“When it’s dark and it’s silent”
Art:Kiora, Behemoth Beckoner
by Jaime Jones
Table of Contents
Today’s Featured Commander Is:
Kiora is a whole truck of a commander! This is certainly not uncommon for Simic commanders as they are just simply amazing at drawing cards, having an awesome board presence, and having the counter and protection spells to back it all up. Kiora is a stompy deck with a ton of upside, the upside coming in the form of hard-to-remove creatures with Hexproof and Ward, as well as counterspells and protection spells. Combine a very hard-to-remove huge board with the ability to draw a ton of cards, and this spells disaster for our opponents. With the ramp and big creatures of green and the utility and support provided by our blue cards this deck really is the whole package. Green or blue players rejoice. This deck really has it all; without further ado, let’s get it!
The Deck:
Click here to copy full decklist to your clipboard!
Kiora, Behemoth Beckoner Stompy!
Buy This Deck!
Buy this deck using our TCGPlayer Affiliate Link: Kiora, Behemoth Beckoner Stompy Pauper EDH
Why Kiora, Behemoth Beckoner?
Kiora is an amazing piece of utility for our deck; once we get a good ramp package established, we can easily draw a ton of cards off of Kiora, which can be a great way to fill up our hand. Kiora’s second ability can be quite helpful for us as well, especially with some of our enchantment mana buffs like Market Festival
and Utopia Sprawl
as well as some of our mana dorks like Ilysian Caryatid
. Kiora never has to come out, and if they get killed, it certainly is what it is, but we would like to keep them out, and unless we have a three mana ramp spell like Cultivate
or Kodama's Reach
we typically want to cast Kiora on curve.
Deck Matchups:
Since this is Pauper EDH, there are an absolute ton of things that can tip a game in your favor or out of it. While an archetype may seem favorable, there are absolutely good and bad commanders for our deck to go up against; I have included both these, which were all played among my testing groups using various decks, and I have included the sample size for clarity purposes. This is just meant to be a guide after testing a bunch of games with this deck!
The information below is notes about specific decks that were featured in our testing pods and how we fared against them. Naturally, Pauper EDH is a multiplayer game, so these are just a summary of my notes against different commanders and strategies. When we test these decks we try to test to its strengths and weaknesses to give a full spectrum of what the deck has to offer. Various commanders and archetypes/strategies are used to get the most accurate information.
Commanders, we have a good matchup against:
Glaring Fleshraker
Record against Glaring Fleshraker 4-0
This is a very good matchup for our deck. We are much quicker than them, and if we are able to bounce their commander or force them into a bad combat situation, we can easily run them over and just steamroll this deck. Colorless has very little recourse against us and makes this a very tough matchup for them.
Grumgully, the Generous
Record against Grumgully, the Generous 3-0
Grumgully is a very good matchup for our deck; we are just often bigger and faster than them, and while they can get pretty big by the point that they do, our creatures are also really big, and we typically have a lot more of them. There are no notes for this; if we bounce or remove their commander, there is not much they can do against us as we beat them down.
Tatyova, Benthic Druid
Record against Tatyova, Benthic Druid 5-1
The true Mirror Match! Our decks are pretty much doing the same thing, but since we are far more creature-focused (and our commander can come out earlier) we have the advantage in this matchup, cards that they are running as finishers we have like three or four other creature cards with the same stat lines if the game goes long and we can resolve our big hitters we can easily take care of this one.
Commanders, we have a tough matchup against:
Dionus, Elvish Archdruid
Record against Dionus, Elvish Archdruid 2-2
We did split the games in this matchup, but I still don’t find it to be favorable, Dionus has a really quick time to kill and can establish a board way quicker than we can, our best recourse against them is that we are able to bully them in the early stages of combat which can make their board progression a little slow. Anytime you are dealing with elves it can be a very tough matchup.
Inkfathom Witch
Record against Inkfathom Witch 1-4
We are really good at combat and especially blocking, well unfortunately for us, this deck has so many unblockable creatures, and there just isn’t a ton we can do against them, our damage spells and bounce spells that hit creatures can be effective, but since they are in Dimir, they are often packing a ton of protection and counterspells of their own. This is a rough one!
Juri, Master of the Revue
Record against Juri, Master of the Revue 0-3
Juri engages in far too many sacrifice effects and non-combat damage for us to have a real chance against them. We can whittle them down pretty low, but their consistent source of sacrifice makes our combat and board presence quite weak, and they can typically easily finish us off with their commander. This is a rough one, I had no success against it in testing.
Strategy Overview:
Always be Ramping:
We have a ridiculous amount of ramp in our deck; a good starting hand should have at least a couple of pieces of ramp and that allows us to cast Kiora and our bigger creatures early.
Never Stop Swinging:
We are a combat deck through and through; when we have an advantage against an opponent in combat, we should always be swinging, whether it’s one damage or ten damage. Putting pressure on our opponent’s life totals allows us to take over games.
Take advantage of Kiora:
The deck can absolutely function very well without Kiora, but having her on the field certainly provides a lot of benefits, from untapping a permanent,t which can be very relevant with all of the mana production we have, or drawing cards Kiora is a great piece of support for the deck and if a turn happens where you don’t have much to do casting Kiora and establishing them is always a great option.
