You want to win via the "Turning Creatures Sideways" plan.
Karador in the Context of Other Reanimators
Reanimator means different things to different people.
When some people say "Reanimator", they're thinking about a play style that's all about finding the cheapest way to cheat bombs onto the battlefield without really paying for them. Yes, Karador can and does do this with things like Animate Dead, Dance of the Dead, Reanimate and Necromancy, but these are exceptions to his fundamental way of doing things. They're efficient one offs primarily included to speed up combos, and are not part of what makes up the Karador Identity. The Cheating Out Fatties plan isn't a good overall fit for Karador's abilities since he requires you to pay face value for the creatures you're reanimating. If you want a general naturally disposed to getting big threats into play without really paying for them, you'll probably be much happier with Teneb, the Harvester or Chainer, Dementia Master.
Another perspective from which to consider Reanimator is as an engine for repurposing other players' threats to be used to your advantage. This is a fun framework for deck design, because the strength of your deck is largely dependent on the content of your opponents' lists. Sometimes you'll steal combo pieces right out from under someone at the last possible moment. Or maybe they'll land a huge threat only to have you wrath/spot remove it and reanimate it moments later. These kinds of lists are swingy and fun, but can be unpredictable and inconsistent unless you bake a sufficient number of game changing bombs into your list to cover for the cases that your opponents don't have any. Again this is a space where Chainer excels, but again, Karador doesn't fit here very well either, 1) because his ability only applies to your own yard and 2) his ability doesn't give any advantages in playing bombs at a reduced rate.
Yet another interpretation of what Reanimator can mean is card advantage through the treatment of the graveyard as a second hand. Combos aside, over time, in any game, whoever has the most cards in hand is highly favored to win. This is the foundation of Karador's value proposition and the space in which he yields competitive advantage. Mike Flores defined card advantage in the following way: "Card advantage is any process by which a player obtains effectively more cards than his or her opponent." (http://archive.wizards.com/Magic/magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/lo/286). A generally accepted fundamental assumption of card advantage is that, when a card is no longer in your hand, it isn't available for you to play. If you've played a card or been forced to discard, you've lost access to that card and have incurred relative card disadvantage. However, when Karador is on the board, every creature in our graveyard is effectively a creature in your hand. Cast a creature from your hand and it got countered? That's fine, cast it again from your yard. Countered again? That's still fine, you can just cast it again next turn. Karador gives you the freedom of inevitability. Creatures that have been removed or countered are not lost. Many times, you don't really mind if your plays get disrupted because you know you can just keep casting them until you outlast your opponents. The more cards in your yard, the more options you have. Also the more cards in your yard, the cheaper Karador is to cast. And recast. (Note that Karador's cost reduction applies after Commander tax has been applied. So, even if you're on your third or fourth cast, you'll probably still only need to pay BGW.)
The mechanics of Karador's ability have a couple implications. Karador can only reanimate creatures, so creatures will form the bulk of any Karador list. When considering spells to include, you want to prefer creatures over sorceries/instants. Thinking of running Nature's Lore? Go with Wood Elves instead. How about Naturalize/Disenchant? Reclamation Sage/Harmonic Sliver/Qasali Pridemage are better. And so on. You have to pay full price for creatures you play from the yard, so you want your creatures to be cheap. You want it to be feasible to keep casting your creatures again and again for value. Sure, you'll have some bombs that will have more demanding price tags, but those are the exception and you'll be saving your Loyal Retainers and other reanimation spells for those pieces. Since you'll be casting creatures over and over, ETBs have good value, but don't overlook powerful static abilities (hate) as well. For those creatures with high value ETBs, you don't have to wait for opponents to kill them for the opportunity to play them again. You'll be running sac effects (preferrably the free kind) to increase reuse and enable combos (which we'll cover in a moment). Besides enabling combos and reuse, sac effects are useful for avoiding exile, bounce, or stealing effects. For instance, if someone casts Gilded Drake targeting one of your creatures, just sacrifice it while the drake's ability is still on the stack and you're good to go.
Deck History
This list started (like a lot of Karador decks) as a midrange list that exploited creatures with good ETBs to gradually gain advantage over opponents and eventually win with such janky combos as Mikaeus, the Unhallowed + Triskelion and bare Reveillark and friends. Bare in this case means that there was no Boonweaver Giant or Academy Rector support to assemble combos. The list in that incarnation had lots of Karador staples you normally see: Ashen Rider, Mindslicer, Disciple of Bolas, etc and played the long grinding game to make the most of Karador's natural card advantage. Ramp was chunky and took the form of slow creatures like Farhaven Elf, and Yavimaya Elder. The deck ran big slow effects like Tooth and Nail and the average CMC was somewhere around 3.75. This was not a competitive deck. It was fun in casual circles, but would never hold up in serious play.
This was about the time that I began to take interest both in Duel Commander (French) and competitive multiplayer. Fluxuate's list became a strong influence and taught me a lot about fast acceleration via mana dorks. They come down way faster than land oriented ramp, contribute to reducing Karador's casting cost, never get targeted for removal, and can be cast out of the yard for 1 CMC. Fluxuate's list was running a strong dredge subtheme at that point which I adopted as well. Golgari Grave-Troll, Hermit Druid (which is banned in French), and multiple other dredge pieces found their way into the list and the deck's speed and consistency made a marked improvement. For Karador, dredge roughly equates to draw, so having lots of cheap effects to 'draw' 5 or more cards made an incredible impact. Of course, graveyard hate then became an issue and the landbase needed to be adjusted to raise the number of basic lands so Hermit Druid wouldn't leave me too vulnerable. At this point, there was lots of learning about how to use the graveyard intelligently, not overextending and not giving away unnecessary information about what plays were getting set up. The average CMC came way down in part due to the mana dorks, but also in emulation of the speed needed for French decks to be able to effectively play 1v1. This speed translated very well into multiplayer and the deck began to turn the corner.
With the spoiling of M15 came Boonweaver Giant. This guy completely shifted the entire focus of the deck. The fact that you could put an arbitrary number of creatures from your library into play with the only requirement being Boonweaver and a sac outlet translated into possibilities of insanely fast wins, complete with multiple T1 Magical Christmastland win assemblies. It didn't take long for the list to transform into an all-in combo deck. Practically all the midrange content got purged in favor of moxen and additional tutors to accelerate to the fastest possible wins with the most possible consistency. Anything that wasn't integral to the combo that was over 3 CMC generally got the axe. After a few games, I quickly realized that the dredge subtheme was utterly at variance with the tutor package and combo, so all of those pieces got discarded as well. On Cockatrice, I brought the new list to lots of competitive tables and was really pleased with the speed that it was able to reliably pull off the combo. Most players were very much taken by surprise that a Karador deck could put together wins so quickly and consistently. It raced Narset, Prossh, and Animar and often outsped them all.
It didn't take long for people to wise up to the threat of Boonweaver combo, so the list became a target. Opponents began to counter T1 Carrion Feeder. They'd exile the graveyard after an early Entomb. They'd respond with Aven Mindcensor to activations of Survival of the Fittest. Given the depth and redundancy of the list's combo pool, these types of disruption where only setbacks, but they would often give one of the other combo/storm players the extra turn or two they needed to hit the win first. In order to adapt, the list introduced a team of hate bears to interact with antipated threats in targeted ways. Teeg, Elesh Norn, Iona, and Peacekeeper were already in the list, but they needed some backup to increase reliability of the hate package. Eidolon of Rhetoric came in to slow down combo and storm, but wound up being an all star against essentially all competitive lists that universally want to accelerate quickly. Aven Mindcensor and Hushwing Gryff were called in to similar purpose and effect. Kataki, War's Wage came in to be a thorn in the side of virtually all competitive decks, but makes the biggest impact against MLD-oriented stax lists like Brago and Daretti. Hate bears assembled, this is the current incarnation of the list. No holds barred, race for the combo or shut everyone else down until it comes together. Fast, consistent, reliable, resilient. Karador Boonweaver Combo.
Added Spirit to bolster support against control, storm, and any other deck that relies on draw effects for combo or maintaining control.
Added Shriekmaw because targeted removal is important sometimes
Added Thalia as an additional hedge against fast combo and storm.
Removed Buried Alive because it was too slow and doesn't really play the game we want. It gives away too much information and leaves us necessarily exposed.
Removed Sakura-Tribe Elder because he was subpar compared to the other dorks.
Removed Fleshbag Marauder in order to make room for Shriekmaw.
Strategy
The Namesake Combo
This Karador build focuses on Boonweaver Giant combo, which is very similar to the old Protean Hulk decks that dominated the French meta a few years ago during the brief period that Protean Hulk was unbanned. Boonweaver is similar to Hulk in that it only needs a sac outlet and Boonweaver to combo out. Since the combo comes together with so few cards, it can be assembled very quickly and reliably. There are several hands with which you can assemble the combo T1, though T3 or T4 is most typical.
The Boonweaver combo goes as follows:
When Boonweaver enters play, find Pattern of Rebirth and attach it to him.
Sac Boonweaver to find Karmic Guide which returns Boonweaver and Pattern.
Sac Boonweaver again to find Fiend Hunter, who exiles Karmic Guide.
Sac Fiend Hunter to return Karmic Guide, who then returns Boonweaver and Pattern.
Sac Karmic and then Reveillark to return both Karmic and Fiend Hunter.
Use Karmic to return Boonweaver and Fiend Hunter to exile Karmic.
Sac Boonweaver to go get anything.
Sac Fiend Hunter to return Karmic, which returns Reveillark.
Repeat
This sequence nets one creature from the library each cycle and can put all creatures from your library into play and win on the spot. The combo wins through any combination of Reveillark and Friends with Blood Artist, Acidic Slime, or Altar of Dementia. Note that the order and pieces involved have some flexibility. For instance, Saffi Eriksdotter can be substituted in place of Fiend Hunter if he gets stuck in your yard or hand prior to the combo. Also, you don't need to go through the entire combo depending on your board state. If, for example, your sac outlet is Altar of Dementia you can stop once you have Karmic Guide and Fiend Hunter/Saffi Eriksdotter since you can just mill everyone with those pieces alone. Make sure to call out your triggers during each step to give each player opportunities to respond and to be convinced that the combo actually works. Some people will be suspicious if you just say, "Boonweaver, I win." Given there's so many moving pieces to the combo and it will probably be something your opponents haven't seen before, it's important that you show them all the steps so everyone can be satisfied.
Reveillark and Friends
"Pick two."
