Kraum & Vial Smasher Primer

Commander / EDH* UBR (Grixis)

dagger93

Land (31)

• 1x Academy Ruins
• 1x Ancient Tomb
• 1x Arid Mesa
• 1x Badlands
• 1x Blood Crypt
• 1x Bloodstained Mire
• 1x Cascade Bluffs
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Flooded Strand
• 1x Graven Cairns
• 2x Island
• 1x Island
• 1x Mana Confluence
• 1x Marsh Flats
• 1x Polluted Delta
• 1x Reliquary Tower
• 1x Scalding Tarn
• 1x Shivan Reef
• 1x Spirebluff Canal
• 1x Steam Vents
• 1x Strip Mine
• 1x Sulfur Falls
• 1x Sulfurous Springs
• 1x Sunken Ruins
• 1x Underground River
• 1x Underground Sea
• 1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
• 1x Volcanic Island
• 1x Watery Grave
• 1x Wooded Foothills

Sorcery (8)

• 1x Ancestral Vision
• 1x Bribery
• 1x Damnation
• 1x Demonic Tutor
• 1x Exsanguinate
• 1x Temporal Mastery
• 1x Toxic Deluge
• 1x Vandalblast

Planeswalker (4)

• 1x Dack Fayden
• 1x Jace, the Mind Sculptor
• 1x Tezzeret the Seeker
• 1x Ugin, the Spirit Dragon

Artifact (21)

• 1x Basalt Monolith
• 1x Chromatic Lantern
• 1x Coalition Relic
• 1x Crucible of Worlds
• 1x Dimir Signet
• 1x Gilded Lotus
• 1x Grim Monolith
• 1x Izzet Signet
• 1x Mana Crypt
• 1x Mana Vault
• 1x Mox Diamond
• 1x Mox Opal
• 1x Nihil Spellbomb
• 1x Paradox Engine
• 1x Rings of Brighthearth
• 1x Sensei's Divining Top
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Strionic Resonator
• 1x Sword of Feast and Famine
• 1x Sword of Fire and Ice
• 1x Talisman of Dominance

Creature (10)

• 1x Consecrated Sphinx
• 1x Gilded Drake
• 1x Glen Elendra Archmage
• 1x Jace, Vryn's Prodigy  ^Flip
• 1x Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
• 1x Notion Thief
• 1x Phyrexian Metamorph
• 1x Snapcaster Mage
• 1x Torrential Gearhulk
• 1x Trophy Mage

Enchantment (6)

• 1x Leyline of the Void
• 1x Mystic Remora
• 1x Necropotence
• 1x Power Artifact
• 1x Rhystic Study
• 1x Stranglehold

Commanders (2)

Instant (18)

• 1x Arcane Denial
• 1x Blue Sun's Zenith
• 1x Capsize
• 1x Chaos Warp
• 1x Condescend
• 1x Counterspell
• 1x Cryptic Command
• 1x Cyclonic Rift
• 1x Dig Through Time
• 1x Disallow
• 1x Fact or Fiction
• 1x Flusterstorm
• 1x Force of Will
• 1x Mana Drain
• 1x Negate
• 1x Swan Song
• 1x Terminate
• 1x Vampiric Tutor

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Vial Smasher the Fierce & Kraum, Ludevic's Opus PRIMER

Introduction

Hey guys! This is my primer for my partner deck featuring Vial Smasher & Kraum! I decided on these two after loving the Grixis play style. I've gone through several different commanders in the Grixis colors from Thraximundar to Lord of Tresserhorn . I couldn't find any that really featured my type of playstyle which is more focused on control rather than something like storm.

Zombie tribal was another focus of mine, but it's a much weaker in terms of a competitive environment which is my ideal type of game. I play against decks like General Tazri Food Chain, The Gitrog Monster combo, & Tasigur, the Golden Fang control, among others.

For experience sake, I've been playing magic for over a year now consistently, while being exposed to the game several times over the course of 10 years. More of my card game experience came from Hearthstone, a digital CCG that I played since early beta. I'm familiar with mechanics, although Magic is far more interactive. Back to Magic, I've played in Modern, Standard, Draft, Sealed, and Commander - Commander being by far my favorite way to play.

