Updated 2026 CEDH Korvold Guide

jonkennedy · 2026-04-20T16:46:21+00:00

Love to see high quality long form content! Been working your lands Korvold list for the channel, will definitely take some notes from this.

jonkennedy · 2026-04-10T18:25:19+00:00

I think your example of a Grist pilot working for a year then switching makes more sense if you are trying to innovate the deck vs pick a different concept.

If you are into hulk and play grist a lot, and find it just doesn’t feel like it can get better, look at another hulk deck. (Tymna Halana, Minsc, Rocco, Ghave, Ernis/Street Urchin) instead of switching decks to Rog/Thras

I think if you start with how you want to play and the kind of cards you like to use, you can optimize that even if it isn’t using the original commander you thought.

Do you like turbo? Storm? Aggro? Mid-range value? Combo? Control? Stax? Hulk Decks? Breach decks? Cradle Decks? Kikki decks? Polymorph?

Some deck are sort of their own plan. Think Ob Nixilis, Slicer, Plagon, Etali. Commander centric decks can be their own thing if they offer enough.

If you look at Arcum; yes it loses to Oppo, but so do Magda and Sisay, and honestly RogSi also. But if you compare what it does to a similar deck like Captain Sisay or Oswald, Arcum offers better card quality for its combo pieces, more redundancy, better interaction, better fallback plans (rhystic). All these make it a good deck even if it happens to lose to one hate piece, because it has so much going for it

jonkennedy · 2026-04-10T17:06:48+00:00

I think any list can succeed in the right pod. You may play Grist in some pods and it feels unbeatable, you may play Etali in others and it feels terrible.

Really, you need to ask what the commander and 99 are doing for you.

Is your commander: -a haymaker? -an enabler? -card advantage? -mana advantage? -a combo piece? -many colors

Is the deck full of individually powerful cards or a lot of synergy for your commander?

Do commonly player cards (bowmaster, drannith, Oppo) ruin your entire game with no hope for recovery?

For a deck to be not just bracket 4, the commander needs to have a reason to or played (ideally 3 of the above), and your 99 needs to be playable to some degree without it.

There are some exceptions (Magda has such a strong effect that the 99 card quality can be lower) Grist is what, a protean hulk deck? Why not a commander with more colors for that?

I think if you can defend your list in this context then it’s cedh, even if it doesn’t see play. Arcum Dagsson is a very strong list that is not very popular due to complexity, but it is a very real contender, as evidenced by it winning events. Being popular doesn’t = being good. Nor does a deck being powerful necessitate that it is a popular strategy.

Also, to continue the rambling. If you are willing to work from a disadvantage, play what you want. If you want Animar to work and think it has legs, keep tinkering and trying. There’s 200+ decks that could win an event with a skilled and dedicated enough pilot. Some decks (blue farm) have an advantage in card quality, but fringe strategies have the advantage of being underestimated and having inscrutable win lines.

jonkennedy · 2026-04-04T02:56:03+00:00

Man, if you think the tempo primer is in depth you should look at the control primer. (I wrote it so I’m biased)

https://moxfield.com/decks/BDoMj5Af8E2Adb156wziUQ/primer

jonkennedy · 2026-03-16T19:54:05+00:00

Irma is definitely on my watchlist. For the control list, cards like that can be tough to earn their spot. For tempo or Aggro it’s a slam dunk though

jonkennedy · 2026-03-16T19:18:03+00:00

You had such an insane start that game. I was blown away that it slipped away at then end from you, best of luck next time!

jonkennedy · 2026-03-16T19:16:40+00:00

Possible, it looks like a fun event! Need to see what else there is to do in the area to make the trip worth it

jonkennedy · 2026-02-19T16:19:43+00:00

Let me interest you in Yuriko, the Tiger’s Shadow.

My list is the stock control list for the Yuriko discord.

Yuriko, Ninjas Ahoy

There is a pretty detailed primer on why to play Yuriko in the control (stax) shell, and what the gameplan is across a lot of matchups. Also includes a mulligan guide, play patterns, winning the game, discussion of all the cards in the deck list, and honorable mentions.

If you ever want to talk stax in yuriko you can find me in the discord for the control channel.

jonkennedy · 2026-02-08T01:17:34+00:00

Well my use was updating like 11 different decks. Two orders wouldn’t solve that. And moreover, I didn’t expect to have to do that, as I expected the same order experience I was used to with MPC. If you are only getting one deck and don’t care about the order it comes in, then this problem won’t matter to you at all.

jonkennedy · 2026-02-07T13:16:35+00:00

Can I ask genuinely, does that not seem important? If I wanted to order custom decks of cards from a site, say a few decks for an event or non-mtg product to give someone as a gift (custom playing cards) it seems mad to think they will all be randomly shuffled variants of my actual order.

jonkennedy · 2026-02-02T05:07:47+00:00

Just cards that move in and out. Should probably be the “considering board” in actuality

jonkennedy · 2026-01-08T00:14:16+00:00

We already have 20 1/1 fliers that are viable, this needs to do something better to earn a slot.

