The Karrthus Do-Over

I’d like to kick things off by thanking the committee which elected me to the Magic Judge Hall of Fame. You can read all about it on the Magic Judge Blog. Thanks also to everyone for the
congratulations and words of support since the announcement came out. It’s an honor to stand alongside some of the giants in Magic’s history.

Dragons of Tarkir
is still very much in our minds, as the recent Game Day has passed to great success and the Pro Tour has shown that big fat flying lizards are winners.
Since Dragons are still (and always will be) a thing, this week I’m adding Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund to the Do-Over list. For those of you who aren’t aware,
the Do Over Project is about taking commanders I’ve already put together and building a new deck using none of the same cards (except lands which only
produce mana-and in this case, that means only basic lands). Part of it is to get out of a comfort zone of using some of the same staples, and part of it
is about the thought exercise of making something new. I think it would be pretty cool to eventually be able to sit down with just one commander and play
two, three, or four radically different decks with it over the course of an evening.

As I’ve done a number of times before, I’m going to take you through the thought process that I had when putting together the deck, a sort of organic in
the moment approach, which highlights how thinking of one thing can lead to another. Seeing how other people arrive at their destinations is just as
valuable as seeing where they end up. In approaching the Karrthus Do-Over, I want to make sure that thematically, the deck is different. In Jund, with an
aggressive commander, it’s difficult to avoid the idea of big creatures attacking. The two themes we’ll avoid are Dragon tribal (although a few Dragons
might not hurt-but the best ones are already in the original) and fiery damage. Again, not the easiest thing in the colors, but we’ll run it.

A quick note on the original list below in the Decks Without Comment section is that the Dragons of Tarkir updates aren’t in yet because I haven’t
gotten the cards. One of the ways I’ve lost configuration control of decks is to do the written updates before the physical ones and then never getting
around to actually putting in the cards. For those of you playing along at home, here are the Dragons of Tarkir updates scheduled. Some of the
removals may be different than listed in the original article, but now that I’ve regained that configuration control, they’re accurate:

In: Dragon Tempest, Dragonlord Atarka, Dragonlord Kolaghan, Savage Ventmaw, Haven Of The Spirit Dragon

Out: Dragon Shadow, Hellkite Charger, Moonveil Dragon, Warmonger Hellkite, Swamp

This means that any of the cards coming in are off limits for the new build. The cards going out are fair game, but I don’t intend to use any of them. The
only one that was close was Blasphemous Act, but that got removed two or three iterations ago.

My first thought is that in order to make Karrthus more useful, I would have to give Dragons to other people. We’ll try to do this in a number of ways. We
could do what we can to give them Dragons and could turn the creatures they already have into Dragons. Unfortunately, we’re not playing blue, so we don’t
really have that option. I would like to have Conspiracy set to Dragons and then Donate it. That’s not a viable option in our colors. Adding Conspiracy,
however, might still be worth it. We consider the deck Dragonless Dragon tribal. That means we can build it a little more tool-boxy.

There are a few cards that I definitely want to play, simply to play them. The top of the list is Wave of Vitriol. Most of my decks like artifacts and/or
enchantments (and to some extent nonbasic lands), so it’s been awkward to try to work it in. If I start from the top knowing that it’s going to be in
there, I can build in a different direction. Since Wave of Vitriol is going in, we might as well also go with Bane of Progress-and we’re already off to a
start. With just those two cards, t’s already starting to feel like a Jund Control deck, and I want to continue down that road. We’ll probably have a
little nonbasic land hate subtheme as well, but not so much to be oppressive (Blood Moon would be going over the top).

I also took a look at my box of foils for a few cards that haven’t found a home. Here’s a short list:

Beacon of Unrest; Consume the Meek; Consuming Vapors; Herald of Leshrac; Avatar of Fury; Caldera Hellion; Detritivore; Overmaster; Stigma Lasher; Ant Queen; Deranged Hermit; Living Hive; Mitotic Slime; Molder Slug; Penumbra Wurm; Realms Uncharted; Summoning Trap; Sylvan Safekeeper; Thicket Elemental;
Borborygmos; Cauldron Dance; Deus of Calamity; Kaervek the Merciless; Kulrath Knight; Rumbling Slum; Spellbreaker Behemoth; Sisters of Stone Death;
Sprouting Thrinax; Ulasht, the Hate Seed.

Here we get to a decision point. I had already thought about Consume the Meek and Aether Snap, but those are a serious nonbo with creating tokens of my own
(an idea I got onto because of Crater Hellion). Since I’ve done token creation, I think we’ll go with being a token killer instead. I will have at least
one token creator card, but we’ll get to that shortly. Back to tokens/counters, the question is whether or not to play Kulrath Knight. With only one
counter-remover (although Spike Cannibal is appealing, too), it seems worthwhile. From that list, we’ll also take the following:

Beacon of Unrest: We’re killing stuff. We need to make some use of it. We’ll add some more graveyard stuff, but I don’t want to go with the full standard
Sepulchral Primordial package.

