“The darker the night, the brighter the stars.”
Art:Kaya, Bane of the Dead
by Magali Villeneuve
Table of Contents
Today’s Featured Commander Is:
Kaya is a very interesting commander and a commander I have trouble justifying; while they have great matchups against decks that feature hexproof commanders, they are quite expensive and can be hard to get out early, especially in Orzhov. This leads to an interesting conundrum. The Condudrum comes from Kaya being a great utility piece, but since they are quite expensive, they can be hard to justify out of all of the amazing Orzhov options within the format. We are covering all the Planeswalkers, and this deck is strong independent of Kaya, but with how much faster the format has gotten, I am not entirely sure this deck is the most viable option for Orzhov. But we planned on doing them all, including the ones that aren’t that great, so here we go! Without further ado, let’s get it!
The Deck:
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Kaya, Bane of the Dead Extort!
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Why Kaya, Bane of the Dead?
Kaya is arguably the most controversial card in our deck, while there is removal spell and a decent piece of utility if you are going against a deck filled with hexproof creatures, it can be strong, but since it costs six it can be quite hard for Kaya to have a meaningful impact, and in my opinion, I think that there are better Orzhov commander options. If we make the game go long and get Kaya out, she can have a strong impact on the game, but we are often doing bigger and better things independent of Kaya. This puts this deck in an interesting position. We essentially have a card in the command zone that provides a decent amount but pretty much nothing else, Turn Six is extremely tough especially in a deck without a lot of ramp.
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:
Arabella, Abandoned Doll
Record against Arabella, Abandoned Doll 3-1
I like this matchup a lot and find it to be quite favorable for us, our cheap and early removal as well as some early-game sacrifice effects allow us to get a leg up on them and keep Arabella off of the field, combine that with all of the lifegain we have and we can keep our life total high and make them really struggle to kill us. I tend to aggressively mulligan in this matchup for cheap removal to deal with Arabella.
Thermo-Alchemist
Record against Thermo-Alchemist 3-0
This is another matchup where we tend to dominate them by keeping their commander off of the board and keeping our life total high through all of our lifegain; there just isn’t much that they can do against us. I like this matchup a lot and, in testing, had no trouble dealing with them.
Commanders, we have a tough matchup against:
Balmor, Battlemage Captain
Record against Balmor 0-4
Counters, aggressiveness, and a ton of flyers, this matchup is pretty terrible for us, this deck actually runs some hexproof creatures in most lists, but in my testing, I was dead before I could ever get Kaya out so that was kind of a wash, this deck is quick, and they have counters too, it can be hard to keep or commit anything to the board, and they have a very strong presence in combat. This is a rough one for the deck.
Legate Lanius, Caesar's Ace
Record against Legate Lanius 0-3
This is a really rough matchup; any of our early-game typically gets destroyed by Lanius, and since we can’t deal with things on the stack, they can pretty much use their commander at will and just devastate our board.
Strategy Overview:
Drain and Gain:
We have a lot of life gain effects in the deck as well as lifeloss effects, being able to trigger these both continuously allows us to position ourselves very well against creature decks and put a decent amount of additional pressure on our opponents.
Extort as much as we can:
We have a ton of different extort creatures, and they are a great way to execute the drain and gain piece of our gameplan, with enough of them out and a decent amount of mana we can drain and gain our opponents for four or five life a turn which when combined with all of the other sources of damage floating around at a Pauper EDH table can add up very quickly.
Commander Keep Away:
One of the best ways to slow down opponents is to remove their commanders as often as we can. We have a ton of removal, and against decks that need to keep their commanders on the field, we can be really strong against them. I often like to just kill commanders as soon as they drop. This is of course deck dependent but I love doing that against Arabella, Abandoned Doll.
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:
Some of our early game creatures are very strong and allow us to execute the drain and gain gameplan very early, like Soul Warden
and Soul's Attendant
, since these trigger for our opponents creatures as well we can get our life total really high in just a few turns, often just a few turns with these cards is enough to make creature, and aggressive based strategies have a tough time killing us. Since we have a lot of lifegain within the deck, we also have some strong payoffs like Marauding Blight-Priest
and Celestial Unicorn
, which are both really strong payoffs for our deck and can allow us to put additional pressure on our opponents and after just a few turns Celestial Unicorn can get really huge. More on the drain side, I love both Blood Seeker
and Suture Priest
, which can really punish creature-based strategies. I am also a big fan of our extort package like Basilica Screecher
and Basilica Guards
, as well as quite a few other extort creatures, which is a great way to drain and gain opponents. They are also pretty decent blockers for the most part and they can come down decently early and help us deal with the early-game creatures. On the opposite side we also have Heron of Hope
, which can make our life gain go crazy, with so many individual sources of life gain this can trigger an absolute ton, and in testing, I was able to get my life total to over 80 with this card and a few other sources of life gain.
