Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet

Legendary Creature — Vampire Warrior

Lifelink

If a nontoken creature an opponent controls would die, instead exile that card and put a 2/2 black Zombie creature token onto the battlefield.

, Sacrifice another Vampire or Zombie: Put two +1/+1 counters on Kalitas, Traiter of Ghet.

Discussion (51)

Icbrgr on Grixis Control

1 week ago

I think with conventional countermagic + discard in combination with Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet i think you are doing all you can/need against burn TBH.... with my build i kinda just gave up on that matchup and decided to better hedge my matchups elsewhere; but for awhile i was running Sun Droplet .

Hardhitta7 on Edward, uhh I mean Edgar

2 weeks ago

Trying to keep the price around $350 so I’ll pass on the Necropotence but I can probably cut the 3 signets and add Chromatic Lantern , Cathars' Crusade , and Phyrexian Arena .

I wanna keep both Drana because she’s one of my favorite characters in Magic. So they’re mostly just pet cards of mine.

You don’t think Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet would be good to have for when the board gets wiped?

Grisbane on Edward, uhh I mean Edgar

2 weeks ago

may want more draw than you have. Read the Bones , Painful Truths , and Vanquisher's Banner are all i really see as stable hand income. Phyrexian Arena and Necropotence have been massive all stars in my deck, constantly feeding me cards. Not sure about Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet . He was one of my cuts before as he always seemed to underperform, as did Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief . of course since i am an aggro player i tend to try to set a mostly hard line at CC of 3 and lower with a few exceptions for enders. I also do a lot more aristocrats with my deck and this is supposed to be a fun deck for fighting relative newbies. not a fan of signets except for Arcane Signet mostly because they are mana filtering and not really standing on their own. More times than not they end up becoming a liability when i need a straight up mana source and they keep popping up instead of actual lands or an artifact that can stand on it's own. Highly suggest Chromatic Lantern here as it is mana fixing and a mana rock all in one. Lastly, very, very much suggest Cathars' Crusade here. With Edgar's ability things get very stupid very quickly. nothing dishonest about it, you deal with it or the game ends shortly after. Team it up with Shared Animosity and you are very, very quickly dealing with an avalanche that will flatten you. that and it's fun. anyways, hope i helped. good luck and have fun

FenIsABasicSwamp on Rainbow in the Dark: Haakon Reanimator Combo

1 month ago

Hey Pheardemons yeah of course I remember you. I've been wondering how your deck ended up being for you. This is by far one of my favorite decks and the deck I've invested the most time into in the last 3 years. I'm glad you came back to the game.

1) Why Wasteland? You may have noticed that all of the cards in this are German foil for the most part. I has been nearly impossible to get either Wasteland or Strip Mine in German, or foil for that matter. I like the art on EMA Wasteland more than any of the stripmines and it felt appropriately thematic for a character like Haakon, who's epithet being "Stromgald Scourge" suggests he would leave a Wasteland behind his army. Also, rarely does an occasion arise in EDH where I want to destroy a basic over a non-basic anyways, and I recently found an opportunity to get a foil borderless German Wasteland from the new Zendikar set.

2) Emergence Zone is amazing and should be played in all monocolor decks that can sustain one more colorless nonbasic. Also, there's a minor subtheme of lands being playable from the graveyard with Crucible of Worlds in this deck to support the overall discard theme. So the Zone is not necessarily a one-off use.

3) Fetches for the same reason as emergence zone: playing lands from the graveyard and if I get it going with Crucible and Ghirapur Orrery, I can really get some deck thinning going on by pulling lots of swamps out of the library. Why the two that I have and not the others? I don't have German foils of Prismatic Vista, Bloodstained Mire, and Marsh Flats is the easy answer; also theres a point where I worry about reducing the number of overall Swamps in the deck, but maybe that's erroneous since each fetch doubles as a swamp. The other real reason is that I have all the German foil snow-covered swamps and wouldn't have any other use for them if I took them out of this deck for the other fetches.

4) I haven't really gotten to use K'rrik since I put him in the deck. Took a while to source a German one and then get it altered and Corona has severely impacted how much I actually play EDH nowadays. We'll see how impactful the life loss is, but as with all such things you have to strike a balance between your greed to play stuff out with him and putting yourself in a dangerous situation. Lifelink is generally not the way I plan to recover from things like K'rrik, rather cards like Disciple of Bolas and Disciple of Griselbrand are usually more useful for gaining relevant amounts of life back. I rarely find myself attacking unless it's to get a sword trigger.

5)Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder has been in earlier iterations of this deck but his sac trigger from making too many thrulls makes him less attractive unless you can play something like Conspiracy so that he doesn't make thrulls anymore. Abhorrent Overlord is a key piece to generating a massive number of dudes to be sac fodder to an altar to make infinite mana. Since the point is to get to a play where I can just keep sacing and replaying cards from my graveyard with Haakon and Ashes of the Fallen, Overlord does that better than any other card in monoblack.

6)Bitterblossom would serve no valuable purpose other than the Contamination lock and I prefer not to play really "mean" magic like that. Contamination is not usually in the deck but I wanted to try it out because its art seems really fitting for Haakon once again as the Scource of a place. Also, it's a good card for helping a black deck catch up that is playing from way behind "better" decks.

