Kolaghan's Command

Instant

Choose two —

• Return target creature card from your graveyard to your hand.
• Target player discards a card.
• Destroy target artifact.
• Kolaghan's Command deals 2 damage to target creature or player.

Discussion (49)

Icbrgr on Is Grixis Control Weak/Bad in …

1 week ago

I honestly dont know for certain about prismari command... at a glance Faithless Looting + Coalition Relic + Shock + Smelt seems enticing for drawing and fueling delve and the treasure token may find a good use for something... but i dont know for sure..

It seems good enough to explore in grixis maybe alongside/split with Kolaghan's Command .... I dont know how prevalent "Hammer time" Colossus Hammer decks are exactly but I keep hearing they are gaining popularity....

or maybe prismari command is more suited for a Storm type build over control?

ToolmasterOfBrainerd on Is Grixis Control Weak/Bad in …

1 week ago

I haven't played a game of modern since pre-covid. I will probably be jamming grixis something once I'm back.

A lot of the top decks in modern right now (looking at mtggoldfish) are soft to lightning bolt and fatal push. The biggest issue I see is that a lot of those decks can shrug off the first 2 or so removal spells and still get there. Unless you have something to 2-for-1 or generate a lot of value, you'll just peter out. Spirits, in particular, is very hard to beat with just removal spells. Something more is needed.

It looks like graveyard decks are at an all-time low, which means graveyard hate is down as well. Maybe Thought Scour + Tasigur is good still? Maybe that plays well with Kroxa too?

Snapcaster Mage + Kolaghan's Command will always be really good for generating card advantage. I just don't know if grixis can get its engine going quickly enough.

IMO the biggest problem I have had playing grixis over the years is deciding if I want to play on my turn or their turn. Modern counterspells have been disappointing forever. UW shells can work with the available counterspells so much better than Grixis. Without counterspells in grixis you're so vulnerable to the opponent's topdeck.

What about this:

• 4 Snapcaster Mage
• 3 Tasigur, the Golden Fang
• 3 Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger
• 3 Cryptic Command
• 3 Force of Negation is this necessary? I'm not sure.
• 3 Drown in the Loch
• 3 Kolaghan's Command
• 2 Fatal Push
• 4 Lightning Bolt
• 4 Thought Scour
• 4 Serum Visions
• 22 lands (8 fetch, 5 shock, 4 basics, 5 misc depending on testing)
• 2 something else. Dunno. I haven't looked at the new set at all so I'm sure there are cards I just don't know about. Thoughtseize might also deserve a spot somewhere. I could see cutting Force to fit Thoughtseize and another Kroxa.

X-Factor11105 on Lurid Revival

2 weeks ago

Hey! I'm happy to share suggestions, as I've thrown out a few ideas and tried to chat about insight so far. You may want to try and isolate cards you're willing to remove - that way you can still feel like the deck is yours, while being open to prospective ideas / outside perspective ya know?

I'll try to make suggestions with budget in mind!

Deal Broker > Azra Oddsmaker

• Get the same effect with a higher upside and immediately get to discard a Dragon. Non-artifact so it's harder to remove. Mid and late-game card-drawing machine with an evasive Dragon.

Neheb, Dreadhorde Champion > Terramorphic Expanse

• This Neheb is too slow and while the synergy is there, it's going to have trouble making a consistent impact. Even an ETB tapped fetch still keeps you getting the color mana you need while (statistically marginally) thinning your deck and cleaning your future draws.

Hollowhead Sliver > Evolving Wilds ,

Rummaging Goblin > Daretti, Scrap Savant ,

Mad Prophet > Chainer, Nightmare Adept

• Overall, these edits reduce your cumulative curve, provide similar (if not more consistent) discard ability, and much higher ceilings for providing value. Evolving Wilds is your 2nd fetch, so you can keep improving the lands you're getting into play. Daretti lets you move through the deck quicker AND has artifact synergies if you choose to lean into that line of play. Chainer is a discard outlet and haste enabler the turn he comes down, so he's already got the same floor as Mad Prophet with the opportunity to be impactful if he stays on the board.

Ox of Agonas > Drownyard Temple

• Since you've enjoyed leaning heavily into the discard aspect, Temple makes a lot of sense for you to have access to a mid or late-game land to ramp a bit. With all these expensive Dragons, I'm sure you've had a turn or two with plenty of un-used mana (I have!), so this gives you a way to maximize the discard AND set yourself up to keep having access to mana!

