Creature (21)
- 1x Anowon, the Ruin Sage
- 1x Blood Artist
- 1x Butcher of Malakir
-
1x
Crypt Ghast
- 1x Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief
- 1x Fleshbag Marauder
- 1x Grave Titan
- 1x Graveborn Muse
- 1x Gravecrawler
- 1x Gray Merchant of Asphodel
- 1x Karn, Silver Golem *oversized*
- 1x Liliana, Heretical Healer Flip
- 1x Merciless Executioner
- 1x Mikaeus, the Unhallowed
- 1x Nirkana Revenant
- 1x Reaper from the Abyss
- 1x Relentless Dead
- 1x Sheoldred, Whispering One
- 1x Sidisi, Undead Vizier
- 1x Viscera Seer
- 1x Zulaport Cutthroat
Land (37)
Enchantment (5)
Artifact (19)
- 1x Ashnod's Altar
- 1x Blade of the Bloodchief
- 1x Caged Sun
- 1x Darksteel Plate
- 1x Expedition Map
- 1x Gauntlet of Power
- 1x Jet Medallion
- 1x Lashwrithe
- 1x Lightning Greaves
- 1x Nightmare Lash
- 1x Nim Deathmantle
- 1x Oblivion Stone
- 1x Phyrexian Altar
- 1x Skullclamp
- 1x Sol Ring
- 1x Swiftfoot Boots
- 1x Sword of Fire and Ice
- 1x Sword of Light and Shadow
- 1x Thran Dynamo
Instant (5)
Sorcery (12)
- 1x All is Dust
- 1x Beseech the Queen
- 1x Damnable Pact
- 1x Damnation
- 1x Demonic Tutor
- 1x Diabolic Intent
- 1x Exsanguinate
- 1x Innocent Blood
-
1x
Living Death
- 1x Toxic Deluge
- 1x Victimize
- 1x Yawgmoth's Will
Commander (1)
Maybeboard
Creature (2)
Instant (2)
Sorcery (2)
Whether you need a planeswalker assassinated or just some pesky creatures off your lawn, call Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet!
He'll use all the tools at his disposal to complete your job. It doesn't matter if you require discretion, precision or you don't mind a sloppy mess remaining — Kalitas has you covered!
Kalitas also specializes in crowd control using various ancient martial arts techniques like All Is Dust , Damnation and Toxic Deluge . Plus his Attrition strategies can outlast the best of them!
Basically, if you need something dead Kalitas is your man!
Mention this advertisement and get a FREE zombie with the death of an opponent's creature. Don't wait, call 1-999-KILL-DED today!
Now that we've had our fun with the deck theme, let's talk about the deck itself. From the outside this may look like a mono-black goodstuff deck, but let's peel back some of the layers and really see what's happening here.
Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet is an interseting legendary creature to build around. He provides us with a number of useful things:
- Token generation
- A sac outlet
- Graveyard hate
- An aggro threat
- Lifegain
And those abilities feed each other:
- Kill things, get zombie tokens
- Sac zombie tokens to make Kalitas bigger
- Swing with big commander and gain some life (because why not?)
Killing things seems to be the most effective strategy for Kalitas. Doing so not only gets you tokens but also keeps the board clear for him to get in for those one-shot and two-shot kills. The most efficient ways to kill things are via board wipes and repeatable kill/sacrifice effects, so we'll be packing plenty of those.
Being prepared to recover quickly from a board wipe via token generation and recursion is one of the keys to success with this deck. Since Kalitas will lose his counters when he dies, we use an equipment package to supplement our commander and provide some of our other creatures with protection and threat potential.
Kalitas allows us to generate card advantage by simply having our opponents' creature die, but he wants them to die on his terms. There are three primary ways to make that happen: Board Wipes, Sacrifice Effects and Spot Removal.
Take note, when a creature is exiled due to Kalitas's replacement effect it does not trigger "dies" effects for things like Blade of the Bloodchief and Blood Artist. That's OK since those will still trigger from your creatures dying, and they will die a lot.
Board Wipes
Board wipes are Kalitas's best friend. They clear the board and leave us with a bunch of zombie tokens to do as we please with, even if Kalitas dies. Since mono-black can't easily deal with non-creature permanents, we can shore up a weakness as well by including a few wipes that hit more than just creatures. The current package is:
- Damnation : Cheap, effective and damn fun with Darksteel Plate on your general.
- Toxic Deluge : This can often be an asymmetrical board wipe, or at least leave Kalitas around to munch on the zombie tokens he creates.
- All Is Dust : Helps us deal with problem permanents like enchantments, planeswalkers and Iona, Shield of Emerias.
- Oblivion Stone: Another way to deal with problem permanents.
- Living Death: While not necessarily a board wipe, it can act as one in a pinch.
Sacrfice Effects
Useful for getting rid of creatures having hexproof/shroud or indestructible, and for keeping the board clear for Kalitas to swing away:
- Grave Pact: I've heard making other things die when your stuff dies is good...
