MTG Salvation

First post, gentle on the beatings please. So here's the deal - I played magic when revised first came out (24 years ago now? something like that). I played just for fun with a few friends, and we had a great time. But then, life got busy, had kids (5 of them to be exact), cards got sold, and never really thought much about it. About a year ago, my oldest sons (identical twin boys age 20) came home from a friends house all excited about a new card game they had learned about called Magic, which promptly made the old man starting laughing. So now, 3 of my 4 sons play Magic, along with several of their friends from school. Every Saturday is now Magic day and dinner at our house - usually a BBQ, my wife making brownies or cake for dessert, about 10 or 12 games of commander, and usually ends about 1 am on Sunday morning, or when the old man just can't keep his eyes open any more.

So, the old man needs help. I don't care if I win or lose, because I completely enjoy just playing the game. My decks are usually different - I personally don't care for infinite combos, winning on turn 2, etc, but would rather play a deck that allows the game to go for several turns so that everyone actually "plays" the game, not looses in 3 turns. At the same time, I'n not about to roll over and let everyone run over me. My sons are of a similar vein of thought, though they are more competitive, but they still eschew the hard locks/infinite combos. One of them is playing a nasty Kaalia deck, one is Oloro life gain or Krenko goblins, my third son built a Wort Raidmother deck that if left alone, runs over everyone like a truck. The big problem lies in a one of their friends, who is EXTREMELY competitive. If he's not playing a tier 1 or 1.5 commander, he doesn't play. He has no qualms of playing infinite combos, hard locks, shut out games, and at times it gets frustrating, since it's all supposed to be friendly games. But as my sons' and my knowledge has grown, our decks are improving and starting to be a challenge for him.

So my new deck I'm working on is Korlash. I know he's not a top tier commander, but again, I'm here for the fun and I think the deck can be pretty decent, even if I don't win. I've attached a link to my deck on Tapped Out. Currently, I need to cut 3 cards, as I'm sitting at 103. I'm open to suggestions for improvement and thoughts. I am somewhat limited on budget, since providing for a family of 7 is main priority, but usually I can come up with a few bucks for new cards or find a way to trade for them. I know fetch lands will come up, but at this time I do not have any, so my land base is somewhat where it is.

Give me your thoughts, I appreciate the help.

Mods - truly sorry, I read the info on formatting and found the info on how to post a deck. Please feel free to delete or modify anything I've posted to clean it up. Won't happen again.

Mutilate does WORK in this deck. There's a black creature with transmute that can fetch it.

Expedition Map tutors Coffers. Deserted Temple and Petrified Field support Coffers as well.

There are a few variants of Infest that might be better. Check those out and see if you think they are worthwhile.

I agree with JDv's cuts.

Why do you run so many zombie lords when you have practically no zombies in the deck? You have 2 cards that generate zombies (Grave Titan and Cemetery Reaper and 7 lords. Lot of the potential lords generate is lost if you don't bunch of ways to flood the board with zombies. I think this deck could be a lot better if you ran Ghoulcaller Gisa as the commander.

Also what card is called "Kayla"?

Kaysa, maybe?

Quote from JDviant »

My money is on Kaalia of the Vast.

And the lords thing through me at first too, but thats because I was thinking of them as zombie tribal when really, they're just there as Volton enablers. I don't love the idea, but I don't hate it. They all give +1/+1 and have utility, like gy hate or or evasion or recursion. Its at the very least interesting, and since this is black and they're zombies, they can keep coming back to pump the commander. I don't know if it'd work, but I'd like to hear about it.

But if they are there for the voltron aspect then they are doing a pretty poor job. There are ton of random equipments that more or provide the same bonus. Equipment are also harder to remove, provide more versatile bonuses and generally pretty cheap.

Consider something like Obsidian Battle-Axe. Costs 1 less than Risen Executioner gives a better bonus and haste.

