Early brainstorming for Queen Kalya bin-Kroog

[DirkGently]

As someone saddled with a hyphenated last name and a love for Boros, I can relate to Queen Kayla bin-Kroog.

So she actually looks kinda nuts. You recycle your hand, thus filling your graveyard and ditching a bunch of stuff you didn't feel like casting, and in exchange you get a whole new hand plus you get potentially 6 mana worth of stuff for free. It doesn't even cost you a card, like it would if you cast it. But of course that's best-case scenario. You need hits to make that happen.

So obviously we want a decent spread of 1-3 cmc artifacts and creatures. The other thing that stands out is that we really want a big hand. BEEEEG hand. So we're definitely running handsize delimiters, plus cards like Land Tax to fill our hand with junk to loot away. Stuff like Chromatic Star might fit okay here as a functional pot of greed (since we pay nothing to "cast" it or to activate it). Which then also means we're gonna see most of the cards in the deck pretty quickly. Which means we don't need TOO much redundancy for any important effects, because we'll see them real soon even with just normal on-curve play. T3 Kayla, T4 activate, T5 activate...we've already seen more than a quarter of the deck. And if we can delimit our handsize and get some shenanigans going, we can potentially go through our deck in just a few turns.

So there's two roads I see at this point. One option is to use the graveyard for value and/or avoid going too ham with Kayla. Just have a 40-card graveyard and enjoy it. The other option is to chuck a Kozilek, Butcher of Truth in there and go to town. Just discard your whole deck every turn, let's effin go.

Personally I favor the latter. Kayla's ability already gives some pretty major payoff imo, so trying to also do graveyard value seems a bit overloaded.

The latter option also gives us some pretty disgusting value off the following:

Glint-Horn Buccaneer
Surly Badgersaur
Bag of Holding
Brallin, Skyshark Rider
Flameblade Adept I guess
Psychosis Crawler
Change of Fortune

I feel like I'm probably missing a bunch, so feel free to enlighten me.

So we've got some payoffs that enable a pretty quick game win. That's probably a small percentage of the deck, less than 10 cards, maybe less than 5.

We've got a bunch of random draw value that will help us get our hand massive as quickly as possible. Pin in that one, since we should go into the details. Mostly I want either really cheap stuff like Arcum's Astrolabe that will just give us free draw, or Change of Fortune that will suddenly double our handsize in the mid/late game. I'm hoping there are more of those that I'm not aware of, but we probably don't need that many.

We've got Kozilek, Butcher of Truth obviously.

Beyond that, I think we want some good 1-3 mana artifact ramp. I'm not sure if stuff like Mox Diamond is worth it since we're putting ourselves down in cards. Lotus Petal etc despite usually being nice for a 3mv commander are also kinda meh since we need 4 to activate on the following turn. I think we want some untappers so we can activate multiple times in a turn, luckily there are some good artifacts that will do exactly that.

Hmm, it probably ends up being pretty linear if I'm being honest, but it still seems fun to try just for the gimmick of looting away your entire deck in a turn, even if only for a limited time.

[Hawk]

I adore Bag of Holding but it seems weaker with Kayla - she can only reanimate stuff you "discarded this way", and Bag of Holding will exile everything you discard. I'd actually avoid running Bag and Containment Construct both, even though they're normally good in "Boros Rummage" decks. For this reason I also think artifacts and creatures with EtB triggers (Arcum's Astrolabe, Ichor Wellspring, Spirited Companion, Inspiring Overseer) are much better than ones with sacrifice or death triggers.

On the other hand, "scooping up" cards, especially ones with EtB triggers, seems interesting for this Queen. Among the options are one-shot EtB dudes like Kor Skyfisher, Glint Hawk, Whitemane Lion, Rescuer Chwinga, and Stonecloaker; reusable effects like Erratic Portal, Cloudstone Curio, Umbilicus, and Eiganjo Free-Riders, and one-shot effects like Scapegoat and Leave // Chance.

EDIT: This might just be a deck that wants to run Quintorius, Field Historian and Desecrated Tomb to make tokens while you loot your whole library and then win with Charge Across the Araba? Probably a bit too cheeky.

[Feyd_Ruin]

Containment Construct

This guy actually works pretty well. The discard happens, the exile is optional, and it's a triggered ability so you see what you draw first. So, you only exile what you want to cast — like the Change of Fortune that was in your hand pre-loot.

[Hawk]

Containment Construct

This guy actually works pretty well. The discard happens, the exile is optional, and it's a triggered ability so you see what you draw first. So, you only exile what you want to cast — like the Change of Fortune that was in your hand pre-loot.

