Teysa, Orzhov Scion - Combo Strategies - PRIMER

Commander / EDH Aristocrats Combo Primer Tokens Value Engine WB (Orzhov)

obsidian743

Lands (38)

• 1x Ancient Tomb
• 1x Arcane Lighthouse
• 1x Castle Ardenvale
• 1x Command Beacon
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Field of the Dead
• 1x Godless Shrine
• 1x High Market
• 1x Isolated Chapel
• 1x Marsh Flats
• 1x Maze of Ith
• 1x Phyrexian Tower
• 6x Plains
• 1x Scrubland
• 4x Snow-Covered Plains
• 5x Snow-Covered Swamp
• 1x Strip Mine
• 7x Swamp
• 1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
• 1x Vault of the Archangel

Sac Outlets (7)

• 1x Ashnod's Altar
• 1x High Market
• 1x Phyrexian Altar
• 1x Phyrexian Tower
• 1x Priest of Forgotten Gods
• 1x Smothering Abomination
• 1x Victimize

Tutor (6)

• 1x Academy Rector
• 1x Demonic Tutor
• 1x Enlightened Tutor
• 1x Idyllic Tutor
• 1x Vampiric Tutor
• 1x Weathered Wayfarer

Removal (3)

• 1x Anguished Unmaking
• 1x Utter End
• 1x Vindicate

Token Generation (15)

• 1x Anointed Procession
• 1x Belfry Spirit
• 1x Bitterblossom
• 1x Castle Ardenvale
• 1x Elenda, the Dusk Rose
• 1x Elspeth Tirel
• 1x Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder
• 1x Field of the Dead
• 1x Grave Titan
• 1x Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
• 1x Lingering Souls
• 1x Ophiomancer
• 1x Painter's Servant
• 1x Thraben Doomsayer
• 1x Twilight Drover

Support (9)

• 1x Animate Dead
• 1x Entomb
• 1x Sensei's Divining Top
• 1x Sorin, Lord of Innistrad
• 1x Teysa Karlov
• 1x Torment of Hailfire
• 1x Victimize
• 1x Weathered Wayfarer
• 1x Yawgmoth's Will

Card Draw (6)

• 1x Esper Sentinel
• 1x Mentor of the Meek
• 1x Necropotence
• 1x Sensei's Divining Top
• 1x Skullclamp
• 1x Smothering Abomination

Protection (4)

• 1x Angel's Grace
• 1x Imp's Mischief
• 1x Rebuff the Wicked
• 1x Teferi's Protection

Commander (1)

Aristocrats (9)

• 1x Blood Artist
• 1x Bloodghast
• 1x Corpse Knight
• 1x Cruel Celebrant
• 1x Nether Traitor
• 1x Reassembling Skeleton
• 1x Relentless Dead
• 1x The Meathook Massacre
• 1x Zulaport Cutthroat

Ramp (8)

• 1x Arcane Signet
• 1x Land Tax
• 1x Mind Stone
• 1x Orzhov Signet
• 1x Smothering Tithe
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Talisman of Hierarchy
• 1x Tithe

Lifegain (5)

• 1x Baneslayer Angel
• 1x Elspeth Tirel
• 1x Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
• 1x Serra Ascendant
• 1x Vault of the Archangel

WinCon (1)

• 1x The Meathook Massacre

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Maybeboard

Other (96)

