Karador, Ghost Chieftain: The Primer!

Commander / EDH BGW (Abzan, Junk) Competitive Control Multiplayer Primer

Beezy

Creature (42)

• 1x Avacyn's Pilgrim
• 1x Aven Mindcensor
• 1x Birds of Paradise
• 1x Blood Artist
• 1x Carrion Feeder
• 1x Caustic Caterpillar
• 1x Collector Ouphe
• 1x Dark Confidant
• 1x Deathrite Shaman
• 1x Elves of Deep Shadow
• 1x Elvish Visionary
• 1x Eternal Witness
• 1x Fauna Shaman
• 1x Fiend Hunter
• 1x Gaddock Teeg
• 1x Grand Abolisher
• 1x Grim Haruspex
• 1x Hermit Druid
• 1x Karmic Guide
• 1x Knight of Autumn
• 1x Leonin Relic-Warder
• 1x Llanowar Elves
• 1x Midnight Reaper
• 1x Mindslicer
• 1x Plaguecrafter
• 1x Protean Hulk
• 1x Putrid Imp
• 1x Ranger-Captain of Eos
• 1x Ranger of Eos
• 1x Reclamation Sage
• 1x Recruiter of the Guard
• 1x Remorseful Cleric
• 1x Renegade Rallier
• 1x Reveillark
• 1x Saffi Eriksdotter
• 1x Satyr Wayfinder
• 1x Shriekmaw
• 1x Spore Frog
• 1x Stinkweed Imp
• 1x Stitcher's Supplier
• 1x Street Wraith
• 1x Viscera Seer

Land (33)

• 1x Ancient Tomb
• 1x Bayou
• 1x Bloodstained Mire
• 1x Bojuka Bog
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Dryad Arbor
• 1x Flooded Strand
• 2x Forest
• 1x Gaea's Cradle
• 1x Geier Reach Sanitarium
• 1x Godless Shrine
• 1x High Market
• 1x Horizon Canopy
• 1x Mana Confluence
• 1x Marsh Flats
• 1x Misty Rainforest
• 1x Nurturing Peatland
• 1x Overgrown Tomb
• 1x Phyrexian Tower
• 1x Plains
• 1x Polluted Delta
• 1x Reflecting Pool
• 1x Savannah
• 1x Scrubland
• 1x Silent Clearing
• 1x Strip Mine
• 2x Swamp
• 1x Temple Garden
• 1x Verdant Catacombs
• 1x Windswept Heath
• 1x Wooded Foothills

Enchantment (3)

• 1x Animate Dead
• 1x Deafening Silence
• 1x Survival of the Fittest

Commander (1)

Instant (7)

• 1x Abrupt Decay
• 1x Chord of Calling
• 1x Eladamri's Call
• 1x Entomb
• 1x Nature's Claim
• 1x Vampiric Tutor
• 1x Veil of Summer

Sorcery (7)

• 1x Demonic Tutor
• 1x Diabolic Intent
• 1x Dread Return
• 1x Green Sun's Zenith
• 1x Life from the Loam
• 1x Natural Order
• 1x Reanimate

Artifact (7)

• 1x Altar of Dementia
• 1x Chrome Mox
• 1x Mana Crypt
• 1x Mox Diamond
• 1x Perpetual Timepiece
• 1x Skullclamp
• 1x Sol Ring

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Welcome to my Karador, Ghost Chieftain Primer!

Karador as your Commander

Karador, Ghost Chieftain is an extremely powerful commander for reanimator decks in EDH. He is very unique in that he is one of the only legendary creatures ever printed that reduces his own cost. If you have five creatures in your graveyard, he only costs 3 mana! This holds true for basically the entire game, unless someone exiles your graveyard, in which case you'll have to build up your graveyard again to cast him. Karador is your best way to start snowballing your advantage in the mid-to-late game, primarily using creatures with "when this enters the battlefield" or "when this dies" abilities. Other decks won't be able to keep their commanders out against you, and they most likely won't have access to as many resources as you (With Karador, your graveyard is a second hand). Karador is perfect for grinding out your opponents until you eventually kill them in whichever splashy way you choose!

I chose to make this deck extremely competititve, although it isn't a tiered deck in cEDH, since the exact same deck can be built under Thrasios and Tymna and be strictly better and faster thanks to the addition of blue, among other reasons. But I love Karador and have always wanted to develop the best list possible, making mine more competitive with each iteration. This deck might not be 100% optimal, but it can certainly tangle with cEDH decks and I would call this a cEDH deck. It's just not the BEST one!

Even though my deck leans towards cEDH, I will be offering non-competitive cards and advice in this primer as well, since I've played this deck for years and have a lot of insight regarding the different ways to play it.

