Karador has been my favorite commander since he was released in 2011. I've built him in a variety of ways over the years and have settled on this particular build as the one that I enjoy the most. The goal of the deck is to grind your opponents to dust by accumulating incremental value, while being able to answer threats on their side of the board.
While this deck is fairly effective, it's not designed to be a top tier competitive deck. Instead, it aims to provide an interesting game filled with a lot of back and forth gameplay. Ultimately, your opponents should always feel like they are in the game instead of being locked out from doing anything fun.
The Early Game
The early game for this deck is all about resource accrual. Focus on your mana base and graveyard. Ideally, you should be recurring some sort of mana fixing, whether it's fetch lands with Life from the Loam or reusing creatures that fetch lands, like Sakura-Tribe Elder or Wood Elves.
It is also important that you work on stocking your graveyard with an assortment of utility creatures. If you're dredging Life from the Loam every turn, this will happen fairly quickly. However, be aware of graveyard hate that your opponents might have in their decks. While you want to be able to cast Karador, Ghost Chieftain for , you don't want to lose the majority of your deck to timely hate. Personally, I tend to aim for around ten creatures in my graveyard before I stop actively working to fill it. If you are looking for a particular answer, though, feel free to dredge more cards. They don't do you any good if your opponents win.
Key Early Game Cards
- Ramp Creatures: Avacyn's Pilgrim, Birds of Paradise, Bloom Tender, Deathrite Shaman, Sakura-Tribe Elder, Wood Elves. These cards all accelerate your mana production and can easily be brought back with Karador. If you are facing a particularly aggressive deck, don't be afraid to throw your ramp creatures in front of their attackers. You can always get them back later, if necessary.
- Graveyard Enablers: Life from the Loam, Golgari Grave-Troll, Stinkweed Imp, Satyr Wayfinder, Altar of Dementia. These are the cards that you will be using to fill your graveyard in the early game. Typically, you will need some sort of sacrifice outlet to reliably get the three creatures into the graveyard, but there are plenty of those available. Once again, avoid overstocking your graveyard if you know that your opponents are playing graveyard hate. Note that, in most cases, it is more useful to use Altar of Dementia on yourself over your opponents.
- Sacrifice Outlets: Altar of Dementia, Carrion Feeder, Disciple of Griselbrand, Phyrexian Altar, Viscera Seer. While there are a few other sacrifice outlets in the deck, these four are notable for their low mana costs and, with the exception of Disciple of Griselbrand, the lack of a mana cost for sacrificing creatures. I always hope to have at least one in my opening hand, but the deck can function just fine without them. If you are lucky enough to have more than one, try to hold the surplus back in case you lose the one that you have in play.
The Mid-Game
Transitioning to the mid-game with this deck is all about figuring out your opponents' threats and choosing appropriate answers. As such, the creature selection in the deck is focused on giving you flexible options for dealing with most strategies. Ultimately, you will need to evaluate which opponent is the greatest threat at the given moment, how to disrupt that threat, and how to best find the necessary creature. This will require practice. As with most grindy decks, you can afford a fairly substantial amount of life loss in the early and mid-game, but don't let yourself fall too low if you are facing an aggressive opponent.
Key Mid-Game Cards
- Versus Artifact/Enchantment Strategies: Caustic Caterpillar, Leonin Relic-Warder, Qasali Pridemage. Recurring any one of these cards will generally enable you to deal with a variety of artifact and enchantment threats. Note that the Leonin Relic-Warder does not use the modern wording for banish effects, and is thus abusable with a sacrifice outlet (put the exile trigger on the stack, then sacrifice the relic-warder in response to exile the artifact or enchantment permanently).
- Versus Single Creature or Low Creature Count Strategies: Fleshbag Marauder, Liliana of the Veil, Luminate Primordial, Noxious Gearhulk, Palace Jailer, Path to Exile,Skinrender, Swords to Plowshares. These cards do an excellent job of answering single creature threats, like most Voltron decks. While some of these are less effective against hexproof creatures, they are quite capable of answering most others. Note that, with the Palace Jailer, they only get their creature back when you stop being the monarch, so you are free to block/sacrifice the jailer without consequence.
