Kalakscion, Hunger Tyrant Deck Tech

Kalakscion, Hunger Tyrant

by John Tedrick

The Crocodile Becomes the Hunter

What do aggressive decks and crocodiles have in common? They both bite down on an opponent and hold on for dear life! This deck has one other thing in common: it's an aggressive deck with a crocodile for a commander. Continuing the Muraganda vanilla commander rabbit hole, Kalakscion, Hunger Tyrant

It has a huge power stat, able to fell a player in three combat steps for the low, low price of three mana. The primary weakness is the lack of toughness. Thankfully, black has a lot of ways to keep creatures alive and bring them back from the grave, so we can be aggressive and swing with impunity.

Crocodiles can exceed 100 years of age in captivity, and we intend to keep our guy alive for as long as possible!

Power Equipment

While crocodiles are capable of biting down hard and holding on for dear life, we'd rather not have to hold on for the entire 100-year lifespan. Instead, we want to use the crocodile's incredible jaw closing power and show just how deadly of a beast we can be. For starters, Fireshrieker

Loxodon Warhammer

Strata Scythe

Sometimes, aggressive decks just can't break through. Commander is a midrange-heavy format, and, no matter how tall your deck goes, decks that go wide can stall you out, so how can we win anyways? Essence Harvest

Protection

One of the downsides of playing a commander with a lot of printed power is that it operates as a rattlesnake (I know... wrong reptile). Opponents see the sharp teeth and can't help but visualize them chomping down on their life totals. As a result, it's best to put some cute little Swiftfoot Boots

Not of This World is a cool bit of tech that we can use because of our commander's high power. While it was intended for use with Eldrazi, it works with any large creature, and free counters out of mono-black can take people by surprise.

Kalakscion will often be in dangerous situations. Most blockers can trade with it; abilities like first strike and creatures with high printed toughness can brick wall it, and it gets swept up by Pyroclasm effects. As a result, we can dip into the wealth of instant-speed protection effects black has been receiving in the form of common draft chaff, like Unlikely Aid. The spells might not seem flashy, but there are enough of them that we can design our plan around them!

Shade's Form is a particularly interesting Aura that, on its face, acts as an additional layer of protection in the scenario that our commander should meet with an unfortunate end. What makes it special, however, is that it gives the ability associated with Shades in Magic: an improved Firebreathing that also adds toughness.

Ramp

The ramp isn't particularly noteworthy, but it does make it so that, if we can't protect Kalakscion, we can re-cast it. Sword of Feast and Famine adds a bit of power, but it also adds protections to make safe attacks, all while untapping our lands on connection.

Plague Myr is a mana dork, but it can sneakily act as an alternate win con by loading up Equipment on its infecting body. Spare bodies are a necessary resource in a Voltron deck, both as spare hosts for Equipment and as fodder for edict effects.

Card Draw/Advantage

Aggressive decks tend to peter out quickly, especially ones that don't scale well to longer games. There are several ways to draw cards that care about the power of a creature, including Eye of Yawgmoth, which can dig deep into the deck to get a particular card, one of my favorite bits of tech in my The Mindskinner deck.

Key to the City is another tech piece that pulls double duty. It can slowly rummage its way through the library, but it is perhaps more useful making our commander unblockable, enabling one-shots with our power Equipment.

The general plan is to stick our commander, make it bigger, and beat down. We have plenty of protection effects to prevent commander tax from getting too high, as well as draw to dig for whatever pieces we need.
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