$30 Budget Lazav, the Multifarious (EDH / Commander)

I’ve been meaning to build an EDH deck with Lazav, the Multifarious ever since I pulled him from a pack I bought months ago. I have what I must assume is a common problem for EDH players; I want to build all the decks, but don’t have all the money. When I set out to build a new EDH deck, I usually set my budget to around $100. I’ve never tried to build a deck with a much lower budget, but I thought I would give it a try with Lazav. I set my budget at $30 and started pouring over Scryfall search results.

How awesome is Scryfall, btw? Very awesome is the answer.

For those who can’t wait, here is the decklist. You’ll note that I also have something like 70+ cards in the ‘Maybeboard’ - these were cuts I made in getting the list to its current form, but perhaps the extra chaff will help someone else trying to build their own budget Lazav deck in the same mold as mine. I had the best luck in looking at cards I wanted to include/emulate, pulling the relevant text, and then plugging that text into an advanced Scryfall search in order to find budget equivalents. Did I mention Scryfall is awesome?

-What is this build trying to do?-

Lazav cares about mimicking creatures in the graveyard, so any strategy we brew with should probably be creature-heavy and provide a reliable means of getting those creatures into the graveyard. One thing we need to keep in mind is that Lazav’s ability copies the card in question, but it does not activate any ETB triggers tied to the copied card. Normally this would be seen as a downside, as players are well versed into getting value out of creature-based ETB triggers. Yet we can turn this seeming negative into a positive by selecting creatures that are powerful and cost less, but come with nasty ETB triggers that we can avoid using Lazav’s copy ability.

In the end, I went with a build that made Lazav into a Voltron commander. We are going to use a mix of looting, discard, and self-mill to ensure that Lazav has access to several creatures in the graveyard. Because we will often need Lazav to transform into multiple creatures in a turn, our creature suite needs to have both low-cmc and useful abilities. We usually aim to win by dealing unblockable commander damage, either of the regular or infect variety, but can also turn to Faith of the Devoted and our numerous looting/discard outlets to drain-out opponents over time.

-What is the deck breakdown?-

Ramp

One of the first things I do when making a new EDH deck is to think of ramp/fixing options. Our CMC average is 2.45 and I’m running 33 lands. For Dimir, we need to rely upon mana rocks for most of our ramp, although creatures like Millikin and Deranged Assistant act as sources of both mana ramp and self-mill. Again, we want to emphasize low-cmc options as Lazav will be very mana hungry when he is on the board. We don’t need a lot of fixing, but since our budget makes inclusion of almost any dual-lands impossible, fixing can help smooth out those random times when we draw nothing but swamps/islands in our opening hand.

In the one-drop slots are Renegade Map and Traveler's Amulet. I would much, much rather put in a card like Wayfarer’s Bauble, but that card is over $1 and pretty hard to include with this budget. Traveler's Amulet comes into play untapped, but requires a total of two mana to use. I’m okay with Renegade Map coming into play tapped because it only costs me one mana total to get it rolling. As I play more and more EDH, I find that I like having rocks/fixing that costs 2cmc or less over options that are 3cmc or higher. Fixing is more useful in a three-color or more deck, but budget builds need some degree of mana flexibility given how expensive most dual lands are and fixing can provide this kind of flexibility at both low cost and low-cmc. Plus, this deck likes to have some extra land in its hand at times to use as discard fodder when we are looting but want to hold onto a key spell.

For two-drops, I went with Fractured Powerstone, Guardian Idol, Mind Stone, and Prismatic Lens. Prismatic Lens can mana fix in a jam, and although Guardian Idol comes into play tapped, this deck craves access to cheap sources of ramp so we can get our Looting/Discard engine going as quickly as possible. The difference between 2-cmc and 3-cmc is huuuuuuuge, imo, so much so that I could be talked into replacing the three-drops below with cheaper fixer options that don’t ramp but ensure we make our land drops + provide options for discard effects as the lands come into our hand. Note, also, that I didn’t include Corrupted Grafstone. Because I want to emphasize early game ramp, the Grafstone, which normally would seem like a slam-dunk for a deck that is looking to fill the graveyard, becomes less reliable in the early turns when I want it the most. Yet this is another two-drop option that is budget friendly, for those interested.

