Korvold's Gluttonous Feast

Brawl Wednesday is upon us again, my dudes! Today, We are taking a look at one of the more established commanders in Brawl at the moment in Korvold, the Dragon What Eats Stuff. People have already been experimenting quite a bit with the Korvold sacrifice archetype, and I thought it was about time to see what all the ruckus was about. Turns out it's a lot: this commander fucking OWNS in terms of the sheer amount of value you can extract from him. So now, without further ado, the Dragon Boy:

By Jove does this commander rule. I understand now why I've seen so many people running him while I was testing my other decks. He gives you everything: board pressure, card advantage, and insane sacrifice synergies with so many of the cards in this deck. So get ready to get sacking, because we are going to be chucking a lot of fodder at our opponents' face!

Ramping Up:

Korvold can draw a lot of cards, y'all. Due to that we can be a bit lighter on our ramp package for this Brawl deck, and we run 5 cards to help us ramp up and fix our mana. Note that all of these cards can potentially tap for any of the colors we need, and this was a huge factor in choosing them, as the mana requirements for this deck are very demanding. I've already spoken about every one of the cards in this list at length, but it's always good to be reminded how good Leyline Prowler can actually be in this format. Sure, 3 mana is a lot for a ramp creature but opponents are rarely interested in spending their usually greedy removal on such a seemingly inoffensive creature. It shines vs both aggro and control, and I love the little guy. All the other cards here are pretty obvious: mulligan for them in your opening hand and you should be snowballing incredibly hard with Korvold.

Food for the Dragon:

We need to feed our Dragon-King, and we have a lot of fodder to give him. This list includes Cauldron Familiar because that card is SO CUTE, and I wanted to see if there was a deck for it in Brawl. This seemed like a good fit, and if you get it down with a Witch's Oven then you can do the thing! The other option for this slot would be Sorcerer's Broom, which might very well be a lot more powerful than the cat. But I love the kitty too much so we are keeping it. The other early fodder-makers come at the 2-drop slot with Dreadhorde Invasion, Piper of the Swarm, and Trail of Crumbs, the latter being an almost unstoppable value engine if we have our commander and Gilded Goose in play. At the 3-drop slot we run the excellent Chandra, Acolye of Flame to make two creatures we can sacrifice a turn for tons of value, as well as letting us reuse our cheaper removal. Deathless Knight has some fantastic synergies in this deck with its copious amounts of small, incidental lifegain, being both an easily sacrificeable and recurrable permanent for Korvold as well as a good enough hasty threat on its own. Finally, Mad Ratter really shines in this deck, triggering off Korvold to give us more food for the Dragon, as well as making more rats for our Piper of the Swarm to steal some juicy stuff.

Sacrifice Outlets:

"Well, our commander sacrifices, isn't that enough?" Oh you sweet summer child, NO! It is never enough unless we have become complete slaves to the archetype. In all seriousness, these cards are BANANAS with our commander, allowing us to draw a card and beef him up with counters every single time we sacrifice ANYTHING. The potential value in this deck is ridiculous, starting with Witch's Oven to allow us to sacrifice any creature in play to make a food, which can in turn be used to feed Korvold. Of course, there's the cat combo of sacrificing the cat to the oven and bringing it back with the food which should net us a metric shitload of value if we start getting it off. Priest of Forgotten Gods is back on the menu, and I am so glad to be using what is probably my favorite card printed for Magic over the last few years to good effect, it gives us so much in this deck: card draw, soft removal, and mana - delicious! On the greedier end of the sacrifice outlets we run the excellent planeswalker Vraska, Golgari Queen as both removal and an excellent way to sacrifice permanents; as well as Rankle, Master of Pranks to run social experiments all over our competition and then throw it on Youtube. As a last outlet we run [[Izoni, Thousand-Eyed, which I have found to be at okay value in this deck with at least 4 creatures in the graveyard, something that isn't that hard to accomplish with all our sacrifices.

Sacrificing for a Purpose:

Of course, most of the sacrifice we have listed so far has been for the purpose of value. We have a few other synergies to allow us to use our creatures in more interactive ways to mess with our opponent. Starting with our pieces of artifact hate, we run Goblin Cratermaker (who can also kill Ugin, the Ineffable for just one mana, wow!) and Thrashing Brontodon, which can also hit those pesky Fires of Invention going around. We run Cavalier of Night to deal with powerful creature threats, and Mayhem Devil gives us one damage to anything for each permanent sacrificed by anyone on the board. You'll be pinging a LOT with it in this deck. Finally, we run one Midnight Reaper, to extract extra value from the nontoken creatures we end up sacrificing, like Cauldron Familiar, for example.

More Interaction:

This deck has a lot of value, we've established that. But how does it stay alive? Well, Jund has some of the goddamned best removal in the game, and we run a lot of it. Golgari brings us Assassin's Trophy and Casualties of War to nuke any (or any number of) single permanent our opponent controls, and Deathsprout lets us get a kill on one creature while ramping us up a bit. Rakdos provides the amazing Angrath's Rampage, which also triggers Mayhem Devil when forcing our opponent to sacrifice, and Bedevil to hit most of the biggest threats in the format. We run one Murderous Rider as a reusable creature or planeswalker kill that we can keep sacrificing, and to finish up the black removal, one Massacre Girl, because I love Massacre Girl and will probably write about a deck I've been working with her as commander soon.

Scary Threats:

Our commander can give us all the value in the universe, but sometimes he will be removed, countered, or any other sort of messed up stuff our opponents can do. We need some other big threats to either soak up some of that removal, or kill our opponents if they ran out. Anyone who says Stormfist Crusader isn't a threat has clearly never played with the card properly. One damage a turn adds up, and the card advantage can be very easily leveraged in our deck to simply roll over our opponents. As heavier big drops we have Clackbrige Troll, who forces our opponent to sacrifice creatures to give us value, and works exceedingly well with Mayhem Devil. Cavalier of Thorns is a bit questionable, but his ability to find us our lands and just the sheer size of the lad make me want to keep him in here. We run two big "I Win" planeswalkers in Garruk, Cursed Hunstman, who can give us fodder and removal as well as a powerful ultimate, and Liliana, Dreadhorde General for pretty much the same reasons. Bolas's Citadel is here to be a straight-up finisher. Sacrificing 10 permanents with it while a Mayhem Devil or our commander is on the board is sure to end the game REAL fast.

Lands:

Ah, three-colored manabases in Brawl. What a goddamn mess. This deck runs 7 basics in 3 Forests and 4 Swamps, though it could be running one more of each, probably. We have 3 lands that sacrifice on activation with Blast Zone, Evolving Wilds, and Fabled Passage. If you have the luxury of holding on to these cards to sac them after Korvold is on the board, you will see what true power feels like. We run three of each dual land and a Castle Locthwain to get us more cards in the worst worst case scenario in which we ran out of steam. Finally, some board presence is here with the lands Field of the Dead (Korvold thinks zombies are SUPER tasty) and Mobilized District, in case we are stuck with too much top-end in our hands.