Kroxa, Titan of Death’s Hunger

Time to look at the Titan of Death’s Hunger. Kroxa is a low cost discard, burn engine titan who hits each opponent with the enter the battlefield and attack triggers. The ability to drain resources both early on, and repeatedly if left on board unchecked makes him a hell of a threat. This deck list version going to be classic to the Rakdos colour combination. Discard, aggro burn and more with some interesting synergy pieces – so let’s get to it!

Kroxa

We’re going to start by looking at Kroxa. On average you can just cast it turn 2 and force people to discard. If they choose to pitch a land then they’ll also be losing 3 life. Quick, effective, not making you any friends at this table fast but you’re Rakdos; get used to it. There are people toting two cards for the titans and I believe they fit better in Kroxa than Uro.

First is Altar of Dementia which has shown its strength in Hogaak and fuels Escape. Sacrificing Kroxa in response to it’s sacrifice trigger will just set you up to cast it repeatedly until you’re out of cards or it could be used to disrupt tutor effects such as Vampiric Tutor or Mystical Tutor.

Second is Torpor Orb to get around the sacrifice trigger. While you do give up on the enter the battlefield effects, Kroxa can still trigger on attacking so this is an aggressive move. It can however definitely disrupt strategies from other opponents.

Now those are cool and all but I want some more fun pieces. Regardless of how you cast Kroxa is works with one of my favorite pet cards, Warstorm Surge. It’s a huge enchantment giving you all the enter the battlefield damage from your big creatures.

Like in many Rakdos decks, Bloodchief Ascension functions well. Once online, it causes a ton of damage just for playing the game; left unchecked, it can very quickly take players out. Neheb, the Eternal also takes advantage of the damage you’ve dealt out generating a helpful chunk of mana. Since we’re going aggro though as all the titans could use some boots, we’ll give them a nice pair of Lightning Greaves to make the most of their attack triggers. Lastly, some land destruction, not too much though just Keldon Firebombers which has everyone sacrifice down to 3 land. It’ll fuel your graveyard with lands and with one land drop you should have the gas to Escape with Kroxa and start wrecking people.

Discard

Now this is a fun one especially when things aren’t symmetrical, but I’m not picky. Utilizing the fact that Kroxa has a natural discard ability, the rewards for having people discard are a plenty.

Geth’s Grimoire: Draw a card every time your opponents discard. Each time Kroxa enters the battlefield or attacks you’ll probably be drawing for each opponent who still has cards in their hand.

Waste Not While this can technically be better than Geth’s Grimoire it depends on the type of card they discard. If they do discard a land the BB may help pay for Kroxa to Escape.

Sire of Insanity, Mindslicer, Liliana of the Veil: All symmetrical discard effects but unlike your opponents you know when it’s coming and you’ve built the deck to work with it. With an escaped Kroxa you’ll be able to run rampant with repeated discard and damage.

Bone Miser: If you’re going to have to discard too, then may as well be rewarded for it. From Faithless Looting to Chandra, Flamecaller, as they say, “Waste not, want not”.

Reanimator

I’m running my full enchantment reanimation package here: Necromancy, Animate Dead, and Dance of the Dead. When you have Sidisi, Undead Vizier or Rune-Scarred Demon in the graveyard, then all of them can become extra Demonic Tutors. There’s also a Victimize just for that way to end the game is needed. Most of the effects you want don’t care if things are coming in tapped anyhow. Buried Alive is an incredible tutor for the package and bringing out either the win condition combos, pure value, or disruptive threats are all good. You can always take your opponents’ stuff that they’ve had to discard as well.

Combos

My favorite part, how many combos can we fit in the deck and how many synergize with our commander.

Nim Deathmantle + Ashnod’s Altar + Grave Titan: Infinite 2/2 Zombies and colourless mana not good enough? Use it to repeatedly bring Kroxa back to the battlefield with Nim Deathmantle and burn your opponents to death. This can be synergized with just the Nim Deathmantle and Ashnod’s Altar which will allow you to sacrifice Kroza for 2 mana and bring more enter the battlefield triggers. You don’t even need the Ashnod’s Altar you can just have Nim Deathmantle, and for every 4 mana you have just make your opponents discard.

Mikaeus, the Unhallowed + Triskelion: Remove a +1/+1 counter to deal 1 damage to an opponent then the rest to kill Triskelion. Triskelion comes back with Undying and repeat for the kill. Two win the game targets you can pull out with Victimize. Mikaeus gives Kroxa Undying, though double the amount of enter the battlefield trigger you’ll probably get out of the big hungry titan.

Mikaeus, the Unhallowed + Nim Deathmantle + Ashnod’s Altar + Any non-human creature: Repeated enter the battlefield and die triggers. Point being that Mikaeus is breakable. I could add another on Sneak Attack and Yawgmoth, Thran Physician but I think you get the point.

Summary

Kroxa is a big hungry angry titan who will make you discard and bleed. Rakdos is a good colour combination to take advantage of that and help with the aggro strategy. It’s early game is disrupting and painful while the late game becomes a resource battle with big threats.

So what do you think? How do you like the list? Anything you would add or remove? How would you build Kroxa? Let me know in the comments or directly…I’m always up for a good Magic discussion!