Boonweaver Giant isn't actually the way you win your games. He's just a very reliable accelerator for assembling the combo pieces that do so. In almost every case, Boonweaver's job will be to call up a Reveillark and Friends combo pair. Reveillark and Friends are a family of creatures that combine in many combinations into infinitely recursive pairs when you have a free sac outlet on the board. Putting an infinite pair together with a win con is your number one focus.
sac outlet + Boonweaver Giant allows you to put all creatures in your deck into play and win on the spot with any of the above.
Quick Overview (tl;dr)
The overall gameplan is to combo out as fast as you can. Your agenda is to get a sac outlet on board and Boonweaver into play so you can combo out. One way to do this is to get Boonweaver into your graveyard (generally off the back of something like Entomb, Survival of the Fittest, or Buried Alive) and then you reanimate Boonweaver and win. If the reanimation route doesn't materialize, Academy Rector can come out really quickly and search up Pattern of Rebirth onto any random creature, which you can then sac for Boonweaver to combo out from there. There is substantial tutor support to grab Rector/Boonweaver, sac outlets, and reanimation spells, so the pieces come together consistently.
You don't have to land Boonweaver to combo out. He just enables the assembly of your combo pieces very quickly. If you happen upon an infinite pair and a win con, don't go around looking for Boonweaver, just combo out with the pieces you've got.
The confluence of being a fast combo list, having the baked in recursion inevitablity of Karador, and maintaining a powerful hate bear suite makes this build really well positioned for competitive play. The fast combo component will be enough to plow through most competitors and a lot of times, you'll just hit your combo so fast that no one will be able to respond with disruption. Your strategies will vary slightly depending on the shape of the table and the archetypes you're dealing with.
Combo and Storm
Boonweaver is able to go off as fast or faster than most all of the prominant combo and storm builds you can expect to see, so you can feel free to just race them. Most of the time, you'll be able to get there first. If you get disrupted, peruse your hate bear menu for appropriate tools to stall until you can regroup.
Against Narset, Enlightened Master
Expect competitive Narset lists to get their commander onto the table by T3 (sometimes earlier) and that even a single attack will lead into a chain of extra turns and big effects that no one will be able to disrupt. That means if they get to T4 and haven't been disrupted, they're going to win. Luckily there's a number of ways to approach dealing with Narset. One plan is to land Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite and keep Narset from ever hitting the battlefield. This generally requires Survival of the Fittest and loses you a turn of tempo doing the Loyal Retainers dance. Another tactic is Peacekeeper. He'll keep Narset from being able to attack and thus keeps her at bay as long as you can maintain the 1W upkeep. Another strong approach is Gaddock Teeg. Narset will be able to attack and trigger with Teeg on the field, but all of the extra turn effects and a lot of the MLD and other game changers will be blanks until she can find a way to remove him. Even Eidolon of Rhetoric is sometimes an effective stumbling block for Narset because her triggered ability counts as casts. Of course she can choose removal spell and then keep going with the extra turn chain once Eidolon is gone, but that only happens when she gets lucky with the top 4. Thalia, Guardian of Thraban works nicely here too because she forces the 'free' spells to still cost mana. Sometimes this is the difference between winning and losing.
Hate bears are particularly strong against Narset because she generally runs very little targeted removal, instead opting for more acceleration, extra turns, and MLD. This means the Narset player will normally not be able to remove then from the table reliably.
Against Sharuum the Hegemon
Sharuum exists as a testament to the brokenness of Esper + artifacts in the format. At its core, the list is a big pile of strong artifacts and artifact manipulators that fit together in countless ways to generate infinite mana, infinite turns, and infinite damage. Esper means that Sharuum has access to all the best tutors in Magic to assemble any parts needed to come at you from many different angles. Sharuum himself goes infinite with any clone or artifact copy spell (state based actions take place before triggered abilities go on the stack, so Sharuum dies, comes back via his ETB and cycles infinitely) allowing him to kill everyone with Disciple of the Vault, Blood Artist, etc. If you think that keeping Sharuum off the table will make the game easy, you're quite mistaken as he'll just generate infinite mana with a Basalt Monolith and Brings of Brighthearth/Power Artifact or Pili-Pala and Grand Architect and feed that mana into any number of problematic outlets like Memnarch. Or he'll just take all the turns with Thopter Assembly and Time Sieve. His attack vectors are truly staggering so you'll need to be prepared.
You can expect Sharuum to be able to put his combos together about as fast as you can, so racing isn't always going to be profitable. If you wake up with a God hand and can assuredly put your win together T2 or T3, you can probably go for it, otherwise you'll want to open with hate bears. Given that he's running an artifact deck in every sense of the word, Kataki, War's Wage is a strong choice. He'll tie up Sharuum's ramp capability and slow down his ability to put pieces together. However, since his combos come together so quickly, Sharuum may never hit an upkeep before assembling a win, so Kataki is no silver bullet. You may actually be better served going first to Aven Mindcensor. Sure, Sharuum has tons of winning combinations, but he generally won't naturally draw into them. He will lean heavily on tutors to put pieces together and find answers to problems. Taking his tutoring capacity away is probably your strongest disruption against him. Eidolon of Rhetoric (normally an incredible drop) is only going to yield modest value against Sharuum. Eidolon locks most combo decks, but Sharuum for the most part doesn't rely on casting many spells. He goes infinite off of triggered and activated abilities instead, so Eidolon, while forcing Sharuum to give you information about what's coming, won't hurt him too much. That said, dropping something like Hushwing Gryff is also only a minor setback for the Sharuum player. It disrupts his clone combo and Deadeye Navigator and that's about it. The turn or two of disruption may be enough to sneak your combo in, but it's certainly not a sure thing. Another play he may not expect would be to land Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite. This will make his namesake combo with Blood Arist or Disciple of the Vault unworkable as well as shutting down all of his thopter games with Time Sieve and Sword of the Meek.
Against Animar, Soul of Elements
Competitive multiplayer Animar decks are generally going to be drawing upon two potential lines of combo. The most established is the Imperial Recruiter combo that leverages the repeated bouncing of Phyrexian Metamorph (for 2 life over and over) until Animar is large enough to cast Ulamog for free. This has variations with Cloudstone Curio that result in all opponent permanents getting destroyed, leaving a large Animar and Ulamog on the table to kill you. The second combo line involves getting Ancestral Statue into play (which self bounces for free) and either swinging with an infinite Animar or killing everyone with Purphoros, God of the Forge. Both combos come off very reliably by T4 or T5, but T3 happens often as well. Animar's protection from Black and White also poses significant problems for us in that we essentially will not be able to target him or block him. That said, we need to combo out first or disrupt his ability to finish.
Even though Animar is part blue, he runs very little reactive disruption. Like us, he's looking to find his combo as fast as possible and will likely only be looking to protect himself rather than disrupt others. This means he will generally not be interacting with hate bears as we cast them, though he does pack creatures with removal ETBs. Since he relies so heavily on ETBs for assembling and finishing his combos as well, Hushwing Gryff gives him enourmous trouble. If Gryff makes it to the table, there is very little chance Animar will have any tools for getting rid of it since all his removal is generally tied to creature ETBs. Given all the tutoring Animar uses to assemble his plays, Aven Mindcensor is also a really strong play, plus it will likely foil the plans of other opponents with more probability than Gryff. Animar plays very much like a storm deck, so Eidolon of Rhetoric applies very well here as expected. Finally, Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite makes the goings for Animar very difficult. Even if Animar himself survives Elesh Norn's static ability, nearly all of his creatures will succomb. This means that the value he generates from repeatedly bouncing his creatures will be entirely shut down until she's gone, not to mention his ability to complete either of his main combos.
Against Storm/Doomsday (Jeleva, Nephalia's Scourge, Zur the Enchanter)
Storm and Doomsday decks (often both played together in one list), normally show up in Grixis and Esper flavors and will be among the faster decks you'll have to deal with. Storm lists are characterized by low creature count and lots of cheap instant/sorcery spells and mana rocks. These resources can be leveraged via mana doublers like High Tide coupled with untappers like Turnabout and Candelabra of Tawnos to generate huge amounts of mana to chain through sequences of draw spells that culminate in a massive storm effect like Mind's Desire or combos like Doomsday into Laboratory Maniac. To make this happen consistently, Storm lists require tutors to hit their pieces. Many times though, these builds also often run several ways to arbitrarily draw the whole deck (Ad Nauseam or Mind Over Matter + Sensei's Divining Top + Helm of Awakening) as well so you need to be prepared for those eventualities. Given that their speed is on par with ours, if the opening hand doesn't look like we'll hit the combo by T3, we'll want to consider using some of our tutor support to grab a hate bear or two to keep them from blowing everyone out.
Right off the bat, Eidolon of Rhetoric is an excellent choice since he'll lock down their ability to generate any storm count and will force their Doomsday pile to take at least 3 or 4 turns to progress through. Along a similar axis, Spirit of the Labyrinth eliminates their access to card draw, which makes many of their lines of play significantly more difficult to put together. Aven Mindcensor also does a great job here disrupting all the tutoring that is normally required to assemble the combo. Note that Mindcensor completely nueters Doomsday because the top four card restriction is still applied to the searching of the library. Thus they search the whole graveyard, the top four of their library and then exile all the rest that they didn't even get a chance to search through. This is backbreaking when you flash him in response to the Doomsday cast. Given that Ad Nauseam is a popular assembly tool for these lists, Gaddock Teeg is a good disruptor for dealing with that who also works well against the bigger finishing spells in their list. Sequencing a win under storm/Doomsday requires very tight play and efficient use of mana, so Thalia, Guardian of Thraban makes their life much more difficult, given the extra mana for every step in their engine. The Esper version of this list is often helmed by Zur, with the expectation being that he can go find tools like Necropotence to maintain a full grip and dig for combo pieces. If this is the situation, Peacekeeper can step in to slow the whole process too. Remember, the goal isn't to completely shut your opponents down from doing anything. The goal is to hold them up for the couple turns it takes for us to recalibrate and put a new combo together.
Stax/Lockdown
Typical stax lists often won't have the board fully locked down by the time you've got your pieces together, so you can often feel comfortable racing to the combo. If they do wind up locking the board down, your combo pieces can many times still get through because they're mostly only 1 or 2 cmc. To buy some time, Kataki, War's Wage will make the stax players' lives complicated, given that most of them lean heavily on artifact acceleration for mana. Also, most of the stax pieces will be comprimising their ability to reliably pay Kataki's upkeep. This will allow you some space to free up some mana and put something together while the stax player is scrambling. There will be times that they get a lock more firmly established. In those cases, your only hope will be Pernicious Deed, sometimes off the back of Academy Rector.
