Kaalia, Zenith Seeker
~BLINK/REANIMATOR~
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Who am I?
Deck History
Why Play Kaalia, Zenith Seeker?
Other Commander Options
THE DECK
Current Decklist
Budget Decklist
Deck Philosophy
Win Conditions
Sideboard
Playing the Deck
Vulnerabilities/Matchups
CARD CHOICES
Card Selection
Wishlist
Considerations
Notable Exclusions
FOOTNOTES
Changelog
Discussion Questions
Casual vs Competitive
Credit and Thanks
WHO AM I?
I would describe myself as "casually competetive" None of my decks are really at a cEDH level and I don't really plan to take them that far. I enjoy more niche decks and interactions. However, I do care about winning. I like my decks to have a high degree of synergy and consistency. I don't have a ton of free time to play either, usually just for a few hours on the weekends.
I was born in 1989, live in a small town in New Mexico and have been playing magic consistently since Rise of the Eldrazi (2010). The first time I saw a magic card was in Junior high, 2004?? Some of my friends played up in Alaska where I grew up. The thing that really struck me was the ARTWORK. The words and characters depicted really intrigued me, long before I ever sat down to learn how the game actually worked.
I own a flooring installation business. Hobbies include bicycling, computer gaming (warframe mostly), and cooking. I am on the board of a small local non-profit tackling the issue of recycling and waste management in our community. I dabble in theater, screenwriting, and gardening. I live with my wife and my cat.
DECK HISTORY
What really stuck with me was the subthemes of reanimation and blink that I wanted to bring forward. Kaalia 1.0 never really fully supported those subthemes and more encouraged the route of stax which is totally legitimate, but not what I had envisioned for the deck.
For years, I steered away from Kaalia for the plain reason that she is a hate magnet and not exactly welcome at more casual tables. The deck is very expensive to build well since you really need the higher power cards to stay in the game. It also focuses very heavily on Kaalia's trigger, therefore your setup is crucial. Casting Kaalia early with haste, and then landing some game breaking creature, followed by a stax piece. The playstyle just never appealed to me.
Fast forward about 8 years and we get Kaalia, Zenith Seeker. At first glace, she is inferior to the original, however after playing with her for some time, I will argue she is an appropriate commander for the deck if you are looking to go the route of blink/reanimator and NOT looking to become arch-enemy on turn one.
That said, I do think she could stand to get little bit of a buff to her power level and not be too OP. Something like "Creature spells with flying you cast cost 1 less to cast" or just the ability to dig a little deeper with her trigger, 7 cards instead of 6. This would allow her to really shine as a commander for this type of deck.
Recently, we got a lot of awesome cards for this deck and it has quickly become one of my favorite builds. Terror of the Peaks, Mythos of Snapdax, Burning-Rune Demon and Goldspan Dragon all help tremendously in bringing this deck up to an acceptable power level for me.
WHY PLAY KAALIA, ZENITH SEEKER?
I play Kaalia for the aesthetic and the SATISFACTION of landing some of the most powerful and iconic creature types in magic: angels, demons and dragons! It is decidedly METAL and evokes the same pleasure as hearing the delicate twinkle of a piano paired with the forceful distorted warble of a scream. Whenever I lean into a game with this deck, I feel very at home. I think this deck strokes all the archetypes for me at some level: Spike, Timmy, Johnny, and Vorthos.
Why play Zenith Seeker over OG Kaalia?
1. Interestingly, she offers something that the original Kaalia doesn't: card advantage, which is something I always struggled getting with the oringial Kaalia. You will actually want Zenith Seeker to die so you can get another trigger. However, there is a pretty wide margin in effectiveness for this trigger. It ranges from a complete whiff to fetching up to six creatures in combination with Panharmonicon and the other blink effects, or entering her into a blink engine such as Gift of Immortality plus a sac outlet. I've found it best to try and set her up for this kind of scenario where you are getting multiple triggers for a single cast. As soon as she goes back to the command zone, you will be paying for the effect which should be avoided.
