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Divine Dorkervention (Katilda Budget EDH)

Commander / EDH Aggro Budget Casual GW (Selesnya) Humans Multiplayer Ramp Tap/Untap Tokens Value Engine

LynxGoddess

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Human One (30)

Lifegain (8)

Wincons (5)

Mana (3)

Lands (32)

Draw (12)

Interaction (9)

Tokens (7)

Recursion (2)

Haste (1)

Commander (1)

Commander: Katilda, Dawnhart Prime

Untap (13)

Protection (10)

Pump (7)

Stax (4)

Maybeboard

Other (5)

Introduction

We commander players allways enjoy new toys, and we keep getting spoiled by great new build-around creatures to put in our command zones. From Killian, Ink Duelist letting us break the cost of auras to Tovolar, Dire Overlord   finally making werewolf tribal powerful to Tergrid, God of Fright   doing wonders for powerful edict effects. Having a commander that realy synnergises with your deck is awesome, and having a commander that makes your deck very powerful while doing so feels even better. And that brings us back home to what I would argue is the most powerful, budget friendly, build-around commander we've seen in a long time: Katilda, Dawnhart Prime.

Katilda allows us to break the game's rules in a new way. She makes every single human in your deck a mana dork, ramping us with each creature we put on the board. Breaking the limit to one drop mana dorks gives us great consistancy and insane mana velocity, I cannot understate that Katilda's ability is increadibly powerful! It will let us build a huge board presence increadibly quickly, and we will be able to truly aggro out opponents in a multiplayer format.

Primer

Thus, this is an aggressive Human tribal deck combining Katilda, Dawnhart Prime and humans with a mana value of 1. As we've seen the ability on Katilda essentially allows us to run however many Llanowar Elves we want, which is the fastest permanent ramp in the game (apart from the most prohibitivly expensive artifacts). For this deck, I have settled for around 30 one drop dorks, choosing the most relevant alternate stats and abilities I could find, and supplemented them with a good amount of powerful card draw and some scary haymakers. As it happens, angel tokens and big pump spells are really good budget finishers!

Game Plan

The game plan is to quickly amass a horde of ramping humans and play powerful cards with high mana costs before our opponents have time to set up and prepare for our incoming alpha strike. We need to be fast, and we need to find ways to break the action economy of the game even further either by gaining great card velocity or improving the card quality of the permanents we allready have in play and in our hand further - preferrably both!

Card velocity comes through draw effects like Duskwatch Recruiter  , Shamanic Revelation, Huatli, Radiant Champion and Beast Whisperer.

We can imrpove the quality of our dorks by repeatedly untapping them through e.g. Vitilize, Gideon, Martial Paragon or Village Bell-Ringer, thus gaining access to their mana several times in a turn. We might also improve the card quality by making our creatures larger threats with e.g. Ajani, the Greathearted, Kyler, Sigardian Emissary or Coppercoat Vanguard, or by gaining further benefits from playing our cards (see Soul Warden, Torens, Fist of the Angels and more). Finally we improve card quality simply by lowering the threshold for playing powerful spells by ramping, and we can gain a relative improvement of our card quality by reducing the quality of our opponents' cards (see Deafening Silence, Glowrider and Thalia, Guardian of Thraben).

Finally, a suite of continually untapping effects will allow us to repeatedly activate Katilda to pump our team - or to use some other mana outlet we might have. Therefore we add Seedborn Muse, Quest for Renewal and Drumbellower into the mix to gain ever more advantages.

The Ideal Start

To get the best start to the game, we need to mulligan until we have a hand containing the following:

  • An untapped green mana source
  • An untapped white mana source
  • Two one drop humans that share a color (or a white one drop human and Avacyn's Pilgrim)
  • A scary card that costs 6 mana or less to cast

For example: Plains, Forest, Doomed Traveler, Nova Cleric, Kyler, Sigardian Emissary

We then play the following starting sequence; (using the example above)

  1. Turn 1: Plains, Traveler
  2. Turn 2: Forest, Katilda -> tap Traveler to play Cleric
  3. Turn 3: (Land if drawn), tap lands and humans to play Kyler

And with that we have set up a very powerful engine very, very quickly using only our commander, two lands and any two among thirty cards in our deck.

Weaknesses

The deck has very little interaction, with a few tools to stop opponents from ruining our day and barely any to disrupt anyone else's plans - we are an aggro deck and our goal is to over power our opposition as fast as possible and snag a win. If we are disrupted we have likely lost, but we can rebuild pretty quickly. Wait patiently for the time to explode into action again if you are stopped from going off, and let your opponents spend their resources somewhere else first.