Against Derevi, Empyrial Tactician
Thought of by some to be best positioned deck in all of EDH at the moment, Derevi poses a fast, resilient, and dynamic challenge to overcome. Like all the Stax/Lockdown lists, he runs all the Lockdown effects (Stasis, etc) and tax effects (Trinisphere and friends) available in his color identity and seeks to avoid the negative consequences of the lockdown pieces through the use of his triggered untap ability. To get the most out of that tactic, you can expect him to slot in a horde of 1 cmc mana dorks to both act as nonland acceleration (to hedge against MLD) and as extra attackers to capitalize on untap triggers. Unique among Stax lists for his affiliation with green, Derevi has access to the best creature tutoring sources in the game (Survival of the Fittest, Green Sun's Zenith, Chord of Calling, etc). This tutoring capability allows him to run essentially the same hate bear subgame that we have going on. The only difference is that we dip into our hate bear menu when we need time to recover from combo disruption and he uses his as the primary strategy for playing the game.
Derevi doesn't just use his untapping ability to overcome Stax lockdown. He also leverages those untaps to exploit things like Gaea's Cradle and Yisan, the Wanderer Bard, stacking multiple untaps to generate huge amounts of mana and multiple Yisan activations at a time. Suffice to say the effects are negative for you and should be considered a high priority to shut down. That said, a resolved Peacekeeper eliminates that aspect of Derevi's gameplan altogether until he can find an answer (and he will). Given all the tutoring he does to carefully select the best answers to our board state, Aven Mindcensor is also a huge bomb against the Derevi player. This will force him to rely solely on draw sources to get the pieces he needs to disrupt our offensive. That will be a tall order for him. Another angle to attack from is to understand Derevi's dependence on cheap creatures that can attack and produce untap triggers. Getting Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite onto the table (off of Loyal Retainers of cource) will greatly complicate his plans in that regard and likely give you the time you need to assemble a win.
Against Brago, King Eternal
Brago plays very agressively, flooding the table with mana rocks and Stax/Lockdown pieces, then reinforcing his advantage with MLD. He overcomes lock effects by using his triggered ability to blink (and untap) all of his nonland permanents. Expect him to run draw ETBs and Manifest effects to further push his advantage with every blink. The potential of drawing mana from all those mana rocks twice a turn means that Brago accelerates very quickly and is very hard to stop once he gets going. In a tuned list, you can expect Brago to land on T2 and start swinging T3. Generally his wincon is infinite Brago triggers off of Strionic Resonator, which allows him to draw/manifest his whole deck, destroy/bounce all permanents, and BSZ everyone for infinite.
Brago's entire gameplan hangs on the assumption that he can swing and get triggers to blink his board. Shut that down and he really struggles. Therefore, Peacekeeper is a snap keep when Brago is at the table. This will cost you a 1W upkeep, which may be a challenge depending on the board state and how many lock pieces have landed, but the dividends paid are well worth it. Another good choice for dealing with Brago is Hushwing Gryff. Brago's blinking ability will be looking to exploit ETB effects. Gryff will shut down at least thosee effects that are tied to creatures. This won't keep him from untapping his rocks, but it will eliminate a lot of the incremental card draw off pieces like Mulldrifter as well as shutting down the otherwise devastating Rishadan family, which you only need to experience once to realize how broken they are under Brago's helm. Those fronts covered, Gaddock Teeg will protect our mana base from the large MDL effects we can expect Brago to run, namely Armageddon and Sunder, but even Ravages of War shows up too, so keeping those out of the equation will mitigate his attempts to swing advantage into his favor. As usual, again we can further expect Eidolon of Rhetoric to do lots of work holding Brago to one spell per turn. A lot of his gameplan revolves around casting a bunch of permanents, blinking everything, and then casting more with all the untapped mana sources. Eidolon serves as an excellent check against Brago's ability to run away with his board state, so it's a great cast at any point in the game.
Control
Control decks are at a huge disadvantage because you often can just grind them out, casting and recasting until they're top decking and overcome. Against counterspell.dec, your strategy is to just keep barreling at them until all their counters are gone. Also, make note that there are a number of means of getting things into play that don't require casting. A good example of this is Sheoldred, Whispering One. Lots of times, control players will allow her to come into play because they've got their eyes on disrupting combo pieces of multiple players and don't consider her a real threat. However, Sheoldred's ability allows you to cast your actual combo pieces like Academy Rector, knowing they will be countered, and then brought into play for free the next turn in a way that is much harder to disrupt. Apprentice Necromancer is another example of a creature that will likely be allowed to make it to the battlefield, especially if you have an empty yard. Then you can cast a combo piece, let it get countered, and activate Necromancer to get it into play. These types of plays add a layer of indirection that makes it more difficult for the control player to judge which plays to counter and which ones to let through.
All of this presumes that your implicit card advantage engine will eventually outpace theirs. As a means of cementing this, you can plant Spirit of the Labyrinth to keep them from refilling their hands, thus ensuring inevitability for as long as you're able to keep it on the table.
Any land that yields black or fetches one that does
If you wake up with the above hand, you play the land, play the mox, and play the lotus. Then play the sac outlet, play Entomb for Boonweaver and then reanimate him and combo out to win T1. Obviously this won't happen often, but similar assemblies will very readily come together by T3 or T4 if you plan well from the beginning. Your starting hand will dictate the strategy for the early game. To combo out, you'll want a sac outlet and a way to get either Boonweaver or Rector into play. As stated before, Boonweaver will generally require reanimation, so he'll need both a means of getting tutored into the yard (Entomb, Buried Alive, Survival of the Fittest) and a way of being resurrected afterward. Rector can be hard cast and sacrificed to put Pattern of Rebirth on a dork which will then find Boonweaver. This boils down to two objective lines:
Components needed to start the combo with Rector
a sac outlet (or tutor)
a dork (or hatebear, or tutor)
Academy Rector (or tutor)
Components need to start the combo with Boonweaver
a sac outlet (or tutor)
an Entomb effect (or tutor)
a reanimation effect (or tutor)
Notice how the high volume of tutors gives you a lot of flexibility, redundancy, and consistency in putting together an opening hand that has a very specific path to a win. If you start with three tutors, you can pick whatever path you want. Normally, you'll almost always be looking for Rector unless you have an Entomb effect or reanimation effect in your opener. The high tutor count in the list makes it such that after a mulligan or two, you should generally be set with a clear idea of which path you're going to take when you start the game.
Speaking of mulligans:
Never keep Boonweaver in your opening hand unless you have Survival of the Fittest or a tutor that can find it.
Same goes for Reveillark and friends. Just say no, unless you have or can get Survival of the Fittest.
Two lands is generally enough for a keep. You can toss the rest away unless you've got Mox Diamond, (for which you'll keep an extra one).
Keeping more than two mana dorks is normally a mistake. You want acceleration, but you want cards to play with that acceleration all the more.
You'll generally want to toss hate bears and utility in favor of reinforcing your assembly of combo pieces. A lot of times, when you do want hate bears or utility, you want very specific pieces to deal with the threats on the table. You can look those up if the game doesn't end with the early combo. Of course however, a case can be made for keeping a hate bear that lines up very well to a specific player at the table that you expect to be a big threat. For instance, if you've got a Brago at the table, keeping that Kataki, War's Wage is probably a good idea.
Piloting at different times of the game
At the start of the game, before doing anything, you want to look at the opponents at the table. Are they combo players? Stax? Control? You've got the speed to race most every deck in the format, but it also makes sense to plan for disruption. If you get disrupted, does that virtually guarantee another combo player will win? Choosing to open with targeted hate can be the correct play if you expect someone may be able to outrace you or disrupt the table in a way that will give another opponent advantage over you. Your opening hand will give you lots of information as to how fast your combo is likely to come together. If you've got a lame opener with one tutor and little prospect of hitting your combo quickly, use that tutor instead for grabbing the hate that will apply most profitably to your outlook. If there's three other combo players at the table, Aven Mindcensor is a really strong play. If you're playing a control player and a Stax player, you can bet that the Stax player will be a bigger threat in the early game, so Kataki, War's Wage may a good first choice, and so on.
As stated throughout, your early game is largely about hitting the combo quickly. Based on your opening hand, choose the sequence you want to take and put the pieces together quickly. A lot of the time, you'll get there and no one will have anything to do about it. However, there will be many times that you'll get disrupted. You'll have tutors get countered. You'll have Boonweaver exiled out of your graveyard. You'll have Rector countered when you don't have reanimation. It's going to happen and it's a setback when it does, but it isn't the end of the world. And it isn't the end of the game. It just means you need to transition into your disruption strategy.
The early game combo strategy is very much all about finding a way for you to win as fast as possible. The disruption strategy, however, is all about not allowing anyone else to win until you can assemble a path to your combo. This is where your utility pieces and hate bears come into play (literally) to disrupt the gameplans of your opponents. Essentially all of your disruption is creature oriented because those pieces have the widest available tutor support and are recurrable via Karador if the game goes into attrition mode. The best tool we have for effectively accessing our hate menu is Survival of the Fittest. Getting this onto the table is priority one when playing in disruption mode. Don't expect Survival to survive very long. Experienced players will kill as soon as they can, so you'll want to make your activations count. In service to this, look at the board state. If you've got enough mana reserves to put together a win for the next turn and no one else is on the doorstep of winning the game, hold your mana open and pass turn so you can process the activations at the latest possible moment and avoid giving away information about your plan of attack. If someone is threatening a game winning play, identify appropriate disruption and get it into play, while hopefully holding mana open to find Eternal Witness in response to someone destroying Surival. A clever trick is to hold mana open and respond to threatening plays by searching up and flashing in Aven Mindcensor or Hushwing Gryff depending on the play on the stack. This takes lots of people by surprise and likely costs them tempo if they expected to get through without disruption.
Maintain your disruption focused game until you've got the necessary resources in hand and/or graveyard to combo out. The longer the game goes on, the more advantage you're likely to have via treating your graveyard as a second hand. Karador only ever comes into the game when he costs BGW and can start generating advantage right away. Keep dropping hate bears that reinforce your advantage (and recurring them from the yard) as long as needed and your outlook should be positive. Karador himself is an excellent hedge against both Stax decks and control decks. If there aren't any combo players at the table, you can count on Karador to support you in outlasting your competition. Against Stax, he lets you keep replaying important pieces that you've been forced to sacrifice. Against control, he lets you keep casting your combo pieces over and over until all the counters are gone and the control players are topdecking and powerless.
