Kaalia of the Vast

Overview

Kaalia is a discount machine bolted to a 2/2 flyer. Her attack trigger — whenever she attacks an opponent, put an Angel, Demon, or Dragon from your hand onto the battlefield tapped and attacking that player — means the top-end of this list costs you an attack, not its mana. A turn-3 Kaalia drops a creature you'd otherwise cast on turn 7, already swinging.

That's the engine. The rest of the deck answers two questions: how do you get Kaalia to turn sideways more than once, and what do you drop when she does. The fast mana, the haste outlets, the protection, the removal — all of it exists to buy those swings and keep her alive for the next.

The deck has two gears, and you choose which to run based on the table and your hand:

• Aggro: fast mana into an early Kaalia, cheat a game-ending threat, and use extra-combat effects to cheat again the same turn. Fastest clock in the deck; how it steals games from slower tables.
• Midrange: when Kaalia is contested or dead, grind. Hardcast/sneak attack the threats, reanimate them instead of Kaalia cheating them, lean on a deep interaction package, and close with a combo. The deck is threat-dense and controlling enough to win without her.

Neither line is "correct" — read the table. A pod with open red mana and a Swords in every deck is a midrange game. A pod fumbling their openers is an aggro game.

White runs slightly under-sourced, so in a two-lander it's the source you most want to see. Black carries the tutors and reanimation; Red carries the combo halves and the more aggressive fliers; White carries the protection and the premium removal.

Mulligan Guide

The keep question is "can you use her, and do you have a plan if you can't."

Keep a hand that has both:

1. A path to a protected, hasty Kaalia — mana plus a haste outlet or protection — or a credible hardcast/reanimate plan (fast mana + a threat + Reanimate/Entomb).
2. Something worth doing on the payoff turn — an Angel/Demon/Dragon to cheat, or a tutor to find one. A hand that lands Kaalia with nothing to drop just swings for 2.

Snap-keep the explosive openers: fast mana + Kaalia + haste + a combo enabler. Most of those are a turn-3/4 kill.

Mulligan all-lands-no-threats, all-threats-no-mana, and hands that land Kaalia but can neither protect her nor do anything the turn she connects. Free protection in the opener changes your speed, not your keep decision — with it, jam early; without it, keep a reasonable hand and play the patient midrange game until a safe window opens.

Game Plan

The aggro line (default when you have the mana)

• Turns 1–2: fast mana — Sol Ring, Mana Vault, a Mox, Lotus Petal, a Signet/Talisman. You're racing to a hasty Kaalia on turn 2 or 3. Gemstone Caverns is a free extra land before turn 1 when you're on the draw — exile your worst card and take it; that's the difference between turn 3 and turn 2. Simian Spirit Guide and Dark Ritual are one-shot mana that exist only for the turn you go off: spend them to deploy-and-protect in the same turn, or to find the last for Sneak Attack or an Aggravated Assault activation. Don't hold them for a "better" turn that never comes.
• On connect, cheat the creature that ends the game now, not the biggest one. Ranked when the goal is to close:
  • Master of Cruelties — puts a player to 1, and Kaalia's own 2 damage finishes them (see Combos). The cleanest single-swing kill in the deck — but it only hits a single player and only once per trip (though once he dies — chump-blocked into his own deathtouch, or wiped — Liesa returns him to hand for a re-run). Save this for finishing the last opponent. Usually puts a target on your back if you don't already have one.
  • Gisela, Blade of Goldnight — doubles your damage and halves theirs; makes the whole board lethal.
  • Avacyn, Angel of Hope — your board becomes indestructible; stabilizes and locks in the beatdown.
  • Balefire Dragon — one-sided board wipe on connect against a creature deck.
• Snowball: each extra combat is another cheat. Aurelia → Aggravated Assault → Bloodthirster chains can chew through a table in a single turn.

The midrange line (default when Kaalia is contested or dead)

Losing Kaalia is a signal to switch gears, not a loss.

• Hardcast, Sneak Attack, and reanimate. Don't be afraid to Sneak Attack a threat in or send one to the bin. Reanimate, Animate Dead, and Agadeem's Awakening put them into play without a swing, and Entomb → Reanimate is a two-card line that ends games without Kaalia at all.
• Grind with interaction. The answer suite is genuinely deep — Swords, Path, Anguished Unmaking, Damn, Deadly Rollick, Vanquish the Horde — plus taxes (Grand Abolisher, Silence, Deafening Silence, Esper Sentinel). You can sit in the control seat, trade one-for-one, and win on card quality.
• Draw engines. Vilis and The One Ring bury opponents in cards; Dragon Mage wheels. Grind to a full grip, then redeploy behind protection. Vilis into a Reanimate draws 8 cards for 1 mana and 8 life — really good early.
• Assemble a combo. When beatdown stalls, the combos below end the game out of nowhere.

