Deck Tech - Kardur, Doomscourge
Forcing your opponents to do the dirty work for you with some group hug and slug.
Deck Techs
$100 decks that are cheap, fun, and competitive.
Total cost: $77.80 (at time of publication)
Politicking is not for everyone in EDH. Convincing your opponents to act a certain way is not easy, so this week lets dive into a deck that subtly convinces your opponents to leave you alone. Then, once you have setup your game plan, they will truly never be able to attack you again and instead will eliminate each other!
Most Kardur, Doomscourge decks revolve around its second ability where each time an attacking creature dies, each opponent loses 1 life. This strategy has some downfalls, though. It really only pays off when you are facing token based decks with enough attacking creatures to reliably trigger it. You could certainly add cards like Blood Artist to increase the damage, but these are quick targets for removal and take away critical slots for other cards.
Also, with the prevalence of mana dorks or other creatures with tap abilities, there is a good chance that your opponents will bypass the forced combat and instead use these creature abilities in their first main phase. I've often found opponents making deals like "hey I'll attack in this way or block in this way to have creatures bounce off of each other," as well.
Instead, the way we will build this deck is through slowly chipping away at your opponents' life totals in exchange for resources. Even if they tap their creatures or make deals to reduce the effectiveness of combat, just preventing them from attacking YOU is enough.
Win conditions
The game plan is very simple:
Step 1: Curry favor by giving your opponents extra mana or extra cards, subtly hinting they should leave you alone unless they want the free gifts to stop. Each time they get a gift, they take a little bit of damage.
Step 2: Slowly add pieces to the board that boost your opponents' attacks. Frontier Warmonger will give all creatures, attacking your opponents, menace. Death Kiss will double their power, and Frenzied Saddlebrute will give them haste.
Step 3: Trigger Kardur's ability. This will force your opponents to attack each other, leaving you alone while diminishing their board state.
Repeat Steps 2 and 3
Step 4: Once everyone's life total is low, use something like Exsanguinate or Insurrection to finish them off.
Flickering in Rakdos?
There are 3 ways to repeatedly trigger Kardur's ability to force your opponents to attack:
Casting
You need to first stick Kardur to the board, and once you do you will need to keep him in play. After two or three times of casting him though, he will likely be prohibitively expensive.
Just in case, Chainer, Nightmare Adept is included so you can recur Kardur from the graveyard for his base mana cost.
"Flickering"
You are not actually flickering him, but you are trying to trigger his enters ability each turn. Once you have a sac outlet on the board like Viscera Seer or Carrion Feeder, you will need a card like Feign Death. Before sacrificing Kardur, cast and resolve Feign Death. Then when he returns to the battlefield, you will get his trigger again.
Creating copies
Blade of Selves, Helm of the Host, Jaxis, the Troublemaker and Delina, Wild Mage will create copies of Kardur each turn. Helm of the Host and Delina will allow these non legendary copies to stick around, but even in the case of Blade of Selves or Jaxis, when the legendary copies get sacrificed to the legend rule, you will still trigger their ability to force combat.
Ramp
To garner favor with your opponents, some of your ramp should be universal. Helm of Awakening reduces everyone's spells by 1, and Mana Flare doubles everyone's mana.
Ghirapur Orrery allows everyone to play extra lands.
And Coveted Jewel is a mana rock that also draws cards.
For yourself, you should add the standard, non-green suite of mana rocks. Talisman of Indulgence, Rakdos Signet, and Wayfarer's Bauble fix your colors.
Sol Ring and Arcane Signet are staples.
You should include Black Market because, even though we are not specifically trying to take advantage of creatures dying, if this starts generating 5 mana a turn, that is plenty to create a significant advantage for yourself in the late game for an Exsanguinate.
Card draw
Similar to ramp, you want to give your opponents a reason to keep you around as you help them draw cards.
Humble Defector is a classic card to pass around the table, and the same goes for Coveted Jewel.
Howling Mine and Seizan, Perverter of Truth gives everyone extra cards per turn.
Who doesn't love a good wheel? Wheel of Misfortune and Khorvath's Fury allow you to play politics with how badly people want to trade cards for life. Ruin Grinder basically says "if you want to wheel so bad, just trade a few of your creatures."
Throughout the game, you should be whittling down your opponents life totals. Karazikar, the Eye Tyrant, Stormfist Crusader, Keen Duelist, and Protection Racket all deal small pockets of damage, while giving people extra cards.
Interaction
Rakdos is perhaps one of the best colors for interaction. From staples like Feed the Swarm and Chaos Warp to more recent cards like Bitter Triumph, you should put a bit more targeted removal into this deck. If you cannot manage to consistently trigger Kardur's ability each turn, you will need another way to stop your opponents from attacking you.
Blasphemous Act is a classic board wipe, and a synergistic include is Massacre Wurm. It works quite well with Kardur's second ability, whereby a creature dying triggers loss of life.
Trading a quick death for a long game
When I've seen Kardur decks focus on the second ability, they are often eliminated first because the deck itself is "goad+removal.deck." No one likes getting their stuff consistently destroyed and then taking damage for it.
Another way Kardur struggles is when it comes down to 1v1. If you are relying on his second ability, it will virtually never trigger because your deck does not have a good density of powerful creatures to withstand any attack.
By playing the long game, getting in small bits of incidental damage, and using Kardur's pseudo-goad ability, you should be able to survive until pulling off one of your win conditions. Rakdos can often be an aggro focused Ravnican guild, but we're going to slow it down with Kardur.
Don't get fooled
- Cards that double or triple damage do not work. City on Fire or Angrath's Marauders will not trigger, because Kardur's second effect is a loss of life. Draw engines like Keen Duelist, Protection Racket, Karazikar, the Eye Tyrant, and Stormfist Crusader all trigger loss of life, as well, furthering the idea that these damage doubles will not be good in this deck.
- Kardur technically does not goad creatures. Be careful if you include cards that specifically trigger off of a goaded creature, like Vengeful Ancestor. Kardur's ability is actually better than goad, because it is a trigger that goes on the stack and affects everything in play. If a creature, with haste, entered on your opponents' turn, it has to attack that same turn.
- Do not include too many cards that goad. You should be able to trigger Kardur's ability pretty consistently.
Clean up
Do not forget to get your cards back at the end! I lost a Humble Defector that way, but that's part of the game! Kardur is a fun deck to play because it mitigates any frustration from your opponents by giving them resources. Who can be mad if you give them extra cards and mana each turn?! It also presents your opponents a puzzle. I rarely see the amount of politicking and strategizing in other games those with Kardur in them. If your playgroup views commander games as communally solving a puzzle against an archenemy, Kardur is an amazing commander to play!
Also, just look at the badass art on this alternate printing.