- Dictate of Erebos: ...but I've heard doing that at instant speed is even better.
- Butcher of Malakir: You can never have enough of this effect, even for .
- Anowon, the Ruin Sage: If he's allowed to stay out for a round or two it's time for a zombie party!
- Fleshbag Marauder, Merciless Executioner: Use/abuse with Mikaeus, the Unhallowed or other reanimation, like...
- Sheoldred, Whispering One: She's slow, but very effective at what she does.
We also use some sacrifice outlets to trigger our Grave Pact effects, most of which are pretty useful on their own:
- Ashnod's Altar, Phyrexian Altar: Extra mana for saccing is great, but these are also very powerful with the right cards.
- Attrition : A sac outlet with an upside we'll talk about later.
- Viscera Seer: A cheap and useful sac outlet. Can also be food for Kalitas.
- Phyrexian Tower: Good for a bit of ramp off a token, triggering ETBs with undying/persist or to prevent an important creature from being taken.
Spot Removal
We round out the "kill stuff" suite with some spot removal. I've tried to get maximum value from each card in these slots:
- Attrition : With Kalitas out, allows you to machine gun creatures for each.
- Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief: Can deal with most creatures and doubles as an aerial threat.
- Reaper from the Abyss: Hey, how about another big flying beater that can assassinate creatures?
- Malicious Affliction : Things are constantly dying, so you often kill two things for .
- Tragic Slip : Kills just about anything, even indestructible creatures.
- Hero's Downfall: The option to assassinate a planeswalker here earns it the spot.
- Sudden Spoiling: Even though it doesn't technically kill anything, this enables things to be killed which is never a bad thing.
Sometimes our creatures will suffer the consequences of our board wipes or die in some other tragic event like Kalitas munching on them for counters. Here we have a reanimation/recursion suite to help us get more value from our creatures and make the deck overall more resilient:
- Buried Ruin : Brings back a key equipment or one of our engine pieces.
- Liliana, Heretical Healer : Oh man, is she dumb here. Makes a zombie on flip, then let's us ditch Fleshbag Marauder to reanimate it next turn!
- Sheoldred, Whispering One: Repatable reaninmation. So good with our ETB creatures.
- Mikaeus, the Unhallowed: Enables. So. Many. Shenannigans. Saves our dudes from board wipes, let's us get extra value from ETB creatures and is a zombie to boot!
- Relentless Dead : Great to reuse/abuse Sidisi, Undead Vizier, Mikaeus, the Unhallowed and Gray Merchant of Asphodel .
- Victimize : Bring back two creatures for the price of one token.
- Living Death: If you've been playing the deck correctly, this should be a very asymmetrical effect to our benefit.
- Volrath's Stronghold: Gets back key creatures when we need them.
- Yawgmoth's Will: There's already so much creature reanimation, let's give other card types a chance to come back too!
Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet wouldn't be an assassin without an arsenal at his disposal. I've chosen an equipment suite which complements our gameplan while providing pressure on our opponents:
- Lightning Greaves, Swiftfoot Boots: Creature protection staples.
- Darksteel Plate: Arguably the best equipment in the deck. Protects Kalitas from most of our boardwipes and is very difficult to deal with.
- Blade of the Bloodchief: While this won't trigger for opponents' creatures with Kalitas out, since they don't technically die, it still works for your creatures which means 4 +1/+1 counters on Kalitas when you use his sac ability!
- Lashwrithe, Nightmare Lash: These can get out of control quickly, especially with Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth out.
- Sword of Light and Shadow: The big thing here is the protection from white and black, but putting a creature back to hand from the yard is great too.
- Sword of Fire and Ice: Provides protection, card advantage, can kill small creatures to get tokens from Kalitas.
- Nim Deathmantle: A very useful piece of equipment. It saves a creature from board wipes, makes it a relevant creature type (zombie), buffs the creature as much as a Sword of X and Y, and can be used with Ashnod's Altar + Mikaeus, the Unhallowed for infinite non-human sacrifices and ETB triggers!
The remainder of the deck is ramp, draw, tutors and a few utility cards. I'll briefly discuss them here.
Ramp
The ramp package consists of a mix of black/artifact mana doublers, a few mana rocks and some extra mana lands:
- Crypt Ghast: Mana doubler and bonus life loss for playing the game, umm yes please!
- Nirkana Revenant : Mana doubler and a nice creature to wear some equipment when Kalitas isn't around.
- Sol Ring, Jet Medallion, Thran Dynamo : Mana rock package.
- Gauntlet of Power, Caged Sun: Mana doublers that give Kalitas a bit of a boost.
- Cabal Coffers, Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx: Big mana lands.
Ashnod's Altar, Phyrexian Altar and Phyrexian Tower are also useful for mana in a pinch, with the altars being great with a board full of tokens or recursion in hand.
