Thought about it more, I'm playing Scroll Rack, Land Tax is obligatory. This is because you never play the extra lands, much like in Caw-Blade you never play the extraneous squadron hawks - they are the moving parts that lets you see all these extra cards.
Whoa. This is the very reason I almost put together rebel yell, not because it's good (it's not, it's mono-W, it's pretty trash), but these kinds of optimizations. I love this [nerdy] stuff, it's like turning your deck into a math equation. Says the math major, haha.
edit: I made those changes, including the uber tech Mortuary. Really loving the development thus far.
Although perhaps Mortuary is a missed gem since we can stack the triggers post wrath with Kaalia on top, draw her, cast for three and get three threats.
Although perhaps Mortuary is a missed gem since we can stack the triggers post wrath with Kaalia on top, draw her, cast for three and get three threats.
Hoooo, now that's a tech, pretty much negates the drawback by immediately fetch them out of the library.
It's true Avenging Angel keeps top decking itself, but then, like, you have to keep drawing (and casting), a five drop 3/3. Not so exciting. Although perhaps Mortuary is a missed gem since we can stack the triggers post wrath with Kaalia on top, draw her, cast for three and get three threats.
I'm right there with you that his threat suite is suspect, as well as his count being high. And there's too many high drops when it's not guaranteed you will see a cheat mechanism.
Still, that list is a valuable case study to examine.
I've been testing Kaalia as a "draw spell" in command zone that benefits from blinks, much like Niv #4. If the deck's curve is low enough, one could play it like a Mardu aggro, then cast Kaalia to regain your hand and still have enough mana to drop threats right after. Scroll Rack (in your deck already) works quite well with Kaalia similar to Land Tax (Mardu has never been quick on lands).
Land Tax is a good call but I don't think we have enough basics for it? I'm on six, and that feels like an upper limit since I need to fix.
Do we really have enough good cyclers? We have to play threats as well, and a lot of these guys look really bad to cast. I suppose it would allow us to use Hollow One and maybe parlay into a sort of modern living end deck (keep scroll racking it on top until we could demonic dread or bituminous blast into it)? I feel like this is getting away from the deck itself though, but I may be mis-evaluating here.
I'm right there with you that his threat suite is suspect, as well as his count being high. And there's too many high drops when it's not guaranteed you will see a cheat mechanism.
Still, that list is a valuable case study to examine.
I agree that while Conspiracy looks good on paper, the value it offers quickly diminishes when we go from gaining a +1 instead of a +3 CA, even if it's more likely to gain at least that +1 (and it's easier to just keep the a/d/d split and not have to worry about running a five cmc do nothing anyway). This deck is going to be less glass cannon, and more go the distance, and we will not be able to support such a card. It would do better in original Kaalia where I could suddenly make a demon Ulamog, but even that is a bit win-more, I think.
The trick is we have to remember that we're losing the mana cost cheat mechanism with this deck and so we have to focus on casting our cards and support cards, rather than the original where we cast support cards and deploy the threats for free.
I saw this card and thought of Jade Statue. Then I read it and was all "waitaminute, this is not that card..." Uhm, I guess this is good with Pariah's Shield? Pariah it onto a creature that likes getting hit or shrugs it off (Unworthy Dead comes to mind, Darksteel Myr), or win the lottery with Stuffy Doll as the recipient.
Let's not forget that blood of the martyr and does come outta nowhere when one was expecting to pyroclasm your board. The monolith sits on the field and telegraphs your intentions. I'm sure that's the primary reason for the price hike.
Hmmm. So I opted for the Krav/Regna package as they tutour each other and are found off the commander, while being not terribly over costed for the effect and a good sac outlet to help move through the deck. They also function just fine on their own without any further support. It was like a perfect storm thing. I'm not sure Emeria Angel is enough high iMPACT for the ninety-nine here (though angel of invention might be). I really don't think there's enough lifelink to proc resplendent angel consistently, although I did consider it pretty hard in the initial build. And if we're not gonna proc it, then it's just a 3/3 for three, which I'd rather have Emancipation Angel at that point since it resets our commander and is found off the commander.
While it's true Aurelia untaps exerted guys, is this a relevant thing? Or is it just win more? Typically I'm using Angel to blink Kaalia in fact I've never exerted it ever, and while Glorybringer would do a sweet impression of everyone's favourite red four drop, I question the validity of running a six drop to make our great five drop better than it already is, which is already pretty good. That said it does make for a better combat which speeds up our clock exponentially, and unlike in the original Kaalia, it both triggers off the first attack, and doesn't burn through our cards in hand. I think I'd like a swords package before I go in on Aurelia though.
I'd like to use Firemane Avenger too. I'm not sure how often battalion can proc, but I think this is just enough to stay under the radar and generating free Helixes is always pretty grand.
edit: Whoops, i missed the part about Sephara. I'm not even sure the deck wants her, tbh, but she is an Avacyn that can be alt casted in a deck that doesn't actually have a cheat mechanism, which isn't nothing. And she preorders for under $2 so if it doesn't work out with her, we can '86 her easy enough. Worth noting we have a fair amount of vigilance going on too, so we have a great < combat, post-combat here's a 7/7 lifelink that protects our whole board plan.
As I've asked in another thread: What would be an optimal number of tribal cards in Kallia #2 to make it consistent? Rather, is there a formula that could help calculating it?
The chance to "draw" a tribal card is = [(Total # of tribal cards in deck) - (# of tribal cards NOT in deck)] / (Cards left in the library)
Kaalia enters/blinks would take 6 cards off the top of the remaining deck at once, I'm not sure how the formula would go with the one above. Ideally, average ETB/blink should net 2+ cards. This feels so calculus...
Since you've been looking, you might be interested in the primer stub I just started for this commander. Could be a useful resource and collaboration hub.
Authour’s Note: This commander is brand new and of course this deck and Primer resource is as well. It’s only natural that the material contained within is a work-in-progress to be continually updated and tweaked as more experience is gathered.
Professional Analysis
Converted Mana Cost: Neo Kaalia’s cmc is WBR, which is an aggressively pushed cost for what otherwise is a 3/3 creature with two static abilities, and even more aggressively costed with an enters the battlefield effect stapled onto her that can generate card advantage. Without this effect, she is a very aggressive (but fair) commander, and with it, she is a force to be reckoned with.
Her Ability: The irony is not lost on me that Neo Kaalia’s power pales in comparison to the original’s. That’s to be expected however, as the original’s ability to circumvent mana costs is the single strongest trait a player can utilize in any given game of Magic. With that said, Neo Kaalia’s ability is still one worth pursuing as she can generate an up to plus three in terms of card advantage. In comparison to the original which needed a steady stream of extra cards to maintain it’s strategy, Neo Kaalia can get to the mid-game and even late just by virtue of it’s own ability keeping it fueled. This ability is not such an easy ability to manipulate however;
”When Kaalia, Zenith Seeker enters the battlefield, look at the top six cards of your library. You may reveal an Angel card, a Demon card, and/or a Dragon card from among them and put them into your hand. Put the rest on the bottom of your library in a random order.”
In the top six cards, we’re looking to be able to pick up half of those while shipping the rest to the bottom. That’s great, but the cards are specific – we need one angel, one demon, and one dragon specifically, we can’t just grab three angels and call it good! We also must be able to cast the cards, drawing extra cards we can’t utilize is an otherwise wasted resource. And since we don’t have a cheat mechanism built in to our commander, we must be weary of the mana curve of our deck. That’s not to say we have to exclusively curve out at four, of course, but we know that the higher the cost, the more weight those cards need to be able to pull in order to be worth a deck slot.
Other Commanders: I don’t believe there are any other commanders offering the niche Neo Kaalia is offering that she should be directly competing with other options you could choose. If you want Sneak Attack on a body, I’d recommend referring to my original Kaalia primer as this deck is far, far different from that.
Reasons you would enjoy this deck:
• You love playing with Miracles.
• You enjoy piloting a deck that can build longterm advantage from the beginning of the game.
• You love original Kaalia but are tired of your friends taking a ball bat to your knee caps.
Reasons you wouldn’t enjoy playing this deck:
• You prefer a shotgun blast to the face approach rather than an intrinsic value-over-time engine.
• You would rather beat everybody all at once and at the same time.
• You like decks that actually play more than one six plus converted mana cost card.
Incentivizing the Choice to play Kaalia, Zenith Seeker
So, if you’re reading this far, by now you must be wondering why you would ever pick this up when you could go Lab Man or Food Chain, or Flash Hulk or even just Eldrazi Sneak your way to victory. Hell, why would you pay retail on these angels, demons, and dragons when you could instead pay zero and get them with pseudo haste? The answer is because you don’t want to be obvious about what you’re doing in a multiplayer format.
Let’s be honest, when someone sits down at the table with a Tymna-Thrasios deck, you instantly know the tryhard alert went off around everyone. When original Kaalia sits down, you know she draws legitimate vile and malice from opponents that are afraid of the unknown. Meanwhile, our deck here can make use of a lot of “under the hood” style of optimizations. What does that mean, “under the hood”, right? What I mean by that is that this deck will be making use of a lot of basic card advantage theory to increase the average card quality you see in a given game. You know how you resolve a Brainstorm and then follow it up with a fetchland to create an Ancestral Recall? Yeah, those are the kinds of optimizations I'm talking about here. And here’s where the name for this deck comes into play (err...enters the battlefield :P).
Since our commander cares about our top deck, it’s not exactly a huge leap of logic to take on a miracle approach. Sensei’s Divining Top, Scroll Rack, in fact with the Rack especially you can generate immense card advantage with the commander by putting the angels, demons, and dragons from your hand back on top, drawing those new cards, and then blinking or otherwise resolving the commander again to draw those cards right back! And, as an added bonus there was probably some cards you didn’t care about that could get shipped to the bottom clear and out of your way! Then as an added benefit to go with all these top deck matters strategies, we can go back to “outplaying our opponent with Vampiric Tutor for Terminus to put them on tilt for the rest of the night!” That last sentence is obviously sarcasm, but the strategy is genuine. A one mana tutour to hard wipe all creatures to the bottom for also one mana when the two cards also fit well into our deck’s strategy anyway, is quite the potent game plan.
Scroll Rack & Sensei’s Divining Top: As outlined above, these are corre pieces to the deck’s miracles strategy, allowing me to cast powerful cards at an under-priced mana cost, as well as provide assistance in ensuring each Neo Kaalia trigger nets me as many usable cards as possible.
More to come with real time field play experience.
I would appreciate you clarifying your recommendation because if it is to ban cantrips/cheap draw spells I think you're barking up the wrong tree. But if you mean that banning the cheap tutors would be analogous to banning cantrips in other formats, I can at least see the parallels.
If you're seriously talking about banning cantrips and cheap dig spells, I think you will just make black the new dominant color in combo (as if it's not already close). Black has some of the best draw in the format and also has Necropotence which straight up is the best draw spell in the format possibly after Ad Nauseam (I'm not really sure there).
Most non-CEDH decks don't play cantrips beyond Brainstorm and Ponder (if that) -- there is a steeeep falloff in play after Ponder/Brainstorm/Preordain and even Preordain starts to fall off precipitously after ponder. And comparing those in effectiveness to Vampiric tutor is comical.
CEDH and even high power level (75%+) combo decks would adapt to the removal of cantrips in about twenty minutes.
Obviously you can't just ban the cantrips when the tutours as I did mention, would take over precedence. Of course this by nature would hit your Necros and Ad Naus (and similar) by virtue which serves to create an unmanageable, bloated banlist. That's not desirable to anyone, but would rein in the offending decks in question.
