A New Dawn Rises: BW Ketramose in Legacy

Written by Adri

This is a primer on a new deck that has been brewed in the East Coast by yours truly with many of the regulars in the 90sMTG community.

Deck Analysis

The deck in all its glory. Let’s discuss its configuration and how Ketramose, the New Dawn fits in.

Core

Consider the following as the deck’s core shell:

• Swords to Plowshares / Solitude
  • Swords to Plowshares is the best removal spell ever printed. We play eight of them with its elemental incarnation, Solitude. There’s no shortage of dangerous creatures to remove, from Atraxa, Grand Unifier and Archon of Cruelty to Barrowgoyf or Murktide Regent, and less commonly Marit Lage and Emrakul, the Eons Torn (which Solitude deals with).
• Thoughtseize
  • Thoughtseize is our best turn one play — the only turn one play possible unless on the draw and the opponent played a creature. Thoughtseize provides early disruption against combo or other bad matchups and paves follow-up turns.
• Phelia, Exuberant Shepherd
  • Phelia is as pushed a flicker enabler as Wizards of the Coast (WotC) can design — it’s the deck’s motor. Most of our cards benefit from reusing their enters abilities and Phelia provides degeneracy against opponent’s permanents like resetting Chalice of The Void, Murktide Regent, or Tamiyo, Seasoned Scholar.
• Overlord of the Balemurk
  • Phelia and Balemurk are a match made in heaven. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were designed together. The Impending mechanic works in such a way that we can cast Balemurk for 1B, then flicker it with Phelia to return it to the battlefield as a creature, milling eight cards and disentomb the two best creatures from the graveyard. Unlike Barrowgoyf, Balemurk can disentomb any creature in the graveyard. However, crucially, Balemurk cannot disentomb copies of itself.
• Orcish Bowmasters
  • Much has been written about Bowmasters in Legacy, so I’ll skim through it. If you play black, you need an extraordinary reason not to play four Orcish Bowmaster.

Bullet Creatures

Since Balemurk acts as a Life from the Loam of sorts, sparse bullets are useful and more accessible.

• Emperor of Bones
  • Emperor of Bones started seeing play in Reanimator to dodge cards like Grafdigger’s Cage. We fill our graveyard quickly with good enters abilities — reusing them is always good. The finality counter is all but final.
• Skyclave Apparition
  • Skyclave Apparition is a generic answer to more midgame permanents like Kaito, Bane of Nightmares, The One Ring, Ensnaring Bridge, etc. Skyclave is among the few modern designs that do not return the exiled permanent to the battlefield.
• Barrowgoyf
  • Barrowgoyf may surprise some since it’s not typically seen outside blue shells. It’s likely the strongest fair creatures for racing or locking the board down. We’re happy to trade it for our opponent’s Barrowgoyf, since we can recur it.
  • Be careful with the mill effect. Unlike Balemurk, Barrowgoyf can pull a creature from the milled cards. However, Barrowgoyf works through replacement effects like Dauthi Voidwalker or Leyline of The Void, which Balemurk does not.
• Boggart Trawler / Witch Enchanter
  • Witch Enchanter and Boggart Trawler have useful enters effects but are mediocre creatures. Their upside is they are lands Balemurk can disentomb. It is sometimes correct to play these into opposing Wastelands only to regrowth them the next turn.
• Lion Sash
  • Lion Sash doubles as targeted removal hate and to break big boards. As a creature, we can disentomb it with Balemurk.
  • We need sufficient white-card-count for Solitude.

Strange Spells

The final two spells may seem unorthodox but serve different purposes:

• Reanimate
  • Reanimate has been in ban discussions for as long as I can remember and for good reason. When used unfairly, Reanimate is often the last relevant spell of the game. Even using it “fairly” is akin to Black Lotus.
  • Reanimate is the best effect of this kind. In a typical game, our graveyard is full. Having them available for B and some life is exceptional. Reanimating an opponent’s creatures can be powerful but Phelia flickers them back to the opponent’s control.
• Cling to Dust
  • Cling to Dust is straight from Grixis Control lists, acting as a late-game card advantage. It serves a similar role to Lion Sash as graveyard hate accessible via Balemurk, though more expensive.
  • Gaining three life means that Delver decks need one more attack or Lightning Bolt to win.

Lands

Lands are mostly self explanatory. We heavily emphasize basics for stability against Wasteland. Four Wastelands of our own for Urza’s Saga, opposing Karakas, and seldom to tempo an opponent out.

Our good spells start at two mana, so refrain from Wastelanding as the second land drop unless it is to survive or garner more time than we lose by delaying development.

