Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund Dragons

Commander Overview

Karrthus was one of the first commanders I built when I got into the format around 2014. I have had a soft spot for Karrthus since then, just a fun commander, sure, its abilities usage can be a little narrow, but this card is amazing against other dragon decks, and being able to give all of our dragons haste is pretty strong as well. Karrthus has a bit of an interesting role in this deck, if there are other dragon decks at the table he is a bomb and can truly swing the game in our favor and without well we are still a strong dragon deck that can ramp hand, put big dragons into play with cards like Monster Manual and Quicksilver Amulet and almost all of our creatures have flying which makes us naturally evasive. Karrthus still has a soft spot in my heart, and rebuilding and reviving this deck has been a blast.

How to Play the Deck

Playing the deck is simple; we don’t have a lot of complicated interactions here. We mostly ramp in the early game and start slamming down as many dragons as we possibly can. Even if we are against another dragon deck and we have incentives to slam down Karrthus, all we really do is steal all of the dragons on the board. I do like that there is a decent amount of dragons in the format, and with Lorwyn Eclipsed being released and having a lot more changelings in the format, Karrthus is better than they were before. This deck is extremely simple to play, and anyone can pilot this deck.

Synergy’s in the deck

Our whole deck is synergized around our dragons. We have some cards that work really well with our overall game plan, like Utvara Hellkite, which produces a crazy amount of dragons, and even if we swing out, allows us to have a ton of additional blockers as well. While Utvara Hellkite is a bit pricey, we can ramp into them easily. Thrakkus The Butcher is another great card for our deck, doubling each of our dragons’ power is truly insane and allows us to output a ton of damage. Our whole deck is synergized around dragons with cost reducers like Dragonspeaker Shaman and Dragonlord’s Servant, which make nearly every creature in our deck cheaper.

Phases of the Game

Early-Game: The only thing we do in the early game is ramp, cards like Birds of Paradise and Cultivate, and we can use cards like Frontier Siege to help us get some extra mana as well. I tend not to be aggressive at all in the early game; most of our early-game creatures are better for mana as opposed to getting in a little bit of damage.

Mid-Game: By this point, we have typically ramped enough to not only cast Karrthus but some of our big dragons as well. Many decks can struggle to deal with cards like Earthquake Dragon, which is a huge creature and has trample, making it just a nightmare for our opponents to deal with. All of our dragons can be terrible for our opponents to deal with, as they are all pretty big and almost all of them have flying. The mid-game is a great time for us.

Late-Game: Our huge dragons work overtime in the late-game, oftentimes when all of the boards at the table are pretty full, we can fly over the top. We tend to become a lot more aggressive in the late-game, as we don’t want our opponents to scale to the level we have.

Card Breakdowns

Ramp

We are very good at ramping, as to be expected with a deck that has green in it, cards like Birds of Paradise, Cultivate and Kodama’s Reach which are great early-game options to get our lands out and get closer to casting our huge dragons, we also have Frontier Siege which is a great piece of passive mana ramp for the deck and while its temporary it can allow us to cast something big much earlier than we should. We are very good at ramping and are great at getting our big creatures out early and swinging.

Card Draw/Card Advantage

Being in Jund allows us to be good at drawing cards; we are easily able to draw enough cards to keep our hands full even if we are casting a decent amount of stuff. Garruk’s Uprising is a strong source of card draw for the deck and can be extremely consistent; having it be on ETB also synergizes extremely well with Utvara Hellkite and Lathliss, Dragon Queen. Shamanic Revelation is another consistent source of card draw, as we almost always have a pretty big board. Since we have a decently high cost throughout the deck, we rarely have turns where we dump our hands on the field, but we do have enough card draw to keep our hand full and always have access to what we want!

Removal

We are much more focused on our dragons than our removal, but we have more than enough to get by. Cards like Assassin’s Trophy and Putrefy give us a cheap and easy way to kill commanders or problematic creatures our opponents have, and they are both very cheap. Artifacts and Enchantments also hold a huge role in the format, so being able to use Tear Asunder to exile a combo piece an opponent has is insanely strong. Krosan Grip is another cheap source of artifact/enchantment removal, and having Split Second is truly huge, not allowing opponents to counter it or use the stack at all is insanely powerful. One underrated removal aspect of our deck is our dragons; we are quite good at blocking and can withstand a lot of creatures in combat, because of this, opponents often don’t attack into us.

