You can fire it off to protect a creature on defense, or give protection from each color to push an attacker through in combat
10 Vile Mutilator An Awful Way To Go Yes, seven mana is a lot to pay for a 6/5 flying trample, especially one that requires either an enchantment or creature sacrifice
The thing is, we currently lack symbiotes in MTG, so its best to buff Venom itself
usually a 38-12 split 10 sources of "card advantage;" I use this term loosely, but mostly looking for card draw or any spell that nets me 2+ nonland cards in hand / directly into play 6 targeted removal split between creature / artifact / enchantment removal 3 board wipes 2 recursion 2 flexible tutors 1 graveyard hate 1 surprise "I Win" card That's always my starting point, which is then tweaked to suit the individual deck's strategy, and further tweaked with playtesting
I can assure you that the Gruul straw is NOT the short straw
Starting with the most conventional of these new MTG commanders: Winter, Cynical Opportunist leads the golgari graveyard deck, Death Toll