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Kari Zev | Big Monkey *PRIMER*

Commander / EDH Aggro Artifact Infinite Combo Mono-Red Primer Voltron

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Land (35)

Token Maker (7)

Artifact Synergy (3)

Removal (3)

Evasion (2)

Ramp (10)

ETB Effects (8)

Moar Combat (6)

Draw (3)

Defense (2)

Sac Outlet (1)

Commander (1)

Commander: Kari Zev, Skyship Raider

Kari Equipment (8)

Wombo Combo (5)

ETB Equipment (4)

Equipment Support (2)

Introduction

In the world of Magic: the Gathering, anything is possible. With the inclusion of the Ixalan set, you can even have a Dinosaur driving a train on a boat in a plane! So back when Kaladesh came out and I saw that I could win a game of Commander by beating people with a Legendary Monkey Creature token, I knew what I had to do. I knew my destiny was to brew the craziest Kari Zev, Skyship Raider deck to have ever been brewed!

If you're here... If you're reading this now... Welcome.

Welcome to the Promised Land.

Overview

I've broken the decklist down into a number of different categories to better explain what piece of the puzzle each card is. Some cards perform two functions and this will be outlined when we break down "card selection" later in the primer.

- Lands: Can't have Magic without lands! This one is pretty self-explanatory.

- Moar Combat: With the main goal being that you want to beat-down your opponent with a well-equipped Monkey token, you'd normally thing to just make more of the token. However, Ragavan is a LEGENDARY Monkey token, so we can only have one out at a time. How do we compensate for this "weakness"? By making it possible to hit people more than once with multiple combat phases, of course!

- Artifact Synergy: As we go through the list, you'll notice a large number of artifacts within the deck, fulfilling several different purposes. These "synergy" cards specifically help us keep our colorless friends on the battlefield, since they don't help us from the graveyard!

- Removal: Unless you're going to play a Red Burn deck, it can be difficult to have a lot of removal in Mono-Red. As it is, I've picked what I believe to be the best removal for the theme. If you need more than these three, you've probably let the game go on too long and you may want to consider resorting to one of the Infinite Combos to close out the game.

- Ramp: Mono-Red has a hard time ramping up for the late game. It's great at putting out small, fast threats and making a big splash early on, but as the game goes on, you may find yourself resorting to less attacking and more combos to finish off any straggler opponents.

- Kari Equipment: Kari has to attack in order to get Ragavan out. With that in mind, we don't want to send a 15 year old girl too far into the fray completely unarmed. So there's a ton of equipment to give her even more evasion than her natural Menace ability. The great thing about this is that Kari can easily become unblockable and there's a chance you'll end the game by killing opponents with Commander Damage while they struggle to lose blockers to Ragavan.

- Wombo Combo: Mono-Red is stereotypically a fast color that wants to end the game before opponents can stabalize and start dictate the pace of the game. If something prevents Kari from winning the game quick, these combos can easily close the rest of the game out, without ever needing to attack!

- ETB Equipment: Ragavan enters the battlefield as a 2/1. Seeing as we want him to be a huge threat, we're obviously going to need to pump him up. However, since he comes out during the Declare Attackers step, it's impossible to activate Equip abilities. Luckily, there's a number of Equipment cards that can auto-Equip to a creature when it enters the battlefield, turning out 2/1 into 9/6! Ragavan can pack quite a punch and that's before non-Equipment boosts that can be applied!

- Defense: Mono-Red Aggro doesn't want to play defense, but not every game is going to go off without a hitch. At the end of the day, for the sake of covering all your areas, I've picked a few defensive cards that can keep your opponents at bay.

- Evasion: Kari Zev comes with some built in evasion in her Menace ability. We can give her even more through Equipment but in the event that our toys get blown up or just haven't hit the field, I've added some non-colorless means to give our Raider friend and her monkey friend some more evasion.

- ETB Effects: Similar to ETB Equipment, these effects are great for boosting Ragavan into hitting even harder or just dealing out some direct damage to soften up our opponents' life totals!

- Token Maker: There will be games that Kari Zev will not be able to participate in. Either she'll have died enough to not be worth casting again or a single strike just isn't enough. For those games, we have ways of going wide instead of tall with our damage and we use Tokens to do so!

