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Kroxa's Snax [PRIMER] *MH2 Update*

Commander / EDH BR (Rakdos) Cycling Discard Dredge Escape Midrange Primer Reanimator Value Engine

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Land (34)

Enchantment (7)

Planeswalker (1)

Creature (24)

Artifact (10)

Commander (1)

Commander: Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger

Sorcery (17)

Instant (6)

Maybeboard

Creature (15)

Instant (8)

Enchantment (4)

Sorcery (8)

Artifact (2)

Planeswalker (1)

This Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger deck will have everyone at the table filling up their graveyard, which frankly, they should thank you for. This deck aims to accrue card advantage by making players (including ourselves) discard. This deck can take advantage of cards moving from hands to graveyards in several ways, namely reanimation, escape, dredge, and a variety of cards that pay us off for players discarding like Waste Not or Tergrid, God of Fright  . In essence, we want to use all players' graveyards as an extension of our hand and grind opponents down while they are hellbent. While this deck won't be for every player or playgroup, my opponents usually enjoy the challenge it provides, and I think it sits at a nice power level that can play in most pods.

I like to draw together a large pool of cards which synergize well together and test out a lot of different permutations of a deck. I've reached what I'd consider my second stable build for Kroxa, meaning the deck feels good to play, I don't feel bad about any of the inclusions, and it sits at the power level I am targeting (mid to high). What I think are the most important cards to consider are in the maybeboard--they're all worth a slot, find the ones that suit your budget and playstyle.

Discard Enablers, Graveyard Fillers

Ensuring we can fill our graveyard is very important for this deck. Faithless Looting, magmatic chaneler, Cathartic Reunion, Azra Oddsmaker, Harnfel, Horn of Bounty and Chainer, Nightmare Adept along with the several cards we play with a cycling ability ensure that we don't run out of gas to escape Kroxa and enable our other graveyard strategies.

Stinkweed Imp is a real gem in this deck, dredging 5 and getting a deathtouch blocker each time just feels great.

Universal Discard effects that have everyone at the table discarding are very valuable and are the fuel which makes this deck work. Notable inclusions: Anvil of Bogardan, Burning Inquiry, Mind Rake, Geier Reach Sanitarium, Sire Of Insanity, Rankle, Master of Pranks, and Liliana, Waker of the Dead.

Dark Deal is a wheel you can cast without worrying about refueling the table.

Wheel of Fortune- sometimes you want your foes to gas back up so you can get more triggers. Be wary of casting wheel of fortune though. If you're not getting a big payoff, it's often better to hold on to it in order to maintain card advantage over the table.

Magus of the Wheel works great in this deck as a budget alternative, but I'd warn you off Wheel of Misfortune. Since we only want to cast a wheel when it's advantageous to do so, our foes are likely to collude against us, causing our plans to fizzle if they all make a pact to choose 0.

You don't need a lot of cards that cause only your foes to discard (that's what Kroxa is here for), but it's worth running a few. My favorites are Syphon Mind, Plaguecrafter, and Words of Waste- but you'll notice each of these serves another purpose (namely card draw, an edict, a hasty beater and a combo piece). If you find yourself unable to overcome your opponent's card advantage, I'd consider slotting in Arterial Flow, Rotting Rats or Raiders' Wake

Payoffs

These are the cards that make all the cycling, discarding and wheeling worth it.

Waste Not is one of the best cards to see in your opening hand, providing mana and card advantage when the table discards.

Tinybones, Trinket Thief is another lovely card to get some excellent draw, and can be a nice mana-sink in the late game.

Dauthi Voidwalker - However good you think this card is, it's better in play. It's graveyard hate that gives insane card selection and cheats on mana. Every now and then the shadow (read:unblockable) becomes relevant as well. Sac it, cheat out the bomb you made your opponent discard, reanimate it and go again.

On the other end of our curve, Archfiend of Ifnir can wipe your opponents boards.

Bone Miser, waste not's other half, can provide mana, card advantage and board presence.

As a black mage, I don't have much of an issue with paying life for cards, but Sangromancer takes a bit of the sting out of the exchange, giving us a nice life cushion to work with. She also combos wonderfully with Fire Covenant

Ox of Agonas combined with a dredger like Stinkweed Imp can have you cycling through your deck quite rapidly.

Tergrid, God of Fright   is a great new addition to this deck. If you can stick her and have a discard engine in place, it's going to be hard for opponents to come back.

Geth's Grimoire can feel a bit slow to cast, but in a grindy game like the one we're working to make happen it really shines. Combos with Words of Waste (described below).

When this deck does its thing, it is inevitable that juicy creatures end up in graveyards. Reanimate, Animate Dead and Necromancy all let us select the best creature from among any graveyards, not to mention Sepulchral Primordial who has the ability to dramatically swing the game in out favor by grabbing a creature from each opponent.

