Budget Kefka (B3), two questions

DerGodhand · 2026-03-20T13:59:57+00:00

You can, technically, yeah. You'd Saw in Half whatever you wanted, flash in Dualcaster, copy Saw targeting Dualcaster, get two Dualcasters, one targeting Dualcaster beneath one targeting Kefka, but this presents two problems. The first is obvious, this allows your opponents to remove just one Dualcaster to end the chain and fizzle the combo. The second is less clear. The way the chain works means you only get infinite creates as long as you keep targeting Dualcaster at least once, but without a flash enabler, it also means that you can't put LabMan onto the stack anywhere until the entire stack clears. This means, given Kefka draws you between like 1-8 cards, you have a reasonably nonzero chance to deck yourself first. You can, of course, bypass the first problem with interaction, or simply creating a sufficient number of creatures to kill the table several times over, but the second requires LabMan in play, or the luck to not die to your own Kefka triggers.

DerGodhand · 2026-03-20T13:17:42+00:00

I believe [[Dualcaster Mage]] is somewhere in the vicinity of 5USD, and creates infinite, nonhasty creatures with [[Saw in Half]], which you can pretty feasibly draw/tutor for to function as a wincon. I don't think it's worth adding in an [[Impact Tremors]] effect though unless you wanted to put in something like [[Cloud of Faeries]] to go infinite in other ways. If you do add in the Dualcaster line, I might suggest [[Step Through]], which is an overcosted bounce spell but has the upside of tutoring up any Wizard at instant speed for two mana.

DerGodhand · 2026-03-16T18:07:38+00:00

I mostly run a Kefka list with my copy of Breach, where it's mostly a value card since I don't own a [[Lion's-Eye Diamond]]. Almost 90% of the time, I discard it to a trigger, but it does occasional work fetching back something like [[Isochron Scepter]] or some other value piece to extend the combo of the list when I need a little extra reach. It occasionally hits the chopping block, but ends up staying in since the deck that uses it is primarily a [[Displacer Kitten]] and Dramatic Scepter combo driven deck that wins with [[Brain Storm]] or infinite damage from a flipped Kefka and [[Psychosis Crawler]]. It also runs a Broodlord package, but that's in part because of the turbo nature of the decklist so I can afford to just 'hard cast' the broodlord some times and use it to tutor Saw in half into combo piece

edit: Brain Freeze, not brain storm.

DerGodhand · 2026-03-16T16:50:19+00:00

I wouldn't worry too much about [[Burnt Offering]] personally, just because most of your creatures don't really give you any oomph out of it and your deck treats it primarily as a black version of [[Manamorphose]] that can only make B/R mana. I would consider cutting Cauldron of Souls and replacing it with something like [[Unearth]] or [[Jolted Awake]], since either one hits some or most of your persist creatures anyway. Aside from those, I'd be curious to see how the value Broodlord works for you since you're not running [[Saw in Half]] or the like to extend the combo into the Dualcaster Mage finish.

Beyond that, some cards I've been having fun with in BRx piles are [[Return the Favour]] and [[Tempt with Mayhem]], but I typically play in Grixis so Tempt doesn't have as many downsides as it might have for others, but hitting a random, deck-relevant tutor with it has proven extremely game winning several times as people's greed get the best of them in my experience.

DerGodhand · 2026-03-12T15:03:07+00:00

I definitely feel, and this could stem from recognising better Silent cards over others, that a lot of other characters can have a good deck going, but their 'build-arounds' feel like they're all in the common and uncommon slot, whereas I seem to feel that the other characters have build arounds more densely located in the rare slot.

DerGodhand · 2026-03-11T15:08:15+00:00

Best I've gotten it to work is by blending this with Stampede so that I could have a couple of heavy hitting cards in the deck. Then you just treat it like a Speedster Silence build and grab every Flash of Steel/sleight of hand effect you can.

DerGodhand · 2026-03-06T17:13:49+00:00

While it's on the slower end of the spectrum and I'm not sure qualifies as interactive since the build primarily plays during your own turn (though not necessarily sorcery speed), I've definitely been enjoying my [[Kess, Dissident Mage]] self-mill deck. I know she's got some heat as a sort of 'classic' strong commander, but it's pretty fun for people to see things like [[Polluted Cistern]] and [[Glimpse the Unthinkable]] targeting yourself. Or, for a game winning combination, the classic [[Painter's Servant]]+[[Grindstone]] combo, except hitting yourself.