Your Bread and Butter

Some creatures in this deck are just bonkers. They can help you get a reanimation chain going to create a massive board presence out of nowhere, and more importantly, provide you with multiple enters-the-battlefield triggers! Here's a few of the hardest hitters around for Karador decks:

Karmic Guide: This Angel Spirit will always do insane amounts of work for you. She's even kind enough to put herself back into the graveyard with her Echo ability, so you can cast her every turn! She is your go-to creature whenever she's in your graveyard, since you now only have to spend to reanimate anything.

Sun Titan: This giant rascal always pulls his weight. He can bring back lands, ramp creatures like Wood Elves, lands you might need, and "fair" magic cards like Survival of the Fittest and Skullclamp too. It'll put your opponents in a tight spot knowing that they could either kill him only to have you cast him again next turn, or not kill him and get attacked by a 6/6 that will get you back even more toys.

Craterhoof Behemoth: If you're playing this card, you don't need any other dedicated finisher in your deck unless you want one. It's power level is absolutely through the roof and it should be able to kill everyone else at the table almost always. One of the best commander finishers out there. (Don't flicker this until you're sure your friends won't disown you)

Reveillark: A very powerful elemental that will help you get multiple Enters the Battlefield (ETB) triggers in one turn, which leads to that snowballing I mentioned earlier. The best part about it is that you can cast it for its Evoke cost from your grave with Karador. Can go infinite with a few other cards if you're into that kind of thing. (Check the combo tab for that)

Birthing Pod: Nothing about this card is fair or balanced, just ask the Modern format... Luckily, we still get to play with it! This is a Karador staple, and a relatively cheap one too at only $5. Once you get a chain going, you're going to fill up your graveyard, get multiple ETB triggers in one turn (Because Wizards decided it should only costs one mana to get a new, bigger creature, so you can just play something else on the same turn), and upgrade to your more effective threats without having to draw them! This card does it all and it's one of the reasons why Karador decks are ready to answer any threat you can throw at them.

Satyr Wayfinder: This card isn't unfair in any way, but it IS exactly what this deck wants to be doing, and definitely belongs in the "bread and butter" section. I can't overstate how useful this card is at every stage of the game; he ensures you hit your land drops AND puts three other cards in the bin for you. This is a very common target of Green Sun's Zenith for me early on. I highly recommend it!

Getting Creatures Dead

With Karador as your general, you obviously want faster ways to fill up your yard with corpses then just whenever your creatures happen to die. You'll need sacrifice outlets, dredge spells, special tutors, and you'll also need to favor creatures that can kill themselves over other choices when selecting your 99 card army.

Viscera Seer, Carrion Feeder, Sadistic Hypnotist, Altar of Dementia, High Market, and Phyrexian Tower: These are the sac outlets I currently run in my deck or have run in previous versions. They help ensure that if you want something in your graveyard, you can get it there, and they all provide a decent bonus from sacrificing a creature, too. Other creatures that offer a one-time ETB sacrifice are good too. I run Plaguecrafter and Sidisi, Undead Vizier, to name a few.

Life from the Loam, Stinkweed Imp, and Perpetual Timepiece: Dredge is another busted mechanic that lets you put 1-6 cards in your graveyard instead of drawing a card, and then the dredge spell returns to your hand. Life from the Loam is the PERFECT card to have early, and lets you hit all of your land drops for as long as you want. The Imp is a solid blocker, and helps you really dig deeper into your deck for goodies with Dredge 5. In this deck, Dredge X is basically Draw X. There are plenty more dredge spells than these two that you could run if you wanted to be a more self-mill heavy deck, and I'll mention those in the Budget tab below. Perpetual Timepiece mills you two every turn while keeping your precious graveyard safe from exile effects. Better to be back in the deck than gone for good!

Sakura-Tribe Elder, Shriekmaw, Saffi Eriksdotter, and Yavimaya Granger: This is where favoring creatures that kill themselves is really going to benefit you. You just can't play spells like Rampant Growth in this deck and expect to get good value out of them. Sure, Yavimaya Granger is just some random dumb common from Urza's Legacy, but you have to look past that and see the ability to cast it multiple times and net 3-4 basic lands out of it. Saffi combos very well with any creature capable of sending itself to the graveyard and will selflessly sacrifice her life to let you abuse their ETB/Dies ability a second time. (She's part of a few combos as well)

Buried Alive, Survival of the Fittest, and Entomb: These specialized tutors are just what you're looking for to both fill your graveyard and give yourself access to whatever type of removal or board advancement you need. Survival is quite expensive, but certainly worth it if you're unsure about making the purchase or not. Note that Entomb searches for any CARD, so something I always like doing early is getting Life from the Loam with it, to make sure I hit my land drops on time.

Removal is Key!

