We bought all five of the new C20 Commander decks and ran them through a gauntlet against each other so we could see what each deck is good at, what it needs, and who is the strongest of the new Ikoria C20 Commanders!
Overview: Kathril (Kathy) wants to put as many big, bad creatures into the graveyard as possible and power up her team with groups of keyword abilities and by giving herself +1/+1 counters. Or you could just put all the counters on Kathy and make her a force to be reckoned with! The best targets for Kathy's ability stealing power are going to be Akroma, Angel of Wrath, Zetalpa, Primal Dawn, and Slippery Bogbonder which give her numerous abilities but most notably Indestructible, Hexproof, Flying, and Double strike. This much power can easily make Kathril big enough to take out a single opponent in one swing! Our back-up plan involves getting a few creatures out, then using Odric, Lunarch Marshal to give our whole team a big power-up.
Pros: This deck excels in the long game. Once it gets rolling with a big, Indestructible Kathy, your opponents will be scrambling to find a solution before you take them out. Even if we only get one or two ability counters on Kathy, Odric, Lunarch Marshal makes our team powerful enough to make it difficult to interact with, at least during combat.
Cons: While we do great in the long game, the early turns are pretty uneventful. There are few cards that can be played early, particularly early ramp and draw spells. Grisly Salvage and Nyx Weaver are great early play to put cards into our graveyard for Kathy to borrow abilities from, but the other options for getting cards into our graveyard are relatively limited. Often you'll have the ability to play Kathy but will not have any good targets making her less useful in those situations.
THE GAUNTLET
Kathril (Symbiotic Swarm) Vs Jirina Kudro (Ruthless Regiment)
Wins: 2 Losses: 1
In the early game Kathril is quickly outpaced by Jirina's tokens and small humans. Fortunately, Kathril becomes a powerhouse in the late game. It excelled at one sided board wipes with cards like Cataclysmic Gearhulk. These tools let Kathy out power the humans and take them down in the end. Those little humans never stood a chance.
Kathril Vs Gavi, Nest Warden (Mystic Intellect)
Wins: 3 Losses: 0
Kathy was clearly the front runner here. Gavi the Nest Warden and her Cycling themed deck did some awesome work here, and while the value engine of Gavi was powerful it didn't quite do enough to stop Kathy once she was up and running. Hexproof and indestructible make her hard to hit with Cycling abilities. Little tokens (even Gavi's cute Dinosaur Cat Tokens) can only do so much to block a super swoll Kathy with Flying. It was game over before the Nest Warden knew what hit her.
Kathril Vs Otrimi, the Ever-Playful (Enhanced Evolution)
Wins: 1 Losses: 2
Here we see the power of the newest Magic mechanic, Mutate! Stacking creature abilities onto Otrimi was incredibly powerful, and consistently found answers for dealing with Kathy and her shenanigans. While Kathy was able to find some answers to Otrimi's ever growing pile of creatures it always seemed to come back even stronger than before. We also ran into some consistency issues with Kathy in these games where we saw very little draw and ways to get stuff into our Graveyard. This made Kathy less than stellar when we were able to get her to stick to the field for any length of time. Mutants win this round
Kathril Vs Kalamax, the Stormsire (Arcane Maelstrom)
Wins: 3 Losses: 0
Another big win for Kathy here. Playing Archon of Valor targeting Instants is just backbreaking for Kalamax and was unable to recover. Kalamax seemed like it had a ton of synergy and a lot of really interesting plays available to it, but just didn't have the finishing power it needed to handle Kathy.
4 Person Games
Commander really is all about the multiplayer aspect so lets see how Kathy and her team fare against a group, rather than one deck at a time.
GAME 1: Kathril Vs Kalamax Vs Otrimi Vs Gavi
We ran into no real mana issues in this game, however with no ramp we got stuck to playing a single Land every turn. Could be worse but definitely could be improved upon. Draw and targeted removal were also lackluster this go-around. Early game we were able to play Satyr Warfinder and Grisly Salvage for quickly getting some cards into our graveyard, but was unfortunately not enough to get Kathy truly rolling. Without any major threats, Kathy quickly got knocked out by the rest of the table
GAME 2: Kathril Vs Jirina Vs Kalamax Vs Otrimi
Again no issues playing our one Land per turn here but with the upside of a Sol Ring! We may not see it every game but it's always an appreciated bit of ramp when we do. This game draw spells fell short again and we quickly played through our hand and resorted to top decking the rest of the game. Thankfully we drew into a much needed Despark for some removal mid-game. Thanks to an early Sol Ring, Daring Fiendbonder came out quickly and started hitting for 5 damage every turn before the other decks had much to say about it. As much damage as we were able to unleash on our opponents, they were having none of it and Kathy was once again forcibly booted from the table.
GAME 3: Kathril Vs Gavi Vs Jirina Vs Kalamax
No ramp, no draw, and Sunblast Angel was our only removal piece this whole game. I like Sunblast Angel but she's a conditional piece of removal and if your opponents aren't attacking all out you may find yourself never hitting anything good. Late game we managed to get a Deadbridge Chant into play but too little too late. Kathy did fairly little this game and didn't live to see the end of the round.
What we learned- All decks need ramp, card draw, and removal to function properly. These are all aspects of the game that this pre-con is sorely missing. On top of those card archetypes, Kathy also needs consistent ways to put stuff into our graveyard. However, within the context of the pre-con environment, Symbiotic Swarm is a fun deck that can have some big flashy plays, and is great for teaching newer players that in the right decks your graveyard can basically be an extension of your hand!
Want to take Symbiotic Swarm to the next level with Kathy leading the way? Check out our improved deck list HERE to find some sweet ways to upgrade her!
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