In this article we will discuss the deck based on interesting 5-color Saga card The Kami War. It’s mythic rare Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty card.
Decklist
kami-war
Why 80 Cards?
I originally started with a 60-card version of the deck, which worked reasonably well at the expense of not being able to include certain one-ofs that I later added, as well as the mana-base being a bit rocky. In all honesty, you shouldn’t consider this a top-tier deck you can win tournaments with; it’s for having the most fun you can while cramming as many different threats into a single deck, playing all five colors. I chose 80 cards because I wanted the draws to be as consistent as possible.
When Yorion, Sky Nomad was still legal in Standard, Emergent Ultimatum decks playing Yorion and 80 cards were dominant on the ladder. I figured the same could be true here; the only difference is that we don’t have a companion. That didn’t inherently make the odds of drawing the cards you needed to better, but those decks usually continued to draw consistently in most games I played. There may be other 80 card decks that haven’t been explored, just waiting for us to discover them!
Mana-base
There are 33 lands in total if you count the one Bala Ged Recovery. The ability to return a card from your graveyard can come in handy. However, I only wanted to play one Modal DFC in the deck because having the right colors is essential, so I wanted to play more dual lands. Since we’re playing Binding the Old Gods, playing the cycling lands from Streets of New Capenna made sense. There are four in Jund colors, one in Bant, and one in Naya. These are important in the deck because they are all technically forests, so you can fetch them with the Binding on the second chapter. With an 80-card deck, you need a higher land count overall, and I wanted to have a few extra to ramp more often with Kami of Bamboo Groves.
How to Play the Deck
Our main goal with this deck is to attempt to cast either The Kami War, Titan of Industry or Tibalt, Cosmic Imposter by turn three or four (You can choose to play Valki or Tibalt when casting it from underneath the Fight Rigging). It sounds like I’m reaching, but I’ve done it dozens of times already playing this deck in Alchemy Constructed Events. I did try it out on the ladder a few times, but it didn’t perform as well as I had hoped and may need additional tuning if it’s going to put up a fight in ranked. We do this by ramping with Kami of Bamboo Groves, Courier’s Briefcase, or Fable of the Mirror-Breaker and casting Fight Rigging by turn two or three. There are many ways to fix your hand in the deck, including blood tokens, discarding with the Fable and drawing, cycling lands, and drawing cards from the briefcase.
So, even if you don’t have Fight Rigging by turn three or four, you should still be able to find one relatively quickly for later. By turn three or four, we want to be casting Shakedown Heavy so we can put the counter from Fight Rigging on it right away and play the card underneath for free. It’s up to you to decide whether to cast the Fight Rigging first or Shakedown Heavy. If you suspect removal, maybe play out a Fight Rigging first and wait for the opponent to tap out. If you’re falling behind on the board against an aggressive deck and need a blocker, play out the Shakedown Heavy first. You won’t hit one of the hammers in the deck every time, but there are plenty of other great hits you can get.
Throughout the matches I played, I usually was able to cast multiple things for free from additional Fight Riggings. Even if you don’t have Shakedown Heavy to play right away with the Fight Rigging, there are many other creatures in the deck you can start building up counters on instead. If you don’t have the right cards to do all this by turn three or four, the other deck’s cards are primarily Jund. The mana-base is catered heavily towards that, so you can play as if you aren’t playing The Kami War or Fight Rigging and work on fixing your hand while developing on the board. I chose Voltage Surge as the removal in the deck since we have blood tokens and can also sacrifice Courier’s Briefcase to the Surge in a pinch.
The One-ofs
I chose to play an additional 20 cards because it opened up other synergies in the deck that I’ve had a blast tweaking here and there. This deck list is very much in progress, but a couple of essential cards are lurking here. The first is Grizzled Huntmaster. It’s my favorite inclusion in the deck, and the best part is that you only need to play one because there are many different ways to re-use the ability after you’ve already cast it. Playing this card opens up seven slots in the sideboard (in best of one) to have a toolbox of creatures for different situations. It’s up to you to choose what creatures to have in your sideboard; we’re playing all five colors, so they can be anything! Next is Callous Bloodmage. Cards like this with unique options when you cast them help to flesh out the deck and make it have answers to all different types of threats. Having one copy of this card won me a game because I was up against Invoke Justice/Velomachus Lorehold, and I drew it on turn three and was able to exile everything they had dumped into their graveyard.
Tenacious Underdog offers resilience to the deck since you can cast it repeatedly from the graveyard. One copy of Outland Liberator gives us a way to deal with artifacts/enchantments. Workshop Warchief gives us another excellent hit for Fight Rigging and is a great draw in the late game. Arming Gala is an enchantment I haven’t seen too many people trying out outside of the recent Chromatic Cube events. I chose to run one copy of it here. It isn’t the point of the deck (since we already play giant creatures) but let me tell you that when you can get this thing down and allow it to begin pumping all your creatures, it can get out of hand quickly. It perpetually gives all creatures in your hand, graveyard, and library +1+1 at the end of every turn. I attacked with an 18/18 Titan in one game!
Final Thoughts and Suggestions
Maybe I’m just reminiscing about the days of Emergent Ultimatum and having ways to cheat powerful cards into play outside of Historic. With the new Alchemy Horizons: Baldur’s Gate set, this format is beginning to grow in power level and mirror Historic heavily. I want The Kami War to work, and with all the fun I’ve had with this deck, I can’t say I would recommend going and using all your wildcards to craft it.
I can also say it’s not appropriately tuned against the meta to play on the ladder. However, playing it is a blast if you already have most of the cards or some wildcards to spare. I know the mana-base needs a bit of tweaking. There are so many potential tapped lands, which is unavoidable in a five-color deck, but it comes up often that having too many tapped lands causes you to get run over by aggressive-based decks.
I’m also uncertain if it’s even worthwhile to attempt running 80 cards instead of the usual 60. The deck’s one-ofs could be changed and altered any way you like. Sadly, the meta for Alchemy currently doesn’t support this type of deck succeeding just yet, as there are mostly mid-range/control decks like esper, aggressive decks, and combo decks. Who knows what will happen in the coming months. In the meantime, sit back, relax, and smash your opponent’s face with a Titan of Industry on turn 4!