Consume the Meek: As mentioned, kills tokens.

Consuming Vapors: A little lifegain doesn’t hurt. I had thought about a “players can’t gain life/damage can’t be prevented package,” but I think that
self-preservation might be a thing.

Herald of Leshrac: I’m not out to land-hose anyone, but keeping them from using the rough stuff is a good idea.

Avatar of Fury: A 6/6 flyer for RR is pretty good. Also leads me to add Avatar of Woe, a great classic from the ancient days.

Detritivore: We’re committed that nonbasic land hate, so let’s make big monsters out of it, too. Seems like Terravore is also a good idea at this point.
The nonbasics I’ll play are all fetchlands, so they’ll end up in the yard, too.

Overmaster: I have it, I want to play it, and there are a few things I’d rather not have countered.

Stigma Lasher: It’s never worked before, but with all the creature destruction, I’m hoping that it can get there.

Molder Slug: I won’t have artifacts, so it’ll keep some of the others in check.

Sylvan Safekeeper: Goes with Herald of Leshrac to get rid of the really dangerous lands.

Cauldron Dance: An awesome combat trick that people don’t appreciate enough.

Deus of Calamity: More nonbasic control. Plus, it’s a 6/6 with trample for five.

Sisters of Stone Death: Another oldie but goodie, it’s a huge rattlesnake because of the second activated ability. With the mana cost, I decided to not
also add Kaervek the Merciless because we need to keep an eye on the curve.

Spellbreaker Behemoth: There aren’t a huge number of counterspell decks flying around my local environment, but there are enough. This also led me to
Spearbreaker Behemoth since stuff is getting nuked.

Speaking of nuked, let’s look at both the nuking and the aftermath. We need cards that blow up creatures, creatures and spells that do something with
graveyards afterwards, and perhaps some things that give us benefits when our own creatures go to the graveyard. Afterwards, we’ll look some card draw and
other utility.

There is a bunch of direct damage in the original deck. We’ll look for the things that just straight up destroy creatures, like Damnation, Life’s Finale,
Necromantic Selection, and In Garruk’s Wake. Nevinyrral’s Disk makes some sense here since we’ll never accidentally blow it up (like having Lurking
Predators turn up Bane of Progress). We’ll also add Ugin, the Spirit Dragon and see how it works out. I wouldn’t mind adding Overwhelming Forces, Plague
Wind, or something else, but those get pricey (mana-wise); let’s first see if there’s room. The other cool destruction spell is Descent of the Dragons. If
I need to, I can then later get rid of the creatures with Aether Snap/Consume the Meek or steal them with Karrthus, which is obviously the tech play. I
considered both Lethal Vapors and Tainted Aether, but without mass recursion of my own stuff (plus the added global enchantment destruction), neither made
all that much sense.

With all that destruction going on, a few indestructible creatures might be worthwhile. Predator Ooze and Sapling of Colfenor fit the bill. A few of the
Gods look interesting, but I’ve honestly put enough of them in decks recently that I’m not interested in dipping again into that well. Creatures with dies
triggers might be cool, though. Moldgraf Monstrosity will get some things back for us. Woodfall Primus gives us some more board control. None of the other
persist creatures really do much for me besides Puppeteer Clique. I saw a foily one of them in the pile, so it’s in (and it reminds me to take Fated Return
out of my Child of Alara deck since there aren’t enough black sources in it to reliably cast it). Goblin Gardner seems like a nice defensive creature. No
one is really going to want to attack into it. Blood Artist is the king of all creatures dying, so that’s definitely in. Actually, Mikaeus, the Unhallowed
is the king of all creatures dying, and we have very few Humans (and it combos with Spike Cannibal!). In addition to using graveyards, we’ll want to be
able to get rid of them in case someone gets out of hand. Crypt Incursion is a good choice since most of what’s scary in yards involves creatures. Rakdos
Charm and Nihil Spellbomb also provide instant speed answers.

