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Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund: Dragon Tyrant

Commander / EDH BRG (Jund)

limitsoflogic


Ah, Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund , the original dragon alpha-pappa. Then The Ur-Dragon had to come along and upstage him, didn't he?

Yep, poor old Karrthus ain't the most popular Dragon tribal commander these days. He's not even the most popular dragon commander in Jund.

I'm guessing that this is due to the fact that Karrthus's ability seems just a weee bit corner-case. I mean, "gain control of all dragons and untap them" works pretty well against dragons, but it ain't so hot against, oh you know, anything other than dragons.

So on the whole people just use Karrthus as a hasty beater, and a haste enabler for other big brutes like Atarka, World Render and Balefire Dragon . Which is fine and all, but a little primitive for the EDH meta in 2021, not to mention kinda boring.

But I think that people are sleeping on Karrthus's unique power - the power to untap dragons. It's time for Karrthus combo, baby!

The idea behind the deck is "how do you exploit that Karrthus trigger?" The obvious answer is "give other people dragons, then grab 'em up!" For which we use the classics, Descent of the Dragons and Sarkhan the Mad , and the not-so-obvious but super-awsesome Blades of Velis Vel . The last one is super-tech because rather than replace your opponents' best creatures with dragons, you just momentarily turn them into dragons, then nick 'em - for ever. Hey Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger , you work for ME now! Oh no you got haste too? My my my...

Way-to-exploit-ETB number two is probably more fun for being the road less traveled - send those lazy dragons down the mana mines! This is about using your dragons to generate mana, then untap 'em with Karrthus and go round again for super-value. The two pieces for this kind of dragon abuse are Citanul Hierophants and Song of Freyalise .

To make this dragon-mana-exploitation work you need numbers of drones, and you cannot be casting them suckers one at a time, so Dragon Broodmother , Nesting Dragon and Utvara Hellkite are essentials but most other dragons are surplus to requirements. Molten Echoes doubles up your Karrthus trigger to double your profits. If you hit critical mass - i.e. a 10-mana Karrthus trigger dividend - you can go infinite by bouncing the Tyrant repeatedly with Temur Sabertooth .

These pieces just so happen to enable a couple of other juicy combos. So Bladewing the Risen loops himself in and out of the graveyard forever with Molten Echoes ; throw in Dragon Tempest for infinite damage, Citanul Hierophants for infinite green mana, or Garruk's Uprising or similar to draw unlimited cards.

All these shenanigans require hella mana, and the ability to get Karrthus off the field to repeat his trigger. So Burnt Offering and Metamorphosis are star players. Cursed Mirror ain't half bad either.

Overall this is a reasonably powerful but fair deck, not too fast out the blocks but with plenty of cool power-moves and able to pull a surprise win out of the hat without necessarily relying on combat damage. Get them dragons down the mines baby!

Star players and honourable mentions...

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92% Casual

Competitive

Date added 2 years
Last updated 2 years
Legality

This deck is Commander / EDH legal.

Rarity (main - side)

7 - 0 Mythic Rares

29 - 0 Rares

31 - 0 Uncommons

16 - 0 Commons

Cards 100
Avg. CMC 3.70
Tokens Copy Clone, Dragon 1/1 RG, Dragon 2/2 R, Dragon 4/4 R, Dragon 5/5 R, Dragon 6/6 R, Dragon Egg 0/2 R, Treasure
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