Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Kroxa, Titan of Death’s Hunger!

Kroxa is a two mana 6/6 with when it enters, sacrifice it unless it escaped and whenever it enters or attacks, each opponent discards a card then each opponent who didn’t discard a nonland card this way loses 3 life and has an Escape cost of double black, double red, and exile five other cards from your graveyard.

Kroxa wants to rip your opponent’s hand apart, and with the benefit of being able to come back into play for a decent enough cost means we can also circumvent the Commander Tax if we keep getting Kroxa into the graveyard, provided we also have cards in our graveyard.

The plan is to make sure we continuously get rid of cards from our opponents hand while also having a steady supply of cards in our graveyard to make sure we can get Kroxa in play when they are sent there. It also helps that Kroxa is only two mana, which means we can start ripping our opponents hands early.

The first thing to look at are any cheap ways to get rid of multiple cards from everyones hands.

Mind Rake is deceptively an excellent card for us because for three mana it gets rid of two cards from one opponent’s hand, but if we Overload it for two mana then everyone discards two cards. While this would normally be bad for us, we want cards in the graveyard that we can exile for Kroxa, so this becomes fuel for us.

Cards that have wheel effects like Wheel of Fate also come in at cards to consider because not only do you get your opponents to discard some number of cards, you get to fuel back up to seven cards while also getting cards in the graveyard for Kroxa to come back. While our opponents do get cards back as well, at the rate of discard we should be producing it only becomes a minor setback.

We even some cheap removal in Bone Shards to destroy a creature or Planeswalker at the cost of either discarding a card or sacrificing a creature, of which either works for us because we can use it to get Kroxa back into the graveyard if they become under a Pacifism effect or a card into the graveyard to get Kroxa out.

To help get rid of cards from our opponents hands we have a plethora of options, a fun one being Bite of the Black Rose, a card with Will of the Council, in the options of sickness or psychosis, with sickness being to give creatures your opponents control -2/-2 or psychosis have each opponent discard 2 cards if this option is chosen or tied.

Hopeless Nightmare has each opponent discard a card and lose 2 life, Raven’s Crime to have a player discard a card and Retrace to help us get some more cards into the graveyard to recast it, and Vicious Rumors to deal 1 damage to each opponent, have them discard and mill a card and gaining you one life.

Next we should have some cards that give us benefits whenever any player, more importantly our opponents, discard cards.

Quest for the Nihil Stone is a card that tracks whenever an opponent discards a card by quest counters and at the beginning of each opponents upkeep if they have no cards in hand when this has two or more quest counters we can have that player lose 5 life. This immediately becomes live when Kroxa comes into play because it counts each instance of discard, which means we get damage in early if we get our discard online fast enough.

Waste Not is the classic discard matters card in that it can make two black mana if an opponent discards a land card, a 2/2 Zombie if they discard a creature card, and draws you a card if they discard a nonland, noncreature card. Megrim is a neat card that deals 2 damage to an opponent whenever they discard a card.

In a similar vein, Bone Miser does the same thing that Waste Not does but for cards we discard, which means if we manage to get a consistent discard outlet for us then we can get a ton of benefits. Keep in mind this is a card that is pretty pricey, but does have a lot of upside.

If we are discarding a decent number of cards in a turn, then there is a chance that we can play Hollow One for free, since it discounts itself for two mana whenever we discard a card. While we are on colorless cards, there is also Geth’s Grimoire, which lets us draw a card whenever an opponent discards a card.

Now that we have ways of getting a ton of cards into our opponents graveyard, we should use them to our advantage.

Grave Upheaval is a solid card to have because it allows us to reanimate something from any graveyard and gives it haste, or if we need to fuel the graveyard and need a land then we can cycle it for a basic land.

Quest for the Necropolis is also a solid card to have because we can play it early to start accumulating value whenever we play a land and when something we want gets into a graveyard, we can sacrifice it to reanimate it back to the battlefield under our control.

Liliana’s Caress, Raiders’ Wake and Fell Specter work for us by having our opponents lose 2 life whenever they discard a card, with Fell Specter also having an opponent discard a card and Raiders’ Wake having an opponent discard a card if we attacked on our turn.

If we want to be really mean then we can play Tergrid, God of Fright as a way to get permanents our opponents discard or nontoken creatures they control that go to the graveyard, or Syr Konrad, the Grim to deal 1 damage to each opponent whenever a creature card goes to the graveyard from anywhere other than the battlefield or a creature card leaves the graveyard, like Kroxa or cards we exile for Kroxa.

Kroxa is an interesting Commander in that it can be used early in the game to give yourself an advantage, and can avoid becoming too expensive to cast if we keep it in the graveyard and discard with reckless abandon. Now the issue comes if we discard too many cards and are unable to recover or if our graveyard gets exiled, such is the way of a graveyard deck.

Thank you for reading, see you tomorrow for the next Daily Commander!

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual