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I Kar-Adore This Commander (2.0)

Commander / EDH BGW (Abzan, Junk)

CosmicConical


Sideboard


This is my updated Karador, Ghost Chieftain list from over a year ago. So much has changed that I decided to just make a new decklist rather than try to update the existing deck.

Karador is probably my favourite commander and I've had to make compromises along the way for deck building to keep my playgroup happy, but personally I still love the playstyle even if it has been nerfed several times. There are still some infinite combos in the deck, which I'll get to after the description of the deck.

I like to think this is the essence of an aristocrats deck, coupled with a self-mill deck. Karador himself enables the strategy to be very consistent in the mid-game due to his graveyard recursion ability. Any aristocrats pieces that get removed are happily replaced with themselves in the graveyard if need be.

Like any good self-mill strategy, the goal is to fill the graveyard very quickly in the early game, and this can easily be accomplished with cards such as Perpetual Timepiece, Buried Alive, Fauna Shaman, Sticher's Supplier, as well as classics such as Grisly Salvage. However, the one card that you definitely want to be looking for in the early game is Hermit Druid. As many of us know, Hermit Druid is a very powerful card, and with only six basic lands in this deck, the chances are very good that he will fill the graveyard by a sizeable chunk with just one activation. Hermit Druid is a pretty key part of the deck and there are plenty of ways to get him closer to being played in this deck such as the aforementioned Fauna Shaman or an Eladamri's Call, so be sure to tutor up a hermit druid when you need one to get that sweet, sweet activation.

Once the game starts going, we can get some value going with any number of our aristocrat cards. Usually my opponents like to focus these cards down, which is no problem, because even if some get exiled, there will be plenty of redundancy in the deck to replace a piece later on.

As for protection, I am still working on it. There is of course the Perpetual Timepiece for graveyard protection, as well as a Veil of Summer for any targeted blue or black spells, but other than that, sacrificing any combo pieces is the best way we can protect our gameplan. I've been thinking of putting in more graveyard protection for a while now, since everyone wants to at least run a Bojuka Bog if they can, so I have considered slotting in a Leyline of Sanctity.

As for the win conditions, we still have a Living Death for an easy burst to get a ton of life pingers onto the battlefield as well as a ton of devotion for a Gray Merchant of Asphodel. There is also an infinite loop with Saffi Eriksdotter and Reveillark, a classic. So having those two on the board with a sac outlet like Altar of Dementia or any other sac outlet with a damage source, we can either mill or ping our opponents down until they run out of cards or life. And thankfully, there are many Sac outlets and damage sources to go with them in the deck.

I've also added a bit of artifact hate in the deck in the form of Kataki, War's Wage for my meta. There are plenty of flexible cards to remove from the deck if the meta calls for it, so do with them what you will!

Lastly, you may notice the deck is actually a true singleton deck. That is because of one very good land: Field of the Dead. Well, its also because of the Hermit Druid, but y'know, synergies complimenting eachother.

But yeah, that's mostly it. Other than what I've described here, it's just a creature-focused deck that can recur its best removal/cards with its commander.

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93% Casual

Competitive

Date added 3 years
Last updated 2 years
Legality

This deck is Commander / EDH legal.

Rarity (main - side)

7 - 1 Mythic Rares

49 - 4 Rares

29 - 1 Uncommons

8 - 4 Commons

Cards 100
Avg. CMC 3.03
Tokens Angel of Sanctions 3/4 W, Eldrazi Scion 1/1 C, Eldrazi Spawn 0/1 C, Experience Token, Goat 0/1 W, Human Soldier 1/1 W, Insect 1/1 BG, Pest 1/1 BG, Spirit 1/1 W, Zombie 2/2 B
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