Re: [EDH] Kaalia of the Vast
Aegis Angel from m2012 might be useful. You could protect the general, or even the lightning greaves.
Re: [EDH] Kaalia of the Vast
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Malchar
Aegis Angel from m2012 might be useful. You could protect the general, or even the lightning greaves.
Wow, good find. Aegis Angel is almost certainly going in once M12 comes out. It's also fantastic with Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker.
Re: [EDH] Kaalia of the Vast
Just throwing it out there, there are a lot of creatures that are fantastic in these colors that you'd love to play and beat with for free, but can't becuse they aren't Angels, Demons, or Dragons...
enter Conspiracy
It's hilarious attacking with your general at a guy who has a bunch of utility dorks only to shit out an Elesh Norn, or even one of the Titans, since you'll get the CIP trigger even without the attack trigger.
Re: [EDH] Kaalia of the Vast
Conspiracy still seems good even if you stick with the Demon/Dragon/Angel theme since it makes Rakdos and Bladewing better. Kilnmouth Dragon and Patriarch's Bidding would be good to add then, as well.
Re: [EDH] Kaalia of the Vast
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Sims
Just throwing it out there, there are a lot of creatures that are fantastic in these colors that you'd love to play and beat with for free, but can't becuse they aren't Angels, Demons, or Dragons...
enter
Conspiracy
It's hilarious attacking with your general at a guy who has a bunch of utility dorks only to shit out an Elesh Norn, or even one of the Titans, since you'll get the CIP trigger even without the attack trigger.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
AlexAI
Conspiracy still seems good even if you stick with the Demon/Dragon/Angel theme since it makes Rakdos and Bladewing better.
Kilnmouth Dragon and
Patriarch's Bidding would be good to add then, as well.
Those are very good points. I'll have to think about some good options. Titans and Praetors are a good starting place, but do you guys have any other ideas? Mother of Runes sounds good, and I'd thought about Sheoldred, Whispering One.
Also, this deck really wants Moat.
...my poor wallet.
Re: [EDH] Kaalia of the Vast
Personally I don't think Conspiracy is good enough. It does nothing on it's own, and if you draw a titan without having conspiracy then you'll have to hard cast it. It seems like being able to sneak in angels, dragons, and demons should already be sufficient.
Mother of Runes is also great for any white deck. Weathered Wayfarer is also pretty useful since you could run less lands than normal and plan on just playing things through your general. I was also noticing that Warstorm Surge from m2012 or the similar Pandemonium might be good. Pandemonium is symmetrical, but you should be able to get the most benefit out of it because of your general. The only caveat is that you'd want to make sure that your general is protected so that she doesn't get sniped by it.
You could actually use Daru Spiritualist, Lightning Greaves bouncing between the spiritualist and your general, and Starlit Sanctum to get infinite life. Daru Spiritualist isn't that bad on it's own either since it kind of protects your general. There's also Edgewalker, Daunting Defender, and perhaps Master Apothecary.
Re: [EDH] Kaalia of the Vast
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Malchar
Personally I don't think Conspiracy is good enough. It does nothing on it's own, and if you draw a titan without having conspiracy then you'll have to hard cast it. It seems like being able to sneak in angels, dragons, and demons should already be sufficient.
After some thought, I came to a conclusion about Conspiracy. If I'm running a small number of non-angel, demon, or dragon creatures, Conspiracy isn't very useful in the deck. If I run a large number of creatures I can't cheat into play without it, the deck won't work very well if I don't have Conspiracy. Either it's a weak card, or I'm forced to tutor for it to make the deck run smoothly. The interaction it has with cards already in the deck isn't enough reason to run it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Malchar
I was also noticing that
Warstorm Surge from m2012 or the similar
Pandemonium might be good. Pandemonium is symmetrical, but you should be able to get the most benefit out of it because of your general. The only caveat is that you'd want to make sure that your general is protected so that she doesn't get sniped by it.
Pandemonium's symmetry is enough reason not to run it. As for Warstorm Surge, it's a little costly at six mana. This deck requires a certain percentage of angels, demons, and dragons to run smoothly, and cutting them for cards like Warstorm Surge will hurt the deck's consistency. I'm not even sure Warstorm Surge is better than Mordant Dragon. If you can suggest a good cut, I'll try it, but I need a real good reason to dip the creature count.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Malchar
I'm not going to turn the deck into cleric tribal when I can cheat huge fliers into play. That said, I am intrigued by the life combo, but I can't cut many more angels, demons, and dragons before the deck becomes inconsistent. Low to mid-30's is where I want the count to be, which means I'll have to cut non-creature spells for any non-cheatable additions.
