All your deck are belong to Kess

Commander / EDH Aikido Casual Control Creatureless UBR (Grixis)

herpdederp92

Sorcery (26)

• 1x Acquire
• 1x Blasphemous Act
• 1x Blatant Thievery
• 1x Bonus Round
• 1x Bribery
• 1x Chain Reaction
• 1x Chandra's Ignition
• 1x Clone Legion
• 1x Cruel Entertainment
• 1x Dark Petition
• 1x Decree of Pain
• 1x Devastation Tide
• 1x Increasing Ambition
• 1x Knowledge Exploitation
• 1x Mizzix's Mastery
• 1x Past in Flames
• 1x Praetor's Grasp
• 1x Reforge the Soul
• 1x Rite of Replication
• 1x Saheeli's Artistry
• 1x Spelltwine
• 1x Toxic Deluge
• 1x Vandalblast
• 1x Whispering Madness
• 1x Windfall
• 1x Worst Fears

Creature (3)

• 1x Clever Impersonator
• 1x Gonti, Lord of Luxury
• 1x Mizzix of the Izmagnus

Enchantment (2)

• 1x Swarm Intelligence
• 1x Thousand-Year Storm

Land (39)

• 1x Bojuka Bog
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Crumbling Necropolis
• 1x Dimir Aqueduct
• 1x Evolving Wilds
• 1x Exotic Orchard
• 8x Island
• 1x Izzet Boilerworks
• 1x Jwar Isle Refuge
• 5x Mountain
• 1x Rakdos Carnarium
• 1x Shivan Reef
• 1x Sulfur Falls
• 1x Sunken Hollow
• 6x Swamp
• 1x Temple of Deceit
• 1x Temple of Epiphany
• 1x Temple of Malice
• 1x Temple of the False God
• 1x Underground River
• 1x Vivid Crag
• 1x Vivid Creek
• 1x Vivid Marsh

Artifact (10)

• 1x Chromatic Lantern
• 1x Commander's Sphere
• 1x Dimir Signet
• 1x Fellwar Stone
• 1x Gilded Lotus
• 1x Izzet Signet
• 1x Rakdos Signet
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Talisman of Dominance
• 1x Talisman of Indulgence

Commander (1)

Instant (19)

• 1x Aethersnatch
• 1x Arcane Denial
• 1x Bedevil
• 1x Chaos Warp
• 1x Counterspell
• 1x Cyclonic RiftGC
• 1x Desertion
• 1x Dissolve
• 1x Evacuation
• 1x Hero's Downfall
• 1x Hinder
• 1x Lightning Bolt
• 1x Memory Plunder
• 1x Mystical TutorGC
• 1x Reality Shift
• 1x Snuff Out
• 1x Swan Song
• 1x Wild Ricochet
• 1x Word of Seizing

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Maybeboard

Sorcery (9)

• 1x Crush of Tentacles
• 1x Crux of Fate
• 1x Damnation
• 1x Demonic TutorGC
• 1x Insurrection
• 1x Mind's Desire
• 1x Psychic Intrusion
• 1x Rise of the Dark Realms
• 1x Stolen Identity

Creature (3)

• 1x Jeleva, Nephalia's Scourge
• 1x Perplexing Chimera
• 1x Spellseeker

Enchantment (2)

• 1x Mind's Dilation
• 1x Stolen Strategy

Instant (3)

• 1x Disallow
• 1x Force of WillGC
• 1x Terminate

Artifact (1)

• 1x Mirage Mirror

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Hello! I am a long-time casual commander player. This is my Kess deck, and it has no win conditions.

No, seriously. Go through the deck and try to figure out how to win. It's doable, but probably involves an unlikely chain of events involving Thousand-Year Storm , Bonus Round , and Chandra's Ignition . Silly, clunky, and obviously jank.

Thankfully, our opponents are usually trying to win the game harder than we are. Let's go through their decks and take their win conditions, instead.

Aikido? But why? Show

Kess is an incredibly competitive commander, most commonly used at the head of Grixis Ad Nauseam cantrip combo decks that can win consistently within the first 3-4 turns via Dramatic Scepter or similar. That's not what this deck does. If you want to win like that, go find another Kess deck.