- Draw: Every deck needs some draw power to keep your hand full of fun things to do!

- Equipment Support: This category is similar to Artifact Synergy, except it's specifically about Equipments.

- Sac Outlet: It's GOING to happen. Someone is going to use some targeted removal on Ragavan OR Kari Zev. We don't want to let them get away with that, so I've included some cards that will help us get some last-minute damage out of our creatures before they die.

When I first started playing Magic, I learned by playing Green decks. Being able to ramp up and play bigger things before everyone else seemed like a great strategy. However, when I started branching out and testing other colors, I fell in love with red for how fast it works. While Green decks were looking for lands or putting out mana dorks, I was tossing down creatures that were taking chunks out of their life total and if they didn't stop me, the game was over before their first fattie even hit the field. It can be argued that Red has a weak late game, but I strongly believe that any color can excel at any phase of a game if the deck is tailored with weaknesses in mind. I try to ensure my decks can operate at every stage, so the reality is that Red doesn't have a weak late game, just a different way of approaching it.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA- Oh. Oh? You're seriously asking me WHY you want to play Kari Zev? HAVE YOU NOT READ THE CARD?! For starters, Kari's combat prowess is amazing when you consider the fact that she's a 15 year old girl. First Strike gives her great trading potential if you get her power up, she comes with some evasion in the form of Menace and her stats for a 2 drop aren't bad. She even breaks from stereotypical Red norms by having a higher toughness than power, meaning she's here to stay and can keep fighting for longer. Then when you read the part where SHE MAKES A LEGENDARY MONKEY TOKEN WHEN SHE ATTACKS, I think you know "Why Kari?"... I think we ALL know!

Seriously, though, Kari Zev is a very versatile Red Commander. You can focus on Tokens and utilize ETB/Leaving the battlefield effects, equipped her up and try to win with Commander Damage or you could even run her as a burn deck and have her act as a distraction from what you're really doing.

This deck is strong at doing a lot of damage very fast. Even if you just hit your land drops turn one and two, you can have Kari out and attacking on turn three. With the right cards, I've done 5+ damage to an opponent by swinging with Kari on Turn 2 and getting Ragavan onto the field. In 1v1, 5 out of 30 damage can be pretty alarming for an opponent and even in a multiplayer game, that's a big chunk in a format where the first couple of turns are normally ramp and setting up mid-game strategies or combos.

A lot of Artifact hate can hose this deck fairly well, unless you're drawing more of the ETB Effects cards. Control decks that limit attacking or make it impossible or unprofitable can also become annoying and make you have to shift your focus from hitting with a big monkey to make lots of tiny creatures and potentially flinging them at people. The diversity of the deck can be a weakness itself, as there is (minimal) potential that you'll draw only parts of each possible strategy and be left with a half here, half there board state.

This deck is designed to play a few different ways, depending on the situation:

1. Hit with Kari and Ragavan.

- Play Kari turn two and start swinging on Turn 3.

- Play as many of the ETB Equipments as you can to make Ragavan the threat and use any kind of search you can find to give Kari some protection or buffs of her own.

2. Go wide, not tall.

- If you start the game with a hand full of token makers, concentrate on going wide instead of tall.

- Take advantage of Purphoros, God of the Forge triggers and amplify with Panharmonicon.

- Utilize Daretti, Scrap Savant and Trading Post to keep cycling through Myr Battlesphere ETB triggers and keep getting small 1/1s that deal damage with Purphoros or get +2/+0 and haste with either Ogre Battledriver or In the Web of War.

- Use swarm mechanics and attack the person with the least amount of blockers to get them low and out of the game fast.

3. Wombo the combo.

- Play defense with your Removal and Defense cards, keep your token makers and tokens back as blockers.

- Keep drawing into cards and look for the combo pieces. Skullclamp with your token makers can do this very well, especially if you're constantly recurring Myr Battlesphere.

- Ramp up enough to play the combo pieces in one turn, preferrably one where everyone is tapped out. If you've appeared to not be a threat, this may be easier then in games where you played aggro first and then had to turtle up to survive.

