Karona Virus OFFICIAL

Commander / EDH Five Color Infect Multiplayer Theme/Gimmick Vorthos

kpres

Land (44)

• 1x Arcane Sanctum
• 1x Blackcleave Cliffs
• 1x Blood Crypt
• 1x Blooming Marsh
• 1x Choked Estuary
• 1x Concealed Courtyard
• 1x Crumbling Necropolis
• 1x Darkslick Shores
• 1x Darkwater Catacombs
• 1x Dismal Backwater
• 1x Dragonskull Summit
• 1x Drowned Catacomb
• 1x Evolving Wilds
• 1x Foreboding Ruins
• 2x Forest
• 2x Island
• 1x Isolated Chapel
• 2x Mountain
• 1x Murmuring Bosk
• 1x Nomad Outpost
• 1x Opulent Palace
• 1x Overgrown Tomb
• 2x Plains
• 1x Sandsteppe Citadel
• 1x Savage Lands
• 9x Swamp
• 1x Tainted Field
• 1x Tainted Isle
• 1x Tainted Peak
• 1x Tainted Wood
• 1x Terramorphic Expanse
• 1x Woodland Cemetery

Instant (3)

• 1x Contagion
• 1x Instill Infection
• 1x Sick and Tired

Creature (22)

• 1x Atraxa, Praetors' Voice
• 1x Atris, Oracle of Half-Truths
• 1x Blight Mamba
• 1x Blighted Agent
• 1x Chronozoa
• 1x Civilized Scholar  ^Flip
• 1x Contagious Nim
• 1x Cystbearer
• 1x Droning Bureaucrats
• 1x Garza Zol, Plague Queen
• 1x Gwafa Hazid, Profiteer
• 1x Lavinia of the Tenth
• 1x Pestilence Demon
• 1x Pharika, God of Affliction
• 1x Plague Engineer
• 1x Plague Mare
• 1x Plague Myr
• 1x Plague Stinger
• 1x Plaguebearer
• 1x Plaguemaw Beast
• 1x Void Beckoner
• 1x Yawgmoth, Thran Physician

Sorcery (10)

• 1x Apocalypse
• 1x Collective Effort
• 1x Desecration Plague
• 1x Inaction Injunction
• 1x Plague Wind
• 1x Pox
• 1x Smallpox
• 1x Spread the Sickness
• 1x Undercity Plague
• 1x Wrath of God

Commander (1)

Enchantment (16)

• 1x Arrest
• 1x Brainwash
• 1x Captive Audience
• 1x Collective Restraint
• 1x Compulsory Rest
• 1x Conspiracy
• 1x Crackdown
• 1x Engineered Plague
• 1x Greed
• 1x Infectious Rage
• 1x Martial Law
• 1x Pestilence
• 1x Propaganda
• 1x Revoke Privileges
• 1x Sphere of Safety
• 1x Virulent Plague

Artifact (4)

• 1x Contagion Clasp
• 1x Contagion Engine
• 1x Edifice of Authority
• 1x Plague Boiler

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Maybeboard

Creature (37)

• 1x Ammit Eternal
• 1x Angry Mob
• 1x Blazing Archon
• 1x Blighted Bat
• 1x Blightsteel Colossus
• 1x Blightwidow
• 1x Dementia Bat
• 1x Diseased Vermin
• 1x Doomed Traveler
• 1x Dread
• 1x Endbringer
• 1x Infected Vermin
• 1x Infectious Horror
• 1x Infectious Host
• 1x Kulrath Knight
• 1x Mannichi, the Fevered Dream
• 1x Minister of Impediments
• 1x Peacekeeper
• 1x Pestilence Rats
• 1x Pestilent Kathari
• 1x Pestilent Souleater
• 1x Pestilent Spirit
• 1x Phage the Untouchable
• 1x Phyrexian Plaguelord
• 1x Plague Beetle
• 1x Plague Belcher
• 1x Plague Dogs
• 1x Plague Fiend
• 1x Plague Rats
• 1x Plague Sliver
• 1x Plague Spitter
• 1x Plague Wight
• 1x Plague Witch
• 1x Plaguecrafter
• 1x Plagued Rusalka
• 1x Unruly Mob
• 1x Void Beckoner

Enchantment (28)

• 1x Agoraphobia
• 1x Bloodshed Fever
• 1x Cowed by Wisdom
• 1x Dust Corona
• 1x Fear
• 1x Fevered Convulsions
• 1x Fevered Visions
• 1x Ghostly Prison
• 1x Imperial Mask
• 1x Infectious Bloodlust
• 1x Infectious Curse  ^Flip
• 1x Intimidation
• 1x Isolation Zone
• 1x Krovikan Plague
• 1x Mass Hysteria
• 1x Mob Mentality
• 1x Necrotic Plague
• 1x Phyresis
• 1x Quag Sickness
• 1x Sicken
• 1x Spreading Plague
• 1x Strength of Isolation
• 1x Tainted Remedy
• 1x Temporal Isolation
• 1x Traveling Plague
• 1x Vow of Duty
• 1x War Tax
• 1x Widespread Panic

Sorcery (10)

• 1x Dakmor Plague
• 1x Death Cloud
• 1x Eternal Isolation
• 1x Incite Hysteria
• 1x Nausea
• 1x Plague Spores
• 1x Plague of Vermin
• 1x Sickening Dreams
• 1x Swallowing Plague
• 1x Worst Fears