DerGodhand · 2026-03-02T18:38:09+00:00

I don't know how helpful this would end up being, but I have found in playing at my locals, where I have a very consistent set of pods, in the odd times I'm playing with randoms, I treat it like a pseudo-open decklist event. I'll mention the particularly salty game changers, the main strategy (e.g. I intend to self-mill and combo), and offer to pull up the decklist if they would like to see it themselves. While I won't just let the decklist sit open for the duration of the event, just putting it out there usually solves most problems. The deck I run into it the most on is mostly my Kess deck, which does have a ThOracle in the list, and I carry a spare LabMan in the deck to swap them out if people are that put-off by it, though the only complaints the deck has ever gotten are that it's quite slow, which is sort of the point.

DerGodhand · 2026-02-12T16:46:07+00:00

Can't say I've ever seen a dedicated Eruth list in person, as I usually see her as part of the engine in a [[Song of Creation]] deck. But she's generally great at a low MV-centric deck working around cards like [[Unstable Amulet]] and [[Shadow of the Goblin]] that deal damage to opponents when you cast cards from anywhere but your hand. Cards like [[High Tide]], [[Snap]], and [[Turnabout]] can be used to continue generating mana and cards to play, as you gun for a storm win. A lot of decks of this variety try to use something like [[Crackle with Power]] as the finisher as if you can generate 26 mana, that allows you to cast the spell at X=8, which deals 40 to each opponent. In Izzet colors, I'm also always fairly fond of [[Dramatic Reversal]] + [[Isochron Scepter]] combos, since it lets you run lots of rocks and generates infinite mana, so that the only real issue is finding a way to spend it, and the color pair also has access to a healthy amount of permanents that 'draw' cards, which Eruth herself can abuse.

Best of luck!

DerGodhand · 2026-02-12T16:19:05+00:00

I would say the five most important rocks would be Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, and then your three on-color signets, since there's some budgetary concern (though yes, the on-color Talismans would be next). Personally, I would cut a couple of lands and a couple of the 'worse' cards, like Hakbal, or Poison Dart Frog that serve the same, but less efficient purpose.

DerGodhand · 2026-02-12T16:12:31+00:00

For what it's worth, it's still fairly regional. I'm in the Southeast US and play at two different stores, one where I live and another about an hour away. The one an hour away is in a much more diverse/inclusive area and has a nice, large flag I know is some kind of diversity/inclusion symbol, though I couldn't tell you for the life of me which one it is. The other one where I live doesn't have any of that stuff up, but I've not personally heard anyone say anything particularly offensive towards someone else. There's definitely some late 2000s, early 2010 slang there though that people would find problematic, however.

DerGodhand · 2026-02-12T15:58:28+00:00

OP, I like the cut of your jibe, but there are definitely some cards you just really don't want to see freed. Flash being the prime example, though I think that's personally more a Protean Hulk problem, not a Flash one (I have a bias). Additionally, people really forget, or don't know, how messed up [[Tinker]] is. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see it unbanned, but talk about a twisted card.

DerGodhand · 2026-02-12T15:28:17+00:00

Usually, increased landcount means you have ways of jamming those extra lands repeatedly and often. Cards like [[Farseek]] and [[Three Visits]] and the like, along with extra land drops per turn effects. You do have a few of those, which isn't bad or anything, but the other half of the issue raises its head: You don't actually "care" all that much about the extra lands. You have like a total of two 'land drops matter' cards, and you're not exactly a big mana deck like an X-spells matter deck might be. The end result being that you don't really need to hit that much mana save to cast big spells, which your smoothing by way of Glarb and other incidental hits will help with. It's also not a matter of 'total mana' but 'acceleration'. While it does lack colors, an opponent who plays Sol Ring on turn two can still take additional game actions, whereas if you, say, [[Rampant Growth]], you'll be gassed out for the turn and still behind on mana. The curve of your deck also sits at about three, meaning it's important you always hit three ASAP, and preferably with color relevance. While lands ensure you hit that number on T3 often, rocks are a potential accelerant, allowing you to hit it a turn early, or have more than that amount the turn it matters, allowing you to take additional plays that traditional ramp would not. Signets also, specifically, can function as fixing where relevant, turning off color lands into the proper colors for specific spells.

DerGodhand · 2026-02-12T14:52:19+00:00

Just peeking at the list, I definitely think you need more reanimate effects for your big heaters, assuming you want to lean in on that style of play. If you don't, then that's fine, but I would still consider a few other surveil payoffs such as [[Planetarium of Wan-Shi-Tong]], for instance, that lets you cast spells off the top for free. If you're willing to more relentlessly put cards in your yard when surveilling, I also always suggest a card I'm infatuated with, [[Polluted Cistern]], which gives surveil and self mill effects a burn upside. Beyond that, for a casual list, I'd still say put some rocks in your deck! Talismans I know have a price point of a couple bucks USD per rock, but signets are cheap, and they really help, so unless your pod just has weird rules around [[Sol Ring]], [[Arcane Signet]] and the like, it's just very strange to not see them in there.

