Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Korvold, Gleeful Glutton!

Korvold is an eight mana 4/4 that costs 1 less to cast for each card type among permanents you’ve sacrificed this turn, flying, trample, haste, and whenever Korvold deals combat damage to a player, put X +1/+1 counters on Korvold and draw X cards, where X is the number of permanent types among cards in your graveyard.

Original Korvold is such an efficient Commander in what he does that anything that doesn’t match or surpass it then it is seen as not as effective. While this Korvold is not as flashy or as self fueling as the other Korvold, it does have some interesting utility.

What we can do is find a decent number of things to sacrifice in order to get Korvold out earlier than expected and to make sure our graveyard is full of permanent types that will make Korvold big enough to win via Commander Damage.

The first thing that we need to look for are ways to sacrifice permanents we control, and if they have multiple card types the better.

Goldhound is great to have because it is a one mana creature with first strike and menace while also being able to sacrifice itself to add a mana of any color. It can do this because Wizards does enjoy the fact that adding an artifact subtype like Treasure or Food to a creature gives it the ability of that subtype, in this case being a Treasure.

In a similar vein we can also use something like Tough Cookie or Syr Ginger, the Meal Ender, both of which being artifact creatures that can sacrifice themselves with their Food abilities, but also have the utility in Tough Cookie being able to turn a noncreature artifact into a 4/4 artifact creature until end of turn and Syr Ginger getting a ton of abilities if an opponent controls a Planeswalker and gets bigger whenever we sacrifice an artifact.

We can use Dockside Chef to sacrifice an artifact or creature to draw a card while being an enchantment creature that can sacrifice itself to its own ability. Speaking of self sacrifice, there are plenty of other permanents that can do it with some sort of value added to them.

Blood Pet can sacrifice itself to add a black mana, Wild Cantor can do it to add a mana of any color, Tinder Wall can sacrifice itself to add two red mana, Seal of Primordium can sacrifice itself to destroy an artifact or enchantment, Haywire Mite can sacrifice itself to exile a noncreature artifact or noncreature enchantment, and Hopeless Nightmare can have each opponent discard a card and lose 2 life while being able to sacrifice itself to scry 2.

Since Korvold cares about card types in the graveyard, we can use other cards that care about cards in the graveyard to supplement Korvold.

Polygoyf is great example because they have the Goyf ability in having its power and toughness be determined by the number of card types in all graveyards, while also having the benefit of also having trample and myriad to make decent number of attacking creatures to keep the pressure on our opponents.

Barrowgoyf has the Goyf ability along with deathtouch and lifelink while also having the ability to mill ourselves equal to amount of damage it has dealt to a player and put a creature from among them into our hand.

Pyrogoyf deals damage equal to its power to any target whenever it or another Lhurgoyf enters the battlefield under our control, Nethergoyf is a one mana Lhurgoyf that can recur itself from the graveyard, and Tarmogoyf Nest can make a Tarmogoyf token for two mana.

There are also cards that happen to have Delirium that we can take advantage of like Winter, Misanthropic Guide, who let’s each player draw two cards at the beginning of our upkeep, but also has the Delirium ability to reduce our opponent’s hand size by seven minus the number of card types in our graveyard.

Demolisher Spawn is great to have as a way to get our creatures bigger because it has trample and haste, and once it hits Delirium then other attacking creatures we control get +4/+4 until end of turn, which can definitely help put the pressure on things.

We can also take advantage of all the sacrificing that we are doing by using creatures like Juri, Master of the Revue which gets bigger whenever we sacrifice a permanent and when it dies we can deal damage equal to its power to any target.

There is also the classic Mayhem Devil, Cauldron Familiar, and Witch’s Oven combination in which we can sacrifice a creature and an artifact at the same time while also being able to deal damage to our opponents or small utility creatures.

Now that we have ways of making Korvold huge while also presenting other threats that make use of our graveyard, we need ways to close out the game.

Genji Glove is great because we can attach it to Korvold in order to give him double strike, which is incredibly effective since he also has trample, and whenever he attacks during the first combat phase of our turn then we untap him in order to gain an additional combat phase, which takes advantage of Korvold getting better after dealing combat damage to a player while also drawing us a ton of cards.

If we want a few more permanent types to take advantage of, there is also Invasion of Ikoria, which helps us tutor a creature onto the battlefield, and when it flips it becomes Zilortha, Apex of Ikoria, which for each non-Human creature we control, we can have those creatures assign damage as if they weren’t blocked, which helps deal with any potential chump blockers to help get damage through from Korvold.

The Reaver Cleaver can make Korvold bigger and let us get Treasure tokens whenever we deal damage to a player or Planeswalker, Jeska, Thrice Reborn to give Korvold the ability to deal triple combat damage to an opponent, and Aggravated Assault for more extra combats.

While we won’t have many instants and sorceries in the deck since we care about permanents, we still want a couple like Crux of Fate to clear the board of non-Dragon creatures, Terror Tide to clear the board of hard to interact with creatures, or Blasphemous Edict to have everyone do a ton of sacrificing of creatures.

Korvold is a pretty straightforward Commander in that he cares about us sacrificing things and card types in the graveyard. There are plenty of permanent types we can get into the graveyard fairly easily, but the tricky thing is that while we can sacrifice plenty of things to get Korvold into play, graveyard removal can slow down our game plan.

While they are few, there are also a couple of cards that hate out on sacrificing things that we need to be aware exist and have some form of removal to deal with them.

Still, this Korvold isn’t as oppressive as the other Korvold and can be made into a fun sacrifice deck that won’t make you the archenemy of the table…usually.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual