EDH - Karador, Ghost Chieftan/Shadowborn Apostles (EDH / Commander)

from deadguydrew's Decks

This is an Abzan colored Shadowborn Apostle deck. While moving from the more traditional Orzhov colors for this type of deck by adding green does lose some consistency it is many respects more resilient to opponent interaction and more explosive.

The deck has both a combo and combat damage game plan to win matches. The combo win focuses on using Blood Artist or Zulaport Cutthroat to burn out our opponents by repeatedly sacrificing creatures and bringing them back using Skullwinder/Eternal Witness to recur Rally or Immortal Servitude. The damage based wincon is about generating a massive board state using a large number of Apostles and tokens and then sticking Mirror Entity, Coat of Arms, or Beastmaster Ascension.

The deck features three ways to effectively cheat Apostles into play directly from your hand without paying their mana cost. These are Edgewalker, Alluren, and Earthcraft as long as you have a Swamp in play. Earthcraft, while technically not reducing their cost, allows you to play an Apostle and immediately tap it to untap a Swamp to play another Apostle and so on.

Despite running three colors, the deck primarily uses black mana meaning that non-black producing lands are very painful to hit. Only four lands in the deck do not produce black mana (outside of getting an Urborg into play) though this may increase to five lands when Westvale Abbey becomes legal.

Why Karador?
Karador was the only Abzan general that interacted with my deck in a meaningful way. While Ghave could get some value, I'm not running the support pieces to make him viable. Additionally unlike Karador, I will likely never have enough mana to cast Ghave more than once while Karador is easier to cast late game because of a large number of creatures likely to be in the graveyard. Anafenza the Foremost could also work as just a goodstuff pick and it is human which can be relevant for Coat of Arms but not much else except to shit on everyone else's graveyard parade.

A couple cards that float in and out of the decklist based on my mood:
Mortal Combat - Alt. wincon.

Tendrils of Agony - Kills one player if you are able to start cycling all of your Apostles with Thrumming Stone since they are cast with Ripple. You can also get this with a cycle using Skullwinder or Eternal Witness along with Earthcraft or Phyrexian Altar to get effectively infinite mana and triggers but I found the majority of the time that in such a situation I was going to win anyway.

Dark Supplicant/Scion of Darkness - Great synergy with the deck since the Apostles are also clerics. Only downside is that Scion is an Avatar not a demon.

Dark Tutelage - I rotate this in and out for Phyrexian Arena. The majority of the time it is a less damaging Arena but when you flip one of your big demons it can hurt at the worst time. Also unlike Dark Confidant (which we do not own) it is impossible for this deck to get rid of Tutelage when needed.