Welcome to my Selenia, Dark Angel deck! After building my Jolrael, Empress of Beasts and my Braids, Conjurer Adept deck, I got addicted to winning the game in more unconventional ways. I also enjoy using more underutilized commanders and fell in love with Selenia.
So if this is your first time seeing a Selenia deck, you may ask "why run her as a commander? She has a 3/3 flying for 5 with evasion and you're not even running her as a voltron commander!" Well, as I mentioned before, this deck wins in an unconventional way. Instead of draining your opponent's life totals; this deck wants to win by draining your own! Selenia is perfect for this because you can stack her "return to hand" trigger as many times as you want; effectively draining your life total in multiples of 2. So why is this a good thing? You are able to play cards like Soul Conduit, Reverse the Sands, and Repay in Kind to make your low life total into your win condition.
Sounds fun right? Well the downside is that you can't just stay at 1 life for an entire round of the table or you're just asking to lose. This means that you want to be able to drain your life total and swap life (or win via Near-Death Experience all in the same turn. Due to the nature of that, this deck wants to play like a combo deck; which brings us to the components of the deck.
Life Loss: Cards like Wall of Blood, Lich, Hex Parasite, Blood Celebrant, Mischievous Poltergeist, and your commander herself, Selenia, Dark Angel are cards that help you drain your life total at instant speed. Selenia, Dark Angel and Hex Parasite can only reduce your life total in increments of 2; so if you're at an even life total you want to take 1 damage or gain 1 life if you're trying to set yourself to 1. Blood Celebrant, Wall of Blood, and Mischievous Poltergeist can all drain in increments of 1; so these should be your go-to cards when trying to combo out.
Life Restoration: This one is a bit weird, but stick with me for a minute. Cards like Soul Conduit, Reverse the Sands, Children of Korlis, and Tainted Sigil are able to combo with Defiant Bloodlord and Viskopa Guildmage after a massive loss in life to be able to deal burst damage to a player while also keeping you at a healthy life-total.
Card draw and tutors: This is the brunt of the deck. Since it's a combo deck and we have to make due with the combo pieces we have under $2, you want to be able to find your limited combo pieces as fast as you can. Because of this, I have included basically every black tutor card (or at least all of the commonly used ones); all of the transmute cards (Shred Memory and Netherborn Phalanx hit AMAZING targets); as well as 7 or so card draw cards.
Win conditions: Celestial Convergence, Soul Conduit, Reverse the Sands, Repay in Kind, Near-Death Experience and all of those Life Restoration combos I mentioned are the way that this deck wins. Even though I say that; a good 90% of the time the way this deck wins is through Near-Death Experience. Though to win in this way; you need to have Near-Death Experience and a creature that drains your life total survive an entire round at the table since this deck doesn't have a way to play either card at instant speed.
Removal: Pretty self-explanatory. Keep your opponents far away from you while you do your own thing.
Protection: Same thing as removal, pretty self-explanatory. You're playing a deck that doesn't really play creatures (at least not ones that you want to be blocking with). You need a way to survive so I put in some cards like Ghostly Prison and Righteous Aura to help you survive while you assemble your combo pieces. There's a couple cards here I feel that deserve some special mentions as well. Imp's Mischief, Mana Tithe, Dawn Charm, and Memory Lapse are four counterspells that are in these colors. Yes, you heard me right, counterspells in black and white. Of course they're situational and worse than blue counterspells; but the element of surprise and the turn that it buys you might just be the turn that you need to combo off. The other card that needs a mention is Soul Echo. This card lets you go below 0 life (similar to Lich) so that you can drain your life total and then play Repay in Kind to win the game or Soul Conduit to take one player out while restoring your own life total. Also, pair Soul Echo (with at least 1 counter on it) with Delaying Shield and you are invincible until they destroy one of them; it's kind of like build-your-own Platinum Angel!
Last, but not least, ramp: This deck is very mana hungry and you want to be able to get as much mana as possible in this deck. Ideally you want to be able to play Soul Conduit and tap it in the same turn that you play it. Not to mention your other major win conditions like Debt to the Deathless, Reverse the Sands, and Repay in Kind are incredibly mana hungry. I put it quite a bit of ramp into this deck, but I'm honestly considering putting in even more. This deck needs mana badly and ramp helps you get there.
Phew! That was a lot more than I usually type for a deck description, but I hope it helped anyone that read that huge mess. I really do enjoy this deck and it's the deck I have changed the most since creation BY FAR and I'm still considering making huge changes like adding more card draw and ramp and cutting down on tutors. Anyways, this is where I like it currently and I hope you have as much fun with the deck as I do.
Tl;dr Draw/tutor for combo pieces, drain your life total, trade your life total with opponents.