The best advice is that regardless of what your strategy is, stay focused and don't play cards you don't need unless you're trying to draw out a counter or removal spell. If you don't have any of your equipments on the board, Darksteel Forge isn't necessary but if you think the blue player is holding Counterspell, drawing it out may pave the way for you to combo out the next turn.

The ideal opening hand consists of at least two mana, but I would prefer three unless you're also holding Expedition Map or Sol Ring. Thirty four of the deck's cards can be played with three mana, so starting with two shouldn't be a big deal. Other good cards to keep in an opening hand are Sword of the Animist to help ensure you hit lands or Scrying Sheets to help dig through the deck for land drops and make your draws have better potential.

The mid-game for this deck is played very similarly to the early game, just with more thought into what you're playing and who you're attacking. If the biggest threat in the game is the player player a specific color, try to search for the sword that will give Kari protection from that color. Know the difference of when to board wipe or maybe just targeted removal with Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle on specifically scary creatures. You may want to hold Chaos Warp for an Enchantment that's disrupting you, since Red struggles to get rid of Enchantments in the first place.

There are four infinite combos in the deck spread out across seven cards. You can add in a couple of cards here and there to change the combo into something that doesn't require attacking in the event that someone has a Ghostly Prison effect on the field.

1. Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker + Lightning Crafter This combo doesn't do anything by itself except make infinite Crafters that kill themselves to do it over again. With Purphoros, Goblin Bombardment or Stalking Vengeance, however, you can ping everyone down to 0.

2. Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker + Zealous Conscripts This combo makes infinite Conscripts that you can swarm your opponents with. With Kiki-Jiki on the field, play Conscripts and target Kiki with the second ability. You will "gain control" of Kiki AND UNTAP HER! If you keep tapping Kiki to keep making copies, the copies keep untapping Kiki and you do this until you reach a number you think will kill everyone and attack!

3. Dualcaster Mage + Twinflame This combo makes infinite Mages that have haste, similar to the Kiki Conscripts combo above. With any creature on the field, cast Twinflame. Before it resolves, flash in Dualcaster, targeting Twinflame. If Dualcaster resolves and isn't killed, the copied Twinflame will target Dualcaster, which will then enter and target the original Twinflame AGAIN because it hasn't resolved. Keep doing this until you reach your Lucky Lethal Number and attack!

4. Neheb, the Eternal + Aggravated Assault For this combo to work, you need to ensure you can do 5 damage per combat phase. For instance, Neheb + Kari hitting someone's life total will result in 5 damage. In your post-combat main phase, Neheb will make 5 red mana, which you then use to activate Assault for a second combat phase. Because Nehebs ability triggers on post-combat Main Phases, youll get the mana after each combat phase. Provided Neheb doesnt die or Assault isnt blown up, you essentially have infinite combat phases from this single attack!

- Arid Mesa, Bloodstained Mire, Scalding Tarn, Wooded Foothills, Myriad Landscape All of these are chosen to help thin the deck out. If we have trouble drawing cards early in the game, we want to try to ensure that the draws are at least value cards and not just lands, so the more lands we pull from the deck, the better!

- Dust Bowl, Strip Mine, Wasteland Since Mono-Red sometimes has a problem with ramping as fast as, let's say GREEN decks, sometimes we can create advantage by causing disadvantage. These three lands help us take out the opponents' Cabal Coffers, Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx or anything else we don't want them to have!

- Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx Almost any mono-colored deck is going to run this land for ramp purposes.

- Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle This is one of the first cards to have multiple uses. Not only is it a red mana source, but it turns your Mountains into Lightning Bolts to help snipe creatures!

- Hanweir Battlements Not only can this be used as a Haste enabler to help us do damage quicker, it can meld with Hanweir Garrison later in the game to turn the 1/1s that Garrison makes into 3/2s!

- High Market Ragavan is going to scurry away after each combat phase, regardless of whether or not he's blocked. With this land, we can get one last boost out of him by sacrificing him for a life. It's not a busted combo, but it does help us with a pinch of sustainment!

- Inventors' Fair Another card that has multiple uses! Fair gives us colorless mana and when (not if, WHEN) we get three artifacts onto the field, we can start gaining a life during each of our upkeeps for a little bit of sustain. If we have enough mana and don't need the lifegain, we can sacrifice it to find an artifact (preferrably not an Equipment since we have other ways to tutor those, but read the situation and get what you need!)

