Kels, Zombie Cult: Feasible?

[Vessiliana]

When I saw Kels, Fight Fixer, I knew I wanted to build a deck for her. I have a really bad habit of wanting to build decks simply because of the art, and this is no exception. Sometimes, it has turned out well. My Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis deck is one of my absolute favorites, gets all the shinies and everything. But Kels is coming in oddly for me. I already have a mono-B tokens/bleeding deck with Ayara, First of Locthwain at the helm, and I love it. (So I'm not taking it apart.) I have a sort of aristocrats build with Trynn, Champion of Freedom and Silvar, Devourer of the Free, too. I have draw-'til-I-win decks, too, with Niv-Mizzet, and some others in our meta.

I generally hate the Dimir pairing, but Kels makes me not mind. I would be willing to do mono-B as well. So I am wondering if she would work as a Zombie tribal general? I know that Dimir zombies are fine, but would she just be purposeless? I mean, draw and a sac outlet in the CZ seem good, and zombies are good at coming back to be killed again, but...

I'm just sort of stumped here, and I don't want Kels to go the way of Sevinne, the Chronoclasm or flip Avacyn and just live in the binder.

[toctheyounger]

Personally, I think it's fairly feasible. There's a reasonable amount of brewing scope for her - you could do sac for value with die triggers etc, sac for pump/Voltron leveraging her indestructibility ability, or a second level synergy with reanimation. Tribal zombies fit relatively well into some of these, probably more the latter than anything else though.

With reanimation zombies the win-con tends to be aristocratic in nature (unless you plan to be able to combo out somehow), so if that steps on the toes of your Mardu build that might be a consideration.

Is she useless for the build? No, a draw outlet in the CZ is handy, even if you have to drop mana to use it. Plus she can protect herself, that's really handy. Are there better tribal zombie commanders? I'm biased, I run Varina, Lich Queen and she's a lot of fun. Whether she's better or not, she's my dog in the fight and I'll stick with her. Other than that, Gisa and Geralf tend to be a weird and slightly different build, and Grimgrin, Corpse-Born is again different territory (voltron or combo mostly), so she sort of occupies a space that the other zombie Dimir commanders don't, necessarily. The Scarab God is probably the best zombie tribal commander out for pure power in the CZ and general ease of building, but there's something here you could carve a niche out of. Could be fun, and IMO a totally feasible way to build her.

[darrenhabib]

I haven't thought about Kels, Fight Fixer much as it takes up the same sort of space as Yawgmoth, Thran Physician deck as far as mechanics to look for but of course it also puts you into blue.

My initial thoughts however is that you'd want to use the ability to make her indestructible to run your own board wipe effects like Damnation.

As far as Zombie tribal I mean of course you could run her, but it is hard to pass up on some of the obvious Zombie commanders like Varina, Lich Queen, The Scarab God, Gisa and Geralf, Sidisi, Brood Tyrant.
Having said that, Kels does have the infamous key text "draw" written on the card and if you are committing creatures to the table then you'll be able to make use at times.
But the costs associated with that draw are a huuuuge factor. More than you might think. Tapping out to progress your board will often leave you without mana to make use of her abilities.
That's why I think technically Varina, Lich Queen is just much better at drawing, even though you discard as well.


I guess my personally approach to this commander would be that you are not actually committing that many creatures to the board.
The reason is that you want to have that 1(u/b} available for each creature in the face of a board wipe or even targeted removal.
Then you hope that indestructible also saves her from having to cast her too many times.
There are plenty of premium quality creatures between blue and black that you can look to play, but most of the deck is control of some kind.
Blue for the stack and black for controlling creatures.

[Vessiliana]

Thank you both for the suggestions and advice. I used to actually have a Varina zombies deck (disassembled to steal the mana-base for another deck and never rebuilt), and I just built a Lord of Tresserhorn zombies deck for a friend. My own zombie deck is now just an Oathbreaker one, hence thinking it might work to expand.

I am not giving up yet! I will still keep looking, and I am open to suggestions/thoughts about the lovely Kels' strengths and weaknesses.

[darrenhabib]

Thank you both for the suggestions and advice. I used to actually have a Varina zombies deck (disassembled to steal the mana-base for another deck and never rebuilt), and I just built a Lord of Tresserhorn zombies deck for a friend. My own zombie deck is now just an Oathbreaker one, hence thinking it might work to expand.