Whoa. This is the very reason I almost put together rebel yell, not because it's good (it's not, it's mono-W, it's pretty trash), but these kinds of optimizations. I love this [nerdy] stuff, it's like turning your deck into a math equation. Says the math major, haha.
edit: I made those changes, including the uber tech Mortuary. Really loving the development thus far.
I knew I'd find a home for that card eventually.
That moment you never expected affinity to ever see the light of day again.
Land Tax is a good call but I don't think we have enough basics for it? I'm on six, and that feels like an upper limit since I need to fix.
Do we really have enough good cyclers? We have to play threats as well, and a lot of these guys look really bad to cast. I suppose it would allow us to use Hollow One and maybe parlay into a sort of modern living end deck (keep scroll racking it on top until we could demonic dread or bituminous blast into it)? I feel like this is getting away from the deck itself though, but I may be mis-evaluating here.
What do we think of the aggressive cost echo creatures? Herald of Serra, Lightning Dragon? And I suspect Radiant, Archangel may be stronger here than I wrote her off to be (surely it's better than Angelic Overseer in most cases).
Still, that list is a valuable case study to examine.
The trick is we have to remember that we're losing the mana cost cheat mechanism with this deck and so we have to focus on casting our cards and support cards, rather than the original where we cast support cards and deploy the threats for free.
I saw this card and thought of Jade Statue. Then I read it and was all "waitaminute, this is not that card..." Uhm, I guess this is good with Pariah's Shield? Pariah it onto a creature that likes getting hit or shrugs it off (Unworthy Dead comes to mind, Darksteel Myr), or win the lottery with Stuffy Doll as the recipient.
Let's not forget that blood of the martyr and does come outta nowhere when one was expecting to pyroclasm your board. The monolith sits on the field and telegraphs your intentions. I'm sure that's the primary reason for the price hike.
Hmmm. So I opted for the Krav/Regna package as they tutour each other and are found off the commander, while being not terribly over costed for the effect and a good sac outlet to help move through the deck. They also function just fine on their own without any further support. It was like a perfect storm thing. I'm not sure Emeria Angel is enough high iMPACT for the ninety-nine here (though angel of invention might be). I really don't think there's enough lifelink to proc resplendent angel consistently, although I did consider it pretty hard in the initial build. And if we're not gonna proc it, then it's just a 3/3 for three, which I'd rather have Emancipation Angel at that point since it resets our commander and is found off the commander.
While it's true Aurelia untaps exerted guys, is this a relevant thing? Or is it just win more? Typically I'm using Angel to blink Kaalia in fact I've never exerted it ever, and while Glorybringer would do a sweet impression of everyone's favourite red four drop, I question the validity of running a six drop to make our great five drop better than it already is, which is already pretty good. That said it does make for a better combat which speeds up our clock exponentially, and unlike in the original Kaalia, it both triggers off the first attack, and doesn't burn through our cards in hand. I think I'd like a swords package before I go in on Aurelia though.
I'd like to use Firemane Avenger too. I'm not sure how often battalion can proc, but I think this is just enough to stay under the radar and generating free Helixes is always pretty grand.
edit: Whoops, i missed the part about Sephara. I'm not even sure the deck wants her, tbh, but she is an Avacyn that can be alt casted in a deck that doesn't actually have a cheat mechanism, which isn't nothing. And she preorders for under $2 so if it doesn't work out with her, we can '86 her easy enough. Worth noting we have a fair amount of vigilance going on too, so we have a great < combat, post-combat here's a 7/7 lifelink that protects our whole board plan.
Since you've been looking, you might be interested in the primer stub I just started for this commander. Could be a useful resource and collaboration hub.
Authour’s Note: This commander is brand new and of course this deck and Primer resource is as well. It’s only natural that the material contained within is a work-in-progress to be continually updated and tweaked as more experience is gathered.
