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Kess, Doomcaller

Commander / EDH Combo Competitive Primer UBR (Grixis)

Dimarx

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Instant (28)

Creature (3)

Enchantment (3)

Sorcery (22)

Artifact (15)

Commander (1)

Commander: Kess, Dissident Mage

Land (28)

Maybeboard

Instant (3)

Planeswalker (1)

Enchantment (1)

Deck Introduction

Kess Doomsday is a deck that can race to that turn 3-4 win or grind it out through recursion in the graveyard if the plan gets interrupted. The depth of the deck is incredible. The primary win condition of the deck is winning through Doomsday , if that gets interrupted or stopped we have the back-up plans to use Aetherflux Reservoir and storm off with our high amount of draw and mana cards to ping everyone to zero.

The biggest upside of running Kess over other commanders is that she opens up the options to use more of a longer grind strategy if we do not have our win within turn 3-4 or if someone is actively stopping the win with such cards as Rule of Law . With this she has the ability to go fast or grind it out over a longer period of time.

Who am I?

Hi, I'm Dimarx, the creator of Mishra's Lab Assistant

If anyone hangs around the PlayEDH Discord you may know me as the person jamming Kess games. My first deck into competitive is this deck, I have always been a fan of the spell-slinging strategy and when I found storm and Doomsday I fell in love. I originally had a Melek the Izzet Paragon deck that was not tuned as much as it could have been but felt too slow to me. I worked at making the deck faster started out by trying to change it to a Narset, Enlightened Master which I theorized and proxied to play within my group I didn't keep this idea too long as it was a race to play Narset, which is how that deck always works, after thinking about it made more sense to add instead of . I argued if Jeleva, Nephalia's Scourge would fit what I wanted, then Kess, Dissident Mage surfaced and I decided that she was the commander for me.

Pros and Cons

Pros

  • Can win on Turn 3-4 easily.
  • Can switch to the grind game if need be.
  • Runs quite a bit of interaction to stop others from winning if falling behind.
  • High Consistency.
Cons

Why Play this Deck?

You might enjoy this deck if you:

  • Really love drawing cards.
  • Really enjoy combos.
  • Like to be flexible in game plans.
  • Enjoy coming up with creative ways to win.
  • Like counting to 6.

You will not enjoy this deck if you:

  • Dislike Drawing Cards
  • Prefer decks that have a very linear strategy.
  • Prefer creature-based decks.
  • Don't like losing life.

Our Deck really wants to get to a point where we have Doomsday and a way to "crack" our 5 card pile, this can be any cantrip like Gitaxian Probe this is a good time to remind you that Doomsday is our win condition and in turn also has a lot of ways to win from casting this card, just about every pile is situational, and can be a complex card to play around, it is suggested that you look through this primer for Doomsday if you have not used this card in the past: The EDH Doomsday Primer

Our secondary win condition is storming off and using Aetherflux Reservoir to ping everyone to 0. This can be done because of our low mana curve and ample draw and ritual effects, along with a one time option to draw/ritual again with Kess, Dissident Mage on the battlefield if we whiff and hit no gas.

This is probably one of the harder matchups to win. Beating a resolved Rule of Law may seem unbeatable. It's far from unbeatable just not as easy to win. Let's get into how to work around stax pieces.

ETB Tapped Effects

These cards and nothing else do not effect the combo too much. The turns up to our combo turn are now much slower now though. If we see a Root Maze then maybe our Grim Monolith and Mana Vault are not quite the cards we want to slam down. For this it is our best bet to tutor for something like a Cyclonic Rift to deal with these pesky enchantments, we could also try and use Dramatic Reversal to still combo and gain enough mana for the win, but this is much more of a risky line.

Graveyard Hate

When someone drops a Rest in Peace and thinks they have stopped our strategy it's a little funny. This card makes it harder to win through both Doomsday by cutting off our Lion's Eye Diamond / Yawgmoth's Will line, but it does not shut off our combo as a whole. It does however make it much much harder to use Aetherflux Reservoir as a win.

Rule of Law

One of the scarier cards to see someone play into our deck. Rule of Law grinds us to a halt as we need the ability to play multiple spells a turn. Best strategy for these cards is to get a bounce spell of some kind and take care of the issue.