Instant (9)

• 1x Abandon Reason
• 1x Ad Nauseam
• 1x Batwing Brume
• 1x Curfew
• 1x False Cure
• 1x Fanatical Fever
• 1x Fever Charm
• 1x Fevered Strength
• 1x Sickening Shoal

Artifact (2)

• 1x Blight Sickle
• 1x Isolation Cell

Land (1)

• 1x Halls of Mist

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In light of our pandemic shut-down, I'm exploring several themes:

• Black - Sickness and plague

• White - Staying at home, not able to attack

• Green - Some infect creatures and sickness effects are green

• Blue - Propaganda, deception, and misinformation by the media

• Red - Limited resources, taking things, and acting selfishly, rashly, and passionately

And of course, the whole deck is led by the Coronavirus itself!

Honorable mention to Spacegodzilla, Death Corona. If I can get a copy or figure out how to link the alternately-named card, it'll be in here.

HOW IT WORKS

The way a Karona deck wants to work is by buffing up Karona, keeping her alive, and preventing her from coming your way. With the added constraint of keeping it on theme, I've had to omit the vows, assault suit, and other cool Karona cards. If you want a good Karona deck, look elsewhere! This card is 17 years old and is tried, tested, and true in EDH.

How it works in THIS deck is you've got Sphere of Safety, Propaganda, and Edifice of Authority to prevent her from attacking you on your opponents' turns. Then there are a lot of cards to take out creatures on a massive scale - i.e. the plague cards. All of your infect creatures are tiny, so they'll probably get wiped first by Pestilence, so that's why we have Contagion Engine and some point removal sickness cards. By detaining the big creatures and destroying the small ones, you should be able to get your infect creatures through.

The one rule for playing this deck is that if you have to choose a creature type for Plague Engineer or Engineered Plague, you have to pick HUMAN. Stay on theme, folks! You can pick whatever you want with Karona, but it's HUMAN for plagues.

Last of all is the mana base. Since there is a high proportion of black cards (over 50%) and abilities that use black mana, I have made sure that every land taps for black mana.

THEMES

Atris, Oracle of Half-Truths: The people in the media who are inflating tidbits of information or using misleading statistics to create fear.

Chronozoa: One of the few cards that represents a microbe, and this one kind of sounds like it has "corona" in the name.

Civilized Scholar  : This represents the people who are usually rational and smart, but are now ruled by fear and making rash or brutal decisions.

Droning Bureaucrats: This represents the bureaucrats who are making laws to keep people at home. The card literally stops creatures from attacking.

Garza Zol, Plague Queen: This card represents those people who are profiting from the economic shut-down. It's a bit of a stretch, but she profits (grows bigger) when a creature dies. Futures trading is crazy right now because of the market volatility.

Gwafa Hazid, Profiteer: This card better represents those futures traders, but this guy also keeps people at home. So we have two types: The plague queen who represents the belligerent "Hey don't shut down the economy! So what if people die!" side, and Gwafa, who represents the side of "yes, stay at home, I'm making money off of businesses going bankrupt".

Lavinia of the Tenth: This card represents the police cracking down on kids playing basketball or whatever. Crackdown, Arrest, Collective Restraint, Compulsory Rest, Martial Law, and Revoke Privileges also represent this theme.

Propaganda: This card represents the false news being spread about how bad or not bad the pandemic is. See also Brainwash. Stay home, everybody!

Greed: Imagine a stack of toilet paper instead of gold coins.

Maybe this isn't the right forum for this, but let's get deep into the conspiracy theories of what's going on right now, but only because it's relevant to this deck!

• Coronavirus is an inside job - it was made in a lab and released intentionally in the industrial capital of the world, and it was released by the USA, Russia, or China, but we don't really know. What is a good card to represent this?

• The pandemic and our reaction to it is all part of a plan by the financial sector to profit from the major losses in the economy (via futures trading). What is a card that represents futures trading? Maybe something that exiles parts of your library for some effect.

• WHO was too slow to react and failed to adequately warn the rest of the world, partly because of a cover-up by China, which allowed the epidemic to become a pandemic. Delay of information could be represented by putting cards form hand on top of library or by returning permanents to hand.

• USA is mobilizing for war, but a war on whom? When war breaks out, I will add more relevant red cards to the deck and take out some of the plague cards.

• It's worse than the flu, or it's not worse than a common cold, depending on age and health, but it's highly infectious so it spreads from person to person really quickly. Maybe some proliferate effects could represent this - in which case, I need more -1/-1 counters. Perhaps this is already represented by Contagion Engine

• Ummm, what else? Leave conspiracy theories and card recommendations in the comments.

Shout-out to deck:covid-19-cube for an even better list of cards.

Top Ranked	Achieved #1 position in Commander / EDH Five Color 3 years ago Achieved #1 position in Commander / EDH Infect 3 years ago Achieved #1 position in Commander / EDH Theme/Gimmick 3 years ago
Date added	4 years
Last updated	4 years
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	5 - 0 Mythic Rares 34 - 0 Rares 28 - 0 Uncommons 15 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.84
Tokens	Enchantment Snake 1/1 BG, Zombie 2/2 B
Folders	Favorites, Commander