Kavu Lair

Enchantment

Whenever a creature with power 4 or greater enters the battlefield, its controller draws a card.

Legality

Format	Legality
1v1 Commander	Legal
Archenemy	Legal
Canadian Highlander	Legal
Casual	Legal
Commander / EDH	Legal
Commander: Rule 0	Legal
Custom	Legal
Duel Commander	Legal
Highlander	Legal
Legacy	Legal
Leviathan	Legal
Limited	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Premodern	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Tiny Leaders	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (51)

king-saproling on Omelette du Fromage

1 year ago

(cont.2) I also included some "draw enablers" and "mana enablers" so that you can use the changeling loop to draw into and play anything you need, such as a wincon (the cards listed in the first comment), or a counterspell if an opponent tries to disrupt your plans:

draw sources:
Weatherlight Compleated
Elemental Bond
Fecundity
Kavu Lair
Garruk's Uprising
Laid to Rest
Guardian Project
The Great Henge

mana sources:
Earthcraft
Prosperous Partnership (requires looping Irregular Cohort)

counterspells:
Lapse of Certainty
Tibalt's Trickery

Some of the enablers require changelings with certain conditions (e.g. power 4 or greater) to work. Since Pulmonic Sliver's ability is optional, you can ignore it and sac changelings until you hit the right one for the enabler to start working.

Notable tricks:
Land's Edge + Wheel of Sun and Moon + a draw enabler allow you to win without decking yourself. The Wheel functions as a substitute Pulmonic Sliver as well. It also lets you counter all your opponent's spells alongside the changeling loop combo + draw enabler + mana enabler.

If an opponent tries to get rid of Pulmonic Sliver or Atla with targeted removal, you can respond by paying 0 into Mirror Entity's ability to fizzle the removal. This works by turning all your creatures into sliver eggs but also killing them, lifting the target off them and allowing them to re-enter via Pulmonic's + Atla's abilities. This also works against mass removal if you pay 1 into Mirror Entity in response.

Omniscience_is_life on Wait wait wrong egg WRONG EGG | **Primer**

2 years ago

Some cuts/adds I'm pondering at the moment, getting back into this deck:

1. My whole recursion package needs to go. Emeria Shepherd doesn't have enough Plains to function properly, and the days of the Zacama, Primal Calamity combo are long since past. Once and Future is overcosted and replaceable... with the lovely Noxious Revival. This is probably the most direct upgrade, all the other cards I'm cutting (e.g. Shepherd) don't have straight-across replacements.

2. Nyxbloom Ancient may well be cut if I decide a card like Protean Hulk, Treeshaker Chimera, Voice of Many, or Combustible Gearhulk is better. The Ancient is just a generic value piece, and I'm trying to cut down as much on those as I can. It does, however, allow for some of the crazy-long turns that I take to work, so I'm really unsure if it's gonna go or not.

3. Brainstone, Kavu Lair, and Flawless Maneuver are all looking really spicy right now. Unsure as to what cuts would allow them to come in.

4. Greater Gargadon might come out for Towering Titan, as cracking into a vanilla 9/7 is a bit underwhelming. The Gargadon is great at being an uninteractable sac outlet, but I do like the trample grant on Towering Titan. Again, unsure.

king-saproling on Forest fire

2 years ago

Assault Suit could be fun here. It allows you to keep the dragon spirit that it is attached to. The haste is nice as well.

You might like these too: Where Ancients Tread, Dragon Tempest, Rite of Passage, Skullclamp, Elemental Bond, Garruk's Packleader, Kavu Lair, Rile

corpsebandit on Titania

2 years ago

Upgrades: Kavu Lair out, Garruk's Uprising in. Replace 2 Snow-Covered Forest for Misty Rainforest and Verdant Catacombs .

BenWin on [[Primer v3.6]] - OM_RATH!!! (2021 Update!!!)

3 years ago

Hi Guerte and _Arra_. Great discussion.