If op would run Ghoulcaller Gisa instead of Korlash the equipment aspect that is already in the deck still makes sense because you can equip random zombie token and then fireball them at opponents or take advantage of power boost equipments give and sac token to create nutty amounts of tokens in return.

Thanks for the input. I appreciate the help.

Yes it was supposed to be Kaalia of the Vast. And yes, I originally looked at Nightmare, but I liked Sima Yi, Wei Field Marshalfor the style.

In regards to the use of the lord cards - with several of the decks in our meta running tokens, including Krenko goblins and Prosh, my thought was by using Conspiracyto turn all my creatures into zombies and then using the lords to pump them, it would put them out of reach of my using cards such as Infest, Pestilence, Thrashing Wumpus, etc. I also have Languish and Yahenni's Expertise that could be added as pseudo sweepers that the pump lords could save my creatures. Like I said in the op, I tend to think different about decks and card interaction, going for different and obscure rather than in your face. I have a Ghoulcaller Gisa I can add in and an Army of the Damned. I's still looking for an Endless Ranks of the Dead which I think would add quite a bit to this deck.

Consider adding Tragic Slip as some solid removal for some of your more circumstantial removal. Also, if you like Grave Pact, I think you'd really like Dictate of Erebos. Finally, are you liking Dash Hopes? If your problem is creatures, you will get more mileage out of Withering Boon.

Quote from dirtycamel »

Thanks for the input. I appreciate the help.

Yes it was supposed to be Kaalia of the Vast. And yes, I originally looked at Nightmare, but I liked Sima Yi, Wei Field Marshalfor the style.

In regards to the use of the lord cards - with several of the decks in our meta running tokens, including Krenko goblins and Prosh, my thought was by using Conspiracyto turn all my creatures into zombies and then using the lords to pump them, it would put them out of reach of my using cards such as Infest, Pestilence, Thrashing Wumpus, etc. I also have Languish and Yahenni's Expertise that could be added as pseudo sweepers that the pump lords could save my creatures. Like I said in the op, I tend to think different about decks and card interaction, going for different and obscure rather than in your face. I have a Ghoulcaller Gisa I can add in and an Army of the Damned. I's still looking for an Endless Ranks of the Dead which I think would add quite a bit to this deck.

Going for a unique angle of attack is fine but this sounds just too janky. First of all the only creatures outside of lords you are protecting from infect is Crypt Ghast and Myojin of Night's Reach. Neither of them is a zombie so you need conpiracy to make them zombies. That is 4 different nonland cards and 15(!!) mana just to protect a single card (you actually need more mana and cards if the lord isn't lord of the accursed. At this point it would far more efficient just to run random french vanilla beaters and plague wind.

Then if you want to cast languish without your stuff dying you need 3 lords just to keep the lords alive. To get the odds be over 50% to get enough lords you need to draw 15 cards. That is turn 14 without any card draw. I think Krenko alone(as in no other goblins) has killed the entire table over 10 times.

I noticed you have 103 cards in your deck.

I knew I had more than 100 cards, that was one of the reasons I made the post was to get opinions on what to cut. But the more I read the comments, the more I realize how scattered my deck is, trying to do too many things outside of the norm. I think I'll remove the Conspiracy, change a few of the creatures to more zombie related Ghoulcaller Gisa, Diregraf Colossus, Gempalm Polluter, probably remove Liliana, Death Wielder/Liliana's Influence and add in Endless Ranks of the Dead and Army of the Damned.

I'm open for suggestions on better Zombie creatures and related cards. Thanks for the help so far.

Oh I didn't see you mentioned it. I kinda TLDRed the post.

I think you should first decide what you want to do with your deck. Do you want to build zombie tribal? Korlash beat down? Mono black goodstuff? Currently the deck is suffering from multiple personality disorder.

Here is list of random zombie related cards:
https://edhrec.com/commanders/ghoulcaller-gisa

Thanks again for the suggestions. I'm going to rework this some and then come back for more.