Reinventing Kaalia
Commander Deck Help forum
Posted on Dec. 20, 2016, 8:12 p.m. by Mig-El
I've played this deck: Vengeance of the Fallen for about two years. As you can see, it is a pretty standard Kaalia deck. And as every Kaalia of the Vast deck, it is "too powerful for casual, too weak for competitive". That's why I want to try a new idea, turn it into a little less aggro, but with a better defence. I want to add some useful humans and build the strategy thanks to them. I need to cut some fatties to 20 or less, only the powerful and I would like your suggestions for changes.Here are my ideas to add:
Thanks for your help.
To be 100% honest with you, those additions would hurt the deck. Kaalia is unfortunately a lot like Jhoira of the Ghitu, the more MLD you have the more competitive the deck. If you are dead set on playing her I'd say go ahead and load up on MLD since the whole table is going to come at you anyway. A lot of tier two commanders unfortunately are like this, that's why I stick to taking tier 3 ones as far as I can.
December 21, 2016 3:31 a.m.
Adding anything that doesn't enter the battlefield with kaalia's trigger is a bad idea unless it's something like Mother of Runes which helps protect your board state and more specifically kaalia. The only way to really improve the deck is by adding MLD, a little control, and tutors so you can get the appropriate creature to put on the battlefield with kaalia's trigger.
December 21, 2016 9:01 a.m.
kanokarob Agree, in duel commander is a beast, but in regular Commander is another story...
dlamars It's a good point, my other deck uses Kruphix, God of Horizons as Commander (Beyond Divinity). Usually I can play more relaxed with it.
Livingham And for the three of you, thanks, but this is my point: In my expierence, not only in decks played by me, in the early game if you don't enable Haste for Kaalia, you are probably playing nothing at all. My idea is to use cards that I already have in my deck like Cavern of Souls and Grand Abolisher to have other variations and possibilities, because honestly, in the best of cases Kaalia will swing three or four times.
December 21, 2016 8:52 p.m.
And that thinking is fine. But don't put in cards that detract from Kaalia, too. If you feel like you need more Humans specifically, you should limit it to those that protect or enhance Kaalia, not to be a completely unrelated plan of attack that will fail like the German two front war.
December 22, 2016 7:28 a.m.
In a good kaalia deck, one or two swings should put you far enough ahead to win. Hell, if you just get kaalia out and wipe everyone's lands, you'll almost definitely win. Having backup plans is good but most of the cards you mentioned in the original post would surely hurt the deck.
kanokarob says... #2
A: A well constructed Kaalia deck is not too weak for competitive. She's generally exceptional, certainly for duel commander.
B: Trying to detract from Kaalia's purpose is only going to make it less of a Kaalia deck and therefore worse, as it'll be less streamlined. If this sort of deck is what you want, you'd be better of with Queen Marchesa as the commander and Kaalia in the 99.
December 20, 2016 10:20 p.m.