Of all of my EDH decks, Kaalia is the only one that jumps out as being incredibly full of shit.
Kaalia is the only deck I have that scores a 5. The decklist can be found here, http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/kaalia-13-01-14-1/.
As you can see its a brutal list. I came to it almost by accident. I was looking to build a deck that was able to win sans any combo. What I found when playing the deck was that without some way to immediately win the game one of my opponents would eventually find the Mind Over Matter to pair with their Temple Bell. So I started adding in Hate cards and just never stopped. It was significantly more effective than I anticipated but this method also made it so that games would last forever with me being the only person still able to take actions. I now only bring the deck out went faced with other people who have 4s-5s.
Above I mentioned Hate cards. Some readers might not know what a Hate card is. A Hate card is what would normally be a sideboard card. It is a narrow answer card for a specific strategy. The Hate cards in Kaalia are:
Ob Nixilis, Unshackled
Erebos, God of the Dead
Iona, Shield of Emeria
Linvala, Keeper of Silence
Spirit of the Labyrinth
Grafdigger's Cage
Torpor Orb
Aura of Silence
Chains of Mephistopheles
Moat
Nether Void
Rest In Peace
Stony Silence
Stranglehold
Tainted Aether
Rix Maado, Dungeon Palace
These are the cards that purely exist to cut off options from the opponent. They ruin linear strategies and some things that EDH decks commonly rely on. We don't have too much artifact mana for a couple reasons. The first being that Kaalia costs three colored mana, so accelerating into her is difficult. So the only artifact mana we run are the broken ones, Sol Ring and Mana Crypt, and the signets. Signets actually make playing Kaalia on turn three realistic. As such, we can play Stony Silence to shut off the crazy amount of mana rocks everyone plays without hurting our self too much. We do have a couple other artifact activate-able effects, In fact, the deck has a number of anti-synergies in it. That's a price you pay for playing so much Hate. Unsurprisingly, most Hate cards are enchantments, the most difficult to remove permanent type in EDH. Of special note is Torpor Orb, which is just so hard to beat. So many decks rely on creatures with etb disenchants to solve non-creature problems that Torpor Orb is often the best card to defend itself.
The goal of the deck is to put the game into a locked up state and then smash with huge monsters. Kaalia lets us short-cut the step where we play them and wait a turn. She's also fast enough that she can get in under a lot of the answers and if your opponents spend their time answering her, eventually you'll have the best creatures on the table with all of your opponents synergistic components disabled. There are a few big players in making this happen:
Land Tax
Necropotence
Scroll Rack
These are the most important cards in the deck. Necropotence more so than the other two. Necropotence doesn't actually draw cards, getting around Spirit of the Labyrinth and Chains of Mephistopheles. It gives you a land drop and a monster every turn. Land Tax merely gets you lands for the rest of the game since there's almost always going to be a green player at the table. Scroll Rack is at its best here since you have tons of conditional cards that you want at specific times and it also doesn't draw cards. Scroll Rack can get shut off by Stony Silence so you have to be more away of that. That doesn't stop it from being so good that I've considered running off color fetches since the real advantage comes when you can shuffle away the useless cards. When you combine Land Tax and Scroll Rack you get a to turn the basics into real cards and keep shuffling away whatever dregs you don't need.
The rest of the deck are huge dudes to put into play with Kaalia, tutors, mana denial, removal, and some card draw. Most of the creatures have strong board control elements to them like Steel Hellkite, Scourge of Kher Ridges, and Balefire Dragon. These police the board and make sure you don't get overrun by small aggressive creatures(or in the case of Balefire really any creatures). Several of our monsters line up well with functions the deck wants to reinforce. I already mentioned the various creatures that act as hate cards, but we also have Angel of Despair as removal, and Rune-Scarred Demon as a Tutor. Gisela does lots of work blunting aggro and increasing our clock by a ton. Avacyn, Angel of Hope is some of the best protection in the format and also makes our Mass Land Destruction asymmetrical. We run Armageddon, Boom//Bust, and Catastrophe as our mass LD. Armageddon is a classic and is super cheap. Boom//Bust has the utility that we can use Bust to pick off someones Cradle or what-have-you without having to use it to blow up all the lands. It also can reset our Land Tax, which is sweet. Catastrophe can also be a Wrath in a pinch. The mass LD gives us the dimension to be able to shut our opponents off mana completely while we are holding a bunch of land from Land Tax, or have a Kaalia on the table letting us cheat our monsters into play. It combines well with the various Tax cards. Taxing is making people pay more mana for their cards. Its entirely possible that we want more of them since the deck is really trying to slow down the game, but without dedicating to them more only the big ones that stand on their own are worth it.
