How To Play Ketramose, The New Dawn Commander Deck In Magic: The Gathering

Ketramose, the New Dawn immediately became an all-star across the many Magic: The Gathering ​​​​​​formats upon its release in Aetherdrift. Commander is no exception, with Ketramose being a fantastic choice to lead a Commander deck.

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A Ketramose, the New Dawn is a unique take on an Orzhov (white/black) deck as Ketramose is an engine piece as opposed to building the whole deck around it. This allows some versatility in how you want to build Ketramose, from full control to blink. Ketramose works best as a blink (exiling and returning to the battlefield) commander, which is what this guide will be using in this build.

Decklist

The decklist contains 26 creatures, four sorceries, 14 instants, 14 artifacts, seven enchantments, and 34 lands. Most of the deck are cards that either blink a creature or benefit when a creature enters the battlefield.

Key Cards

Ketramose, The New Dawn

The commander of the deck, Ketramose, the New Dawn is an invaluable draw engine. Whenever a card is put into exile from the graveyard or battlefield, you draw a card. This effect is key, as it does not trigger once per turn, only once per instance.

This means if you exile something twice in one turn, you’ll draw two cards so long as they aren’t a part of the same effect. Ketramose is indestructible, making it much harder for your opponents to deal with. The only thing that can get rid of Ketramose is exiling it, which is an effect not common in many decks.

Unlicensed Hearse

Unlicensed Hearse is one of the best graveyard hate cards out there, but when combined with Ketramose, turns it into a draw engine as well. One activation of Unlicensed Hearse with Ketramose draws you a card while cutting off your opponent from anything important in their graveyard.

Over time, Unlicensed Hearse will become one of your best attackers. Since its stats increase for each card it exiles, it can get pumped up very quickly. You can activate Unlicensed Hearse at instant speed, letting you surprise an opponent with a blocker that’ll grow in stats.

Mirror Of Life Trapping

Mirror of Life Trapping delays every creature that enters the battlefield from entering until the next creature comes along. This is a great way to give yourself time to find answers for a problematic creature, especially if no other creatures enter the battlefield.

When Ketramose is on the battlefield, Mirror of Life Trapping becomes a way to draw a card whenever any creature enters the battlefield. Mirror of Life Trapping only triggers on creatures entering the battlefield that were cast, so tokens or reanimated creatures won’t be affected.

Preston, The Vanisher

Any blink deck isn’t complete without Preston, the Vanisher making an appearance. Preston essentially makes it so all creatures that come back after getting blinked are duplicated in the form of a 0/1 Illusion token. This doubles up on all their enter the battlefield triggers and in some cases, opens up the door for infinite combos.

While you won’t often use Preston’s activated ability, it is still useful to have, especially if you go down an infinite combo path. Preston has a great toughness to act as a blocker, all while continuously build up a threatening board state that makes it hard for your opponents to concentrate on just one threat.

Here is the infinite combo with Preston, Felidar Guardian, and any way to blink a creature.

This combo gives you an infinite number of enter and leave the battlefield triggers, an infinite number of 0/1 Felidar Guardian tokens, an infinite number of mana (if you blink lands with the original Felidar Guardian), and the ability to remove all nonland permanents with Preston’s effect with the infinite mana and tokens.

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How To Play The Deck

A Ketramose, the New Dawn Commander deck is all about blinking your creatures and getting value from doing so. The deck draws a ton of cards, both with Ketramose itself and with cards that draw when they enter such as Spirited Companion and Wall of Omens.

While blinking triggers Ketramose, there are other ways to have it draw you cards. Relic of Progenitus, Scrabbling Claws, and Ghost Vacuum can all exile a card from the graveyard by just tapping themselves, triggering Ketramsoe to draw you even more cards. Exile-based removal like Anguished Unmaking, Despark, and Swords to Plowshares are helpful as well.

The deck’s primary win condition is winning through combos. With how much draw power is available in the deck, you can draw to your main combo pieces very quickly. These are infinite blink combos, such as the Preston and Felidar Guardian loop along with the Leonin Relic-Warder and Animate Dead/Necromancy.

The Leonin Relic-Warder combo works as so:

The combos in this deck will lead to a win if Corpse Knight, Wispdrinker Vampire, or Altar of the Brood are on the battlefield. For the Preston-Felidar Guardian combo, blinking a swamp with Dread Presence on the battlefield drains all opponents’ life totals. For the Leonin Relic-Warder combo, Grim Guardian or Elas il-Kor, Sadistic Pilgrim being on the battlefield can cause infinite burn.

The biggest flaw of the deck is its low defense​​​​​. There aren’t a ton of creatures in the deck that make for great blockers, so you’ll need to rely on removal spells and board wipes to cut your opponents off from their most threatening permanents for you. It is very reliant on its combo pieces, so it’s prone to removal as well.

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