Kaalia the Killer (Commander / EDH MTG Deck)

Play Buried Alive with Living Death in hand, mass reanimate what you searched for. Many times the targets will be situational but you can instant win by searching up Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker, Restoration Angel, and Grand Abolisher. Grand abolisher will prevent your opponents being able to target your combo pieces with spot removal, insuring that you combo out in piece.

Play buried alive with a one off reanimate effect in hand, search for Restoration Angel, Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker, and Karmic Guide. Animate Karmic guide, which in turn brings back Kiki- Jiki. Copy the Guide with Kiki-Jiki, use the copy to bring back Restoration Angel. Bounce Kiki, copy guide, infinite hasty angels.

Play Insidious Dreams while attacking with Hellcarver Demon. From here there are a multitude of cool plays that you can do, and very often it will be situational. However if you discard three cards it is possible to end the game on the spot with either of the two combos listed below.

Combo 1: Search up Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker, Restoration Angel, and Seize the Day to generate infinite hasty fliers and an extra attack step

Combo 2: Dig for Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker, Worldgorger Dragon, and Bogardan Hellkite. Then use the infinite blinks produced by kiki and worldgorger to bounce the hellkite for victory.

The Engines

This is a non linear Kaalia deck with multiple angles of attack and interlocking paths to victory. Your job as the player is to figure out which one is shortest. Being adaptable is key :)

On an average goldfish this deck gets a kill by turn 5, although there are multiple possible ways to win or kill an opponent as early as turn 1. But even though you're playing Kaalia don't be afraid to grind things out, this deck is very resilient for being in black, red, white and can win out of nowhere with or without the general.

There are three engines in this deck that all overlap with each other on some level. Your job playing the deck is to decide which one to commit to when the time is right. These three engines include:

1: The Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker + Restoration Angel combo, usually cheated into play via reanimation effects or through Hellcarver Demon + Insidious Dreams or Scroll Rack. This combo is pretty straight forward and can be alarmingly easy to get into play quickly. It is a solid way to win and can take many opponents by surprise, especially if they make the mistake to solely focus their removal on kaalia.

2: The risky Worldgorger Dragon + Animate Dead/ Necromancy or Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker combo, which can be enabled either through Entombing/ Burying alive the dragon and reanimating it, or sneaking it into play via a Kaalia attack and then copying it using our favorite goblin. This is another combo which can catch opponents by surprise but it is weak to removal. If your opponent kills of the dragon in response to its etb trigger you can lose your whole board :/ Although, once you have a Worldgorger loop going you can win passively via bouncing Piranha Marsh or triggering the damage clause of Dragon Tempest a million times, or alternatively milling everyone out via infinite untaps of Geier Reach Sanitarium and stacking the effects so that opponents cannot respond. Additionally, if you do not have any of these passive methods in play, you can bounce Angel of Despair to destroy all the things, Angel of Serenity to permanently exile all of your opponents' creatures, deal infinite damage to everything via Bogardan Hellkite, make an infintely large Steel Hellkite, draw your whole deck with Knollspine Dragon, or tutor your whole deck using Rune-Scarred Demon. (Victory from bouncing the Knollspine Dragon or Rune-Scarred Demon comes by digging up and then flashing in Bogardan Hellkite once the combo has generated sufficient mana).

3: And finally, and most famously, we have the classic Kaalia beatdown package. Beat your opponents to death with big angels, demons, and dragons and capitalize off the brokenness of things like Kaalia of the Vast + Rakdos the Defiler to make your opponent sacrifice half of their board. Kaalia effectively reads the "the first angel, demon, or dragon that you cast this turn has haste, cannot be countered, and costs zero mana." Kaalia is a lead in to our late game inevitability and can act as an enabler for creature based spot removal, board wipes, tutors, card draw, and combo.

Kaalia also has a natural affinity with stax effects, particularly those which destroy or mess with lands, because once she's in play it you won't need mana to cast your fatties. Blow up the world via Armageddonor Cataclysm and then cheat your fatties into play with your general. This will usually put you so far ahead of your opponents that the game will quickly turn in your favor.

More to come on when to go for which strategy, and the cards to use against which opponents.

Inspiration

I've been playing Kaalia edh since the card was first printed, and while many of the design elements in this deck are from my own head there are a quite a few decks out there that have been really influential in this list's construction.

Soon after the Heavenly Inferno commander deck first came out a guy over at MTG The Source named Kuma posted his working take on Kaalia. As far as I can tell Kuma's list is the first to incorporate a mass land destruction strategy. Since then there was an explosion of people using the formula and it's rare to see a Kaalia deck without Armageddon or Cataclysm.

Kuma, Cabal Therapist's deck over at MTG The Source

Since Kaalia's release people have been trying to work in the worldgorger dragon combo. I myself gave it a go but found it too cumbersome. It was a couple of years before I tried to work the strategy in again. JMCraig 's list is the first that I'd come across to seamlessly work in the combo without having to dig for clunky extra pieces like Shivan Hellkite. His list is excellent and inspired the combination of Worldgorger Dragon + utility lands, enchantments, and enter the battlefield effects that I currently use.

deck:Kaalia Worldgorger Combo

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Revision 2 See all

(2 years ago)

Date added	9 years
Last updated	2 years
Legality	This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	20 - 2 Mythic Rares 52 - 9 Rares 16 - 3 Uncommons 6 - 1 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.82
Tokens	Copy Clone, Lizard 8/8 R, Spirit 1/1 C
Folders	inspirational decks, Commander, Deck Ideas, Competitive Mid-Budget, Kaalia of the Vast, Competitive, EDH Ideas
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