I remember when Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet was spoiled, I thought he was a really good card. He's decently costed, has an effect that seems interesting and is an OK body at 3/4.
However, I don't know if I should try and make a commander out of him or if I should find a deck for him instead. I've tried looking him up and there's not a bunch on him, at least to my liking. Any thoughts?
I love him in the 99 as an alternative to leyline. He is a bit boring for commander role, imo.
See, my major hangup with him is that if I do use him as a commander, I really don't know how I would go about building him. As 1 of the 99, the only deck I can see myself putting him into is my Prossh, Skyraider of Kher. He's a good card but at around $17.99, I'm trying to make sure I use him to his fullest.
My use case was swapping him in for LLOTV. Your mileage may vary but for me, he exiles the most commonly recycled creature type while creating a threatening presence at the same time. I happily trade the exhaustive exiling of LLOTV for something that exiles while enabling me to put pressure on people. He is in a deck that wins via exsanguinate, gray merchant, and kokusho so any chip damage that I get in just lowers the barrier to win with those mechanisms. If you already have a slot of LLOTV, I consider him an upgrade to that slot.
I happened to pull one, so I slotted it in to my Chainer deck, just to see. I very rarely reanimate other people's creatures, so I don't forsee that being a big problem for me, and the ability to get a lot of sac fodder off him just seems real nice. Haven't played with it, yet, however.
I have it in my Karlov deck. My meta is quite heavy on GY based decks, like Meren and others. So he is nice addition. But I don't think he is appealing as a commander..
I happened to pull one, so I slotted it in to my Chainer deck, just to see. I very rarely reanimate other people's creatures, so I don't forsee that being a big problem for me, and the ability to get a lot of sac fodder off him just seems real nice. Haven't played with it, yet, however.
See, he'd be a great addition to my Prossh deck due to his token making ability and his graveyard hate is just a bonus. However, he would seem lend himself to being at the helm. Thought I do ponder if I truly want to commit to making another EDH deck after working on 4.
Seems pretty good. It's not over-costed and has multiple relevant abilities. Plus, it's a hell of a beater with Nightmare Lash, Lashwrithe and Strata Scythe.
Generally speaking, he's grave hate. So any deck that could use more grave hate while also being able to use more gravy should consider him.
That said, as a commander, he does good work as both a goodstuff and as a beater. You don't really need to build around him aside from packing plenty of removal to turn dudes into your zombies.
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My Commander decks:
Chandra, Torch of Defiance - Oops! All Chandras.
Prime Speaker Zegana - Draw for Power.
Pir & Toothy - Counterpalooza.
Arcades, the Strategist - Another Brick in the Wall.
Zacama, Primal Calamity - Calamity of Double Mana.
Edgar Markov - Vampires Don't Die.
Child of Alara - Dreamcrusher.
Generally speaking, he's grave hate. So any deck that could use more grave hate while also being able to use more gravy should consider him.
That said, as a commander, he does good work as both a goodstuff and as a beater. You don't really need to build around him aside from packing plenty of removal to turn dudes into your zombies.
After all the comments, I think I'm going to use him in the Prossh deck. That deck is already set up with lots of removal and forcing my opponents to sac creatures as I do. In addition, it also runs a token theme that Kalitas can really contribute to and his graveyard hate would stop a lot of my meta's recursion. As time goes on, I may make a deck out of him one day, just not anytime soon.
Someone in my playgroup has put together a deck with him as the commander and it seems to work pretty well. Lots of removal to keep the zombies flowing, and plenty of black's usual sacrifice shenanigans to take advantage of said tokens
He has a very good ability that can be taken advantage of. When I thought of making a deck with him several things came to mind:Endless Ranks of the Dead , Grave Titan, Ghoulcaller Gisa, etc. He has a lot to work with, which is why I couldn't really decide if I wanted another deck with him at the helm or have him bring his talents to my Prossh deck, who would vastly appreciate his talents.
Seems pretty good. It's not over-costed and has multiple relevant abilities. Plus, it's a hell of a beater with Nightmare Lash, Lashwrithe and Strata Scythe.
They should have bolded the font on lifelink or something, I keep missing that.
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"I think EDH would be more fun for the majority of participants if players just showed eachother their decks rather than actually playing games out."
