Awesome deck! It looks pretty consistent! However, I'd also look at Demonic Consultation and Laboratory Maniac. Cast Consultation for Lab Man which gets Lab Man to hand. Cast Lab Man and then recast Consultation with Kess's ability but this time, name something that isn't in the deck. This will exile your whole deck. Cast a draw spell now to win.
I would recommend using fewer combos and adding more counter spells and board clears. This deck is also missing some mana ramp that makes it hard surviving the early game. The deck falls a little short on card fetch, but its okay considering the low price. All in all a decent beginner deck I would say.
Most cards are what, like less than $1ish right? Save for a few cards he considers important, I’d guess counterspell ends up being more meta specific over the $0.25 counters that are generally “good enough.”
I haven't actually watched the video yet, but I assume it's impractical to keep UU open in a tri-color deck with a budget manabase. Sometimes I use negate/essence scatter over classic counterspell for that reason
I made a Kess deck... my friends banned it permanently... I call it “Kess, Treason mage” and includes about 20 treason effects in it and focuses on stealing things and then sacrificing them for profit... Stalking Vengeance is a fun combo with it...
Adrason it was pretty mean. Absurdly mean. I let one of them play it against me, just in a 1v1 game, just to see how awful it was and it was just terrible. They didn’t even get stalking vengeance out but I couldn’t cast creatures fast enough. I tried casting my 5 mana commander, they stole it, hit me with it, then sacrificed it to draw 2 cards. Rinse/repeat. I’m sad it was banned, but I completely understand it. It’s also pretty easy to counter imo. Flooding the board with tiny things makes it hard to break through. It also makes Kess a huge target.
Thanks for your consistent, high-quality content Mitch! I tend to shy away from infinite combos that are repetitive or unfun, but this deck avoids those pitfalls! Setting aside some of my paycheck now.
1)tutor for behold the beyond 2)resolve behold the beyond fetching "mana geyser", "mizzix's mastery", and "fork" 3)win on the turn you can cast mana geyser for 8 or more. Get exsanguinate, dark ritual, and a swamp with the 2nd behold the beyond from the overloaded mizzix mastery after you start with mana geyser... all because the roon player slowed the game down with a perplexing chimera. So once that finally got taken away I just went off
I just did this and had a narset's reversal in the graveyard to copy my first mana geyser after an opponent tries to counter it. It actually made the turn even better haha. Fizzles the counter spell and then I could cast mana geyser a 2nd time and increasing vengeance it before I did the mizzix mastery craziness... with a mind's desire resolved at the end too... as if the exsanguinate I got to copy with ral with x equal to 39 wasn't enough :)
Since it's Kess we are talking about here (he mentions her ability at the beginning and throughout the video often enough) it is fairly obvious that all of the sorceries and instans can be used again for more value. That is her main gimmick after all.
A three card combo in a 100 card deck of single cards (even with a handful of relatively expensive tutors, which you still need to draw into and ramp up to) is still far more casual than a two card combo in a 60 card deck with playsets...and don't forget you also have 3 players gunning against those pieces rather than just 1. If you think it's comparable, you clearly have never played Vintage or even Modern.
Wayne Feller because you have to run a bunch of cards that do nothing by themselves so they are essentially dead cards. And with a budget you aren’t able to run any good tutors or mana so this deck is only really punishing players who want to run no interaction and play solitaire because this deck will play solitaire better.
@@ProaMc and that is fine. People should run more interaction instead of crying about combos. As long as the general powerlevel among decks is similar, people should really get over infinite combos and be ready to interact with them. Also, playing a bunch of cards that do essentially nothing by themselves is the definition of the 6 mana do nothing enchantment that are just very often seen in commander in casual decks ;)
Final Parting! YES! Kess was my first EDH deck I built when I really got into EDH, and I realized how good Final Parting was! An excellent budget card to say the least, and one of the last cards to remove when optimizing, I would expect! One VERY important thing...this was CLEARLY misprinted. Obviously, this was meant to be Final Farting, what with the wafting purple smoke around Liliana's legs and everything, and how your opponents will feel ill soon after it resolves. :P
I like the content of these videos, but the vibes are off somehow... However I found a way to fix this. I listen to The Commander's Quarters at 75% speed. Nice drunk narration.
Can you do an upgraded/updated version of this deck using a man lab effect? I know you hate lab man effects but I'd love to see your take on this type of build!
I'm running this exact kess deck with the upgrades,I've seen success pulling off infinite etb/cast triggers with drowned secrets and Sage's row denizen on board, how do I pull off the Sunscorched desert combo?
50 dollars? My closet will make this deck 5 dollars. Joking aside, Thanks Troy!! This is exactly what I am looking for in a deck. Budget, Grixis, AND Combo???
Not going to lie about it, I thought about this for months because I'm rather competitive player and I'm just not big enough into commander at the moment to invest into a deck at said level sooooo I've relied on mitch and the spike feeders budget competitive episodes. Then this was born and I may be in love.
Troy Tellinghuisen I’m in the same boat but it’s my actual budget that is this low. Part of why I have these cards is because I’ve been slowly working on my own all year and this has been a godsend!
I don't know how often you guys look at comments but I have 3 decks I'm attempting to build Lovisia Coldeyes, Anafenza(Humans) and Jarad Golgari Lich Lord I want to build them on a 25$ budget but have no ideas how. I just don't want to use the persist combo Jarad if that's possible.
If you want a competitive Kess deck, put Doomsday in this deck and build around finding/casting that. For example, Thassa's Oracle. I've won on turn 4 and even turn 3 with this combo
Just got this ordered...hopefully it was an affiliate link. Only got two upgrades nothing crazy. Love the videos though man! I don’t like playing the same commander over and over so these budget decks are amazing!
Yooo! Can you do an Oko, thief of Crowns Oathbreaker deck? Throne of Eldraine is about to release and Oathbreaker is pretty popular. Also, Food mechanics seem very interesting!!!
currently building a Kess deck with Torment of Hailfire as the main wincon. It is by no means a budget deck, it is a Cedh deck but this build is very nice for budget!! I love combo decks, and this is inspiring enough it ALMOST made me change some of my strategy. My main strategy is to storm off with rituals into the torment, or tutor for a Notion Thief or Narset Parter of Veils and hit wheel effects to gain a huge advantage, also utilizes Waste Not and Liliana's caress for a glass cannon strategy to make sure i can 1 shot with the Torment.
I swapped out an island with high market; it's been a great addition to the deck. There was one game where I had the deadeye + drake combo but no graveyard (exiled), luckily i had mnemonic wall and high market in play and drew connive//concoct. I started a chain of concoct + high market + mnemonic wall to mill my dualcaster + twinflame win combo. I'm also thinking about adding nim deathmantle as a backup combo because the deadeye drake combo is famous and having deadeye out while waiting for the next turn to cast drake is too risky.
So is it possible for you to make a Voltron like deck for Traxos, Scourge of Kroog ? or do you have a idea? or like building a construct tribal or golem deck with it? like giving it Blackblade Reforged with Swiftfoot Boots ?
Cool deck as always mitch! One thing I've noticed about a lot of budget decks is they need to play TONS of taplands. Have you thought about devoting some budget to the cheaper manabase upgrades, like painlands and battlelands? It might not be the most exciting part of deckbuilding, but having a good manabase can make a deck much stronger and more fun to play.
I've got a Kess alter art that's John Constantine. Since rockstar Johnny is always burning his bridges and ruining friendships, I thought Kess and her ability fit him. There's a slight sac theme and various shenanigans, but of course the main thing is to slam dunk spells into enemies faces over and over.
I will most definitely add the infanate Mana combo with ghostly flicker into my kess deck amazing work around with this commander it's nice to see something different ur perspective brought me some light to my build with her ❤️ commander quarters
Do you think throwing in Great Whale even though it’s 7 mana would be a good idea to get another Peregrine Drake effect into the deck or should I just keep the CMC of the deck to lower cards?
Love the videos still, but I think you have to slow down the pace a bit. lol It was like a machine gun to my face the speed of this one. Couldn't really absorb all the cards and strats being discussed without rewinding at times.
Since Ral is in here, a good 2 card combo with Kess specifically is Chain of Smog. If you minus Ral to copy it, and you have a counterspell in hand, you just target yourself with the discard and choose to copy infinitely and burn the table out. Because Kess allows you to cast that discarded counterspell to the graveyard, your opponents will need either 2 ways to remove a PW at instant speed, or 3 counters for both copies of Smog. 2 very unlikely scenarios in most pods. It is a bit all in, but for Kess specifically it is a combo that Final Parting can just win from.
Another fantastic card is burning Inquiry, think about it with kess on the field your burning Inquiry is a ancestral recall but there is the random Claus but as long as you can get a couple instant and sorcerys your golden ;)
Loved this guide and ended up using the decklist as a guide for about half the cards i use in what ive come to call Spellslinger (i went least amount of creatures most amount of beneficial instants as possible)
is Creators' Quarters still going on. You inspired to join the content side of MTG. Recently i finaly started a channel and wanted to see if Creators' Quarters was still in effect.
Awesome deck as always man! Ive been using the Hapatra budget deck for awhile and the $50 budget is amazing. Also i feel like Xenegos is an incredibly budget deck besides the commander being $10-15. Xenegos decks in some playgroups also have a lot of politics in them since no one wants to die really fast. You could even make it an annihilator sub theme making your opponents sacrifice perments as well as taking huge amounts of damage during your combat steps. Anyways keep up the great work!
Interesting take on Kess! I'd consider Crux of Fate as another board wipe. Since the deck is relatively light on creatures, Crux of Fate can help keep the board clear. With the mana rocks being used, getting Kess back out onto the field shouldn't tax us as much as the spell would damage our opponents. And at around $1, it's within the budget requirements of the deck. Just a thought!
Dude thanks! Ive been trying to make riku etb work for several months now but these combos can be abused there I already have most of these cards. Also Warstorm Surge is a card that i love but never expected to see in a real focused deck
Does the Ghostly Flicker combo work? Those cards will re-enter the battlefield WHILE Flicker is resolving, so it won't be in the graveyard yet to return with Archaeomancer/Chronarch/Skaab. ...no? The Naru Meha combo actually shows this itself: Flicker is still on the stack, not in the graveyard, when it ETBs, which is what allows you to copy it! How can it be both in the graveyard when Archaeomancer ETBs but on the stack when Naru Meha ETBs?? The two combos' explanations contradict each other... (I'm sure I must be wrong as this channel is usually well-researched, so don't think I'm being dismissive or arrogant of knowing rules - I just want to understand how it DOES work!)
I'm something of a Grixis combo aficionado so allow me to explain: By the time that Archaeomancer and Peregrine Drake re-enter the battlefield and their ETB triggers go on the stack, Ghostly Flicker has resolved and is now in the graveyard. It works just fine. Naru Meha/Dualcaster works differently, as they COPY the flicker spell, not recur it from grave once it has already resolved. Therefore once the copy of flicker resolves and puts the new Meha/Dualcaster ETB trigger on the stack, the original flicker is still on the stack to be targeted and copied again. Hope that clears up your confusion.
I appreciate the video, but I don't really like infinite combo decks. I have a few myself, and it makes the games (in my playgroup at least) play out pretty similarly. You need people who want to do something similarly broken to get good games with decks like this.
My one thought is why not add in some storm cards? grapeshot, tendrils of agony and brain freeze are all commander legal and would work great with infinite casts of ghostly flicker. plus none of them are very expensive at all on the places i buy my cards (mostly Cardmarket).
Important thing to note about the dualcaster/flicker combo is it *doesn't* cast flicker; it copies it, which doesn't add to the storm count. That's why Ral Zarek has the text "cast or copy," so it will trigger from interactions like this. You can still storm off with Release to the Wind and Baral's Expertise, though.
This is definetly my sort of deck, i love playing decks with alternate wins to just direct damage, and This deck gives the choice of mill or ping depending on your draw. Definetly want to gives This deck a go when i have some spare cash, especially as i have little success with tri colour decks :)