Instants:
We have a lot of strong instants in our deck, Orzhov has access to a lot of awesome removal one of my favorites in the deck is Unmake
I love using this on opponent’s late-game creatures as the exile can really throw off their gameplan, this card is also really strong against graveyard decks that like to recur something like Gray Merchant of Asphodel
. I also really like Union of the Third Path
in this deck card draw in white is pretty uncommon, and card draw stapled onto life gain is just perfect for our deck, it being instant speed has also allowed me to gain some additional life at instant speed and stay alive which can be a great trick to have up your sleeve as needed. We have removal for pretty much any creature type/situation like Cast Down
, Doom Blade
, and my personal favorite Grasp of Darkness
, which is a great way to kill indestructible creatures. Since we have a lot of removals and are pretty much always messing with our opponent’s creatures, a great follow-up is Crypt Incursion
which can be a huge life-gain swing the deck and is an absolute powerhouse against graveyard decks and can absolutely invalidate their whole strategy.
Sorceries:
Our sorcery package is largely uninteresting but does do a lot for the deck; we have an amazing trio of card draw in Night's Whisper
, Sign in Blood
, and Read the Bones
which are all cheap sources of card draw, while they do cause us to lose life that truthfully really doesn’t matter because we gain so much throughout the course of the game. The only interesting card we have is Settle Beyond Reality
which is a strong blink effect for us and an exile effect for our opponents. This feels like a great two-for-one and can trigger our life-gain creatures, and I love using it re-ETB strong cards like Gray Merchant of Asphodel
Artifacts:
The coolest artifact we have is Greatsword of Tyr
, which is a strong card and allows us to have a little bit more control over combat and, more importantly, buffs up one of our creatures, increasing our attacking/blocking power and just allowing us to be more and more of a nuisance to our opponents! I also love Tithing Blade // Consuming Sepulcher
, a sacrifice effect that can flip into drain and gain is exactly what our deck needs, it can be a little tough to craft with Tithing Blade and get it to flip as it does cost a decent amount of mana but on a turn where we aren’t doing much and have a lot of mana it’s a great option to have. I was on the fence with this card but ultimately decided to include Mephitic Draught
which is a decent source of card draw, we don’t really have any ways to sacrifice i,t but there is quite a bit of artifact removal in the format, and in the early game, this can often bet the only target and additional card draw is absolutely worth it to our deck.
Enchantments:
Our enchantment package helps us to continue our overall drain and gain plan with Ill-Gotten Inheritance
, which is a great card that can come down quite early. Beyond that, our enchantment package focuses on disrupting our opponent’s creatures and commanders; we are especially strong against decks that focus on just a couple of creatures because we invalidate them with cards like Petrify
and Reprobation
. These decks can also get out to a pretty fast start, so having these cheap ways to deal with their best creatures puts us in a pretty good position.
Strengths of the Deck:
- We are super strong against creatures with hexproof; while this doesn’t come up super often, being strong against these can help, especially against commanders like Invisible Stalker
. Invisible Stalker is still a tough matchup, but having a way to kill them is pretty strong. - We have a ton of removal, allowing us to be well-positioned against creature decks.
- We have a great matchup against aggressive strategies since we gain so much life.
Weaknesses of the Deck:
- We can have tough matchups against Control decks.
- Decks that arent trying to go to combat and don’t care about our life total can be very tough.
- Our commander is expensive, and if they die even once after casting, it can be tough to get them back on the field.
Deck Stats:
Sample Hands:
Conclusion:
Thanks so much for reading to the end! Kaya is certainly a very interesting choice; if I wasn’t covering all of the legalized Planeswalkers for January 2025, I don’t think I would build this deck. I like a lot of the Orzhov options in the format and think they perform far better, and much quicker than Kaya. I love this deck’s flavor win, and independent of Kaya, it’s a very strong deck. I just don’t like how our commander doesn’t do much for the deck overall. Here’s to a weird one! Stay tuned and Tap IN!