I played him in the 99 of my Sen Triplets control deck and he's worked wonders.
I consider him to be a utility creature against graveyard decks, and he costs 1 less than the most I'm willing to pay for my utility dorks. A lot of people complain when I Relic of Progenitus or Rest in Piece because those cards utterly neuter graveyard decks in the mid-late game.
However nobody complained when I played Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet followed by a Wrath of God. Yet it still effectively neutralized some of the recursion deck's biggest threats. And after that the big army of zombies soaked up yet another board wipe (Toxic Deluge) before my next turn.
With flash enablers he can become quite annoying. Slap him down in response to an enemy board wipe or more entertainingly Wake the Dead, or Living Death
I also enjoy how his effect is asymmetrical, so he fits into graveyard decks just fine if you need him.
One way to build around him would be with things like Gravecrawler and Dark Prophecy to give you plenty of chumps to sacrifice and some added incentive to do so. The graveyard hate he provides is nice but it only touches creatures and even then it only hits creatures that die, e.g. not creatures discarded or Entombed. Because of this I wouldn't replace Leyline of the Void with Kalitas.
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You would never guess, at the terrifying sight of the man, that Hunding was as charming a companion as one could wish for.
I use him in my mono-black deck in the 99 because he's a variation on Bridge From Below and Leyline of the Void - he freed up some space, for extra lands, mostly.
He has a very good ability that can be taken advantage of. When I thought of making a deck with him several things came to mind:Endless Ranks of the Dead , Grave Titan, Ghoulcaller Gisa, etc. He has a lot to work with, which is why I couldn't really decide if I wanted another deck with him at the helm or have him bring his talents to my Prossh deck, who would vastly appreciate his talents.
The old Kalitas could have (should have?) been pushed harder. Print him as is at 5 mana, or 7 mana with a free activated ability, or maybe 6 mana without a tap in his ability. Not sure, but that's a ton of mana for not a lot of value, compare him to Drana from the same block. She's a removal engine and threat.
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"I think EDH would be more fun for the majority of participants if players just showed eachother their decks rather than actually playing games out."
The old Kalitas was a good concept, but as you said, it was simply too much mana to be efficient, even from an EDH standpoint. His mana cost should have been lower and his ability should have been worked with maybe a stipulation. For instance:
Kalitas. Bloodchief of Ghet 3BB
Legendary Creature - Vampire Warrior
BBB: Take control of target creature opponent controls for as long Kalitas, Blood Chief of Ghet remains on the field. If this ability is activated again, return creature to its' owner's control.
5/5
I don't know but it did seem like they wanted us to play him. Cool art, a decent ability and he's 5/5 vampire? Problem? Not only did we get Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief in the same set, we got Anowon, the Ruin Sage, who at least has tactical viability to him and can get crazy with the right set up and protection.
I think he's got a lot of flexibility as a general that goes unnoticed. It's not quite obvious at first read the impact he has. First of all, the main weakness of Black is no stack control (or really any responses against combo). Now, this guy does stop a lot of combo's when he's on the field. The grave-hate ability just looks weaker than it really is. It doesn't stop Entomb, or Buried Alive type cards at the front end, but he will stop creatures from looping in and out. So someone casts Buried Alive for Mike-Trike combo, and they can't Victimize there because Trike will exile on first use. Same for Booonweaver and Lark-Guide.
Ok now, even reading carefully what the impact is, I think it's still easy to go unnoticed the power of that kind of effect in the Command Zone. You don't just replace LLOTV with it, you replace every single card in your deck that's supposed to fill that role. If you were a Mono-B deck that wanted to interact with combo, those were a lot of slots. Now, you're 100% consistent in blocking those combos from 4 mana and on. Really strong. People having tried Anafenza, the Foremost will say the same thing. You build your deck to have fun with the Bolster effect, but the grave-hate ability ends up having more impact in an actual game.
There's also the indirect result of what the texture of the rest of the deck becomes once those worries are solved. Now that you don't have to worry about a certain set of things anymore, what is there left to worry about? Basically, just board states and resources. Now, killing creatures for free and draining resources is something Mono-B just does innately. Solving a color's weaknesses via the Command Zone ends up being much more powerful than just complementing its strengths, the way Drana, Geth, and other Mono-B generals not named Xiahou-Dun will do. With that box checked, your other disruption gets a ton more mileage. I don't think it's possible to overemphasize Black's glaring weaknesses in interacting with combo and artifacts/enchantments, when put against its strengths in card advantage and board control. That ends up being Black's main weakness, and any way to solve it is at a premium.