Limited Untaps

Cards like Winter Orb and Static Orb are cards that just slow the gameplan down. They don't stop us from going off in the way like Rule of Law does.

Taxes

Cards like Sphere of Resistance slow us down and make Aetherflux Reservoir lines much harder to do. Best thing we can do if there are only one of these cards down on the field is to play our Helm of Awakening to bring it back to a regular price for cards. There is always the bounce spell line though.

The only card that must be dealt with quickly is Trinisphere this card is hard to beat. Drawing one card for three mana instead of one is just painful. The easiest way to beat the ol' Trinisphere is to use Abrade , it costs three mana but at least the threat is taken care of.

Cursed Totem Effects

Nothing really to say here, our creatures do not have activated abilities, no need to fear this card, if anything it helps us.

Null Rod and Stony Silence

These two cards shut off both our mana rocks and Aetherflux Reservoir which can slow down the Doomsday plan since we do tend to lean on our mana rocks in the early turns of the game to get the mana required to win through Doomsday. Again best plans for dealing with these cards are using our interaction before our turn.

Tutor Hate

Now cards such as Aven Mindcensor or even Stranglehold are not very good for us to find answers to. We have to hope that we can get a removal spell for them or if we can get Ad Nauseam and just find the cards to win without searching. Finding these cards are much harder, but there isn't really a way to get around this.

We are in this category as well, so it's pretty even, we have interaction on the stack and so do they. For all intents and purposes it's an even playing field. Up side for us is even if we use a counterspell on an opponent's turn we still have access to it on our turn as long as Kess, Dissident Mage is on the battlefield.
I would say that we are favored in this matchup seeing as without blue it is much harder to interact with the stack where we want to be most of the time, with this we also have the ability to counter their things as well. While we are favored, I would still not just jam our combo if we notice our opponents are playing slower than their deck is known for.
This turns into a nice little dance of how many counters does the control player have, now this all depends on where you are located in turn order relative to the control player. If you are directly after the control player you have to think rather hard about what you can and cannot get away with, maybe hold off on jamming Ad Nauseam until you have some backup counter spells to assist getting that through. One of the best ways is if you have the start of combo in hand, miraculously have the Ad Naus, and the control player taps out for a greedy mana acceleration we can play Ad Naus and make them have a Force of Will / Pact of Negation and if they do, cool it's now out of their hand, if not, we know the coast is clear.
All metas are different and there are better cards for different metas, most of the cards in this section are ones that I feel fit in most metas and are selected as such.
Our commander Kess, Dissident Mage is a mini Past in Flames for one card a turn. This ability is something that really fuels the deck. Casting Bonus Round twice into a Dark Petition is pretty good it seems.

Interaction/Protection

Abrade destroys pesky artifacts or sometimes creatures that stop us from getting to our combo Chain of Vapor / Cyclonic Rift / Hurkyl's Recall / Rebuild and Snap are all bounce spells we can either use on us to keep the combo going, or to disrupt anything that could be stopping us from winning. Delay / Dispel / Flusterstorm / Force of Will / Mana Drain / Mental Misstep / Pact of Negation / Pyroblast and Swan Song are all counterspells that help us deny a win or protect our win and help push it through. The odd "counter spell" out would be Narset's Reversal which allows us to combo out if we have an effect like Bonus Round happening along with Frantic Search will allow us to draw our deck and generate mana as long as we have enough lands.

Card Draw

Ad Nauseam / Brainstorm / Frantic Search / Gush and Impulse all allow us to sift through our deck to find our win or help us complete the Doomsday win.

Rituals

Cabal Ritual / Dark Ritual / Dramatic Reversal and High Tide all make mana that help us achieve the win.

Tutors

Intuition / Mystical Tutor and Vampiric Tutor allow us to fetch whatever is needed at the time of fetching.

Extra Spells

Bonus Round it makes all of our spells better, how exciting.

Tutors

Dark Petition / Demonic Tutor / Gamble / Imperial Seal and Merchant Scroll all allow us to go searching for cards, making our deck more consistent.