Your deck is going to truly excel when you have access to removal for all types of permanents. If you put in too many ETB effects that only help yourself, you'll find yourself getting shut down by other decks. Finding the right balance for your playgroup is important! For reference, my deck has about 20 creatures/spells that destroy or exile certain permanents, and with all the tutors in the deck, I've found that to work extremely well for me and there hasn't been a threat I couldn't answer (Maybe I didn't find the answer before dying, but it was in the deck).

Some of the bigger removal spells you can play are Ashen Rider, Bane of Progress, and, of course, Living Death. (ProTip: Just avoid casting Living Death with Magister of Worth in your grave if you play that card, it's tedious to bring everything out and then destroy everything again)

The duo that works extremely well together while simultaneously confusing your opponents is Harmonic Sliver and Necrotic Sliver. They're both great alone and quite amazing together, I highly recommend trying this out if you're a sliver fan! The new hotness lately has been Knight of Autumn, which can replace a Harmonic Sliver.

Popular Cards I Don't Play

Avenger of Zendikar: Seven mana is a lot, and this is never even your go-to finisher card, Craterhoof Behemoth is. It always gums up opening hands and makes them look terrible, and often if it gets cloned your opponents will have a better use for him than you do.

Golgari Grave-Troll: This deck isn't a dedicated dredge deck (I prefer leaning on one or two dredge cards to avoid having redundant dredgers and thus limiting my toolbox) so if I am only playing a few dredge creatures, I'm willing to exchange one card in my graveyard for a creature actually worth casting with some political value (deathtouch). Golgari Thug has also proven to be cheaper and have more impact. Having the Troll be like a 12/12 just doesn't matter, he'll get chumped every time and you'd rather he just be in the graveyard anyway, but it's hard to do consistently because he's five mana.

Restoration Angel: She's very good, but four mana is super expensive for a one-time flicker, and if you're dying for flicker effect, I recommend Eldrazi Displacer instead. I think it's about a hundred times better. One of my faves. If this deck weren't built to be super competitive, I'd throw it in.

Yawgmoth's Will: I tested this card out for a while and it was never actually THAT impressive. It usually amounted to just being a more expensive Zombify, and there's not much need for that when Karador does it better. That, and you don't want to exile your cards basically ever. The only reanimation spells I play are Dread Return and Animate Dead, because nothing can really do it better than they can.

That's Cool and All, but What about Combo?

After all, this deck is competitive and can kill on the first five turns pretty consistently.

Protean Hulk + Any way to kill it: This is one of the main win conditions of my deck. The Hulk dies, and you grab Karmic Guide and Viscera Seer (and Dryad Arbor for fun). Reanimate the Hulk, then sacrifice it to get Reveillark and another 1 cmc creature. Now you can loop Karmic Guide and Reveillark to get every creature costing 6 or less out of your deck and win via Blood Artist or Altar of Dementia. This is one of the best ways to win in competitive metas because it's very tough to disrupt a one card combo.

Sun Titan OR Renegade Rallier + Saffi Eriksdotter + Sac outlet: This combo has several different variations and setups but basically you can generate infinite enters and dies triggers with this one. Use it to kill how you see fit!

Mikaeus, the Unhallowed + Triskelion: Kills all other players instantly. I've excluded this combo from my deck because I think it's pretty clunky, and Triskellion isn't a good card without Mikaeus, the Unhallowed. You can also use Walking Ballista.

Mikaeus, the Unhallowed + Vish Kal, Blood Arbiter: This is a combo I used to play, but it was mostly on accident since I just loved both these cards individually. However, I have done this one from time to time, and it's sweet! You sac Vish Kal, Blood Arbiter to himself (which he can do for some reason). This triggers undying and he returns with a +1/+1 counter that you then remove to give target creature -1/-1 until end of turn. Now you're back where you started. This combo kills every creature your opponents control without hexproof or shroud, while also ensuring neither of your combo pieces gets exiled, because Vish Kal can sac them first.

Karmic Guide + Reveillark + Creature with power 2 or less + Sac Outlet: Infinite triggers of whatever you want. You can draw your whole deck with Solemn Simulacrum, drain everyone with Blood Artist, or exile all other creatures with Duplicant. There's plenty more and you can get creative with this one.

Hermit Druid + No Basic Lands + A Desire for Suffering: Instant win combos can be set up with Hermit Druid within the first 3 turns by using it to mill your entire deck, then getting free creatures like Bloodghast back from your graveyard in order to pay the flashback cost for Dread Return, which usually gets Reveillark or Sun Titan to start a reanimation chain that eventually wins you the game. It's easier to do in five color builds, but it's possible in Abzan decks too. You'll just have less tutors. I do play Hermit Druid, but I also play a couple of basic lands which restricts him to being very very good rather than ending the game every singe time.

