im on a little bit of a budget and i was wondering why you run living plane

The card is an alternative win condition. It can be found by Academy Rector and combines with either Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite or Linvala, Keeper of Silence to kill / disable all your opponents' lands.

wow i never really thought of that before

why blind obedience?

Thoughts on Renegade Rallier? It looks like a good value creature and can even combo with Saffi or Animate Dead plus Dance of the Dead or one of those two plus Sun Titan.
Felidar Guardian is yet another potential combo piece (with Karmic Guide or Reveillark) but it seems slightly overcosted for this deck.

Im also curious about thoughts on Rallier and Guardian. With Pod you can go from 3 to combo. What are your thoughts on Massacre Wurm over Elesh Norn? You can Eldritch Rector into Living Plane and Massacre Wurm.

And why Pod in maybeboard?

...welp... Protean Hulk is unbanned now... Yaaay

how do people think the deck will change with the addition of hulk?

axelrodgunnerson I suspect you could just switch Boonweaver Giant with Protean Hulk and be set, since every line of play is nearly the same. Crop Rotation will play a bigger role finding High Market and Phyrexian Tower now, which can kill Hulk to find the rest of the pieces, while cards like Natural Order and Green Sun's Zenith can now tutor for Hulk.

oh snap i didnt even think of NO. do you think Boonz is straight up replaceable or can they be run together? i think ultimately Boonz is on the outs, as the deck only really needs one Boonz, and it doesnt even fully need that one. ill tell you this though, i dont care what changes are made, if Boonz and Karador are replaced, if the deck becomes 5 color or mono color, im still calling it Karador Boonweaver

Straight up replacing Boonweaver, Hulk is a perfect fit. It doesn't need much work around except for small interactions that might be useful in niche scenarios (such as fetching Grand Abolisher, a sac outlet via Viscera Seer / Carrion Feeder, and Heliod's Pilgrim fetching Animate Dead; this play can work around interaction completely but costs an additional 1B to run, and in personal preference, Heliod's Pilgrim isn't justifiable in this list)

As for the name, if I recall correctly, there was a list called KaraHulk on the 1v1 French Commander listings over at MTGTop8.com

One could probably get away with running both as exile yard effects are sure as hell going to go up in use as of hulk being legal again. Dont take my suggestion too seriously, I'm an edh scrub

cobblepott where do you see the future of this deck going?

Hey cobblepott, 3 things:1. I LOVE this deck, I play pretty much the same w some exception based on my meta

1. Have you considered putting in Protean Hulk now that he's unbanned?

2. Would you consider Bloodthrone Vampire a decent include as an additional, continuous sac-outlet, or is 3 enough in your opinion?

Any particular reason that Qasali Pridemage was cut instead of Reclamation Sage? I would think that Pridemage is better than Sage at keeping a lock on opponent's artifacts and enchantments because it can sacrifice itself to be recurred whereas with Sage you need a sac outlet to do the same thing. You can play Pridemage on your turn but hold open the mana on your opponent's turns to potentially destroy something they play during those turns. Lastly, I know in a competitive environment this isn't frequently relevant but Pridemage is a larger creature for the net 3 mana you will end up using that also provides a combat buff for another creature.

Plus Qasali Pridemage gets around Torpor Orb and Hushwing Gryff.

But Pridemage can't beat Cursed Totem, and if you put it into play using Eldritch Evolution, Reanimate etc, you need to pay an extra mana to get your disenchant effect. There are arguments both for and against it.

Emzed, that seems more narrow than Torpor Orb effects, which see slightly more play than Cursed Totem. Not to mention that even if you were locked down by the Totem, you would need to have exactly Altar of Dementia or Skullclamp to recur Reclamation Sage because your creature sac outlets would be locked down as well.

Generally I think you want to run both activation effects to be safe, especially if you play with against many different decks.

If you play in a smaller playgroup where you know the decks you could adjust though.

Just read the full primer, you mentioned not playing Teneb due to Karador being better.But I have a suggestion.I haven't read all of these comments, so it may have been said before.

But have you ever considered putting Anafenza, the Foremost at the helm?

Simply because your primer stated that you rarely ever cast Karador, and Anafenza can shut down ANY other creature based combo that involves the graveyarddeck at the table - which a lot of them do.

The only issue I can foresee with running Anafenza is if someone steals her or copies her.

So, I could be completely off, but she does seem like a better option to me :)

AnafenzaBoonweaver

Why does your main description not match the decklist?I'm going over the description and comments now and you mentioned putting in some cards like Bloom Tender and Sylvan Tutor but neither of those is in the decklist.

So, what's the actual decklist consist of right now? o.O

After reading some of the most recent comments, not going back to 2015 as it is probably not relevant now, i'm so confused.

What is the actual decklist now?

What is the best way to run this deck? Not taking into account your meta and just putting in an all around good creature based removal suite.

Jpegwun, to answer your question as to why to run Karador, Ghost Chieftan as the general, Karador offers powerful, straightforward recursion from the graveyard that other generals, Anafenza, the Foremost included, cannot match. This list is built for the highest tier of competitive play and most of the time, is a fast combo deck, which is why cobblepott mentioned that Karador rarely gets cast. When the Boonweaver Giant combo route to win the game is not available, this deck has a backup plan using hatebears to slow the game down and interfere with opponents. This backup plan is reinforced by the recursion Karador offers because you can cast creatures that your opponents or you personally have sent to the graveyard. Another benefit of Karador over other recursion oriented generals like Teneb, the Harvester is that Karador comes with no conditions to access your graveyard such as dealing combat damage to a player.

Another thing to note, Karador's built-in cost reduction can make him cost only BGW after multiple casts from the command zone given you have enough creatures in your graveyard. Lastly, and this is a narrow but still powerful interaction, at 8 mana, you can sacrifice Karador to effects like Birthing Pod and Eldritch Evolution to fetch top-end creatures (like Boonweaver) out of your deck and into play to win games.

@Fresh303

Ok, fair enough. I can see how he is the most capable general for this style of combo deck. I just thought it'd be nice to shut down other players with your general, who is always accessible.

As far as Birthing Pod yeah that works too. However I don't see that in the main board of this list....to which I am still confused what the current list actually is lol