2. She offers combo potential with Worldgorger Dragon and Animate Dead. This is a fairly simple three card combo that puts all the angels, demons, and dragons within your deck into your hand with basically infinite mana at your disposal. I will go into more details about this combo later, but suffice to say it is easier to pull off than you might think. You could build this deck as a purely combo deck focused around these cards and I think it would be pretty consistent. The reason for this is that we have all the tutors and protection to make it happen. Because Animate Dead and Kaalia herself are so cheap, you can do this very early.
3. She encourages a higher density of creatures than the original commander. In fact, to get the most value from her, you will want to be running as many angels, demons, and dragons as possible!
4. Having an ETB ability herself, you can comfortably main deck things like Gift of Immortality and Ephemerate and know you will get consistent value from them. Therefore she really enables the blink archetype if you choose to go that route.
5. We get to run A.D.D. With Flameblast Dragon syndrome! This includes creatures with an "on attack" trigger. While Kaalia of the Vast is in the list, we can nearly always choose something without a flameblast syndrome to put onto the battlefield with her ability.
OTHER COMMANDER OPTIONS
MY CURRENT DECKLIST
BUDGET DECKLIST
COMBO CENTRIC DECKLIST
The main differences here is that you no longer need so many A.D.D. since you are primarily using her trigger as an infinite combo NOT as a value engine. The A.D.D. we do run are specifically there to utilize the infinite mana at our disposal once the combo goes off OR to also combo with WGD to win.
We are running all the rituals and tutors we can to make this combo happen early. We are also running a lot more protection and interaction for the combo itself so it is harder to disrupt.
We are running redundancy to Animate Dead as well so we get even more chances to attack WGD to it.
DECK PHILOSOPHY
Kaalia, Zenith Seeker certainly asks for a very different type of build than you might pursue with Kaalia of The Vast. The main difference being that you can no longer reliably cheat 6cmc + creatures into play turn after turn without some extra help.
It is important to realize the value that Zenith Seeker brings to the table and to build around it. She is a card advantage engine. Her ability to fill our hand with ADD is certainly powerful when the rest of the deck supports it. Getting as many triggers from her as possible is very important. We can go a little lighter on card draw effects in the deck because of this. What we have instead are efficient tutors that allow us to grab our key non-ADD pieces.
There is a strong ETB theme here which I feel gives us a lot of value over time. Because our commander sports an ETB ability we can comfortably maindeck support for it. You don't want too many of these effects however. It is better to focus on the strongest ones. This is still in flux however and I am still considering what other blink engines might be fitting for the deck.
WIN CONDITIONS
At its heart, my current decklist is an aggro deck and wins through combat damage. Fielding as many A.D.D. as possible and swinging in for lethal is our main path to victory. Some pretty explosive turns are possible with Living Death as long as our graveyard has enough A.D.D. in it.
DEATH BY DRAGONFIRE:
Terror of the Peaks should be mentioned separately as its own win con because it can deal massive damage in this deck and often deal lethal out of nowhere. Getting him to play and keeping him there will ensure we get to threaten our opponents' life totals.
COMBO VICTORY:
Now lets talk about the Worldgorger Dragon combo with Animate Dead. This combo works so well with our commander and many other ADD in our list. If Kaalia is on the field, we can put all the ADD in our deck into our hand with infinite mana at our disposal. Terror of the Peaks will also kill the table as will some other creatures in the list.
How does this combo work?
This combo generates infinite:
Mana from lands (any color you have available)
ETB triggers
Death/LTB triggers
NOTE: In additon to Animate Dead this combo also works with Dance of the Dead or Necromancy .
- Have Worldgorger Dragon in your graveyard and Animate Dead in your hand.
- Cast Animate Dead , targeting Worldgorger Dragon .
- Worldgorger Dragon enters the battlefield, causing it to exile all other permanents you control.
- Animate Dead gets exiled along with all your other permanents.
- Animate Dead 's LTB ability triggers, sacrificing Worldgorger Dragon .
- All permanents exiled with Worldgorger Dragon enter the battlefield.
- Target Worldgorger Dragon with Animate Dead , have this ability stay on the stack and in response, tap all lands you control and activate any abilities of permanents you control.
