Ketramose, the New Dawn Commander Deck Guide

Ketramose, the New Dawn | Illustration by Maaz Ali Khan

Ketramose, the New Dawn is stirring the Commander community as one of the more interesting and flexible commander creatures to build around in Aetherdrift. Some players are even seeing cEDH potential, or Pioneer/Modern competitive potential in this one. The hype is real, guys. Ketramose is a very interesting god legend to build around, and you’re getting a lot of value with it.

Today, we’re taking a look at a very casual approach for a Ketramose, the New Dawn Commander deck, what makes this Orzhov commander () tick, and options to make this decklist a more competitive kind of combo-y.

Enough chit-chat. Let’s get on to it!

The Deck

Obzedat, Ghost Council | Illustration by Svetlin Velinnov

Although you can build this commander in a competitive way, I’m taking a way more casual and budget-friendly approach to Ketramose, the New Dawn. The main idea here is to blink and recycle creatures with good enters abilities, especially those that also exile something on ETB, thus triggering your commander multiple times while getting the most value.

The Commander: Ketramose, the New Dawn

Ketramose, the New Dawn is an excellent cost-to-benefit creature, offering you a 4/4 menace, lifelink, and indestructible creature for just 4 mana. Once it’s on the battlefield, it’s hard to remove thanks to indestructible. Each time you exile something, be it from the battlefield or graveyard, you draw a card and lose 1 life, which is typical for black card draw. Ketramose cares about things going into exile on your turn, so even an opponent exiling one of your creatures triggers your commander.

Once there are seven cards in exile between all players, not just you, Ketramose can start rumbling. Since cards don’t come back from exile in most situations, it’s almost like a permanent condition for the whole game.

The most interesting part of Ketramose is that white and black are the colors that exile the most. You can have flicker/blink effects, which exile permanents from the battlefield, exile-based removal, both in black and white, as well as sweepers that exile and graveyard-exiling effects. Phasing doesn’t count, but mechanics like delve, collect evidence, and escape also do the trick.

Ketramose strongly rewards you for things you’re already willing to do in a game. And each time you attack or block with it, you gain life to offset the life loss.

Creatures

Since this deck has a blink component, most creatures it plays either support this strategy or have good enters abilities. Loran of the Third Path, Solemn Simulacrum, and Gray Merchant of Asphodel are some of the former, while cards like Phelia, Exuberant Shepherd and Restoration Angel are some of the latter.

Creatures like Soul Warden and Elas il-Kor, Sadistic Pilgrim help you to offset the life loss from your commander. If you blink a creature, you can draw cards without losing that much life.

Heavy Hitters

Obzedat, Ghost Council is a card I played in its Standard format, and here it fits the exile theme and the desire for lifegain, and it’s hard to deal with this creature. Noxious Gearhulk also fits as a good blink target with lifegain. Solitude can be even better than usual, also drawing a card on entering.

Athreos, Shroud-Veiled shouldn’t be hard to turn on via devotion, and sometimes you’ll steal stuff from your opponents. If you’re drawing a bunch of cards, Psychosis Crawler can deal a lot of damage to everyone in a single turn.

Repeatable Exile Effects

Here’s an interesting aspect of the deck. Since you want to exile stuff as often as possible, cards that exile a card from the graveyard every turn are perfect. Cards like Ghost Vacuum, Relic of Progenitus, and Unlicensed Hearse were made for this deck.

I confess I didn’t know this card existed, but Withered Wretch is also awesome, allowing you to trade mana for cards right away.

Another card that fits this deck very well is Kaya, Orzhov Usurper. It exiles cards, gains you life, and even ultimates for a bunch of damage and lifegain. Then there’s Bag of Holding and Currency Converter. When you draw and discard, you actually exile the discarded card. You draw twice with your commander on the field, so that’s a nice little engine.

Interaction

One of Orzhov’s (’s) biggest strengths in MTG is its exile spot removal. Be it Deadly Rollick, Swords to Plowshares, or Anguished Unmaking, you’ll be exiling the problematic stuff. Which, by the way, triggers Ketramose each time – provided it’s your turn, of course.

You can also interact via your creatures, like Angel of the Ruins, Solitude, and the like. While not definitive, Sheltered by Ghosts is in the deck to add some lifelink, an exile effect, and a card draw. It’s a nombo with your commander because lifelink doesn’t stack, but at least the problematic permanent stays in exile a while longer.

Sweepers

I’ve included a few exile-based sweepers. Farewell is a classic, and here you probably won’t want to exile creatures, but the other card types are fair game. Another interesting one is Winds of Abandon, which can hit one creature you don’t control or all of them.

Win Conditions

You’re drawing a bunch of cards, making your land drops, and hopefully not dying to aggressive decks or from your inherent life loss. So, how do you win? With big spells.

Exsanguinate, Torment of Hailfire, and Outrageous Robbery give you the tools you need to end a game. Note that there aren’t any infinite mana combos in this deck, but I’m usually happy when X = 10 or 12 on these spells. Cards like Sheoldred, the Apocalypse, Kaya, Intangible Slayer’s +2 loyalty activated ability, or Athreos, Shroud-Veiled can also get them in the long run.

The Mana Base

A 2-color mana base isn’t hard to pull off. I’m aiming for a functional and inexpensive mana base, so I’m playing budget fetch lands like Evolving Wilds and Ash Barrens to have more graveyard stuff to exile during later turns.

This deck doesn’t have that high of a mana curve and your commander is cheap, so some mana rocks like Arcane Signet and Orzhov Signet are nice to have, but you don’t need to go overboard. Thought Vessel and Reliquary Tower serve a nice purpose together because the deck draws some cards, and these will remove that maximum hand size limit when it’s a problem.

