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Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger

7 min read

Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger

At a glance

  • Commander: Kroxa, Titan of Death’s Hunger
  • Colors: Rakdos
  • Archetype: Rakdos discard / hand-disruption control
  • Power tier: high

Cards

Commander

Kroxa, Titan of Death’s Hunger — Legendary Creature — Elder Giant (6/6)

When Kroxa enters, sacrifice it unless it escaped. Whenever Kroxa enters or attacks, each opponent discards a card, then each opponent who didn’t discard a nonland card this way loses 3 life. Escape—, Exile five other cards from your graveyard. (You may cast this card from your graveyard for its escape cost.)

This matches the scout’s paraphrase well, with the important precision the engine text glossed over: a hard-cast Kroxa immediately sacrifices itself (it only sticks when cast for escape). The 2-mana cast is a one-shot Mind Rot-plus-Skull-Crack that then feeds the graveyard; the escape cost ( + exile five cards) is where the actual recursion and the 6/6 body live. The whole deck is therefore built to (a) jam the graveyard so escape is always online, and (b) keep opponents hellbent so each enter/attack trigger drains 3. commander_oracle_ok = true.

Gameplan

A classic Rakdos grind. Early turns are spent ripping cards out of opponents’ hands while looting/self-milling to build a graveyard. Once you have ~7+ cards in the bin, Kroxa becomes a 2-mana-recur, 6/6 attacker that trickle-mills the whole table’s hands and chips 3 damage every time it enters or swings whenever they’re empty. The deck wins by inevitability: you out-resource the table with cheap card advantage and treasure, strip their answers with ~16 discard effects, then loop Kroxa as an evasive-enough recurring threat backed by reach (Ill-Gotten Inheritance, Sawblade Scamp, Skull Rend, the burn suite) to close.

The escape cost competes with your own graveyard value (recursion spells, flashback), so the self-mill package is intentionally deep — you want to be able to pay the five-card exile every other turn without going hellbent on your own good cards.

Key synergy lines

  • Fuel → Escape → Drain. Mire Triton / Gorging Vulture / Stinkweed Imp’s dredge / Eerie Soultender stock the yard; Treasures (Deadly Dispute, Big Score, Pirate’s Pillage) pay the ahead of curve. Every escape = each opponent discards, and any opponent who can’t pitch a nonland eats 3.
  • Hellbent lock. Hymn to Tourach, Wrench Mind, Blightning, Mind Rake (overload), Unnerve, Skull Rend, Liliana’s Specter keep hands empty — which converts Kroxa’s discard trigger straight into 3-to-the-face damage and neuters their interaction for your loops.
  • Recursion grind. Call to the Netherworld / Raise Dead / Blood Beckoning rebuy bodies and (critically) re-buy Kroxa itself if it ever gets exiled-around; Songs of the Damned is a ritual that can hard-cast and leaves enough to escape next turn.
  • Edict + sweeper coverage. Six edicts (Diabolic Edict, Cruel Edict, Geth’s Verdict, Devour Flesh, Fleshbag Marauder, Slum Reaper, Cornered by Black Mages) ignore hexproof/indestructible go-wide threats; small sweepers (Drown in Sorrow, Sulfurous Blast) reset early aggro.

Role breakdown (with counts)

  • Lands — 36: 10 nonbasic (Command Tower, 5 BR duals, Ash Barrens, Barren Moor cycler, Bojuka Bog GY-hate, Haunted Fengraf recursion) + 15 Swamp + 11 Mountain. Black-weighted because the discard/edict core is BB-hungry.
  • Ramp / mana accel — 11: Deadly Dispute, Big Score, Unexpected Windfall, Seize the Spoils, Pirate’s Pillage, Blood Fountain, Greedy Freebooter, Impulsive Pilferer, Shambling Ghast, Prized Statue, Songs of the Damned. Treasure-centric so it doubles as escape fuel and color-fixing for .
  • Card advantage — 9: Faithless Looting, Faithless Salvaging, Insolent Neonate, Costly Plunder, Night’s Whisper, Sign in Blood, plus the draw halves of the ramp spells. (Looters double as graveyard-fillers.)
  • Self-mill / Kroxa fuel — 8: Wailing Ghoul, Mire Triton, Corpse Churn, Crow of Dark Tidings, Gorging Vulture, Stinkweed Imp (dredge), Eerie Soultender, Scarblade-style enablers folded in via looting.
  • Discard / hand disruption — 13: Duress, Divest, Vicious Rumors, Horrifying Revelation, Hopeless Nightmare, Burglar Rat, Elderfang Disciple, Hymn to Tourach, Wrench Mind, Blightning, Aggressive Sabotage, Liliana’s Specter, Unnerve, Mind Rake, Skull Rend.
  • Spot removal / interaction — 10: Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Flame Slash, Terminate, Bone Shards, Annihilating Glare, Deadly Derision, Grim Bounty, Pumpkin Bombardment, Withercrown + the 6 edicts listed below double as interaction.
  • Edicts — 7: Diabolic Edict, Cruel Edict, Geth’s Verdict, Devour Flesh, Fleshbag Marauder, Slum Reaper, Cornered by Black Mages.
  • Mass / pseudo-wipe — 2: Drown in Sorrow, Sulfurous Blast.
  • Inevitability / win pieces — rest: Kroxa loop, Ill-Gotten Inheritance (repeatable drain), Sawblade Scamp (recurring ping), recursion (Call to the Netherworld, Raise Dead, Blood Beckoning).

Pilot notes

  • Don’t hard-cast Kroxa unless you mean it. A cast is a sorcery-speed Mind Rot that sacrifices itself — fine as an early disruption play that also puts a card in the yard, but the real engine is escape. Hold it if you’re one mill short of comfortably paying the exile-five.
  • Sequence loot before escape. Faithless Looting / Salvaging both dump cards you’d rather have in the yard and dig — fire them in your first main so the yard is stocked when you escape in the second.
  • Watch your own graveyard economy. Escaping exiles five cards. If you want to flashback Faithless Looting or rebuy with Call to the Netherworld, leave those out of the five.
  • Edicts beat what burn can’t. Save Diabolic Edict / Geth’s Verdict for hexproof commanders and single big threats; lead with burn on small utility creatures.
  • Bojuka Bog / Relic-style hate is mainboarded via Bojuka Bog — point it at a graveyard deck, but remember it can hit your own yard, so fetch it for the land drop, not necessarily the trigger value, against non-GY tables.

Weaknesses

  • Grindy clock. Kroxa is a 6/6 with no evasion; against go-wide or fast-combo tables the discard-and-chip plan can be too slow. The burn/ping reach is the backup but it’s thin in a 4-player pod.
  • Only two true wipes. Red/black commons cap out at small -X/-X and 2-3 damage sweepers; a resolved fatty or a wide board with toughness 3+ slips through. Edicts and spot removal carry the load instead.
  • No counterspells at common — this is reactive-via-removal control, not stack control. You answer threats after they land.
  • Self-discard tension. Loot effects and Kroxa’s escape can eat cards you needed; mulligan toward a yard-filler + a treasure source.

Decklist

⬇ Download as .txt — paste into Moxfield, Archidekt, or MTG Arena.

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