Finally, I think it's easy to underestimate what a beater the general is, both on offense and defense. Once you're up past 10 mana or so, easy in Mono-B, he grows past 10 power really easily. On the defensive too, Lifelink and chumps for days means no one is killing you very easily. You're also getting enough life in the right situations that you can use it instead for absurd things like Unspeakable Symbol.
I was brainstorming a Karlov hatebears build concurrently with Kalitas, and Kalitas unexpectedly just ended up testing a lot better for what I was trying to do. He's the hatebear, the offense and the defense in one package. Kills from Commander damage ended up being a lot more consistent even, with the Black equips like Nightmare Lash being a ton more consistent with Mono-B.
Kalitas only stops creature-recursion combos, so a deck built around that will still have trouble with various other combos. Kalitas does nothing against the combos I see the most often: infinite turns, infinite mana, infinite spell copies, Sanguine Bond/Exquisite Blood, etc.
Well, to have a deck with at least one card in it capable of stopping virtually all combo's in EDH, you'd have to be in either U or W, possibly both. Here are the combo's I see most often on Cokca, and whether they're stopped by Kalitas:
Not stopped:
1) Mind's Desire Storm
2) Reset infinite mana/spells
3) Monolith infinite mana
4) E-wit Time Warp (w/ DEN or otherwise not reanimating E-wit)
5) Doomsday Lab-Man (playing Lab Man from the deck)
6) T&N for Palinchron-Deadeye
7) T&N for Kiki-Conscripts
8) Survival for Necrotic Ooze
9) Prossh Food Chain
10) Azami-MoM
11) Omni combo's
Stopped:
1) Survival for a reanimate loop
2) T&N for Mike Trike
3) Karmic-Lark (or Fiend Hunter-Titan, etc)
4) DDLM with Unearth for Lab Man
5) Boonweaver Pattern
6) E-wit Time Warp (by reanimating E-wit)
7) Jarad flinging Lord of Extinction/something
8) Hermit Druid for graveyard loop
9) Sharuum for Sculpting/Metamorph
10) Living Death combo's
The ones I see exceptionally often are in italics. See, it's about a 50-50 split between the two, which is how I tend to eyeball cards like Containment Priest. So, it's not about being able to play a general and then just not worrying about combo for the rest of the game. It's that you have a whole lot of bases covered to give you a good point to branch off from, and making sure that the rest of the answers you might need are in color. Take Kalitas, add Null Rod, Torpor Orb, Phyrexian Revoker, etc, tutors for what you need, a little discard and some spot removal like Snuff Out, and you've got a pretty lean Mono-B build that hasn't let go of its strength in board control, but is now capable of fighting combo in a way that Mono-B struggles with. Simply put, you're not just tutoring for the first hate card you need every game anymore, you're now tutoring for the last one you need.
He's fantastic in my Marchesa EDH (tribal vampire w/zombie splash). Those +1/+1 counters are the bee's knees.
That's where I've got him slotted too, although I'm not sure he'll stick. The lifelink is actually a drawback more often than not in that deck.
If I was going to build around him as a general then I think I'd focus on his ability to pump out dudes. That's a pretty powerful effect to get "free" tacked on to removal, and it seems like one you could really build a deck around with lots of ways to take advantage of the tokens. The nice thing is that you have a strong built-in backup plan in his ability to just make himself huge and kill in a couple of swings, plus built-in grave hate.
Combos aside, shutting off opponents graveyard strategies for creatures is pretty strong. He's an efficient beater, recovers you well from board wipes, generates quad-tiered value while in play (lifelink, sac and pump outlet for the most common black creatures, token producer, and creature based GY hate against your opponents and not you). I mean, there is a reason he's $20 right now. I preordered one for $8 the second I saw him spoiled. He's in my Grimgrin list right now and I'm very pleased with him. All around solid card as one of the 99 in black, especially in my list where the tokens are great. I appreciate him being a great beater, the lifelink can be decent sustain, and the graveyard hate just puts him over the top.