How Kaalia's trigger actually works

Her one line hides several rules that dictate how you sequence combat. Internalize these — they're where she's easy to misplay:

• It's an attack trigger, not a damage trigger. It fires when she's declared as an attacker — before blockers. So the creature you cheat in arrives before opponents declare blocks, and they can then block it (or block Kaalia).
• One cheat per Kaalia attack. The way to cheat more is to make her attack again — an extra combat phase where she's untapped. Aurelia and Aggravated Assault untap all your creatures, Kaalia included, so each of their combats is a fresh attack trigger and another free threat. Bloodthirster's extra combat untaps only Bloodthirster — it adds damage, not a new cheat, unless something else untapped her.
• They're put onto the battlefield, not cast. Enters-the-battlefield triggers fire (Rune-Scarred Demon tutors; Terror of the Peaks and Dragon Tempest see it enter), but cast-triggers don't, and spell-counters can't touch it — it was never a spell.
• A cheated creature is attacking, but was never declared as an attacker. So its plain "whenever this attacks" abilities don't fire — most notably Aurelia's extra combat (see Key Loops). Two kinds still work: its combat-damage triggers (Balefire Dragon, the Ancient Dragons, Dragon Mage) fire if it connects, and "attacks and isn't blocked" abilities — Master of Cruelties — do fire, because those check at declare-blockers, not declare-attackers.
• Kaalia does nothing until she swings, so haste is disproportionately valuable. Lightning Greaves, Hall of the Bandit Lord, and Arena of Glory let her come down and trigger immediately, instead of handing the table a full turn to kill her first. She's a 2/2 and the highest-priority target on the board — protection is the engine, not a luxury. Swiftfoot Boots / Greaves' shroud, Teferi's Protection, Flawless Maneuver, and Deflecting Swat are how she survives contact.
• Command Beacon is your tax evasion. Once opponents start trading with her, Beacon returns her to hand so the next deployment is clean; the fast mana covers the rest.

The job every game: land Kaalia, give her haste, protect one swing, and hold something worth cheating. Align those four once and the game usually tilts hard.

Key Loops & Interactions

• Extra combats = extra cheats — when Kaalia untaps into them. Aggravated Assault (and Aurelia, once she's attacking normally — not when cheated in) untap all your creatures, so every additional combat is another Kaalia attack and another free Angel/Demon/Dragon. Bloodthirster's extra combats untap only Bloodthirster — they stack damage, not cheats, unless Aurelia or Aggravated Assault untaps Kaalia into them. This is the real engine of the aggro line before the combos below come online.
• Terror of the Peaks / Dragon Tempest as cheat payoffs. Both trigger when a creature enters, so everything Kaalia cheats in (and every token) pings a target. Terror turns your cheats into removal and reach — land it before a big Kaalia turn.
• The amplifiers: Twinflame Tyrant, Gisela, Archfiend of Despair. Twinflame Tyrant doubles all damage your sources deal to opponents — Kaalia's 2 becomes 4, every Tempest/Terror ping doubles, and it stacks with Gisela for 4×. It's a Dragon, so Kaalia cheats it in. Archfiend of Despair doubles differently: at each end step, every opponent loses life equal to the life they lost that turn (and they can't gain life) — it silently replays your whole turn's damage. Any one of these turns a normal swing into a table-ender.
• Two cheat targets with text that shapes the turn. Valgavoth, Terror Eater exiles cards from graveyards as they're eaten and lets you cast the exiled cards — a cheat that doubles as graveyard hate and card advantage against reanimator tables. Drana and Linvala locks opponents' creatures out of their activated abilities and hands those abilities to you — and since it's put onto the battlefield, not cast, no counterspell can stop it landing. It isn't a full lock-out, though: opponents still get one window of priority while Kaalia's trigger is on the stack, so a sac outlet or a mana dork can be used in response. Cheat it in before they need the ability, not after they've already announced the combo.
• Liesa is your re-ammo engine. Kaalia only cheats from hand, and Liesa returns your dying nontoken creatures to your hand at end step — so every Angel/Demon/Dragon that dies (chump-blocked, wiped, sacrificed to Reanimate costs) becomes next turn's cheat again. She also exiles opponents' dying creatures, which shuts off their graveyards for free.
• Reanimation routes around Kaalia. Entomb / Gamble / any discard fills the yard; Reanimate / Animate Dead / Agadeem's Awakening bring it back. Your plan-B "cheat" and your grind-game closer.
• Protect the connect, then protect Kaalia. Free interaction (Deadly Rollick, Deflecting Swat, Flawless Maneuver) and Teferi's Protection are what let you commit her into open mana. Save them for her removal and for clearing the blocker off a kill swing. Three cheaper effects do similar work when the free spells are gone: Redirect Lightning is a second Deflecting Swat for single-target removal (pay the 5 life if you're tapped out — you're the deck with Vilis and The One Ring, life is a resource), Reprieve bounces a wipe or a removal spell for a turn and replaces itself, and Red Elemental Blast is a one-mana answer to the blue deck's counter on your Kaalia turn.
• Taxes buy the turn. Deploy Kaalia and swing into a Silence (or under Grand Abolisher) when going for the Master of Cruelties kill or a combo, so nothing interrupts the sequence.
• Opponents fund your interaction. Smothering Tithe, Lotho, Corrupt Shirriff, and Ragavan mint Treasures off things opponents do anyway; Tataru Taru and Trouble in Pairs turn their draws and extra actions into your cards. This package resolves the deck's core tension — Kaalia turns want you tapped out, but protection wants mana held up. The Treasures let you deploy and keep Deflecting Swat mana ready, and after a wipe they're the fastest route to redeploying the threat plus its bodyguard in one turn.
• Cavern of Souls names Human (or Cleric) — never a Dragon type. Kaalia is a Human Cleric, and she is the only card in the deck that ever wants to dodge a counterspell: the Angels, Demons, and Dragons are put onto the battlefield, never cast, so Cavern could never protect them anyway. Naming her type makes every redeployment uncounterable, which is exactly what you need once the table has traded with her twice. For anything else Cavern is just a colorless land.
• Two lands that cut both ways. Scavenger Grounds exiles all graveyards, yours included — before you crack it, check that you're not holding Reanimate or Animate Dead with a target in the bin; it's for their reanimator deck, not a reflex. Mount Doom is mostly a painless dual, but its sacrifice mode (keep two creatures, destroy the rest) costs you a legendary artifact, and The One Ring is the only one in the deck — that's a real price, so it's an escape valve for a board you genuinely can't beat, not a value play.
• Pinnacle Monk // Mystic Peak is a land 90% of the time. for a 2/2 is not a rate you want; play it as an untapped red source for 3 life and forget the front half. The exception is a grindy midrange game with mana to spare, where casting it regrows Teferi's Protection, Reanimate, or a free-spell answer from the yard.