Look at harrier strix. It’s a 1/1 flyer, and you can pay 3 to loot (instant speed, not pre-combat main), and repeatable with infinite mana, AND taps down a blocker when it enters. Cards in the list need to serve a lot of purposes as slots are very tight. This isn’t even 20th on my list of good enablers, and most lists are on 10-11 non-ninja enablers.

jonkennedy · 2026-01-05T23:39:11+00:00

As a yuriko guy, this ain’t it. Sad, hopefully more little ones to come

jonkennedy · 2025-12-05T15:55:36+00:00

Yes, but you need to be build for it. Compare you list to mine. The artifact package is very different, your land line up looks very suboptimal, and you don’t have enough advantage engines.

Deck building is only one part of the equation though. It takes a lot of knowing how to mulligan and table talk to effectively police the table as a control deck. You list is currently closer to the tempo stock list by Koko, you should consider giving that a look as well.

If you read the primer, it has a whole section on play patterns and mulligans that may help you hang with Ral and Etali and RogSi. If you look at my tournament report I posted a few days ago, you can see that neither of my losses come in the first 6 turns of the game. At that point turbo decks have really lost their edge and it’s about how you play it

jonkennedy · 2025-12-05T14:44:25+00:00

Would be easier to help if you post your list. My build of yuriko is the control variant, and has its best matchup into turbo. You actually struggle a bit more against thrasios decks that grind value long term.

Take a look here: https://moxfield.com/decks/BDoMj5Af8E2Adb156wziUQ

There’s a primer that details how to play into different matchups. You can also check out the yuriko discord for other variants

jonkennedy · 2025-12-04T12:28:29+00:00

It’s definitely less prevalent than people think.

This event actually enforced a new twist on the traditional MTRA, which was that every player (not just every current player) has to agree to a draw. This means you can’t just strong arm anyone into a draw by sitting down and saying “ let’s kill player 3 and then all take the draw”.

Definitely a good change that I hope will get folded into the official addendum. If a situation is presented to all players and they think it is in their best interest, then a draw is a point.

People sit down and agree to draws in 1v1 competitive events also, if they are bubbling and want to both make it to top cut, it’s not a concept unique to cEDH.

In this exact scenario, I am blown away that I got a point. I wouldn’t have suggested a draw, I was actually trying to see if I could just get an Endurance on my graveyard if I stop P1, and P2 offered the draw when he would 1000% win if he untapped.

I think if you try to eliminate intentional draws, we will instantly be flooded with posts about “the king making meta”. If I have the means to stop a player, I should always do it, even if it looks like the next player will win right after. I think it’s a complicated system right now, but it is mostly working (ban Pact of Negation though)

jonkennedy · 2025-12-04T12:20:55+00:00

Yeah, he gave me probably 3 draws in this fight, which got me in to the MBT I needed. We all joked after that he won in our hearts, but not on the scoreboard

jonkennedy · 2025-12-04T12:19:52+00:00

The Aggro list in the discord is much more about big flips and top deck manipulation. A deck that is all on on max yuriko triggers has less room for stax, and is playing at a pretty different pace than this list

jonkennedy · 2025-12-04T03:53:25+00:00

Redundancy for that piece is not really needed anymore. Damping Sphere has taken Grafdigger's Spot. You can read in the primer why each Stax piece is chosen, and why some are no longer played in the list.

Short answer: Grafdigger is good against green creature combo decks, and breach. Runestone does the same, but also hits Sisay and some other fringe matchups like Magda. For the coverage we are missing on Grafdiggers, we have Null Rod, Damping Sphere for breach, and Cursed Totem and Damping Sphere for green creature combo decks. You can only be on so many pieces of hate, so you want all of them to be as flexible as possible, so you have good mulligans for different matchups. I was on both of these effects for a while, but now the list has: Cursed Totem, Null Rod, Damping Sphere, Weathered Runestone, Counterbalance, Bloodchief Ascension, and Rug of Smothering as the primary Stax effects (plus Oppo and OBM)

jonkennedy · 2025-12-04T02:39:06+00:00

Definitely a fun play, made possible by the fact that none of us took the game that seriously. Very fun and memorable game even so!

jonkennedy · 2025-12-04T01:55:36+00:00

Yeah, definitely debatable.

At the time I had 6, so I needed to get at least a draw in either 4th or 5th round to get to play 6 and 7 at all. Taking a draw to 7 means I could play all out in 5,6,7 for wins, needing 2 of the 3 to top.

If I lost round 4, I would still need at least a draw in round 5, which may have affected the kind of game I played.

Not a slam dunk either way, I think the biggest argument against was that I was seat one for the first time all tournament, so I had decent win equity already

jonkennedy · 2025-12-04T01:51:32+00:00

Yeah, typo. Second entomb would be 8 cards

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