Yawgmoth's Undying Win

The main way to win with Yawgmoth is his devious plan of sacrificing creatures! Not just any creature will do, as at least one must have the undying ability! We will be harvesting corpses to further our vile plans!!

We can generally win with 9 mana if you want to combo all at once , or much less if the creatures are played over multiple turns or cheated into play with reanimation.

Here is the main equation to winning :

    Yawgmoth + undying creature + (undying creature/combo enabler) + (life enabler/payoff card)

***The Setup***

This can be setup in one turn or multiple turns, however the less time you take to assemble the cards the greater chance you will have of winning. If you are interrupted during your turn or combo, we have many different reanimation and tutor cards that can help you get back on track as well.

1. We will ALWAYS need Yawgmoth to combo this way.

    Cast Yawgmoth

2. We MUST have at least one undying creature! The first undying creature can be any undying creature.

Pick and cast one undying creature (creature A in example) :

    Butcher Ghoul
    Evernight Shade
    Sightless Ghoul
    Geralf's Messenger

3. The second part can be either any other one of the aforementioned undying creatures or any one of the following combo enabler cards.

Pick and cast one other undying creature (creature B in example) :

    Butcher Ghoul
    Evernight Shade
    Sightless Ghoul
    Geralf's Messenger

OR pick one of these combo enablers:
    Pawn of Ulamog
    Desecrated Tomb
    Genesis Chamber

How to combo with two undying creatures :

    Sacrifice creature A using Yawgmoth's ability. It's undying ability triggers and it comes back into play with a +1/+1 counter on it. Draw a card.
    Sacrifice creature B using Yawgmoth's ability. It's undying ability triggers and it comes back into play with a +1/+1 counter on it. Draw a card and put a -1/-1 counter on creature A. Now according to the game rules, since creature A has both a -1 and a +1 counter both counters disappear leaving creature A with no counters on it.
    Sacrifice creature A using Yawgmoth's ability. its undying triggers and it comes back into play with a +1/+1 counter on it. Draw a card and put a -1/-1 counter on creature B. Now according to the game rules, since creature B has both a -1 and a +1 counter both counters disappear leaving creature B with no counters on it.
    Repeat steps 2 and 3 to alternate sacrificing creatures A and B. Every iteration will make you lose 1 life and draw a card. The issue here is that we will run out of life before we can draw into a win or combo out. This is where one of the life enablers come in. You need to either have one in hand, tutor , or draw into one and cast it. It can be any of these cards :
        Deathgreeter
        Blood Artist
        Zulaport Cutthroat
    If Geralf's Messenger is one of your undying creatures, you only need Deathgreeter to keep your life total up and can skip either the blood artist or zulaport cutthroat since the messenger causes life loss itself.
    If Blood Artist or Zulaport Cutthroat is your life enabler, you can now repeat steps 2 and 3 again until your whole deck is in your hand. At this point , your opponents may be already dead or close to death from life loss. If they are not all dead, either cast a free discard outlet or you can use Yawgmoth's discard ability to discard your Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre to recycle your graveyard and Ulamog back into your library. This will allow you to loop drawing cards infinitely which will kill all your opponents.
    The payoff card can be any of these cards : Notice that 2/3 of these payoff cards are the same as the life enabler. That means that if you already have one of these in play from the previous step that you are already set in this step.
        Blood Artist
        Zulaport Cutthroat
        Bitter Ordeal
    To use Bitter Ordeal as your payoff card, you need to have completed steps 2 and 3 at least as many times as other players have cards in their library in order to exile their whole libraries. Doing the loop at least 99 times is usually enough since that is the maximum deck limit however I generally would recommended just picking any large arbitrary number that is higher in case the opponent has any strange answers. Alternatively, we can use Praetor's Grasp to steal another players Laboratory Maniac and draw our deck out to win.

How to combo with one undying creature and one combo enabler :

    Sacrifice creature A using Yawgmoth's ability. It's undying ability triggers and it comes back into play with a +1/+1 counter on it. Draw a card. Your combo enabler will trigger, giving you a 1/1 token.
    Sacrifice the 1/1 token to Yawgmoth's ability, draw a card and put a -1/-1 counter on creature A. Now according to the game rules, since creature A has both a -1 and a +1 counter both counters disappear leaving creature A with no counters on it.
    Sacrifice creature A using Yawgmoth's ability. It's undying triggers and it comes back into play with a +1/+1 counter on it. Your combo enabler will trigger, producing a 1/1 token. Draw a card and put a -1/-1 counter on either any opponents creature or no creature.
    Repeat steps 2 and 3 to alternate sacrificing creatures A and the 1/1 token. Every iteration will make you lose 1 life and draw a card. The issue here is that we will run out of life before we can draw into a win or combo out. This is where one of the life enablers come in. You need to either have one in hand, tutor , or draw into one and cast it. It can be any of these cards :
        Deathgreeter
        Blood Artist
        Zulaport Cutthroat

    If Blood Artist or Zulaport Cutthroat is your life enabler, you can now repeat steps 2 and 3 again until your whole deck is in your hand. At this point , your opponents may be already dead or close to death from life loss. If they are not all dead, either cast a free discard outlet or you can use Yawgmoth's discard ability to discard your Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre to recycle your graveyard and Ulamog back into your library. This will allow you to loop drawing cards infinitely which will kill all your opponents. If Geralf's Messenger is your undying creature, you only need Deathgreeter to keep your life total up and can skip either the blood artist or zulaport cutthroat since the messenger causes life loss itself.
    The payoff card can be any of these cards : Notice that 2/3 of these payoff cards are the same as the life enabler. That means that if you already have one of these in play from the previous step that you are already set in this step.
        Blood Artist
        Zulaport Cutthroat
        Bitter Ordeal
    To use Bitter Ordeal as your payoff card, you need to have completed steps 2 and 3 at least as many times as other players have cards in their library in order to exile their whole libraries. Doing the loop at least 99 times is usually enough since that is the maximum deck limit however I generally would recommended just picking any large arbitrary number that is higher in case the opponent has any strange answers. Alternatively, we can use Praetor's Grasp to steal another players Laboratory Maniac and draw our deck out to win.

***Backup Plans***

Nest of Scarabs

Yawgmoth + Nest of Scarabs and any one creature to sacrifice : This is a great combo which will steamroll into killing all opponents creatures and potentially drawing cards equal to their toughness if you want. Sacrifice any creature to put a -1 counter on any opponents creature. Now, the nest of scarabs will trigger and create a 1/1 insect token. We can sacrifice that token to draw a card and put another -1 counter on an opponents creature. You can repeat this until you have enough cards in your hand, run out of life to use, or your opponents run out of creatures. This is a good way to draw into tutors and keep the board clear at the same time.

Blast Zone

This amazing new land comes into play with a counter. We can use Yawgmoths proliferate ability to tick the counters up so that we can kill problem enchantments especially things like Rest in Peace which can ruin our whole game plan.

Aetherflux Reservoir , Bolas's Citadel and Senseis Top

This has replaced the mike+trike backup combo for a number of reasons. The most important reason is that both mike+trike and the regular Yawgmoth combo both operate on the same axis - abusing the graveyard and the undying mechanic. When we are in a situation where this is impossible to accomplish with say a Rest in Peace that we don't have removal for at the time, it is a bad idea to have our backup combo also be turned off (Whats the point then?) So, we have Aetherflux Reservoir now as a very easy way to win with a little setup.

A. We can manually go off and win. This requires playing at least 13 spells in a row to be able to gain enough life to shoot everyone at once, which can easily be done with a full graveyard and yawgmoths will. We can also just use the aetherflux to gain life and bring us away from death since the deck is suicide black and we are constantly losing life.

B. We can do a setup win with Insidious Dreams (or you can assemble this combo manually as well) .

    cast Insidious Dreams at an opponents end step. Discard 3 cards, and search for Bolas's Citadel , Aetherflux Reservoir , and Sensei's Divining Top , putting them on top of your library in that order.

    on your turn, draw and cast Bolas's Citadel

    With the citadel in play, we can play Aetherflux Reservoir off the top for 4 life

    With the citadel, play the Sensei's Divining Top off the top for 1 life. You gain 3 life from reservoir (3rd spell you played this turn)

    Now you can tap the top to draw a card, putting the top back on top of your library and a new card in your hand. Cast the top again for 1 life, gaining now 4 life from reservoir (4th spell played).

    Continue repeating this cycle until you played the top enough times to gain 150 life (10 repetitions should do it) and shoot everyone to death with aetherflux reservoir

    Alternatively if you cant activate the reservoir for some reason (like a Pithing Needle ) you can just draw your whole library and win manually with the normal Yawgmoth combo