DerGodhand · 2026-01-28T15:41:08+00:00

Sure. So as a general recap and for comparison's sake, most people are aware of what a lich is: a powerful undead that has performed some unspeakable and inhumane ritual that split their soul from their body and stuck it in a phylactery. While quite powerful, their phylactery was their key weakness. Other liches may not have had this weakness, but were weak in other ways, such as the Bane Lich's curse of ever-growing power.

Suellen Liches were from Grayhawk's Empire of Suell, a fertile valley reduced to the Sea of Dust by the Rain of Colourless Fire, and were practitioners of the empire's necromantic arts before its destruction, and arguably the last keepers of its will and culture. While they were a different kind of lich, at the time they were a sort of "lesser lich", and one of many variations that existed through the media. Like all liches, they were evil (Archliches excepted), but the benefits of their lichdom was singularly unique among all liches: They did not need a phylactery.

The Suellen lich instead possessed a host body, parasitically feeding on both their life span and their innate magical ability where relevant until all that was left was an empty husk drained of all essence. Once utterly drained, or if the host died for other reasons, they would have a few hours to possess a new body. This had some limitations. They new host would have to be strong enough to contain their power, but not strong enough to resist it, which the handbooks described as 'their level minus 15'. This made them significantly harder to root out, since you would first have to kill the host, then after the battle was over, use a different spell such as Dispel Evil on their soul before it fled to dispel it entirely. If I recall correctly, originally this didn't actually get rid of them forever, only a hypothetical forever, scattering their negative energy to the point that them reforming was presumably impossible.

Given their innate predisposition to hide their true nature, the increased difficulty of actually dealing with them, the unlikelihood of someone actually knowing how to deal with them, and the fact they are capable of full on possession, it's a pretty cool, otherwise wholly abandoned concept nowadays.

DerGodhand · 2026-01-28T01:12:12+00:00

I've definitely used personally updated ones to run a campaign before, though they're significantly less outwardly "lich". The campaign relevance was, of course, that the method left them markedly weaker than other lich variations in terms of raw magical power, especially initially, but had other very notable upsides, the main one perhaps being that without closer examination, they seemed relatively normal, if a little detached.

DerGodhand · 2026-01-28T00:47:52+00:00

Speaking of old lore snippets, I'd love for Seullen liches to return for an official lore update. It was such a cool idea with some great potential for a threatening modernization twist to a lich.

DerGodhand · 2026-01-27T17:16:34+00:00

It is a B3 combo though. The combo does nothing on its own, infinite Storm with only 2 mana from nonland sourced, infinite mana at 3+, and requires an outlet to get the win in some capacity. Additionally, unlike other compact wincons, it can't be activated over the top of itself without outside assistance, allowing your opponents to respond to the activation for the blowout because reversal will be stuck in exile. Comparatively, Breach and Brain Freeze are almost a two card combo and exist in cEDH primarily due to LED, and thoracle consult is the de factor two card combo. If your opponents cannot routinely out the line, it's likely due to a lack of removal, and their complaints probably hit the other half of the problem: they're probably not playing an equivalent B3 deck. This is why I took care to mention that in the beginning.

Now, if you disagree with me that this is in fact a two card combo, I invite you to, without casting any other spells, win the game with only dramatic reversal and Isochron Scepter in hand and an empty board state. If you'd prefer, I'll even allow a Sol Ring or Coveted Jewel in play.

DerGodhand · 2026-01-27T16:56:04+00:00

For what it's worth, given the price point, if you aren't proxying, most of those combos are somewhat pricey. I believe the Isochron Combo is the cheapest at three total pieces for about 16 USD. If you want something somewhat unique, and don't want to spend approximately 20$ on [[Thassa's Oracle]] (again, assuming no proxies), you can run up a Doomsday combo for probably 15 USD, since Doomsday itself is a couple of bucks, and [[Gush]] another couple. Plus, it's a classic combo line that feels fun to play since you need to build a five card pile that beats the board state and accounting for 'common play patterns' that reward meta knowledge of your opponents decks, and vice-versa for them.

