‘In the Phase of Open Warfare, especially when one is placed in a position of defending or countering, one must be proactive.
Determine what commodities or resources you will need to gain the advantage and place your opponent on the defensive.
Establish which of these commodities or resources your opponent possesses.
Take them from him. Do not chase glory. Do not force unwinnable confrontations.
Do not try to match his strength if you know his strength over-matches yours.
Do not waste time. Decide what will make you strong enough, and then acquire those things.
Your most desired commodity is always your continued ability to prosecute the war.’
This is my
Alesha, Who Smiles at Death
EDH deck. It has evolved from a quickly mashed up a deck consisting of cards that seemed OK, into my favorite deck for any kind of playgroup, casual or more serious.
Before we begin, I gotta thank my girlfriend for actually putting up with my obsession with Alesha, my co-host Niksa for giving me solid judge advice and selling me that WPN Thalia, and in the end, AsykoSkwrl for actually formatting everything so it looks so well done. It's all him!
When Alesha's Story was released, I was intrigued by her as a character. I quickly traded for her, getting a Spanish version.I made some janky deck that was losing more often than not, but she was fun to play nonetheless. As time went by, I got more and more things for Alesha, and I became obsessed with her more and more.
I play mostly multiplayer in a spell heavy environment (and that influenced some of my card choices) however, with small adjustments, this deck can fight off any type of deck.
Small update on the meta: We cEDH now, boiz. We have Tymna/Thrasios, Zur, Food Chain Prossh and the rest of the gang at the table.
This Alesha, unlike more commonly seen token based version, focuses on winning through taxing our opponents from casting spells,playing creatures and killing our creatures.
Another reason to play Alesha is that we are in perfect colors to hate on permanents. From creatures, to lands, nothing is safe!
We have a few simple categories: Mana, Taxes, Card Advantage, Tutor, Removal, Combo and Reanimation
This list is quite resilient to wraths, and only thing that really stops our creatures is lot of exile.
Merciless Eviction
and Angel of Dire Hour can be game over if one overextends without sac outlet backup. Also, our deck can operate on small amounts of mana - if Alesha is well protected, only thing we need is 2-3 mana per turn.
Because I build this deck 'cause commander appealed to me so much, we have to go with Mardu. Firstly I was sad, because no blue (If only I could sneak Cyclonic Rift in this deck ...)however, I was quick to find that Mardu can play a control-y game if need be - all while beating face!
Black lets us play with our graveyard even more, and gives us
Oppression
style cards, and is generally kill happy. Black also provides us with wonderful card advantage a la
Necropotence
Big mana decks can punish us a lot, if their threats/mana bases aren't killed and/or slowed down.Also, decks that move lot faster than us (like Goblins or cEDH style combo decks) can outrace us - however,
Trinisphere
should be applied in these cases.As it is usual with graveyard strategies, don't dump everything into your graveyard at once, since graveyard hate can hurt. A lot.
Also, you need to taylor your hate pieces towards your meta - if there is more go-wide strategies, usre more wraths, if there is a lot combo decks, go harder on Taxing effects.
Our general strategy is simple - be disruptive as possible. Strip players out of their hands, kill their creatures,destroy their permanents, while attacking with our small dudes and grinding value.
You want to reach a point where your taxing effects are holding you down the least and enabling you to win the game, while your opponents stay crippled.
Early game is all about laying our hate down. You want to have disruptive Taxing effects in play by turn 2. Turn three can already be too late, depending on meta.
Trinisphere
slows down ramp decks, wrecks combo decks. In the similar vein,
Aven Mindcensor
can screw up people ramping.
One of the newer additions are
Magus of the Moon
and
Hokori, Dust Drinker
The way we abuse them is by assessing the situation - will this move hamper our opponents more than us?
Do we have enough basics and are our opponents greedy with their mana base?
Blood Moon
them.
Do they rely on mana dorks and activated abilities?
Cursed Totem
is the way to go.
Stax Pieces should have already been set, and our efficient beaters should be doing their work, making our opponents life miserable. This is a good spot to Armageddon people, if we have rock/board presence/
Smothering Tithe
ready to overwhelm them.
Apply pressure, choose your battles carefully. Always remember you are reliant on your permanents for the most of it, so ponder about your enemies answers and how can they disrupt your disruption.