Because this list puts so much focus on hitting the combo quickly, it does take time to get back on track if disrupted, especially when Boonweaver gets exiled. Remember that the actual wincon requires a pair from Reveillark and Friends. Boonweaver assembles them quickly, but isn't necessary to get the win. Survival of the Fittest only needs 2 to 4 activations to put together an arbitrary kill from any given hand and normally only consumes a single turn to do so. So don't lose hope, keep your game going, stick a couple hate bears to disrupt the competition, and find another wincon.
Card by Card
Win Cons
Altar of Dementia
Perhaps the best of the sac outlets since it acts as a win con too. All you need is an infinite pair for gg.
Blood Artist
Kills all opponents with any infinite creature loop. He doesn't need to be part of the loop, so he's more flexible and immediate than Acidic Slime. Even Saffi + Loyal Retainers will net a win off this guy. He also shuts down opponent infinite creature loops as a fun edge case that shows up now and again.
Acidic Slime
Goes infinite with Reveillark to destroy all opponent lands. Used as a backup win con when Blood Artist gets exiled.
Combo Machinery
Boonweaver Giant
Central to getting Reveillark and Friends into play fast. Since he can search anywhere for Pattern of Rebirth all you need to do is get him into play with a sac outlet. Boonweaver isn't the one who actually wins the game, but, without disruption, he will very reliably put the pieces together that do.
Pattern of Rebirth
The target of Boonweaver's affection. Note that this can be used on any creature to go get Boonweaver if it happens to show up in your hand while you have a sac outlet.
Academy Rector
If you don't have Survival of the Fittest or Entomb, this guy is the first stop in kicking off your Boonweaver combo. He only costs 3W, which can be achieved very early. Make sure to have another creature in play to receive Pattern of Rebirth after the Rector trigger. In a few rare cases, (maybe Boonweaver in hand or an opponent threatening a win when you can't convert that turn) he can get Survival, Pernicious Deed, Oppression etc to meet the needs of the moment.
Carrion Feeder, Viscera Seer
The main sac outlets that generally see play in game because they're creatures and thus readily tutorable off of Survival of the Fittest. The 1 cmc is also spectacular. Dropping one of these on T1 will put your opponents on edge.
Reanimation
Reanimate
The cheapest possible reanimation piece. Enables the rare T1 win. The life cost is never a concern since the game ends immediately after.
Necromancy
A little slower than the above two, but the ability to be used as an instant can enable some tricky plays when you need to respond to opponent threats.
Loyal Retainers
Behind Survival of the Fittest, this is perhaps the best card that can be run in any Karador deck. 3 cmc, free activation the same turn he comes out, Sun Titan and Reveillark recurrable, and very easily tutorable. Many big Iona, Elesh Norn, and Sidisi plays materialize off of Survival of the Fittest and this guy.
Apprentice Necromancer, Sheoldred, Whispering One
Since these are creatures, they can be tutored up more easily then the other reanimation tools in the list. If you play one of the other reanimators and get countered or if you didn't have any reanimation in hand, you can always tutor up one of these guys (mainly with Survival of the Fittest) and try again. If you get disrupted again, Karador can keep pulling them out of the yard until they connect. Also note that both of these pieces are excellent tools for working through opposing countermagic. You can expect opponents to counter your combo pieces, but they will likely allow these to get to the table. Then you can cast a real combo piece, let it get countered and then leverage one of these to get it to the battlefield without needing a cast. Note again that you would never hard cast Sheoldred, but pull her in through Loyal Retainers instead.
Tutors
Vampiric Tutor
The best tutor in all of magic. Go get whatever you need eot of last opponent's T1.
Imperial Seal
Almost on the same level as Vampiric Tutor. Yes, it's super expensive, but having a second 1 cmc tutor for anything significantly improves your mulligan performance and reinforces the chances of profitable T1.
Entomb
Almost always reserved for Boonweaver. Part of the Magical Christmasland T1 win. Most of the time this supports wins in the T2-T4 timeframe.
Survival of the Fittest
Very likely the best green card ever printed. Get this out and string a chain into a combo for the win or a gamebreaking legend and Loyal Retainers to get it into play.
Demonic Tutor
The second best tutor in all of magic. Won't help with those T1/T2 wins, but extremely useful nonetheless.
Diabolic Intent
Effectively, a second copy of Demonic Tutor. You generally feed a mana dork to it and find something to win the game.
Altar of Bone
Not the best tutor in the list by a long shot, but it grabs a creature and puts it directly into your hand. This means it can get Academy Rector to start the chain, a sac outlet (Carrion Feeder/Viscera Seer) or a reanimation creature like Apprentice Necromancer, which gives us a lot of flexibility in lining up a combo sequence. The sac cost is no problem since you'll likely just feed it a dork that probably helped with the mana cost too.
Eladamri's Call
Instant speed creature to your hand. Lots of applications. Go get the hate you need to stop someone else's combo. Or maybe get a creature into your hand to shovel into Survival of the Fittest so you can combo out. Like, Altar of Bone, this can get all kinds of things that just translate into a win if no one can respond.
Birthing Pod
Honestly, the only thing I really ever us this for is targeting Karador to go put Iona, Shield of Emeria into play. Even for that narrow use case, it's totally worth it.
Chrome Mox, Mox Diamond, Lotus Petal
Moxen! These enable the afformentioned Magical Christmasland T1 win. Or more likely, they convert to make a win on T2/T3.
Mana Crypt
As if Sol Ring wasn't broken enough, let's have one for free. The damage drawback is never an issue. Very often used to land an early Academy Rector to launch the Boonweaver chain.
Sol Ring
The slow crappy version of Mana Crypt. Still incredible for powering out necesary combo pieces really early.
Avacyn's Pilgrim, Birds of Paradise, Elves of Deep Shadow, Elvish Mystic, Fyndhorn Elves, Llanowar Elves
1 cmc mana dorks. These guys are the fastest creature-oriented acceleration you can get, they come down T1, they almost never get targeted for removal, if they die they reduce Karador's casting cost, they can be cast from the yard on the cheap, and they love to be fed to Diabolic Intent and Pattern of Rebirth. This list runs a low land count largely because it can depend on these guys coming down early and getting it done.
Utility
Sensei's Divining Top
Excellent on T1 to help organize an early combo. The list runs an intentionally low number of lands. This helps to make sure you hit a land during those first (only) couple turns.
Sylvan Library
Like Top, but the effect is for free and you can draw all three cards if you want. Again the life drawback is inconsequential since you expect the game to end quickly in most cases.
Dark Confidant
Bob. Accentuates your already baked in card advantage. You cast lots of spells really quickly in the early combo game. If you need to switch to disruption mode, keeping a full grip is really important.
Skullclamp
With all the dorks running around, this yields really good value after you've exhausted your hand and need to reload or at least get a creature to feed to Survival of the Fittest
Grim Haruspex
Yields a surprising amount of value since creatures dies so often with this list. There's multiple ways to just draw the whole deck without thinking about it. Also dovetails nicely with Skullclamp.
Gaddock Teeg
The penultimate hate bear, this guy breaks many win cons and big plays you can expect your opponents to put together. He completely disrupts Narset, Maelstrom Wanderer, Teferi (planeswalker), most MLD, Ad Nauseam, Omniscience, and others. The 2 cmc is absolutely incredible.
Iona, Shield of Emeria
The big red button that you press when counterspells and storm need to stop. Even if there's a mono color deck at the table, a lot of times, you're just going to say, "Blue." Obviously, you never hard cast her. She only comes in off of Loyal Retainers, Pattern of Rebirth or Birthing Poding Karador.
Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
Utterly hoses many prominant decks. Azami, Narset, Prossh, Arcum, Hermit Druid, Animar, Kaalia, and others are all dead in the water until they come up with an answer. Like Iona, this only ever comes in off of Loyal Retainers or Pattern of Rebirth
Aven Mindcensor
Lots of competitive decks rely on the ability to search their libraries in order to operate effectively. Take that away and they really struggle. Flash is really powerful. Search this guy up with Survival of the Fittest in response to a tutor and buy yourself some time. This guy is particularly good because many times, your opponents won't have removal in hand and won't be able to search for it either!
Eidolon of Rhetoric
Slows everything down, completely hoses Storm. Capitalizes on the fact that Boonweaver combo has fewer steps than most other prominate combos. The use of Survival of the Fittest also mitigates the downside, since you can just activate as many times as you want. Also, instants like Vampiric Tutor and Entomb are great for casting on other players' turns so you can finish the combo on your turn. If necessary, you just sac this guy if you get disrupted and need to regroup quickly.
Hushwing Gryff
Yes, I'm running Torpor Orb in a Karador deck. While he does stop you from executing your win cons, he doesn't interfere with your combo assembly process. Academy Rector, Apprentice Necromancer, Loyal Retainers, etc all work perfectly fine, as do all your other hate pieces. Gryff stops a huge amount of functionality in many opponent lists until you're ready to combo out. Then, you just sac him before starting the combo. He's a great target for Pattern of Rebirth off of Academy Rector if you need one. Also the Survival of the Fittest trick where you search him up and flash him into play in response to an opponent beginning a combo sequence is glorious.
Kataki, War's Wage
How many competitive lists run a lot of artifact ramp? Yes, essentially all of them. This guy disrupts the plans of those who want to employ MLD and makes stax/lockdown decks have to work way harder than normal. He particularly makes the lives of Daretti, Teferi (planeswalker), and Brago really miserable.
Peacekeeper
A huge impact against Narset, Derevi, and Brago, who each tend to run relatively little targeted removal, so they often flail for awhile trying to get him off the table.
Spirit of the Labyrinth
Neutralizes control decks, storm, and any list that depends heavily on draw effects to win or maintain advantage. We don't run that many draw effects in this list, enjoying most of our card access via tutors, so this doesn't hit us too badly.
Thalia, Guardian of Thraban
Another tool to be used against storm. Slows us a little, but most of our combo machinery is creature oriented, so the negative effects aren't entirely symmetric.
Land
High Market
Sac effect on a land is great in a pinch when you just need to get Academy Rector into the yard.
Phyrexian Tower
The BB is really useful for putting wins together earlier than they'd otherwise happen. Targeting a dork T2 has put together many a win.
coming soon!
Appendix
Using Survival of the Fittest Effectively
Never cast Survival of the Fittest without at least one creature in your hand.
Never cast Survival of the Fittest without at least one open green mana.
Experienced players will respect the threat Survival poses and kill it as soon as possible. Have a plan in your head for what you want to have in play ahead of time and convert that into a Survival chain. The cost (mana and time) of the chain will dictate how and when you sequence your activations.
Your goal is to activate Survival multiple times at the end of your last opponent's turn. This allows you to respond with an alternate activation chain in the likely case that some destroys Survival, and it also allows you to avoid giving information away about what you're doing.