Despite our low legendary creature count, attack with Phelia every combat and have her survive and flicker value. Ee play two to ensure Phelia can attack, flicker a permanent, bounce Phelia, and redeploy her before our next turn. Bouncing our legendaries to pitch to Solitude is also a way to trick an opponent. There are other relevant legendaries in Legacy like Atraxa and Tamiyo.

Sideboard

Our sideboard has a couple hammers and generically good cards.

• Deafening Silence
  • We barely interact with solitaire-style combo decks like The Epic Storm (TES) or the like, unless they rely on creatures like Glaring Fleshraker or Ral, Monsoon Mage. We don’t play counterspells, so we need to gain time to kill our opponent or put more lock pieces into play.
• Containment Priest
  • One of the most generic and best foils to “cheat big stuff into play,” Containment Priest covers every possible way a big creature can be cheated in from Reanimate to Show and Tell and Sneak Attack, to the more esoteric third lore counter on Fable of the Mirror Breaker or Dryad Arbor. In some matchups, Containment Priest creates extra removal in conjunction with Phelia.
• Disruptor Flute
  • A flexible tool for locking planeswalkers or Nadu, Winged Wisdom enablers to delaying, or even nullifying the casting of spells like Doomsday. This card rewards vast knowledge of the meta and threat evaluation. Phelia can reset Disruptor Flute in a pinch or if the original threat was dealt with.
• Null Rod
  • Artifact decks can explode via The One Ring with Grim Monolith. In most cases, Null Rod will delay them long enough.
• White Orchid Phantom
  • Since we’re a four-Wasteland deck, opponents are incentivized to fetch basics, making White Orchid Phantom a repeatable Strip Mine with Phelia.
  • White Orchid Phantom can fix your colors in a pinch or convert a dual into a basic to ensure access to a colors against an opposing tapped Wasteland.
  • Most people forget about first strike, which is relevant against Baleful Strix or Insectile Aberration.
• Leyline of The Void
  • At the time of writing, a whopping 20+% of the meta is fast graveyard decks like UB Reanimator, Oops, All Spells!, and Cephalid Breakfast. We don’t play Force of Will, so we need turn zero interaction.
  • We don’t have good ways of getting rid of extra Leylines of The Void but we can replay them when inevitably bounced.
  • Leyline of The Void is an emergency brake but most heavily graveyard-reliant decks have ways to deal with it. It is surprisingly strong against Delver since half their threats require the graveyard to reach full power and they don’t always have good ways of dealing with it.

Ketramose, The New Dawn

Ketramose suffers slightly from Questing Beast syndrome — it has more keywords each time you read it:

• Menace
  • Hard to block
• Lifelink
  • Good for racing and stabilizing
• Indestructible:
  • Hard to kill; protected from most non-white permanent removal. Still dies to Dismember and Sheoldred’s Edict
  • Notably, Ketamose will see itself exiled via Swords to Plowshares and the like on your turn and you will draw a card and lose 1 life.
• Ketramose can’t attack or block unless there are seven or more cards in exile
  • I glossed over this at first and assumed it needed devotion to white and black.
  • This counts your and your opponent’s cards, including cards imprinted via Chrome Mox or exiled via Skyclave Apparition, etc.
• 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
  • It’s the first mostly non-conditional draw card in white that rewards you for doing what you already want to do via exile or flicker. White finally joins the “ignore the color pie” club with The One Ring and Up the Beanstalk.
    • You draw one card whether you exile one card or twenty with one effect
    • It needs to be on your turn
    • The draw and life loss aren’t optional. Be careful with playing Ketramose at low life
    • Notable unintuitive exceptions that don’t work are Flashback or Rebound (spell is exiled from the stack)
    • It doesn’t trigger when pitching cards from the hand

There are two main areas to Consider when enabling Ketramose:

• Drawing Cards
  • Drawing cards with Ketramose works best with small, controlled, and cheap exile effects that happen on your turn.
    • The best enablers are Phelia and Emperor of Bones, since don’t cost mana. Swords to Plowshares, Solitude and Skyclave Apparition also work. Lion Sash may seem insane but you’re unlikely to want to spend too mana to draw cards when you could add more to the board
    • Cling to Dust draws at least two cards if escaped on your turn, as the exile effects happen separately
• Attacking and blocking
  • Seven cards may not seem like much but it can be difficult to get there. Our best enabler for fast animations is Boggart Trawler or escaping Cling to Dust.

Esper Ketramose has an easier time animating Ketramose thanks to Murktide Regent and Force of Will but has difficulty drawing cards consistently.

