So, story time. When I was first getting back into MTG, my son was around 10 years old. He wanted to play commander with me and that sounded like fun. Just something for us to enjoy together. So I asked him what I asked him what type of deck he would like. His answer was… well, I really like dragons, and demons, and some angels are cool too. For obvious reasons, I already knew I wanted to make his deck more powerful than my normal decks. So there was only one option for me. So I built him Kaalia of the Vast, of course.
This deck, like most of the decks you will see on our site, is very casual. We don’t love playing high power decks and also don’t want to dump that amount of money into decks. So, before you put it in the comments, I know the land base isn’t optimal, I know there are better options for the dragons, angels, and demons, but this deck lets him have fun, is very powerful, and isn’t so strong that he is instantly the arch enemy.
Like most Kaalia decks, our first order of business is to get Kaalia out and protect her. Using the swift foot boots or lightning greaves is the preferred way, but we also have a few instants or sorceries that will allow us to protect her or bring her back from the graveyard if she dies. For this to work the way we want, we need Kaalia to attack and bring her friends into play. We DO NOT want to hard cast most of the options in this deck because they have a very high mana cost and the payoff isn’t as worth it if we aren’t getting the creature in for free.
If flying massive battle cruisers in for the win isn’t working for you, we also have Liliana’s contract that will give us the win as long as we can get four of our demons out at the same time.
The Master of Cruelties is also in the deck for obvious reasons. Getting an opponent down to 1 life comes in handy with certain decks obstructing life gain or plenty of other times. Sneaking him in with Kaalia can turn the tides of a game in an instant. And for those wondering, yes, you can put Master of Cruelties down, tapped and attacking, even though his conditions for attacking are not met. Kaalia’s trigger gets around this restriction. It’s a beautiful thing.
But the question I have for all of you is: Can Kaalia be a casual deck? to many people see the card and will target you to make sure and limit what she can do at all. Is that worth it? When you’re trying to build just a casual fun deck, does it get tiring trying to explain that this isn’t “that kind of Kaalia deck?”. At the end of the day, is it only worth playing the more powerful commanders at a casual/janky level if everyone is just going to not believe you?
This deck is built to be fun and powerful without outclassing everyone at lower level table. This deck could easily be upgraded into a monstrosity and a true power level 9 deck quite easily. If that is what you are into, Just optimize the mana base and add the staple angels, demons, and dragons missing from the list. Otherwise, enjoy! Have some fun and swing those big stompy creatures at your friends!
AoE Table Top 