For three-drops, I included Dimir Locket and Victory Chimes. The first provides B/U, which is nice but not entirely necessary for our build, and can be cashed in for extra cards. Victory Chimes, however, is far more useful in this deck. It untaps on each player’s turn, providing you with mana that can help transform Lazav into one of our several 1-cmc or 2-cmc creatures, such as Kjeldorian Dead or Disciple of Deceit.

Now that we have ramp out of the way, let’s talk about the most important part of our Lazav strategy- looting.

Looters

These cards are, in my opinion, the most essential part of the deck and serve best the overall strategy of putting valuable creatures into the graveyard. I have included twelve ‘looting’ sources here, but it might be wise to include a few more. My general criteria for looters is that they needed to be 3-cmc or lower and (usually) have a free activation cost. For non-creature based looting I went with Monastery Siege, Necromancer’s Stockpile, and Compulsion. Okay, so the last two are rummaging, not looting effects. and they don’t have a free activation cost either, unlike Monastery Siege. But they are cheap and repeatable, and Necromancer’s Stockpile will occasionally gift you a 2/2 zombie token for your efforts as we do have a handful of zombie creatures to discard.

Our 2-cmc looters are comprised of Daring Saboteur, Magus of the Bazaar, Merfolk Looter, and Thought Courier. Daring Saboteur doesn’t loot for free and needs to connect on damage to an opponent in order to loot at all. But he can be made unblockable for 2U and gives Lazav another option, albeit an expensive one, in that regard. Magus of the Bazaar is a beast in this deck. They are cheap, they draw two cards, and they allow us to discard three- all for free!

3-cmc looters are less desirable in terms of speed, but budget restraints make their inclusion necessary. Here we have Bonded Fetch, Deal Broker, Reckless Scholar, Krovikan Sorcerer, and Enclave Cryptologist. The Cryptologist does cost U to cast, but you have to level it up with 1U before it can begin looting, hence its inclusion here. Bonded Fetch has haste, which essentially puts it on equal footing with non-hasted 2-cmc looters. Krovikan Sorcerer is another looting beast in this deck. If we discard a black card, we can draw two cards and discard one.

Outside of looting, we are also including discard and self-mill options to help fill our graveyard. They don’t draw a card and help us dig through our deck faster, but they do have other powerful abilities and we need consistent access to looting/discard/mill effects in order to ensure Lazav has something to mimic. Looters cannot take us all the way there alone.

Discard

At the one-drop slot, we have Trickster Mage, an incredibly useful creature that allows us to tap or untap any artifact, creature, or land by paying U and discarding a card. Helpful for untapping Lazav after an attack, getting multiple uses out of our various non-mana artifacts, and various political moments that can arise at the table.

Disciple of Deceit, Dreamscape Artist, Sliversmith, and Key to the City all comprise our 2-drop offerings. Disciple of Deceit has a narrow condition, untapping, tied to a very useful ability, tutoring. There might be early turns where you actually want to cast this and swing away at someone’s stalled or empty board, but its best use is for Lazav to transform into the Disciple before untapping in order to gain access to the discard/tutor trigger. This can help you easily find essential pieces needed to assemble an unstoppable Voltron Lazav. Dreamscape Artist is blue ramp(?!), allowing us to both discard cards and grab untapped lands that essentially make its activation cost only one mana. Sliversmith provides tokens that can be chump blockers and also hedge against that random Sliver player. Finally, Key to the City allows us to discard and make a creature, like Lazav, unblockable AND provide card draw if we tap two mana at the start of our turn.

Only two cards fill the three-drop slot, Tomb Robber and Psychatog. Tomb Robber’s ability isn’t free, but it does allow us to Explore, potentially filling our graveyard, grabbing us mana to play/discard later, or placing +1/+1 counters on Lazav/Robber. Lazav keeps any counters he acquires during his transformations, so the Robber becomes a very flexible discard option that can also potentially buff Lazav himself. Psychatog lets us discard creature cards for free and can even eat (exile) useless chaff, like spells or lands, acquired through looting/milling, all while providing a temporary buff that can make a Lazav-turned-Psychatog especially threatening to our opponents.

