Nearly Identical - Korvold or Korvold?
October 12, 2023 by
Joshua Wood 
(Mayhem Devil | Art by Dmitry Burmak)
Always Hunger for More
Hello! Welcome back to Nearly Identical, a series where I take a look at two commanders with similar designs and archetypes, find out what separates them, and help you find your next commander! Today, I'm looking at two hungry Jund commanders that want to sacrifice permanents for value: Korvold, Fae-Cursed King and Korvold, Gleeful Glutton.
Jund Sacrifice is a well-known archetype that's a powerhouse in multiple formats. In Commander, Korvold, Fae-Cursed King dominates the Jund Sacrifice theme page on EDHREC and still leads as the most-built Jund commander by far. He's a menace that can draw cards just for playing the game. Sac a fetchland? Trigger. Sac a Treasure? Trigger. And to top it off, he's a flier that gets +1/+1 counters each time you sacrifice something, so he's also a win-condition.
Of course, on a revisit to the infamous world of Eldraine, we got a second rendition of the cursed king: Korvold, Gleeful Glutton. He still draws a bunch of cards and grows bigger with +1/+1 counters, but at a heftier cost of seven-mana and the restriction of needing to sacrifice a number of permanents with different card types in order to reduce that cost, making him a significant downgrade to the original. And by downgrade, I mean he's not as broken. Unlike the Fae-Cursed King, we can't just throw in every good-stuff card that makes treasure tokens and call it a day, we need to construct a deck that has a balance of multiple permanent types to enable him.
Today, I want to look at these two and find out how we can make them unique from one another and the types of cards we want to add. For the Gleeful Glutton, I want to try and power out Korvold and make him a menacing threat with commander damage. And for the Fae-Cursed King, I wanted to take advantage of all the new Food cards we've gotten since Throne of Eldraine and build a Korvold Food deck. But first, what do we want in our Jund Sacrifice decks?
Tireless Provisioner feels like a very underrated card. Players might pass on it because they're not running Landfall or Food synergies, but this on its own means you can double your mana every turn just by playing a land. It lets you ramp faster than the rest of the table and gets better if you're playing land ramp on top of it. Here, it'll help enable our strategies and give us fodder to fuel our commanders. Vat of Rebirth has become a favorite of mine in my aristocrat decks. If your deck is built around sacrificing, then getting four oil counters to reanimate our best creature won't ever be a problem.
You might be able to tell that sacrifice decks are one of my favorite themes, and part of that reason is because of Mayhem Devil. Mayhem Devil is one of our key payoffs for all the permanents we plan to sacrifice. It's a pinger that can pick off small creatures easily or big creatures with enough resources to spare. It also triggers when our opponents sacrifice permanents too. So, it's Rakdos' ideal version of passive income.
A King's Thirst Can Never Be Quenched
Now let's take a look at what we'll be feeding Korvold, Fae-Cursed King.
Gilded Goose is a weak impression of Birds of Paradise that didn't have much of an impact in Commander. However, in a dedicated Food deck, it can either make more Food or turn that Food into mana, making it an excellent early-game play. Night of the Sweets' Revenge turns all our passive Food tokens into mana rocks and even has an ability that'll sacrifice the enchantment and pump all our creatures equal to the number of Food tokens we have. It's one of our strongest ramp pieces and finishers in the deck.
And it's not a Food deck if we don't talk about our Master Chef, Gyome. Not only does he supply us with a bunch of Food tokens, but he's also a protection piece for our commander, which is important since he'll be targeted on sight. However, Gyome isn't just a protection piece. His tap ability can be used to tap down our opponents' creatures as well. You should read Jonathan Meyersberg's deep dive on Gyome and all the applications his ability can be used for. But now that we've talked about enablers for our deck, how about we get to the main course?
Outside of swinging with Korvold, we have a few other ways to seize victory. This is, after all, an inherent lifegain deck because of Food tokens, so Blossoming Bogbeast can be a powerful overrun effect the more Food we sacrifice. Alongside Mayhem Devil and the like, Marionette Master is potentially our most lethal creature, as we can deal four to an opponent for each Food we sac. And since everything in our deck wants to sacrifice Food, it's pretty much a game-ender when it comes down.
There are a few cards in the deck that drain our opponents whenever an artifact goes to our graveyard, so a combo like Peregrin Took and Experimental Confectioner that loops making and sacrificing Food tokens to draw your entire deck will pair nicely with the previously mentioned drain effects.
