This Season on Masterchef
Art:Gyome, Master Chef
by Steve Prescott
Todays Featured Commander is:
Gyome, Master Chef is serving up food whether you like it or not! Gyome is a really fun Golgari Food deck that focuses on the benefits of sacrificing the food tokens. We have cards that allow us to gain life and deal damage on token creation / sacrifice. Gyome focuses on creating as many food as possible and getting the benefits from sacrificing them! Gyome being Golgari also allows us to play a decent amount of interaction and kill spells many of which create food. We typically win through combat buffs or a combo win! Gyome’s second ability is also very important since it allows us to protect a creature or remove a blocker when in combat!
The Deck:
Gyome Food and Fun!
Why Gyome, Master Chef?
Gyome is a perfect commander for food strategies, not only does Gyome produce foods nearly every turn, Gyome also offers a great piece of protection for our creatures and can also be used offensively to take creatures out of combat! Gyome being in Golgari is perfect for our strategy since a bunch of the great food producers are either in G or B. Gyome is one of our strongest food producers and really helps tie the deck together!
Deck Overview:
Our creature package is highlighted by sacrifice outlets, payoffs for token creation and additional food producers! Even though Gyome is one of our primary food producers we of course have many ways to produce food. Academy Manufactor
is one of the best cards in our deck since with it on the battlefield Gyome’s triggers or any of creatures that make food triggering produces an absolute ton of tokens and can deal a ton of damage when combined with Mirkwood Bats
or Gluttonous Troll
. Mirkwood Bats is one of the best cards in our deck since it deals 1 to each opponent on token creation or sacrifice this card is a huge threat when it comes down! Pippin, Warden of Isengard
is a great way for us to create food as well as in the late game buff our creatures! Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest
is one of the ways that we can setup wins through combat since we can buff every creature we have everytime a permanent is sacrificed in testing after having Mazirek out for only 2 turns we already had +7/+7 on each creature we had! Fangren Marauder
is one of our best ways to gain life in the deck, while we dont have ton of payoff for gaining life this is more or less a way to protect us and happens pretty much every turn if not multiple times! Jaheira, Friend of the Forest
is a great way for us to turn the large amount of tokens we create into mana, this card is great at really any stage of the game! Sarinth Steelseeker
is a great way for us to cycle through our deck and since we have ways to recur stuff from the graveyard this card really has no downside. One of the best ways to get stuff back from the graveyard is Veinwitch Coven
is a great way for us to return creatures from the graveyard and can trigger any time we sacrifice a food!
Our spell package is full of ramp and food payoffs as well as some interaction. For our ramp as always we are packing classics like Cultivate
and Kodama's Reach
but we also have some food based ramp like Many Partings
. Our kill spells even make food like Taste of Death
and Bake into a Pie
both of these cards are great albeit a little high costed but since it helps us create more tokens the cost really doesn’t matter. One of our most efficient spells is Battle at the Bridge
since we can use its improvise cost we can really destroy anything and since it deals damage in -X/-X we can even kill indestructible creatures!
Our artifact package is pretty small but has a lot of important pieces, one of the most important being Inspiring Statuary
which with the large amount of food tokens that we create allows us to cast our nonartifact spells pretty easily! Giant's Skewer
is another great piece of equipment since it allows us to create a food token when deal combat damage to a player. Other than these couple of pieces everything is combo related or basic mana rocks.
Our enchantment package helps a ton with token generation since we have two of the best token generators of all time in Parallel Lives
and Doubling Season
. Once you put either one of these on the board all eyes are going to be on you so you need to prepare for that but with just 1 or 2 turns of these on the board and the game can get very out of hand! Trudge Garden
is a food payoff card that allows us to get 4/4s every time we gain life just for paying 2 this is another great way for us to win through combat. Trudge Garden is very similar to Killer Service
which produces food on ETB and is basically another Trudge Garden. Agent of the Iron Throne
is another great way for us to deal damage to our opponents.
Our land base is really nothing special and is very reminiscent of a bunch of Golgari land bases. Since we are in Golgari we of course have Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
and Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth
these lands are a best piece of fixing in our deck. Gingerbread Cabin
is a great land to play once we already have 3 forests since we can create a food token, this is very much helped by Yavimaya! Memorial to Folly
is a great piece of creature recursion and is just another option to get our creatures back!
Strengths of the Deck:
- Able to gain a ton of life
- Able to do a lot of noncombat damage to our opponents through sacrificing clues
- Buffs from Sacrificing Food
Weaknesses of the Deck:
- Weak to artifact hate
- Weak to graveyard hate
- Can struggle without damage dealers for creating or saccing tokens
Deck Stats:
Sample Hands:
What to look for in a Starting Hand?
Since we are not an ultra-efficient deck we do not need a ton of specifics in a keepable hand. A good keep is 2 to 3 lands and really any creatures we can cast as soon as Gyome is on the battlefield so we can start creating food tokens. An early ramp spell or Gyome enabler is always strong but there is nothing too specific that we look for!
Main Win Conditions:
We typically can win through buffs and combat but we are also packing some infinite combos! I also omitted the Exquisite Blood
and Sanguine Bond
combos because I felt it would make it to much of a combo deck and this deck is more about food and fun! Since we have a large amount of food production one of the easiest ways to win is our sacrifice payoffs for our food like Mirkwood Bats or Marionette Master
Cauldron Familiar
+ Witch's Oven
+ Clock of Omens
+ Academy Manufactor
Result: Infinite Treasure tokens. Infinite Clue tokens. Infinite colored mana. Infinite ETB. Infinite LTB. Infinite death triggers. Infinite sacrifice triggers. Infinite lifegain. Infinite lifegain triggers. Infinite lifeloss. Infinite card draw. Infinite draw triggers.
Requires: All permanents on the battlefield.
Steps: Activate Witch’s Oven by tapping it and sacrificing Cauldron Familiar, creating a Clue token, a Food token, and a Treasure token. Activate Clock of Omens by tapping two artifact tokens, untapping Witch’s Oven. Activate Cauldron Familiar by sacrificing a Food token, returning it from your graveyard to the battlefield. Cauldron Familiar triggers, causing each opponent to lose 1 life and causing you to gain 1 life. Repeat.
Cauldron Familiar + Witch's Oven + Clock of Omens + Parallel Lives
Result: Infinite lifeloss. Infinite ETB. Infinite death triggers. Infinite LTB. Infinite tapped Food tokens. Infinite lifegain. Infinite lifegain triggers.
Requires: All permanents on the battlefield.
Steps: Activate Witch’s Oven by tapping and sacrificing Cauldron Familiar, creating two Food tokens. Activate Clock of Omens by tapping two Food tokens, untap Witch’s Oven. Sacrifice a Food token, return Cauldron Familiar from your graveyard to the battlefield. Caludron Familiar enters the battlefield, causing each opponent to lose 1 life and gaining you 1 life. Repeat.
Conclusion:
In conclusion I think that Gyome is a really fun commander, Even though we chose to focus on a food build instead of the more popular lifegain build I still think the deck is a ton of fun to pilot and makes for a great addition to any pod you are playing in! Gyome being a great token producer as well as having an ability that can be used both offensively and defensively which adds a ton to the versatility of our deck!
Thanks for reading to the end!