Self-Mill

Deranged Assistant and Millikin were discussed above, in the Ramp section. They let us mill for one and provide a colorless mana for the trouble. Perpetual Timepiece not only lets us mill for two every time we tap it, but it also acts as a hedge against graveyard hate. If we have a looting/mill/discard engine in play and our opponent tries to exile our graveyard, we can sac the Timepiece and grab the best creatures/spells to shuffle back into our library.

Now that we have outlined the core components of our graveyard filling strategy, it’s time to look at the utility creatures we want to fill the graveyard with in the first place.

Protection Creatures

Lazav will draw serious heat once his intentions are known, so we need a suite of creatures that can deal with various threats. Kjeldoran Dead is a wonderful card for our purposes. Not only can it put itself in the graveyard with its ETB trigger, but its 1-cmc cost + ability to regenerate for B provides Lazav with the ability to survive ‘destroy’ removal + act as a blocker. Will-o'-the-Wisp is pretty much the same, but it is a flyer.

Cavern Harpy is a 2-cmc creature that allows us to pay one life to return a mimicking Lazav to our hand, dodging removal/wipes/exiles with ease. Xathrid Slyblade is a 3-cmc creature that has hexproof, one of the cheapest in terms of $$$ and cmc cost that provides Lazav such an ability. Slippery Scoundrel could be a better fit, as it can become unblockable, but Scoundrel relies upon Ascend to gain its abilities, and I’m not sure we will always be able to consistently field ten permanents in the early turns of the game. With a higher budget, this would be one creature I would like to replace.

One crucial component of our Voltron strategy relies upon Lazav becoming unblockable and delivering consistent damage. Thus, we need to include a handful of creatures that provide extreme evasion. We have to be careful here, however, because while we want access to this ability for Lazav, drawing/milling multiple copies of this ability is less than useful to our overall game plan.

Unblockable/Extreme Evasion

Creatures like Changling Outcast, Slither Blade, and Triton Shorestalker make up the backbone of our unblockable strategy. They all cost one mana, making them the best targets for Lazav, and they are, um, unblockable. Don’t forget that Changling Outcast is a shapeshifter, so they counts as a Zombie for the purposes of Necromancer’s Stockpile or any other creature for ‘all this type of creature’ effects your opponents play. Escpae Artist is an unblockable creature that costs two mana, but allows you to spend U to return the Artist/Lazav back to your hand. Pretty nifty.

Wharf Infiltrator has skulk, so if an opponent only has creatures with two power or greater, you can get through. Being able to spend two mana when we discard creatures, which we will hopefully be doing a lot, to create a 3/2 Eldrazi token is icing on the cake. Dimir Infiltrator is a very flexible card as it has Transmute for 1UB - if we draw it, we can use its Transmute ability to discard it and search our library for a 2-cmc card and put it into our hand. This can tutor up a ridiculous range of cards in our deck, not to mention it is unblockable so even if we can’t transmute it there is still a very real way to gain value from its inclusion in the 99.

Now we can move onto the payoff creatures. These creatures provide a lot of value for their cost or have synergistic effects with our general strategy of putting creatures into the graveyard.

Mimic Payoffs

Vector Asp is a 1-cmc creature that allows us to give Lazav Infect for B until the end of turn, opening up the potential for us to one-shot an opponent given proper evasion and power support.

Entrails Feaster allows us to engage in some graveyard hate of our own, while also providing a way to buff Lazav with +1/+1 counters. I once had Consumptive Goo in this spot, as its ability allows us to pay 2BB to give a creature -1/-1 until end of turn and add a +1/+1 counter, but the mana requirement is too much for what we want to do with Lazav. I think Goo could work in other builds, but Feaster is better here. Bonus: it’s a Zombie for the purposes of Necromancer’s Stockpile.

Lupine Prototype is a 2-cmc creature that is 5/5 and can't attack or block unless a player has no cards in their hand. Very cheap for its stat line and the attacking/blocking restriction can be circumvented by having Lazav attack/block as one creature, then transform into the Prototype when damage is dealt. If we manage to get our looting/discard engine going, then we will very likely become the player who has no cards in hand, making the Prototype even more useful for our designs.