Ooh, good catch. In that vein then, Currency Converter is also a "may".

[DirkGently]

@Hawk Bag of Holding is a triggered ability, so Kayla will return the permanents to the battlefield before it resolves. Pretty sure it's going to be one of our strongest cards since we can load it up with cards and then pop it to get a 30 card hand and win with one or two triggers from Glint-Horn Buccaneer or whatever.

It's possible she even works through replacement effects like Rest in Peace, since she doesn't ask for cards in your graveyard (similar to how you used to be able to put your commander into the command zone when it got Citizen's Arrested, but still get it back to play by blowing up the enchantment if you happened to find a way to do that - back when command zoning was a replacement effect), but I'm not positive about that.

Not sure I follow about etb vs sacrificing. Death triggers ofc may be difficult to activate without a built-in sac, but so long as it's easy to do, what's the problem with sacrifice? I'll grant they don't work as well with returning-to-hand stuff, which is a nice way to increase our card count incrementally, but I doubt that'll be our primary means of boosting hand size.

Probably none of the 4+mv stuff that returns things is worth it since we'd need to actually cast it. 3 or less is fair game though.

Currency converter etc is interesting also as a way to intentionally exile low-value cards like lands. That way if we make it all the way through our deck, it'll be much denser with hits. And a 1-drop that makes a treasure every turn once we get going isn't bad. Although with stuff like glint horn buc, we might not need to loop the deck to kill people, that might happen pretty quickly tbh. I'll probably just go full-cEDH for my first build to see how strong she is, and if that ends up being degenerate I'll maybe try a more conservative strat.

[darrenhabib]

I've done some early brainstorming for Queen Kayla bin-Kroog, making good Boros decks is kind of like a passion of mine and she does represent a lot of good value.
One of the most important elements is making sure you hit all converted mana costs so having the ratio of your one, twos and threes pretty similar. Obviously you get more value out of your threes, so I'd go slightly heaver on these, with slightly less twos and then slightly less ones to that.

One thing that Queen Kayla bin-Kroog can get you around is cards that limit how many spells are played in a turn. Deafening Silence, Ethersworn Canonist, Archon of Emeria, Eidolon of Rhetoric, Rule of Law. Even Planar Chaos you can navigate while opponents arse cheeks are clenched if they do/or don't cast their spells. Possibility Storm as well.

Squee, Goblin Nabob for an additional draw each turn.

Illusionist's Bracers, Battlemage's Bracers and Rings of Brighthearth for the double value.

I was trying to see if I could make Zirda, the Dawnwaker as a companion but with Land Tax being so good in the deck I abandoned this idea but certainly worth in the 99.

Library of Leng allows you to keep any key cards.

I'm personally looking at graveyard as a resource and Idol of Endurance and Planar Birth are cards that caught my eye.

[Mookie]

Alhammarret's Archive seems relevant here. Beyond that, I like the idea of a hatebear / disruption / value creature package. Recruiter of the Guard and Imperial Recruiter to fetch up Charming Prince / Duergar Hedge-Mage / Dualcaster Mage / Archivist of Oghma / Deep Gnome Terramancer seems relevant.

...I've brainstormed a 'MV2 matters' package before, and Queen Kayla looks like a good spot for it. Sigardian Savior, Imperial Recovery Unit, The Restoration of Eiganjo // Architect of Restoration, and Extraction Specialist are all worth consideration if you have enough creatures to recur.

[DirkGently]

Okay I've got the beginnings of a list. Need to make a lot of cuts, though.

