Cassidy Silver
7/26/2012 10:20:00 AM
Hello! This week, we are talking about one of my favorite decks to play –
Kaervek the Merciless. Lately, I have been playing a lot of one-on-one against my brother's Riku of the Reflections deck (which I wrote about a
few weeks ago), and a big part of that strategy is spamming
Time Warp effects, and chaining together copies of
Rude Awakening and
Turnabout with a
Past in Flames or
Praetor's Counsel. Kaervek pretty much shuts down all of that hullaballoo, and also has his way with
Palinchron shenanigans as well. It might be worth mentioning that we have been playing with thirty life in most of our games, which I highly recommend. It makes games go much faster, and really nerfs the power of cards like
Serra Ascendant.
I originally wrote about Kaervek back
in February, and the deck was focused around what is colloquially known as ‘group slug.' Group slug gets its moniker from the archetype ‘group hug'; basically, compare Woodstock to Fight Club, and you get an idea about the relationship between the two. The premise is to force players to draw cards with
Howling Mine,
Spiteful Visions, and one of the decks MVPs,
Seizan, Perverter of Truth, and as they drift into some
Underworld Dreams, throw everyone in the
Iron Maiden, ‘cause that is just how merciless Kaervek is. (By the way, how awesome is the title ‘Perverter of Truth'? Yeah, pervert that truth!) Ideally, this combination of filling peoples' hands while dealing incremental damage will create a neutral political state, but it doesn't always work out that way. My version played a relatively non-aggressive early game, in favor of large creatures with strong utility, like Dread or
Sheoldred, Whispering One; I also use quite a bit of X damage spells, mostly as early game spot removal, but they are pretty handy late game for the last push of damage.
One thing that I found particularly interesting about this deck is the way
Necropotence interacts with cards like
Spiteful Visions, which has a symmetrical effect that damages the controller as well as opponents, or even problem cards from other players, like
Consecrated Sphinx.
Necropotence skips the draw step, so Spiteful Visions' mandatory draw is turned off, and since it puts cards into hand, and doesn't actually involve and drawing, no extra damage is taken from Necro's cards, and there are no annoying Sphinx triggers to worry about.
In the many games I have played with this deck, I've found life-gain to be the strongest aspects of the strategy, especially in games with a lot of Spiteful Vision or
Necropotence damage. Avacyn Restored gave me my favorite card for gaining some life in
Exquisite Blood - it turns all the incremental and variable damage cards into a better version of
Drain Life, and makes cards that are already soul sucking doubly effective. Be careful with this card, because it WILL turn a table against you. The other day, I played a game against my buddy Calvin, as well as Andy and Gibson from Commandercast, and as soon as I played
Exquisite Blood, everyone started attacking me. Even a healthy dose of
Exsanguinate and an uber-kicked
Comet Storm couldn't save me; all because I played
Exquisite Blood, and didn't win shortly after.
Another techie card that fits into this category is
Suffer the Past, which is a card that is good most of the time, but is amazing versus reanimator or Past in Flame-type graveyard shenanigans.
Basilisk Collar goes in this category as well, and is particularly good with Kaervek,
Heartless Hidetsugu, and
Deathbringer Thoctar. Removal that gains life is also very handy, so I put in
Consuming Vapors to compliment the
Tribute to Hunger. The ‘edict' effect is good for taking out hexproof generals, like
Uril, the Miststalker, or
Thrun, the Last Troll, or in the unfortunate event of coming up against a creature that is both pro-Red and pro-Black, or an
Akroma's Memorial, for that matter.
Well of Lost Dreams rounds out the life-gain section of the build, turning all that life into potential card advantage.
After the early game plan of spot removal and incremental damage, we want to land a big creature to finish the deal. The card that facilitates this most is
Heartless Summoning, which is basically one of the best targets for early game
Demonic Tutor. Dropping
Bloodgift Demon or Seizan on turn three is worth the small blow to their power and toughness, and making Kaervek cheaper is always a plus.
Heartless Summoning also shaped the creature base, in that I cut out all creature that would die to it, or aren't really able to use it.
Heartless Summoning seems perfect for a deck lead by a guy who earned ‘the merciless' as his title.
As for the creature base, most of the choices are pretty straightforward, so ill just go over recent additions to Kaervek's ranks –
Malignus,
Dark Impostor, and
Xathrid Gorgon.
Malignus is great in any Red deck, and I went over it in greater detail when I built my
Gisela, Blade of Goldnight relentless beatings deck
in May. With Kaervek,
Malignus is actually a decent play early game, where he will be much bigger. The best thing about
Malignus, though, is its weird asymmetry, where it counts the opponent with the highest life, so can easily hit players for fifteen, even if that player is not the one with thirty life.
Malignus also draws removal like a champ, so it can also be a nice way to draw out
Counterspells or Terrors.
