Foxy
- Aug 27, 2020
- 7 min read

Kalamax, More Like Value-Max

Updated: Aug 31, 2020

Kalamax, the King of Value

Kalamax is all about that value. He just wants to sit around all day and reap the benefits of a bunch of little spells, and helps us out by doubling up those spells. Drawing two cards? Yeah, how about four. Kill a creature? Too easy, let's make it three. Searching up a single land? Weak sauce, we'll go ahead and double that up. So what if he's got a few hoops to jump through (ya know like being tapped AND only coping the first instant each turn). Kalamax is his own value engine and he's powerful enough that these "setbacks" are well paid for. All hail the King of Value!

Nap Naps

It takes a lot of power to double this many spells each turn so the first of our hoops to jump through is getting Kalamax into play and then getting him tapped as soon as possible. Sure we could wait a whole turn cycle, hope he survives, then try and attack, but this just seems clunky. He isn't much of attacker and we don't want him dying in combat so soon. Cards like Cryptolith Rite, Paradise Mantle, and Rishkar, Peema Renegade let us tap our Commander for extra Mana to fuel his spell casting shenanigans, unfortunately if he doesn't have haste that tapping will have to wait a turn. On the other hand Springleaf Drum and Honor-Worn Shaku let us tap Kalamax down the turn he comes into play because we aren't using an ability on him! Freed from the Real can tap Kalamax at any point for a single Blue, and in a pinch we can untap him for a blocker on an opponent's turn. Predatory urge is a surefire way to kill a lot of stuff on our opponent's boards, especially when our boi Kalamax is getting +1 counters every time we copy a spell. He gets big fast! Lastly who doesn't want to see a giant Dino drive a ship? Smuggler's Copter and Cultivator's Caravan can be crewed by Kalamax at instant speed and give us little creatures should we need them.

All the Tree Stars

Now that Kalamax is laying down he's ready to feast on all the Tree Stars we can get him. Being a little bigger than Little Foot we need to feed him a ton. Thankfully the ramp spells we have here are instants and Kalamax is all ready to double them up for us. Crop Rotation may have us sacrifice one land, but as it's part of the casting cost we get to search for two lands and only sacrifice one! Also its any land, not just a forest, not a basic, ANY LAND! Evolution Charm has a few things it can do, but mainly it'll grab us any color basic lands we need to ensure we hit future land drops. Growth Spiral is already great but two draws and two land drops? Ban worthy (I'm joking please don't). Harrow getting us four lands? Yeah, I know. Feels good. Snap and Rewind can untap a huge amount of mana for us if we're doubling up on them. Baral, Chief of Compliance and Goblin Electromancer aren't exactly Tree Stars themselves but they do make our spells cheaper so they can stay. Oh, and Untapping with Seedborn Muse each turn gives us full access to our hands every turn so we can just go wild.

Brain Juice!

Now that Kalamax has had time to digest all those tree leaves he's got the brain power to think about all those spells we'll be doubling. That means drawing cards! Anticipate basically says "Look at the top six of your library and pick your two favorite cards". Chemister's Insight can be cast two consecutive turns thanks to the Jump Start mechanic, and discarding a single card isn't much of a downturn for this deck. Dig Through Time, Frantic Search, Fact or Fiction, and many, many others will let us churn through this deck in no time flat. But the best, absolute best is casting Visions of Beyond. In a normal deck hitting 20 cards in your graveyard might be a chore, but not with Kalamax drawing a thousand cards each turn cycle. Having 20 cards in any graveyard means Visions becomes essentially an Ancestral Recall. Who doesn't want to play that card in every deck? What's even better? That's right! A second free Ancestral Recall! Final point to remember, any card that makes us discard as an additional casting cost only us requires to discard once, no matter how many times we copy it. So before you tell me I should have added Faithless Looting, remember you'd have to discard two cards every time the spell resolves, so I chose to leave it out. Not value-ful enough for the King.

Don't Disturb the Naps!

Let a sleeping dog lie. This rule applies to Kalamax too. So while Kalamax is tapped how are we going to protect him? Pesky artifacts and enchantments don't mean anything to Kalamax when we're slinging spells like Artifact Mutation and Wilt around. Opponent's creatures disturbing your slumbering buddy? Pongify, Rapid Hybridization, Mana Confluence, Reality Shift, and Snap will take care of them for you. Chain of Vapor and Chaos Warp are left to take care of any non-land permanents still giving you a hard time. And of course even instants and sorcery spells are no match for you. Avoid Fate, Mystic Confluence, Narset's Reversal, and Deflecting Swat are there to counter anything you don't like. Doubling up a counterspell might not be the coolest thing its still nice to have them on hand. Besides, you can cast something you'd like to copy first then cast your counter, provided you have the mana for it. At the very worst you get a +1 counter on Kalamax just for copying your spell. Not bad!

Sleepovers

Naps are more fun with friends, so let's invite some. The new Curious Heard can create us a huge amount of Beast tokens for four mana which we can use as chump blockers in order to keep our life total nice and high. Murmuring Mystic, Talrand Sky Summoner, and Young Pyromancer are all here to benefit from us casting the spells we were planning on casting anyway. The fact that a lot of these tokens have Flying is no laughing matter either. With enough tokens we may just be able to get in for enough damage to kill our opponents. But Kalamax has some even better ways to off the table...

Swatting Flies

Ok nap time's over and Kalamax is ready to take out the trash. There's a few built in ways for Kalamax to take down the table so let's take a look. First is good ol' Commander Damage. Copying four spells per turn cycle means our big dinosaur friend gets 4 +1 counters before it untaps again. It may take a little bit but we can hopefully kill a few players while looking for our combo. Rogue's Passage is an easy way to make sure nothing gets in our way. Too slow for you? Yeah, me too. Since we're all about doubling spells we're going to stick to the theme. Narset's Reversal, Twin Cast, and Reverberate are our major combo pieces. With Kalamax tapped these cards get copied, and each copy can copy our copy so we can keep copying our copy. Copy? Now that Kalamax has a near infinite amount of +1 counters our Rogue's Passage plan seems a little better. Then again, Soul's Fire and Chandra's Ignition will basically win the game outright so we'll just stick to those. Lastly, Ral, Storm Conduit is both flavorfully named and kills our opponents outright when we make our infinite copies. Maybe we should call him Kombo-max.

Deck-stras

With so many neat instants for Kalamax we've got to sleep with one eye open and protect our spells. Adding cards like Boseiju, Who Shelters All and Vexing Shusher can help keep our spells from getting hindered by our opponents counters. Seriously what kind of monster plays those? And if we find ourselves in need of some graveyard casting, Archaeomancer, Past in Flames, and Surreal Memoir can help get some of our important combo pieces back. Snapcaster Mage and Torrential Gearhulk might be some good includes if you've got the spare cash to throw at this deck. Final neat little trick you can pull off, if you copy Crop Rotation you can pull a Dark Depths and Thespian Stage from your deck and get yourself a big ol' Marit Lage to threaten the table with.

And that about wraps things up. Have any cards you would have included instead? Something super cool you'd love to see copied by Kalamax? Let us know by leaving a comment below!

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