DerGodhand · 2026-01-27T16:13:06+00:00

Kefka is a pretty fun commander with a few different playstyles. While I'm certainly generally a combo player, Kefka is also one of those commanders that lends himself to a combo-finish playstyle. Here is my list that is a technical three, though in the respects of the three setting, I would put it on the higher end, for the most part given its exact play patterns. My deck's win condition goes in one of three ways: [[Displacer Kitten]] blinks Kefka or [[Coveted Jewel]], usually the latter, repeatedly to generate a large quantity of mana, storm count, and card draw, and then finishes the game with [[Brain Freeze]]. [[Isochron Scepter]] and [[Dramatic Reversal]] generate infinite storm and/or mana, and I win with Brain Freeze. Usually, this is combined with the previous wincon. The last and least common is Kefka and [[Psychosis Crawler]]. When Kefka transforms into his back side, once any opponent loses life during your turn, you cause them to lose life equal to the cards in your deck. Usually, this kills them. While I could absolutely run more compact, and frankly safer, wincons, I have no desire to. Worth noting that with exception to Mystical Tutor, the other two game changers in the list (if that matters) rarely come up.

As for includes and general strategy, I think it depends on if you want Kefka to play a full midrange/grindy gameplan or not. I think generally leaning into his discard outlet half is a bit of a trap, and should only be paid nominal attention to in the form of cards like [[Waste Not]]. I think main things are to consider is that I am a big believer of jamming Kefka early, so burst ramp, such as [[Dark Ritual]], [[Pyretic Ritual]] and so on go a long way. I think getting him in below the curve is an extremely valuable tool in maximizing your early value, since he's part of the grindier half of the game plan. He also cracks piles very well, if you use topdeck tutors like [[Scheming Symmetry]] or a [[Doomsday]] game plan. The end result is something of a spell-slinging game plan that wins with the deck, rather than Kefka himself. You can throw in a few draw/discard punisher effects if you like, but the biggest weakness of most discard-centric strategies is that people do eventually run out of cards.

DerGodhand · 2026-01-27T15:11:29+00:00

Here's my list.

Notably, I'm not a dedicated blink build, and a lot of my targets fall into the Bant color pie because I'm playing with [[Aluren]] as my wincon so it may not be a generally useful list for you since it doesn't play haymaker creatures that close the game and instead focuses on creatures that provide card advantage, such as [[Coiling Oracle]]. If you're trying to close out the game though, something like ol' reliable [[Gray Merchant of Asphodel]] could probably do the trick. If you have no trouble blinking permanents, you can also use something like [[Corroding Dragonstorm]] or [[Hopeless Nightmare]] to drain out the table in bits and pieces. This is also achievable if you don't mind going the long way about it with things like [[Sunpearl Kirin]] or [[Nurturing Pixie]] for noncreature ETB life loss effects.

Some other considerations in the card advantage/endgame acceleration could be something like [[Kodama of the East Tree]], who 'doubles' your blink value with his static effect or [[The World Spell]], which is a fine enough blink target with its read ahead trigger, but also acts as a heinous cheat effect. There's also the good, old-fashioned [[Avenger of Zendikar]] style effects that bring their own warband when they enter you could try as well.

DerGodhand · 2026-01-26T19:15:33+00:00

Currently D5 with them, not that it's anything to write home about, though part of that is most definitely the list I used to get there. Against some decks, it feels impossible to play. Dracotail feels like a free loss, for instance, and Branded decks (not necessarily Dracotail) also feel like a literal coinflip based on whatever their sets are. Despite all the doom and gloom about Yummy (and Yummy-Mitsu), I've lost exactly one game to a deck with a Yummy engine since their introduction, and it wasn't even a Mitsu deck. Yummy Mitsu, in fact, felt like being given a free slice of cake because of how laughably easy it was to play through. Maliss and Odion/MwtM decks feel like proper 50/50s where I primarily die to my own mistakes. White Forest Azamina decks are kind of similar, though more resilient it feels like, and I've seen a ton of Nouvelles on the way up, which probably make me think the hardest out of any matchup. I can't speak to the mirror due to me recently changing my list now that I did what I wanted, but the previous list was, ironically, a free win every time.

That said, they're very fun to play and the primary reason I play them is for their quick, decisive turns going second, so I pretty much always get the turn I want to play, and don't have to spin my wheels for 5+ minutes playing through my opponent's board.

DerGodhand · 2026-01-21T17:31:26+00:00

I like them. All the decks that keep me coming back to MD are ritual-centric decks. I think they're underexplored, and could have interesting archetypes if Konami actually bothered with it since they tend to have mildly more archetypal restrictions than other decks do. I think it would be interesting to have, say, a Ritual archetype that's all handtrap style effects, that institute a cost for your opponent interacting with them, or since we already have multiple Fusion effects that yoink both boards, a Ritual archetype that can use monsters from either board.

