Azoth2099 Hello! Been a while! I took pretty much all your suggestions at the beginning of the month and spend quite a few weeks trying things out. Out of the 20-30 matches I played I never managed to score a win so I have now given up on making the deck Family Friendly and now I am trying to make it more fun for myself.

I've found to like combat and invested in getting Avacyn, Angel of Hope as I love that card, but it is so damned expensive. Now I'm wondering what you might think of my V.3 version of the deck.

One of the big cards I ended up taking out was Burning-Rune Demon as I never really ended up using or really just don't know what cards to pick. I put more dragons overall instead and got rid of quite a few angels that were giving control/protection but little to no deck value (card draw/mana). Another interesting change I went for was to replace Damn with Living Death. I found to be able to flip the tables like that was pretty fun.

Anyways, thank you for helping me! And for anyone reading this, I'm accepting all kinds of feedback :)

jameswarlord

Hey man! Good to hear from you, nice job refining this list so far!

Yeah, Avacyn, Angel of Hope is stupid expensive lol, she probably always will be just because of how awesome she is. Proxy it in the meantime? Hell, I'd proxy an Ancient Copper Dragon too, they both win games.

Concerning Burning-Rune Demon: This card tends to get cut from a lot of decks that aren't running winning lines for it. Personally, my Kaalia of the Vast list also includes Dockside Extortionist, Corpse Dance & Disciple of the Vault, which enables Burning-Rune Demon to grab Razaketh, the Foulblooded & Reanimate to enable either a same-turn win or a next-turn win by generating infinite Treasures (and infinite Life via Children of Korlis) and nuking the board. It's also really good in Reanimator lists that are running the aforementioned pieces, as well as cards like Animate Dead, Necromancy, Buried Alive, Victimize & Karmic Guide to accelerate sheer board value if you don't want to run combos like that. If you apply it creatively, it essentially acts as an uncounterable Intuition in the deck, but for no mana cost & at Sorcery speed. Not the worst...

Concerning catching Ws: the #1 thing that's going to snag you wins here is making sure that you capitalize on the Commander's value as quickly as possible, as well as making sure that your deck doesn't necessarily need it's Commander on the field to dominate. You need more ramp and card draw, simply. I'd add the following ASAP:

Ramp: Culling the Weak, Dark Ritual, Burnt Offering, Cabal Ritual, Pyretic Ritual, Desperate Ritual, Seething Song, Talisman of Indulgence, Talisman of Hierarchy, Talisman of Conviction, Fellwar Stone Lotho, Corrupt Shirriff, & Deep Gnome Terramancer

Draw/Tutors: Archivist of Oghma, Moon-Blessed Cleric, Tectonic Reformation, Diabolic Intent, Gamble, Grim Tutor, Idyllic Tutor, Steelshaper's Gift & Sarkhan's Triumph.

Also, I know you've stated that you are trying to stay withing certain budget constraints, but Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor & Enlightened Tutor have seen recent reprints, and are cheaper right now than they will be in the future. Just something to consider.

All of these will help you get on and stay on! Let me know what you think.

jameswarlord - I like the build! You have some interesting cards in there that I did not know existed like Liliana's Contract which leads me to my constructive criticism - I feel like the deck is lacking unity in terms of what you are trying to do with it. For example, you have Liliana's Contract but then only have a handful of demons in the deck so the likelihood of that being helpful is very low. You are also running Dragon Tempest but only have a total of 9 dragons in the deck again severely limiting its potential. I also see you have a bit of a lifegain theme with additions like Sunscorch Regent, Luminarch Ascension, and Valkyrie Harbinger but you have just as many if not more demons that have abilities that cost life so the probability of the lifegain part working is again very low.

