Polukranos, Unchained - I Want to Break Free!
Approximate Total Cost:
Polukranos is back at it again. Eating like there is no tomorrow and this time he has been left off his leash.
Let's fight!
The strategy behind this deck is rather simple actually. He going to be continuously fighting to the death. But he is a Zombie this time round, and he will rise again and again. You know what they say...you can't keep a good Zombie down.
So it's a case of setting up engines to continuously activate his fight ability for , and also resurrect him with the escape ability for . This is quite mana intensive, but ultimately oppressive for your opponents trying to establish a board presence.
Voltron
Being a 12/12 also means that you have one hell of a Voltron commander, and as long as you can give him trample, he is going to put opponents' under a very short clock.
By the very nature of being able to bring him back from the graveyard, it's going to be very difficult for your opponents to keep him off besieging them. There is literally no escape for them.
There are a lot of cards in the deck that grant trample. After all a 0/1 can block Polukranos and avoid the commander damage.
Well the main component for this is dredge. We have Golgari Grave-Troll, Stinkweed Imp, Life from the Loam.
Obviously we need to set this up, and there are plenty of ways to get these into your graveyard.
Entomb, Buried Alive, Jarad's Orders will all do this.
Survival of the Fittest can setup a lot of things for you. You can filter through for Brawn and Filth to put into your graveyard to give your creatures swampwalk and trample, then you can also put a dredge creature like Golgari Grave-Troll so that you can put additional cards into your graveyard.
Buried Alive is similar in that you'll likely put Golgari Grave-Troll, Brawn, Filth into your graveyard to setup.
Hermit Druid is used in a very fair way, in that you actually have 18 basics in the deck, so you will be putting on average 5 cards into the graveyard. This is perfect for having just enough to use Polukranos ability, and not exposing more cards to graveyard hate.
Even though there is a graveyard engine, you are not looking to fill your graveyard up other than when you need to exile 6 cards for Polukranos escape ability. This means that unlike most graveyard strategies, you don't actually care about targeted graveyard removal that much. Often some expose their graveyards to big removal spells like Bojuka Bog. But because you can dredge/mill at the beginning of your turn, and then you will be exiling cards straight away to recast Polukranos, this means that you are not worried about protecting your graveyard.
With Polukranos having 12 power, leveraging off green suite of "draw cards equal to creatures power", means that you can fill both your hand and graveyard due to discarding to hand size. This will mean that you will be able to have access to setup your powerful control engines.
It's also a control deck in that you can remove creatures continuously, but there are also other disruptive cards in the deck for artifacts and enchantments.
There is mass removal in the form of Rampage of the Clans, Bane of Progress, Seeds of Innocence, Oblivion Stone, Pernicious Deed, Ugin, the Spirit Dragon.
Kamahl, Fist of Krosa can make troublesome lands into creatures to then remove them with Polukranos fight ability. Kamahl can also grant trample, which can be important to push damage through.
Because you want to be using Polukranos ability to fight and recasting from graveyard as many times as your mana situation allows you, there is a heavy focus on gaining mana.
Seedborn Muse and Wilderness Reclamation are perfect for freeing up your mana to use the fight ability multiple times each turn round.
Selvala, Heart of the Wilds will be able to give you 11 additional mana with Polukranos and realistically give you a draw each time you escape.
There are a lot of ways to get this, and it's very hard for your opponents to disrupt you on both getting it and removing it.
Hour of Promise, Scapeshift, Nylea's Intervention can all literally get you both the lands. Pir's Whim can get you one of the lands.
Deserted Temple will also double up on your Cabal Coffers activation's, so your land search cards can always be used to search for this as well, if you've already got one of the others.
This is why the Cabal Coffers + Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth combo is so hard to prevent long term in this deck, because you can just get the lands back with Loam if removed. There is also Petrified Field as another way to return one of them.
Volrath's Stronghold can also be used to grind opponents out of threats with Bane of Progress. There are also plenty of other creatures you can put back and Eternal Witness does mean that you can recur other cards from graveyard that might have been drege/mill/remove during the course of the game.
Counters matter
Vigor allows you to use choose the benefits of adding +1/+1 counters over removing them, so he will just keep getting more and more bloated as you fight creatures!
Zacama