Ketramose is seldom cast on curve. While a formidable engine, we don’t ramp fast enough to use the cards drawn and Ketramose does not contribute to controlling the board early.

Exceptions to this rule can occur in some cases:

• Developed Phelia or Emperor of Bones on turn two means we are guaranteed to generate a card
• There’s a Leyline effect on board so drawing cards is easy and fast
• Solitude is the only removal spell and must be used in the same turn

The Whole Deck

This is a midrange control deck. We want long games so our extensive removal and two engines can generate card advantage. Playing patiently is key for success.

We thrive against a field of creatures with little protection, decks that win by attacking without reach, and grindy decks.

Decks in the “Force-check” category are difficult to beat since we don’t play Force of Will. Our sideboard is organized to combat most of them.

Doomsday is egregious and we are mostly defenseless against it. It underrepresented in the meta and is such a lopsided matchup that it is better to forsake it to improve other matchups.

Tips and Tricks

Phelia

In general, hinge the deck’s performance on how effective Phelia is as a value engine. Here tricks and sequencing tricks:

• Overlord of the Balemurk
  • Play Phelia on the opponent’s end step before deploying an impending Balemurk. That compresseses the window the opponent can answer Phelia, who flickers the Baleburk. This sequence disentombs two creatures and presents a 3/3 and a 5/5 onboard.
  • If the opponent counters or removes the Phelia, Balemurk can disentomb it.
    • This is most effective if you have four mana, as you can disentomb Phelia and cast it on the same turn cycle.
• Emperor of Bones
  • Finality counters are all but final. If the creatured is flickered, it returns without finality counters.
  • You can flicker the Emperor itself to reanimate a new creature the following turn.
    • Note: you will lose reanimation access to creatures previously exiled with Emperor.
• Karakas
  • Bouncing Phelia with Karakas to pitch to Solitude catches many by surprise.
• Prison Locks
  • If you sneak in Phelia before Chalice of The Void, Blood Moon, and Doorkeeper Thrull enter, you can remove them temporarily.
• Counters and Flipped permanents
  • Cards like Tamiyo, Seasoned Scholar or Murktide Regent are significantly less scary if they get reset to their base statline.
• Tokens
  • Urza’s Saga constructs are common. Since you declare Phelia as an attacker, the Urza’s Saga player can create the construct after Phelia’s flicker trigger resolves but before blocks so the construct could still block Phelia.
• Reanimated creatures
  • It is not uncommon to have our creatures Reanimated. Phelia returns them under the owner’s control, so thank the opponent for giving our creature back for us.

Emperor of Bones

Emperor of Bones seems simple but has a lot of depth:

• Consider not exiling anything or exiling something useless for Emperor’s first tigger if you can’t activate the Adapt ability. We can access our graveyard in many ways, it may be beneficial to not pick any creatures if we can’t Shallow Grave them the same turn. If Emperor is removed, we lose access to that card forever. This happens Emperor is cast on turns 2 or 3.
• Barrowgoyf matters; Consider card types in the graveyard for power and toughness.
• Adapt can be activated multiple times. A common misplay is an opponent trying to remove Emperor in response to the Adapt activation, rather than the triggered ability of putting counters on it. If your opponent does so, Adapt again in response, so the triggered ability will resolve before Emperor is removed.

Containment Priest

The Scryfall list of rulings for this card is much shorter than you’d expect for how many complicated interactions there are. Here’s a non-exhaustive list of ‘works vs. doesn’t work.’

Works

• Reanimate
• Show and Tell — if Priest is in play before Show and Tell resolves
• Creature sagas like Fable of the Mirror-Breaker
• Green Sun’s Zenith / Chord of Calling / Finale of Devastation
• Dryad Arbor — in almost all cases, even if played as a land drop
• Manifest / Cloak / Manifest Dread (Abhorrent Oculus, Cryptic Coat)

Doesn’t Work

• Grist, the Hunger Tide
• Kaito, Bane of Nightmares
• Flip-walkers like Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student
• Show and Tell (if you put in Containment Priest as your creature for Show and Tell)
• Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath (and any other Escape cards like Ox of Agonas)
• Evoke cards like Solitude, Fury and Endurance

Honorable Mentions

BW Ketramose is often compared to Yorion Death and Taxes (D&T) and the BW Blink deck that was popular when Grief was legal. They share similarities but play differently.

Disclaimer: I don’t portray my opinions as correct or better than others’. This is my explanation of choices and deckbuilding philosophy, so disagreement is encouraged and welcome.