Graveblade Marauder is a 3-cmc creature that is 1/4 with deathtouch. If it deals combat damage to an opponent, they also lose life equal to the number of creatures in our graveyard. This can deal some serous damage if we have a decent looting/discard engine going, not to mention it allows us to trade up in blocks and survive, provided that Lazav has mana + regenerate support.

Grisly Survivor is also a 3-cmc creature that is 2/3 and gains +2/+0 until end of turn for each card we discard. Given that our strategy is to actively use looters and discard outlets, Grisly Survivor/Lazav can easily grow to lethal power, allowing us to use one mana to transform Lazav into an unblockable creature and take out an opponent. A personal favorite of mine, as I got back into Magic almost two years ago in part by buying booster boxes of Amonkhet and Hour of Devastation.

Liliana’s Elite is, you guessed it, a 3-cmc creature that is 1/1 and gains +1/+1 for each creature in our graveyard. I really wanted to include Mortivore in this slot, a 4-cmc creature that is / and gets +1/+1 for each creature in all graveyards, plus the ability to regenerate for B. It’s still a budget card, and could be included in this deck, but we don’t want too many ‘cares about creatures in our graveyard’ creatures, and Liliana’s Elite is cheaper in both cmc and cost for this deck. Also a Zombie for purposes of Necromancer’s Stockpile.

Nighthowler is just like Mortivore described above, in that it gets +X/+X for the number of creatures in all graveyards, but is roughly half the cost of Mortivore and still just 3-cmc. You could use this as an enchantment on another creature other than Lazav in a pinch, but that is probably not going to happen.

Nyxathid is 3-cmc with a 7/7 stat line and an ETB trigger we will almost never have to worry about. Just some good ole' beatdown potential with this one.

Skaab Ruinator is our last 3-cmc creature, a 5/6 flyer that has a cost trigger we will never use ever. It’s also a Zombie that triggers, wait for it, Necromancer’s Stockpile!

Traxos, Scourge of Kroog is a 4-cmc creature that is a 7/7 with trample. It doesn’t untap during the untap phase, but can untap anytime we cast a Historic spell. Still will want a reliable, low-cmc creature to transform into before our turn just in case. If budget was no issue, I would easily replace this with the new (Core Set 2020) Rotting Regisaur, a 7/6 body that forces us to discard a card during our upkeep.

Greater Harvester is a 5-cmc creature that is 5/6 and forces an opponent dealt damage by it to sacrifice two permanents. A wonderful disguise for Lazav, but also something that requires you to transform afterwards as the upkeep requirement of sacrificing one of your own permanents is often too steep a price to be paid.

Archfiend of Ifnir joins the aforementioned Faith of the Devoted in that it very much cares about the number of cards we discard. Only instead of life gain/drain, we can put a -1/-1 counter on each creature our opponent’s control for each card we discard. This is an absurd ability for this deck, and we will even want to cast this creature outright given the right looting/discard conditions.

Given that we really care about getting creatures into graveyard, why not include some cards that care about that goal as much as we do?

Graveyard Toolbox

Every single card listed below acts as a tutor of some sort. Tutoring is such a powerful ability that is often out of reach for budget decks. I’ve already described how Dimir Infiltrator and Disciple of Deceit help us tutor for cards, but let’s consider now a card like Corpse Connoisseur. This creature lets us search our library for a creature card and dump it into our library when it enters the battlefield. Normally this would be a disadvantage for deck, as Lazav can’t copy ETB triggers. But luckily Corpse Connoisseur has Unearth for 3B, allowing it to reenter the battlefield from the graveyard for a single turn, allowing us to grab a creature form the graveyard even if we never actually cast it.

Buried Alive and Final Parting serve important purposes in this deck in that they both act as tutors, able to grab creatures out of our library and put them into our graveyard. Final Parting actually allows us to grab two cards, one of which goes into our hand and the other into the graveyard. It’s expensive, but the ability to grab two cards is well worth it. Buried Alive is one of the most expensive cards in the deck, and perhaps the most useful. It allows us to grab three creatures, meaning we can grab Vector Asp, an unblockable creature, and whatever other payoff creature we need to take opponents out. Easily one of the best cards in the deck.