Kroog

DecklistCMCManaPricesChartsDraw 7

Kayla Synergy

1 Zirda, the Dawnwaker

1 Magewright's Stone

1 Rings of Brighthearth

1 Thousand-Year Elixir

1 Battlemage's Bracers

1 Illusionist's Bracers

Kayla Protection

1 Giver of Runes

1 Mother of Runes

1 Benevolent Bodyguard

1 Selfless Savior

1 Anger

1 Selfless Spirit

1 Lightning Greaves

Removal

1 Fairgrounds Warden

1 Banisher Priest

1 Fiend Hunter

1 Cathar Commando

1 Transmogrifying Wand

1 Skyclave Apparition

1 Dusk // Dawn

1 Bounty Agent

1 Mangara of Corondor

Stax

1 Drannith Magistrate

1 Ethersword Cannonist

1 Eidolon of Rhetoric

1 Archon of Emeria

1 Deafening Silence

Wincons

1 Brallin, Skyshark Rider

1 Desecrated Tomb

1 Glint-Horn Buccaneer

1 Surly Badgersaur

1 Psychosis Crawler

Ramp

1 Thought Vessel

1 Dockside Extortionist

1 Mind Stone

1 Decanter of Endless Water

1 Worn Powerstone

1 Metalworker

1 Grinning Ignus

1 Currency Converter

1 Mana Vault

1 Sol Ring

1 Mana Crypt

1 Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer

1 Chrome Mox

1 Mox Diamond

Other

1 Library of Leng

1 Kozilek, Butcher of Truth

One-drop Value

1 Arcum's Astrolabe

1 Soul-Guide Lantern

1 Sensei's Divining Top

1 Terrarion

1 Esper Sentinel

1 Barbed Sextant

1 Chromatic Sphere

1 Conjurer's Bauble

1 Scrabbling Claws

1 Phyrexian Furnace

1 Chromatic Star

1 Goblin Welder

1 Bag of Holding

Two-drop Value

1 Oswald Fiddlebender

1 Goblin Engineer

1 Containment Construct

1 Conspiracy Theorist

1 Tsabo's Web

1 Wall of Mourning

1 Stoneforge Mystic

1 Ingenious Smith

1 Loyal Warhound

1 Spirited Companion

1 Jeskai Barricade

1 Kor Skyfisher

1 Restoration Specialist

1 Knight of the White Orchid

1 Whitemane Lion

1 Wall of Omens

1 Oreskos Explorer

1 Ichor Wellspring

1 Mycosynth Wellspring

1 Elsewhere Flask

1 Armillary Sphere

1 Prophetic Prism

1 Golden Egg

1 Guild Globe

Three-drop Value

1 Scrap Welder

1 Audacious Reshapers

1 Inspiring Overseer

1 Extraction Specialist

1 Rumor Gatherer

1 Emancipation Angel

1 Pilgrim's Eye

1 Skyscanner

1 Dungeoneer's Pack

1 Trusty Packbeast

1 Priest of Ancient Lore

1 Ranger-Captain of Eos

1 Pilgrim of Ages

1 Archaeomancer's Map

1 White Plume Adventurer

1 Roving Harper

1 Recruiter of the Guard

1 Welcoming Vampire

1 Imperial Recruiter

1 Scrap Trawler

Other value

1 Land Tax

1 Squee, Goblin Nabob

1 Panharmonicon

1 Alhammarret's Archive

1 Change of Fortune

Approximate Total Cost:

[darrenhabib]

I was thinking with Sensei's Divining Top you will always have a one mana card to put into play if you keep on tapping to draw. With that in mind cutting down on the one mana cards and having a few more ways to tutor for it will save slots.
Urza's Saga, Goblin Engineer, Enlightened Tutor, Oswald Fiddlebender can all get it.

[DirkGently]

I was thinking with Sensei's Divining Top you will always have a one mana card to put into play if you keep on tapping to draw. With that in mind cutting down on the one mana cards and having a few more ways to tutor for it will save slots.
Urza's Saga, Goblin Engineer, Enlightened Tutor, Oswald Fiddlebender can all get it.

Yeah SDT is pretty gnarly in this build. The nice thing about 1-mana cards is that they're easier to cast on the side if you have multiples you want in play, though ofc that will cut down on your cards in hand. I probably wouldn't cut down on 1-drops that do other things (like protect Kayla) but SDT definitely overshadows the value 1-drops.

Hard to get with Oswald. I guess you could run some artifact lands to enable it. He seems like he'll always have good targets anyway though.

I'm almost wondering if archive might end up becoming problematic. Within a few activations you're going to lock yourself out from activating Kayla's ability. I guess if you intentionally avoid anything that delimits handsize you could keep yourself to 14 cards per draw, which is fairly manageable and gives you good odds to draw kozilek before you paint yourself into a corner.

[Dunadain]

I was thinking with Sensei's Divining Top you will always have a one mana card to put into play if you keep on tapping to draw. With that in mind cutting down on the one mana cards and having a few more ways to tutor for it will save slots.
Urza's Saga, Goblin Engineer, Enlightened Tutor, Oswald Fiddlebender can all get it.

Yeah SDT is pretty gnarly in this build. The nice thing about 1-mana cards is that they're easier to cast on the side if you have multiples you want in play, though ofc that will cut down on your cards in hand. I probably wouldn't cut down on 1-drops that do other things (like protect Kayla) but SDT definitely overshadows the value 1-drops.

