Kess, Value Queen

Commander / EDH* Combo Competitive Control Multiplayer Twin UBR (Grixis)

gongshow

Lands (35)

• 1x Blood Crypt
• 1x Bloodstained Mire
• 1x Boseiju, Who Shelters All
• 1x City of Brass
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Crumbling Necropolis
• 1x Dragonskull Summit
• 1x Drowned Catacomb
• 1x Fetid Pools
• 6x Island
• 1x Mana Confluence
• 1x Path of Ancestry
• 1x Reflecting Pool
• 1x Reliquary Tower
• 1x Shivan Reef
• 1x Smoldering Marsh
• 1x Spirebluff Canal
• 1x Steam Vents
• 1x Sulfur Falls
• 1x Sulfurous Springs
• 1x Sunken Hollow
• 4x Swamp
• 1x Underground River
• 1x Vivid Crag
• 1x Vivid Creek
• 1x Vivid Marsh
• 1x Watery Grave

Value (6)

• 1x Lightning Greaves
• 1x Mystic Remora
• 1x Necropotence
• 1x Rhystic Study
• 1x Sensei's Divining Top
• 1x Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir

Cantrip (13)

• 1x Brainstorm
• 1x Careful Study
• 1x Fact or Fiction
• 1x Faithless Looting
• 1x Frantic Search
• 1x Gitaxian Probe
• 1x Gush
• 1x Night's Whisper
• 1x Ponder
• 1x Predict
• 1x Preordain
• 1x Serum Visions
• 1x Thought Scour

Tutor (10)

• 1x Buried Alive
• 1x Dark Petition
• 1x Demonic Tutor
• 1x Entomb
• 1x Gamble
• 1x Intuition
• 1x Lim-Dul's Vault
• 1x Mystical Tutor
• 1x Personal Tutor
• 1x Vampiric Tutor

Ramp (6)

• 1x Dimir Signet
• 1x Izzet Signet
• 1x Rakdos Signet
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Talisman of Dominance
• 1x Talisman of Indulgence

Disruption (5)

• 1x Cabal Therapy
• 1x Dreadbore
• 1x Duress
• 1x Inquisition of Kozilek
• 1x Thoughtseize

Commander (1)

Counter (11)

• 1x Arcane Denial
• 1x Counterspell
• 1x Delay
• 1x Forbid
• 1x Glen Elendra Archmage
• 1x Misdirection
• 1x Negate
• 1x Pact of Negation
• 1x Pyroblast
• 1x Remand
• 1x Swan Song

Combo (9)

• 1x Deceiver Exarch
• 1x Doomsday
• 1x Exhume
• 1x Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
• 1x Laboratory Maniac
• 1x Pestermite
• 1x Reanimate
• 1x Shallow Grave
• 1x Splinter Twin

Wipe (4)

• 1x Cyclonic Rift
• 1x Mizzium Mortars
• 1x Toxic Deluge
• 1x Vandalblast

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This is my first draft for a Slightly budgeted build of Kess, Dissident Mage. She seems to be extremely powerful and has a lot of directions she can be built in. I Chose a tutor heavy doomsday control deck with Twin-Pestermite as an alternate win con.

This deck wants to use cantrips, and cheap disruption as well as tutors to assemble a quick kill with little resilience.

It's important to know that Kess isn't a win condition or combo piece, she's just there to make your tutors, cantrips and disruption better. This is a strength in my opinion because you don't need to worry about playing or keeping your commander alive, if she dies you're probably not too upset about it.

Notable synergies with Kess include Intuition, Fact or Fiction, Gamble, Faithless Looting, Entomb, Frantic Search.

Cards going into your graveyard doesn't hurt your game plan with Kess and in the case of Entomb Allows you to tutor for a instant or sorcery to use with Kess' ability.

She Also allows you to pay alternate costs for your spells so Cyclonic Rift and Mizzium Mortars are wipes you can use more than once and things like Foil and Misdirection can be cast from the grave with their alternate costs.

Unlike other decks that utilize the grave yard cards like Deathrite Shaman is blank against Kess because her ability doesn't target the spell your casting, and other hate cards like Rest in Peace don't effect our Game plans too poorly either.

Plan A is to cast Doomsday with a pile consisting of some cantrips and Lab Man to close out the game but if the deck has other ways to win if your plan gets disrupted.

Plan B is to cast Pestermite and Splinter Twin and win the game however with how much discarding we tend to do we might lose our creatures like Pestermite, Exarch and Kiki-Jiki so we have some ways to bring them back with things like Reanimate and Shallow Grave, We're running Buried alive as a way to get these creatures into the graveyard intentionally for even more redundancy with the reanimation package.

I feel as if this deck is very powerful and consistent, this deck has plenty of disruption and redundancy, As well as resilience vs popular hate cards and is why I will be playing Kess in the future.

Thanks for your time, please leave any feedback or suggestions.

Date added	6 years
Last updated	6 years
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	6 - 0 Mythic Rares 39 - 0 Rares 26 - 0 Uncommons 19 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.12
Tokens	Bird 2/2 U, Copy Clone