I am not giving up yet! I will still keep looking, and I am open to suggestions/thoughts about the lovely Kels' strengths and weaknesses.

I mean if you have all the Zombie cards already then sure why not. But my suggestion is that you skew towards even more mana sources so that you can make use of her ability.
Also you want to probably make your play-style a little bit more conservative when it comes to deploying creatures.
Often with Zombies (or any tribal) you just dump your creatures as quickly as your hand allows and hope to go wide with creatures.
But with Kels you want to make sure that you get value from her, so implies that you leave mana open.
That makes it a little hard when you are wanting to play lords and then also go wide to apply maximum damage.
But I feel like the key would be to concentrate on the quality of what you deploy to get card advantages.
The sort of example I'd see in a typical game is that you've deployed maybe 2 or 3 Zombies and have Zels in play my the mid game. So if your meta plays a decent number of board wipes, you want to have maybe 2{u/b}{u/b} held up as you want to sacrifice and get the draw from at least two of those creatures, meaning you don't lose in resources much.

What I do I mean by more mana sources? Well you should make concessions for cards that you'd normally consider fairly marginal for your past Zombie decks like Talisman of Dominance, Coldsteel Heart, Fellwar Stone, Mind Stone.
When you have so many good cards to choose for your 99 its seemly hard to make cuts for these smallball mana sources, but I can't emphasize enough that you need to be able to deploy your creatures and hope to hold up mana for value using her abilities.

[Sinis]

I am not giving up yet! I will still keep looking, and I am open to suggestions/thoughts about the lovely Kels' strengths and weaknesses.

I think for Kels, I wouldn't necessarily play zombie tribal. I'd look more along the lines of sacrificing creatures (probably from canned armies like Chittering Witch and Sengir Autocrat) for effects like Attrition, Priest of Forgotten Gods and Mind Slash. I think there are a few cards that have not-overwhelming synergy with Kels, like Glen Elendra Archmage, Apprentice Necromancer and Doomed Necromancer. Maybe this could be the deck Voldaren Pariah shines in.

If you're playing zombies, I'd be reaching for the ones that recur themselves, but, I don't think the synergy is overwhelming. Grimgrin, Corpse-Born does okay with it, but everything else is pretty underwhelming.

[toctheyounger]

I mean if you have all the Zombie cards already then sure why not. But my suggestion is that you skew towards even more mana sources so that you can make use of her ability.
Also you want to probably make your play-style a little bit more conservative when it comes to deploying creatures.

This is fairly close to how my Varina build plays. It's a relatively conservative approach, purely because you need to swing before you get to dig, and that means holding back resource for future planning. It works well for me in terms of planning my game and putting contingencies aside.

In terms of application to the tribal zombie concept, I think you're right though: quality over quantity. If you go zombies, you go zombies that count for a lot. You'd want Gravecrawler, Prized Amalgam and Relentless Dead for easy reanimation/reusability with your commander. Apprentice Necromancer is a possibility too.

Other than that I would think you'd want to punish creatures ETB'ing/LTB'ing, which zombies can do (although some of the best need white). You'd want to have Diregraf Captain and Vengeful Dead. It'd probably be nice to go further into this area, but these are the only real options in strict tribal form (although Blood Artist and Zulaport Cutthroat are both excellent). Perhaps a clone subtheme would help to double down on these.

As you mention, holding extra resource for using the commander's ability is a must. There's a few options to make this work, but nothing strictly on-theme. The best of these is Pitiless Plunderer, which I've had really good results with. There's always Black Market, but I'm personally not a fan. It's a lot more fragile and conditional, whereas you still keep your treasures if Plunderer dies. Other than that the Altars tick both boxes; they cause you to sac, and give you resource to drop into the commander's ability, the former obviously being more preferable.

The other possible angle that could make a reasonably decent build is token swarm. Zombies obviously do it really well, and there's some pretty efficient ways to make a swarm of undeads. Ghoulcaller Gisa comes to mind, Tombstone Stairwell is a literal win condition with Vengeful Dead, then there's stuff like Diregraf Colossus and Noosegraf Mob for pretty easy token generation. It makes sense to look at adding Grave Pact effects too.

Somewhere in the intersection of all of these there's maybe something feasible.