Hard to get with Oswald. I guess you could run some artifact lands to enable it. He seems like he'll always have good targets anyway though.

I'm almost wondering if archive might end up becoming problematic. Within a few activations you're going to lock yourself out from activating Kayla's ability. I guess if you intentionally avoid anything that delimits handsize you could keep yourself to 14 cards per draw, which is fairly manageable and gives you good odds to draw kozilek before you paint yourself into a corner.

You could also just run two shufflers.

[DirkGently]

You could also just run two shufflers.

Library of Leng is already kind of a bonus kozilek. It does lock you into drawing out of control with archive, although you get a lot of control about where cards go any thus how many cards are left in your library.

[Dunadain]

You could also just run two shufflers.

Library of Leng is already kind of a bonus kozilek. It does lock you into drawing out of control with archive, although you get a lot of control about where cards go any thus how many cards are left in your library.

In a sense.

On that note, I don't really like Library of Leng I want to dig as deep and as fast as possible, if there is a card in my hand that I want but can't cast I'll find it again sooner or later.

[Mookie]

I'm almost wondering if archive might end up becoming problematic. Within a few activations you're going to lock yourself out from activating Kayla's ability. I guess if you intentionally avoid anything that delimits handsize you could keep yourself to 14 cards per draw, which is fairly manageable and gives you good odds to draw kozilek before you paint yourself into a corner.

"Oh no I have 60 cards in hand, how can I possibly win now that I don't have any cards left to draw?"

Yeah, I'm somewhat dubious of the value of having no maximum hand size in the first place, given that this deck will probably end up at least somewhat graveyard-focused due to all the looting. Having a bunch of cards in hand does increase the chance of you hitting full value (1+2+3) off Kayla, but if the primary payoff for using Kayla in the first place is digging deeper into the deck, then doubling your draw with Archive does so much more efficiently.

...I guess Obstinate Familiar is technically another option if you're concerned about milling out, as are Words of War and Words of Worship. Or just run Peace of Mind or another discard outlet. Still, I think limiting yourself to 7-14 cards max is probably the simplest solution to not accidentally decking.

...now I'm curious if it's worth looking into Four Horsemen nonsense with Desecrated Tomb and Mesmeric Orb + Basalt Monolith (all of which can be Kayla'd onto the battlefield).

[DirkGently]

@Dunadain as I envision the deck, you need hand delimiters asap because the whole plan is to Kayla for lethal numbers off bucc and co. Without hand delimiters all the draw stuff is basically pointless. So I'd probably run library without the discard clause at all, it's just a nice bonus. Though I do think keeping combo pieces on top is pretty valuable, as is controlling your deck size etc. I don't think you'll dig through your whole deck so quickly that there's no value to keeping relevant cards available.

@Mookie 60 cards isn't that useful if the vast majority only exist to draw you more cards. Sure you can put in some combo, but then if you don't happen to hit those pieces you're still bricked. It's not even 60 cards, with archive you could be locked in with just 30 cards, so your odds of having a multi-piece combo in hand is fairly low.

I did consider obstinate familiar lol. Not in my collection but it merits consideration. Words are probably pointless, you'd need to pay way more mana than is practical. Same for peace of mind, but ofc there are plenty of free sac outlets. Maybe those are worth it? But it only seems necessary specifically with archive, so it goes back to whether archive is really worth all the hassle.

No max hand size is crucial to the plan. 7 point hits with bucc is small change, I want 20+ Damage hits before I even bother.

[Dunadain]

I don't understand, Glint-Horn Buccaneer is not a one time effect. You can also just kill the table seven points at a time. I suppose that bursty wincons means your opponents will have a smaller window to interact, but the deck sells gimmicky enough already.

[DirkGently]

I don't understand, Glint-Horn Buccaneer is not a one time effect. You can also just kill the table seven points at a time. I suppose that bursty wincons means your opponents will have a smaller window to interact, but the deck sells gimmicky enough already.

You nailed it.

6 turns of uninterrupted Kayla activations is not a realistic wincon. And it takes even longer if they gain life. The goal is to ramp up hand size ASAP, then kill the table in 1-2 turns. If I draw bucc early I guess I may as well put it into play, but then my goal is still to ramp up hand size ASAP so I'm not durdling around with a big "kill me" sign for any longer than I need to.

Of course I could see making a more conservative deck that just runs a bunch of good 1-3 drops - Serra Ascendant, Umezawa's Jitte, Brimaz, King of Oreskos, that sort of thing - and just uses Kayla as [t]: add [2] draw 3. But I think this explosive version is going to be more powerful, so I'm going to try it first and see how it goes.