Survival works well with Flash Bears like Aven Mindcensor or Hushwing Gryff. You'll already be leaving mana open to execute your chain. If someone starts to combo out, respond by searching up a bear and flashing it into play.
If someone does destroy Survival, you can respond in a couple ways. If you only have one open green mana, you might just search up Eternal Witness to get it back and recast the next turn. If you have the needed resources to fully execute the chain you need, just go ahead and do that instead. Otherwise you want to respond with an activation chain that puts you in good position. Something like creature --> Sun Titan --> Apprentice Necromancer works ok because it sets you back up to have Survival in play again, but with effectively two turns lost. Perhaps a better response chain would be creature --> Iona/Elesh Norn --> Loyal Retainers depending on which legend is most debilitating to your opponents.
Developing a Survival chain requires you to consider total cost in mana and number of turns required. The current board state should inform your decision making process. You want to avoid giving away information when possible, but sometimes this can't be avoided. Suppose your goal is to get Boonweaver in play and you have no reanimation spells in hand. One chain could be creature --> Boonweaver --> Sheoldred --> Loyal Retainers. Once you sequence through the chain, you'd play Retainers and then activate them to return Sheoldred, who then returns Boonweaver on the next turn. The total cost of the chain would be GGG + 2W. You'll also have a turn where Sheoldred will need to be in play waiting for your upkeep, so the 2GGGW will either need to be spread over two turns or you'll need to spend all 2GGGW in one turn. Another route could be creature --> Apprentice Necromancer and then another creature --> Boonweaver --> Carrion Feeder. Here you spend G + 1B to get Necromancer out and then next turn GG + BB to reanimate Boonweaver and put Carrion Feeder into play. Taking this second route has a number of benefits. 1. If the opponent isn't very experienced and all they see is Necromancer on board with nothing in the yard, he or she may not feel very threatened. 2. The mana cost is cheaper overall. 3. If Necromancer gets killed before he can activate, you can always chain through the first sequence instead. 4. This sequence doesn't give away information the way the first one does. Everyone will see Boonweaver in the yard and know exactly what you're up to and Boonweaver will be exposed to graveyard hate in the intervening turn.
Typical Survival Chains (all assume no reanimation/combo pieces already in hand)
1. creature --> Apprentice Necromancer and then another creature --> Boonweaver --> Carrion Feeder
Requires one turn delay since no haste for Necromancer
2. creature --> Boonweaver --> Sheoldred --> Loyal Retainers and another creature --> Carrion Feeder
Requires one turn delay for Sheoldred to have upkeep trigger (during that lap, everyone will have information on what you're up to).
3. creature --> Academy Rector and another creature --> Carrion Feeder
Fully executable during your turn, but more expensive.
4. creature --> Iona/Elesh Norn --> Loyal Retainers
Fully executable during your turn
Dealing with Disruption
Just as our hatebear suite is aimed at disrupting opponent weaknesses with targeted hate, you can also expect to have to deal with plenty of hate coming your way as well. Sac outlets will get removed, cards in the yard and library will get exiled, and inconvenient permanents will be dropped onto the table. With maybe one exception, none of the disruption you can expect to see are silver bullets. Yes, disruption can lead to us losing the game, perhaps because we lose tempo and another combo list takes advantage of the opening, but if we play tightly there is very little we can't overcome and bounce back from.
Even though disruption will come in many different forms, the net effect of most of them is the same. For one, you lose tempo as mentioned above. Second, you lose access to one or more of your combo pieces for either a short period of time (effects that put pieces in the graveyard or things like Stifle) or you lose them permanently (exile effects). Between the two, the loss of tempo is probably more important. The depth and interchangeability of your combo roster allows you to suffer the loss of various pieces without needing to be too worried. Loss of tempo, however, can mean the difference between winning and losing, particularly if you've committed all your mana in pursuit of the win. For this reason, planning ahead and securing solid hate pieces is often well advised.
This is a very typical type of disruption you can expect to encounter. Losing access to our graveyard means losing access to our ability to combo out, so we're held up until these things are removed. Luckily, almost all of the grave hate we can expect to see is artifact or enchantment based so they're all easy to remove with Harmonic Sliver, Reclamation Sage, or Qasali Pridemage (and all of those are easy to tutor for). One shot grave hate is a little easier to play around in that you can sometimes 'remove' it by enticing the opponent into triggering it prematurely. For instance, just dumping Boonweaver into the yard is likely to provoke a trigger from many opponents. You can further ensure a response if you play some cheap reanimation representing the beginning of the combo. If you've got Survival of the Fittest online, losing Boonweaver isn't really a problem since you can just keep playing through and manually assemble Reveillark and friends from there.
Bojuka Bog is a dangerous sleeper of which you should be wary. An open Knight of the Reliquary or Crop Rotation can be timed to exile your yard when least expected. (So always be expecting it!) Rule of thumb is to avoid unnecessarily dumping creatures into the yard. Overextending can give your opponents leverage, which is never a wise plan.
Counters
You'll probably run into these even more than grave hate. The setbacks are less painful though, since you'll normally have access to your graveyard to keep going. Rather than countering your tutors, wise opponents will wait for you to cast something important like reanimation, a sac outlet, or Rector. None of these is much of a problem as you can just find more reanimation to continue forward. Creature-oriented reanimation like Sheoldred and Apprentice Necromancer are really good because they're easy to tutor, they look inconspicuous (and so are likely to survive), and they allow you to bring things back from the yard via activated/triggered abilities rather than casts and thus are much harder to disrupt.
Spot Removal
Also in the list of inconveniences are various sources of instant speed spot removal. These are inconveniences because they only cost tempo and don't disable any of your combo machinery in a permanent sense. Boonweaver himself can be responded to while he's on the battlefield and he's waiting for his ETB to resolve. This is annoying and means you need to go get another reanimator to make another combo attempt. The same goes for Karmic Guide or Sun Titan waiting for their ETB triggers in order to go infinite with Fiend Hunter or Saffi Eriksotter. In each case, you need to either recast from the yard (with Karador in play) or find more reanimation. If the spot removal is an exile effect, fear not, just sacrifice the target to your sac outlet before the exile effect can resolve.
Stifle effects are similar to spot removal in that they cost you tempo, but generally in a more innocuous sense because they don't remove any of your pieces. Even if your Rector trigger gets stifled, you can reanimate him and try again since the exile takes place when the trigger resolves.
These are pretty irritating to have resolved against you, but aren't the end of the world. Depending on the experience of your opponent, you can expect a very diverse spectrum of choices for what they'll exile. Some people will exile Boonweaver and Rector (which means you just assemble Reveillark and friends manually). Others will remove Blood Artist, Acidic Slime, and Altar of Dementia, thinking that you won't have a way to combo out. While that's true, you can still run through the Boonweaver cycle and put all your creatures into play without an immediate win condition, but with a very challenging board state for your opponents if all of the hatebears are in play at the same time. Savvy casters will exile Reveillark, Karmic Guide, and Blood Artist, which gives you the hardest way to go since the base combo won't work and a manual assembly will require Altar of Dementia to win. In that situation, you're best served playing tightly with your hatebears until you find Altar and an infinite pair or you eventually get to victory turning creatures sideways.
This card plays very similar to grave hate. Normally it will flash in during your combo and will exile one or more of your critical pieces (likely Karmic Guide and Fiend Hunter being returned by Reveillark). Because it's only going to exile a small part of your team, the tempo loss is really the only bit of consequence here. Search up some removal to take out the priest and go back to your gameplan manually assembling the combo.
Playing around Elesh is very similar to playing around graveyard hate because you can't combo out while she's online. You need to go find removal (Shriekmaw), get her off the table and then continue.
Mindcensor is one of the most powerful tools to use against your opponents, so it's only fitting that it's also one of their most powerful pieces to use against you. Without being able to search your library, you can't toolbox for answers and are thus stuck in topdeck mode. With Survival, Fauna Shaman, or another instant speed tutor source we can respond to the cast and find an answer. Otherwise we're pretty compromised.
I mentioned earlier that, with one exception, there are no silver bullets. Well this is the one exception. If someone resolves Humility, you're pretty much toast. There is a little silver lining in that there are very few lists that run it profitably (so you won't see it often) and if it hits, chances are it's really hurting other opponents too. So you can expect that you won't be the only person trying to remove it. Now there will be people who criticize running a list without any noncreature removal, but Karador really needs to be as creature-oriented as possible. Having high creature count pays many dividends and every concession in this regard dilutes our overall effectiveness. Also, noncreature cards have much narrower tutor support in this list, so getting your hands on them will be unreliable at best. That said, if you have a meta where Humility sees significant play, then slotting in Nature's Claim or Naturalize will probably make sense, at the expense of optimal operating efficiency.
T1.
Draw Forest
Play Windswept Heath -> Bayou
Play Llawnmower Elves
T2.
Draw Fyndhorn Elves
Play Swamp
Tap elves and play Fyndhorn Elves
Play Diabolic Intent sacking Fyndhorn Elves -> Survival of the Fittest
T3.
Draw Enlightened Tutor
Play Forest
Play Survival of the Fittest
(eot for last opponent)
Activate Survival discarding Iona -> Boonweaver Giant
Activate Survival discarding Boonweaver -> Carrion Feeder
T4.
(Derevi player had played Rising Waters, so only Bayou untaps)
Draw Brushland
Play Phyrexian Tower
Play Carrion Feeder
Activate Phyrexian Tower on Llawnmower Elves for BB
Play Animate Dead on Boonweaver
gg
A couple more cheap sac outlets couldn't hurt. Blasting Station is another wincon outlet, and there are a few solid 2 mana ones, like Cartel Aristocrat, Bloodthrone Vampire, and Dross Hopper. Evolutionary Leap isn't free, but can generate a ton of card advantage and get combos kickstarted with a few mana. Auratouched Mage can kick off the combo as another Boonweaver Giant. Just grab Pattern, then sac him to grab Giant off of Pattern and recur Pattern onto Giant and win. Heliod's Pilgrim works similarly. Drop him turn 2/3, grab Pattern, and then enchant him with pattern and sac the next turn to find Giant and win.
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I ran Blasting Station in a previous incarnation of the list, but eventually culled it due to relatively high cmc, not being a creature, and not doing really doing anything without combo fully assembled.
I like keeping the sac outlet count pretty low. Perhaps moving to four of them would be ok, but having multiple sac outlets in your hand feels really bad when you wish one as a tutor or reanimation spell The 1 cmc of Carrion Feeder and Viscera Seer is also pretty important for reliably hitting the win con T3 or T4. The extra mana makes a difference. The 2 cmc of Altar of Dementia is tolerated because it's a win con and sac outlet rolled into one.
