It’s not very often that a 63/63 Legendary Human Warrior gets shut down by a 1/1 Frog. Yet there I was, staring down David Rappaport (a good friend and a great judge from Michigan), completely cold to his Spore Frog/Volrath’s Stronghold recursion. Meanwhile, Kresh the Bloodbraided glowered at me, craving blood and finding no joy. Over the course of the game — which, if I recall correctly, included a Chuck Reinman’s Green/White token extravaganza and Ryan Stapleton’s Dromar deck — Kresh got Some Big, partially owing to my Pernicious Deed sweeping away many of Chuck’s tokens. Dave and I were the last two standing. His Sisters of Stone Death deck showed a remarkable amount of resilience, and I could do nothing but continually swing into his ceaselessly-recurred Frog.
Yeah, Dave won that one.
It’s true that a number of judges develop insomnia over the course of a long Magic tournament. It’s also true that said insomnia owes largely to the popularity of EDH. As much as I enjoy giving rulings and performing deck checks, there’s no better way to relax after a day of judging than to gather up a few friends and see who can put together the most ridiculous play. I’ve mentioned this before, and I’ll reiterate it again: EDH is not about winning. It’s equivalent to the All-Star Game. Nobody really cares who wins. We just want to see the flashiest plays you can put together.
I first got acquainted with EDH at Grand Prix: Madison in 2006, borrowing a deck from my roommate for the weekend, Rob McKenzie (who, to my recollection, had something like a half-dozen decks — possibly more). I’m fairly certain that I didn’t win that, but I’ll never forget the lightbulb that went off over my head when I managed to Polymorph a Gamekeeper into Darksteel Colossus and a Sundering Titan. I’d had my share of broken plays before — I was a competitive player when Necropotence was legal, and I definitely sacrificed an arbitrarily large amount of Goblin tokens to Skullclamp — but this was something completely different. Not only was it powerful, it was also silly. Using two generally bad cards to bust out two massive monsters seemed ludicrous. That’s when I got hooked.
Coming home from Madison, I was convinced that I had to build my own EDH deck. Pillaging the good stuff from the comic store at which I worked at the time, I put together a Sliver Queen deck that crucially missed the point. I loaded it full of combos (Earthcraft plus Overgrowth plus Sliver Queen plus either Goblin Bombardment, Altar of Dementia, or Soul Warden) and other generally stupid stuff (Tinker for Darksteel Colossus, anyone?), and took it to Pro Tour: Charleston later that year. While it was enjoyable enough, it didn’t really express anything. It was a hundred-card combo deck. That’s all. The end.
Fast forward to last year’s GP: Atlanta. I have a terrible habit when I receive booster packs for judging: I do not draft them. I crack packs, I pick out the cards I want to keep for various decks, and then I store the rest away in longboxes or sell them. My product from Atlanta included a foil Violent Ultimatum, a card that really has to be foiled to be appreciated. A few packs later, a Broodmate Dragon, and then the piece that tied it all together: Kresh the Bloodbraided.
Different players build their EDH decks for different reasons: some like the idea of making goofy decks around fun combos, others prefer to custom-build a deck around their favorite general, and some prefer to pick a five-color General and simply play the best of what’s around. Kresh appealed to me for the brutality of a general that gets progressively bigger and more threatening as you destroy more and more of your opponents’ creatures. His color combination — Red/Black/Green — ensured that I’d be able to play with some of the most ridiculous cards in the format, such as Vampiric Tutor, Survival of the Fittest, and Goblin Sharpshooter. As a personal preference, I gravitate toward generals with green as part of their mana cost, as it also enables me to get at the best mana-fixing in the format: Birds of Paradise, Kodama’s Reach, and Sakura-Tribe Elder.
For those of you unfamiliar with the rules of EDH, I’d like to remind you here of the rule by which a player loses the game if they are dealt twenty-one points of combat damage from an opposing general. Most generals will require at least three solid hits in order to end the game this way — a quick search shows that Lord of Tresserhorn and Progenitus top the scales at 10 power each, excluding creatures such as Multani, Maro Sorcerer with variable power — but over the course of a long EDH game, it is not unreasonable to expect Kresh to become sufficiently large to one-shot opposing players. That was all I wanted, really — my current build can win the game through attrition, or through turning large creatures sideways, but there was something viscerally appealing about the thought of my general charging into battle and simply ending the game in one fell swoop.