This deck actually mulligans quite well. All we need is couple of lands and a few small dudes or hate cards to get the ball rolling, so feel free to mulligan aggressively (even with 5 cards, we are okay.)
With addition of
Ancient Tomb
and
Chrome Mox
our hands get even faster, meaning we can cast many dumb things turn one, from many rocks T1, or
Magus of the Moon
etc. I do recommend to agressively mulligan with this deck, since we are really reliant on hate pieces early on.
One of the most obvious combos is Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit + Murderous Redcap
+ any sac outlet. (You can have
Cathars' Crusade
instead of Anafenza for the combo) Unless disrupted, this combo deals infinite damage to any number of players/ creatures.
Way to speed up the kill is to have
Blood Artist
on board while doing this. For those wondering how the combo works:
Step 1. Sacrifice Redcap
Step 2. Persist Triggers and Redcap is back
Step 3. Redcap trigger is put on the stack
Step 4. Anafenza/Crusade triggers - resolve this one first
Step 5. Redcap deals damage
Rinse and repeat.
Note about this combo - if your sac outlet is
Altar of Dementia
you can mill one player while killing another one, speeding up the whole process, while
Viscera Seer
gives you infinite Scry.
Step 1: Either have
Sun Titan
on the board and than cast
Fiend Hunter
, or have Hunter in graveyard and than cast Titan, all while
Blood Artist
is on board.
Step 2.
Fiend Hunter
enters the battlefield, and it triggers his exile trigger
Next combo is one Alesha and Kaalia of the Vast are known for, and it includes Alesha, Who Smiles at Death + Master of Cruelties
. For this to work, we need Master in the graveyard, and Alesha in the field.
Step 1: Attack with Alesha
Step 2: Use her ability to get back Master of Cruelties
Step 3: Master comes back from the graveyard, and if it somehow and another creature don't get blocked blocked (
Break Through the Line
) you kill a player on the spot
Now that we've listed all of the game winning combos, it's time to delve into some combos that don't win the game, but hurt opponents very, very much.
First, we come back to our good friend Fiend Hunter and his favorite trick "how to make opponents creatures dissapear forever". First time I used this against my girlfriend, it resulted in a 15 minute argument that ended up with words "This is bullsh*t" . Note to the careful reader,
Faceless Butcher
and
Mesmeric Fiend
etc.
Trigger warning: a lot of trigger manipulation ahead.
Things needed for this cocktail are a sac outlet and Fiend Hunter
So, what are options whilst recruiting? One of better option is getting a sac outlet, so we can sac Recruiter and reanimate him again. If not, just judge by what's happening on the battlefield, and what do you forsee happening.
Here I'll cover the creatures that didn't get mentioned in previous segments.
Aven Mindcensor
- Tutoring is good. Unless our opponents do it. Extra benefit - flash makes
Dowsing Dagger
work so much better, especially if you equip it, cast
Armageddon
and than smack somebody in the face!
Azra Oddsmaker
- Discard outlet, Draw Engine, all this deck needs.
Brutal Hordechief
- He wins us the games and keeps us in losing ones. Those small drains add up, and 3 is a small price to pay for a dead opponent. Note, you can activate his ability during ANYBODYS turn, making sure right people live or die.
Main reason he's here is to laugh in face of
Constant Mists
that Tatiyova player deploys.
Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
- Lady Gaga is here to kill creature strategies, and make our creatures hit for leathal. Reanimate it for cheap if possible!
Grand Abolisher
- Anti-disruption measure that enables us to combo off in peace.
Mindblade Render
- Phyrexian Arena on a stick, that works on other peoples turns sometimes.
Phyrexian Revoker
- This little guy does work. He doesn't shut off mana abilities, and you don't name the card while casting, but while it resolves!
Sire Of Insanity
- Since people mostly draw better than we do, let's drag them to our level!
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
- One of the flagbearers of the Death and Taxes playstyle, she taxes people, while not interfering with our reanimation plan that much. Also, look at that gorgeous WPN art (provided by my co-host Niksa) (Also, Vryn Wingmare is a card)
Tymna the Weaver
- Why can't we have her as Alesha's Partner? Draws us cards, we can recur her, tutor for her. Truly a perfect creature!
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