- Versus Going Wide Strategies: Defense of the Heart, Demon of Dark Schemes, Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite, Magister of Worth, Spore Frog. While Defense of the Heart doesn't directly answer a token swarm strategy, you will most likely be able to sacrifice it and get one of the creatures that does answer it. Demon of Dark Schemes and Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite can completely demolish most "going wide" strategies, while Spore Frog is incredibly frustrating to deal with for opponents who are looking to attack. Be careful when using Magister of Worth in a multiplayer game. Since you cast your vote first, your opponents can choose to overrule you. Typically, however, you should have enough creatures in your graveyard that the reanimation option is less appealing for them.
- Versus Aggressive Decks: Disciple of Griselbrand, Miren, the Moaning Well, Spore Frog. If you are dealing with a particularly aggressive deck, you will want to get these cards as soon as possible. The first two will let you block and sacrifice for life, while the last one is excellent at shutting down the combat step. You may need to be a little careful with Spore Frog, however, as you can only recast it on your turn. Choose which combat step to negate very carefully.
- Versus Attrition Decks: Eternal Witness, Karmic Guide, Life from the Loam,
Ramunap Excavator
, Restoration Angel, Reveillark, Sigarda, Host of Herons, Sun Titan, Volrath's Stronghold. Karador, as a commander, is incredibly well-suited to facing another attrition-based deck. Between his inherent ability and the suite of cards that let him repeatedly retrieve things from the graveyard, it can be very difficult for an attrition deck to come out ahead. That being said, it's important to always have a backup plan for when they inevitably remove your primary source of recursion. You will also need to be aware of graveyard hate and plan for it accordingly.
- Versus Reanimator: Bojuka Bog, Crop Rotation, Path to Exile, Swords to Plowshares. This strategy is slightly more difficult to answer with the current configuration of the deck. Using Crop Rotation to fetch Bojuka Bog at instant speed can be an excellent way to disrupt a one-shot reanimation effect. It's especially satisfying to do in response to Living Death. Other than that, however, you are limited to exile effects at low mana costs, due to how quickly most reanimator decks operate. For suggestions on improving this match up, see the Adjusting for Your Metagame section, below.
- Versus Spell-Based Combo: Gonti, Lord of Luxury, Mindslicer. This is another weak match up for the current deck configuration. If you are lucky, you will be able to remove a few key cards with the cards listed, but your only other realistic hope is to get some pressure on them early and not let up. For suggestions on improving this match up, see the Adjusting for Your Metagame section, below.
- Generic Answers: Angel of Sanctions, Ashen Rider, Necrotic Sliver, Woodfall Primus. These cards serve as generic, albeit somewhat expensive, answers to a variety of threats. If you are anxious to use a tutor, but don't have a particular threat in mind, grab one of these.
The End Game, or "How Do I Actually Win?"
So, you've dealt with your opponents' major threats and built a nice little value engine. What now? Now, it's time to win the game. At this point, you want to ramp up your value threats into a lethal force. While it may seem like there are a low number of actual game-winning threats, the deck is very well positioned to get to the end game and eventually find them.
Key End Game Cards
- Abuse, Reuse, Recycle: Angel of Condemnation, Eldrazi Displacer, Meren of Clan Nel Toth, Volrath's Stronghold. These cards, along with Karador himself, allow you to continually reuse the high value targets in the deck.
- Reuse Targets: Ashen Rider, Golgari Grave-Troll, Gonti, Lord of Luxury, Grave Titan. Of these four, my least favorite to repeatedly reuse is Ashen Rider. However, if you really want the win, flickering it multiple times a turn with Eldrazi Displacer will certainly get it for you. Golgari Grave-Troll can end up quite large, due to how well-stocked your graveyard should be, and can easily go on the offensive once you feel you've dredged enough. Grave Titan can quickly produce a zombie horde for the times that you need to go wide. Last, but certainly not least, Gonti, Lord of Luxury gives you the satisfaction of winning with your opponents' cards. Hey, if they didn't want to be beaten to death with their own Blightsteel Colossus, they shouldn't have included it in their deck.