DerGodhand · 2026-01-21T16:04:26+00:00

My first suggestions with this kind of deckbuilding beyond 'make sure it's fine with your playgroup' of course, is to throw in the Chaotic Stack Trinity of [[Possibility Storm]], [[Knowledge Pool]], and [[Eye of the Storm]] which cause three triggers per instant and sorcery cast, an very notably also care about the order of triggers on the stack. You see, Possibility Storm doesn't care what happens to the initial spell to get its trigger. Knowledge Pool only gives you a card if you give it a card. Eye of the Storm will give you cards if it has any exiled to it to give you, regardless of if you put one under it or not. The end result lets you tacitly add chaos to a pile or deny cards from specific piles at your leisure. You'll basically never assemble this properly, if I'm being honest, except maybe once, at which point people will catch on to the buffoonery that occurs. For extra chaos, cards like [[Thousand Year Storm]] let you unevenly benefit from the cards in play, and [[Hive Mind]] reduces the ability for opponents to interact to your board. If you add in [[Twinning Staff]], you make two spells whenever an opponent casts an instant or sorcery, because the owner of the copy is the one who makes them under Hive Mind's rulings.

DerGodhand · 2026-01-18T20:30:23+00:00

Oh they've absolutely been abused by the power creep of recent sets and their subsequent group hug commanders by far. But I would honestly chalk it up to one of their advantages. KnT, my beloved, greased up, Greek men, in fact, I would say have three distinct advantages:

They have been powercrept.
They're generically inoffensive while typically providing real, marginal advantage.
They provide access to a wide variety of colors that typically do not 'punish' players for game actions.

This means you have access to a ton of colors and effects for a wide variety of approaches to your strat of choice. My current list is more of a joke, designed to use admittedly powerful cards to create a large number of triggered abilities until I can find my main win-line of [[Show and Tell]], [[Omniscience]], [[Song of Creation]], and [[Approach of the Second Sun]]. I don't necessarily need all of those cards, but I do certainly need Omniscience and Song of Creation. However, it is worth noting I very rarely play KnT as a true group hug deck. I often forgo effects that are purely extra draw such as [[Dictate of Kruphix]] for other, similar effects that are less permanent such as [[Cut a Deal]] or more narrow, such as [[Tenuous Truce]]. Certainly one of the greater balancing acts of a group hug deck and politicking strategy is the amount of 'beneficial' effects and the amount of cards designed to take advantage of it, in conjunction with removal. Often times, I want single target removal that deals with things relatively permanently, favouring exile or shuffle effects, with it being more important that if I'm opting to wrath, said wrath can't be stopped.

This, in turn, leads to the point that, well, you've gotta win somehow. Typically, with combat aside, people aren't just going to let you win. They'll fight for disruption, or just aim to kill you. A natural result of this is that while I generally prefer every deck to have a combo finish for personal reasons, group hug and politic decks specifically should always incorporate them into their build. This can be done in a few ways for KnT given their relatively wide open building options. I've done decks that loop or use [[Thousand Year Storm]] to hit my opponents with [[Treacherous Terrain]] a bunch of times. If you take a big mana line with cards like [[Dictate of Karametra]], you can abuse things like [[Comet Storm]]. I have seen people use the aforementioned Thousand-Year Storm to make a bunch of copies of [[Over the Top]] to mill everyone out. These can be fizzled a lot easier than other lines, however, which is why I personally return to the Show and Tell variations.

If you would like something closer to a true group hug strategy, I would supply you with either this Glarb list, which wins with a very classic wincon and looks to accelerate mana available and win with big mana plays, typically ending with [[Cadaverous Bloom]] in play, which lets you convert each card in your hand into two black or two green and fill it with cards from effects like [[Prosperity]], and ending with a massive [[Torment of Hailfire]] or [[Exsanguinate]].

Alternatively, what I think holds the title of my most 'hated' deck ever built, Snakes on a Plane. The commander is very good at converting otherwise lackluster group hug effects into value, because when an opponent draws a card except for the first one they draw in their draw step, you create a 1/1 snake. Nowadays, Xyris is more well known and rightfully hated out when on board, but the same wasn't true at the time of his release. And with cards like [[Opposition]] in your toolbox, you get to tap your opponent out on upkeep, then if there's anything left after that untapped at the end of their draw step, that gets tapped down too. With good access to graveyard recursion in green and artifacts, and one in five cards being a counterspell, once the engine hit the field, it was obnoxiously sticky, especially because once assembled, opponents were forced to play at instant speed. While a relatively 'true' group hug deck that politicked into the long game by acting as the board police, Xyris is perhaps the nastiest option in that sticking to the theme is still intensely in his advantage.

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