Purphoros, Bronze-Blooded > Myriad Landscape

• The five-mana CMC for a less-efficient Sneak Attack just feels heavy in this build. Adding Landscape gives you another opportunity to pull lands out of your deck and keep having colors on the battlefield - I'm sure you've noticed but the double and triple-pips of the deck can be VERY challenging at times. Being able to get two Mountains (or your two Swamps) will hugely impact your ability to play relevant spells on time. As far as getting one more haste enabler, even with Chainer already in...

Dragon Tyrant > Dragonlord Kolaghan

• Tyrant is a win-more and a payoff card. It's a fun ambition, but in a deck chock-full of power and crazy cool Dragons, we don't need this. Instead, big Kolaghan comes down much earlier AND hastes our entire squad.

Thundermaw Hellkite > Hellkite Courser

• Courser enables shenanigans and fantastic temporary Commander fun. It's effect can be much more impactful than Thundermaw Hellkite's in the long-run, and essentially acts as another reanimation spell. Thundermaw's effect is pretty narrow, while Courser's lets us go into the graveyard for a more toolbox-like approach, depending on what we've been able to get into the graveyard so far.

Stormbreath Dragon > Gadrak, the Crown-Scourge

• This might be a little bit of personal preference, and with how many ways this deck has to kill opponents' creatures on your turn, I think it provides a great ceiling while also acting as an early-game blocker. Mana that you can do anything with is so precious in this deck, and it happens to synergize nicely with the best addition to this deck in Kaldheim...

Lathliss, Dragon Queen > Goldspan Dragon

• I personally don't think this deck needs to go wide, otherwise you'd be running more cost reduction ( Urza's Incubator , Dragonspeaker Shaman ) as well as Nesting Dragon . Big-mana decks are always going to need mana, and Goldspan makes it in spades.

Zirilan of the Claw > Feldon of the Third Path

• This is a different style of play, I'd just rather avoid exiling my Dragons or only getting a single use out of them...for a minimum of 8 mana and two turns. Feldon has more flexibility in coming down quicker and activating sooner. You're packing High Market and Phyrexian Tower here for sac outlets to get rid of the tokens (same as the Dragons from Zirilan realistically), but you're doing it much earlier in the game, or with mana to spare, with no downside of losing a Dragon for the rest of the game.

Hagra Mauling  ^Flip > Malakir Rebirth  ^Flip

• Between all of the Dragon ETB damage and the removal suite available to Rakdos, you don't need more removal, I'm sure you've noticed this! Especially cost-inefficient removal. Having more reanimation effects, especially to act as a or flicker effect? There's WAY more flexibility here for how the Dragon reanimator wants to succeed. I agree that more removal is always good though! With that in mind...

Stolen Strategy > Kolaghan's Command

• Play faster, and play with more flexibility. Command will give you options based on how the game's playing, and playing at instant-speed ensures you can be more interactive. Along that same line...

Tormenting Voice > Rakdos Charm

• Flexibility in usage! More than likely this will get rid of a troublesome artifact, and wouldn't you know it that some of the best graveyard hate is on artifacts! The graveyard hosing can also be key and, again, playing at instant-speed gives you more opportunities to disrupt opponents. For a high-curve deck like this, that's really important!

Phyrexian Arena > Valakut Exploration

• Let's help Rakdos players see that Arena isn't the powerhouse everyone thinks it is! Exploration does EVERYTHING we could need - especially in your build, which has a higher concentration of Dragons, there's a greater likelihood for you to fill your graveyard quicker! Please give this a shot and let me know what you think!

Fractured Powerstone > Exotic Orchard ,

Charcoal Diamond > Swamp ,

Fire Diamond > Swamp ,

Temple of Malice > Wayfarer's Bauble ,

Coldsteel Heart > Hedron Archive

Four of these cards ETB tapped and make you a turn slower, AND they're bad in the late-game since they have little utility. There's no snow synergy here to justify Coldsteel. Having more land ensures you'll hit your drops throughout the game. Wayfarer's lets you keep some ramp (I prefer Expedition Map, but one discussion at a time) while Archive has mana utility and lets you cash in when you have leftover mana. Smooth out your hands, get more consistent draws and turns, and have the ability to draw more cards.

Underworld Connections > Victimize

• All of these Dragons in the yard are going to go to waste if you can't get them out onto the field! This is my favorite low-cost reanimator aside from the namesake - if you wanted to make a case for Stitch Together I wouldn't argue it. Being able to get two Dragons out, albeit tapped, ensures you can keep some board presence. It also lets you use up some of those Sneak Attack / token creations in an efficient way. I know losing some card draw feels a bit weird, and based on how the deck's built up, and from what you've described about your playstyle, it sounds like you may have an over-abundance of card-draw and not enough interaction. Hopefully this changes things!