There are four reasons why a card does not make the cut:

• Stronger in Yorion D&T
  • Flickerwisp, Recruiter of the Guard, Aether Vial, and Stoneforge Mystic
  • My philosophy is “small interactions and high card quality.” Yorion D&T has lower card quality with more synergies. D&T relies on reusing tutors to compensate running 80 cards without a draw engine. Even Overlord of the Balemurk mills for 1/20th of the deck in D&T, compared to 1/15th in BW Ketramose.
• A card is too inconsistent, has too low a floor, or does not help against the meta I expect.
• Ephemerate
  • Ephemerating a Solitude is like Christmas if you exile three creatures. You can always concoct a situation where Ephemerate rocks your world.
  • I prefer Reanimate. It has a larger selection of creatures to affect, including your opponent’s, and is generally a better topdeck. It is also a way to resolve an effect through countermagic, as Reanimate can target the creature after it is countered.
• Relic of Progenitus
  • Can exile enough cards to animate Ketramose while drawing four cards in one turn
  • Oops, All Spells! requires capacity to nuke a graveyard on turn one. I would Consider this card over Lion Sash if the graveyard decks slow down, become less popular, or catch a ban.

Next Steps

Current Build

This is my current build of BW Ketramose:

A couple changes:

• Two Wastelands for two more modal-faced cards (MDFCs)
  • We struggle for colors accessibility.
  • We use Wasteland defensively against opposing Karakas
• Nihil Spellbomb replaces Lion Sash
  • A concession to Oops, All Spells! making 10% of the meta at the top tables of the MTGO Challenges. Being on the play with this card vastly improves your chances to win the match, and it cycles at worst if it’s useless in the matchup. It is also a good card to animate Ketramose
• Plus one Emperor of Bones, minus one Barrowgoyf
  • Lower the curve and respect fair graveyard decks like Delver and UB Tempo
  • Lean more into the draw engine of Ketramose
• Doorkeeper Thrull replaces Deafening Silence in the sideboard
  • Thassa’s Oracle is the default wincon for combo decks except Storm and Mystic Forge
  • Has text against Stoneforge Mystic and Kappa Cannoneer.
  • People won’t expect it. Phelia can flicker the Thrull so your enters triggers can occur in the second main phase.

Branching Evolution

BW Ketramose can be tuned and evolved. Here are some ideas currently in experimentation:

Full Reanimator

A simple-minded idea of adding the broken stuff to the deck. This adds more explosiveness as the deck can struggle to come back from too much disadvantage. Herald of Eternal Dawn is a lock against decks without hard removal. This build didn’t work well but informed ideas for other versions.

Fair Reanimator

Midway between control and full reanimator. Reanimating Troll of Khazad-dûm gives unexpected explosiveness we can defend with Thoughtseize. It’s also serviceable against Moon Stompy to get black mana and also a clock. Would likely require more degeneracy like Seasoned Dungeoneer.

Chrome Mox

We don’t have many turn one plays, which can be problematic in a format this fast. Chrome Mox increases the pool of turn one plays and gets to Ketramose faster while helping against Moon Stompy and Wasteland decks. Chrome Mox’s card disadvantage is a hurdle.

Full Enabler

This is not my list, but it recently made Top8 in a challenge. It goes all-in on supporting Ketramose with four Ephemerate, four Relic of Progenitus and three Flickerwisps. I’m excited to try this.

Parting Words

Special shoutouts are warranted:

• My partner in (Magic) crime, Matt (DethFrmAbove in MTGO), for helping me tune the deck and entertaining my dumb ideas, as well as creating the foundation for the deck during Eternal Weekend (EW) prep.
• Dom (Top8 at the 2024 EW North America) for asking why I picked Reanimate over Ephemerate every five minutes as a joke, which prompted the “Honorable Mentions” section.
• Bill for insightful commentary on my plays during and after the games and many different perspectives on lines I could approach.
• Everyone in the 90sMTG Discord for the encouragement, support, questions, and, of course, terrible memes.

This deck has been fun to brew and play with and I am pleasantly surprised by its success online and the community reception. It reminds me that “The Gathering” is the most important part of this game we dedicate so many hours of our life towards.

Take the deck for a spin and let me know how it went!

About the Author

Adri has been playing Magic since Judgement, taking two extended breaks and returning recently to eternal formats inspired by the 90sMTG streams, on which he appears regularly. Adri has no social media accounts because he chooses not to, and totally not because he doesn’t know how to reply to a tweet; he totally knows how. 

You can always find Adri complaining about Magic and hyping terrible cards as @morsaa in the 90sMTG discord (and basically every Magic discord under the sun, including EternalDurdles!)

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Featured image: Ketramose, the New Dawn by Maaz Ali Khan