Aikido describes a political deck meta that attempts to turn your opponents' actions against them, either by redirecting damage or by stealing cards away. In this case, we're doing quite a bit of the latter, taking opponents' cards straight out of their decks and putting them into play or copying cards already in play. Kess is an incredible commander for this strategy as well, since many of this deck's spells individually have a massive impact; recasting them even once with Kess generates huge value.

You should play this deck if

-You have no qualms about reaching over to your opponent's cards and picking them up to read the text, even if it annoys them.

-You have no qualms about shuffling your opponent's deck vigorously. Even if it annoys them.

-You have friends with decks more expensive and awesome than yours, and you want to play their foil Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre without asking permission. Especially if it annoys them.

-You don't mind repeatedly dynamiting the battlefield just to stall for time.

-Most importantly, you don't mind thinking. Seriously, this deck takes a lot of brainpower to pilot well. That's because your opponents' decks are your toolkit, and frequently it takes some creativity to imagine how their decks can solve the problems you're currently facing. Great example: The type of deck that runs Elesh Norn is the same type of deck that Elesh Norn screws over. Know yourself, know your enemy.

Creatureless? Show

OK, so that's a slight fib. Obviously, Kess gets played occasionally to recast a high-value spell or two - frequently, a boardwipe that kills her again. Such is life.

In a deck with 45 instants and sorceries, Mizzix of the Izmagnus is too valuable to exclude; if we can manage to keep her in play for a single turn, she'll allow us to dominate the board state. If you're a purist, you can replace Mizzix with Arcane Melee .

We're also running Gonti, Lord of Luxury as a stronger version of the Stolen Goods effect. Gonti gives us better card selection than sorceries like Goods, allowing us to profitably choose reactive cards like countermagic. While Praetor's Grasp performs the same task better, Gonti is no slouch and is definitely worth the slot. The purist would swap to Stolen Strategy here.

Finally, we've got Clever Impersonator hanging around as the broadest blank-check copy effect available. I'm not aware of any instant or sorcery that reads "copy target permanent," so Impersonator feels justified due to his flexibility. Besides, half the time he enters as a Sol Ring rather than a creature anyway, so he barely counts.

So why do I call this a creatureless deck? Because our deck typically wins by stealing and interacting with our opponents' creatures, or copies of their creatures. The few creatures we cast will be comparatively superfluous; we don't protect them and we barely care if they die. In a control deck that nukes the board this much, it doesn't pay to run many creature spells.

Controlling the board Show

We're playing a comboless, mostly creatureless deck with little to no early board state; that makes it hard to stay alive for very long. The best solution I've found is to blow up the table as frequently as possible and deny opponents resources. By playing the control deck, we won't be making many friends, but we'll at least be making it harder for our enemies to kill us.

Here are all the boardwipes I'm running. I need more, I swear.

Blasphemous Act

Chain Reaction

Cyclonic Rift

Decree of Pain (amusingly, the most direct draw spell in the deck)

Devastation Tide

Evacuation

Toxic Deluge

Vandalblast

And Chandra's Ignition as an experimental boardwipe that can also serve as a game finisher, depending on how powerful of a creature we've stolen. Crux of Fate or Damnation takes this slot otherwise.

It's hard to argue against counterspells in any blue commander deck ever, but we're running a comparatively small number here. Typically, we get more value from letting permanents resolve so that we can copy the results and then blow 'em to smithereens. That said, we still need to run countermagic to prevent the game from ending to cheesy cards like Approach of the Second Sun :

Desertion incidentally steals cards but works as countermagic in a pinch.

Aethersnatch works as countermagic against any permanent or targeted spell.

Arcane Denial

Counterspell

Hinder

Swan Song

Dissolve which I'm looking to upgrade to Disallow or similar.

Finally, spot removal is great for getting rid of stax and for removing individual high-threat cards you don't want to copy:

Chaos Warp is the best tool for dealing with nasty enchantments, always an achilles heel for Grixis.