However, I don't know if I should try and make a commander out of him or if I should find a deck for him instead. I've tried looking him up and there's not a bunch on him, at least to my liking. Any thoughts?
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See, my major hangup with him is that if I do use him as a commander, I really don't know how I would go about building him. As 1 of the 99, the only deck I can see myself putting him into is my Prossh, Skyraider of Kher. He's a good card but at around $17.99, I'm trying to make sure I use him to his fullest.
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My use case was swapping him in for LLOTV. Your mileage may vary but for me, he exiles the most commonly recycled creature type while creating a threatening presence at the same time. I happily trade the exhaustive exiling of LLOTV for something that exiles while enabling me to put pressure on people. He is in a deck that wins via exsanguinate, gray merchant, and kokusho so any chip damage that I get in just lowers the barrier to win with those mechanisms. If you already have a slot of LLOTV, I consider him an upgrade to that slot.
WU Bruna UW | R Kiki-Jiki R | RB New Chainer BR
Legacy - Burn | Pauper - Reanimator | Aristocrats | Burn
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See, he'd be a great addition to my Prossh deck due to his token making ability and his graveyard hate is just a bonus. However, he would seem lend himself to being at the helm. Thought I do ponder if I truly want to commit to making another EDH deck after working on 4.
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BGUYarok Lands Matter
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GGG [Primer] Omnath, Big Green Beatstick Machine GGG
That said, as a commander, he does good work as both a goodstuff and as a beater. You don't really need to build around him aside from packing plenty of removal to turn dudes into your zombies.
Chandra, Torch of Defiance - Oops! All Chandras.
Prime Speaker Zegana - Draw for Power.
Pir & Toothy - Counterpalooza.
Arcades, the Strategist - Another Brick in the Wall.
Zacama, Primal Calamity - Calamity of Double Mana.
Edgar Markov - Vampires Don't Die.
Child of Alara - Dreamcrusher.
After all the comments, I think I'm going to use him in the Prossh deck. That deck is already set up with lots of removal and forcing my opponents to sac creatures as I do. In addition, it also runs a token theme that Kalitas can really contribute to and his graveyard hate would stop a lot of my meta's recursion. As time goes on, I may make a deck out of him one day, just not anytime soon.
Thank LouCypher and everyone for the feedback.
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Also, he a vast step up from his previous incarnation, IMHO: Kalitas, Bloodchief of Ghet.
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They should have bolded the font on lifelink or something, I keep missing that.
I consider him to be a utility creature against graveyard decks, and he costs 1 less than the most I'm willing to pay for my utility dorks. A lot of people complain when I Relic of Progenitus or Rest in Piece because those cards utterly neuter graveyard decks in the mid-late game.
However nobody complained when I played Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet followed by a Wrath of God. Yet it still effectively neutralized some of the recursion deck's biggest threats. And after that the big army of zombies soaked up yet another board wipe (Toxic Deluge) before my next turn.
With flash enablers he can become quite annoying. Slap him down in response to an enemy board wipe or more entertainingly Wake the Dead, or Living Death
I also enjoy how his effect is asymmetrical, so he fits into graveyard decks just fine if you need him.
The old Kalitas could have (should have?) been pushed harder. Print him as is at 5 mana, or 7 mana with a free activated ability, or maybe 6 mana without a tap in his ability. Not sure, but that's a ton of mana for not a lot of value, compare him to Drana from the same block. She's a removal engine and threat.
Kalitas. Bloodchief of Ghet 3BB
Legendary Creature - Vampire Warrior
BBB: Take control of target creature opponent controls for as long Kalitas, Blood Chief of Ghet remains on the field. If this ability is activated again, return creature to its' owner's control.
5/5
I don't know but it did seem like they wanted us to play him. Cool art, a decent ability and he's 5/5 vampire? Problem? Not only did we get Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief in the same set, we got Anowon, the Ruin Sage, who at least has tactical viability to him and can get crazy with the right set up and protection.