Never heard of Auratouched Mage before. I'll probably give that a swing, though it's effectively a crappy Rector. I'm not going to be hard casting it ever, so it will require reanimation, which would be just as well applied to Boonweaver himself. I'll give him a try though.
Auratouched was the original Boonweaver. Sure, you're never going to be casting him (though he's one mana easier than Boonweaver if you have to), but it gives you another card to kickstart the combo with, and if you have discard outlets + reanimator spells, every copy helps. Also, unlike Rector, you don't need a second creature to enchant and sac with the Pattern to get started.
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You should also swap out your spot removal creatures for staxing creatures like Thalia, Guardian of Thraben or Glowrider. Those cards can better buy you the time you need to beat combo decks, and they help against cards that really bone you otherwise, such as Humility.
I go back and forth on the Thalia effects. She very nearly made the list, but I was concerned about taxing myself on all the tutors. Keeping those costs down helps ensure winning quickly from out of nowhere. I'll playtest her along with Vryn Wingmare to see whether my suspicions are correct.
Elder definitely feels bad to get in your opening hand sometimes, though I do like being able to grab a land of any color (given the intentionally low land count). Treespeaker is a little slow and doesn't give color flexibility. Spirit Guide is obviously great, but we really want creatures on the field for sac purposes and in the yard for Karador purposes. I could perhaps be convinced in the direction of either Lotus Cobra or Bloom Tender. Thoughts?
I've been playing a similar list (but I can't afford imperial seal) I'm not convinced with lotus cobra whilst playing such a low land count. Bloom tender I'm actually playing currently. It'd be better with anfensa at the helm with the guarantee of enabling 3 colors more consistently but I can't say it's any worse then Sakura-tribe elder at its worst and far better at its best. Still tinkering my local meta is all over the place with casuals cut throats and everything in between.
Glad it's finally done. This took forever working on it 30 min at a time here and there
Greater Good is excellent in midrange builds that do more toolboxing out of the yard and run more substantial creatures. For this list, it would generally read: "Sacrifice a Creature: Draw 1 card and then discard 3 cards." This kills us on tutors and makes keeping a hand together very difficult. Also the 4 cmc is rough when trying to win so aggressively early.
No Peacekeeper but def going to add him in. I have Kokusho in and he was a house with karmic guide, Reveilark, volrath stronghold, feeder. Also, I wanna try and get spore frog in with Yosei as well.
I really like this deck idea, its pretty cool. Also, the list and everything is very nicely formatted which I appreciate, and you did a very nice job on explaining how the deck runs etc. So, kudos, I really appreciate it.
My one suggestion goes against something some other people have said. Instead of running things like auratouched mage and heliods pilgrim as worse second and third boonweaver giants, I would just run more tutors for boonweaver. I believe you are running all of the best ones, but before I looked at more versions of boonweaver, I would look at upping the tutor count for boonweaver. Maybe Grim Tutor and I would even consider Diabolic Tutor.
I really like this deck idea, its pretty cool. Also, the list and everything is very nicely formatted which I appreciate, and you did a very nice job on explaining how the deck runs etc. So, kudos, I really appreciate it.
My one suggestion goes against something some other people have said. Instead of running things like auratouched mage and heliods pilgrim as worse second and third boonweaver giants, I would just run more tutors for boonweaver. I believe you are running all of the best ones, but before I looked at more versions of boonweaver, I would look at upping the tutor count for boonweaver. Maybe Grim Tutor and I would even consider Diabolic Tutor.
Grim Tutor is fine, but Diabolic is way too slow IMO. I'd recommend Fierce Empath though, as a 3 or less CMC creature who can tutor the Giant. Dark Petition is also solid.
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I really like this deck idea, its pretty cool. Also, the list and everything is very nicely formatted which I appreciate, and you did a very nice job on explaining how the deck runs etc. So, kudos, I really appreciate it.
My one suggestion goes against something some other people have said. Instead of running things like auratouched mage and heliods pilgrim as worse second and third boonweaver giants, I would just run more tutors for boonweaver. I believe you are running all of the best ones, but before I looked at more versions of boonweaver, I would look at upping the tutor count for boonweaver. Maybe Grim Tutor and I would even consider Diabolic Tutor.
Grim Tutor is fine, but Diabolic is way too slow IMO. I'd recommend Fierce Empath though, as a 3 or less CMC creature who can tutor the Giant. Dark Petition is also solid.
I agree on fierce empath over Diabolic tutor, but I am seriously not convinced that Dark Petition gets anything above Diabolic Tutor. It is even slower than Diabolic, especially since to get full value, you need spell mastery, and even with spell mastery, I'm not convinced this deck can use that random extra black mana unless you happen to have animate dead in your hand so you tutor for entomb and use the mana to entomb the giant and then animate it.
I agree on fierce empath over Diabolic tutor, but I am seriously not convinced that Dark Petition gets anything above Diabolic Tutor. It is even slower than Diabolic, especially since to get full value, you need spell mastery, and even with spell mastery, I'm not convinced this deck can use that random extra black mana unless you happen to have animate dead in your hand so you tutor for entomb and use the mana to entomb the giant and then animate it.
Maybe you are correct there. It seems like the deck is *generally* going to be using black mana to go off with a reanimation spell, it just needs to connect the other piece(s) (either Entomb or a sac/discard outlet).
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No Peacekeeper but def going to add him in. I have Kokusho in and he was a house with karmic guide, Reveilark, volrath stronghold, feeder. Also, I wanna try and get spore frog in with Yosei as well.
Careful with Yosei. He's very good in 1v1, but in multiplayer his efficacy goes way down. Sure, there will probably be a front runner giving you trouble, but whenever you single out one opponent, you're likely yielding advantage to another.
I really like this deck idea, its pretty cool. Also, the list and everything is very nicely formatted which I appreciate, and you did a very nice job on explaining how the deck runs etc. So, kudos, I really appreciate it.
My one suggestion goes against something some other people have said. Instead of running things like auratouched mage and heliods pilgrim as worse second and third boonweaver giants, I would just run more tutors for boonweaver. I believe you are running all of the best ones, but before I looked at more versions of boonweaver, I would look at upping the tutor count for boonweaver. Maybe Grim Tutor and I would even consider Diabolic Tutor.
Thanks for the kind words! The redundancy vs more tutors question isn't cut and dry, but I agree that adding more tutors is likely a better choice in that they give you more flexibility in grabbing whatever you need, Boonweaver or not. Auratouched Mage and Heliod's Pilgrim both wind up being far behind Boonweaver and Rector and they don't wind up helping us much when Boonweaver gets exiled (in which case, you're more interested in grabbing Survival of the Fittest, which neither of them can do). I agree with Wildfire that of the two tutors you suggest, Grim Tutor is acceptable, while Diabolic Tutor probably is not.
I really like this deck idea, its pretty cool. Also, the list and everything is very nicely formatted which I appreciate, and you did a very nice job on explaining how the deck runs etc. So, kudos, I really appreciate it.
My one suggestion goes against something some other people have said. Instead of running things like auratouched mage and heliods pilgrim as worse second and third boonweaver giants, I would just run more tutors for boonweaver. I believe you are running all of the best ones, but before I looked at more versions of boonweaver, I would look at upping the tutor count for boonweaver. Maybe Grim Tutor and I would even consider Diabolic Tutor.
Grim Tutor is fine, but Diabolic is way too slow IMO. I'd recommend Fierce Empath though, as a 3 or less CMC creature who can tutor the Giant. Dark Petition is also solid.
I ran Fierce Empath long ago, but dropped him because we really don't want Boonweaver or any of the other 6+ cmc cards in our hand. Survival/Fauna Shaman are the only discard outlets we're running in this list and, if we have one of them, we don't need Empath in the first place. You may then suggest we add more discard outlets so we can better set up big reanimation plays, but that would only dilute the consistency of the deck. Our primary strategy is often not about reanimating Boonweaver at all, but hard casting Rector instead. If we happen to wake up with the pieces to Entomb and reanimate Boonweaver, we'll be able to pull that off faster than any other line of play, so that's what we'll do. But if we don't open with that ready to go, Rector is our first plan of attack.
I agree on fierce empath over Diabolic tutor, but I am seriously not convinced that Dark Petition gets anything above Diabolic Tutor. It is even slower than Diabolic, especially since to get full value, you need spell mastery, and even with spell mastery, I'm not convinced this deck can use that random extra black mana unless you happen to have animate dead in your hand so you tutor for entomb and use the mana to entomb the giant and then animate it.
Maybe you are correct there. It seems like the deck is *generally* going to be using black mana to go off with a reanimation spell, it just needs to connect the other piece(s) (either Entomb or a sac/discard outlet).
Like I mentioned above, the reanimation path is faster and more efficient, but will generally happen less often than hard casting Rector. I'm not thinking that Dark Petition will make its way into the list. We can't cast it T2 and the target of our tutor is not always going to be black.
In my heart of hearts, I feel like Hermit is only viable in five color because it's just so well known and well hated that you have to have access to blue to protect the combo from the almost guaranteed disruption that's coming your way. Sneaking it in under Karador will probably give you a couple of surprise wins, but once people wise up a little, it's going to have the same problems that five color has, but with fewer protection options. How has it fared in your experience? I'd be particularly interested in how it's done against really fast combo like Doomsday and Sharuum.
How has the Living Plane trick worked out for you? I feel like you're going to be hard pressed to find opponents with 3+ creatures to trigger Defense of the Heart before somebody else combos out, so consistency of assembling the pieces may be in question. Seems like dumping Defense and just going with Survival may be more consistent at the end of the day. Also, you can expect many competitive opponents (especially Stax) to be running lots of artifact ramp, which will hedge against MLD. In those cases you would need a consistent way to drop bothLiving Plane and Pernicious Deed, which may be a tall order.
You may want to consider Carrion Feeder and Viscera Seer as sac outlets (probably in exchange for House Guard and Vish Kal). They're creatures, so they're much more tutorable than artifacts and the 1 cmc vs 3 cmc or higher makes a huge difference in how fast you'll be able to get the combo out (in the very likely case that Hermit gets disrupted and you switch over to Survival of the Fittest mode).
How you liked Vish Kal? I feel like he's terrible. He's effectively a 7 cmc Carrion Feeder in most situations.
I'd definitely suggest including Lotus Petal, Mox Diamond, and Chrome Mox, because T1 Hermit is much better than T2. The likelihood of getting disrupted drops significantly the earlier you get your pieces together.