Other Notable Card Functions
- Tutors and Card Draw: Birthing Pod, Bloodgift Demon, Demonic Tutor, Diabolic Intent, Eladamri's Call, Fauna Shaman, Greater Good, Green Sun's Zenith, Rune-Scarred Demon, Sidisi, Undead Vizier, Survival of the Fittest, Vampiric Tutor. Yes, that's a lot of ways to tutor and/or draw cards. This allows you to find exactly the silver bullet you need to deal with the biggest threat on the table. However, see Adjusting for Your Metagame, below.
Adjusting for Your Metagame
While this particular configuration has worked well for me, you may want to make some small tweaks to adjust to your specific metagame. Here are a few suggestions to get you started:
- Powering Down: If you are dealing with a lower-powered metagame, the first things to cut are the tutors. Simply replace them with more creatures that provide the effects you want and allow the natural course of the game to bring them to you.
- Heavy Combo Metagame: As noted above, this deck can struggle with a spell-based combo opponent. There are a few options, however, to improve your chances. First off, if they are particularly creature-light, it's safe to cut removal like Palace Jailer and Luminate Primordial. You will want to replace them with cards that either disrupt your opponents' hands (Brain Maggot, Mesmeric Fiend, Sin Collector, Tidehollow Sculler) or disrupt their mana curves (Glowrider, Gaddock Teeg, Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, Vryn Wingmare).
- Heavy Reanimator Metagame: You will want to bring in additional cards to attack the graveyard. However, since you are also a graveyard-based deck, you want to choose targeted hate. Agent of Erebos, Anafenza, the Foremost, Angel of Finality, Faerie Macabre, Scavenging Ooze, and Withered Wretch can all do excellent work here.
- Hexproof Galore: If you are dealing with an excessive amount of Voltron decks, you'll want to increase the number of sacrifice effects you run, as well as board wipes. Damnation, Merciless Executioner, Slum Reaper, and Wrath of God should get you off to a good start.
Some of Those Cards Are Really Expensive, or "I'm on a Budget"
I have been steadily working on improving this deck since Karador was printed in 2011. As such, I have invested a lot of time, effort, and money into it. However, if you want to build it on a budget, there are quite a few options.
- The Mana Base: Original dual lands, fetch lands, and the like are all rather expensive. You can make the deck function fairly well by including more basic lands. If you do, you will want to look into cards like Yavimaya Elder, Farhaven Elf, Ondu Giant, and Solemn Simulacrum.
- The Tutors: Again, these are decently expensive cards. Many of them can be replaced with tutors that cost more mana, however, such as Beseech the Queen, Dark Petition, and Diabolic Tutor. You also have the option to go with a less consistent deck and forgo tutors entirely.
- Sacrifice Outlets: Ashnod's Altar is quite inexpensive. There are a lot of other options within black, especially. The key is to focus on cards that don't have an additional mana cost to sacrifice creatures, as well as cards that can be used at any time. Avoid sacrifice outlets that can only be used at sorcery speed, since that will end up causing you trouble when your opponents use exile-based removal on your creatures.
- Recursion: The only really expensive card here is Volrath's Stronghold. Haunted Crossroads is a very cheap replacement and can even be better in certain situations.
- Other Cards: Liliana of the Veil provides a lot of utility in being able to discard dredge cards from your hand and forcing your opponents to sacrifice creatures. She is far from required for the deck to function, though, and can be replaced with whatever you'd like. Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite is an outstanding answer to token decks, but can be replaced with a board wipe or a card like Curse of Death's Hold.
In Conclusion
Over the years, I have had a ridiculous amount of fun playing this deck. Several of the most enjoyable games of my Magic history have involved this deck. Hopefully, this guide provides a little bit of insight. I will be glad to answer any questions in the comments.
TODO:
- Add a list of commonly used cards that didn't make the cut, along with explanations.