Converted Mana Cost: Neo Kaalia’s cmc is WBR, which is an aggressively pushed cost for what otherwise is a 3/3 creature with two static abilities, and even more aggressively costed with an enters the battlefield effect stapled onto her that can generate card advantage. Without this effect, she is a very aggressive (but fair) commander, and with it, she is a force to be reckoned with.
Her Ability: The irony is not lost on me that Neo Kaalia’s power pales in comparison to the original’s. That’s to be expected however, as the original’s ability to circumvent mana costs is the single strongest trait a player can utilize in any given game of Magic. With that said, Neo Kaalia’s ability is still one worth pursuing as she can generate an up to plus three in terms of card advantage. In comparison to the original which needed a steady stream of extra cards to maintain it’s strategy, Neo Kaalia can get to the mid-game and even late just by virtue of it’s own ability keeping it fueled. This ability is not such an easy ability to manipulate however;
”When Kaalia, Zenith Seeker enters the battlefield, look at the top six cards of your library. You may reveal an Angel card, a Demon card, and/or a Dragon card from among them and put them into your hand. Put the rest on the bottom of your library in a random order.”
In the top six cards, we’re looking to be able to pick up half of those while shipping the rest to the bottom. That’s great, but the cards are specific – we need one angel, one demon, and one dragon specifically, we can’t just grab three angels and call it good! We also must be able to cast the cards, drawing extra cards we can’t utilize is an otherwise wasted resource. And since we don’t have a cheat mechanism built in to our commander, we must be weary of the mana curve of our deck. That’s not to say we have to exclusively curve out at four, of course, but we know that the higher the cost, the more weight those cards need to be able to pull in order to be worth a deck slot.
Other Commanders: I don’t believe there are any other commanders offering the niche Neo Kaalia is offering that she should be directly competing with other options you could choose. If you want Sneak Attack on a body, I’d recommend referring to my original Kaalia primer as this deck is far, far different from that.
Reasons you would enjoy this deck:
• You love playing with Miracles.
• You enjoy piloting a deck that can build longterm advantage from the beginning of the game.
• You love original Kaalia but are tired of your friends taking a ball bat to your knee caps.
Reasons you wouldn’t enjoy playing this deck:
• You prefer a shotgun blast to the face approach rather than an intrinsic value-over-time engine.
• You would rather beat everybody all at once and at the same time.
• You like decks that actually play more than one six plus converted mana cost card.
So, if you’re reading this far, by now you must be wondering why you would ever pick this up when you could go Lab Man or Food Chain, or Flash Hulk or even just Eldrazi Sneak your way to victory. Hell, why would you pay retail on these angels, demons, and dragons when you could instead pay zero and get them with pseudo haste? The answer is because you don’t want to be obvious about what you’re doing in a multiplayer format.
Let’s be honest, when someone sits down at the table with a Tymna-Thrasios deck, you instantly know the tryhard alert went off around everyone. When original Kaalia sits down, you know she draws legitimate vile and malice from opponents that are afraid of the unknown. Meanwhile, our deck here can make use of a lot of “under the hood” style of optimizations. What does that mean, “under the hood”, right? What I mean by that is that this deck will be making use of a lot of basic card advantage theory to increase the average card quality you see in a given game. You know how you resolve a Brainstorm and then follow it up with a fetchland to create an Ancestral Recall? Yeah, those are the kinds of optimizations I'm talking about here. And here’s where the name for this deck comes into play (err...enters the battlefield :P).
Since our commander cares about our top deck, it’s not exactly a huge leap of logic to take on a miracle approach. Sensei’s Divining Top, Scroll Rack, in fact with the Rack especially you can generate immense card advantage with the commander by putting the angels, demons, and dragons from your hand back on top, drawing those new cards, and then blinking or otherwise resolving the commander again to draw those cards right back! And, as an added bonus there was probably some cards you didn’t care about that could get shipped to the bottom clear and out of your way! Then as an added benefit to go with all these top deck matters strategies, we can go back to “outplaying our opponent with Vampiric Tutor for Terminus to put them on tilt for the rest of the night!” That last sentence is obviously sarcasm, but the strategy is genuine. A one mana tutour to hard wipe all creatures to the bottom for also one mana when the two cards also fit well into our deck’s strategy anyway, is quite the potent game plan.
