The drawing cards part is totally worth the extra mana imo. The proliferate isn't amazing but it is a discard outlet to put something in the GY from your hand.
In a format like EDH Yarok kills imagination, because it builds deck itself, instead of players building their own deck with unique ideas and personality. EDH is suppose to be less boring than tournament formats.
I don't think this is a reasonable critique of Yarok. ETBs are pretty wide open, even constrained to those colors. There are over a thousand creatures with ETB effects and at least a couple dozen noncreatures that trigger when a creature ETBs in those colors. There are certainly some cards, like Reclamation Sage that I'd expect to see in most Yarok decks, but the rest of the deck can vary pretty wildly. Yes, you can do control/general ETB value and it's likely to be popular. You could also build stax, tokens, reanimator, combo, and probably numerous other varieties of deck. Yarok is kind of boring but it's not railroading you into building one particular deck. If that's what ends up happening it's on the players more than the general.
I agree with you. The deck certainly doesn't build itself. I like decks like Karlov of the Ghost Council, Sidisi, Brood Tyrant, Edgar Markov etc. These decks build themselves. You have a clear and narrow strategy with a fairly limited card pool. One of the things that turns me off of Yarok is I have no idea what to do here. Sure blink shenanigans but which ones? Literally pick a strategy and it works. You could go landfall, reanimator, dredge, discard, elemental tribal, goodstuff, artifacts, enchantments, control. Like damn
I have the Roon issue with Yarok in that I can guess the opponent's entire deck the moment I see Yarok in the command zone. I can also guess it's gonna have some really annoying things in it like Venser, Shaper Savant, Acidic Slime, Deadeye Navigator...
Unless you're playing Jank I think I can do that for any general
I don't get why everyone is excited about the talismans when we have the signets.
That's kinda like asking why one would play Negate if they can play Counterspell. You are now able to run two 2 mana ramp artifacts that reliably colour fix.
Hard to see anything that's just a fat beater being a great commander tbh.
I think my favorite place for him would probably be something like Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord, which can take advantage of his recastability, and get more value from his high power than simply swinging at once person at a time. Having a sac outlet in the CZ also reduces the risk of him getting exiled. Also Sidisi is also probably a reasonable spot since she fuels graves and makes tokens. I just don't see her having as much need of a big fat dummy.
Hmm, ya maybe Jarad would be better and I agree its a bad commander
I wonder though if a free big dumb beater is fairly desirable in Sidisi . Like if you put him plus Bloodghast, Prized Amalgam, Vengevine, Narcomoeba, Nether Shadow etc, does it become more interesting in the context of a free dredge army?
You know what, Im warming up to Yawgmoth. Thanks for the discussion guys. I think I was just too blinded by the proliferate and thinking I want to play superfriends or Infect. Its really all about building around the sac ability, not being too concerned about building around the second and just treating it as icing for anything that happens to have counters. That sounded lame at first, but really that sac outlet is really pushed on a mere 4cmc body. He would be good even without that last ability.
He's obviously meant to support a token deck that uses Bloodghast and Ophiomancer and friends to fill its hand with cards and shrink down enemy creatures with counters, and then uses its full hand to discard to proliferate and shrink down those creatures till they're dead, freeing the way for the rest of Yawgmoth's creatures to attack. You can even run cards like Drana, Liberator of Malakir, Necropolis Regent, and Unspeakable Symbol to pump up your tokens, and then proliferate those counters to pump them further.
Black Market, Spawning Pit, Yahenni, Undying Partisan, Smokestack ... there's a number of artistocrat and even stax-type cards that Yawgmoth's proliferate works very well with. Really though, all you need is tokens and repeatably resurrecting creatures since the combination of card draw + mass -1/-1 counter distribution + discarding cards to kill those creatures en masse is already strong, even ignoring the further synergies he enables.
Ya I guess as long as there are enough Black Market type cards that care about both creatures dying and running counters. I just didn't think there was enough to build a decent deck but I could totally be wrong, maybe there is. Generally speaking Token/Bloodghast decks don't care about proliferation (or perhaps Im just ignorat and they actually use them way more than I realize) thats what I mean by unocused. It makes me want to jam cards that use counters into an archetype that doesn't generally care about counters.
Sire of Insanity is pretty damn close to my dream general.
Also Mayhem Devil / Deathbringer Thoctar because Judith, the Scourge Diva is just too narrow for aristocratz and Rakdos deserves a more competitive aristocrat general
That's kinda like asking why one would play Negate if they can play Counterspell. You are now able to run two 2 mana ramp artifacts that reliably colour fix.
I wonder though if a free big dumb beater is fairly desirable in Sidisi . Like if you put him plus Bloodghast, Prized Amalgam, Vengevine, Narcomoeba, Nether Shadow etc, does it become more interesting in the context of a free dredge army?