Mausoleum Secrets is another gem of a tutor on a budget that more than suits our overall strategy. It can find us any black card in our deck with a CMC equal to or less than the amount of creature cards in our graveyard. Have a bunch of looters set up? Go find the Archfiend of Ifnir or Faith of the Devoted. Need a crucial creature in the graveyard to help Lazav out? Go tutor up Buried Alive. If we even have just a few creatures in the graveyard, Mausoleum Secrets can tutor up a ton of useful cards.

While our deck strategy relies upon having a creature-dependent source of answers and options, even we can use a few spells to help advance the larger goals of Lazav’s dominance of the table.

Spells

I’ve already mentioned Faith of the Devoted, a 3-cmc enchantment that gives us a discard payoff. At 4-cmc, Aetherize is the most expensive card in this ‘Spells’ category, but it allows us to return all attacking attacking creatures to their owner’s hand. This is a pure safety valve card, helping to relive the pressure of an all-out attack by one of our opponents. But it can also become a political card, allowing us to intervene and help another player so long as it benefits us in our larger schemes. Breakthrough is one of the most mana efficient discard outlets in the deck. If we pay just U, we can draw four cards and then discard our entire hand. There will rarely be an occasion where we want to pay more and save a particular card, but it can be done if the situation requires it.

Grave Strength can be a lights-out play. It allows us to mill for three, then put a +1/+1 counter on a target creature for each creature card in our graveyard. Giving Lazav counters is absolutely bonkers, and its low cmc makes Grave Strength a perfect tutor target for Disciple of Deceit or Mausoleum Secrets.

When I first posted this decklist to Reddit, one Lazav pilot suggested adding more counterspells/removal in order to protect what is essentially a telegraphed-threat when Lazav hits the board. For now I've added Turn Aside and Negate as our instant-speed counteraction options. Turn Aside costs U and lets us counter any spell that targets a permanent we control, helpful for protecting Lazav against spot removal. Negate costs 1U and lets us counter any non-creature spell, like an untimely board or graveyard-wipe. Lazotep Plating gives all of our permanents + us hexproof at instant speed while also producing a 1/1 zombie token.

Necrotic Wound, Walk the Plank, and Price of Fame comprise our removal suite of spells. Necrotic Wound can exile even the most worrisome creatures for a humble B, provided our graveyard is big enough. Walk the Plank is sorcery speed, and can't target Merfolk, but is cheap removal that can deal with quite a few threats. Price of Fame, aka Commander Killer, lets us handle Legendary threats with ease, and provides a bonus Surveil 2 ability that can put additional cards in the graveyard. Talk about win-win.

With all that out of the way, let’s talk about the mana base.

Mana

In addition to the twelve Swamps and twelve Islands, the deck has copies of the ‘gain one life’ ETB taplands Jwar Isle Refuge and Dismal Backwater. Other B/U taplands include a Dimir Guildgate and Submerged Boneyard. It might seem like sacrilege, but I also included Waterveil Cavern and Rootwater Depths, two lands that enter untapped and provide colorless mana, but if they are tapped for either B or U, they don’t untap during our next untap phase. This deck needs access to only one source of B or U mana, so having a land that enters untapped, provides a colorless mana that Lazav can use, and can also provide B or U in a pinch if we need it, is a solid include in this budget list. Duskmantle, House of Shadow and Nephalia Drownyard provide both colorless mana and the option to mill our deck. Cave of Temptation can mana fix, provide colorless mana, and potentially give Lazav two +1/+1 counters if we think that is best.

-What are your thoughts?-

I’ve come up with the following list after a bit of refinement, but would love to hear your thoughts on what could be changed. Are there other budget cards I’ve overlooked? What experience do you have piloting Lazav that can help refine the decklist presented here? Am I using the wrong ‘payoff’ creatures, or should I be considering another strategy other than looting? Let me know what you think!