Kaya, Orzhov Usurper Overthrows Modern
Hello Readers! Today, we are going to spotlight Kaya, Orzhov Usurper! We’ll take a look at the Kaya Extraction, a modern deck that was originally brought to light by SaffronOlive. This deck is a bit out of the ordinary, but think of this deck as Surgical Extraction tribal, with Kaya, Orzhov Usurper as our win condition, draining our opponents of life after we exile all of the important cards from our opponents deck.
There are many different ways to play Kaya in modern. The first way is slotting her in as a main deck utility graveyard hate card. Another way Kaya can be played with WB Eldrazi Processors, and cards like Blight Herder and Wasteland Strangler, but those builds just seems like a bunch of Eldrazi thrown together with Kayas, and results in very inconsistent games. The third way to build her is the way we built Kaya, the surgical way, with plenty of exile effects and Kaya being the finisher in the deck.
While the +1 and -1 abilities of Kaya add value to the card in various matchups, we are primarily aiming to get Kaya to ultimate, as well as having closer to twenty cards in our opponent's exile to make it lethal. She can be a finisher, but also functions as an incidental graveyard hate card, similarly to format staple Scavenging Ooze . The incidental life gain helps against the Lava Spike decks in the format, which have risen in popularity. Her -1 exiles some of the premier pillars in the format like Aether Vial, Champion of the Parish, Hardened Scales, Death’s Shadow, Chalice of the Void, Amulet of Vigor and a bevy of others. Her versatility as removal spell cannot be underrated especially in conjunction with our Surgical Extraction effects. Ultimating Kaya, Orzhov Usurper is our main win condition but it often won’t be the first Kaya you played that won the game. The second Kaya usually does the trick. But again, twenty cards would be VERY difficult if we were to only rely on Kaya in order to get those cards into our opponents exile. So how do we speed up the process? That’s where our extraction pieces come into play.
With Kaya being our finisher, the main theme of our deck is targeted exile, and we achieve the targeted exile with our full playsets of Surgical Extraction, Extirpate, and Unmoored Ego in the main board. These cards are very powerful at grabbing the key payoffs and enablers for a deck. Think of how many decks in Modern are named after one or two cards, (Grixis Death’s Shadow, Izzet Arclight Phoenix, Hollow One, Amulet Titan, Titanshift ), and then imagine removing all of that card from the deck. For 1-3 mana, we are able to grab a full playset of cards from our opponents deck, and send them straight to exile, fueling Kaya’s ultimate. In most cases, the extractions are enough to beat a deck on it’s own by hamstringing all of their threats. They fail to do anything for most of the game before Kaya finishes them off.
These cards can at first be questionable against Midrange decks like Jund or the Rock, or decks that have a variety of win conditions like Humans. On the other hand, we can often disrupt our opponent with discard and sniping extraction effects just long enough so we can trigger Kaya’s ultimate for lethal.
In order for Surgical Extraction and Extirpate to do their work, we need to be able to get cards into our opponents graveyard to target with our extractions, which is where our discard comes in. Thoughtseize, Inquisition of Kozilek, and Collective Brutality give us efficient ways to get the cards we need from our opponent's hand into their graveyard, allowing us to target them. With this, we are often looking at our opponents hand multiple times throughout the game, feeding us more information as to what our opponent is up to, and how to stop their game plan so we can set up ours.
Our deck is finished up with removal and counterspells. While all of these cards are important in terms of keeping us alive during our games, these fit extremely well with our extraction effects. Our removal spells such as Fatal Push and Supreme Verdict are more ways to get key creatures our opponents control into their graveyard, and allow us to extract them from the deck. Logic Knot allows us to counter key spells, which will also be prone to extraction. It is important to have the ability to interact with every type of deck or approach in the format. Discard and Counters help against combo decks and Removal helps against threat-lite decks like Death’s Shadow. Setting these avenues ensures we will be able to deal with at least 1 thing they do towards their gameplan and stop it before nerfing them via Surgical Extraction.
Snapcaster Mage serves as our versatile Regrowth effect. I know it seems to pop up in every modern deck that runs blue, but this card is especially powerful in our deck. It is incredible with Surgical Extraction due to the Phyrexian mana cost, and having even more extraction effects available when they are good lets you shred your opponents deck to pieces. Snapcaster can also act as extra discard, removal or counterspell when the situation calls, making it uber flexible.
The Matchups
The matchups for Kaya Extraction are very straightforward. We are able to crush combo decks and graveyard decks by getting rid of their key pieces, along with other very linear decks that run off of a couple cards in order to win the game, such as Tron and Izzet Phoenix. On the other hand, aggro and midrange decks are pretty hard to win against, as there are no KEY cards to extract from their deck, and we rely on beating our opponents with Kaya’s ultimate before they are able to kill us. In these matchups, the deck becomes more focused on removal like Fatal Push and Supreme Verdict to keep the board under control. Extraction effects may not be great hitting a creature like a Tarmogoyf but at least it means they have three fewer threats in their deck to attack Kaya.
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Overall, this deck is very, very fun to play, and can put together some incredible wins. While not being the most battleforged deck in the meta, this deck can post results in the right environment, and is fun to pull off wins with, regardless of how mad our opponents get when we extract all their win conditions. I highly recommend this deck to any player who knows the modern metagame well, as it is very helpful to know which cards to send to the graveyard to extract later based on the cards in the hands of our opponent. This deck was very fun to play, and is a definite recommendation of mine to anyone wanting to “break” the metagame of modern. I hope you guys enjoyed!
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