I've only gotten to look at the list for a short time, so I'm sure there are nuances that I've missed that would either invalidate some of my observations or yield better suggestions for changes you could make. Let me know if you'd like more back and forth!
Thanks for the feedback cobblepot. This deck is def awesome! What you think of volraths stronghold?
I also have Phyrexian Arena in the list which is always solid
What do you use Volrath's Stronghold for? Graveyard hate protection? Extra recursion? Seems only ok at first glance, but I might be missing a key interaction.
I used to run Phyrexian Arena but switched it out for Grim Haruspex. Haruspex is much easier to recur when it gets killed, it can draw your deck if you need it to, it can be targeted by Altar of Bone and Diabolic Intent, and can be discarded to Survival of the Fittest or Fauna Shaman to get that last combo piece or hate bear. In Karador, being a creature is really so important that I believe it outweighs the guaranteed 1 card per turn from Arena.
Glad to see you on mtgs pott. I hope to see you in thr finals soon.
You also have a combo off sun titan plus sac outlet plus 2 reanimation enchantments and something to give you additional value
See you in the finals! Lets bust some heads!
Yes, there's a million emergent interactions between Sun Titan and most other pieces in the deck. I didn't call those out mainly on account of Titan showing up so infrequently compared to the other members of Reveillark's clan.
I just want to reiterate that this is an amazing primer!
I'm learning that one way to evaluate combo quality in competitive EDH is by how easily disrupted they are. And if disrupted, how recoverable they are.
For example, a win with infinite mana + Goblin Cannon is only disrupted by a counterspell. Once Cannon hits the board, the player regains priority, places 1,000 copies of the ability on the stack without passing, and wins. Stifle prevents 1 point of damage. Even Krosan Grip won't stop it because your opponent never gets priority until . (Okay, I suppose Time Stop works, but nobody plays that.)
Another good example is Hermit Druid combo. A lot of parts can't be responded to the way the opponent wants because they're costs (like Devoted Druid.)
Other combos, like Mike+Trike, are more easily disrupted.
Would you be able to say a few words (or add to the primer) about how/when the combo can/can't be disrupted? What's the worst case scenario? What disruptions don't really do anything? What should we be most afraid of? I'm thinking about cards like counterspells (duh), Krosan Grip, Jester's Cap, Stifle, Tormod's Crypt and friends, etc. You posted some great matchup analysis, but it's mostly about how WE can beat THEM. I want to know how THEY can beat US--because knowing is half the battle!
Hope my question makes sense! Feel free to wait until after finals
I like this list! Looks fun to play. I have some ideas that I intend to test in the next few days.
A couple of cards I think are worth considering would be Life // Death, Shallow Grave, and Boreal Druid. It's mana intensive, and maybe your deck won't typically have enough dorks, but Soul Exchange seems interesting too. I'm going to test it out in the next few days.
I just want to reiterate that this is an amazing primer!
I'm learning that one way to evaluate combo quality in competitive EDH is by how easily disrupted they are. And if disrupted, how recoverable they are.
For example, a win with infinite mana + Goblin Cannon is only disrupted by a counterspell. Once Cannon hits the board, the player regains priority, places 1,000 copies of the ability on the stack without passing, and wins. Stifle prevents 1 point of damage. Even Krosan Grip won't stop it because your opponent never gets priority until . (Okay, I suppose Time Stop works, but nobody plays that.)
Another good example is Hermit Druid combo. A lot of parts can't be responded to the way the opponent wants because they're costs (like Devoted Druid.)
Other combos, like Mike+Trike, are more easily disrupted.
Would you be able to say a few words (or add to the primer) about how/when the combo can/can't be disrupted? What's the worst case scenario? What disruptions don't really do anything? What should we be most afraid of? I'm thinking about cards like counterspells (duh), Krosan Grip, Jester's Cap, Stifle, Tormod's Crypt and friends, etc. You posted some great matchup analysis, but it's mostly about how WE can beat THEM. I want to know how THEY can beat US--because knowing is half the battle!
Hope my question makes sense! Feel free to wait until after finals
Great idea. I'll add a section with that information, but will indeed wait for the finals to wrap up before doing so
I like this list! Looks fun to play. I have some ideas that I intend to test in the next few days.
A couple of cards I think are worth considering would be Life // Death, Shallow Grave, and Boreal Druid. It's mana intensive, and maybe your deck won't typically have enough dorks, but Soul Exchange seems interesting too. I'm going to test it out in the next few days.
Thanks for the kind mention! For what it's worth, I'm not convinced that adding more ways to reanimate Boonweaver (especially non-creatures) is really where we want to take the deck. The most common way to get to a win is actually through hard casting Rector and not reanimating Boonweaver. Reanimation is the fastest plan, but not the most reliable one at the end of the day. Feel free to run some tests and see what you think.
Also, I'm not sold on Boreal Druid simply on account of colorless mana being weak for our early game strategy. Sure, he can help power out an early Rector, but that's about it. I'd prefer to have the added flexibility afforded by Black or Green so we can power out reanimation or Survival activations respectively.
1 Karador, Ghost Chieftain
Win Cons (3)
1x Acidic Slime
1x Altar of Dementia
1x Blood Artist
Combo Machinery (8)
1x Academy Rector
1x Boonweaver Giant
1x Fiend Hunter
1x Karmic Guide
1x Pattern of Rebirth
1x Reveillark
1x Saffi Eriksdotter
1x Sun Titan
Sac Outlets (3 [because Altar of Dementia!])
1x Carrion Feeder
1x Viscera Seer
Reanimation (7)
1x Animate Dead
1x Apprentice Necromancer
1x Dance of the Dead
1x Loyal Retainers
1x Necromancy
1x Reanimate
1x Sheoldred, Whispering One
Tutors (14)
1x Altar of Bone
1x Birthing Pod
1x Demonic Tutor
1x Diabolic Intent
1x Eladamri's Call
1x Enlightened Tutor
1x Entomb
1x Fauna Shaman
1x Imperial Seal
1x Shred Memory
1x Sidisi, Undead Vizier
1x Survival of the Fittest
1x Vampiric Tutor
1x Worldly Tutor
1x Avacyn's Pilgrim
1x Birds of Paradise
1x Chrome Mox
1x Elves of Deep Shadow
1x Elvish Mystic
1x Fyndhorn Elves
1x Llanowar Elves
1x Lotus Petal
1x Mana Crypt
1x Mox Diamond
1x Sol Ring
Utility (12)
1x Dark Confidant
1x Eternal Witness
1x Grim Haruspex
1x Harmonic Sliver
1x Pernicious Deed
1x Qasali Pridemage
1x Reclamation Sage
1x Sensei's Divining Top
1x Shriekmaw
1x Skullclamp
1x Swords to Plowshares
1x Sylvan Library
Hate (10)
1x Aven Mindcensor
1x Eidolon of Rhetoric
1x Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
1x Gaddock Teeg
1x Hushwing Gryff
1x Iona, Shield of Emeria
1x Kataki, War's Wage
1x Peacekeeper
1x Spirit of the Labyrinth
1x Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
1x Arid Mesa
1x Bayou
1x Bloodstained Mire
1x Brushland
1x Command Tower
1x Flooded Strand
3x Forest
1x Godless Shrine
1x High Market
1x Isolated Chapel
1x Llanowar Wastes
1x Marsh Flats
1x Misty Rainforest
1x Overgrown Tomb
1x Phyrexian Tower
2x Plains
1x Polluted Delta
1x Savannah
1x Scrubland
1x Sunpetal Grove
4x Swamp
1x Temple Garden
1x Verdant Catacombs
1x Windswept Heath
1x Wooded Foothills
1x Woodland Cemetery
1 Karador, Ghost Chieftain
Creatures (39)
1x Academy Rector
1x Acidic Slime
1x Apprentice Necromancer
1x Avacyn's Pilgrim
1x Aven Mindcensor
1x Birds of Paradise
1x Blood Artist
1x Boonweaver Giant
1x Carrion Feeder
1x Dark Confidant
1x Eidolon of Rhetoric
1x Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
1x Elves of Deep Shadow
1x Elvish Mystic
1x Eternal Witness
1x Fauna Shaman
1x Fiend Hunter
1x Fyndhorn Elves
1x Gaddock Teeg
1x Grim Haruspex
1x Harmonic Sliver
1x Hushwing Gryff
1x Iona, Shield of Emeria
1x Karmic Guide
1x Kataki, War's Wage
1x Llanowar Elves
1x Loyal Retainers
1x Peacekeeper
1x Qasali Pridemage
1x Reclamation Sage
1x Reveillark
1x Saffi Eriksdotter
1x Sheoldred, Whispering One
1x Shriekmaw
1x Sidisi, Undead Vizier
1x Spirit of the Labyrinth
1x Sun Titan
1x Thalia, Guardian of Thraban
1x Viscera Seer
1x Eladamri's Call
1x Enlightened Tutor
1x Entomb
1x Swords to Plowshares
1x Vampiric Tutor
1x Worldly Tutor
Sorceries (6)
1x Altar of Bone
1x Demonic Tutor
1x Diabolic Intent
1x Imperial Seal
1x Reanimate
1x Shred Memory
Artifacts (9)
1x Altar of Dementia
1x Birthing Pod
1x Chrome Mox
1x Lotus Petal
1x Mana Crypt
1x Mox Diamond
1x Sensei's Divining Top
1x Skullclamp
1x Sol Ring
Enchantments (7)
1x Animate Dead
1x Dance of the Dead
1x Necromancy
1x Pattern of Rebirth
1x Pernicious Deed
1x Survival of the Fittest
1x Sylvan Library
Lands (32)
1x Arid Mesa
1x Bayou
1x Bloodstained Mire
1x Brushland
1x Command Tower
1x Flooded Strand
3x Forest
1x Godless Shrine
1x High Market
1x Isolated Chapel
1x Llanowar Wastes
1x Marsh Flats
1x Misty Rainforest
1x Overgrown Tomb
1x Phyrexian Tower
2x Plains
1x Polluted Delta
1x Savannah
1x Scrubland
1x Sunpetal Grove
4x Swamp
1x Temple Garden
1x Verdant Catacombs
1x Windswept Heath
1x Wooded Foothills
1x Woodland Cemetery
9/13/15
In
Thalia, Guardian of Thraban
Spirit of the Labyrinth
Shriekmaw
Out
Buried Alive
Sakura-Tribe Elder
Fleshbag Marauder
Added Spirit to bolster support against control, storm, and any other deck that relies on draw effects for combo or maintaining control.