• 1x Altar of Dementia
• 1x Angel of Despair
• 1x Army of the Damned
• 1x Aryel, Knight of Windgrace
• 1x Ashen Rider
• 1x Attrition
• 1x Ayara, First of Locthwain
• 1x Bastion of Remembrance
• 1x Black Market
• 1x Bloodgift Demon
• 1x Bloodline Keeper  ^Flip
• 1x Burnished Hart
• 1x Butcher of Malakir
• 1x Carrion
• 1x Circle of Despair
• 1x Claws of Gix
• 1x Condemn
• 1x Conspiracy
• 1x Culling Dais
• 1x Culling the Weak
• 1x Damnation
• 1x Dark Ritual
• 1x Dark Salvation
• 1x Darkest Hour
• 1x Darkness
• 1x Debt of Loyalty
• 1x Decree of Justice
• 1x Demonic Taskmaster
• 1x Desecrated Tomb
• 1x Despark
• 1x Dictate of Erebos
• 1x Dreadhorde Invasion
• 1x Eerie Interlude
• 1x Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
• 1x Elspeth, Knight-Errant
• 1x Elspeth, Sun's Champion
• 1x Emeria Angel
• 1x Endless Atlas
• 1x Endless Ranks of the Dead
• 1x Esper Sentinel
• 1x Exsanguinate
• 1x Fellwar Stone
• 1x Geralf's Messenger
• 1x Ghostway
• 1x Glorious Anthem
• 1x Grave Pact
• 1x Gravecrawler
• 1x Heliod's Intervention
• 1x Imperial Seal
• 1x Increasing Devotion
• 1x Intangible Virtue
• 1x Leyline of the Void
• 1x Mana Crypt
• 1x Mana Tithe
• 1x Mana Vault
• 1x Mortify
• 1x Necromancy
• 1x Necrotic Sliver
• 1x Nether Shadow
• 1x Nether Spirit
• 1x Nightcreep
• 1x Nomads' Assembly
• 1x Painter's Servant
• 1x Phyrexian Arena
• 1x Plagued Rusalka
• 1x Plumb the Forbidden
• 1x Profane Command
• 1x Reanimate
• 1x Replenish
• 1x Reprocess
• 1x Rise of the Dread Marn
• 1x Scheming Symmetry
• 1x Scroll Rack
• 1x Secure the Wastes
• 1x Serra's Sanctum
• 1x Shadowspear
• 1x Shallow Grave
• 1x Skeletal Vampire
• 1x Skyclave Shade
• 1x Snow-Covered Plains
• 1x Snow-Covered Swamp
• 1x Solemn Simulacrum
• 1x Soulreaper of Mogis
• 1x Sudden Spoiling
• 1x Sun Titan
• 1x Suture Priest
• 1x Syr Konrad, the Grim
• 1x Thalisse, Reverent Medium
• 1x Thallid Soothsayer
• 1x The Meathook Massacre
• 1x Tithe
• 1x Toxic Deluge
• 1x Unearth
• 1x Urborg Justice
• 1x Village Rites
• 1x Wrath of God

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Intro

UPDATED 5/2022! Now running Painter's Servant!

This is one of the first decks I built over 13 years ago when EDH first came out. Everyone tends to prefer Teysa Karlov, but I think the OG is more fun to play with. I try to keep it updated as newer and more synergistic cards are released. The mana curve is meant to stay low and it does border on the competitive side, meaning if the engine can come online, you can probably win within 5 - 7 turns. The deck can easily be tuned up or down and I provide thoughts on how you might do that later in the primer.

It does well in almost any meta and is very consistent thought there are multiple lines of play.

Setting Up

The trick here is to combo off all the triggered abilities effectively, namely sacrificing black creatures to generate white spirits, and then sacrificing to drain your opponents' life. Remember, your own life is just as much a resource as mana sources so don't be afraid to use it. Other than that, you just build up an army of flying tokens, control the board using Teysa's abilities, then win by group slug with your aristocrats or go for a wide weenie beat down.

Lines of Play, Triggers, and Combos

It's important to focus on getting black creatures out early. The most important black creature engines are Bitterblossom and/or Painter's Servant coupled with your graveyard recursion creatures. Rely on Idyllic Tutor, Enlightened Tutor, or Academy Rector to get your enchantments out. If you already have Bitterblossom and Painter's Servant grab Necropotence, Smothering Tithe, or Anointed Procession. If you've already built up a ton of tokens grab The Meathook Massacre

• With Painter's Servant and Teysa, Orzhov Scion out, you have a combo that can essentially wipe the board or win the game: after naming "Black" with Servant, the three white creatures you sac to Teysa's removal ability generate three new creatures. Ad nauseam.

• Save the most powerful tutors (Demonic Tutor and Vampiric Tutor) to get the non-enchantment combo pieces: Painter's Servant, your sac outlets: Phyrexian Altar / Ashnod's Altar, or the aristocrats: Cruel Celebrant, Blood Artist, Zulaport Cutthroat, Corpse Knight.

• Once Teysa, Orzhov Scion is out you can combo your triggered abilities off Teysa Karlov, Anointed Procession, Elenda, the Dusk Rose, and Twilight Drover.

• Use Skullclamp on black creatures such as the faeries created from Bitterblossom to get card draw and combo off Teysa.

• You can sacrifice creatures like Nether Traitor and Reassembling Skeleton to Phyrexian Altar to pay for their own recursion. Sac Traitor or Skeleton: add one mana. Sac another creature: add mana. Bring Traitor or Skeleton back from your graveyard.

Relentless Dead also sort of works off this combo, too, but you will need one extra mana to re-cast him from your hand.

• Entomb is useful for ensuring Victimize has targets or to get your spells with Flashback into the graveyard (Lingering Souls).