Snuff Out because free is better

Lightning Bolt

Reality Shift can deal with indestructibility

Bedevil

Hero's Downfall which I'm playing over Terminate until War of the Spark is over and decks stop being flooded with planeswalkers.

Taking your opponents' shiny cards away from them Show

OK, so let's start sorting through our opponents' cards and see what value we can get from them. The following cards are the power toolbox because they tutor and play cards directly from opponents' libraries, which lets us find the answer to any pickle we might be in:

Praetor's Grasp is the most powerful of these effects. Grasp tutors any card (even land), but we have to spend mana to cast it. We get to choose the timing, however, which lets us choose reactive cards like Teferi's Protection .

Bribery tutors and plays a free creature (very powerful)

Acquire tutors and plays a free artifact

Knowledge Exploitation tutors and casts a free instant or sorcery

Next, opponents sometimes play cards that we'd rather take than destroy. These spells let us steal or copy useful permanents:

Blatant Thievery Mine

Desertion Mine

Word of Seizing Mine!

Clever Impersonator I want one

Saheeli's Artistry I want this and that

Rite of Replication I want five

Clone Legion I want one of everything!

Instants and sorceries are a bit harder to spelljack, but these cards can do it:

Aethersnatch is a great toolbox that can steal any card off the stack.

Memory Plunder recasts our enemies' counterspells any day, every day.

Wild Ricochet has to be played reactively. However, Ricochet both copies and redirects opponents' spells, giving us a great 2-for-1 deal while giving them nothing.

Spelltwine gives us another 2-for-1 deal: a free cast of an opponent's sorcery and a recast of one of our own.

Finally, when in doubt, don't take the player's cards. Just take the player.

Worst Fears

Cruel Entertainment

Ramp, tutors, and other synergistic stuff Show

Lands like Exotic Orchard and Vivids are designed to access opponents' colors of mana; Bojuka Bog is also noteworthy. All of this deck's artifacts are mana rocks (yes, all of them); I won't insult you by listing them off, but I will say that it could easily run a half-dozen more. What can I say? Kess is mana-hungry.

It goes without saying that tutor spells give us a huge advantage when we can reuse them with your commander. The deck should probably run more:

Dark Petition also makes some mana , which creates some fun chaining plays.

Increasing Ambition will search two cards even when cast by Kess' ability.

Mystical Tutor hits most of the deck.

While not as focused as tutors, hand wheels generate excellent card advantage since Kess can recast any important spells we discard. Plus, they can interrupt our opponents' plans:

Reforge the Soul

Windfall

Whispering Madness

Finally, our remaining cards function to accelerate the game and storm out, recurring or copying our powerful theft cards as many times as possible.

Mizzix's Mastery lets us recast a huge number of power spells we've used or milled. We typically cast this on sight to end the game immediately.

Past in Flames fills a similar niche. Both Flames and Mastery can fill in for Kess when she isn't available for whatever reason.

Spelltwine At base, Spelltwine steals an opponents's spell and recasts one of our own. Spelltwine goes particularly nutty when copied, letting us storm off with six to twelve spells (depending on the copy effect...)

Swarm Intelligence is incredible when played with cards like Spelltwine and Knowledge Exploitation that cast other spells. When combined with Kess, spells like Bribery can be cast four times in one turn, letting us steal opponents' combos in their entirety.

Thousand-Year Storm serves the same function as Bonus Round but can produce even more explosive results. Kess helps us get quick & easy storm stacks before we whip out triply- and quadruply-copied haymakers like Blatant Thievery .

Last but not least, Bonus Round produces the same effect as Swarm Intelligence but casts as a sorcery. This lets Kess recast it and lets Intelligence and TYStorm copy it, causing any subsequent spells to be copied an unreasonably huge number of times.

Date added	6 years
Last updated	5 years
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	7 - 0 Mythic Rares 43 - 0 Rares 23 - 0 Uncommons 8 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	4.05
Tokens	Bird 2/2 U, Copy Clone, Experience Token, Manifest 2/2 C
Folders	Possible decks