The release of Alara Reborn is a great opportunity to re-examine the contents of my deck and to comment on some of the cards that have me really excited. For starters, the decklist:
General: Kresh the Bloodbraided
Creatures:
Anger
Birds of Paradise
Caldera Hellion
Civic Wayfinder
Creakwood Liege
Deranged Hermit
Essence Warden
Eternal Witness
Faerie Macabre
Genesis
Goblin Sharpshooter
Hissing Iguanar
Indrik Stomphowler
Jund Battlemage
Masked Admirers
Mycoloth
Nantuko Husk
Nekrataal
Offalsnout
Sakura-Tribe Elder
Shriekmaw
Solemn Simulacrum
Sprouting Thrinax
Squee, Goblin Nabob
Taurean Mauler
Verdant Force
Viridian Shaman
Vulturous Zombie
Woodfall Primus
Yavimaya Elder
Artifacts:
Darksteel Ingot
Golgari Signet
Gruul Signet
Loxodon Warhammer
Obelisk of Jund
Oblivion Stone
Rakdos Signet
Regrowth
Skullclamp
Sol Ring
Vedalken Orrery
Whispersilk Cloak
Enchantments:
Goblin Bombardment
Grave Pact
Infernal Tribute
Necrogenesis
Oversold Cemetery
Pernicious Deed
Seal of Primordium
Survival of the Fittest
Vicious Shadows
Instants:
Chord of Calling
Krosan Grip
Putrefy
Sprout Swarm
Terminate
Vampiric Tutor
Worldly Tutor
Sorceries:
Harmonize
Innocent Blood
Kodama’s Reach
Living Death
Tooth and Nail
Violent Ultimatum
Lands:
Fire-Lit Thicket
10 Forest
Graven Cairns
Golgari Rot Farm
Gruul Turf
Jund Panorama
Karplusan Forest
Llanowar Wastes
Miren, the Moaning Well
2 Mountain
Mountain Valley
Rakdos Carnarium
Rocky Tar Pit
Savage Lands
Shivan Oasis
Sulfurous Springs
4 Swamp
Terramorphic Expanse
Thawing Glaciers
Twilight Mire
Urborg Volcano
Vivid Crag
Vivid Grove
Vivid Marsh
It bears noting that this deck does not contain some cards that would be obviously exceptional for it: the original dual lands, the Ravnica shock lands, and the Onslaught fetch lands all come to mind. The central issue is not preference, of course, and if you wished to build this deck for yourself and had access to such cards, I would strongly encourage you to do so. The deck also wants for Demonic Tutor; its exclusion here owes solely to the fact that I sold all my foil Tutors, and don’t wish to play with the white-bordered version in my deck. Consider it my sole concession to style.
Obviously, this deck likes it when things die. Aside from Kresh embiggening with each such death — whether from my own creatures, or my opponents’ — Grave Pact is one of those obvious cards that should be played in any deck that can support it, Living Death can end a game (especially when coupled with aggressive Survival of the Fittest activations), and in the right context, Vicious Shadows gets stupid. Yes, it’s a seven-cost enchantment, but read the rules text. With Goblin Bombardment in play, every creature you control becomes a Storm Seeker. If nothing else, it’s a great example of the kind of card that will seem like a crap rare during a cursory examination of a spoiler; in all non-EDH formats, it probably is. I wouldn’t even play it in Limited. Given the time of a multiplayer game and the customizability of a Constructed deck, however, it can become painful.
As it is with Vintage, there are just some cards in the format that are too good to pass up. I’ve mentioned my deep fondness for Vedalken Orrery in a previous column, and Grave Pact is, of course, another member of that club. While I’ve found that it’s very satisfying to have a sense of thematic cohesion to your deck, it’s also important to remember that some cards just belong. I would consider Pernicious Deed and Tooth and Nail to be auto-includes in any deck that supports Green and Black, and Oblivion Stone to be an auto-include in any deck, period. Do not underestimate the power inherent in being able to wipe the board in one turn for eight mana.
Ideally, this deck will slowly build up a board position over time, setting up synergy with various sacrifice outlets (Nantuko Husk, Goblin Bombardment, Infernal Tribute) and token generators (Sprout Swarm, Verdant Force, Mycoloth). Dropping something like Grave Pact to capitalize on this will generally paint a bullseye on your forehead but, sometimes, subtlety is completely inappropriate. For this deck, the dream is to generate enough synergy through token sacrifice and removal to make Kresh obscenely large. Loxodon Warhammer and Whispersilk Cloak are his weapons of choice, if only because they obviate chump blocking completely. I was unduly excited about Mage Slayer from Alara Reborn, until I was reminded that Mage Slayer did not deal combat damage, and therefore wouldn’t build toward defeating somebody that way. It is entirely possible that running Kresh out without Anger in the graveyard would be a mistake — he tends to draw removal with a nauseating frequency — but if you feel that your opponents are devoid of removal, then it’s an entirely reasonable play.
As far as Alara Reborn is concerned, a few solid cards piqued my attention. Deathbringer Thoctar makes it even better for me when things die — I could even start pinging off my own tokens to trigger Grave Pact and wipe everybody’s board — and Predatory Advantage seems interesting, although not yet an auto-include. Dragon Broodmother, the Alara Reborn Prerelease promo, seems like it could lead to some silly brokenness, but I’m reticent to add a spell costing triple-Red to a deck where Red is definitely the minor color. Igneous Pouncer and Valley Rannet make the cuts based on my fondness for versatile mana-fixing.
Therefore, the changes for Alara Reborn look something like this: subtract Caldera Hellion and Offalsnout for Igneous Pouncer and Valley Rannet. Sprouting Thrinax comes out for Deathbringer Thoctar, and Jund Battlemage can likely be scuttled in favor of Dragon Broodmother. I suppose that you could yank something for Predatory Advantage, but I’m not quite sure what that card would be yet. Allow me to add the caveat that this deck is meant primarily as an exercise in fun, and not in competitive play. I do not dare suggest that this is the optimal version of the deck — if there’s something you think is missing, or could be better, I encourage you to speak up in the forums.
Until next time, dear readers, thanks for reading.
Nicholas
nicholas dot sabin at starcitygames dot 63/63
Written while listening to the excellent “One Word Extinguisher” by Prefuse 73