- Ancient Hellkite
- Dragon Mage
- Vindicate
- Akroma, Angel of Wrath
- Malfegor
- Gilded Lotus
+ Armageddon
+ Ravages of War
+ Moat
+ Battlefield Forge
+ Caves of Koilos
+ Mother of Runes
Getting ahead on creatures seems easy to do. Then, blowing up all lands seems to powerful not to do. Moat should stop people from ganging up and racing you, but I could see it not lasting in the deck. I wanted a couple extra lands, since when I mulligan, I'd rather be putting back lands for creatures/tutors than creatures/tutors for lands. Mother of Runes seems too good not to run.
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/attac...1&d=1309320479
Holy crap.
This guy is amazing. Cheat him into play, search for Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker and then Demonic Tutor every turn for the rest of the game.
Re: [EDH] Kaalia of the Vast
Pestilence Demon and Kagemaro, First to Suffer are great things to sneak into play to give you some insurance in case you lose board control and need to wipe.
Re: [EDH] Kaalia of the Vast
Pestilence Demon is solid, but I don't like that he kills Kaalia of the Vast if you spend more than two mana in a turn. I don't usually have enough cards in my hand to make Kagemaro, First to Suffer work, and if I did it's probably because I drew a ton of cards from Knollspine Dragon and don't want to wipe the board.
If I need another sweeper, I'm probably going to put Malfegor back in. In the meantime, Scourge of Kher Ridges, Oros, the Avenger, Rakdos the Defiler and Steel Hellkite do the job pretty well.
M12 changes are going to look something like this:
- Mana-Charged Dragon
- Coalition Relic/Battlefield Forge
- Angelic Arbiter/Razia, Boros Archangel/Bladewing the Risen
+ Aegis Angel
+ Rune-Scarred Demon
+ Swiftfoot Boots
Re: [EDH] Kaalia of the Vast
Quote:
- Angelic Arbiter/Razia, Boros Archangel/Bladewing the Risen
I think the angelic arbiter is the weakest one here. The ability just isn't that strong in multiplayer EDH. Plenty of decks are content to play by the rules. Also, bladewing seems especially strong because you can use it to get back another dragon with an important ability, like scourge of kher ridges. The scourge is probably better than pestilence demon now that I think about it. My idea was that you could put in a creature so that if you somehow lose your general or lose board control, you have the option of wiping everyone's field (or everything except the demon itself). Oros might not be strong enough to kill everything, Steel Hellkite might be too slow, and even Malfegor can fail if they simply cast some spot removal on the following turn and replay a threat.
Re: [EDH] Kaalia of the Vast
Hey, I picked this deck up on a whim and I do enjoy it when it 'goes broken', that is to say when I just have billions of huge duders in hand. I wanted to ask about a couple of things as I'm super new to EDH.
* Your decklist has a lot of lifeloss. Hall of the Bandit Lord, Ambition's Cost, Night's Whisper, Sign in Blood, various Tutors, etc... and not a ton of ways to get it back besides like Baneslayer Angel. I added a handful of these cards and some others, like Skeletal Scrying, and while I don't have as many life-for-cards spells as you do, I feel like you end up hitting yourself for a billion damages by the time the other guys start to stabilize. I think I did about 15 damage to myself last time with HotBL alone. Do you feel like the deck is inclined to just murder itself?
* I've only been playing EDH for about a month, but I feel like our general comes out faster than a lot of them and has a more immediate effect, meaning that the deck really wants to play quite fast. I've added Exalted Angel and Grinning Demon, partially for the lulz of it but also because I'm fond of the deck being one that can play early threats and continue to do so via Kaalia and her crew. Exalted seems a little tiny for this format (saaad faaace) but again, lifelink is lifelink ne? Is this just a really fragile plan on the whole, or does being able to break sooner than other aggressive decks really mean much in this format? I guess to edit and clarify - since Exalted and Grinning can get played lots of different ways - Kaalia, face-down, straight-up - and they all represent a fairly aggressive turn 3/4, would you say that they keep the deck doing what it's intended to do (play guys that are fast, numerous and big)?
* It seems like the mana acceleration is "only fair"; is that a fault of the format or the colors we're in? Is there more mana ramping that the deck could be doing? This is a big ? for me because like I said, just getting into EDH and still trying to wrap my head around the proper speed of the format.
