Welcome to my Karador, Ghost Chieftain Primer!
(I apologize in advance for this being such a long read)
I wanted to go over the many facets of this deck. It is a very competitive deck, with more than one win condition. For those of you who have never played with, or played against a competitive Karador deck, you may not know that this deck plays out as a very aggressive control deck.
The more ETB effects, the better!
With the ability to recur your creatures through our devout commander, having an enters the battlefield effect is great. Playing your graveyard like an extension of your hand really opens up the advantage you have. It also forces your opponents to think more. Is it worth killing that guy if he is just going to come back and trigger his ETB again?
As you may have figured out, we want as many effects on a stick as we can find. Whether it is searching for land with Wood Elves or killing a creature with
Bone Shredder
, if it can be done with a creature, do it. It just recurs better!
We need to prepare the Sacrifice!
Taking the decision of killing your creatures away from your opponent is the way to go, and with 8 different sac outlets in this deck, there are plenty of ways to do it.
Miren, the Moaning Well
Phyrexian Tower
Greater Good (a real all-star)
Ghost Council of Orzhova
Attrition
Birthing Pod
Victimize
Dread Return
These also help set up Yosei, the Morning Star lock-outs, and Woodfall Primus combos. Oh, and they can save our dudes from exile effects.
Tutor me in your ways!
We need ways to build our board state, and when your deck is 92 thick (after a good opening hand, of course!), we need ways to assemble the pieces more consistently.
Yavimaya Dryad
and Wood Elves fix our mana. I picked them because they can grab our lands with forest in their type, and this includes Murmuring Bosk! Sakura-Tribe Elder, and Solemn Simulacrum are just too good not to use with Karador, just be sure to have enough basics to fetch!
Sylvan Primordial
is one of the best green creatures in commander. It can fetch you a forest for each player in the game, and take out pieces vital to their board state.
Buried Alive, Jarad's Orders, Tooth and Nail and Green Sun's Zenith are our creature specific tutors. Dont forget that Green Sun's Zenith can fetch Dryad Arbor if X is 0! Jarad's Orders is great with Karmic Guide. Put something awesome in the graveyard, like that
Sylvan Primordial
and the guide in your hand. It really is a great combo. Using Tooth and Nail to fetch both Massacre Wurm and
Elesh Norn, grand cenobyte
with give all opponents creatures -4/-4, and deal them 2 damage for everything that dies from it!
Vampiric Tutor, Increasing Ambition, Demonic Tutor, and possibly our best tutor Rune-Scarred Demon are our fetch-alls! Using them to assemble our game winning pieces is crucial!
You are not long for this world!
We have many ways to control the overall board.
Bone Shredder
, Shriekmaw, Fleshbag Marauder, Duplicant, Sheoldred, Whispering One, Attrition,and Unmake make up our creature removal suite! Grave Pact might as well be controlled creature removal with how much sac outlets we run!
As for artifact, enchantment, and land removal, we run some of the best! Acidic Slime, Woodfall Primus, Harmonic Sliver, Qasali Pridemage, and the utterly amazing
Sylvan Primordial
.
Our catch all destroyers consist of Angel of Despair, Archon of Justice, Necrotic Sliver, and Beast Within. These can destroy anything on the board, so long as we can target it!
I never want the fun to end!
This deck has a surprising amount of card advantage, be it straight up card draw, simulated card draw, or other ways to keep us in a constant state of tactical advantage! This is outside of our numerous tutors.
Disciple of Bolas has the potential to draw us a ton of cards, gain us a bunch of life, and do it over and over!
Eternal Witness grabs us cards that ended up in our graveyard that we cant use from there (ie: non-creatures. It is like a tutor later in the game!
Sheoldred, Whispering One is basically like an extra draw step that gives us the added benefit of the creature going straight to the board!
Solemn Simulacrum draws us an extra card when he dies, and this is after he advances our board state!
Sun Titan, much like Sheoldred is like drawing extra cards. He is awesome when one of our artifacts or enchantments hit the graveyard.
Deadbridge Chant is almost exactly like Sheoldred, but can put other cards in our hand, besides just creatures. Can accidentally mill some of our key pieces.
Greater Good. Seriously. This card is amazing in this deck. It does everything we could ask for. If only it could do the dishes too.
Survival of the Fittest. This card is right up there with Greater Good. It fills our graveyard, and tutors our awesome creatures. Discarding a biggy to fetch a Karmic Guide is just a bonus!