When I run it, I almost always choose to cycle Decree of Justice for the card draw and because the 1/1s are universally better for this deck than the 4/4s.

Black Token Engines

Naming "Black" with Painter's Servant turns every creature black so cards like Lingering Souls, Belfry Spirit, and your mono-white creatures are now Teysa fodder.

Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder is incredible: You have two strategies here:

1. Play small creatures and and stay at 6 Thrull tokens, sacrificing as necessary, or,
2. Get 6 tokens out and play your more expensive creatures like Baneslayer Angel or Grave Titan.

Bonus: If Teysa is already out you get a spirit token from sacrificing Endrek himself.

An early Entomb + Grave Titan + Animate Dead or Victimize is a serious combo.

Field of the Dead is great for 2/2 black zombie fodder for Teysa. This does imply you'll be playing into mid/late game with 7+ lands.

Sacrificing

Your key combo pieces will require sac outlets. Your ideal outlets are Phyrexian Altar and Ashnod's Altar, though Phyrexian Tower, High Market, Victimize, and Priest of Forgotten Gods work slowly.

The key here is to sacrifice your black creatures to generate your white spirits. Use your white spirits to pick away at your opponents. Straight out attack, remove their creatures from the game, or drain all your opponents at once. Don't forget that sacrificing three white creatures to Teysa's ability also combos with other cards like Smothering Abomination and the aristocrats.

If Ophiomancer is out with a sac outlet(s), be sure to time the sac correctly on each turn if possible.

Attach Skullclamp to, or, sac Belfry Spirit. When Belfry dies, haunt your own creature and then combo another sac or Skullclamp on the haunted creature.

Group Slug

Putting all the pieces together you can group slug with the aristocrats. This combos best with Teysa Karlov out.

As mentioned, if you have at least one aristocrats out or The Meathook Massacre with one or both Teysas and Painter's Servant you almost have an infinite combo for the win. See below.

Recursion

Reassembling Skeleton, Nether Traitor, Bloodghast, and Relentless Dead are black creature fodder for your sac outlets, triggering Teysa, and recurring them out of your graveyard to do it over again. They're also useful targets for Entomb.

One amazing combo is to have Phyrexian Altar or Ashnod's Altar out with Elenda, the Dusk Rose and to constantly recur your creatures like Reassembling Skeleton. This can be a game-ending combo if you have any of your aristocrats out:

1. Sac Skeleton to Altar,
2. +1 on Elenda,
3. Cast Reassembling Skeleton from graveyard.
4. Repeat until you run out of mana.
5. Finish the combo the same turn or repeat in follow up turns: Sacrifice Elenda, the Dusk Rose to an Altar, get a bunch more tokens.

Finishing and Win-Cons

1. When Teysa, Painter's Servant, and at least one aristocrat is out, you can drain your opponents as long as there is a target to exile with Teysa's ability. You can always exile your own creatures if it means winning the game.

2. If you've generated a lot of token creatures you have obvious end-game potential for pure beatdown. The tokens are susceptible to removal, either from a board wipe or because you need them for blockers. In general, it's best to combo out with Phyrexian Altar or Ashnod's Altar with an aristocrat already on the board.

3. Getting the emblem from Sorin, Lord of Innistrad and building up flying tokens is also a fun way to win. You can get the emblem from his -2 ability as soon as you play him. Otherwise, do not rely on his first ability until you have plenty of flyers to protect him. Otherwise, you can wait out your other big spells and combo with Vault of the Archangel.

Don't forget: you can generate more than one emblem from Sorin, Lord of Innistrad!

1. Time The Meathook Massacre for when you have a ton of creature tokens out. Obviously combines with your aristocrats.

2. Torment of Hailfire is there as late-game backup. If your opponents let you get to the late game where you can spend 10+ mana on this bombs you deserve to win.

Protect Your Investment

Teysa, Orzhov Scion and your Altars are almost always likely to get hate. To help rebuild, Victimize and Yawgmoth's Will are here to ensure you you can replay your combo pieces.

If you find your enchantments getting hate, swap in a Replenish to resurrect your enchantments.

Angel's Grace, Teferi's Protection, Imp's Mischief, and Rebuff the Wicked can be critical game-winning pieces late game so consider saving your tutors for them if you're the archenemy. You can always throw in Sudden Spoiling and/or Eerie Interlude / Ghostway as both a defensive/offensive measure as well.

