MTG Salvation

I want to build a new Orzhov deck. I should probably wait until January to see what legends come out of rtrtr but I'm way to impatient for that. Krav, the Unredeemed and Regna, the Redeemer have caught my eye. There isn't really a shortage of Orzhov life gain generals but which is the best? This partnership looks strong to me but the question on my mind is whether something like Karlov is just way better as a lifegain general.

It should be self evident but the idea is to gain life, trigger the Angel to make tokens and then if you want, sac those tokens to the Demon to draw cards, gain life and make Krav bigger. The cool part is that Regna triggers on each end step not just your own. In a 4 player game you can sac 1 creature to Krav on each turn for potentially 4 cards and 8 tokens, 4 life and 4 +1/+1 counters per round. Not bad for 4 black mana right?

The only problem I have is their cmc is expensive. That said, partner has proven itself to be a powerful mechanic in and of itself. What do you guys think? Do they look good to you or would I be better off with something like Karlov?

Personally, I do intend to build a K&R list sometime in the near future and the pair strikes me as an incredibly powerful engine with sacrifice synergy.

There are plenty of small, easy token enablers that Krav can eat up to refill your hand and keep the war machine running. Combine him with traditional sac payoffs like Black Market, Grave Pact or Dictate of Erebos.

Regna strikes me as the second gear, a backup - just a few pieces of incremental lifegain (Kambal, Consul of Allocation, Polluted Bonds, etc) can keep a Life subtheme up when it directly works with one of your Commanders.

If you manage to get both out, you'd eventually accumulate enough value to just crush the rest of the table I'd suspect. Aside from the obvious synergies they're fairly open-ended as far as actual win-condition is concerned. I was thinking of making them a tutorless combo deck, intent on grinding out my advantage and drawing into my pieces. But yours will depend on your meta, of course.

They be strong if your definition of strong is a deck that can draw at least 2 cards every single turn for a single B

Quote from Grimoire »

Personally, I do intend to build a K&R list sometime in the near future and the pair strikes me as an incredibly powerful engine with sacrifice synergy.

There are plenty of small, easy token enablers that Krav can eat up to refill your hand and keep the war machine running. Combine him with traditional sac payoffs like Black Market, Grave Pact or Dictate of Erebos.

Regna strikes me as the second gear, a backup - just a few pieces of incremental lifegain (Kambal, Consul of Allocation, Polluted Bonds, etc) can keep a Life subtheme up when it directly works with one of your Commanders.

If you manage to get both out, you'd eventually accumulate enough value to just crush the rest of the table I'd suspect. Aside from the obvious synergies they're fairly open-ended as far as actual win-condition is concerned. I was thinking of making them a tutorless combo deck, intent on grinding out my advantage and drawing into my pieces. But yours will depend on your meta, of course.

Its kind of interesting that I'm thinking of going the other way and building more around Regna using more Regna like affects such as Crested Sunmare, Regal Bloodlord, Angelic Accord and then really pushing the life gain aspect into other things like Karlov, Aetherflux Resivoir, Sanguine Bond etc.

Of course I have to use the best sac payoffs cause it's just silly not to. I wonder if our decklists would end up looking pretty similar at the end of the day

Don't get me wrong - I love incremental advantage. But Life gain in EDH doesn't have the best track record as a primary theme, and I don't think Regna's payoff compares to the alternatives (Uncle Karl, Ayli, Oloro, or even Licia, Sanguine Tribune). Kambal, Consul of Allocation may even be the better Commander if that's how you want to build/play the deck, since he can come down early, bleed your opponents, and trigger these effects every turn.

I could be biased as a black player, but Krav having "Sac X, draw X" is just straight better in my opinion than "make 2 dudes", if you decide to go with the Partners. Making tokens to sacrifice is easy. Getting your life gain value engines set up is harder.

Fair enough. Thats the input I'm looking for. If Karlov is the better choice for that strategy then perhaps I'm better off building Karlov. Kamble doesn't interest me Personally because I'm more interested in having a payoff in the zone as opposed to the thing that drains life. This duo caught my eye because I get to have both and draw cards too.

Hey, you do what you want to do ultimately. If you think you can make them work, I can't imagine the infrastructure of the deck would change too drastically between Commanders (if you decided to try the Partners over another first).

I like my Commander being an enabler, a payoff, but preferably both. Krav is a payoff for playing into tokens for sure. Regna is the enabler to me. Makes it a nice fit.

Even if you don't go as hard down the life gain path and focus more on Krav, you should still consider running a few things like Crested Sunmare and Regal Bloodlord. The synergy seems strong with Krav.