- Maze of Ith The first time I thought of Maze, it was purely to keep myself protected from the enemy. Sometimes Kari is my only creature and I want her attacking, so I have no defenses. What's REALLY funny is when you attack with Kari, make Ragavan come out and auto-equip all of the "ETB Equipments" onto Ragavan and hit for 5+ damage, then MAZE KARI to keep her safe from being double-blocked and killed. Now you have a blocker and Kari survived combat! (Note, you can activate Maze in response to blockers being declared, so you don't have to waste it if they simply choose not to block Kari! What value!)

- Rogue's Passage With any voltron-esque deck, you need ways to get your main creature through. Passage provides the way!

- Scrying Sheets + Snow-Covered Mountains are a funny combo someone from Reddit turned me onto. Sheets help you dig past drawing land and further into your deck with the snow-covered lands and those lands are still Basic Lands, so cards like Sword of the Animist and Burnished Hart can still fetch them AND they're still Mountains to trigger Valakut or be fetchable by our pain lands.

- Aggravated Assault A permanent form of additional combat phases and it easily combos off with Neheb, the Eternal if you can deal at least 5 in your first combat phase.

- Combat Celebrant A new card from the plane of Amonkhet, I like the fact that you can give an additional combat step as early as turn 2 if you get the right cards. Just give this guy some kind of evasion and you'll be good to go! (You can Maze the Celebrant and Exert him again the following turn! Never wait for another combat phase again!)

- Fury of the Horde All things considered, this is probably the last "MOAR COMBAT" card I want to see in the game because it's either expensive to cast, or I may lose two good cards from my hand. Situationally, it can be better if the two cards you're exiling won't help you and you get to keep your mana, but in the end, moar combat is MOAR COMBAT and I won't shy away from a spell that gives me what I need!

- Relentless Assault Now THIS is more like it! Four mana, get an extra combat step. It's cheap, it's simple and I love it!

- Savage Beating This card is a game ender. You can surprise double strike an opponent and maybe kill them or take an extra combat step and give double strike if you have the seven mana to do it. One of the things I love about this card is that you can cast it with Neheb on the field, get two combat steps without the in-the-middle post-combat main phase and then after the second combat step, you may wind up with tons of mana!

- World at War Two for the price of one! With this costing only one more than Relentless Assault but happening twice, this is a huge value card for the "MOAR COMBAT" theme!

- Daretti, Scrap Savant Daretti is an awesome card in any artifact deck. He helps you dig through your deck, he brings things back and if you manage to pop that ult, you'll never have to worry about a colorless card going to the graveyard again. Exile and bounce effects are stil dangerous, though.

- Darksteel Forge Obviously we want to protect our toys, so the Forge makes most targeted removal null and void. Bounce and exiles will still be dangerous, though.

- Trading Post This card is a value engine in any artifact-based deck. There's lots of tricks and things to do in order to keep getting value out of it, including sacrificing Ragavan before he exiles himself in order to get back a blasted Equipment!

- Blasphemous Act Standard mono-red board wipe. Sadly, I didn't include Stuffy Doll in the deck, but this should still help you whenever the battlefield looks scary!

- Chaos Warp My favorite target for Warp is an enchantment because there's really not much else Mono-Red can do to take care of them.

- Vandalblast Destroy all the toys that aren't mine! This is great in any deck running Red that wants to run mass "not mine" Artifact hate!

- Burnished Hart Commander staple and even better in Artifact decks. You can keep recuring this with Daretti or Post to keep bringing lands out of your deck and hitting your value cards with your draws.

- Caged Sun Mono colored deck that isn't Green or Black? Run Caged Sun. Gives you an extra mana per land!

- Expedition Map There are almost as many nonbasic lands as there are basic (snow) lands in the deck. Not only does Map get you one of those, if you keep recuring it, you can keep getting out your value lands!

- Extraplanar Lens See reasoning for Caged Sun above!

- Neheb, the Eternal The deck is designed to hit hard and fast. Neheb helps keep that momentum going by giving you red mana in the amount of damage you deal to opponents' life!

- Ruby Medallion Mono-Red Commander staple!

- Sol Ring Commander staple!