Idk what you mean by "gimmicky enough". What makes it a gimmick?

[Dunadain]

I don't understand, Glint-Horn Buccaneer is not a one time effect. You can also just kill the table seven points at a time. I suppose that bursty wincons means your opponents will have a smaller window to interact, but the deck sells gimmicky enough already.

You nailed it.

6 turns of uninterrupted Kayla activations is not a realistic wincon. And it takes even longer if they gain life. The goal is to ramp up hand size ASAP, then kill the table in 1-2 turns. If I draw bucc early I guess I may as well put it into play, but then my goal is still to ramp up hand size ASAP so I'm not durdling around with a big "kill me" sign for any longer than I need to.

Of course I could see making a more conservative deck that just runs a bunch of good 1-3 drops - Serra Ascendant, Umezawa's Jitte, Brimaz, King of Oreskos, that sort of thing - and just uses Kayla as [t]: add [2] draw 3. But I think this explosive version is going to be more powerful, so I'm going to try it first and see how it goes.

Idk what you mean by "gimmicky enough". What makes it a gimmick?

I mean the deck is very linear, easily disrupted, and runs no disruption itself.

Not that that's a bad thing, but I don't particularly enjoy decks where I play a game of solitaire and then just slam a giant win-the-game card out of nowhere, I would prefer, if I am playing a very linear deck, to give my opponents at least a little bit of time to interact with me.

Spelling that out now, however, I remember you already said you wanted to go as cEDH as possible for your first draft so disregard what I said.

I am curious though, I thought you were struggling to find a low enough power deck for your playgroup, where are you going to be able to play this one?

[DirkGently]

@Dunadain I don't generally make decks with a very linear and consistent plan into perm decks, but for a temp deck I find it satisfying to build around a really focused plan and see it pay off.

Hopefully I'll be able to find room for more disruption (though I do have some here already - mostly sorcery-speed and creature/artifact based, but still) but initially I want to just try going all-in on big wheels and see how it works. I'd be curious just to goldfish this deck to get an idea of how long it takes to build up to a game-winningly large hand.

I guess I haven't mentioned anywhere, but when I moved here I went to the LGS's commander/draft night and we had a grand total of 4 people including the TO and myself. Since then they cancelled their events for a while, and I'd pretty much written them off. But at some point they started running events again, and I went to the DMU prerelease, and hot damn if they didn't have ~15 people there. Went back the next week for the draft/commander night and it was doing pretty well too, especially the draft (had 8 people this past week, plus the TO lets you cash in prize packs to pay for the next draft so I'm only paying $5 per week as long as I keep winning).

As far as commander, we usually get in a 4p game, with power levels fairly all over the place, although at least one guy has pretty strong decks, including a combo-focused Sisay, Weatherlight Captain that I definitely don't have any qualms about bringing a high power level against. I also think it's at least okay-ish to try a very experimental deck against a lower-powered meta once - there's a decent chance this deck will fall on its face, and if it does end up being OP I can apologize and switch to something else.

[DirkGently]

I did a quick cut down and threw some lands in for an initial test. Overall it went okay but not amazing. The deck does get out of control relatively quickly, but it can be pretty easily disturbed. Granted, I was playing against some fairly powerful decks (urza stax, combo Sisay, bw aristocrats). A lot of times I was fairly shut down or overwhelmed by a single card that could have been overcome pretty easily with spot removal that I didn't have. I was one turn away from winning one game, thanks to archive, although I cheated it into play with Goblin Welder, who was definitely among the strongest cards in the deck.

Based on that, I wonder if it would have more success in the more conservative mold running Kayla as a value engine rather than primary wincon. I think that probably pans out better in a couple of ways - both in terms of being more flexible and not relying quite as heavily on multiple uninterrupted Kayla activations, but also being more politically expedient since I'm not threatening to explode out of control, plus with more room to run non-123-perms since I'm not as focused on achieving critical mass ASAP (which means more strong interaction).

I'll probably try this one at least a couple more times, though.

[DirkGently]

Okay, I finally managed to win with this deck. Ultimately ended up needing to blow up my own Alhammarret's Archive to stop from decking myself (though it did help a lot before it became life-threatening), and exiling my own Reliquary Tower with Mangara of Corondor so I could discard my massive hand with Glint-Horn Buccaneer.

Yeah, I feel fairly confident that the "build a massive hand and kill everyone" plan is probably not optimal, though it is pretty fun and a unique combo build. I may try the conservative approach, though I'll probably try some of the unfinity commanders first.