Kalitas - Traitorous Control
Commander / EDH
SCORE: 3 | 1 COMMENT | 1156 VIEWS | IN 2 FOLDERS
Initial playtest of v1.0 —July 10, 2016
Played quite a few games with this deck. Had two opponents, each of whom brought several different decks to the table over the course of the evening. Played some 1v1, some 3 player FFA. I made no change to the deck.
My deck was pretty amazing. I lost only once over the whole ~8 hour night. Loss was due to me not using mulligan when I really should have, and my opponents getting a damned near perfect opening hand (Serra Ascendant) and initial turns. He dropped Iona on me, I think it was about Turn 4, maybe 5. I actually had Oblivion Stone in hand and 5 mana available. 3 to cast the Stone, and next turn I was hoping to wipe the board. Then he played Winter Orb, so I had to scoop.
In other games, I occasionally brought our Kalitas, but not consistently. Primarily I was playing standard control, and while Kalitas has nice side effects and pumps nicely, he doesn't directly help clear the board. Zero of my wins were due to commander damage, but his Lifelink ability saved me on several occasions.
Biggest all-stars were the mana accelerators. Being able to fairly consistently dump my entire hand and have mana left for shenanigans even without any infinite mana combos online was amazing. None of my mana doublers, including the creatures, were ever killed by opponents. Including the time I got hit by a hard-cast Curse of the Cabal and had to sac 11 permanents.
Another all-star was Sheoldred, Whispering One. Playing her right after sweeping the board, or (as in one case) with Grave Pact online with a Fleshbag Marauder imprinted in a MImic Vat just put a soft lock on the remainder of the game. Many salty tears were shed, seeing me case Sheoldred yet again.
Wins included general creature hordes swinging in on a clear batlefield, a few loops of Gray Merchant of Asphodel (with a very fortunate topdeck of Phyrexian Reclamation to seal the deal), scoops due to Sheoldred with Xiahou Dun, the One-Eyed and Demonic Tutor in the grave, one very pumped Nirkana Revenant, a double-cast (with immediately used flashback) Army of the Damned for 26 zombie tokens, and an Exsanguinate. Both Extort from Crypt Ghast and a few pings from Blood Artist were helpful along the way.
The Gary win was particulaly fun, because I had no sac outlet on the table, but plenty of devotion. I used Karn Liberated to bait a counterspell, so that Phyrexian Altar would resolve. I've never baited a counter with Karn before, let alone for something as simple as that. Absolutely won me the game.
None of my opponents were apparently equipped to do any board wiping of their own. Some spot removal that was moderately troublesome, but no full wipes. One commented that he really needs to add Black Sun's Zenith to his decks that include black.
I on the other hand had enough varied sweepers to recover from several very unfortunate board states. The final game saw Ugin, the Spirit Dragon using his -X to clear an opponent's very beefy heavy-equipment commander and his entire horde of cat tokens, when I was one more commander swing away from a loss.
Several of the zombie themed cards seem to be underperformers. Going to look at removing some of them.
Priority additions will include Steel Hellkite and some hexproof/shroud equipment for Kalitas/Sheoldred/whoever.
Also just got an Extraplanar Lens, and I have the snow swamps, so I might find room for that as well. The doublers are just amazing.
EDIT
At one point Nekusar, the Mindrazer was played. This was later widely agreed to have been a bad idea, since paying life for cards is exactly what I'd like to do anyway. I stole it with Helm of Possession. Good times.