Sylvan Library is like a Sensei's Divining Top activation at the beginning of every draw step, with the ability to keep all of the cards!
Skullclamp is great for our fetch land creatures. Put a forest into play, equip, draw two cards? Oh yeah! Also works great with the creatures we would sac anyway.
Birthing Pod ups your game amazingly. Try it, and you will see that the advantage offered is just amazing.
Mimic Vat recurs our annoying creatures. Imprint Yosei, the Morning Star to it with a sac outlet on board and you can lock an opponent out of the game. Dont forget you can imprint an enemy creature to it too!
And, of course, our absolute best card advantage, would have to be our commander. Karador, Ghost Chieftain makes our hand huge. The majority of our creatures have ETB effects, so playing from the graveyard is just advantage.
Its alive. ITS ALIIIIIIIVE!!!!!
Part of what makes this deck so fun is playing a ton of creatures, a lot of them pretty high on the cmc scale. With that said, we need ways to get those creatures from the grave, to the field. Our suite of reanimation is pretty nice, take a look!
Dread Return is probably our weakest reanimator. But that flashback is just to appealing! Sometimes it can be one of the only sac outlets we have, and it will bring out fatty to the board.
Unburial Rites is awesome. Doesnt mind hitting the graveyard on accident.
Karmic Guide is just amazing. Having reanimation on a stick is great! Dont pay the echo cost, sacrifice her, and recast her with Karador, BAM! Oh, and if you have Mikaeus, the Unahallowed on the board, you can often get double benefit from her just by not paying her echo
Victimize might be the best reanimation there is. Hitting two creatures at once is awesome, and the downside isnt really all that down! And doing this as early as turn 2 is just great!
Sheoldred, Whispering One brings those creatures back over and over, and can control the other side of the board. Deadbridge Chant also kind of falls in line with her, but is, well, random!
Our two mass revives are Twilight's Call and Rise of the Dark Realms. Using Twilights Call at the end of turn gives you immediate benefit of your creatures, allowing you to swing before everyone else gets to take advantage of their creatures. Dark realms just steals all the things. Have fun with that alpha attack if another rotation of the table happens.
We have two creatures that revive from other players graveyards in Puppeteer Clique and Sepulchral Primordial. Both have unique bonuses in the fact that the Clique exiles the creature when it is done playing with it, and has persist, while the Primordial can hit all opponents graveyards, and you get to keep the creatures!
And of course, yet again, our commander is the most consistent form of graveyard recursion.
Victory!
There are a few ways to win. Sadly, we do not win with commander damage.
Combos:
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth + Cabal Coffers + Crypt Ghast or Mirari's Wake or Mana Reflection and Debt to the Deathless. This is a combo you can use when the game is going on too long. You dont even need all of the pieces to win. Just gauge how much damage you need to deal to win. Dont forget that you gain life equal to ALL life lost this way!
Yosei, the Morning Star + Graveyard recursion + a sac outlet. This is preferable for 1 v 1 games. And the good news is that one of the pieces necessary to pull this off is our commander!
Same as above but replace Yosei with Kokusho, the Evening Star. This is better for more than a two player game. Gains a ton of life every turn and the constant 5 damage is nothing to sneeze at.
Non-Combos:
Utter domination of the board and then creature beats. It is seriously that simple.
The dos and donts of Karador EDH
Do: Use your graveyard as the resource that it is.
Dont: Over extend. Usually this means putting too much on the board and ramming into a board wipe. For us it means not overfilling our graveyard and running into a Bojuka Bog.
Do: Keep a hand with a lot of ramp. Our creatures are large, and we need to put on the pressure as quickly as possible.
Dont: Discount a hand without ramp. We can usually control the board early on enough to stabilize.
Do: Play ambassador. Once people play against Karador enough, they will try to take you out as quickly as possible. Playing politically will greatly benefit you. Concentrate on one enemy at a time, which leads me to my next-
Dont: Forget about the other players. Allowing someone else to build up a strong board can lead to your doom. We have tons of resources, but most of them are spot based. We run board wipes in the form of creatures, and our creatures dont hit all other creatures every time. If we are not observant, the person who has been building board state more humbly than us will sneak our victory right from us.
Do: Have Fun!
Dont: Take it hard when you lose!
The most important thing is to have fun!
I will consider all constructive criticism and I appreciate the +1s!