Win Conditions

Doomsday the main win condition to our deck, just have to count to 6. Mind's Desire can be a win condition if we have a storm count equal to our library and cast Laboratory Maniac and then a draw spell.

Draw Spells

Gitaxian Probe / Night's Whisper / Ponder / Preordain and Serum Visions all let us draw cards and go through the Doomsday Pile.

Graveyard Recursion

Past in Flames / Yawgmoth's Will let us use our instant and sorceries and in the case of Yawg Will, it allows us to use anything in the graveyard for a turn.

Interaction

Praetor's Grasp allows us to take a card out of an opponent's deck that would allow them to win. Rolling Earthquake / Toxic Deluge allows us to wipe the field of mana dorks or big creatures if need be.

Mana Producer

Rite of Flame allows us to cast Bonus Round easier.

Wheel Affects

Timetwister / Wheel of Fortune and Windfall all work pretty good with a Notion Thief

Net Positive Mana Rocks

Chrome Mox / Grim Monolith / Lotus Petal / Mana Crypt / Mana Vault / Mox Diamond / Mox Opal and Sol Ring these mana rocks really accelerate our mana in the early game and help us combo off with cards like Hurkyl's Recall / Rebuild

Color Fixing Mana Rocks

Dimir Signet / Fellwar Stone and Talisman of Dominance these cards help us if we fall short on any color, or help us produce colored mana when comboing using Dramatic Reversal

Cost Reduction

Helm of Awakening makes sure our spells are even cheaper to make our combo turns more explosive.

Combo Artifacts

Aetherflux Reservoir is a game ending card if we sting enough spells together to gain enough life. Lion's Eye Diamond is a card that helps us get through Doomsday lines using Yawgmoth's Will to net 3 mana.

Top Deck Manipulation

Sensei's Divining Top A great card when you need to make sure the draws are explosive, and it can also "crack" our Doomsday Pile.

Copy Artifact pretty self explanatory, copy artifact to get an advantage in some way, maybe another Mana Vault or something. Mystic Remora A good early game draw engine. Necropotence Draw engine, just pay life.
Baral, Chief of Compliance lower the cost of those great spells we are slinging. Laboratory Maniac winning games since he went mad. Notion Thief makes all of our wheels just upside for us.
  • Counterspell - We have enough counterspells that do not cost that it seems like overkill to include it.
  • Lim-Dul's Vault - I think there is enough tutors and draw spells that we should be able to get whatever we need. Further testing is going on this card.
  • Dack Fayden - Dack is good, but in a deck where we are really trying to race to the end there are better slots that open up if we cut this card. Overall this is a judgement decision.
  • Ancient Tomb - Our deck is Mana Hungry and most of our deck requires colors to work, the small amount of extra mana this provides does not seem worth it.
  • Candelabra of Tawnos - this card is only good on High Tide turns so in a hand that does not have High Tide it just doesn't do enough.
  • Dark Confidant - Same reason as Lim-Dul's Vault it does quite a bit, but most of our deck is digging and tutoring, the card advantage could be used for other cards like Bonus Round .
    • If you would like to share your brews of Kess, learn about the different archetypes of Kess, or support the other Grixis Competitive commanders join us on the Discord
    For this deck, it is my personal deck but I would not have it this finely tuned without a lot of learning from other decks out there.

    The biggest source for the build is from reversemermaid and their deck Rev 13:18

    Second source that I used was from Wedge-cEDH and their deck Grixis Flux

    The decks were tremendously helpful with finding cards to cut and how to maximize the deck to it's full potential.

    There is also a $100 budget option if you would like to take that price tag waaay down Kess, Doomcaller $100 Budget

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    Casual

    96% Competitive

    Revision 8 See all

    (5 years ago)

    +1 Force of Negation maybe
    Date added 5 years
    Last updated 5 years
    Exclude colors WG
    Legality

    This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.
    Rarity (main - side)

    14 - 0 Mythic Rares

    46 - 0 Rares

    16 - 0 Uncommons

    16 - 0 Commons
    Cards 100
    Avg. CMC 2.00
    Tokens Bird 2/2 U
    Folders Kess
    Votes
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