There are a couple of life-gain options to replenish the life lost by Bitterblossom, Necropotence (or if you decide to run Dark Confidant or Phyrexian Arena). You can swap in Exsanguinate, Glaws of Gix, and/or Heliod's Intervention if you find yourself needing more.

Leverage Teysa's ability through politics: encourage your opponents to focus on each other through fear of getting their creatures exiled to her activated ability.

Weaknesses

Anything that prevents sacrificing creatures, gives your opponent's creatures hexproof/shroud and, of course, anything that prevents ETB effects or triggered abilities. To combat hexproof and shroud, you can fetch Arcane Lighthouse or include Shadowspear. The deck is also weakened by strong graveyard hate such as Leyline of the Void, Rest in Peace and Grafdigger's Cage.

Overall, this build does not run any board wipes but does run a few target permanent removal via Vindicate, Utter End, Anguished Unmaking, etc. Consider adding Despark if you find yourself needing more removal. In general, this deck doesn't care too much about other creatures since the goal is to get tokens out as chumps and/or triggering Teysa's ability to remove creatures. Hopefully, you can convince your opponents to beat each other down.

The deck is a little light on mana ramp so consider including Mind Stone, Fellwar Stone, and/or Coldsteel Heart for ramp.

Finally, the creature count is a little low since the deck relies on tokens. This means that if you don't draw any creatures and you cannot ramp into token generation, you can be susceptible to early game aggro. You can always add Mana Crypt et al. to help with acceleration.

Maybeboard and Alternative Strats

Getting your combo pieces is important. There are already 5 tutors but you could throw in a Scheming Symmetry, Grim Tutor or, if you're really saucy, Imperial Seal, to really ensure you get the cards you need.

If you want more assurance of a group slug option you can swap in Bastion of Remembrance.

For metas with lots of Timmys or games that tend to go late, you might want to consider swapping target removal with Wrath of God and/or Damnation. You can also throw in Dictate of Erebos and/or Grave Pact. Add Army of the Damned for late-game combo potential but it is expensive and you will become archenemy.

Sometimes getting your sac outlet is unreliable so you might want to consider adding Claws of Gix, Altar of Dementia, Reprocess, or Plagued Rusalka. If you add Altar of Dementia go ahead and swap in Bloodchief Ascension as a alternative combo strat!

You could run Darkest Hour for some fun combos, but you would need a way to get rid of it, perhaps through Claws of Gix. An alternative would be to run Nightcreep for a one-time combo. If you go this route, run Ayara, First of Locthwain as well.

Desecrated Tomb can combo off constantly bringing back creatures from your graveyard and is perfect fodder to Teysa. If you run Tomb, consider also running Reanimate and/or Unearth.

Profane Command is another good X based option to throw in that gives you multiple outs and recursion.

Run Endless Ranks of the Dead with Conspiracy for zombie-specific fun. It also fuels Relentless Dead and Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet.

Skeletal Vampire can be a good option to help generate more black tokens but is relatively expensive. Similarly, Angel of Despair, Ashen Rider, Sun Titan are always good options if you want more removal and bigger creatures and are okay with a higher mana curve. Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite and Butcher of Malakir are also high-mana options that play into the themes and strategies of this deck.

If you prefer to go wide and take an aggro approach, opt for more anthem effects, such as Intangible Virtue and/or Glorious Anthem. If you do that I would definitely swap in Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite.

For more protection in aggressive metas with lots of removal, run Ghostway and/or Eerie Interlude.

There are multiple card-draw options such as Culling Dais, Phyrexian Arena, or Endless Atlas but this really shouldn't be an issue if you can get Necropotence and/or Skullclamp out.

Getting Competitive

To kick the deck into competitive territory, you can swap in a Mana Crypt, Mana Vault, Culling the Weak, Dark Ritual, Mana Tithe, go down to around < 35 lands, remove a couple mana rocks and any remaining big X spells. You can run Dark Confidant due to the low mana curve and life gain but you'll want to make sure Sensei's Divining Top is out and possibly remove Baneslayer Angel and Grave Titan. Swap in an Imperial Seal as budget allows.

Date added	4 years
Last updated	1 year
Exclude colors	URG
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	14 - 0 Mythic Rares 43 - 0 Rares 19 - 0 Uncommons 2 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.58
Tokens	Bat 1/1 B, Emblem Sorin, Lord of Innistrad, Faerie Rogue 1/1 B, Human 1/1 W, Snake 1/1 B, Soldier 1/1 W, Spirit 1/1 W, Thrull 1/1 B, Treasure, Vampire 1/1 B w/ Lifelink, Vampire 1/1 W, Zombie 2/2 B