The deck runs enough ways to make our board indestructible to get us through many games, but we need to be very mindful of keeping mana accessible whenever we believe disruption might be heading our way. Targeted is considerably less scary. If aimed at Katilda we can often let the removal o through and recast our commander - at times it might even be wise to let our Katilda die as a blocker if we have the mana to replay her uncontested. And if aimed at other key pieces we may well have enough redundancy to replace the winning threat quickly. I recomend saving your protection for when the entire board is threatened, when our draw engines are at risk, or when we will follow up the protecting with a game winning turn.

Secretly Busted Cards

Some unexpected cards punch well above their weight in this deck, and I feel they deserve a special mention.

Duskwatch Recruiter   and Recruitment Officer are possibly the best card draw there is for our purposes. Apart from being cheap humans, and thus ramping us, they are excellent mana sinks that refill our hand and offer great card selection repeatedly once we have established a board.

Midnight Guard makes any white one mana creature free once it no longer has summoning sickness (while Katilda is on the board, which should be allways).

Patch Up gives us an emergency button that may be our only chance to recover from untimely board wipes, but it's really good at doing just that.

Storm Herd and Sigarda's Summons look like janky budget win conditions. But in this deck they are putting in very realistic wins due to Katildas second ability. An eight mana spell in Storm Herd is unplayable in decks that don't ramp to eight on by turn four, but untapping on turn five with upwards of forty fliers, tapping Katilda to give them a counter each and going to attackers is going to end games real fast. At the same time, casually dropping a six mana enchantment that turns your 1/1 humans into 5/5 flying angels off of a single Katilda activation means Sigarda's Summons can put on a whole new level of pressure way earlier than expected. These are generally jank cards. But in this deck, they are very much at home!

Adapting the Deck

You can easily switch out a few cards to make this deck even more budget accessible. Huatli, Radiant Champion and Seedborn Muse together take up 20% of our total budget for example - and while they are indeed powerful effects, Soul of Theros or Serra's Emissary will pull a lot of weight as well if you'd like to make the deck even cheaper. Feel free to experiment and adapt the deck to your preferences by switching cards around!

To take the deck in the other direction, look first to the land base. I'd suggest that Temple Gardenfoil, Savannah, Branchloft Pathway  , Horizon Canopy, Bountiful Promenade, Mana Confluence, City of Brassfoil, Cavern of Souls and Gemstone Caverns all have a place in this deck along with any white and/or green fetches. Secondly, there are some one mana humans that might be good upgrades for the deck. Esper Sentinel, Ulvenwald Tracker, Sylvan Safekeeper, Serra Ascendant, Kytheon, Hero of Akrosfoil  , Mother of Runes and Champion of the Parish could all be slotted in instead of the current one drops.

Summary

As you can see, the deck is stupidly explosive and absolutely tips the idea of fast ramp in EDH on its head. Sure, we may be disrupted and fall way behind. Sure, we might not have the tools to stop other players from following thier own game plan. And sure, we might have to mulligan to four and hope for the best some games. But our deck is very fast and very scary in the early game, so most of the time we'll be able to do enough damage to straight up win and at the very least keep us relevant as the game goes on. Just be prepared to play a bit of archenemy occasionally!

Hope you enjoy!

Suggestions

Updates Add

More Continual Untap — Oct. 12, 2022
Edit

I've added Quest for Renewal and Drumbellower to the deck as additional Seedborn Muse effects. This very clearly was one of the best cards for the deck to play and I want to lean into it more heavily.

Soon I will be looking to update the deck to reflect more one mana humans having been printed, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. Feel free to recomend one mana humans printed from Neon Dynasty and onward if you have any in mind.

I might also look to find ways to be more interactive and survivable since the deck really struggles more often than I'd like. But I'm not too optimistic that there is a good balance to strike and we might still be better of aiming to be explosive enough to win the games we can rather that try to find staying power.

Engine Tuning and Trimming Inconsistent Cards — Nov. 15, 2021
Edit
New One Drops — Nov. 8, 2021
Edit
Thalia — Nov. 3, 2021
Edit
First new synergies from Crimson Vow — Nov. 2, 2021
Edit
Swapping Cards, and Minor Stax — Oct. 13, 2021
Edit
Crashing Drawbridge — Oct. 4, 2021
Edit
Land Base and Ulvenwald Tracker — Sept. 25, 2021
Edit

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91% Casual

Competitive

Revision 12 See all

(1 year ago)

+1 Benefactor's Draught main
+1 Bridgeworks Battle  Flip main
+1 Charitable Levy main
-1 Codespell Cleric main
+1 Disciple of Freyalise  Flip main
-2 Forest main
-1 Join Shields main
-2 Plains main
+1 Razorgrass Ambush  Flip main
+1 Rubblebelt Maverick main
-1 Tower of Fortunes main
+1 Witch Enchanter  Flip main