@MagusoftheSalt
Hey planeswalkers, welcome back to the Top Down Commander Blog. I'm your Sensei, the Magus of the Salt.
It's week one of the global Corona-Quarantine. People are out of work. Parents are struggling to figure out what we're going to do with their kids who are now home for the remainder of the school year and the summer. And somewhere out there, a select few hoarders laugh atop their thrones made of toilet paper preparing for the upcoming Ass Paper Apocalypse. So what are we to do during this pandemic paranoia? Why, brew extra-janky EDH decks, that's what! And today, I bring you the spiciest of nuggets with the ultimate self-isolation deck: Karona, Skipping Turns.
Our commander for today's deck tech is none other than the Karona (Virus), False God herself. Unlike most Karona decks, that tend to focus on tribal synergies or Voltron strategies, we're going to be focusing on skipping our own turns for value. We'll be loading the board up with plenty of negative upkeep triggers and then self-isolating ourselves and letting the world outside burn.
Stockpiling Our Resources
We start off our journey of survival like we do with every deck by planning out our ramp and card draw. Of note, we're running Sylvan Scrying, Expedition Map, and Golos, Tireless Pilgrim to fetch out Non-Basic Lands, as we've got a few that are important to the deck.
The important lands we're grabbing are Glacial Chasm, Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, and Magosi, the Waterveil. Glacial Chasm can protect us from dying to creatures while we're skipping all of our turns and, luckily, we don't have to worry about the cumulative upkeep because we won't have an upkeep. Magosi, the Waterveil, is a redundant way to skip our turn stapled to a difficult to remove land. Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth pairs nicely with Karma to ping our opponents for each land they control on their upkeep; that damage is nothing to sneeze at when it's coming every turn.
As far as card draw is concerned, we run a lot of enchantments in this deck and as such are best suited running an enchantress package. The only notable exception is mesa enchantress, which I omitted primarily because I forgot about her while building the deck. My bad! Why don't you come out of quarantine and fight me over it!
Spreading the Plague
Since we're running Karona (Virus), we might as well include some Karona staples. Much like her namesake virus, Karona spreads to our opponents every turn and they can attack with her right away. We want to make sure that we're keeping ourselves as safe as we can so we're going to run the Vow Cycle and Assault Suit to keep the virus from spreading our direction. With all of these cards, Karona (Virus) is safe to swing at our opponents without being able to attack us.
Lock your doors and keep everyone out
Now that we're sure the virus can't come our way, we want to make sure that we're keeping the infected away as much as possible. We're going to do this by using several ghostly prison effects to make it less profitable to swing at us. Meanwhile, crawlspace will keep us from getting swarmed by tokens.
We've also got a few more ways of inspiring our opponents to avoid combat and focus on self-care. Fatespinner will hopefully entice them to skip their combat steps and if they need more gentle nudging we can lock the board down with Pramikon and Mystic Barrier.
No self-isolation deck would be complete without the ultimate "stay away from me!" card: Solitary Confinement. Solitary Confinement does a great job of keeping us safe and once we start skipping a ton of turns, it makes us nearly invincible with no downside (since we don't have an upkeep). This card is crucial to surviving when we've skipped all the turns so be careful not to play it too early and risk it being removed.
The End Times Are Upon Us
Next, let's take a quick look at some of the ways we're going to punish our opponents for playing the game. We're running Primal Order and Ancient Runes to deal damage to our opponents each turn for each nonbasic land or artifact they control (respectively). Sulfuric vortex will also deal damage to our opponents each upkeep without allowing them to gain life. We wouldn't want them recovering after all.
One of the ways we can lose is if our opponents get a board full of creatures before we can assemble our protections. Doom foretold and Mogis, God of Slaughter are both great at keeping the table clear of attackers so that we don't have to worry about that.
Gibbering Descent and Bottomless Pit can help us to deny our opponents of resources. Pandemics are notoriously difficult to combat and its often tough to find the appropriate tools. Dreamborn Muse is another way to ensure our opponents have trouble finding the answers to deal with our board state.
We're also going to punish our opponents for drawing cards. If you want to find answers, good luck. Besides, you always draw at least one card every turn so it's like every upkeep, right? Right. Anyone who's run a Nekusar, the Mindrazer deck will recognize these next cards. Underworld Dreams, Spiteful Visions, and Fate Unraveler are all going to punish our opponents for drawing cards. The more you struggle against the Karona Virus, the more you're going to be punished.
Keep that White Blood Cell Count Up
While our opponents are going to be getting pummeled by the plague each upkeep, we're going to be building up our defenses. Just like a healthy white blood cell count, we'll be amassing a token army to keep us safe from harm (or beat down our opponents should we have to hit the panic button). Dragon Broodmother, Tendershoot Dryad, and Verdant Force are all going to make tokens every upkeep.
No token deck I build with black in it would be complete without including Ophiomancer. This little snake charmer is going to make a 1/1 snake with death touch every upkeep, unless we already control a snake. So it's going to make sure we always have at least one death touch blocker but the real trick comes in when you pair Ophiomancer with Divine Visitation. This is going to turn those snakes into 4/4 angels with flying and vigilance and since we're never making snakes, Ophiomancer will continue to churn out angels every turn. Divine Visitation is also just gravy in this deck turning all of our other token makers into Angel factories as well. And then, just in case you're feeling spiritual, Purphoros, God of the Forge is descending from the heavens to ping our opponents for two every time a creature enters the battlefield under our control. What can I say, I like my gods to be a bit more proactive.
Self-Care is Best Care
So far I've called this deck a skipping turns deck without showing any ways to skip turns. It's time to rectify that. The first essential skipping turns cards are Chronatog and its Totem. These allow us to skip every other turn which can be great in a pinch. Eater of Days lets us skip two turns and Meditate lets us skip a turn with the benefit of drawing us four cards. There aren't a lot of turn skipping cards so we want to get the most out of these cards.
Sensei's Top Pick
And now we've come to Sensei's Top Pick of the deck, my choice for the best card in the 99. For this deck that can be none other than Lethal Vapors. Lethal Vapors may not look like much, but it's ability can be activated any number of times on the stack, allowing us to skip an inordinate amount of turns all at once. When we've assembled a lock piece and a protection effect (let's say Sulfuric Vortex and Solitary Confinement), we can tutor up Lethal Vapors, skip 100,000 turns, and hopefully win the game as our opponents burn alive in the vortex, unable to touch us. As the only way to enable the skipping of an absurd number of turns, Lethal Vapors is Sensei's Top Pick of the Deck.
That's All Folks
That's the deck, folks. Thanks for taking the time to check out this article. I hope you enjoyed it. Check out the links below for a full decklist and more Top Down Commander content. Until next time, Keep Kicking Ass!
For more interaction, follow me on twitter @magusofthesalt
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Find the full decklist for this deck, head over to archidekt.com-- Karona: Skipping Turns.
The video breakdown for this deck is available at youtube-- Top Down Commander on Youtube
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