We have a few more ways to reanimate creatures from our graveyard: Unearth, Feldon of the Third Path, Agadeem's Awakening   and Chainer, Nightmare Adept all suit this role nicely.

Entomb Unmarked Grave and Buried Alive allow us to get the pieces we need into our graveyard. Typical targets for graveyard tutors are Stinkweed Imp to dredge up enough fuel to escape Kroxa, Anger to give our creatures haste, and/or one of our top end creatures to cheat out: Sticking an early Sire Of Insanity can really change the table dynamics; The Haunt of Hightower and Sepulchral Primordial each have their niche where they shine. At the very top of our curve is the bomb from MH2, Archon of Cruelty which gives huge resource advantage on ETB and attack.

Liliana's Caress and Fell Specter add a little extra sting to our opponents discarding their hands. This occasionally ends up being a win-condition, but I find it to be a bit less strong than our other payoffs, so I'm no longer running Megrim and haven't missed it much since cutting it for Valki, God of Lies  .

Other Bits and Bobs

This deck doesn't have a ton of ramp, but the curve is fairly lean. Some of these are a bit too situational to call them true ramp, but here are some cards that get us ahead on mana:

We're running a straightforward rock package with Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, Fellwar Stone, Rakdos Signet, Talisman of Indulgence, and my favorite for its ability to cantrip and fill our yard: Mind Stone.

In addition to the above we have sources that can give us influxes of mana in the form of Dark Ritual, Waste Not, Birgi, God of Storytelling   and Bone Miser.

Tergrid, God of Fright   can also get you ahead on mana when opponents crack fetchlands or discard lands.

If you want to add another ramp slot, I'd suggest Millikin, which can ramp us and fill our graveyard! I can also see putting in a few more rituals, since they pair so nicely with Underworld Breach. I can also see mana gyser, but since I like my decks to function in 1v1 games cards such as that get left out.

As we all know, interaction wins games. Here is the package that I'm currently running:

Vandalblast is an all-star in red, and for a deck that wants to maintain an advantage over the table and can become the arch enemy, denying the resources from all your opponents' artifacts is clutch.

Rakdos Charm has great versatility and having the option to exile the graveyard out from under the reanimator deck sitting across from you is very key here, since we help make their yard nice and juicy. Unsurprisingly we are also running Bojuka Bog to help fill this role. If you have a lot of graveyard decks in your playgroup I'd try and squeeze in either Cling to Dust or Soul-Guide Lantern.

Shredded Sails is another great modal card, and the cycling ability is very relevant in this deck.

Terminate, Bedevil and Chaos Warp speak for themselves.

Hagra Mauling   lets us run an extra kill spell in a land slot, which feels good.

Strip Mine lets us get rid a high value land and get a card into our graveyard. (Ghost Quarter works just as well and costs a fraction of the price, this is just where my copy of strip mine ended up.)

I can see putting in another one of your favorite interaction spells, and this deck would probably be fine trimming one more land. Pyroblast and Red Elemental Blast are on the short list of cards to make room for, and would be especially great because if they happen to be dead we could often discard them.

Waste Not/Bone Miser- Main engine pieces that provide nice incidental draw.

Tinybones, Trinket Thief- One of the best creatures in our deck, this little guy keeps us gassed up quite nicely.

Asylum Visitor- Breaks symmetry of cards that make the table hellbent such as Sire Of Insanity.

Night's Whisper- Sometimes you just need to dig without meeting any other conditions.

Azra Oddsmaker- A discard outlet that can provide nice sustained draw as long as we have good attacks.

Geth's Grimoire- One of the stronger engine pieces, almost always worth taking the tempo hit to get it down.

Syphon Mind- draw 3, trigger our discard payoffs... sign me up.

Ox of Agonas- The ox can be looped nicely when paired with Altar of Dementia and/or a dredger, providing some great card velocity.

Harnfel, Horn of Bounty- A nice discard outlet that provides impulsive draw.

Phyrexian Arena- A classic, Phyrexian arena pulls its weight in this deck where having spare cards to discard is a great boon.

Wheel of Fortune- Gasses the table back up. Can either be the best card to topdeck or the worst, depending on the boardstate (See warning above in Tablewide Discard).

This deck also gains a lot of its card advantage through graveyard utilization, turning cards such as Faithless Looting, and Cathartic Reunion into effective draw spells for us, as well as breaking symmetry on cards such as Anvil of Bogardan, Geier Reach Sanitarium and Rankle, Master of Pranks.

This deck has great card velocity. It's not uncommon to have seen a third of your deck by turn 6. (This leads me to the think that cutting a land down to 34 (+ 2 MDFCs) -maybe even two- would be fine. I'd love to hear thoughts about ways to improve my manabase.)

Toxic Deluge and Blasphemous Act are here to clean up when things get messy.

