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Heavenly Hellfire (Kaalia of the Vast cEDH)

Commander / EDH Aggro Angels Competitive Demons Dragons Infinite Combo Land Destruction RBW (Mardu)

Xenhelga

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Land (34)

Instant (5)

Creature (29)

Enchantment (6)

Commander (1)

Commander: foil Kaalia of the Vast

Artifact (14)

Sorcery (11)

Maybeboard

Instant (3)

Sorcery (1)

Land (1)

Enchantment (2)

Creature (1)

Artifact (2)

"Now you shall deal with me, oh prince... And all the powers of Hell!"

This is my competitive Kaalia of the Vast EDH that I’ve been fine tuning for years, as well as my current foil project. This list consistently pulls out wins against very high tier cEDH tables and works very well in both 1v1 and pod scenarios, as long as you can pilot it correctly.

This build has been tuned for cEDH and the cancer that usually comes with playing against high tier decks, therefore it has been tuned to play very much so like a semi-control deck itself. The idea is pretty simple, and it follows the same basic principle that most hard aggro decks do, ramp into an appropriately early Kaalia and outpace your opponent. However as I mentioned before, this deck plays as a semi-control variant of Kaalia, and should be treated/played as such. Cards such as Linvala, Keeper of Silence, Rakdos the Defiler, Angel of Serenity, Serra's Emissary, and Grand Abolisher to name a few, are essential to your game plan in this deck, as an early Grand Abolisher can very well mean the end of the game for your opponent since they will be unable to interact with your board. To run this deck properly, you want your opponent to be constantly having to deal with your threats before they can have access to any of their own, keeping reliable early game threats out and swinging every turn is essential. This deck excels in "kicking while they're down." Cards such as Ravages of War, Armageddon, Sire Of Insanity, Avacyn, Angel of Hope, Winter Orb, Balefire Dragon, and Platinum Angel, can create nearly impossible to break locks for your opponents to escape from, and taking advantage of your opponent's dwindling resources is a vital piece in this deck's strategy. You will also notice that I am in fact running several Worldgorger Dragon infinite combo lines in this deck, as well as the Animate Dead + Leonin Relic-Warder + Razaketh, the Foulblooded combo. These are in this deck as a fallback plan if the original hard aggro playstyle becomes unrealistic for any reason, however if you are unfamiliar with how these combos work, or simply do not want to run them they are completely removable. I will warn you however, that these combos make this deck much easier to pilot in large multiplayer scenarios, where I promise you that you will be public enemy #1 after casting a turn two Kaalia. Through the Worldgorger Dragon lines this deck usually aims to win off of infinite ETB triggers from a few cards, the main ones that I personally aim for the most being Rune-Scarred Demon, Bogardan Hellkite, or Angel of Despair. With all of this being said: If you enjoy playing friendly, political games full of discussion and playful banter, this deck is not for you. This deck is NOT a democracy, this deck is a dictatorship.

You will notice that I personally run a lot of early hand disruption in this build, cards like Thoughtseize, and Hymn to Tourach are in this deck due to the fact that Kaalia can be very easily dealt with by an early Force of Will, or Assassin's Trophy which I can promise that you will be running into a lot with this commander at higher tier tables. Running them is completely optional and is based entirely on how competitive of an environment you find yourself playing in, the hand disruption really only being a must have for cEDH games. Unlike hand disruption, it is absolutely essential for any successful Kaalia build, regardless of power, to run cards to protect her, cards such as Lightning Greaves, Mother of Runes, Grand Abolisher, and Giver of Runes help keep Kaalia alive and swinging every turn, putting your opponents on a very difficult to beat clock that will more often than not end in your victory if piloted correctly.

I do not run Wheel of Fortune in this list, I have tested it many times in the past in an attempt to remedy my usually empty hand problem early in the game. However, I have found that more often than not, especially at higher tier tables, the mass wheel effect ends up helping my opponents find answers for my early threats rather than actually help me myself, so it has been cut from the finalized version of my personal list. The only reason that it is still in my maybeboard is that its effectiveness will vastly change depending on your playgroup, obviously not everyone plays in a cutthroat meta, and it is still a phenomenal option for refilling your hand in these colors if you find yourself playing in a mid tier meta. I personally find Esper Sentinel and the large quantity of tutors in my list to simply be better options, which is why they made the final cut and Wheel of Fortune did not, but the decision is ultimately up to you and is based entirely on whatever you personally find to be better and/or more fun in your meta. Chromatic Lantern is the other commonly questioned card in this list, as it is indeed a strange choice for Kaalia, especially a competative rendition of her. The reason being that, unfortunately, Blood Moon is a very common occurance in the meta that I play in, and as I'm sure you've noticed, I do not run a single basic land in my list for the sake of consistency. While I could place it into the sideboard, where I personally think it belongs, it is very rare that I am not staring down a turn one or two Moon, so it makes the final cut of my list. However, if Blood Moon isn't a problem for you and your meta, feel free to cut Chromatic Lantern and replace it with a different source of fast mana.

You will notice that I run very specific pieces of traditional spot removal in this list, and there is a strategic reason for it. This deck aims to throw out early threats via swinging, obviously. By combining our potential for control and removal into the creatures being thrown down with Kaalia of the Vast's attack trigger, we inherently double the individual value and threat level each creature posesses once entering play. In other words, while your opponent's removal or control spells will likely be instants or sorceries, ours will be creatures that hit play turn after turn, quickly exhausting our opponent(s) resources until they are completely spent. We do this by making sure that each creature's effect is valuable and helpful; an answer or response to anything pulled against you being the goal. By making sure that each card has earned a slot through maximum value offered, we avoid unnecessary card slot choices and make certain that our chances of ever drawing an unusable, or dead card, are as low as possible. Upon further inspection you will also notice that I avoid attack trigger based creatures like the plague in this list, and almost exclusively favor ETB effects or damage based effects such as the ones on Hellkite Tyrant, Rakdos the Defiler, Burning-Rune Demon, or Terror of Mount Velus. The reason being almost identical to the one stated above, we want our creatures to present a threat right here, right now, not 3 turns from now when our opponent(s) have had time to recover or dig for an answer. These kinds of creature choices prevent the kind of "losing steam" curses that hard aggro builds just like this often suffer from. By getting the maximum ammount of value from any creature play, we ensure that every scary turn of ours is followed up by an even more brutal one.

To sum things up, if you enjoy extremely fast, brutal, and ruthless beatdown builds, don't mind playing solitaire for around 3 turns until you win, and love land destruction like I do, this deck is for you. It's certainly my favorite deck that I have ever played/built!

Yes, I am, and will remain salty about Iona, Shield of Emeria getting banned. Thanks, Sheldon Menery, you absolute noob of a player.

Quick side note for those wondering, I have decided to replace Linvala, Keeper of Silence with the Drana and Linvala duo card for obvious reasons, and running both for me proved to just be complete and utter overkill. However, if you keep running into those pesky Yisan, Urza, or Najeela players and want to run both in your list, every test run I've personally ran with both went smoothly.

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Casual

100% Competitive

Date added 6 years
Last updated 3 months
Exclude colors UG
Key combos
Legality

This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)

46 - 0 Mythic Rares

41 - 0 Rares

9 - 0 Uncommons

2 - 0 Commons
Cards 100
Avg. CMC 3.42
Folders cmd, try, Later, Interesting Decks, cEDH builds, Decks to try, Saved Decks, Kaalia comparison, Other folks’ Decks, Kaalia
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