Kroxa, Hand Control

Commander / EDH BR (Rakdos)

mccabej140

Lands (33)

• 1x Blood Crypt
• 1x Bloodstained Mire
• 1x Castle Locthwain
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Dragonskull Summit
• 1x Exotic Orchard
• 1x Fabled Passage
• 1x Graven Cairns
• 1x Hanweir Battlements  ^Meld
• 1x Luxury Suite
• 5x Mountain
• 1x Prismatic Vista
• 1x Reflecting Pool
• 1x Shadowblood Ridge
• 1x Shizo, Death's Storehouse
• 1x Smoldering Marsh
• 1x Sulfurous Springs
• 12x Swamp

Draw (7)

• 1x Asylum Visitor
• 1x Necropotence
• 1x Read the Bones
• 1x Sensei's Divining Top
• 1x Syphon Mind
• 1x Tinybones, Trinket Thief
• 1x Tome of Legends

Removal (5)

• 1x Bedevil
• 1x Chaos Warp
• 1x Feed the Swarm
• 1x Fire Covenant
• 1x Shenanigans

Search (3)

• 1x Entomb
• 1x Shred Memory
• 1x Wishclaw Talisman

Mill (9)

• 1x Altar of Dementia
• 1x Codex Shredder
• 1x Doom Whisperer
• 1x Golgari Thug
• 1x Mesmeric Orb
• 1x Perpetual Timepiece
• 1x Stinkweed Imp
• 1x Stitcher's Supplier
• 1x Wand of Vertebrae

Discard Payoffs (8)

• 1x Bloodchief Ascension
• 1x Geth's Grimoire
• 1x Quest for the Nihil Stone
• 1x Shrieking Affliction
• 1x Storm World
• 1x Tergrid, God of Fright  ^Flip
• 1x Waste Not
• 1x Wheel of Torture

Reanimation (8)

• 1x Agadeem's Awakening  ^Flip
• 1x Chainer, Nightmare Adept
• 1x Claim / Fame
• 1x Coffin Queen
• 1x Corpse Dance
• 1x Dawn of the Dead
• 1x Reanimate
• 1x Underworld Breach

Hate Cards (3)

• 1x Dauthi Voidwalker
• 1x Opposition Agent
• 1x Torpor Orb

Ramp (3)

• 1x Arcane Signet
• 1x Dark Ritual
• 1x Dockside Extortionist

Commander (1)

Miscellaneous (8)

• 1x Anger
• 1x Crucible of Worlds
• 1x Dire Fleet Daredevil
• 1x Lifeline
• 1x Lightning Greaves
• 1x Mirror of the Forebears
• 1x Sundial of the Infinite
• 1x Syr Konrad, the Grim

Board Wipes (5)

• 1x Blasphemous Act
• 1x Damnation
• 1x Last One Standing
• 1x Toxic Deluge
• 1x Vandalblast

Discard (5)

• 1x Bottomless Pit
• 1x Liliana, Heretical Healer  ^Flip
• 1x Necrogoyf
• 1x Oppression
• 1x Rankle, Master of Pranks

Self Discard (2)

• 1x Anje Falkenrath
• 1x Azra Oddsmaker

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Game Plan

The general gameplan is to wear down opponents' resources with discard effects before finishing them off with a combo or commander damage. The two big combos in the deck are:

Altar of Dementia + Dockside Extortionist + Underworld Breach

Animate Dead + Worldgorger Dragon

These combos are quite fragile (we lose if an opponent has interaction against Worldgorger Dragon) but your opponents shouldn't have many cards in hand if the game goes our way.

Board Wipes

The deck has plenty of board wipes to deal with threats that evade our discard effects. Luckily, Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger doesn't care about dying so playing a board wipe will almost always be good.

Discard

The deck also has plenty of repeatable discard effects to ensure that the opponents' hands always remain low.

Discard Payoffs

The best card in the deck is Waste Not. Nine times out of ten if you're tutoring for something, you're tutoring for this card (if you haven't already). It functions particularly well when paired with cards like Burning Inquiry and Dark Deal

Hate Cards

The deck also has a package of hate cards to slow down our opponents while not disrupting your game plan too much. I personally love Torpor Orb because it shuts off Kroxa's ETB sack trigger and gives us a 6/6 for {R}{B} that causes our opponents to discard every turn. It also helps a ton against graveyard hate cards like Rest in Peace that would otherwise be a pain to deal with.

Nasty combo that might lose you friends: Search Opposition Agent with Wishclaw Talisman and flash her in when your opponent tries to use it! If you're feeling particularly nasty give Wishclaw Talisman to someone on the condition that they give it back to you after they use it (probably will only work once).

Chains of Mephistopheles is a great unique card with horrible rules text. Basically it just turns draws into rummages (or mills if they can't discard initially). The card is also a really expensive reserve list card so I'd recommend proxying it if you really like the effect (like I do). Additionally, it synergizes great with dredge cards since both are replacement effects.

Milling

Milling is very critical for the deck because a well stocked graveyard means that we can cast Kroxa for{R}{R}{B}{B} from the graveyard effectively ignoring commander tax if he dies.

Miscelleneous

Haste enablers allow us to cast Kroxa from the grave and swing on the same turn essentially doubling the cards discarded by our opponents.

Mirage Mirror is great with Kroxa as it gives us a Kroxa that won't sack itself. In response to Kroxa's sack trigger, activate Mirage Mirror targeting Kroxa. Sacrifice the original Kroxa to the legendary rule and Mirage Mirror becomes a Kroxa. You may even be able to swing immediately with your Kroxa copy if you played Mirage Mirror on a previous turn.

Crucible of Worlds synergises well with our mill strategy, helping us hit our land drops. Agadeem's Awakening   can also be played from the graveyard as a land! (The ruling is weird, I looked it up)

Reanimation

Coffin Queen is a sneakily good card because it can reanimate big threats from our opponents' graveyards. We can then untap her and exile the card if we want.

Reanimate and Claim / Fame essentially become {B}: each opponent discards a card if Kroxa is in your graveyard.

Notable Exclusions

I chose to forgo Sol Ring since I frequently found the extra colourless mana unhelpful. It doesn't help caste Kroxa and the majority of the cards in the deck are quite colour intensive (plus it just paints a huge target on our back).

I also chose not to include cards like Liliana's Caress because the two damage isn't that impactful and frequently opponents won't be discarding because they have no cards in hand anyway since the deck doesn't run wheel effects.

Date added	4 years
Last updated	1 year
Key combos	Animate Dead + Worldgorger Dragon Altar of Dementia + Dockside Extortionist + Underworld Breach
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	9 - 0 Mythic Rares 49 - 0 Rares 16 - 0 Uncommons 9 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.67
Tokens	Emblem Liliana, Defiant Necromancer, Treasure, Zombie 2/2 B