Kess, Twin Combo - Help

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vandertroll
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Post by vandertroll » 4 years ago

I have this Kess Twin Combo list. It is not 100% due to budget / meta reasons. What I would like to know is what cards would you cut if you were to add a Demonic Consultation , Laboratory Maniac backup wincon in case the reanimator plan gets hosed. Is it even possible without diluting the primary wincon? Can I just cut some lands and be done with it?



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benjameenbear
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Post by benjameenbear » 4 years ago

I think the cuts I would make for your list is Anticipate and a land. You could easily run your list with 33 lands due to the super low curve of your deck and the density of can-trips you have. Did you want to add the full package with Tainted Pact and nu-Jace?

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vandertroll
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Post by vandertroll » 4 years ago

benjameenbear wrote:
4 years ago
I think the cuts I would make for your list is Anticipate and a land. You could easily run your list with 33 lands due to the super low curve of your deck and the density of can-trips you have. Did you want to add the full package with Tainted Pact and nu-Jace?
Thanks for the reply! I don't know if Tainted Pact would be optimal because I run too many basic lands. Nu-Jace could be added along with labman. Do you suggest any other changes apart from the high end staples?
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darrenhabib
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Post by darrenhabib » 4 years ago

Definitely do not just jam Demonic Consultation and Laboratory Maniac into the deck. You'll learn to hate them as they'll be dead draws a lot of games and super risky compared to your other combos. If your other combos are disrupted then you can still carry on, where if Lab Man in answered, insta loss.
Other decks that run this combo have a shell that leads into it more.

You have a matrix of win conditions so don't worry about that:
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror BreakerSplinter Twin
Zealous ConscriptsWinWin
Deceiver ExarchWinWin
PestermiteWinWin

You also have Notion Thief with refill hand spells in cEDH, so that can always snag you a game.

My gut feeling is that you have too many return to hand spells with Kederekt Leviathan, Devastation Tide, Evacuation. The problem being that your mana accelerants are not all that great, and in a true cEDH setting your probably going to get outclassed on the following turns with being able to bounce back with explosive turns. You do have reanimator so it's possible to discard and reanimate after one of these spells, but they are not always going to be the best in my opinion until you spend more $$$ on mana sources.
But you know your meta better than I do, so perhaps you are all more on equal footing with artifact mana, etc?

Counterflux seems too expensive. Try and keep it to 1 or 2 mana counterspells. Arcane Denial and Mental Misstep, Pact of Negation are all better.

I think Baral, Chief of Compliance would be a nice addition to your deck.

Gitaxian Probe is a surprisingly powerful card with Kess as you can cast it for free (twice), and information can win you a game if your going for a combo win turn.

I'm not a fan of Dreadbore at sorcery speed. Try and keep one-for-one removal at instant speed as this is key to thwarting wins.

Small gains with Talisman of Creativity over Mind Stone for color fixing, which is more important than cashing in your precious mana for draw (you are losing the game 97% of the time when you have to do that).

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vandertroll
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Post by vandertroll » 4 years ago

darrenhabib wrote:
4 years ago
Definitely do not just jam Demonic Consultation and Laboratory Maniac into the deck. You'll learn to hate them as they'll be dead draws a lot of games and super risky compared to your other combos. If your other combos are disrupted then you can still carry on, where if Lab Man in answered, insta loss.
Other decks that run this combo have a shell that leads into it more.

You have a matrix of win conditions so don't worry about that:
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror BreakerSplinter Twin
Zealous ConscriptsWinWin
Deceiver ExarchWinWin
PestermiteWinWin

You also have Notion Thief with refill hand spells in cEDH, so that can always snag you a game.

My gut feeling is that you have too many return to hand spells with Kederekt Leviathan, Devastation Tide, Evacuation. The problem being that your mana accelerants are not all that great, and in a true cEDH setting your probably going to get outclassed on the following turns with being able to bounce back with explosive turns. You do have reanimator so it's possible to discard and reanimate after one of these spells, but they are not always going to be the best in my opinion until you spend more $$$ on mana sources.
But you know your meta better than I do, so perhaps you are all more on equal footing with artifact mana, etc?

Counterflux seems too expensive. Try and keep it to 1 or 2 mana counterspells. Arcane Denial and Mental Misstep, Pact of Negation are all better.

I think Baral, Chief of Compliance would be a nice addition to your deck.

Gitaxian Probe is a surprisingly powerful card with Kess as you can cast it for free (twice), and information can win you a game if your going for a combo win turn.

I'm not a fan of Dreadbore at sorcery speed. Try and keep one-for-one removal at instant speed as this is key to thwarting wins.

Small gains with Talisman of Creativity over Mind Stone for color fixing, which is more important than cashing in your precious mana for draw (you are losing the game 97% of the time when you have to do that).
My meta is not true cEDH. It's more like optimized decks without the most expensive mana bases and rocks. I know that the deck is slower than it is supposed to be and my meta has many creature based or creature combo based decks, hence the return to hand spells. Unfortunately i don't plan on getting ABUR duals or super expensive rocks on the near future, so I will try to play around this limitation :)
I don't like Dreadbore all that much, but there are a couple Atraxa superfriends decks that can really slow me down. There is Hero's Downfall on instant speed but i think it's too expensive.
Thanks for the Baral suggestion, I really hadn't thought of him!
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benjameenbear
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Post by benjameenbear » 4 years ago

Reality Shift is a good card that you replace Dreadbore with if it especially matters to you. Maybe the newly printed Angrath's Rampage could be another way to kill PW's for you? The manifest can sometimes trap a combo pieces of an opponent's from time to time as well, which is really cool

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