Re: [EDH] Kaalia of the Vast
- The lifeloss doesn't matter that much in EDH. Usually when you lose, it's because you don't have board position and the opponents have tons of stuff in play, so you lose by a land slide. The alternative is that they have some kind of combo that hits for a ton. Either way, even doing as much as 20 damage to yourself usually doesn't matter that much.
- This is one of the faster generals in EDH. I would try to get a lightning greaves in play as soon as possible, ideally before casting the general. After you get the general attacking, just keep playing as many bombs as you can before the opponents can answer. You want to protect the general though, because if she dies once or twice, then it's not even worth casting her again because you could just hardcast your bombs at that point anyway.
- The mana acceleration is average. Usually decks run around 10 cards to fulfill this role. Obviously green has more options here. You can look at other decklists for an idea of the other popular cards, but this list has all the basics. Worn Powerstone and Darksteel Ingot are some other popular choices. Mono-color decks also have a lot more options with things like Gauntlet of Power, but obviously those don't work too well in a 3-color deck.
Re: [EDH] Kaalia of the Vast
Quote:
Originally Posted by
TsumiBand
* Your decklist has a lot of lifeloss. Hall of the Bandit Lord, Ambition's Cost, Night's Whisper, Sign in Blood, various Tutors, etc... and not a ton of ways to get it back besides like Baneslayer Angel. I added a handful of these cards and some others, like Skeletal Scrying, and while I don't have as many life-for-cards spells as you do, I feel like you end up hitting yourself for a billion damages by the time the other guys start to stabilize. I think I did about 15 damage to myself last time with HotBL alone. Do you feel like the deck is inclined to just murder itself?
I've never had a problem with the self-inflicted damage since I'm dishing out way more pain to my opponents than they are to me. Like Malchar said, you lose when you lose board position, and it's usually by a landslide. I can count on one hand the number of EDH games I've played where I lost a slow attrition war by a couple of points of life. The most damage I've done to myself with Hall of the Bandit Lord is 9, and I could see myself cutting the card because I hate lands that enter the battlefield tapped. We also have better ways to give Kaalia of the Vast haste that don't involve massive life payments.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
TsumiBand
* I've only been playing EDH for about a month, but I feel like our general comes out faster than a lot of them and has a more immediate effect, meaning that the deck really wants to play quite fast. I've added Exalted Angel and Grinning Demon, partially for the lulz of it but also because I'm fond of the deck being one that can play early threats and continue to do so via Kaalia and her crew. Exalted seems a little tiny for this format (saaad faaace) but again, lifelink is lifelink ne? Is this just a really fragile plan on the whole, or does being able to break sooner than other aggressive decks really mean much in this format? I guess to edit and clarify - since Exalted and Grinning can get played lots of different ways - Kaalia, face-down, straight-up - and they all represent a fairly aggressive turn 3/4, would you say that they keep the deck doing what it's intended to do (play guys that are fast, numerous and big)?
This deck definitely does its thing faster than most EDH decks, and it's built on speed at the expense of resiliency and the late game. I've been trying to move the deck away from big, stupid beaters towards creatures that have useful effects/abilities attached to them, which makes Grinning Demon a bad choice, IMO. Exalted Angel could be useful, but I think Baneslayer Angel is a better lifelinker. If you want a second lifelinker, Exalted Angel is your woman.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
TsumiBand
* It seems like the mana acceleration is "only fair"; is that a fault of the format or the colors we're in? Is there more mana ramping that the deck could be doing? This is a big ? for me because like I said, just getting into EDH and still trying to wrap my head around the proper speed of the format.
I wouldn't call Mana Crypt and Sol Ring "fair", but yes, without green it's hard to accelerate your mana production. Your only real option is to run lots of mana artifacts. I've stayed away from artifact acceleration that costs more than two because I can't use them to speed up Kaalia of the Vast. This could change if I repeatedly find myself unable to keep Kaalia on the table and need to actually cast my creatures to win.
I could run rituals, but rituals are usually terrible in EDH. If I add more acceleration, I'm going to have to cut creatures/tutors and I'm already at my minimum for creatures. In a singleton format, tutors are too good to cut.
Re: [EDH] Kaalia of the Vast
Yeah Grinning Demon is sort of a roflcopter. It doesn't change the rules of the game and it doesn't have evasion, it just happens to be Yet Another Morph Creature that Kaalia could also put into play. At last count I had 3 guys with Morph (Akroma, Exalted, Grinning) and I was actually thinking about putting the pre-con's Zoetic Cavern back in just so sometimes I could be like "omg lol u tried to Mortify my lands", which is genuinely 'only cute'.
