Teysa, Token Shenanigans

Commander / EDH* mookie990

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c-c-combo breaker —Nov. 6, 2018

Testing out a slightly different, less combo-focused slant for the deck. TBH, I've always wanted this deck to be more of an aristocrats-style, 'drain people to death' deck. The issue was that this generally wasn't an efficient strategy, so I've leaned on combo as a way to close out games. The issue is that combo draws a decent amount of hate (hence why I can never seem to keep a sac outlet on the board), and a lot of combo pieces are bad on their own. So, I've decided to try swapping things around a bit.

-Sepulchral Primordial - I like the card a lot, so it may come back if I find myself needing more topend.

-Skirsdag High Priest - this deck cares a lot more about quantity of tokens than quality, so making demons isn't that valuable, and the card does nothing when it isn't active.

-Xathrid Necromancer - best as boardwipe insurance, since I have no token humans. Trying to construct the deck in such a way that this isn't as necessary.

-Carrion Feeder - again, bad when not comboing off. Free sac outlets are good, but the payoff is pretty low here.

-Sadistic Hypnotist - 5 mana is a lot, and this mostly just results in drawing a lot of hate, since I don't have any way to capitalize on my opponents' lack of hands.

-Blasting Station - I like that it is a sac outlet that can also kill people, but it's pretty awkward outside of combo. Also, it sort of screams 'kill this before I combo off', which is awkward.

-Martyr's Cause - may come back, since I think it is reasonable. Hmmm....

-Tragic Arrogance - one of my favorite board wipes in the format, but I think I have slightly too many artifacts/enchantments in this deck.

+Bygone Bishop - it has actually been in before, but testing again. Hoping I have enough things to consistently trigger it.

+Suture Priest - as above, testing again. If I had a Soul Warden or Auriok Champion on hand, I'd run them instead, since the drain results in people killing it more often than I would like.

+Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim - as above, testing again. Not a free sac outlet, but deathtouch is useful.

+Swords to Plowshares - it's been a little awkward how little spot removal this deck was running. May cut if I find Grave Pact and friends to be sufficiently consistent.

+Vampiric Rites - cut ages ago for being too inefficient, but trading tokens for cards is certainly something I'm interested in.

+Fumigate - testing as another sweeper. Awkwardly, most creatures in this deck are tiny, and thus bad blockers.

+Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle - testing. Recursion is good. Don't know how consistently I'll be able to trigger it, but I do have a decent number of historic spells.

+Hidden Stockpile - as above, it was in a while ago and got cut. Testing again, since it is pretty multi-purpose.

edit: -Suture Priest, +Soul Warden. Priest is alright, but it also draws significantly more hate than Warden. My primary motivation for running either is to support stuff like Phyrexian Reclamation and Dark Prophecy anyway, so lifegain is more relevant than life loss. (also, being a human is somewhat relevant)

-Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder, +Lena, Selfless Champion - Endrek makes a lot of tokens, but is also very slow. Lena gives tokens immediately, and can potentially protect from a wrath, which is a serious concern for a token-based strategy. Endrek may come back at some point though.

-Hidden Stockpile, +Mind Slash - one of the awkward things with Sadistic Hypnotist was that once you start using it to make people discard their hands, you're obligated to take their entire hands, because the last cards are (presumably) the most important ones. Mind Slash isn't quite as good at emptying hands, but it does let you just take the problem cards, so you don't have to sacrifice quite as many creatures.