BK'rrik Goodstuff
GWSythis Enchantress
URYusri Coin Flip
BRGKorvold Tokens
BGUYarok Lands Matter
WUBRaffine Looter
Ok now, even reading carefully what the impact is, I think it's still easy to go unnoticed the power of that kind of effect in the Command Zone. You don't just replace LLOTV with it, you replace every single card in your deck that's supposed to fill that role. If you were a Mono-B deck that wanted to interact with combo, those were a lot of slots. Now, you're 100% consistent in blocking those combos from 4 mana and on. Really strong. People having tried Anafenza, the Foremost will say the same thing. You build your deck to have fun with the Bolster effect, but the grave-hate ability ends up having more impact in an actual game.
There's also the indirect result of what the texture of the rest of the deck becomes once those worries are solved. Now that you don't have to worry about a certain set of things anymore, what is there left to worry about? Basically, just board states and resources. Now, killing creatures for free and draining resources is something Mono-B just does innately. Solving a color's weaknesses via the Command Zone ends up being much more powerful than just complementing its strengths, the way Drana, Geth, and other Mono-B generals not named Xiahou-Dun will do. With that box checked, your other disruption gets a ton more mileage. I don't think it's possible to overemphasize Black's glaring weaknesses in interacting with combo and artifacts/enchantments, when put against its strengths in card advantage and board control. That ends up being Black's main weakness, and any way to solve it is at a premium.
Finally, I think it's easy to underestimate what a beater the general is, both on offense and defense. Once you're up past 10 mana or so, easy in Mono-B, he grows past 10 power really easily. On the defensive too, Lifelink and chumps for days means no one is killing you very easily. You're also getting enough life in the right situations that you can use it instead for absurd things like Unspeakable Symbol.
I was brainstorming a Karlov hatebears build concurrently with Kalitas, and Kalitas unexpectedly just ended up testing a lot better for what I was trying to do. He's the hatebear, the offense and the defense in one package. Kills from Commander damage ended up being a lot more consistent even, with the Black equips like Nightmare Lash being a ton more consistent with Mono-B.
Not stopped:
1) Mind's Desire Storm
2) Reset infinite mana/spells
3) Monolith infinite mana
4) E-wit Time Warp (w/ DEN or otherwise not reanimating E-wit)
5) Doomsday Lab-Man (playing Lab Man from the deck)
6) T&N for Palinchron-Deadeye
7) T&N for Kiki-Conscripts
8) Survival for Necrotic Ooze
9) Prossh Food Chain
10) Azami-MoM
11) Omni combo's
Stopped:
1) Survival for a reanimate loop
2) T&N for Mike Trike
3) Karmic-Lark (or Fiend Hunter-Titan, etc)
4) DDLM with Unearth for Lab Man
5) Boonweaver Pattern
6) E-wit Time Warp (by reanimating E-wit)
7) Jarad flinging Lord of Extinction/something
8) Hermit Druid for graveyard loop
9) Sharuum for Sculpting/Metamorph
10) Living Death combo's
The ones I see exceptionally often are in italics. See, it's about a 50-50 split between the two, which is how I tend to eyeball cards like Containment Priest. So, it's not about being able to play a general and then just not worrying about combo for the rest of the game. It's that you have a whole lot of bases covered to give you a good point to branch off from, and making sure that the rest of the answers you might need are in color. Take Kalitas, add Null Rod, Torpor Orb, Phyrexian Revoker, etc, tutors for what you need, a little discard and some spot removal like Snuff Out, and you've got a pretty lean Mono-B build that hasn't let go of its strength in board control, but is now capable of fighting combo in a way that Mono-B struggles with. Simply put, you're not just tutoring for the first hate card you need every game anymore, you're now tutoring for the last one you need.
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That's where I've got him slotted too, although I'm not sure he'll stick. The lifelink is actually a drawback more often than not in that deck.
If I was going to build around him as a general then I think I'd focus on his ability to pump out dudes. That's a pretty powerful effect to get "free" tacked on to removal, and it seems like one you could really build a deck around with lots of ways to take advantage of the tokens. The nice thing is that you have a strong built-in backup plan in his ability to just make himself huge and kill in a couple of swings, plus built-in grave hate.
EDH:
G[cEDH] Selvala, Heart of the StormG
URW[cEDH] Narset, the Last AirmericanURW
GWUSt. Jenara, the ArchangelGWU
UBGrimgrin, Chaos MarineUB
GOmnath, Mana BaronG
URWNarset, Justice League AmericaURW
GWUBAtraxa, Countess of CountersGWUB
GWUEstrid, Enbantress PrimeGWU