Protection

We have next to no protection in this deck, no one dragon is core and necessary for the overall gameplan so we don’t care that much if our stuff dies, we do have Bloodline Bidding which is an amazing way for us to recover after a board wipe or a bad combat but other than that we don’t care that much about our creatures dying.

Utility / Support

Monster Manual and Quicksilver Amulet are two of the best support cards in the deck. We can ramp them out easily, and putting our huge dragons into play is very strong and allows us to become an immediate threat to our opponents and swing the momentum in our favor. Minion of the Mighty is another card that allows us to cheat our dragons and it is extremely easy to trigger, even with cheap dragons like Scavenger Regent or Thunderbreak Regent we can become very close to triggering it early, and in the late-game Minion’s ability is pretty much a gimme and can help us save mana and deal more damage. There are so many dragons that help us with combat, like Atarka, World Render, which is truly devastating for our opponents, and I have ended many games soon after dropping Atarka. Collective Inferno is a new card from Lorwyn Eclipsed that is an absolute bomb in this deck, allowing our dragons to deal double damage, and it has convoke, making it even easier to cast. This is another card that we can easily end opponents’ whole careers quickly after playing.

Mana Base

Nothing interesting going on in our mana base, just pure efficiency like I always try to build, so we have the bond lands, shocks, and fetches as well as Ziatora’s Proving Ground for mana fixing. We are running a little heavy land-wise in this deck since we have a very high overall curve, and ensuring we can cast not only Karrthus but all of our awesome dragons is important.

Win Conditions

Our primary win condition is combat; it doesn’t really matter how we achieve that. Cards like Collective Inferno can assist with this and make it happen very quickly. We do have Dragon Tempest, which technically is a win condition, but I often use it to ping opponents’ problematic creatures. Lastly, we have Hellkite Tyrant. While we technically can win the game off of this, I have never successfully pulled it off.

Strengths of the Deck

Decks that don’t have reach or flying can struggle greatly against us as we freely hit them.

We are amazing in any dragon mirror match, perfect for all of those Miirym, Sentinel Wyrms that are floating around the format.

Weaknesses of the Deck

While we do have a lot of ramp, we can be pretty slow to start; aggressive decks can take advantage of this and hit us with some early damage. We are able to stabilize later, but that early damage can become relevant later in the game.

While Karrthus is a great commander, they can feel pretty bad in a low or no-dragon meta as they are just a seven-mana dragon that gives our creatures haste.

Deck Testing/Matchups

I tested this deck against three different decks

Game 1: Vs The Ur-Dragon. Matchup Record: 5-1

A great matchup for our deck, arguably the best matchup for our deck! Karrthus is truly a catch-all here and can allow us to easily kill the Ur-Dragon player since we steal nearly all of their creatures. I had no trouble with this one at all. I do like to wait a bit till they are more built before I rob them, so we can ensure we swing the momentum heavily in our favor.

Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Dracogenesis, Crucible of Fire, Cultivate.

Game 2: Vs Kangee, Aerie Keeper. Matchup Record: 3-2

This was an alright matchup for our deck, Karrthus isn’t great here and Kangee is one of the few decks in the format that can easily keep up with all of our flyers, they can get out of hand quickly too so I tend not to be aggressive unless we have cards like Thrakkus the Butcher or Atarka, World Render which give us the edge in combat.

Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Quicksilver Amulet, Assassin’s Trophy and Drakuseth, Maw of Flames.

Game 3: Vs Drivnod, Carnage Dominus. Matchup Record: 0-3

I struggled a lot with this matchup, Drivnod is crazy and can passively drain us a lot and they have a lot of edict effects rendering cards like Monster Manual or Quicksilver Amulet ineffective since the solo huge dragon we have dies, they also have a lot of removal, it can be hard to keep any of our best stuff on the board. I had no success in my testing games, although I will say keeping Drivnod off the board is quite important.

Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Krosan Grip, Assassin’s Trophy and Terminate.

Conclusion

Thanks so much for reading to the end! I hope you all enjoyed it. Karrthus is certainly a relic from the older side of Commander back when the format was nothing more than one big battle cruise but with the rise of dragon commanders like Miirym, Sentinel Wyrm and The Ur-Dragon I still think Karrthus and his adafsdfrmy of Jund dragons have a place in the format, while its not great in all matchups it is still a powerful deck that is a blast to play.