Adding fetch lands like Marsh Flats or a Scrubland will improve your mana base, of course, but it’s a hefty additional investment. Black decks can usually play Tainted Field without any downside, and since this deck may need a little lifegain, there’s a Restless Fortress in there, too.

The Strategy

This deck is poised first of all not to lose, establish a solid base, and then start drawing cards. Your interaction is heavily creature-based, and you can deal with some problematic artifacts and enchantments as well, but the deck is soft to instants and sorceries. Since your commander is indestructible, odds are your opponents won’t spend exile-based removal when you first cast it, so you might as well deploy it whenever you can. Once it’s on the battlefield, the exile train can begin. With Ketramose online, it’s time to start attacking and gaining 4 life a turn, which will help you a lot.

Combos and Interactions

This deck wasn’t designed to produce any infinite combos, although there’s certainly some interactions worth noting.

Firing exile removal at your opponents’ creatures on their turns won’t trigger your commander. You’re getting less value this way, but you’ll at least surprise them. If your life total is low, it can even be in your best interests.

Bag of Holding and Currency Converter allow you to loot, and you’ll draw a card, discard, then exile (triggering your commander, drawing an extra card). That’s an excellent rate for card draw. Later in the game, you can reuse the cards exiled by those two cards as well.

If you blink a card like Angel of the Ruins, you’ll get to exile two of your opponents’ permanents (preferably), but Ketramose will trigger once when you blink the angel (and exile it from the battlefield) and once when the angel exiles both permanents. The same thing happens with cards like Bojuka Bog, no matter how many cards you exile at once.

Cards like Abyssal Harvester and Emperor of Bones trigger exile while being interesting reanimate outlets. Sometimes, the best win condition isn’t necessarily a card from your deck.

Sword of Hearth and Home is just perfect in this deck, strengthening a creature you already want to attack. If it deals combat damage, you get to blink something and ramp as well.

Cling to Dust is just cute in this deck. You get to exile a card from their graveyard, trigger your commander, and maybe draw another card. And you can do it again later by escaping, which also exiles cards from your graveyard and triggers your commander again.

Rule 0 Violations Check

Rule 0 is utterly respected here. Just make sure that it’s a fair blink deck to everyone, and that you’ll be exiling stuff and drawing some cards. There are no generically powerful tutors, so the goal of the deck isn’t to assemble a combo as fast or as consistently as you can. There’s also no strong stax/prison component that might piss people off.

Budget Options

I’ve made a conscious choice to choose cards to maintain the decklist on a budget. As it stands, it’s actually a $400-450 deck, so here’s a few suggestions to adapt the list.

You can replace Godless Shrine and Shadowy Backstreet with basic lands or any other Orzhov dual lands you have. Even guildgates and temples will do the trick.

The most egregious offender is Sheoldred, the Apocalypse. Debt to the Deathless adds to the wincon and lifegain aspect, as a backup copy of Exsanguinate. It doesn’t have the safe effect, of course, but you’re replacing a $80 card here. Another interesting option is Roaming Throne, if you want to double your commander triggers – it’s half the price of a Sheoldred, though still quite expensive

Another problem is Smothering Tithe; while powerful, it doesn’t necessarily fit the themes of this deck. Let’s add something like Far Traveler to keep in line with the blinking theme.

Torment of Hailfire hasn’t received a real reprint (when, WotC, when?), and it’s currently a $20 card. Corpse Knight fit the themes of this deck if you’re blinking a lot of creatures, and you can dish out some damage constantly this way. Deadly Rollick is also a pricey cEDH staple that you can replace with something like Vraska's Contempt or Baleful Mastery.

Other Builds

Orzhov () usually lends itself to a bleeder or lifegain/life drain midrange deck. Here, you can pull this off. Adding cards that reward you for gaining life, like Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose, and actual lifegain cards like Soul Warden and Bloodthirsty Conqueror, you can build a nice engine and a part of a game-winning combo. If you’re blinking creatures, Soul Warden gains you a lot of life. Your win condition can be something like Exsanguinate, too.

There’s a strong combo possibility with Ketramose, the New Dawn, using discard outlets and cards that let you exile and play those discarded cards from exile. Each time you do this, you’ll draw a card from your commander while also being able to play the exiled cards. You can pair that with cards like Angel's Grace so that you don’t lose and you can draw your entire deck. Skirge Familiar can give you mana whenever you discard, so you’re building towards a game-winning spell as well.

You can pair Leonin Relic-Warder or Abdel Adrian, Gorion's Ward with an Animate Dead to go infinite. If one of these is in your graveyard, you can enchant it with Animate Dead, and when it enters, you exile the enchantment, making it return to the graveyard. And you can loop that for infinite enter triggers. And of course, infinite draw effects as long as you have the life to pay, which of course can be offset by Soul Warden. And Corpse Knight can be your wincon.

Victory Lap

Athreos, Shroud-Veiled | Illustration by Igor Kieryluk

Ketramose, the New Dawn is a very exciting new commander from Aetherdrift, and no matter if you’re casual or more competitive, you’ll find a way to unlock its powers. The best aspect of this commander is that it rewards you for playing the game, and exile effects are very abundant. Also, you’re not going broke while building around this commander, because exile effects are commonplace, and just playing a creature that exiles another one while drawing a card in the process feels good.

What do you think about this commander? Excited to build around this new Aetherdrift god? Let me know in the comments section below, or let’s take the discussion over to Draftsim Discord.

Thanks for reading guys, and I’ll see you on the flip side.