How to Play Kona, the Rescue Beastie Commander Deck In Magic: The Gathering

Kona, Rescue Beastie is a very powerful card dropped in Magic: The Gathering's Duskmourn set. Thanks to its legendary creature status, you can use it as your commander, and it's a powerful one at that.

A Kona, Rescue Beastie Commander deck is all about cheating in expensive permanents without paying their mana cost. This is done through Kona itself, and if left unchecked, it can very quickly snowball out of control once you start holding onto the battlefield. If you like to play cards with high mana costs without actually paying the mana, then Kona will be the perfect commander for you.

Deck list

The deck list consists of 29 creatures, five sorceries, three instants, 26 artifacts, two enchantments, and 34 lands. A majority of the creatures are ones you want to cheat with Kona, and many of the artifacts are enablers for Kona's effect.

Key card

Wife, Rescue Beastie

the commander, Wife, Rescue Beastie is by far the most important card in the deck. You always want it intercepted before your second main phase to ensure that its survivability triggers.

Kona lets you put any permanent on the battlefield from your hand. There are no restrictions on which permanent you choose, which helps you choose which one can help you in the current game mode. Thanks to Vehicles and cards like Springleaf Drumit's trivial to tap the Kona without using it in combat to ensure it stays safe.

Monster manual

When making a Commander deck, it's important to remember you will not always have access to your commander. In Beastie's case it will often be subject to removal as if it gets stuck on the battlefield you will quickly become a problem. As such, replacements are necessary if the Kona is not available, and it is here Monster manual comes in.

The adventure side of the Monster Manual (Zoological Study) is decent, although you can end up casting one of your powerful spells without creatures and not be able to get them back. But if you're in desperate need of a creature, it's worth taking the risk.

When the Monster Manual is on the battlefield, for just two mana you can put any creature directly on the battlefield. If you have both Monster Manual and Kona on the battlefield, you'll be able to get two expensive creatures for little to no mana investment.

Ghalta, Stampede Tyrant

There are many good options to cheat with Kona's effect, but perhaps the best creature is that Ghalta, Stampede Tyrant. This is largely because in addition to being a creature with great stats and stomp, it allows you to craft any other creature cards in your hand with it when it enters the battlefield.

Since Ghalta can trick the creatures out of your hand, Kona can be used to trick away enchantments and artifacts instead. These two work together to help you amass a massive battlefield with just one Kona trigger.

Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger

Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger is a very useful creature once it hits the battlefield if it sticks around. Your opponents will want to remove it immediately or risk it constantly forced to wait two turns before their land can be resolved.

Vorinclex is especially useful for your mana generation, because it doubles the amount of mana your lands generate. Since your deck is primarily made up of permanents with high casting costs, this excess mana is especially useful for casting them when you can't trick them out.

Smuggler's Copter

In your deck, you want many ways to ensure you can tap Kona to ensure that its effect can be triggered. One of the best ways to do this is to man a vehicle and Smuggler's Copter is the best choice of vehicle for the job. It has a solid statline as a 3/3, and since it also has flying, you can attack an opponent without being able to block it to make sure it stays put.

When Smuggler's Copter attacks, you can draw and discard a card. This helps you dig through your deck to get to your powerful permanents faster, and helps you get rid of any dead cards in your hand, such as lands. Then Cone triggers on the second main phase, you can put anything you drew with Smuggler's Copter onto the battlefield after it attacks.

How to play the deck

A Kona, Rescue Beastie Commander deck requires some patience to play. There is one high chance that you will constantly be goal-orientedas it is almost necessary for your opponents to do so. If your opponents are light on interaction, you can very quickly run away with the game. This is the main disadvantage of the tirebecause it's very easy to become a “public enemy” of the game once your game plan starts rolling.

There is a balance of permanents to cheat in and permanents to tap on Kona. You primarily want to use Vehicles for bottlingas these are solid cards in their own right rather than just supporting the primary strategy. Cyberspace, Rolling Hamsphere, and Skysovereign, Cosnul's flagship are all great vehicles in battle, helping you take advantage of your board state and in Skysovereign's case deal with creatures and planeswalkers on the battlefield.

Since you have such a high mana curve, there are other ways to sneak creatures onto the battlefield and avoid paying their mana costs.
Smuggler's surprise
can put two creatures on the battlefield (and ramp and give your creatures cover);
Monster manual
places creatures directly on the battlefield, and
Chimil, the inner sun
allows you to discover five each end step to cast a spell with mana cost five or less from your library.

The the primary win condition for the deck is to win through combat. You have a huge suite of powerful creatures in your lineup, many of which have high stats. Also, many of them have trample (or can grant trample) to all your creatures. Unnatural growth especially helps close games by doubling the power of all your creatures. Triumph of the Hordes helps you close games faster by giving your creatures infect for luck, meaning they only need to do ten damage to take someone out of the game.