- Solemn Simulacrum Commander staple that's even stronger with Daretti and Post. I love the Sad Robot even more with those two cards because you can sacrifice it to draw a card for the activated abilities of the Post and Planeswalker!

- Worn Powerstone Commander staple!

- Sunbird's Invocation This card is not really ramp in the sense of mana ramp. When I added this card to the decklist, I considered it ramp as in ramping up your strategy in order to start out-valuing the rest of the table. I have a deep love of Invocation because it simply gives you free stuff and I love free stuff!

- Swiftfoot Boots I chose Boots over Lightning Greaves because there are times where you don't have another creature and Greaves' Shroud means you can't equip more Equipment to Kari once they're on her. Better to avoid that and deal with paying one to equip!

- Sword of Feast and Famine, Sword of Fire and Ice, Sword of Light and Shadow I looked at all of the "Swords of" cycle and determined that I liked these three the best to ensure protection from all colors. Each effect can be either a nice boon or extremely powerful, but I suggest playing to the colors of the game. If there's a lot of Black, grab the sword that will keep Kari Zev safe from the 10 Murder variants the game probably has in it.

- Sword of the Animist An equipment that triggers on attack to fetch you lands. Everything you need in a deck like this! Even if Kari only gets a couple of swings in before being removed, that gives you the mana to recast her AND thins your deck to draw into more valuable cards.

- Sword of the Paruns I love the idea that just attacking with this Sword attached to Kari means that Ragavan will enter as a 4/1. You've essentially doubled your damage output from just this!

- Vorrac Battlehorns, Whispersilk Cloak With Kari needing to attack in order to truly do what she's here to do (throw big monkey tokens at people, in case you forgot!) you're going to want to protect her as much as possible. So either of these Equipments make her unblockable, with the Cloak giving her Shroud as well.

- Dualcaster Mage, Twinflame These two cards create the infinite combo I detail in "Combos", under the "Strategy" category!

- Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker, Lightning Crafter, Zealous Conscripts These three cards create the two infinite combos I detail in "Combos", under the "Strategy" category!

- Hero's Blade, Ronin Warclub, Sai of the Shinobi, Stormrider Rig All four of these cards do the same thing: they auto-equipped to Ragavan when he enters the battlefield during combat, which is normally a pretty hard thing to do since Equip is at sorcery speed! These can turn Ragavan from a 2/1 into a 9/6 if all four on the battlefield!

- Grenzo, Havoc Raiser You're going to be doing a lot of attacking. If you give Kari some of the extra evasion by making her unblockable, Grenzo can give you the capability of sending someone's biggest and meanest creature at someone else! It creates interesting political plays where maybe someone will waste their removal spells on the creature that could be attacking them, instead of finding a way to get rid of Kari.

- Meekstone Kari is only a 1/3, so normally she can get around a Meekstone fairly easily. With that in mind, there will be games where you don't have a lot of blockers, so this card may persuade people to hang back until they can remove it.

- Break Through the Line A haste enabler for Kari AND makes her AND Ragavan unblockable? Yes, PLEASE!

- War Cadence This card works really well with the deck because of Kari's natural Menace ability. You can force players to pay mana to block and depending on how well you've ramped in the game, there's a possibility they won't be able to pay for two blockers and Kari will be able to hit without blockers.

- Fanatic of Mogis In a mono-red deck, this card can deal some serious damage, maybe even finishing an opponent off if you get them low!

- Gratuitous Violence This doubles SO MANY SOURCES OF DAMAGE in the deck, it's ridiculous. Purphoros damage can be doubled if he's an active creature. Even Warstorm Surge damage is doubled because the card reads that THE CREATURE entering the battlefield deals the damage!

- In the Web of War The haste enabler is great, but so is the +2/+0! Keep in mind that just because Ragavan enters tapped and attacking, he still benefits from ETB triggers, so with this on the field, he does enter as a 4/1!

- Inferno Titan In truth, Titan is designed to be another source of removal as you take out smaller blockers or key pieces within it's damage range.

- Ogre Battledriver Another ITWOW affect! So if you have BOTH of these out, Ragavan comes in as a 6/1?! THAT'S INSANE! Don't forget that if you resort to the token strategy, this means even more boosts because more creatures = more triggers!