7) Being that this deck hovers between $2-3k, I think it's safe to say that money is not a factor. I generally don't like playing tutors and already play way more in this deck than in a normal one of my decks because it's inherently so handicapped. Razaketh has been in it before and I may put him back in, it's just very easy to win outright with him on the battlefield.

8) Ghirapur Orrery has maybe backfired once on me, it's a careful balancing act. It backfired spectacularly on Justin Parnell in SCG's CMDRVS show. His opponent got a Bojuka Bog on the extra land drop and nuked his graveyard. I never play Lifeline until I'm ready to take advantage of it, and preferably when I have Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet out so that it doesn't work for opponents. Haven't really gotten to use Tombstone Stairwell because of the pandemic.

9) Null Profusion is amazing and underplayed. Play Reliquary Tower or Anvil of Bogardan afterwards and the time stamp of the last card replaces the reduced hand size with infinite hand size and now you just draw cards for every card you play. Works great with Haakon playing cards from your graveyard and Crucible of Worlds doing the same.

10) Yawgmoth is a great extra free sac outlets. Sac outlets are always the most important thing to have in a monoblack deck, especially one's that draw you a card and can potentially be removal too. His proliferate ability lets me immediately ultimate Liliana, Defiant Necromancer often too. He's generally my favorite black creature of all time.

11) Always always dredge Stinkweed Imp. More cards in your graveyard is always the goal for Haakon. The best is dredging him, discarding him to Skirge Familiar, and then drawing again from something else to dredge him again.

12) Creature tutors like Fleshwrither are always more appealing to me in Haakon because I can replay them from the graveyard. Fleshwrither isn't a good card per se, but it is a pet card and also just fantastic and frequently reusable. I can get graveyard hate (Kalitas), ramp (Crypt Ghast), or card draw (Disciple of Bolas) with him so he's very flexible depending on what point in the game I'm at.

13) Conspiracy isn't actually in this deck and Cryptbreaker is here as a discard outlet to help me get Haakon in the graveyard as well as be a infinitely castable creature from the graveyard with Haakon/Ashes out and Phyrexian Altar. That gives me all the draws I could need or infinite Gravestorm for Bitter Ordeal when it's in the deck.

14) I have recast Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger probably 5 times in a turn from the graveyard with this deck before. He's amazing and all I've needed. I prefer not to use stuff like Oblivion Stone or All is Dust that a lot of my deck wouldn't dodge as well, and since my wincon is a black enchantment Decaying Soil, I would have few options to recover from it if I was forced to use those. Scour from Existence isn't here because I don't like using over-costed one-off spells. I can tutor for Ulamog and use him repeatedly.

These were good questions and I appreciate you reading my bio and asking questions respectfully. Your manner of asking demonstrates thoughtful consideration of the deck instead of pushy insistence of a different viewpoint. Ultimately there's no "right" way to build an EDH deck, although there are objectively more optimal ways to design them. I have a passing interest in optimization, but am mostly making choices to balance synergy with flavor and a fun play experience.

ZareZare on Jund

2 months ago

I do agree with rjife that many of the cards he suggested should be added to the deck, but I do disagree with his suggestion of Waker of The Dead, as Liliana, the Last Hope is just better. Also, Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet is more of a sideboard card, and I would recommend swapping out the eat to extinction for Assassin's Trophy in mainboard, and the fatal pushes in sideboard for Kalitas. I would also say take out the Soul Shatters for more Fatal Push.

rjife on Jund

2 months ago

I love jund, and this deck is no exception, though there are a couple things that I think could be improved on:

Grim Flayer is much better than ambitious aetherborn, and considering you're running kroxa, running a few Satyr Wayfinder is definitely plausible.

I have been very unimpressed with eat to extinction, as Abrupt Decay and Assassin's Trophy deal with anything for less mana.

In the 4-drop slot, I have found that many jund decks tend to run Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet, and many others run no 4-drops at all.

Here are some other jund staples you may want to consider running: -Kolaghan's Command -Chandra, Torch of Defiance -Liliana, Waker of the Dead -Thoughtseize

Have fun junding them out

Drakenhart on Legendaries to build decks with …

2 months ago

Hello guys,

I am looking for some legendaries which can serve as the basis for multi-tribe decks. I am talking creatures like Rakdos, the Showstopper which can be the basis for a demon/devil/imp deck, or Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet for Zombies and Vampires.

I am specifically looking for cards who buff multiple tribes at ones. Anybody know any?

jasonkrivera on Negan's Saviors

2 months ago

I guess I could say your stance on the community's concerns for this secret lair is...cold-blooded (see what I did there? You're just like Negan like you claimed! Haha) /jk

Joking aside, is there a specific reason you have Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet in the list? The reason I ask is because he shuts off all your "when a creature an opponent controls dies" triggers, such as Revel in Riches, Blood Artist, and Gadrak, the Crown-Scourge, Ob Nixilis, Yahenni, etc. If your friends are all playing graveyard decks I can see this as a piece of GY hate, otherwise you might want to replace him?

Replacements might be Despark or Elspeth Conquers Death to hit higher noncreature CMC threats.

Also you have a lot of board wipes, but I didn't see any "sacrifice" wipes aside from Mythos of Snapdax. Single Combat, Slaughter the Strong, Tragic Arrogance, and Killing Wave. These will play nice with Negan since you can save him if you want (and you'll still get the treasure tokens whether you save him or sac him).