- Let everything resolve.
- Repeat steps 3-8.
Note 2: This combo is an unstoppable looping combo. What this means is that this combo will force the game to a draw as it will forever continue its iterations. The only way to stop it is to meet the following criteria:
Counter the abilities or Animate Dead when it is a spell.
Remove Worldgorger Dragon in response to its ETB ability.
Have another creature in any graveyard.
Call a judge and ask what to do if the above cannot be met.
As a side note, even without Animate Dead, WGD also works nicely with Sneak Attack as a battlefield blink for
SIDEBOARD
PLAYING THE DECK
VULNERABILITIES/MATCHUPS
CARD SELECTION
CREATURES - The meat and potatoes of the deck. Selecting quality A.D.D. for the deck is fairly challenging. They can't just be big game changing creatures like Avacyn, Angel of Hope and Razaketh, the Foulblooded. We will struggle to cast them without Kaalia of the Vast in our command zone. So let's go over some of the important criteria when selecting A.D.D. for the deck.
[*]CMC - we want to pay attention to our curve a bit here. As I said earlier, we can't just fill our hand with 7-9 cmc creatures. The sweet spot really is 3-5 cmc. It's ok to have some truly spectacular creatures at the 7 or 8 cmc spot. Stuff that fits in this category will be Knollspine Dragon. Now, you can go too heavy on the other end and throw too many non-impactful creatures with low cmc into the deck and I think this is also a mistake.
[*]COLOR WEIGHT - You'll notice I run very few triple color costed cards. This is because we will struggle to consistently get those three colors to hard cast them. Our cost reducers: Heartless Summoning and Rakdos, Lord of Riots work better with single or double color weighted cards. Our goal here is to pump out 2 or 3 creatures per turn with these reducers in play.
[*]ABILITIES - We really want our creatures to be more than just beat sticks. The abilities have to serve a general function in the deck such as removal, tutors, ramp, or card advantage. We don't want to be durdling around. Each creature we put on the battlefield really needs to have a function and a purpose. Clearly an ETB ability is going to be ideal, however there are some choices that are just too strong to ignore. I'm talking about stuff like Goldspan Dragon. It also important to keep in mind that we run an effect on a creature body whenever possible. For example, I run Shadowborn Demon instead of something like Hero's Downfall. This is for the simple reason that this deck is built to support creatures. We should be able to get several triggers from Shadowborn Demon and dig him up with Kaalia's trigger, where as an instant or sorcery based effect doesn't give us that synergy.
[*]FLYING - I have personally made the choice to only include A.D.D. with flying. Notably, there are several demons without flying that would probably be good for the list. The reason I do this to fully support Dragon Tempest and Ryusei, the Falling Star
BLINK/CHEATING
These are the enablers that we are going to fetch with our tutors most of the time. Sneak Attack being one of the best cards to get. Nearly all of these cards allow us to create value engines or dump creatures onto the field in overwhelming numbers.
REMOVAL/BOARD WIPES
We only include the best ones available to us and preferably at instant speed. Instant speed is something that our A.D.D. will typically lack (barring Sneak Attack). Sometimes having an Anguished Unmaking or Path to Exile in hand is just what we need in order to stay in control.
I run Ruinous Ultimatum and Mythos of Snapdax because. 1. They hit almost all types of relevant permanents and 2. They are one sided, therefore it's the closest we can get to a Cyclonic Rift in these colors. We don't want to be wrathing our own creatures.
LANDS
We are kind of an aggro deck at heart so we really don't want our lands coming into play tapped. That's why I don't run the "check lands" a-la Isolated Chapel. Being in 3 colors, it's just too much of a risk in my experience.
Any color lands and fetch lands are going to be the premium types to slot in, unfortunately those are some of the most expensive.
Notably, we still run a decent number of basics to support Land Tax.
WISHLIST
Mana Crypt - because our mana curve is higher with a lot of colorless component to our spells this would be a great addition allowing us to cast some of our 4 or 5 cmc creatures as early as turn 2 or 3.
Vampiric Tutor - really one of the best black tutors