- Panharmonicon As you can see from the seven other cards in "ETB Effects", you're going to get quite a lot of value from creatures entering the battlefield. Now imagine if you got TWICE AS MANY of those effects! You don't need to convince me, I'm sold!

- Purphoros, God of the Forge With Ragavan entering the battlefield every time you attack with Kari Zev, the Red God is going to deal a lot of damage throughout the game. Plus there's the fact that sometimes he isn't a creature and he's always indestructible that can make him more complicated to deal with! If you have to, you can even use the activated ability to boost Kari and Ragavan a little more.

- Warstorm Surge I love the way this card works in this deck. With Ragavan entering the battlefield, you can stack the triggers so the ETB Equipment attachs to him or all the other ETB effects take place, making him have a huge amount of power and then throw all of that damage straight into someone's face before the combat damage step is even thought about. The best part is that you can hit on two fronts, if you want to attack player A while targeting Player B with Storm damage!

- Beetleback Chief, Siege-Gang Commander These two are my little GobMob. The original list had more goblin-making cards, including a Krenko, Mob Boss but I quickly realized that I was focusing on making a Goblin deck instead of a Kari Zev deck and took most of them out. Still, for the sake of needing to make tokens, these two work well together because they create a couple of tokens, each and then Commander can blow them up in an opponent's face!

- Hanweir Garrison Between this and Battlements, you can Meld them together to create Hanweir, the Writhing Township and instead of making 1/1s, you can start making 3/2s!

- Kazuul, Tyrant of the Cliffs Ah, Kazuul... This is one of my go-to cards when I think defense in mono-Red. No one wants to give anyone a horde of 3/3s, so people will either need to find removal for this guy (and thus, not cast it on Kari or just burn a whole board wipe for it) or leave you alone so they don't get an army knocking on their front door!

- Myr Battlesphere This token maker is especially fun in the deck because you can sac and recur it with cards like Daretti, Scrap Savant and Trading Post to just make a Myr army!

- Pia and Kiran Nalaar, Pia Nalaar These two cards offer a bit of diversity. For starters, they make you a small squad of flying 1/1s, which is awesome. Then their activated abilities can be massively useful to boost creatures, deal damage or stop opponents from blocking!

- Combustible Gearhulk I'm not going to lie and tell you that you're going to draw cards off of Gearhulk most times. The reality is that, unless you pick an opponent with a very low life total, they're probably going to take the damage and assume you won't kill them with this. Still, it's free damage and maybe artifacts in your graveyard that you can then recur back with Daretti, Scrap Savant or Trading Post!

- Infiltration Lens I love this Equipment on Kari Zev. People are going to want to block her, if only to stop Ragavan or even just spite you. You might as well get something out of the deal and draw a card FOR EACH BLOCKER, meaning at least two each time someone blocks Kari.

- Skullclamp Not only does the deck make a decent amount of 1/1s, but you could potentially use Brass Squire to equip this card to Ragavan before the end of combat and sacrifice him for card draw. Mono-red normally loots in order to draw cards, so take every chance to pick up cards that you're given!

- Brass Squire Because of when Ragavan enters the battlefield, there's only so many ways to get Equipments on him for extra damage or effects. There's fewer still because we're running a mono-red deck instead of red and white, since white has (I think) two ways to equip at instant speed. Squire, however, gives us this ability and we can use it in any number of ways, from moving a Sword that grants protection from the dominant color over to Ragavan to just slapping on Skullclamp so we can draw some cards before he dies!

- Godo, Bandit Warlord Godo not only fetches an Equipment from your library, but he also gets to attack twice a turn! If we had more Samurai, this would probably be even better but as it stands, if you have Neheb, the Eternal on the battlefield and hit with Godo both times, you can take an extra combat phase with Aggravated Assault and that's just the beginning of shenanigans!

- Goblin Bombardment I mentioned when talking about High Market that we want to use Ragavan to his full potential, from cradle to grave as the saying goes. Bombardment is another way to get one last good use out of our Monkey friend by tossing a point of damage around before he scurries away!

Right now, Im not actively looking to make cuts to the deck. I enjoy the overall feel behind it, but Im also not completely closed off from making changes. If anything, I think I could be convinced to drop the token maker strategy while keeping Purphoros and Warstorm Surge in the deck if an argument could be made for good replacement cards.