Combos

Three real combos live in the list — two are dice-driven "near-infinite": they don't loop forever, but one average roll is a game-ending payload.

Kaalia + Master of Cruelties — the instant kill

The most reliable finisher, and why Master is a top cheat target.

1. Attack with Kaalia; her trigger puts Master of Cruelties onto the battlefield tapped and attacking that opponent.
2. Master's "can only attack alone" clause does not apply — that governs declaring it as an attacker, and here an effect puts it into combat. It's legally attacking alongside Kaalia.
3. Master's "attacks and isn't blocked" trigger fires (a creature put in attacking still counts as attacking). If unblocked, that player's life total becomes 1.
4. Master assigns no combat damage — but Kaalia is attacking the same player. Her 2 unblocked (or any other source) takes them from 1 to dead.

Caveat: they can block Master to stop the "becomes 1," or block Kaalia to stop her damage. Against an open board it's a one-swing kill.

With Archfiend of Despair down, Kaalia's damage isn't even needed. "Life total becomes 1" means the player loses that much life (that's the official ruling), so Archfiend's end-step trigger — each opponent loses life equal to the life they lost this turn — hits them for the entire amount again. 40 → 1 is 39 lost, so Archfiend kills them at end of turn even if Master was the only thing that got through.

Ancient Copper Dragon + Aggravated Assault — infinite combats

1. Connect with Ancient Copper Dragon (flying, usually unblocked) → roll a d20 → make that many Treasures (avg ~10).
2. Second main phase: crack Treasures for and activate Aggravated Assault → untap your creatures, get an extra combat + main.
3. Copper Dragon connects again for more Treasures. A swing nets ~10 and Aggravated Assault costs 5, so you run away with combats, mana, and damage.

The loop, at a glance:

Effectively unbounded as long as Copper Dragon keeps connecting — flying plus your other attackers usually guarantee it. Generates near-infinite Treasure/mana along the way.

Dragon Tempest + Ancient Gold Dragon — burst damage

1. Connect with Ancient Gold Dragon → roll a d20 → make that many 1/1 flying Faerie Dragon tokens.
2. Each Faerie Dragon is a Dragon, so each one entering triggers Dragon Tempest ("whenever a Dragon you control enters, it deals X damage, where X = the number of Dragons you control").
3. Triggers resolve one at a time, but the tokens all enter at the same time — ~10 tokens plus the Gold Dragon is at least 11 Dragons in play, so 11 damage 10 times = 110 damage at a table with 120 starting life. Rolling a 20 makes 21 Dragons entering for 21 damage x 20 = 420 damage. Point it at faces or clear the board.

Not a true loop, but an average roll is easily lethal across a table. Dragon Tempest also gives your fliers haste on entry — quietly relevant for non-cheated big creatures.