Boonweaver Giant + Any Sac Outlet: When Boonweaver Giant ETB, you find Pattern of Rebirth and attach it to him. Then you sacrifice him to find Karmic Guide, bringing him back with Pattern of Rebirth. Sac him again to find Fiend Hunter, exiling Karmic Guide. Sac Fiend Hunter to return Karmic Guide to play, which returns Boonweaver Giant. Sac Boonweaver Giant again to find Reveillark. Sac Karmic Guide and then Reveillark to return Karmic Guide and Fiend Hunter to the battlefield. Karmic Guide targets Boonweaver Giant and Fiend Hunter exiles Karmic Guide. Then sac Boonweaver to get any creature you want. Finally, sacrifice Fiend Hunter to return Karmic Guide which returns Reveillark. Repeat this process to puke out every creature in your deck and kill all opponents.

Leonin Relic-Warder + Animate Dead + ETB/Death Payoff: Bring back Leonin with Animate Dead or have the Leonin exile your animate dead thats enchanting something else and sacrifice it. Animate Dead brings back Leonin, exiles animate dead, which brings back leonin, for infinite ETB and death triggers. Bring your Blood Artists for this one.

Budget Options

If cards like Survival of the Fittest, Craterhoof Behemoth, Mana Crypt, Mox Diamond, and Gaea's Cradle are out of your price range, never fear! These cards might be the best things you can do, but that doesn't mean they're the ONLY way to win or have a successful deck. Here are some cards I would recommend if you're on a budget:

Golgari Thug, Shambling Shell, and Perpetual Timepiece: These are dirt-cheap self-mill cards who will help fill your graveyard super quick. Shambling Shell can even sacrifice itself! I recommend throwing in these dredgers on a budget, and going a little more all-in on your graveyard, since you'll have less blatantly broken cards to keep you afloat with a smaller graveyard. Perpetual Timepiece is much better than it looks to be at first glance. It can mill you every turn, AND protects you from graveyard hate for a pretty cheap cost!

Avacyn's Pilgrim, Elvish Mystic, and Elves of Deep Shadow: Another way to combat stronger decks is to get under them. Having a surge of mana early will definitely help you get moving faster than your opponents. On top of that, these mana dorks are the perfect fodder for something like Skullclamp or Fleshbag Marauder later on.

The Gitrog Monster and Splendid Reclamation: I've been pretty darned close to putting these two in my deck at times. The Get-Frogged Monster is a very good card draw engine that can replace something like Greater Good if you're using my list as a starting point. Splendid Reclamation is one of your HUGE pay-off cards for going more all-in on filling up your graveyard with the self-mill cards mentioned above.

Gray Merchant of Asphodel, Myr Battlesphere, Avenger of Zendikar, Trostani, Selesnya's Voice: These less pricey cards still have great ETB effects for you to abuse on a budget and are nothing to sneeze at. Gray Merchant of Asphodel packs a serious punch for being a five mana common! If you can have him enter 3-4 times, odds are good ol' Gary will drain your opponents to death. Myr Battlesphere and Avenger of Zendikar are great token makers that can apply some serious pressure, too. I know I said I don't personally like Avenger earlier, but who cares? The card is still super cool, run it if you want! Trostani is great for life-gain, and if you want to run a sub-theme or just have game against aggro decks in your meta, she's my #1 pick.

Victimize, Unburial Rites, Animate Dead: These are the next best reanimation spells after Dread Return, and things you may want in your budget build for redundancy. Just be careful not to overload on spells. Creatures are far more important! (If you're wondering, Animate Dead is the better of the three)

Dictate of Erebos, Angel of Despair, Acidic Slime: These are great removal choices in a budget build, if a little expensive mana-wise, but your mana dorks should help with casting these higher cmc cards. You'll need ways to reset the board, as well as deal with pesky permanents like lands and planeswalkers, and this handful of cards will be able to handle that nicely for you.

Where You can Find More Deck Techs From Me

Did you know that I make Youtube Videos about commander with my best friend? Well now you do! Come check out the channel, we do commander deck techs every Monday! Feel free to subscribe if you enjoy what you watch.

Just search "The Nitpicking Nerds" on Youtube!

I'd like to thank everyone who has commented and helped this deck reach the point it has! This deck has really evolved into a competitive powerhouse over the years.

Let me know if there are any cards I'm missing that you think are amazing in Karador, or if this primer was of any help to you!

Like the deck if you enjoyed!

Top Ranked	Achieved #30 position overall 6 years ago Achieved #17 position in Commander / EDH 4 years ago Achieved #1 position in Commander / EDH Primer 4 years ago
Date added	7 years
Last updated	4 years
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	18 - 0 Mythic Rares 45 - 0 Rares 17 - 0 Uncommons 14 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.27
Tokens	Morph 2/2 C
Folders	Beezy's Commander Decks, Favorites, EDH Like, Favourite Karador Decks, Interesting Brews, deck ideas, EDH, EDH, Good references, Favorites