I dunno, Morph is one of my favorite dumb mechanics in Magic, I figured I could just throw the junk in here and see if I profit, heh. It is a Timmy-ass thing to do, but this seems to be the format for it. I will say being able to play a face-down creature was the thing that won me my last game of EDH, although the circumstances of that match were definitely completely ridiculous. Basically, running Morph guys seems like a decent enough way to make sure the deck has a number of early plays - whether it's tutoring / Transmuting for Greaves or ramping up with Signets and junk like that, or just playing a FDC and making target opponent wonder whether they want to blow their removal on that thing, or the Kaalia tech next turn. I dunno, shrug, like I said, it's kind of a romantic strategy, but EDH seems to like that sort of thing.
The only other Morph guy that I found that fits Kaalia's requirements was Imperial Hellkite, and that guy looks really, really bad. I don't think I even want to get to enough mana to flip that dude over, I hope I Geddon or Boom/Bust or something similarly dumb before I get to 8, cuz that means all the Green players on the board got to like 15 :/
Re: [EDH] Kaalia of the Vast
If that's how you want to play EDH, that's fine. Just keep in mind that my playgroup is absolutely cut-throat and I'm trying to build the most optimized and powerful Kaalia list possible.
Re: [EDH] Kaalia of the Vast
Well the thing of it is, I've got two very different sets of people I play with - basically, Timmy on Thursday and Spike on Sunday. :/ Since my resources are limited I'll probably be running this deck something like, 80% 'teched out' and 20% 'little kid'. So yeah, Morph spells and dumb things like Razia's Purification are pretty much my 'little kid' spells, but I wanted to ask questions about mana accel and tutoring to suit the Spike in me.
That's why I wanted to ask about things like mana accel and life loss - playing Signets and things like Hall of the Bandit Lord *feel* really weird to me as a Spike-ish player, but apparently they are quite abundantly played. I'll definitely be tearing out junk like Dread Cacodemon and throwing in things that promote more resiliency (Deathless Angel, Adarkar Valkyrie etc...) as soon as I have the means.
Re: [EDH] Kaalia of the Vast
I like it. Some similarities to what I quickly cobbled my Kaalia deck together opening the deck and putting extras from my binders in there and haven't actually had time to open workstation and actually spend some time with what to put in there so your base helps a lot for expanding the mana base and other options that I didn't think of or didn't have on hand.
I find Kaalia does die pretty darn fast if you don't have equipment ready and even then so acceleration to cast creatures normally is important.
I have a few things in mine I didn't see in yours that you might want to try.
Whispersilk cloak - unblockable + shroud is pretty good for kaalia or any beater. In my playgroup I find people have fliers to block kaalia so you this cloak is pretty good to keep her swinging and your fatties coming into play for free.
Plague Wind - nukes everyone elses creatures but yours. Bit expensive on casting cost though.
Desolation Angel - Doesn't work with Kaalia but blows up the lands with a creature attached. disadvantage is the high casting cost with the kicker. Guess its the cheaper alternative to Ravages of War.
Emeria Angel - makes chump blockers and goes well with the War part of Angel of Strife.
Luminarch Assension - it makes 4/4 angels and isn't too hard to activate. Also good with Angel of Strife.
I'll have to spend some time on workstation and post my optimal list when I have time.
Re: [EDH] Kaalia of the Vast
Decree of Annihilation (cycled) is great for land destruction, but it might cost too much for this deck to be able to cast it. When do you usually find yourself curving out?
p.s. too bad Desolation Angel (my favorite) doesn't work.
Re: [EDH] Kaalia of the Vast
Actually, in my experience I get to 6 quite often. Decree of Annihilation is a dodgy bint though, I'd much rather be tutoring for Geddon, Ravages or Boom/Bust (which coincedentally - Shred Memory is rather fond of that spell, gives it something to tutor for besides Greaves or a Signet). With all the Geddon effects listed above, I'm sort of surprised not to see Flagstones of Trokair in the main. I run one and it plays pretty nicely with the above spells, as well as some Timmy ass stuff like Razia's Purification.
One card I am just not having much love for is Bladewing the Risen. Maybe it just hasn't happened yet, where I find myself really needing his Breath of Life effect, but I'd just as soon that dude be something else. Pumping all my Dragons is only better than Firebreathing if I have 3 Dragons in play, so his other effect rarely matters a damn either. Wouldn't regular Rorix be just as nasty, or some other icky dagron or demon with a big nasty effect? Demon of Death's Gate? Spirit of the Night (errata says it's a Legendary Demon Spirit)? With all the artifact acceleration running around, Furnace Dragon seems pretty rofl.