Finally, I wanted to include a weirdo card that I think will take our opponents by surprise. Rampage of the Clans is an instant that destroys all artifacts and enchantments and replaces them with 3/3 Centaurs. While this has a pretty significant drawback of giving our opponents 3/3s after we blew up their Sol Ring, if we cast this on someone's end step, we can turn all our Food tokens into 3/3s. It's green's impression of Rise and Shine.
Let's check out the deck!
Korvald, Food Motivated
View on Archidekt
Give Me Everything On the Menu
Now let's look at what we're adding to Korvold, Gleeful Glutton.
A big part of this deck is dedicated to ramping and getting Korvold onto the battlefield. His cost reduction bares similar resemblance to Dargo, the Shipwrecker, where it's based on the number of permanents we sacrifice, except here it's based card types among permanents sacrificed, so we want to run cards like Goldhound. For one mana, Goldhound is an artifact creature that has a sacrifice ability akin to a treasure token. And because it has two different card types, it'll actually be equivalent to generating three mana towards casting Korvold. Diamond Lion offers us a similar effect, generating five mana toward casting Korvold. Getting this down on turn two can give us a turn three Korvold with one mana to spare. The downside of discarding our hand is really an upside in this deck.
The only way we can draw cards off of Korvold is by having as many permanent card types in our graveyard as possible. So discarding our hand or filling our graveyard is all part of our strategy. And what better way to fill our graveyard than with Shigeki. He ramps out lands, fills our yard, and the best part is that he's an enchantment creature, so by sacrificing him or by Channeling him, we can fuel one or both of Korvold's abilities. Speaking of sac outlets, how do we plan on sacrificing our permanents?
Fans of EDHREC will know just how strong Baba Lysaga, Night Witch is from our very own Joseph Schultz, and that's no different here either. Baba Lysaga can sacrifice any permanent to draw us cards if they happen to have had three or more card types among them. Not only is she an excellent source of card advantage and drain, but she can reduce Korvold's cost by at least three mana. She can even sacrifice permanents that are harder to sacrifice like lands and enchantments that don't have innate sacrifice abilities. I like these commanders that challenge players to build their decks with different card types in mind.
There aren't many sac outlets that let you sacrifice any permanent so I think even a coin flip card like Tavern Scoundrel deserves a mention. While you will lose some flips, on the odds you do win, you pay one to sac a non-artifact permanent, make two treasures on a winning flip, sac the treasures, and now you've generated at least four mana towards casting Korvold. Vraska, Golgari Queen is another piece of tech that can sacrifice any permanent. While she's not that strong at four mana, she does fill in our planeswalker slot and can remove any nonland permanent that's giving us trouble. And if she dies, she'll just add to Korvold anyway. Now let's see how we plan on closing out games.
Lizard Blades is an artifact creature that can be Reconfigured into an Equipment. Since Korvold draws cards and gets +1/+1 counters on combat damage, giving him double strike means that he'll hit even harder on the second strike. And the fact that it has two card types adds to the synergy.
Moraug, Fury of Akoum will give us additional combats whenever we play lands on our second main phase. With all the fetchlands we have in this deck, we can reliably get two additional combats out of him. In a deck that wants to sacrifice creatures, Vicious Shadows can output a ton of damage. And since this triggers anytime a creature dies, it can turn our removal spells into player removal spells.
Take a look at the deck!
Korvold's Everything Bagel Special
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The Final Course
Korvold, Fae-Cursed King leads with 14,000 decks and is currently the 14th most-built commander in the past two years. After three years since his release, he mostly sees play at higher-powered tables. Players have either stopped playing or playing against Korvold decks at lower-powered tables unless they're ready to get overwhelmed with value. His ability is so easy to abuse that even weaker builds can still look powerful. He's an example of the type of commander players don't want to play against.
Korvold, Gleeful Glutton is a successful attempt at making a more fair Korvold. You still get to draw cards and have a large dragon, but relegating that to a seven-mana creature that triggers on combat damage means you have to work a little harder for that payoff. And don't get me wrong, the fact that he has haste and trample now is big. He's still a scary commander, he's just more unique and less broken. However, he's not getting any love from the player base. With only 400 decks, and being the least-built commander from the Wilds of Eldraine Commander Set, I think players either aren't up for the challenge or don't think it's worth it.
Let me know what you think of these commanders! Do you prefer to snack on your food and generate a ton of value or do you want to try a bit of everything? Let me know in the comments below, and I'll see you next time!
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Joshua Wood
Josh is a creative writer that started playing Magic when Throne of Eldraine was released. He loves entering combat and pressuring life totals, and to him, commander damage is always relevant. Outside of brewing many commander decks, he can be found prepping his D&D campaigns with a cat purring in his lap.
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