I have been extremely happy with
Dark Impostor as of late, and this is mostly due to its presence in my Kaervek deck. With the right board state and mana, the Impostor can lock down a board, and most players are just not ready to deal with the exiling effect this guy has. I haven't actually stolen all that many activated abilities, except for maybe
Palinchron and Bird of Paradise, but the little +1 counters can definitely add up, and the Grey Ogre body makes it ideal to play on the cheap with
Heartless Summoning. I love the art and flavor of the card as well, not to mention its membership in the awesome assassin tribe.
The newest creature in Kaervek is
Xathrid Gorgon. I like the Gorgon a lot, but haven't used it all that much yet. Deathtouch makes the paltry three power a bit easier to stomach, but the real strength lies in its petrifying gaze. Even though it doesn't stop triggered or static abilities, which can sometimes be more powerful than activated ones, it does stop creatures from attacking, an ability not normally found in Black's wedge of the color pie. Once a creature has a petrification counter, the effect will last beyond the mortality of the Gorgon, and basically needs to be blinked or bounced to return to normal. Something about turning enemies to stone strikes me as extra merciless, so the
Xathrid Gorgon is a perfect fit in this deck.
Sometimes, we won't have
Heartless Summoning in play, and we don't have the mana to play any of the creatures. This is where a compliment of reanimator spells comes in handy, allowing us to cheat the fatties into play on the cheap. With the extra card draw in the deck, it is feasible that we will have a chance to discard a
Rune-Scarred Demon, Sheoldred, or Dread, (just kidding!), so I don't think the build needs to add any manual discard tech. Many Kaervek decks build with
Wheel of Fortune and
Megrim effects, so those builds could probably amp the reanimator knob up another notch.
Rakdos colors have a pretty good suite of reanimator cards, most of them being Black, of course. I didn't build too into this aspect of the deck, so I wanted cards that I could use repeatedly, or were especially powerful.
Strands of Night is a card I found out about more recently, and has been very good with the high-powered creatures we're packing; it also has a lot of synergy with other parts of the build, which I will get to in later paragraphs.
Profane Command (which is another awesome title, by the way), made the cut here, and as a plus, it is basically an X damage spell. The main reason to run reanimator in RB, though, is
Torrent of Souls. What a great card! True, it's actually about as expensive as a lot of the creatures in the deck, but the bushwhacker effect makes it worth the price. There are many other cards that would work as well, like
Exhume,
Animate Dead,
Beacon of Unrest, etc, so feel free to pick and choose.
Kaervek gives us a great opportunity to try out
Liliana of the Dark Realms; first off, her Swamp tutor ability meshes well with
Strands of Night. She can also grab the
Badlands and
Blood Crypt, and the
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth in here makes her second and third abilities much better. She joins her first iteration in
Liliana Vess, as well as
Karn Liberated, and
Chandra, the Firebrand, to round out Kaervek's super-friends. Karn is important for his indiscriminate hate of everything, and Chandra is good for copying a charged-up
Banefire, but won't work with
Torrent of Souls, unfortunately. With her reprinting in M13, Chandra's price dropped dramatically, so she has a certain merit there as well.
Over the years, I have tested out different land counts for different builds, but I find that forty lands is just about my bare minimum, unless Green is involved, in which case you can get away with less lands in the deck. For a deck with a high curve like this one, I was tempted to run forty-one, but added a
Solemn Simulacrum instead. Even though
Cabal Coffers and
Urborg are amazing in any Black deck, this deck is particularly mana-greedy, especially with all the X spells in the deck.
Winding Canyons is nifty for playing bulky creatures at the most opportune time, ie. no open Blue mana.
Cavern of Souls is also pretty good for forcing the beaters onto the table – if we want to play Kaervek counter-free, choose shaman instead of human, because he is the only human, and there is one other shaman.
Demon is the most prolific tribe with three creatures, so this is probably the best choice in the long run, especially when it comes to casting RSD. There are also two spirits, and two elementals, so we have a few options.
Crucible of Worlds has been stellar in this deck, allowing a lot of extra mileage out of cards like
Evolving Wilds and
Bloodstained Mire.
Strip Mine and Crucible are particularly brutal together, and even if it might seem a little douche-y, Kaervek doesn't care - he's merciless like that. As a final note,
Crucible of Worlds also makes
Strands of Night much, much better.
Well, that's the update to my Kaervek group slug deck, made to manipulate multiplayer politics, but forged in the heat of thirty life one-on-one battles. It loses as many games as it wins, or maybe more, but it is always fun to play, probably because I tend to brag about how merciless Kaervek is every time I successfully cast a spell. Having so many X spells at hand makes a lot of the cards viable in any stage of the game, especially when they are draining life with
Exquisite Blood in play.
Thanks for reading!
Cassidy Silver
@WriterofWrong
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