For my version of a Kaalia deck, I went primarily dragons over the demons and angels as I wanted to include the heavy treasure sub-theme and then I focused on trying to build around Kaalia's ability by trying to trigger that multiple times per turn and keeping cards in my hand. The treasure tokens have a couple wincons but then also add in extra utility with card draw, tutoring, removal, etc but generally everthing is built around getting Kaalia out early, getting out primarily dragons and treasure tokens, and protecting my boardstate.

jameswarlord

Yeah, I pretty much agree with lhetrick13 about everything except the analysis of Dragon Tempest. Being a Haste enabler as well as a piece of a 2-card wincon alongside Ancient Gold Dragon is pretty nice. My intution tells me that if you cut it now, you'll end up re-adding it later in a more refined version of the list. Perhaps not, though!

Also, I think you should be informed about the Hoarding Broodlord + Saw in Half synergy, since you're already running 1 of the pieces. It goes as follows:

Step 1: Hoarding Broodlord ETBs, tutoring Saw in Half

Step 2: Cast Saw in Half targeting Hoarding Broodlord

Step 3: Tutor Burnt Offering & a fat card like Razaketh, the Foulblooded or Peer into the Abyss with your token Broodlords.

Step 4: Convoke Burnt Offering, sacrificing one of the token Broodlords - which retains its 8 mana CMC due to it entering the battlefield as a copy of the original Hoarding Broodlord, very important detail - adding 8 mana to your pool

Step 5: Convoke/cast whatever fatty you tutored for to win the game with. I always go with Razaketh, but you don't have to.

But anyway, definitely cut alot of those weaker value pieces mentioned for more fundamental deck strength cards that will draw you cards and ramp you mana.

Azoth2099 - I do love the Ancient Gold Dragon + Dragon Tempest synergy as that can easily one-shot an opponent but my justification for dropping it is that Ancient Gold Dragon is really the only card it has good synergy with due to the general lack of dragons. You are right that the Haste enable for his flyers is nice, especially if you have the ability to trigger multiple combats with cards like Aurelia, the Warleader letting you drop multiple dragons/angels/demons to the field in a single turn and hit with the previous combats drops. However, Aurelia, the Warleader is the only card being run that triggers multiple combats so in my opinion, it is an inefficient addition to the deck as it currently is constructed. You are right that depending on what way the deck is refined, Dragon Tempest could become crucial piece though!

I was unaware of the Hoarding Broodlord + Saw in Half combo but that has merit! Especially in a more aristocrat themed deck where cards like Burnt Offering would already be present so you would not have to cut something good to make room. Sometimes 99 cards is so hard to trim a commander deck down to! I will have to experiment with that so thank you!

I feel like lhetrick13 is already aware, but I should clarify incase jameswarlord doesn't know:

Dragon Tempest triggers for every Dragon that Ancient Gold Dragon generates. For example, if you roll...let's middleground and say you rolled a 10, with AGD being the only other Dragon you control.

That would be 11 damage 10 times in a row, 110 damage to spread across your opponents. If you roll a 12 or higher all of your opponents are dead if they're at 40 life, which they probably are not! A perfect example of why wording is so, so vital in this game...If the card would have said "Whenever one OR MORE Dragons", it wouldn't be good enough to consider over even something as simple as Mass Hysteria as a Haste enabler.

Also, I agree that the Hoarding Broodlord + Saw in Half combo is probably not worth running outside of Aristocrat/Reanimator strategies for sure. Whichever strategy enables the most 1-card wincons is imho the optimal route, though. If you're trying to max out on power, anyway...

Hi there! Thank you both Azoth2099 and lhetrick13 so much for the feedback! I agree that this deck right now isn't going many places as its trying to do too many things at once so your conversation is very insightful for me!

To clarify on lhetrick13 first comment (which I really appreciate!), Liliana's Contract is really there just for the card draw as I don't like her win con. I should probably replace it with something else as you point out. Maybe some of the ramp cards Azoth2099 suggested.

If anything, one of my goals with the deck was to be as versatile as I could to be able to exist in most games. The reasoning for my lifegain additions were that sometimes the demons (and other cards) giving me card draw outright leave with single digit health (looking at you Diabolic Intent) so I wanted things to soak damage and allow me to cancel out the life drain I was having. I do find fun however to gain a lot of life, but I have seen in many decks focused on lifegain that they go for wincons with Aetherflux Reservoir and I don't feel that's fun for me, so not sure how would I go about that rooute.

