading the love with up to three cards a turn.
Yarus’s more interesting ability, however, is its second one. This gives all of your face-down creatures a second life, springing them back after they trade in combat or eat removal. With a sacrifice outlet at the ready, this essentially allows Yarus to turn face-down creatures up for free. Considering how resource-intensive Morph and Disguise cards can be, Yarus clears up one of the archetype’s biggest downsides.
This is great for face-down creatures in general, but it’s particularly good for the heavy hitters. Expensive Morph creatures like Akroma, Angel of Fury and Root Elemental can essentially be cheated out by Yarus. If you throw in some ways to Manifest cards, like Scroll of Fate and Ugin’s Mastery, you can pull this trick with any permanent. Cheating out powerhouse creatures like Blightsteel Colossus, or engines like The Great Henge, is excellent here.
While running Yarus as a sneaky ramp Commander in this way is powerful, it can also go wide quite effectively. Since all your face-down creatures can be cast with colorless mana, tools like Panoptic Projektor can build your board fast. With Yarus’s added Haste, you can get your creatures in right away, building up cards and added triggers from the likes of Pyrotechnic Performer.
Winning The Flip
Yarus is powerful and flexible when played fair, but it also has a ton to offer in the combo department. The easiest infinite here needs just Yarus, Ashcloud Phoenix, and a free sacrifice outlet like Ashnod’s Altar. With all three pieces out, you can sacrifice Phoenix, and have it return face-down. Sacrifice it again, and Yarus will bring it back face-up, burning the table for two. As long as you’re ahead in life, you can repeat this until all of your opponents are dead.
If infinite mana combos are more your speed, Yarus has you covered there, too. For this, you’ll need Obscuring Aether, Deathmist Raptor, and Phyrexian Altar. Start by sacrificing your face-down Raptor twice, then turn Aether face-down with its ability, and sacrifice it to bring it back face-up. This will let you bring Raptor back face-down, giving you two more sacrifices of that to pay to turn Aether face-down again. You’ll be netting one mana each time, while getting infinite enters and dies triggers. You can win in any number of ways from here, whether it’s with something like Impact Tremors or a mana outlet like Walking Ballista.
Yarus also enables some pretty slick combos in the 99 of other lists. In Temur colors, Master of the Veil immediately goes infinite with Yarus and a sacrifice outlet, allowing for an easy win with Goblin Bombardment or Altar of Dementia. You can pull off something similar in Naya by giving an opponent Karlov Watchdog with Harmless Offering, then sacrificing any face-down creature repeatedly.
Niche But Nice
While Yarus, Roar of the Old Gods is only really viable at the head of a Face-Down Typal deck, the lack of other options makes it excellent regardless. You really can’t do much better than getting archetypal synergy, card draw, and a Haste enabler in the command zone.
That said, Face-Down Typal is undeniably a niche archetype, and Yarus itself is pretty niche as a result. According to EDHREC, just over 3500 decks run Yarus at the helm, and only 4.73k in the 99. While these numbers make sense, it’s also unfortunate that so few players are enjoying the goodness that this Commander has to offer.
What this low popularity means, mind you, is that you can pick Yarus up for pennies on the dollar right now. Near-mint copies of the base version can be had for just $0.10 currently, which is a steal for such a unique legend. If you want to get fancier, the Showcase Dossier version is only a few cents more at $0.13, and foils of both versions will only run you $0.20.
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