Foreboding Ruins > Luxury Suite

Non-budget upgrade, and more likely to consistently come down untapped and provide the same color flexibility. If budget doesn't allow this edit, I'd say the non-budget move could be Path of Ancestry .

I do think you need to find room for one of the game-winning, mass-reanimators like Living Death or Patriarch's Bidding , or the new Kaldheim one, I'm blanking on the name. I'd take out Scourge of Kher Ridges for it to give yourself a win condition out of nowhere!

Hopefully these ideas help, or at least spark some further ideation for you to think about! If you want to chat about Bladewing in real-time over Discord or Reddit I'm on both sites as ThePillowman :)

aholder7 on

1 month ago

okay so a few things of note here.

first. i'd suggest running 4-ofs for your best cards. there isn't any clear reason why you'd want 3 ofs in this scenario except mogis who is legendary in which case it's fine.

second. Lightning Bolt. it's one of the best red cards in the game and it's cost effective way of solving problems cannot be understated. i think it's important that it gets a slot in this deck.

third. your win con appears to be Mogis/burn. Mogis is a very slow way to win. normally for a control deck you are controlling them until you can drop some threat that you can protect that will win the game shortly after that or at least create such a lock as to make getting out of it futile. mogis will never turn on in your deck so at most it's going to be 2 damage a turn from mogis assuming they aren't doing a wide strategy. perhaps a planeswalker like Liliana, the Last Hope who you can +1 to help remove creatures and win off of her ult.

fourth. your mix of control spells is heavily weighted towards destroying creatures after they hit the field. thats something you want to respond to but people play other cards that you'll need to deal with. enchantments like Wilderness Reclamation, artifacts like Amulet of Vigor and non-permanents of all kinds. you also will lose pace with decks that use creature that have ETBs such as Omnath, Locus of Creation and Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath which yes you can kill but you'll be losing card advantage. you need a few more proactive responses and ways to gain incremental advantage over your opponent. discard spells like Thoughtseize or at least multipurpose cards like Kolaghan's Command and Collective Brutality can help. other proactive cards such as Blood Moon and Ghostly Prison can shut down or at least slow opposing decks to keep them from racing ahead of you.

with the above things in mind i'd suggest something along the following changes.

cards to remove:

-3 Crackling Doom: soul shatter and other remove should be sufficient

-3 Lightning Helix: lifegain is great for stabilizing but the power removal comes from it's mana efficiency. on turn 2 being able to play a discard spell and hold up a Lightning Bolt for their creature is much more powerful than the life gain from helix. still a great card for sideboard to bring in against lightning fast agro decks like burn or zoo.

-1 Soul Shatter: i'm not sure you need any of these in the mainboard. you have Anguished Unmaking to get around indestructible should it come up. Dreadbore and Anguished Unmaking can kill planeswalkers. That leaves hexproof is the only thing that this gets around that you don't have an answer for already. hexproof is uncommon enough that i'd personally put this in the sideboard, but considering how many of this effect you have in your deck i'm assuming your meta has enough hexproof to warrant 2 mainboard slots.

-4 Divine Gambit: 1 for 1 at best, 1 for 0 at worst. the ability to exile most types of permanents is powerful but the downside seems too risky and likely to set you behind.

-3 Anger the gods: you don't need 7 soft sweeps. with the amount of removal you have a board wide damage spell is likely for hitting tokens or other wide strategies. for most of these scenarios 2 damage should be enough. in the scenarios where 2 isn't enough, 3 likely isn't either. Wrath of God or similar would be a better bet for those situations.

-1 Pyroclasm: you probably don't even need 4 soft sweeps in the main unless you are expecting a dearth of going wide strategies in your meta.

-3 Mogis, God of Slaughter: without a way to turn him on or a way to create a true lock outs like teferi-pool you aren't going to get as much value out of mogis as you need to make him your win con.

cards to add:

+4 Lightning Bolt: this is solid removal or a damage to face if you don't need to use it as such.

+2-4: Thoughtseize: considered one of the best discard spells in the game because it hits basically everything at the cost of 2 life.

+2-4: Duress: you can choose Inquisition of Kozilek or Raven's Crime or another discard spell of your choice. i'd suggest at least 6 discard spells and you can decide the split between your discard spells depending on how aggressive your meta is.

