It’s no surprise that Ketramose, the New Dawn is an incredible card in Modern. There are simply tons of ways to abuse the powerful God and turn it into a card advantage machine.
Interestingly, though, one format where Ketramose has really failed to make an impact is Standard. Without elite tools like Relic of Progenitus, it takes more work to maximize it.
Still, just recently, one player managed to go undefeated at a Qualifier event with an Orzhov Ketramose shell. This deck features tons of exile effects and is designed to play extremely grindy games. Let’s take a closer look.
Tons of Removal
- Mana Value: 1WW
- Rarity: Rare
- Card Type: Enchantment
- MTG Sets: Dominaria United
- Card Text: When Temporary Lockdown enters the battlefield, exile each nonland permanent with mana value 2 or less until Temporary Lockdown leaves the battlefield.
This deck’s main gameplan is very simple: get Ketramose into play, then follow up with a bunch of ways to exile cards. As you might expect, this deck is chock-full of removal spells that help keep your life total high so you can afford to generate card advantage with Ketramose.
To clean up early threats from Gruul Prowess and Jeskai Convoke, Temporary Lockdown and Anoint with Affliction are great tools to have access to. Temporary Lockdown’s ability to exile a bunch of permanents at once comes in handy in enabling Ketramose as an attacker. Getting seven cards in exile may sound difficult, but it isn’t for this deck.
Moving to more generic answers, Legions to Ashes exiles any nonland permanent that may be problematic. Legions to Ashes is an essential piece of interaction against Domain, since Ketramose is vulnerable to Leyline Binding.
From there, The End and Deadly Cover-Up can get rid of bigger threats the opponent might play. On top of that, you can get rid of extra copies of their most problematic creature of the bunch from your opponent’s hand, graveyard, or library. Assuming you exile four copies of a given card, you’ll have Ketramose ready to attack in no time.
Playing the Long Game
- Mana Value: 1WB
- Rarity: Mythic Rare
- Stats: 4/4
- Card Type: Legendary Creature- God
- MTG Sets: Aetherdrift
- Card Text: Menace, lifelink, indestructible. Ketramose can’t attack or block unless there are seven or more cards in exile. Whenever one or more cards are put into exile from graveyards and/or the battlefield during your turn, you draw a card and lose 1 life.
To pair with this wealth of creature disruption, you still need ways to clear a path for Ketramose versus Azorius control and generate card advantage even in games where you don’t draw Ketramose. With regards to the first point, Soul Search serves as a way to take away opposing Counterspells or Stock Up. Soul Search is quite flexible, and while it is inefficient versus aggro decks, it’s an important piece of the puzzle overall.
In games where you don’t have Ketramose at the ready, Mazemind Tome comes in clutch. If you have time to relish the card advantage, Mazemind Tome is an excellent card that digs for Ketramose in the process. What’s also nice about Mazemind Tome is that the life gain once you’ve used it enough times can offset Ketramose’s life loss. Mazemind Tome even goes into exile to trigger Ketramose.
Beza, the Bounding Spring is yet another card that buffers your life total if it starts to get too low. The burly body is great versus aggro, too.
Finally, the one-of Kaya, Intangible Slayer gives you a piece of top-end that can finish the job. Kaya has hexproof, so as long as you can land it on a clean board, it will win you the game.
Intriguing Matchups
- Mana Value: 1R
- Rarity: Rare
- Stats: 2/2
- Card Type: Creature- Mouse Warrior
- MTG Set: Bloomburrow
- Card Text: Haste. Prowess (Whenever you cast a noncreature spell, this creature gets +1/+1 until end of turn.) Valiant– Whenever Emberheart Challenger becomes the target of a spell or ability you control for the first time each turn, exile the top card of your library. Until end of turn, you may play that card.
This Orzhov control shell may be a bit of a strange choice, but it lines up relatively well against most of the top archetypes. Your Gruul Prowess matchup is quite strong. Ketramose’s life loss can be a bit of a liability at times, but once you can start attacking with the God, you’ll pull ahead in no time.
Temporary Lockdown shines bright against Esper Pixie, too. If you can stem the early bleeding, the combination of Temporary Lockdown and Ketramose can make things easy.
Versus Domain, you have plenty of answers to Zur, Eternal Schemer and the Overlords. Against black midrange archetypes, you have enough ways to grind and exile elite threats, such as Enduring Curiosity. As long as you can keep Ketramose on the board, you’re in good shape.
Where this deck can run into issues is against strategies that can reliably stop Ketramose. Ketramose may be indestructible, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t vulnerable to Sunfall or Lay Down Arms out of mono-white tokens.
It can also be tough to land Ketramose in the face of No More Lies out of Azorius control. You don’t exactly pressure the opponent well, so Jace, the Perfected Mind can be a nuisance, even just as a mill engine. Similarly, you give Azorius Omniscience combo all the time in the world to set up their synergies with Counterspell backup, which is far from ideal.
With Esper Pixie and Gruul Prowess being as popular as they are, though, this Orzhov deck is a reasonable metacall. Just expect some polarizing matchups.