On the other side, I'm also very hesitant to go the aristocrat/reanimator route as all I feel all it takes is a cheap instant with graveyard hate to ruin the whole thing. I might be wrong here, but that's what I've seen from friends playing with half their deck in the graveyard. I've seen a lot of Kaalia of the Vast lists, however, that use just 2-3 cards that bring things back from the graveyard and I think that might be okay? But I might just be increasing the amount of things the deck can do without giving it more direction. What cards would you cut for more graveyard play?

As an aside, cards like Luminarch Ascension and Valkyrie Harbinger I've found to enjoy quite a lot as they give me more board presence over time and serve as a backup plan in case Kaalia is costing me 12 mana. I have no idea what type of deck that would lean into (probably army/tokens) but then I don't think I would be using Kaalia properly.

All that to just say, I'm very happy that you both are willing to share knowledge and help me here :D I would really like to add Azoth2099's suggestions, such as the Saw in Half combo but I am very lost with what cards should I cut as I would like to keep synergies with Dragon Tempest and synergies with Aurelia, the Warleader. I would assume that my intention with the deck is to go ful aggro? Honestly no idea, I welcome any thoughts.

jameswarlord

Honestly man, for the next level of refinement for this list, I would recommend stripping away literally everything except for the cards that you're trying to win the game with so that we can apply a solid template for the next iteration.

Personally, I will always insist that Reanimator Kaalia is the optimal way to build her. Ensuring that your deck can fulfill it's function without necessarily having to rely on it's Commander is tantamount in building a truly efficient deck, and nothing is going to do that for Kaalia like the Turbo Reanimator strategy.

Have you tried Moxfield? We can co-brew your new list far more efficiently on that site. lhetrick13, would you be interested in joining?

Azoth2099 I've never tried Moxfield! I pre-emptively imported the deck in there (www.moxfield.com/decks/_LTrrj5RfUKsBLkk0pXm4g) just in case but no idea how to go about co-brewing it :)

For a list of cards I wouldn't really like to part with from playing as I enjoy them quite a lot and always play I made this little list:

jameswarlord

Just followed you on Moxfield. To add me as a co-brewer go into the deck settings and select "Change Author", my username is "Azoth"!

As far as pet cards go, over the years I've learned that it's always best to find appropriate Commanders for them that fully synergize with them than to shoehorn them in where they don't necessarily belong, but it looks like most of your keepers are bangers anyway I wouldn't worry about it too much. Definitely a few cards that I'd opt to cut but things like Necropotence & Smothering Tithe are not on that list, more like Anger & Luminarch Ascension.

jameswarlord

You also have to enable me to edit the deck! Go back to "Change Authors" and give me permission lol

Azoth2099 oh oops, done! I've been wondering these past couple days how to also make the deck work with the cards I want, with enough card draw, but also not extremely dependent on Kaalia. I've felt that my most powerful turns are around turn 5-6 where I become a threat if I go full unga bunga but after that if there's a board wipe or I got Avacyn, Angel of Hope, Serra's Emissary, or Kaalia of the Vast spot removed, I go the rest of the game crippled headbutting walls.

jameswarlord

Ok, playtest my edit and lmk how it feels! I tried to keep as many of your pet cards as I could without compromising on gas.

Azoth2099

Hello Azoth! It took me a bit to get my friends together to try the iteration out enough times and now I can say for certainty my thoughts on the moxfield iteration!

One thing I noticed, is that it might be "too consistent" for my table. The amount of tutors and reanimations made it so the deck would always follow a similar strategy every game and it felt a bit stale after a while. It also had a bit of a lack of situational control that I normally end up needing considering I play almost exclusively against blue players (my friends are great I know). Overall it was fun! But a bit too guaranteed "punch in the face" and sometimes I felt I had no mana (probably bad luck on draw).

What other options aside from reanimation would you think would fit more of a "lifelink + treasures" theme? Apologies for the delay on the replies and thank you again for helping :D