I added Sunbird's Invocation from Ixalan, but Im not sure there are many other cards from the set I would add. Most of the red spells are more geared toward the pirate theme of the set and thats not necessarily important here. Here are a few cards that caught my attention but Im unsure of. If you think theyd be super good and Im missing something, feel free to leave me a comment below!

- Angrath's Marauders I like the idea of having a one-sided damage doubler. However, the fact that the ability is on a creature that costs 7 mana in a mono-red deck, Im unsure if I want it that bad. More to the point, Im not sure what I would want to take out for it.

- Dowsing Dagger Sure, this would turn Kari into a 3/4 First Strike, Menace Commander and eventually turn into a Gilded Lotus land. BUT you make two blockers for the opponent, meaning it is potentially going to come down and have to survive a round in order to transform when you attack the second time.

- Treasure Map   I love scrying. Truly, I do, because it gives me a chance to get rid of a bad draw. The problem with this is that you dont get a choice to transform it and the deck would need better synergy to keep creating Treasure tokens in order to feel useful after you get rid of the third one it makes. Sure, it is still colorless land, but I dont think thats worth taking up a card slot.

- Thaumatic Compass   Another thing I love is fetching lands out of my deck, thinning it and improving my draws even further. And the fact that this card eventually turns into a weaker version of Maze of Ith seems amazing. Im just not sure what to take out in order to put this in Maybe Burnished Hart?

- Pirate's Cutlass This one seems like a silly addition, but I cant help but think its funny that we can give Kari a sword almost made just for her! Of course, that is the best possible synergy, so I think this one is still an easy pass on additions. Maybe Im crazy though!

- Spellbinder This one is new, /u/evileyeball from Reddit mentioned it to me. Basically, it can create an infinite loop of extra combat phases if paired with Savage Beating and you can keep hitting people in the face. I just have to figure out what to take out, first!

- Land Destruction. Someone mentioned why I didnt run things like Wake of Destruction in a mono-red deck and I didnt have a very good response. Basically, I tend to avoid Land Destruction in most of my decks because my meta has always leaned away from that strategy. But in the interest of this deck being primed and tuned to be good in any meta, I think a healthy dose of blowing up my opponents lands will really put it farther ahead. I think I may look into removing the Token Making strategy for Land Destruction cards. Something for the future!

Feedback

This has been my pet deck for some time and Im proud to state that it is the highest rated Kari Zev deck on TappedOut! I hope you enjoyed the decklist, my card choices and my general idea behind the deck and if you play this list or something similar to it, I would love to hear how it went in the comments below! If you have suggestions for new cards, feel free to give them to me and Ill continue to evolve the list as new sets keep coming out!

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The Value Engine that is Sunbird's Invocation! — Nov. 1, 2017
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With the release of Ixalan, one particular card caught my attention from the set.

Sunbird's Invocation has simply become a value engine. The possibility of getting tons of free stuff just by playing your deck seems amazing and I love this card. I can't think of any deck that has red in it that I wouldn't want to put this in!

Invocation replaced Stalking Vengeance... While I like the idea of sacrificing Ravagan and dealing more damage with Vengeance's ability, I think Invocation will do a lot more work at the 7-CMC slot. We'll have to see!

All the Swords! — Aug. 10, 2017
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Less stealing, Smoother Experience! — July 31, 2017
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MOAR VIOLENCE! MOAR DAMAGE! — Jan. 19, 2017
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Pimping the Deck! — Jan. 16, 2017
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Date added 7 years
Last updated 6 years
Legality

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

12 - 0 Mythic Rares

46 - 0 Rares

22 - 0 Uncommons

1 - 0 Commons
Cards 100
Avg. CMC 3.66
Tokens Copy Clone, Emblem Daretti, Scrap Savant, Goat 0/1 W, Goblin 1/1 R, Human 1/1 R, Myr 1/1 C, Ogre 3/3 R, Ragavan, Thopter 1/1 C
Folders Random Commander Brewery Project, Nette Ideen, Other People's Cool Decks, Cool Decks, Commander Decks I Like, Red, Interesting Decks, cOOl dEcKS, EDH Decks, Decks I want to try
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