We’ll have to avoid enchantments and artifacts when we look at card draw. That means we can either go with creatures with enters or leaves the battlefield
triggers or instants and sorceries. Or planeswalkers, I suppose. With all the creature destruction, we’ll see if we can get Ob Nixilis of the Black Oath to
hang around. Masked Admirers is a good fit because we can regrow it after it gets destroyed. Charnelhoard Wurm is kind of like card draw in that we can use
it to get back any card from our graveyard. It reminds of the time local L3 Judge Ben McDole cast Bribery on me, got my Charnelhoard Wurm, and proceeded to
keep getting back his Bribery until someone Wrathed. I think I play Bloodgift Demon in only one other deck, so it’s a good candidate. A cheap creature that
draws a card is in order, so we’ll go with Wall of Blossoms. Since we’re not doing too much reanimation of our own graveyard, we don’t want to use red’s
looting ability; we’ll stick to drawing cards with black. Sign in Blood is a nice cheap one (which reminds me that I saw Sangromancer in the foil pile,
too-with all the death and destruction going on, it should gain lots of life). I considered playing Necropotence, knowing that I’d get the card draw out of
it that I want and have it go away with all the enchantment hate (I can always blow it up with my own Woodfall Primus), but it’s always a little dangerous.
Ah, what the hell? You only live once. At this point, I think we can give up on Conspiracy. We don’t have enough stuff that makes Dragons better, so I’d
rather go with something a little more straightforward. Praetor’s Counsel makes a nice addition to Necropotence, plus it effectively draws cards.

As far as utility goes, I want something to board wipe all enchantments and all artifacts in addition to the aforementioned Wave of Vitriol and Bane of
Progress. Back to Nature is cheap enough for enchantments. Vandalblast seems like the right thing for artifacts. Battlefield Scrounger is also an old
favorite when it comes to reusing the graveyard, so we’ll add that and Elixir of Immortality. Chaos Warp provides great flexibility should we run into
difficulties with something indestructible.

Adding a ramp suite that includes Boundless Realms, Far Wanderings, Farhaven Elf, Kodama’s Reach, Skyshroud Claim, and Ranger’s Path gets us to 57 cards.
It’s time to take another look back over the list to see if there’s anything missing or that we want to do with the last four or five cards. Let’s get a
little more nonbasic hate with Volcanic Offering and Fulminator Mage, then a little more graveyard recursion with the techy Reaping the Graves and
Disturbed Burial. Adding lands-mostly basics-gives us this:

Karrthus Do Over

Sheldon Menery

Test deck on 04-30-2015

Commander

Creatures (29)

Lands (39)

Looking over the deck, there aren’t even that many expensive cards in it save for Ugin and Damnation. Unless I’m missing something, everything else is
basically under $10 (fetchlands and Mikaeus might fluctuate over the line). While I might not be able to call it a bargain deck, it’s certainly not
hideously expensive, either. If you wanted to build something like this on more of a budget, replacements for Ugin and Damnation might include Do or Die,
Oblivion Stone, Forced March, or Plague Wind.

We abandoned the Dragonless Dragon tribal approach and went for a good deal more control. Don’t forget that once you’ve done a job of wiping away
creatures, Karrthus can be dangerous all on his own because he has haste and is just a three-shot killer. I know one of my mantras has been to play your
Fog effects, but in this deck, I think that the frequent killing is enough. We’ll see how it plays out and will adapt should we need to.

This week’s Deck Without Comment is the first iteration of Karrthus.

Karrthus, Who Rains Fire From The Sky

Sheldon Menery

0th Place at Test deck on 12-30-2012

Commander

Creatures (27)

Planeswalkers (2)

Lands (37)

ADUN’S TOOLBOX
; ANIMAR’S SWARM;AURELIA GOES TO WAR;CHILDREN of a LESSER GOD;DEMONS OF KAALIA;EREBOS and the HALLS OF THE DEAD;GLISSA, GLISSA;HELIOD, GOD OF ENCHANTMENTS;DREAMING OF INTET;FORGE OF PURPHOROS;KARN, BEATDOWN GOLEM;HALLOWEEN WITH KARADOR;KARRTHUS, WHO RAINS FIRE FROM THE SKY;KRESH INTO THE RED ZONE;LAVINIA BLINKS;LAZAV, SHAPESHIFTING MASTERMIND;ZOMBIES OF TRESSERHORN;MELEK’S MOLTEN MIND GRIND;MERIEKE’S ESPER CONTROL;THE MILL-MEOPLASM;NATH of the VALUE LEAF;NYLEA OF THE WOODLAND REALM,OBZEDAT, GHOST KILLER;PURPLE HIPPOS and MARO SORCERERS;ZEGANA and a DICE BAG;RAKDOS: LIFE IS SHORT;RITH’S TOKENS;YOU DID THIS TO YOURSELF;RURIC THAR AND HIS BEASTLY FIGHT CLUB;THASSA, GOD OF MERFOLK;THE ALTAR of THRAXIMUNDAR;TROSTANI and HER ANGELS; THE THREAT OF YASOVA

If you’d like to follow the adventures of my Monday Night RPG group (in a campaign that’s been alive since 1987 and is just now getting started with a new
saga called “The Lost Cities of Nevinor”), ask for an invitation to the Facebook group ” Sheldon Menery’s Monday Night Gamers.”