Archfiend of Ifnir is subtly one of the most powerful cards in the deck, allowing repeatable asymmetrical board wipes with all of our ways to trigger it.

We generally recover pretty well from board wipes, being graveyard focused, so I can see running Damnation if you have one laying around. However, if things go according to plan your opponents shouldn't have the resources to flood the board in the first place.

We've discussed many of the ways this deck wins games already. Often it's a deck that wins by small edges, but that doesn't mean we don't have some ways to go over the top of our opponents:

Underworld Breach is a very powerful card that can lead to insane turns in the late-game.

Tibalt, Cosmic Impostor provides bonkers card advantage, and if he gets to ultimate, well, I hope you're not playing over webcam.

Tergrid, God of Fright  , The Haunt of Hightower Sepulchral Primordial and Archon of Cruelty are all able to close the book on a game quite nicely.

If I wanted to go a bit bigger, I'd add in Torment of Hailfire which has nice synergies with Tergrid.

This deck has a few synergies which may not be apparent at first glance:

Sundial of the Infinite + Underworld Breach or Feldon of the Third Path + Sundial of the Infinite or Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger + Sundial of the Infinite

We are running Sundial of the Infinite to have the ability to make Kroxa stick without escaping it, which is amazing in the early game. For the uninitiated, with Kroxa's sacrifice trigger on the stack, you tap the sundial to end your turn and exile the stack. This effect also combos with a few other cards in the deck, all of which stand on their own merit. If you are able to get Feldon of the Third Path down with the Sundial, you'll be able to make a hasty artifact token of any creature in your graveyard each turn, and end your turn before sacrificing them. You can also exile the sacrifice trigger for Lightning Skelemental and most powerfully of all, Underworld Breach. Untapping with an underworld breach for multiple turns is living the dream.

Waste Not + Words of Waste or Geth's Grimoire + Words of Waste

Activating Words of Waste with either Waste Not or Geth's Grimoire in play can lead to a loop that winds up with your opponents hellbent, and is very powerful. Whenever you would draw a card, activate Words of Waste, which will then trigger either Waste Not or Geth's Grimoire, drawing more cards and thus triggering Words of Waste again (not a sure thing with Waste Not, but it has the benefit of helping to pay for the activations to keep going if players discard lands).

Bone Miser + Harnfel, Horn of Bounty or Archfiend of Ifnir + Harnfel, Horn of Bounty

While this deck does have plenty of other discard outlets to trigger our payoffs like Bone Miser and Archfiend of Ifnir, Harnfell, Horn of Bounty is far away the most repeatable and breakable. The horn will provide card advantage through impulsive draw, and we get to pick from 3 effects to trigger from Bone Miser - Most notably the card draw and mana ability. This combo is 10 mana to get on the board, but leads to some ridiculous turns if it comes together. Archfiend of Ifnir can shrink our opponents' boards down to nothing as we sculpt our graveyard and get access to more cards with the Horn.

I've eschewed the Worldgorger shenanigans - I was running it at first, but it made all the wins feel the same. I prefer playing the deck without it.

Adding in a bit of a madness package led by Anje Falkenrath, featuring Anje's Ravager, Big Game Hunter and Call to the Netherworld seems like it could be worth testing.

Doom Whisperer For card selection and putting cards into our graveyard.

Crucible of Worlds could provide nice card advantage, ensuring we hit our land drops.

Conspiracy Theorist and Fervent Mastery are currently being playtested.

Any other cool tech that I haven't mentioned? I'd love to hear it in the comments. This deck is at that lovely point where cutting cards is a very painstaking process. If you have suggestions, I'd love to hear what you would cut for them.

I hope you enjoyed this tour through my Kroxa deck, which is one of my favorites. While we all enjoy playing and having fun with our friends at the table, deep down we all know that fun is zero-sum. Every now and then, we all just need to take it all for ourselves. If anyone has ideas of cards to try or ways to improve my primer I'd love to hear them below!

Kroxa hungers, feed him upvotes!

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Revision 9 See all

(2 years ago)

+1 Archon of Cruelty main
+1 Bone Shards maybe
+1 Dauthi Voidwalker main
+1 Magmatic Channeler main
+1 Necrogoyf maybe
+1 Persist maybe
+1 Tourach, Dread Cantor main
+1 Unmarked Grave main
Top Ranked
Date added 3 years
Last updated 2 years
Key combos
Legality

This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)

10 - 0 Mythic Rares

47 - 0 Rares

20 - 0 Uncommons

13 - 0 Commons
Cards 100
Avg. CMC 3.00
Tokens Copy Clone, Emblem Liliana, Waker of the Dead, Emblem Tibalt, Cosmic Impostor, Zombie 2/2 B
Folders Rakdos, EDH Decks, Deck ideas, Decks, edh, EDH ideas, EDH
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