Try dropping Sunblast Angel with her.
Go on, try it. It'll be fun!
Posted By:
LordRandomness
(4/20/2013 3:56:15 AM)
@Irandura: Choosing just one tribe rather than your favorites of all three, especially if that tribe is demons, would be a lesser-done route and differentiate such a build from the usual Kaalia decks. Angels are an extremely popular tribe, so most Kaalia decks have a ton of those, so choosing not to run any angels would be much more unique.
I love Kaalia. As with many players, I love angels. While I already had a casual 60/4 angel deck, there was a push to run more copies of important cards to have a decent and more consistent deck. Building a second angel deck, this time a Commander one, gave me a ton more access to angel cards that I couldn't otherwise use. Yes, "run angels, demons, and dragons" is a pretty obvious statement from WotC R&D as to how to build a deck with her, but not every legendary creature must be open-ended in building, and even then Kaalia is more open-ended than people give her credit.
Posted By:
sarroth
(1/14/2013 3:53:48 PM)
Gentlemen, please...
Kaalia was reprinted because she is a popular and beloved card. The measure of a deck's worth is not its uniqueness. The measure of a deck's worth is how much fun it brings to everyone in the game. This does mean that a deck's value is highly context-dependent: EDH decks, Standard decks, casual decks, etc., are all very different, and all casual groups are different.
Kaalia helps to make decks that many people find fun, both to play with and against. She helps accelerate into giant angels, demons, and dragons. That is, for lack of a better word, fun: it is viscerally entertaining for many players. I don't see how you could do something off-beat with her, short of a weird changeling deck, but more important I don't see why you would want to. She is not designed to be a weird Johnny combo card. Generals like Riku, Ghave, and Zedruu easily fill that need. Kaalia is for people who want to play big, exciting creatures and smash face, and she does an admirable job help... (see all)
Posted By:
Irandrura
(12/4/2012 9:00:26 PM)
Fun with Warstorm Surge for mad damage, Aggravated Assault for bazonkers.
The deck also has great synergy with Deathrender, especially equipped to Kaalia for a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't setup.
If you want to throw the above all in, toss in an Academy Rector and a couple of sac outlets (Phyrexian Altar works best to provide you with that elusive third color to recast her) - get those Enchantments out on the board earlier and enjoy!
Anyone who says she is too powerful is not playing in a competitive playgroup. She loses way more than she wins as she is always viewed as the aggressor in the early-game, and ends up playing Archenemy without the Archenemy cards. By mid-game, unless you work hard to get her protected and set up, she will usually cost too much to make it worth your while.
Posted By:
morningstar1978
(1/7/2013 8:39:47 AM)
This card is cool to look at, fun to play with, but impossible to ignore. Because of that last bit I will never consider her as a general. Things can definitely turn out well for you if you draw your demonic or vampiric tutor and put all your marbles into that attack trigger, but it draws too much attention in a format where responses come in the form of everything from stifle to final judgment.
Look at her flavor text, when I read it I picture her in a starbucks texting up a storm on her iphone.The Mimeoplasm is a putty with a T-rex for an arm. I'll stick with chompy.
Posted By:
heavyterror
(3/17/2013 4:31:49 PM)
Ok, ok, I'm ready to get flamed, but seriously. If anyone has seen the gatecrash spoilers... Oh. My. God. The Boros leader will make this 100x worse.
"So... You wanted to drop two abhorrent blasphemies per turn? Yea, I can do that."
- Aurelia, The Warleader
Posted By:
NoIHavent
(11/21/2012 6:25:34 AM)
Master of Cruelties + anything that guarantees he gets through & then any uncounterable damage spell / ability = Win....
Even though MoC's ability normally requires he attacks alone, Kaalia's proc gets around it.... due to the time old rule of Magic being card rule always superceding game rules & players retaining priority over how their own effects stack....
End result, attack with Kaalia & throw down this guy, this guy gets through opponent is at 1 life, hit them with anything to deal the final point & you win. In any decent Kaalia deck you should be able to pull a combo like that off T1 / T2 pretty regularly if you build your deck right.
Posted By:
Kyrinoz
(10/30/2013 4:13:58 AM)
This and all the other "commanders" from those boxes should've been foil from the get-go.
Posted By:
MANABURNWASGOOD
(11/15/2012 8:04:55 AM)
"So there's this commander deck that you can destrollish with just an Icy Manipulator!"
"No way, man, how is that possible?"
Posted By:
Kryptnyt
(11/5/2012 9:55:53 PM)
I was really hoping the Commander's Arsenal would bring back interesting and unique legendaries that would provide entirely new strategies for budding EDH players.
Yeah. Well, I suppose boring competitive folk need their fix too.
@DarthParallax: Wow, you're right about one thing. That comment was so hardcore-fanboyish I practically had to scrub the love juices off my screen. No, the point is is that everyone and their mother uses Kaalia because she's so painfully obvious. There's no real cleverness or strategy a lot of the time, it's just 'oh look I threw down Rakdos, the Defiler or Baneslayer Angel aren't I amazing.'
I would really love to see a deck that uses her in an interesting and unique fashion, so if you want to do that go right ahead. But I'm just fed up of the fact that they could've encouraged players to try something really outrageous with a little known legendary, and instead they just throw in the most over-used commander there... (see all)
Posted By:
psychichobo
(11/4/2012 2:24:04 PM)