EDH Deck of the Week: Kresh, the Bloodbraided

Kresh is a Commander that has the power to end games very quickly if he goes unanswered for little more than a turn or two. However, he is really the only win condition in the deck which can make it rather fragile.

As you want Kresh to be as big as possible throughout the game, the shell of the deck needs to have a lot of removal and sacrifice outlets to allow Kresh to get to where he needs to be. You’ll notice some creatures in the list either destroy other creatures outright such as Avatar of Woe or replace themselves with a different number of tokens such as Thragtusk and Symbiotic Wurm.

The reasoning behind this is simple, killing off your opponents’ creatures or even your own to power up Kresh is exactly what you want to be doing.

As you are in Jund colours you get access to a lot of the nice stompy creatures green has to offer in cards such as Vigor which in its own right is an absolutely ridiculous card. I have played with Vigor in many of my previous EDH decks and it forces your opponents’ into a place they really don’t want to be in. Vigor and Hornet Queen are also a really potent combo. Having a wall of deathtouch blockers every turn that get bigger if anyone you’re playing against is brave enough to attack is brilliant.

Another key card in the deck is Urabrask the Hidden, he allows you to play as aggressively as you want to and sets your opponents back a turn in terms of blocking which could be all that is needed if you’re swinging at everyone with a hopefully powered up Kresh.

Every enchantment in the deck is crucial for this strategy. Grave Pact and Dictate of Erebos combined with your sacrifice outlets such as Ashnod’s Altar are a consistent way of keeping the board clear to ensure Kresh is able to do maximum damage. Asceticism basically gives Kresh hexproof, and the ability to be able to regenerate him if ever needed which really pushes this card to the point of being almost too good for this deck. Doubling Season and Parallel Lives are also good in this list because, as I mentioned earlier we can generate a lot of tokens if we choose to, so doubling or even tripling those tokens makes things even more difficult for your opponents to deal with. Greater Good is simply in this list for card draw as we will be needing a lot of it to draw ourselves into key cards from this list.

One more card I would like to mention for this list is Shizo, Death’s Storehouse. This land enables Kresh to, most of the time, become unblockable or against some other decks, force them to throw important creatures under Kresh to help keep themselves in the game. Shizo is a card you should be looking for throughout the game and if you feel the time is right, by all means tutor for it in ways such as Sidisi, Undead Vizier.

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