Skullclamp. Lets work through this more. The whole point of our deck is to maximize turns Omnath, Locus of Rage is in play and the landfall triggers we give him to make elementals. Saying those are requirements for Skullclamp are silly because we're doing that regardless of what we draw every game. The question is how much of the time will we be drawing a sac outlet to fuel Skullclamp? Well actually sac outlets are a huge component of our win-con because we often rely on our elementals dying to win. Key word dying. Doesn't matter whether it's to a sac outlet, board wipe like Blasphemous Act, combat, or removing our general. You can put Skullclamp on an elemental to dissuade attackers or blockers, or on Omnath, Locus of Rage to dissuade removal. And that's without a sac outlet. Realistically, with or without Skullclamp, if you aren't drawing into a sac outlet on average, you aren't running enough outlets! And after 1 proc you've already exceeded the cost of the single card that it is. The rest is bonus, and a steep potential for bonus that is, not to mention minimal CMC investment. And if more card draw is what you're looking for to justify cards like Gamble, then this card is even better than what it is alone. I also like Life's Legacy and Kavu Lair. I think draw is a really competitive component of any deck. If we're even asking ourselves if the deck has enough draw to support cards like Gamble, why not add more and start criticizing the cards we draw more than the draw engines themselves?

Perilous Forays. I value this card at its CMC because it's aggressive. Burn as an archetype is inherently aggressive, wouldn't you agree? If you draw it early then you have basics to burn for damage. If you draw it late with few basics left to tutor, then that means you've probably had quite a successful game already - aka you should be happy you've gotten this far! Look at Perilous Forays like insurance to the late game. And we all know what happens in late game - looking for hits like Greater Good to look for win-cons like Warstorm Surge. We love to see it!

Mana Vault. Another card you love to see early. Different from the previous example, you gain mana the first time you play Mana Vault, so I'm not sure why you'd be disappointed? Maybe it's that you wished you drew a different card because OM_RATH doesn't have the best card draw? I haven't tested as much, but similar mentality for me.

Zuran Orb. This one is a little bit of a meme, but I've been toying with the idea and I'd like to throw it out and see what happens. If you draw Zuran Orb and a sac outlet, similar to our Skullclamp example, you can tutor up World Shaper and sac all your lands in response to World Shaper trigger for a nutty turn. It's jank, but really think about it!!! :D

Strip Mine. Compare this to the Skullclamp example where for Skullclamp to truly activate you need a sac outlet. One difference in this juxtaposition is that now you need two things: extra land drops and graveyard recursion. Now assume we get them. Using Strip Mine is very different tempo wise in multiplayer commander than it would be in a 1v1 format. Say it's a 4 person CMD game. To get a tempo ahead you'd either have to play 1 land or destroy 3, one of each opponent's on average. I get that Strip Mine can destroy key lands like Cavern of Souls, but are we a policing deck or a deck that wants to play 1000 elementals and say try policing this? Ever since we cut Tempt with Discovery I think Strip Mine got a lot weaker for us. Temple of the False God was a thought, but I agree with you it's not great. Do you have any better ideas, even if it's adding a basic mountain back?

Sylvan Safekeeper. The difference between Sylvan Safekeeper and Strip Mine is that our opponents' removal spells will be more limited their lands. Trading one of our lands for a removal spell will be more valuable than trading land for land. I'm not saying that we should carelessly play Sylvan Safekeeper and sac all our lands, but we can tutor when we have a good foundation and we'll be fine.

Steely Resolve. It is a great card, better than Sylvan Safekeeper when it is in play, but it can't be tutored. What if we had a card that draws us cards in its place? That way we are drawing into more ways to ramp to keep up land production. This would be helpful if we'd like to rely more on Sylvan Safekeeper for protection which is more practical. Practical meaning that we have 3 tutors and a Sylvan Safekeeper meaning that we have up to 4 copies if we want. And this way we won't have to worry about drawing both Steely Resolve and Sylvan Safekeeper in the same game which is redundant. To be clear I respect the power of Steely Resolve, I'm just proposing a way we can justify filling its slot.

BenWin on [[Primer v3.6]] - OM_RATH!!! (2021 Update!!!)

3 years ago

Hi Omrathians.