+2 Kolaghan's Command: small creature removal, artifact removal, discard spell. very versatile.

+4 Liliana, the Last Hope, a strong contender for win con. i went with 4 copies because it doesn't have innate protection and you want it early if you can as it provides good value.

+1 Path to Exile: to make it a 4 of.

+1 Fatal Push: to make it a 4 of.

??? Tibalt's Trickery: I don't know if this is a good idea in control. you are giving up a card to change what card your opponent is casting. but they are still getting something. so you are 1 for 0ing them in a way. if they are casting a spell like Scapeshift for the win then obviously this will help but the risk of them flipping an equally scary threat off the top is very real. but your choices in counterspell are pretty limited.

if you are willing to mess around with your mana base you can probably make good use of Blood Moon as well but that would require some careful maneuvering in a 3 color deck.

wallisface on I tried building a lockdown …

1 month ago

From looking through the list, i have the following thoughts:

• typical control decks can attack from many different avenues. Your deck seems very focused on just killing creatures (which is terrible vs non-creature decks). As well as that, a lot of your spells are quite high cmc (3 mana to kill a thing is a lot). I’d suggest some more proactive and lower cmc control, like Inquisition of Kozilek and Thoughtseize.

• Divine Gambit and Tibalt's Trickery don’t seem good as your opponent gets to replace whatever you’re stopping

I would recommend the abovementioned hand disruption, but also leaning into more of a typical Young Pyromancer shell - they are a fairly controlly deck for Mardu colours, and have a lot of decent interaction. It would also incentivise you to play with a better (lower) mana curve, and make the likes of Kolaghan's Command available to you, which is a strong card.

Fuzzlewuzzle on I Am Fire, I Am Death

1 month ago

X-Factor11105 I've actually been seriously considering Kolaghan's Command lately, but I dunno if I'd remove Bedevil for it (Bedevil is just so so good). Dragonspeaker Shaman was in here for a while a long time ago, but I swapped him out for Dragonlord's Servant for the easier mana cost, then swapped the servant out for Nightscape Familiar because familiar applies to more of my cards. Cost reducers are only really worth it if you get their benefit multiple times in a turn, and I cast multiple red cards way more often than I cast multiple dragons.

Ugin, the Ineffable isn't quite as important as he used to be, but he's still good. Prior to Feed the Swarm being printed he was arguably the best targeted enchantment removal Rakdos had to offer (compared to stuff like Spine of Ish Sah and Scour from Existence). I wish he was at least one mana cheaper, but the removal+card advantage package he offers is still really nice

X-Factor11105 on I Am Fire, I Am Death

1 month ago

SO STOKED

FWIW, Knollspine Dragon has been much easier to setup for 4+ cards than I thought it'd be. That might be the next one to try for possible ramp options!

You're right about Mutavault unfortunately. Instead I'm gonna try Malakir Rebirth  ^Flip to see if I can more mileage out of that utility land spot. Valakut Awakening  ^Flip and Agadeem's Awakening  ^Flip are next on the list for testing.

FWIW I'm going to test Kolaghan's Command in favor of Bedevil to get some more flexibility in that removal spot. Same for Soul Shatter - it feels like so much value for 3 mana, I have no idea why it's a $0.25 card!

Have you ever tested Dragonspeaker Shaman? I'm wondering about it - that 2-mana cost reduction on a 3 CMC body just screams efficiency.

Also - how valuable has Ugin, the Ineffable been for you? I've been seriously considering it for the spot removal and draw but that six CMC is scaring me a bit.

HxC-Spazz on RAKDOS CONTROL

1 month ago

Thank you for your comments fatalzintomyum !

You made two really good suggestions ! In fact, if you look at the cards selection i made in the description, you will see that both of them (Bitterblossom & Kolaghan's Command) were main deck. This actual version is a test of Mazemind Tome.

The lack of cards draw and the high number of Prowess decks i faced make me wanna try it. As i also put in a one-of Chandra, Acolyte of Flame and have so many three drop, i decided to swap Kolaghan's Command and Rakdos Charm from side to main. This allows graveyard & artifact hate game one, and decrease the mana-curve. I also put Demigod of Revenge in the sideboard for matchups where i need a faster clock and/or if my Ensnaring Bridge are dead.

I can easily go back to my first version if i'm not convinced after some play-testing ;)

Concerning Smoldering Marsh, i never had to regret it. I actually run seven basics so fetching it untapped is not very difficult.