1 Kaalia, Zenith Seeker
1x Ancient Tomb
1x Arid Mesa
1x Badlands
1x Blood Crypt
1x Bloodstained Mire
1x Cavern of Souls
1x City of Brass
1x Command Tower
1x Fetid Heath
1x Flooded Strand
1x Godless Shrine
1x Graven Cairns
1x Mana Confluence
1x Marsh Flats
1x Plateau
1x Polluted Delta
1x Prismatic Vista
1x Reflecting Pool
1x Rugged Prairie
1x Sacred Foundry
1x Scalding Tarn
1x Scrubland
1x Silent Clearing
1x Smoldering Marsh
2x Snow-Covered Mountain
2x Snow-Covered Plains
2x Snow-Covered Swamp
1x Strip Mine
1x Sunbaked Canyon
1x Verdant Catacombs
1x Wasteland
1x Windswept Heath
1x Wooded Foothills
1x Heartless Summoning
1x Land Tax
1x Moat
1x Mortuary
1x Necromancy
1x Alms Collector
1x Angel of Condemnation
1x Angel of Finality
1x Angelic Field Marshal
1x Archangel Avacyn
1x Bloodgift Demon
1x Butcher of the Horde
1x Demon of Dark Schemes
1x Desolation Angel
1x Doom Whisperer
1x Eldrazi Displacer
1x Gisela, the Broken Blade
1x Glorybringer
1x Herald of Torment
1x Krav, the Unredeemed
1x Linvala, Keeper of Silence
1x Malfegor
1x Master of the Feast
1x Regna, the Redeemer
1x Restoration Angel
1x Sephara, Sky's Blade
1x Serra Avenger
1x Stormbreath Dragon
1x Sunblast Angel
1x Whitemane Lion
1x Crib Swap
1x Enlightened Tutor
1x Generous Gift
1x Nameless Inversion
1x Swords to Plowshares
1x Unexpectedly Absent
1x Vampiric Tutor
1x Entreat the Angels
1x Entreat the Dead
1x Gamble
1x Grim Tutor
1x Imperial Seal
1x Living Death
1x Night's Whisper
1x Reanimate
1x Terminus
1x Toxic Deluge
1x Unburial Rites
1x Vindicate
1x Arcum's Astrolabe
1x Crucible of Worlds
1x Lightning Greaves
1x Mana Crypt
1x Scroll Rack
1x Sensei's Divining Top
1x Sol Ring
1x Static Orb
1x Talisman of Conviction
1x Talisman of Hierarchy
1x Talisman of Indulgence
1x Winter Orb
Deck stats for those that don't want to calculate those on their own: http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/miraculous-kaalia/
Alpha changes: -1 Armageddon, Ravages of War, Angelic Overseer, Lightning Bolt, Terminate
+1 Static Orb, Land Tax, Mortuary, Nameless Inversion, Crib Swap
Alpha: Firemane Avenger, Radiant, Archangel, Emancipation Angel, Angel of Invention/Emeria Angel, Astral Slide package
Scroll Rack & Sensei’s Divining Top: As outlined above, these are corre pieces to the deck’s miracles strategy, allowing me to cast powerful cards at an under-priced mana cost, as well as provide assistance in ensuring each Neo Kaalia trigger nets me as many usable cards as possible.
More to come with real time field play experience.
Coming soon with real time field play experience.
Obviously you can't just ban the cantrips when the tutours as I did mention, would take over precedence. Of course this by nature would hit your Necros and Ad Naus (and similar) by virtue which serves to create an unmanageable, bloated banlist. That's not desirable to anyone, but would rein in the offending decks in question.