Why Grixis with Vial & Kraum

I've tried all kinds of different color combinations but found Grixis to be home for me.

is the primary color I usually tend to focus on. In a format where people have access to all kinds of powerful combinations of cards and moreso, having access to an engine in their command zone, it's necessary to be able to interact with your opponents when it's not your turn. I find blue to be a universal color for my decks, the exception being my casual Mono- Liliana, Heretical Healer   zombies deck. It's the primary color for this deck and it's where it get's most of it's power and combos to win the game!

is a fantastic support color. It gives us access to tutors as well as other powerful removal effects. It has the control power for board clears close to white with Damnation and Toxic Deluge which we tend to lack in & .

is kind of niche color in Commander and it's usually lackluster as kind of a main color to focus on. When using Red as a support color instead opens up tons of possibilities to control. Cards like Stranglehold and Vandalblast are extremely powerful that can completely neuter decks, like Captain Sisay for example :)

This leaves us with the question of why Vial and Kraum?

Vial Smasher the Fierce gives us the flexibility to run cards like Condescend to kill with some infinite mana combo. She also gets around combat to do damage. She's a nightmare to planeswalkers! Vial is extremely deadly in one on one just for her ability to get damage in so quickly and it's unavoidable. She can burn opponents out extremely fast.

Vial Smasher is possibly one of the strongest partner commanders which is why she's definitely apart of the two. The bigger question is why Kraum because there are multiple partners that give us access to the Grixis color identity.

Kraum, Ludevic's Opus gives us several strong additions to the deck. First is his stat line. a 4/4 is pretty solid for stats. A small increase to damage means we can commander damage someone quickly. This also makes the two swords in the deck - Sword of Feast and Famine & Sword of Fire and Ice effective and deadly! Second are his two keywords - flying, haste. The ability to get in for damage is extremely important and the evasiveness of flying is huge. He also provides us with a solid blocker for say, Atraxa, Praetors' Voice . Third, and potentially most important is his ability. During the second spell cast of an opponent, we draw a card. This gives us access to draw without any draw spells which allows us to dig deeper into our library.

The Unique Partners

So between these two partners, we have two different approaches to building the deck. One relies off the STRONG ability of Vial Smasher the Fierce . This gives us the ability to burn out players without relying on combat. It also allows us to get around blockers to remove those pesky planeswalkers.

To take advantage of Vial Smasher's ability, we use some high cost spells that are really only cast for a fraction of the cost. Force of Will may be a 5 cost spell, but it's really being cast for free and dealing 5. Dig Through Time is actually smoking someone for 8 while we only pay 2. The damage quickly adds up.

We can take advantage of a lot of otherwise situational spells that have X in their cost thanks to Vial Smasher. Their CMC is technically only their base cost when organizing it, but on casting, the X is added to the base CMC, which is extremely important. We can start having cards like Blue Sun's Zenith start hitting for boat loads of damage while giving us a larger advantage in resources.

The second part of this strong partnering is Kraum, Ludevic's Opus . As stated above, he has 3 key parts to why he's our chosen commander. So let's take a look at how we can take advantage of his keywords and abilities.

Kraum has haste innately which means we don't need to run Lightning Greaves or Swiftfoot Boots to help him get across the line. His haste gives us extra damage for turns when he comes out. He also pairs with Vial Smasher the Fierce 's ability to pump out 5 damage and then hit for 4 right after, which is almost 1/4th of a player's life total.

We can also take advantage of his combat evasion and haste with our two swords - Sword of Feast and Famine & Sword of Fire and Ice . Both these help him get more evasion, but more importantly, these are the two of the five swords chosen because of their effects. Using Kraum with Feast and Famine lets us ramp even further ahead while shutting our opponent out of their options. Using Kraum with Fire and Ice gives us additional draw and more importantly, the ping damage of 2. Our deck has a few board wipes and spot removal, but this gives us extra damage to dispense to small mana dorks or commanders that just need a small boop to take them out.

Combos

This deck is made for a more competitive deck. As such, we need to have defined win conditions, which we have several different ways about going about reaching them. First, we will cover the combos that are to enable our win conditions followed by the actual win conditions itself.

Infinite Mana Combos

Power Artifact + Grim Monolith / Basalt Monolith = Infinite colorless mana

Rings of Brighthearth + Basalt Monolith + = Infinite colorless Mana (requires 2 colorless mana to enable the combo)

The Win Cons

Infinite mana + Exsanguinate = nukes the table for infinite loss of life

Infinite Mana + Vial Smasher the Fierce + Condescend = nuke a player for infinite damage

Infinite Mana + Blue Sun's Zenith = mill a player out

Infinite Mana + Vial Smasher the Fierce + Blue Sun's Zenith = mill a player out, with potential to nuke another opponent

The Outer Shell

Our deck contains several combos that can outright win us the game. However, it's important to look more at how the overall deck is constructed. This deck follows the archetype called CONTROL. Control is pretty self-explanatory - We attempt to control the board with our cards until we can assemble the pieces to our win condition.

