Kenrith's Cauldron Pod

Kenrith is prepating a spicy little something for you this week, aiming at exploiting some juicy combos with Prime Speaker Vannifar and The Cauldron of Eternity. The deck is full of creatures with enters-the-battlefield effects filling our curve from 1 to 7 mana, with plenty of ways to bring them back from the dead or shuffle them back into our deck to be reused later! This recipe has the potential to achieve UNLIMITED VALUE, so let's get cooking!

Kenrith is an incredibly powerful commander that gives us access to all colors, but most importantly he gives us a means of semi-consistently reanimating our key creatures, drawing cards, or healing while we search for either our Cauldron or Vannifar. When Vannifar is in play, we have access to our powerful toolbox of impactful creatures, and with The Cauldron of Eternity on the board every time we sacrifice a creature it gets put back in the bottom of our library, to be searched out with Vannifar later. This combo provides us with a ton of value and cheeky combos we can pull off with our versatile creatures.

Ramp:

The deck runs less ramp than other Kenrith decks out there, but it compensates by getting around the commander tax by using graveyard and deck recursion to keep bringing him back. We run [{Arboreal Grazer}} as a way to get more lands in play faster, as well as a decent blocker and a 1 drop to start the chain. We run Gilded Goose for that sweet early acceleration and food synergies, and Arcane Signet for that consistent mana. Risen Reef is an excellent value card to pod into early, and Faeburrow Elder can give us access to a lot of mana if we need to set up for big explosive turns. Chromatic Lantern is our dream ramp card, fixing our mana to help us cast the very demandingly costed creatures we were expecting to pod into, and Golos, Tireless Pilgrim to fetch Field of the Dead, continually ramp us and allow us to cast a bunch of our cards for free.

Self-Mill:

Because we run the Cauldron, there are times in which we will want to mill ourselves to ensure we have creatures to bring back from the graveyard. Glowspore Shaman is a good way of starting the self-mill while helping us bring back lands we might need to fix our mana. Emry, Lurker of the Loch can have her cost reduced quite easily, and she gives us a way to return the artifacts she milled or we sacrificed away from the graveyard. Almost every single card in this deck, with the Finale of Devastation, is infinitely recurrable, meaning that given enough time we can gring almost anyone out. Gorging Vulture is a weak card on its own, but can give us some lifegain and allows us to get more creatures to cheat out from the graveyard. Cavalier of Thorns is the first of three cavaliers we run in the deck, this one helping us ramp up a bit and allowing us to bring back any card we want from our graveyard to the top of the library if we exile him on his death trigger.

Graveyard Value:

We run a few cards that let us get a little bit more value and recursion from having creatures in our graveyard. Lazav, the Multifarious lets us surveil upon entering the battlefield, and can take the shape of any creature in our graveyard. Golgari Findbroker lets us return any permanent to our hand that we might want to reuse, and Izoni, Thousand-Eyed is another sacrifice outlets, as well as providing us with a lot of board presence and card draw. Finale of Devastation can be used as a finisher at 12 mana, but it's mostly a way to either find or recur any creature from our library or graveyard straight onto the battlefield.

Do-stuff Creatures:

These are the creatures we will be podding into or reanimating when looking for answers. Knight of Autumn deals with a variety of hard-to-remove parmanents and gives us potential lifegain in a race. Frilled Mystic isn't a great card to pod into, but when reanimated at instant speed with our commander it makes for some pretty galaxy brain feelings. Rankle, Master of Pranks is a powerful disruptive creature that can help us discard our big creatures to reanimate while forcing discards form our opponent, allowing us to keep moving with our gameplan while frustrating our opponent's attempts to work on theirs.Cavalier of Night is a way to remove a large creature and recur smaller creatures (like Corridor Monitor to untap Vannifar upon death. Ravager Wurm is a big scary boy that can monch on smaller creatures in the battlefield or a land like a Castle or Mobilized District. Dream Eater is a way to interact at instant speed, bouncing a big permanent in our way and surveiling cards we might want into the graveyard. Our chain tops out at the best enter-the-battlefield effect in standard right now, Agent of Treachery to steal a bunch of our opponent's permanents. A common gameplan is to try to race to Agent and continually get his ETB effect to go off, by sacrificing him back to the bottom of the deck and podding back into him, recurring him from the graveyard, or any other fun ways we can come up with.

Even More Value and Synergies:

Speaking of fun ways to get more value out of Agent of Treachery, we have Charming Prince, who is extremely flexible but mostly we want to have him get us extra value from our creatures entering the battlefield again and again. Foulmire Knight provides us with a 1 drop with extra value potential from its adventure to start up our pod, while Mausoleum Secrets is an excellent tutor in a deck running 27 creatures with multiple ways to put it on the battlefield. While the card only tutors up other black cards, we can use to to find our Cauldron if the game has gone on long enough to get 12 creatures in our graveyard,  or any of the more powerful black creatures we can get our hands on.Corridor Monitor works amazingly with Vannifar and the Cauldron, allowing us to pod up the chain from either 1 to 3 drop, or from 5 straight to 7 by sacrificing Cavalier of Night. We run a Neoform for some redundancy on our podding strategies if Vannifar hasn't been drawn, and Fblthp, the Lost for some clean simple card drawing. Spark Double allows us to double up on any of our creatures and ETB effects, and Yarok, the Desecrated does the doubling up on his own when on the field. Cavalier of Gales is also excellent for Vannifar, as it draws us cards, synergizes with shuffling our deck once we Brainstorm on ETB, and just goes back into the deck to be podded up again, even without the Cauldron. 

Lands:

The deck runs 26 lands, and while we do make use of Field of the Dead, the deck's main strategy isn't all about ramping in lands. We run 6 basics in 2 Forests, 2 Swamps, and 2 Islands and 8 shock lands, opting to not include Sacred Foundry and Blood Crypt We run 4 temples to help us fix our draws a little bit, once again not running the Boros land of its type. The rest are just a few gain lands, of the colors we will mostly need, an Evolving Wilds, and a Fabled Passage as well as a Command Tower. It's not the most tuned, but drawing Chromatic Lanterns really skews your thinking when it comes to building your manabase.

Hope you enjoyed this delicious morsel of what Kenrith can bring to the table. What a fun commander!