Karazikar Discussion
Deck Help forum
Posted on Aug. 18, 2021, 3:09 p.m. by RoarMaster
Hey all, its been a day. Havent posted in probs a year or two, but Im all into the new Karazikar, the Eye Tyrant right now and wanted to discuss some potential routes to take him, and just how great he really is. e I dont mean 'Great' as in super competitive, I mean it just that he does alotta sweet stuff and is a pretty unique and cool commander.
At anyrate...
Karazikar is like the illegitimate lovechild of Edric, Spymaster of Trest and Grenzo, Havoc Raiser or maybe Marisi, Breaker of the Coil. Comparisons can be made either way.
What makes him great? Card advantage and heat loss(if you want to call it that), and board control(indirectly pushing aggro).
The card draw is a bit of a double edged sword obviously, but anyone who has played or played against Edric knows that this is a pretty minor drawback if your deck can take more advantage of it. The lifeloss that comes along with it is for the most part negligible to your opponents, but can add up for us as we are getting far more triggers than other players.
Karazikar really shines in his goad ability however. Tapping down a potential blocker on swing helps to ensure your critter will connect, and also leaves the opponent more open to attacks from other players. The tapping ability itself is great and makes minor evasive abilities such as flying, menace, skulk, etc, that much more likely to work.
The goad itself is pretty self explanatory, but I will point out that I do quite enjoy the interactive board control that it and the tapping ability combine to create. We can in a large way force our opponents to play how we want, controlling the table, but in a way that still allows players to "do stuff" and interact with each other. By tapping down some creatures, force goading others, etc, we can really direct the flow of the game, and I dig that.
And I mean, he has square girth at 5/5 for 5. Nice.
Now Ive always loved goad. I have both Grenzo and Marisi goad decks. Both had different routes to gettin that goad on, Grenzo relying on going wide with the addition of some evasion like menace on a bunch of gobbos. Marisi was more reliant on getting that guaranteed connection with a bunch of cheap shadow and flying. Marisi was far superior. But Karazikar offers all sorts of new potential avenues to accomplish his goals.
Karazikar can go wide very easily due to the tapping ability, he can swing evasively and safely with abilities like flying and shadow, or he can just be sorta 'Goodstuffs with evasion' build with value creatures and cards that add evasion.
Id love to hear your thoughts on Karazikar, how youd build him, and any nifty tech or cards youd add. :)
Probably a good dose of recursion for all players would be good. Keep the wars just raging with things like Oath of Druids, Endless Whispers, & make sure you have lots of ways to keep the field full of creatures. You at least shouldn't have to use an extreme amount of slots on card-draw since the commander has a-plenty. Ramp may be tough. I love non traditional ones like Shiny Impetus & Curse of Opulence
August 18, 2021 8:23 p.m.
*Oops!! I meant Oath of Ghouls instead of Oath of Druids - shows you how much a pet oath of druids is for me
August 18, 2021 8:24 p.m.
seshiro_of_the_orochi says... #5
On a sidenote, I imagine we'll get a un-blue (WBRG) commander somewhere in the future to combine all these forced combat monstrosities.
Also: The Oaths are a cycle? Didn't know that.
Regarding Karazikar, Bloodthirsty Blade is awesome, obviously. When building Thantis, I started with some combat tricks that either grant deathtouch or turn the attacker into a glass cannon (Auger Spree) to make multi-kills in every combat more frequent. Trumpet Blast maybe? Zagras, Thief of Heartbeats is great in attacky decks, and I imagine that Karazikar will include some party-relevant types by default without even trying. You could play into granting creatures to opponents, but that might lead too far. Disrupt Decorum is obvious, and I really like the new Hellish Rebuke.
August 19, 2021 12:29 a.m.
RoarMaster says... #6
I forgot to leave my list in the OP, oops! Lets see if I can remember the way to link it here, haha Old One Eye
The only real interesting tech might be Tombstone Stairwell, Horobi, Death's Wail, and mebe Quietus Spike.
Necrosis24 I really like the idea of Words of Waste! Pretty sneaky tech, and just the kind of shananigans I was hoping to hear about here! I dont think fat vanilla creatures like Fumiko are really worth the include though. It could be pretty great, but its sorta situational and requires a sizable field to be most effective. I looked at the other suggestions when I was first building my deck but I tried to keep the creature CMC 4 or less wherever possible. I did so to ensure that by the time karaz hits the board we will be guaranteed to have a few unsick attackers to immediately get some effect from them. The lower average costs also will allow us to take greater advantage of the card advantage that Karaz gives us, similar to how Edric works.
Frontier warmonger and Kardur were the only two of those that made the cut. Kardur because he 2 card combos with Conjurer's Closet :D
I do use EDHrec, but Im honestly not a big fan. All you get are the generic goodstuffs cards for the most part. You wont find sweet tech like words of waste or Horobi, Death's Wail on there!
Gleeock Haha, I see you like playing close to the edge! Although Endless Whispers is an old fav of mine, its far too unpredictably dangerous is most decks, haha The fact our opponents get to choose who gets the dead creatures just makes it super hard on us if we are winning and turns all boardwipes into 'only us' wipes. Too many times have I watched a boardwipe go off while whispers was out and be left with no creatures afterwards while my opponents just switched theirs around amongst themselves :P
The oath seems pretty cool though. A little bit of a double edged sword though too. I might have to test it out and see how it plays, thanks :)
Ive def got Curse of Op and Shiny Imp in the deck!
seshiro_of_the_orochi Bloodthirsty blade and disrupt decorum are definitely auto includes. I generally try and shy away from the more minor, single use effects in commander, but with the card advantage that Karaz offers it may be more feasible to run things like Trumpet blast, youre right. Zagras is pretty all-round good, as is hellish rebuke.
August 19, 2021 3:09 a.m.
seshiro_of_the_orochi says... #7
RoarMaster: I can relate to the aversion against one-shots. I tend to be very fond of them when a deck can use them, but I often take them out once the deck evolves further. This happened in Thantis, but the card draw from the command zone in Karazikar could make them work better here.
Necrosis24 says... #2
I think a really strong card for this deck would be Words of Waste seeing as this deck will likely be built with cards like Fumiko the Lowblood you will be drawing quite a few cards so you can instead get rid of your opponents' hands and control the board easier.
Other cards to consider are: Fiendish Duo, Calculating Lich, Frenzied Saddlebrute, Frontier Warmonger, Kardur, Doomscourge
You can also use Conjurer's Closet to utilize that ETB a bit more.
This is all I got off the top of my head EDH Rec is always a good source for cards you might've missed.
August 18, 2021 4:46 p.m.