Thank you _Arra_ and VexenX for the detailed replies, and anyone else I might be forgetting. You guys never let me down! I would like to quickly mention that I agree with both of your takes on infinite combos, and I too am not aiming to build that type of deck here.

What I may have been poorly communicating in previous posts is that if our current primary win-con of OM_RATH is burn, I think we could benefit from lowering CMC. My understanding is that burn works best when we're pressuring opponents as quickly as possible, which means sometimes less CMC can be more effective!

I'd like to continue the discussion on a few cards, and bring up some new ones too:

Burgeoning - To generalize the comments I've seen about this card, it seems to shine in the right opening hand, but lose it's consistency quickly. Could we agree that if OM_RATH had more consistent draw, especially early-mid, then Burgeoning could be a reconsideration?

Skullclamp - The cheap draw this offers is absolutely nuts. Pay 1 for 2 cards before sacing to an outlet. But we can increase the value of drawing cards by lowering average CMC. Like setting up a well greased engine. Maybe it's just me but I think setting up an engine for burn seems like a great idea. Same idea with Life's Legacy and even Kavu Lair.

Force of Vigor - I still think it's silly to not include this. The extra slot it takes up doesn't sting as bad if you add more draw.

Gamble - Early game you could search something like Oracle of Mul Daya and mid-late you could get a Greater Good. It even serves as a creature tutor for Sylvan Safekeeper. It also gets better as we add more draw and consistency. Isn't this nuts?

Altar of Dementia - Maybe a good hotfix over Ashnod's Altar for 1 less CMC. You could even imagine milling yourself if you want to take a creature tutor route into World Shaper + sac outlet.

Sensei's Divining Top - Great for any opening hand that lacks a 2 or 3 CMC ramp spell, increasing early game consistency. I don't think it slows us down because it allows us to curve out better each turn given a less than ideal hand. Different from other decks, we often have a land to spare because of the ramp, and what a good way to grease an engine!

Perilous Forays - If I'm getting this right, people are complaining about the high CMC. You're not wrong that some CMC cuts could help. In fact, more cuts to CMC improves Perilous Forays because you can afford to dump more mana into it on average. Unlike other outlets, Perilous Forays helps you police other opponents without limiting you to number of creatures owned. In that way it is a very aggressive outlet if left unchecked, and is undeniably just burn. Maybe you won't be able to kill the whole table since you're limited to basics, but it should put at least one player of your choice on a quick clock. Isn't that still everything you want out of a card?

Sylvan Scrying - I still think this one is a must have because it can get you Cavern of Souls, which depending on your table could be game-saving in itself. Of course there are many other routes you can take.

Temple of the False God - Seems like another way to accelerate past our opponents. TBH I've been unimpressed with Strip Mine because it's anti-tempo and I think this may be a better fit. Shoutout to _Arra_ for reminding me about Strip Mine.

Mana Vault - Thank you Guerte for mentioning this. Seems great for a quicker deck concept.

Steely Resolve - I agree we can cut this. In a way, we kind of had 5 Steely Resolves in the deck if you count our 3 creature tutors and Sylvan Safekeeper. Cutting it allows more flexibility, like ramping in it's place.

Interested to hear people's thoughts! I love to hear devil's advocates, so please sir, maybe I have another!

Kaneka on Mono Green Card Draw?

4 years ago

If you are willing to play symmetrical effects, I would replace Rites of Flourishing by Kavu Lair for the card draw (or by Burgeoning for the ramp).

Sylvan Library is always good. Selvala, Heart of the Wilds would get you some draw triggers too.

bushido_man96 on Wurm Tribal-Mono Green

5 years ago

I recommend Zendikar Resurgent and Drumhunter for card draw and mana ramp. Other good card-drawing options are Elemental Bond, Soul of the Harvest, Kavu Lair, Shamanic Revelation, and Rishkar's Expertise. I think Dual Nature could be a better card than Minion Reflector, but it does affect other players, too. Goreclaw, Terror of Qal Sisma in a deck like this is a poor man's Urza's Incubator.

Tribal Wurm looks like fun!