Conditions Allow - Grist, Voracious Larva EDH

(Grist, Voracious Larva

| Art by Chris Rahn)

Sorry to Bug You

Hello, and welcome back to Conditions Allow. In this series I take a legendary creature with a drawback and build a deck to turn it into a strength. This week I'm tackling one of the newest flip 'walkers from Modern Horizons 3. Each of these has a condition that represents the event that causes a planeswalkers spark to ignite. First up on the brewing block is Grist, Voracious Larva

Grist, Voracious Larva

The Circle of Life

Luckily, the Golgari colors have no difficulty in recycling creatures from the graveyard. I'm including all the sacrifice classics, from Bloodghast

At the even more expensive end of things, I'm including Vengevine

Of course, Grist, Voracious Larva

Here There Be Insects

For all this to work, you need to get as many cards into your graveyard as possible. Once again, I'm including all the classics, with a heavy emphasis on creatures, so Skull Prophet rather than Perpetual Timepiece. Even Circle of the Land Druid and Blanchwood Prowler make the cut here. This both ensures you mill enough cards to flip Grist, the Plague Swarm early, and find at least one big token-maker and a Zulaport Cutthroat effect. 

There are a few noncreature spells worth including as well. Grisly Salvage, Winding Way, and Mulch help round out your suite of two-mana mill effects, while Altar of Dementia is simply too powerful to leave out. Six also technically has a self-mill ability, although it is more useful to re-cast Stitcher's Supplier and Satyr Wayfinder. I'm not including Life from the Loam to combo with Six, but the Deadly Disputes and Grim Haruspexes in the deck should make sure you have a land to discard when you need it.

Big Fish in a Big Graveyard

Now all we need are a few big creatures for Grist, the Plague Swarm to create tokens of. If you're goal is to go wide, then you can't do much better than Avenger of Zendikar and Abhorrent Overlord. Remember that Grist makes token copies of all your creatures, so they'll still have their mana costs and contribute to your devotion. This also makes Izoni, Thousand-Eyed much more powerful, since she'll still see all those creatures in your graveyard. Finally, I'm including Grave Titan and Hornet Queen as creatures that create a set number of tokens. They both make excellent blockers to keep your commander safe from attacks, and they still contribute plenty of bodies for your aristocratic needs.

With your graveyard setup, the final step is to get Grist, the Plague Swarm up to six loyalty. You don't have to do this quickly, because your graveyard needs to be full enough, so I'm not including a ton of proliferation effects. Staff of Compleation and Vraska, Betrayal's Sting both double as draw engines, while putting you a turn closer to Grist's ultimate. Karn's Bastion is also a great inclusion in any deck that cares about counters. Finally, Atomize and Cankerbloom are both solid removal options that have the potential to proliferate.

I'm always a little wary of planeswalkers as commanders because they're so much more fragile in multiplayer, but these origin cards are so flavorful they're hard to resist. Grist, Voracious Larva is also so easy to re-transform that it isn't much of a problem if they happen to die once or twice. It's also very cool to see a powerful reanimator effect that encourages you to go wide rather than tall. Although you don't have to build towards Grist's ultimate either. You could focus on milling and reanimating classic big bodies while handling troublesome artifacts and enchantments.

But what do you think? How have you built around Grist, Voracious Larva? Are there any cards or synergies I've overlooked? Let me know in the comments, and thanks for reading!