Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Karador, Ghost Chieftain!

Karador is an eight mana 3/4 who costs one mana less for each creature card in your graveyard and once during each of your turns you may cast a creature spell from your graveyard.

Being an eight mana Commander that can be much cheaper if we have a bunch of creatures in the graveyard is a nice way to mitigate having a high cost, and the additional benefit of being able to cast a creature spell from the graveyard on each our turns is also solid.

The plan is to absolutely fill the graveyard with a bunch of things, but not just through pure milling. There are plenty of directions we can take and a lot of them revolve around a card that I have considered building around for a while, but haven’t had the opportunity to do so, but Karador does offer and interesting opportunity to do so.

Since we have a way to get our Commander out for cheap and ways to recur creatures, we should be able to use that to our advantage.

Birthing Pod is a card that for one and a Phyrexian green, tap, and sacrifice a creature let’s us look for a creature in our library with mana value equal to the mana value of the creature we sacrificed plus one and let’s us put that creature onto the battlefield. This is a strong ability and with the breadth of utility and powerful creatures we have access to, this is a great deck for us to make use of it.

There aren’t too mana ways to get a redundant version of this effect, with Vivien on the Hunt being the best way to get a repeatable version of this effect since she has it as a +2 ability, also with a +1 to mill five cards and puts creatures into our hand if we want, and a -1 to make a 4/4 Rhino creature token.

We have plenty of creatures that serve a great use when they die, like a Solemn Simulacrum which puts a basic land card from our deck to the battlefield and when it dies we draw a card and Reveillark which when it leaves the battlefield we return up to two creature cards with power 2 or less from our graveyard to the battlefield.

There are also utility creatures like Spore Frog which can sacrifice itself to prevent all combat damage this turn, Stitcher’s Supplier who when they enter or die mills us three cards, and Fauna Shaman which can let us discard a creature card to look for a creature card in our library and put it in our hand.

There are also ways we can make use of Warp from Edge of Eternities using a Birthing Pod effect, because they only exile themselves at the end of turn, but if they die they go to the graveyard. If we want a decent sized creature that can get out for cheap, we have access to Haliya, Guided by Light who can Warp for one mana while being a three mana creature and can gain us 1 life when an artifact or creature we control enters and if we gained 3 or more life at the beginning of our end step we draw a card.

The next thing we need is to get what we need to the graveyard, while also making sure we don’t lose out on important resources from the graveyard.

Gravebreaker Lamia is great because when it enters we can search our library for a card, put it into the graveyard then shuffle, while at the same time discounting spells we can cast from the graveyard by one mana.

Buried Alive let’s us get three creature cards into the graveyard, Unmarked Grave let’s us put a nonlegendary card into the graveyard from our library, Cynical Loner can let us put a creature into the graveyard if it is tapped at the beginning of our second main phase, and Final Parting lets us look for two cards to put one in our hand and the other into our graveyard.

If we want to be a bit more cavalier into putting creatures into our graveyard then we have the old reliable in dredge, which whenever we draw a card we can instead mill that many cards and return that dredge card from the graveyard to our hand. Stinkweed Imp is a solid dredge piece since it can dredge for 5 cards, which is a lot to put into our graveyard.

We can also use this to our advantage if we happen to include The Necrobloom in the deck because it gives lands in our graveyard dredge 2, which helps bring lands back if we mill them and it also has an ability to make 0/1 Plant tokens as a Landfall ability that then become 2/2 Zombies if we have seven or more differently named lands in play.

Even if we didn’t include The Necrobloom in the deck, we can also include other cards that let us play lands from the graveyard like Ramunap Excavator or Aftermath Analyst which mills three cards and we can sacrifice it to return all lands from our graveyard onto the battlefield tapped.

The last thing we need are the creatures that we get when we actually do get for the Birthing Pod.

Reya Dawnbringer is a big creature that would normally be a pain to get because they are nine mana, but that is just enough for us to sacrifice Karador to grab from our library, and not only that but at the beginning of our upkeep we can return a creature from our graveyard and return it to the battlefield.

If we want a way to get rid of a couple of creatures, we can also get Apex Altisaur, which when it enters it fights a creature we don’t control, and it also has an Enrage ability where if it takes damage then it fights a creature we don’t control. Combine that with a one mana way to give it indestructible, like say a Loran’s Escape, that can become a board wipe.

We can include Protean Hulk in the deck because it is seven mana and when it dies we can search our library for any number of creature with total mana value six or less and put them onto the battlefield, which also opens up a wide combination of creatures, plus an eight mana creature from the Birthing Pod.

The deck does play around well with how you can customize which big creatures you cheat out and has you play around with number and math, but if you have access to Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite you can make it easier for your creatures to win via combat while getting rid of your opponents smaller creatures, Sun Titan to start getting smaller creatures out of your graveyard, and if all else fails and you have nothing left to tutor, you can always use Eerie Ultimatum to bring them back into play to swing and win.

Karador plays a bit more into a midrange sort of reanimation/Birthing Pod strategy that can be very flexible in how you adjust the mana values of creatures in your deck.

As your deck will probably have a higher number of creatures, you may be running less interaction pieces, which are at risk of being milled away, which is why selective ways to get your creatures into the graveyard is much preferred.

Karador can be a bit of a head scratcher for new players if they decide to go the Birthing Pod route, but can otherwise play as a solid midrange reanimation strategy if Birthing Pod gets a little complicated or unable to work because you accidentally milled the creatures you wanted to bring out, which is also always a risk.

If all else fails, Karador also presents well as a decent three color midrange Commander that can make use of sacrifice strategies over and over again.

A lot more utility than one would expect from such a simple ability.

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

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual