Hello fellow Planeswalkers! My playgroup plays mostly commander because we love how everything plays out, the heart racing wins/loses. The first set we ever got was the commander 2016 set and we've added onto our collection with commander anthology. For commander anthology I picked Heavenly Inferno with Kaalia of the Vast because I like her backstory. In most games I have played with Kaalia she doesn't stand up so well to the other decks. I saw the spoilers for the upcoming commander 2017 set and it seems like a good opportunity to combine Kaalia with a tribal commander 2017 deck. My question is would it be smarter to leave Kaalia as a stand alone deck and upgrade it or combine her with an upcoming commander 2017 deck?
Well, Dragons directly supports Kaalia and if another deck is Angels, you now have two decks giving you new toys for Kaalia.
I think most decks from Commander releases are better to be upgraded than combined together. You may ultimately combine Kaalia with Dragons and potentially Angels (if there is one) but what you are really going to do is probably just picking the specific cards you want from each deck and adding them to Kaalia.
In that sense, I agree with JDViant's approach. Start upgrading it now to get your mana base better (C17 will almost certainly be lacking in this sense) and start replacing some of the weaker cards with some that either ramp or give you more utility or whatever. Then, start looking at the existing Demons, Angels, and Dragons to see if there are any you want to include and work towards those. Just be aware that there may be new cards released that you want to slot into Kaalia so be sure to leave a few flex slots open for new cards so you aren't totally retooling your deck (and buying a bunch of cards) only to find you want to put 10 new cards into the deck.
Also, I think in the long term this is an approach you should use with any deck, not necessarily the precons. If you want to start with a precon as your base, more power to you. And, if you want to start from scratch, that is fine too. However, as time goes on the thought process with new cards should be "will this card fit into this deck" or "what cards in this precon make this deck better". I think looking at it from the standpoint of "which precon can I combine this deck with to make it better" is flawed and will generally make your deck worse if you are truly trying to find the best elements of both to combine together.
The Kaalia deck in particular was very hit or miss out of the box, I remember it played too much lands and too little draw. So upgrading right away gives you a good boost that you will need anyway. Having said that, I would wait for the C17 decks before spending serious money, if only to be able to perhaps take the deck in a different direction than all the existing ones. The Kaalia deck is quite "solved" at this point.
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Commander 2017 is tribal they won't help those decks
One of those is dragon because the set symbol revealed matches the leaks
And the artist for Ramos put the exact same picture from the card on artstation.com (which was taken down by he way.)
I think most decks from Commander releases are better to be upgraded than combined together. You may ultimately combine Kaalia with Dragons and potentially Angels (if there is one) but what you are really going to do is probably just picking the specific cards you want from each deck and adding them to Kaalia.
In that sense, I agree with JDViant's approach. Start upgrading it now to get your mana base better (C17 will almost certainly be lacking in this sense) and start replacing some of the weaker cards with some that either ramp or give you more utility or whatever. Then, start looking at the existing Demons, Angels, and Dragons to see if there are any you want to include and work towards those. Just be aware that there may be new cards released that you want to slot into Kaalia so be sure to leave a few flex slots open for new cards so you aren't totally retooling your deck (and buying a bunch of cards) only to find you want to put 10 new cards into the deck.
Also, I think in the long term this is an approach you should use with any deck, not necessarily the precons. If you want to start with a precon as your base, more power to you. And, if you want to start from scratch, that is fine too. However, as time goes on the thought process with new cards should be "will this card fit into this deck" or "what cards in this precon make this deck better". I think looking at it from the standpoint of "which precon can I combine this deck with to make it better" is flawed and will generally make your deck worse if you are truly trying to find the best elements of both to combine together.
If my post has no tags, then i posted from my phone.