Added Shriekmaw because targeted removal is important sometimes
Added Thalia as an additional hedge against fast combo and storm.
Removed Buried Alive because it was too slow and doesn't really play the game we want. It gives away too much information and leaves us necessarily exposed.
Removed Sakura-Tribe Elder because he was subpar compared to the other dorks.
Removed Fleshbag Marauder in order to make room for Shriekmaw.
coming soon!
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StaffA couple more cheap sac outlets couldn't hurt. Blasting Station is another wincon outlet, and there are a few solid 2 mana ones, like Cartel Aristocrat, Bloodthrone Vampire, and Dross Hopper. Evolutionary Leap isn't free, but can generate a ton of card advantage and get combos kickstarted with a few mana.
Auratouched Mage can kick off the combo as another Boonweaver Giant. Just grab Pattern, then sac him to grab Giant off of Pattern and recur Pattern onto Giant and win.
Heliod's Pilgrim works similarly. Drop him turn 2/3, grab Pattern, and then enchant him with pattern and sac the next turn to find Giant and win.
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I ran Blasting Station in a previous incarnation of the list, but eventually culled it due to relatively high cmc, not being a creature, and not doing really doing anything without combo fully assembled.
I like keeping the sac outlet count pretty low. Perhaps moving to four of them would be ok, but having multiple sac outlets in your hand feels really bad when you wish one as a tutor or reanimation spell
Never heard of Auratouched Mage before. I'll probably give that a swing, though it's effectively a crappy Rector. I'm not going to be hard casting it ever, so it will require reanimation, which would be just as well applied to Boonweaver himself. I'll give him a try though.
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You should also swap out your spot removal creatures for staxing creatures like Thalia, Guardian of Thraben or Glowrider. Those cards can better buy you the time you need to beat combo decks, and they help against cards that really bone you otherwise, such as Humility.
Interesting list, though!
Elder definitely feels bad to get in your opening hand sometimes, though I do like being able to grab a land of any color (given the intentionally low land count). Treespeaker is a little slow and doesn't give color flexibility. Spirit Guide is obviously great, but we really want creatures on the field for sac purposes and in the yard for Karador purposes. I could perhaps be convinced in the direction of either Lotus Cobra or Bloom Tender. Thoughts?
Thoughts on Greater Good?
Jarad Graveyard Combo[Primer]!
Sidisi ANT!
Playing Commander to Win - A guide on Competitive, 4-player EDH
LandDestruction.com - An EDH blog
Glad it's finally done. This took forever working on it 30 min at a time here and there
Greater Good is excellent in midrange builds that do more toolboxing out of the yard and run more substantial creatures. For this list, it would generally read: "Sacrifice a Creature: Draw 1 card and then discard 3 cards." This kills us on tutors and makes keeping a hand together very difficult. Also the 4 cmc is rough when trying to win so aggressively early.
Yes! What changes did you make? How did they do?
My one suggestion goes against something some other people have said. Instead of running things like auratouched mage and heliods pilgrim as worse second and third boonweaver giants, I would just run more tutors for boonweaver. I believe you are running all of the best ones, but before I looked at more versions of boonweaver, I would look at upping the tutor count for boonweaver. Maybe Grim Tutor and I would even consider Diabolic Tutor.
Modern
I also have a Rock competitive deck.. I haven't played it in a while.. curious to know your thoughts on speed and resilience between our two decks.
Here's the deck: http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/commander-edh/multiplayer-commander-decklists/215303-competitive-karador-hermit-druid-turbo-land
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StaffGrim Tutor is fine, but Diabolic is way too slow IMO. I'd recommend Fierce Empath though, as a 3 or less CMC creature who can tutor the Giant. Dark Petition is also solid.
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I agree on fierce empath over Diabolic tutor, but I am seriously not convinced that Dark Petition gets anything above Diabolic Tutor. It is even slower than Diabolic, especially since to get full value, you need spell mastery, and even with spell mastery, I'm not convinced this deck can use that random extra black mana unless you happen to have animate dead in your hand so you tutor for entomb and use the mana to entomb the giant and then animate it.
Modern
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StaffMaybe you are correct there. It seems like the deck is *generally* going to be using black mana to go off with a reanimation spell, it just needs to connect the other piece(s) (either Entomb or a sac/discard outlet).
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Careful with Yosei. He's very good in 1v1, but in multiplayer his efficacy goes way down. Sure, there will probably be a front runner giving you trouble, but whenever you single out one opponent, you're likely yielding advantage to another.
Thanks for the kind words! The redundancy vs more tutors question isn't cut and dry, but I agree that adding more tutors is likely a better choice in that they give you more flexibility in grabbing whatever you need, Boonweaver or not. Auratouched Mage and Heliod's Pilgrim both wind up being far behind Boonweaver and Rector and they don't wind up helping us much when Boonweaver gets exiled (in which case, you're more interested in grabbing Survival of the Fittest, which neither of them can do). I agree with Wildfire that of the two tutors you suggest, Grim Tutor is acceptable, while Diabolic Tutor probably is not.
I'll need some time to look at the list and digest it before I can give any cogent feedback. Let me get back to you in a day or so.
I ran Fierce Empath long ago, but dropped him because we really don't want Boonweaver or any of the other 6+ cmc cards in our hand. Survival/Fauna Shaman are the only discard outlets we're running in this list and, if we have one of them, we don't need Empath in the first place. You may then suggest we add more discard outlets so we can better set up big reanimation plays, but that would only dilute the consistency of the deck. Our primary strategy is often not about reanimating Boonweaver at all, but hard casting Rector instead. If we happen to wake up with the pieces to Entomb and reanimate Boonweaver, we'll be able to pull that off faster than any other line of play, so that's what we'll do. But if we don't open with that ready to go, Rector is our first plan of attack.
Like I mentioned above, the reanimation path is faster and more efficient, but will generally happen less often than hard casting Rector. I'm not thinking that Dark Petition will make its way into the list. We can't cast it T2 and the target of our tutor is not always going to be black.
Nice list! Very interesting take on Angry Hermit.
In my heart of hearts, I feel like Hermit is only viable in five color because it's just so well known and well hated that you have to have access to blue to protect the combo from the almost guaranteed disruption that's coming your way. Sneaking it in under Karador will probably give you a couple of surprise wins, but once people wise up a little, it's going to have the same problems that five color has, but with fewer protection options. How has it fared in your experience? I'd be particularly interested in how it's done against really fast combo like Doomsday and Sharuum.
How has the Living Plane trick worked out for you? I feel like you're going to be hard pressed to find opponents with 3+ creatures to trigger Defense of the Heart before somebody else combos out, so consistency of assembling the pieces may be in question. Seems like dumping Defense and just going with Survival may be more consistent at the end of the day. Also, you can expect many competitive opponents (especially Stax) to be running lots of artifact ramp, which will hedge against MLD. In those cases you would need a consistent way to drop both Living Plane and Pernicious Deed, which may be a tall order.
You may want to consider Carrion Feeder and Viscera Seer as sac outlets (probably in exchange for House Guard and Vish Kal). They're creatures, so they're much more tutorable than artifacts and the 1 cmc vs 3 cmc or higher makes a huge difference in how fast you'll be able to get the combo out (in the very likely case that Hermit gets disrupted and you switch over to Survival of the Fittest mode).
How you liked Vish Kal? I feel like he's terrible. He's effectively a 7 cmc Carrion Feeder in most situations.
I'd definitely suggest including Lotus Petal, Mox Diamond, and Chrome Mox, because T1 Hermit is much better than T2. The likelihood of getting disrupted drops significantly the earlier you get your pieces together.
I've only gotten to look at the list for a short time, so I'm sure there are nuances that I've missed that would either invalidate some of my observations or yield better suggestions for changes you could make. Let me know if you'd like more back and forth!
What do you use Volrath's Stronghold for? Graveyard hate protection? Extra recursion? Seems only ok at first glance, but I might be missing a key interaction.
I used to run Phyrexian Arena but switched it out for Grim Haruspex. Haruspex is much easier to recur when it gets killed, it can draw your deck if you need it to, it can be targeted by Altar of Bone and Diabolic Intent, and can be discarded to Survival of the Fittest or Fauna Shaman to get that last combo piece or hate bear. In Karador, being a creature is really so important that I believe it outweighs the guaranteed 1 card per turn from Arena.
See you in the finals! Lets bust some heads!
Yes, there's a million emergent interactions between Sun Titan and most other pieces in the deck. I didn't call those out mainly on account of Titan showing up so infrequently compared to the other members of Reveillark's clan.
I'm learning that one way to evaluate combo quality in competitive EDH is by how easily disrupted they are. And if disrupted, how recoverable they are.
For example, a win with infinite mana + Goblin Cannon is only disrupted by a counterspell. Once Cannon hits the board, the player regains priority, places 1,000 copies of the ability on the stack without passing, and wins. Stifle prevents 1 point of damage. Even Krosan Grip won't stop it because your opponent never gets priority until . (Okay, I suppose Time Stop works, but nobody plays that.)
Another good example is Hermit Druid combo. A lot of parts can't be responded to the way the opponent wants because they're costs (like Devoted Druid.)
Other combos, like Mike+Trike, are more easily disrupted.
Would you be able to say a few words (or add to the primer) about how/when the combo can/can't be disrupted? What's the worst case scenario? What disruptions don't really do anything? What should we be most afraid of? I'm thinking about cards like counterspells (duh), Krosan Grip, Jester's Cap, Stifle, Tormod's Crypt and friends, etc. You posted some great matchup analysis, but it's mostly about how WE can beat THEM. I want to know how THEY can beat US--because knowing is half the battle!
Hope my question makes sense! Feel free to wait until after finals
A couple of cards I think are worth considering would be Life // Death, Shallow Grave, and Boreal Druid. It's mana intensive, and maybe your deck won't typically have enough dorks, but Soul Exchange seems interesting too. I'm going to test it out in the next few days.
Great idea. I'll add a section with that information, but will indeed wait for the finals to wrap up before doing so
Thanks for the kind mention! For what it's worth, I'm not convinced that adding more ways to reanimate Boonweaver (especially non-creatures) is really where we want to take the deck. The most common way to get to a win is actually through hard casting Rector and not reanimating Boonweaver. Reanimation is the fastest plan, but not the most reliable one at the end of the day. Feel free to run some tests and see what you think.
Also, I'm not sold on Boreal Druid simply on account of colorless mana being weak for our early game strategy. Sure, he can help power out an early Rector, but that's about it. I'd prefer to have the added flexibility afforded by Black or Green so we can power out reanimation or Survival activations respectively.
When you get a chance I'd still love to see more about disrupting the combo!