Some core pieces that can absolutely shut down decks:

Stranglehold - This card is nuts. It shuts down any deck focused on tutoring. Decks that are helmed by Zur the Enchanter or Captain Sisay get destroyed by this card. They are no longer able to look for their win conditions while we contain to run high value cards that have a far higher impact.

Mystic Remora / Rhystic Study - Both of these cards are meant to slow the game down as much as possible or giving us the additional resources to look for the answers we need to what is happening in the game. For Rhystic Study , I've found players will often slow down their plays just to make sure we don't draw extra, which is perfectly fine for us. Mystic Remora on the other hand often just lets us draw tons of cards when it comes down in the early turns and we just let it die when we actually have a play to make for the turn!

Notion Thief - Just a star in any / deck, but specifically for control for two reasons: We shut out our opponents from drawing cards, but we also accrue an advantage in cards against them!

Ugin, the Spirit Dragon - This card is a bit more expensive for the CMC but it's important for several reasons. One is that we run several infinite colorless mana sources which makes it easier to just drop him. Secondly, we run very little enchantment removal so we need a way to hit everything. Lastly, he's just a great board clear which is what every control player wants!

Neat Interactions Inside the Deck

There's some really neat options and interactions that happen inside this deck. I will go over some of them but I always find some new ones every time I play!

Notion Thief + Dack Fayden = Make your opponenent discard, you draw 2.

Paradox Engine + Capsize + 2 & = Capsize the entire board

Strionic Resonator + Vial Smasher the Fierce = Double the hits for Vial Smasher's ability!

Temporal Mastery Miracle + Vial Smasher the Fierce = 2 cost + 7 burn + 1 extra turn = Momentum

Infinite Mana + Rings of Brighthearth + Sensei's Divining Top = Draw entire deck

NOTE: Paradox Engine is absolutely nuts in this deck. I've generated enough mana just by playing a bunch of shitty spells to end up casting Exsanguinate for over 40 after 10 or so spell casts. It's extremely rewarding to figure out how to reach up to there!

Maximizing Your Own Deck

Not everyone aims for this type of deck style nor is interested in building a competitive deck like this. In this section, we have additional offerings for what you can build or what you may want to focus on when building your own deck.

Vial Smasher the Fierce is focused on casting expensive spells for high damage. Try to focus on cards that you can cast for alternate costs to maximize his effect. Cards like Dig Through Time & Treasure Cruise for their delve abilities are extremely effective. Miracle cards like Temporal Mastery & Reforge the Soul also work very well and are much cheaper in terms of money cost for some of the more expensive cards like Temporal Manipulation or Wheel of Fortune . You can force miracles too! Just tutor for them with cards like Vampiric Tutor or Mystical Tutor .

I highly recommend you try to run with Vial Smasher. In order to gain the most out of his ability, you want to be casting stuff on every turn, not just yours. Counterspell suddenly becomes Shock to an opponent's face! The value starts to grow extremely fast when cards that typically are used for combo pieces or utility become high impact damage!

Kraum, Ludevic's Opus is a bruiser. Independently, he's more focused on rushing people down. Try to exploit his strengths. Flying makes him extremely evasive to get in for damage. You can run him along with a partner to run cards like Moat . He also works well with Voltron by buffing him up. Getting only an additional 3 damage means 3 hits will kill. His casting cost is also a bit less intensive for colors with only being necessary colors.

Try to focus more on protection for him with buffs. Cards like Umezawa's Jitte and any of the 5 swords become super effective! Being in blue, he gives protection to himself through your colors. Run cheap counterspells for when people try to remove him. His ability gives you opportunities to refill your hand as well! Don't be afraid to counter spells. Your opponent will have to respond to your counters or risk losing their effects which will give you card advantage over time.

Kraum works well with any other support color. or help with trying to buff him with auras for a more voltrony way of building him. I won't go too much into this because this isn't built as a Voltron deck nor am I a Voltron player, but there's definitely more guides on TappedOut that you'll be able to find some good Voltron cards to add to him!

Date added	7 years
Last updated	3 years
Legality	This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	20 - 0 Mythic Rares 55 - 0 Rares 10 - 0 Uncommons 12 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.03
Tokens	Bird 2/2 U, Emblem Dack Fayden, Emblem Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
Folders	Edh and stuff, cool decks, Grixis ideas