Draw
The draw package is a little on the light side, but several of them get multiple cards which is nice. Here's the current package:
- Damnable Pact: Can draw a respectable number of cards, or can be lethal to an opponent low on life.
- Graveborn Muse: On it's own not a bad draw engine, but have a few extra zombies out and you'll be flooded with card advantage.
- Necropotence : For a while I didn't run this card, but it's SO good it's hard not to!
- Phyrexian Arena: The 'Old Faithful' of black card advantage.
- Skullclamp: Great on the creatures we'll be sacrificing and some good times to be had with Gravecrawler.
- Sword of Fire and Ice: You'll be smashing face a good amount of turns, so this ends up being a decent draw engine.
Tutors
What we might lack in draw we more than make up for in card selection with this tutor suite:
While not a focus of the deck, there are some combos that you may want to take advantage of:
- Attrition + Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet : Replenish the creatures you sac to Attrition so you can rapid-fire kill a bunch of creatures.
- Ashnod's Altar + Grave Pact + Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet : Sac something to trigger Grave Pact which gets you tokens via Kalitas, sac those tokens for more Grave Pact triggers and repeat until only you have creatures left!
- Gravecrawler + Phyrexian Altar + Blood Artist/Zulaport Cutthroat + 1 other zombie: You can keep casting Gravecrawler from the yard with the you generate from Phyrexian Alter . Just have Blood Artist or Zulaport Cutthroat out and you can kill the table.
- Gravecrawler + Mikaeus, the Unhallowed + Phyrexian Altar - Infinite , infinite death triggers for Blood Artist or Zulaport Cutthroat and can generate infinite storm if you wanted to go that route (this deck doesn't).
- Mikaeus, the Unhallowed + sac outlet + ETB creature: This is more a formula than a combo, but put these components together for maximum value. Good ETB creatures include Fleshbag Marauder, Sidisi, Undead Vizier and Gray Merchant of Asphodel .
Aside from the occasional combo finish, this deck will usually need to grind out victories on the battlefield. Here's a few ways to do just that:
- Beats with your voltroned-up Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet and company
- Blood Artist or Zulaport Cutthroat
- Exsanguinate or Damnable Pact
- Recurring Gray Merchant of Asphodel
- A well-timed Living Death
I'm always open to feedback on my decks, so feel free to comment or suggest away! If you've enjoyed this deck and/or found it useful please remember to +1 Upvote!
Suggestions
Updates Add
Made a few minor updates:
IN: Karn, Silver Golem *oversized*, Relentless Dead, Innocent Blood, Skullclamp, Nim Deathmantle
OUT: Smothering Abomination, Withered Wretch, Wretched Confluence, Glistening Oil, Lifeline
I really did miss having Skullclamp and Nim Deathmantle in the deck. They just enable so much in the shenanigans department. Relentless Dead is a reusable zombie, reanimation spell for some of the better cards in the deck like Sidisi, Undead Vizier, Mikaeus, the Unhallowed and Gray Merchant of Asphodel, and is a great target for equipment since it has menace. Innocent Blood is a cheap and effective spell, often removing 3+ creatures and making as many zombies...so really good for . Karn, Silver Golem *oversized* is a test, with the theory being I can use his ability to clear out some artifacts once I have one of my kill engines online or a board wipe ready.
I've also added a few interesting cards to the maybeboard:
- Dark Ritual - A turn 1 Kalitas when you have a Sol Ring in hand is VERY appealing to me.
- Nantuko Husk - Sacrifice outlet and can get infinitely big with one of the recursion combos.
- Behold the Beyond - Can grab a full combo out of the deck.
- From Under the Floorboards - Seems really good if more discard is added to the deck.
I'll be updating the deck description soon.
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Revision 24 See all
(8 years ago)
| +1 | Behold the Beyond | maybe |
| +1 |
Dark Ritual
|
maybe |
| +1 | From Under the Floorboards | maybe |
| -1 | Glistening Oil | main |
| -1 | Grafted Exoskeleton | maybe |
| +1 | Nantuko Husk | maybe |
| -1 | Smothering Abomination | main |
| -1 | Withered Wretch | main |
| -1 | Wretched Confluence | main |
| Top Ranked |
|
| Date added | 8 years |
| Last updated | 8 years |
| Key combos | |
| Legality | This deck is Commander / EDH legal. |
| Rarity (main - side) | 19 - 0 Mythic Rares 31 - 0 Rares 20 - 0 Uncommons 6 - 0 Commons |
| Cards | 100 |
| Avg. CMC | 3.38 |
| Tokens | Emblem Liliana, Defiant Necromancer, Phyrexian Germ 0/0 B, Zombie 2/2 B |
| Folders | Decks I want to try, edh, Saved Decks, new, Active EDH, Cool EDH, EDH, Commander Folder, Decks to Imitate, Ideas |
| Votes | |
| Ignored suggestions | |
| Shared with | |
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