The removal and tutors are just the most mana efficient that we can get. There should be more tutors, but we want them to be cheap on mana since we need flexible answers quickly. Grim Tutor should probably make an appearance, and maybe Idyllic Tutor since Necropotence is so important, but I dislike not being able to get a monster or even a Hate card outside of an enchantment. The card draw is suspect since we are running multiple cards to hate out card draw, but I found that you really do need it in order to smooth out your early game, and the two often don't collide as you are more likely to draw into your hate with the draw spell than to naturally draw the Night's Whisper/Read the Bones/Phyrexian Arena after your Chains or Spirit. In the case of Wheel, its almost fine since you can make everyone play off the top of the deck, and Arena + Chains just means that you loot a card every turn, still giving us great selection.
The miscellaneous cards,
True Conviction and Whip of Erebos are both fantastic and fueling our life total, which we spend a not insignificant amount of. They both have other functions, TC can just end the game when played, especially if you have Gisella in play. Whip can give us some solid utility with our huge dudes. Lightning Greaves and Swiftfoot Boots are standard EDH cards and let us both protect our general and get her to the attack step early. Also, if the are equipped when we cast Stony Silence then they get to keep doing their job. Cabal Conditioning is on the edge of the deck, as is Debtor's Knell. They are both so expensive. Cabal Conditioning is brutal, but if you a huge monster in this deck odds are you are already winning. Debtor's Knell is just super cool and I have no where else to play it, which is most of the reason that Moltensteel Dragon is in the deck. If I ever build Scion of the Ur-Dragon they would both be out.
Our mana base has some tricks in it, but not as many as normal since the deck is incredibly color dense. That's why Chromatic Lantern is present, since it just makes all our mana problems go away. Among the lands in our mana base that get more of a mention are,
Temple of Triumph
Temple of Silence
Hall of the Bandit Lord
Rix Maadi, Dungeon Palace
Flagstones of Trokair
Spinerock Knoll
These are the ones that have effects other than mana. The Temples help us control our draws a little since we are lite on draw effects. There should be a Temple of Doom(I know that's not what the R/B is, but its how I'll always think of it), I just haven't got one yet. Hall of the Bandit Lord is great when you have a general that you want to attack with or use a tap ability immediately, It also supports casting our monsters naturally. Rix lets us put pressure on people's hand without having to use a card slot. I kind of want to have a Liliana of the Veil in the deck for the same reason, and also be able to have a solid answer to decks like Uril. I am always dubious of Planeswalkers in EDH, but we have enough ways to stop attackers that she might be worthwhile to try. Flagstones combos with Boom//Bust and our other mass LD spells, as well as Tainted Aether, to let us get some mana after the fact. Spinerock Knoll is pretty easy to trigger in EDH as you don't even have to be the one doing the damage.
Potential refinements include cutting Debtor's Knell, Moltensteel Dragon, Yosei, and Academy Rector. Yosei is fine to include with the RIP since it can always attack for 5, but its really in the deck to lock people out with Debtor's Knell. If the Knell goes so would Yosei. Academy Rector is a bullshit card, but I find I don't have enough ways to reliably kill it myself, especially immediately after I play it, and its turned off by RIP. Moltensteel Dragon gives us a way to kill people at really high life totals, but unfortunately for him so does general damage. He could go without much fuss. In their place, the adds would probably be some combination of Grim Tutor, Liliana of the Veil, Polluted Bonds, Elesh Norn, Night of Soul's Betrayal, Earthquake. Elesh Norn costs a lot and we have no way to cheat her out, but by god is she one of the strongest hate creatures in the game. The rest of the cards reinforce various aspects of the deck.
That's my only five. Its a lot of fun to play and watch the table try to squirm out from under the lock, but its only for tables that can handle it. I've probably only played it two hundred or so times, whereas the deck I'll be doing next has thousands of games under its belt.
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