Deck Overview:
This section contains information about cards in the deck and how they function within the deck! I also highlighted some of my favorite cards in the deck!
Creatures:
Let’s start out with one of the best utility creatures in our deck in ,Elvish Herder
. Being able to give pretty much all of our big attackers Trample is really key to ending the game, and Elvish Herder helps a ton with that. Now, let’s get into our mana dorks, there is a shocking amount if it produces mana and is cheap we are probably running, I especially love Ilysian Caryatid it fits so perfectly with the overall gameplan and can be turned on really easily and is also a strong target for Kiora’s ability. We are ramping for a reason, and that’s to bust out our huge creatures, we have both mid-game and late-game creatures but they are quite strong. Some of our best mid-game creatures include Fin-Clade Fugitives
, Entourage of Trest
and Rimeshield Frost Giant
four and five mana is super easy to hit in this deck so we are able to power these out quite early! Now for our true late-game creatures, these can still come out shockingly early and end the games typically very quickly like Rust Goliath
, Ulamog's Crusher
and Eldrazi Devastator
opponents usually get pretty nervous when we drop these and for good reason, they are quite scary! Another one of my favorite late-game creatures is Maelstrom Colossus
while it is random what you cascade into being able to get two creatures or spells or pretty much anything can swing the game a lot, since this costs colorless we can cast it crazy quickly on turn four or five when you bring this out it can have a huge impact on the game!
Instants:
Keep Safe
and Turn Aside
are great ways to keep our creatures on the field and can allow us to spend quite a bit of our mana on a turn and shock an opponent when we tap one or two and protect our board! These are especially good because of how much amazing removal is within the format. Speaking of removal we have some of our own, its classic Stompy removal requiring us to have big creatures and using them to take out our opponents like Cosmic Hunger
, Ram Through
and Master's Rebuke
, all of these are effective ways to take our creatures and I especially like Cosmic Hunger and Master’s Rebuke because they can hit Planeswalkers which can feel very relevant, especially in the planeswalker rule zero month! We get pretty aggressive here in our instant package with both Aspect of Hydra
and Chorus of Might
, which can easily one-shot opponents and allows us to do quite a bit of damage.
Sorceries:
Artifacts and enchantments: beware, we are packing two very strong spells in Pick Your Poison
and Atraxa's Fall
. Both of these are cheap and have some great strengths. I especially love Pick Your Poison against decks that have indestructible artifacts, and this also works great against Voltron Strategies; sacrificing can be a really big deal and allows us to take out even the most resilient of artifacts. Atraxas Fall provides us with recourse against flying creatures, and without it, we can’t even really interact with them! This will likely come as a surprise but we also ramp a bit at sorcery speed through the ever-popular Cultivate and Kodama's Reach. Rounding out our Sorcery package is a trio of amazing draw spells in Ponder
, Preordain
, and Lórien Revealed
, not much too say here, drawing cards is good and we would like to do it as often as possible!
Artifacts:
Our artifact package is wholly uninteresting but does provide some cheap support for the deck like Wedding Invitation
! At this point, I don’t know if one of our decks would be recognized if it didn’t contain my favorite card. Cheap card draw and unblockable for one of our big creatures is certainly a win-win for me, and I have eliminated many opponents with this card. Beyond that, we have some additional ramp in Simic Signet
and Simic Locket
we ramp into both of these pretty easily, and we will never say no to more mana production.
Enchantments:
In a format filled to the brim with removal it can be quite tough to keep our best creatures on the field which is why I really like Alexi's Cloak
in the deck two mana shroud whenever we want can surprise our opponents and keep our biggest and baddest swingers on the board. We have a ton of love for Kiora in our enchantment package with all of the enchantments we have that produce us extra mana like Market Festival, Utopia Sprawl and Wild Growth
when combined with our other ramp these can all come down decently early and allow us to get out our huge permanents very quickly. Keeping one of the cheaper one-mana ones in a starting hand can get Kiora and really our whole game plan out super quickly. Another big benefit of these is being untapped by Kiora’s ability to further increase our insane mana production.
Strengths of the Deck:
- Our deck has a ton of ramp and can establish a very nice board super quickly.
- We are hard to beat in combat, our creatures are quite big and can hit like a truck, and they are also great blockers.
Weaknesses of the Deck:
- We can struggle on decks with sacrifice effects as we have no ways to protect against those.
- Super fast decks like Elves or Goblins can give us trouble and put a ton of pressure on our life total before we can really get going.
- We don’t have a ton of traditional removal making it hard to interact with Voltron strategies.
Deck Stats:
Sample Hands:
Conclusion:
Thanks so much for reading to the end! I hope you all enjoyed this one as much as I did; as someone who has had Tatyova built for a very long time, this deck feels extremely similar but just way more creature-heavy instead of land-heavy. I think this deck has a lot of potential, and this is one I’m going to keep around after January 2025 as I think it is not only fun but can be a strong learning tool for newer players as it includes a whole lot of everything and can help a newer player get familiar. Stay tuned and tap in!