My attempt at a CEDH stax deck featuring Teysa Orzhov Scion in the command zone.
Why Teysa?
Teysa has an activated and static ability. Each of these abilities can lead to different infinite combo lines which makes her relatively resilient to almost all stax pieces. This means we can effectively run the most degenerate hatebears without it ruining our plans, eventually break parity, and finally combo off. Most decks wouldn't be able to operate with a Stony Silence, Cursed Totem, Orb of Dreams, and Static Orb on the field, but Teysa can combo off even with all of those effects in play.
The Combos: Teysa has a few different ways to combo off. She has the classic Darkest Hour combo which makes all creatures in play black, thus allowing her second ability to create an infinite. It goes like this:
With Teysa in play, we need a sacrifice outlet, one other creature, and either a Darkest Hour or Painter's Servant in play which has declared Black on ETB. Let's say our Sac outlet is Blasting Station. We sac our one creature to Blasting Station dealing 1 damage to our opponent, because the creature was guaranteed to be black via the Darkest Hour/Painter's Servant in play, it's death triggers the creation of a 1/1 white spirit creature token which on ETB untaps our Blasting Station. Because of the Darkest Hour/Painter's Servant in play, the newly generated token becomes a black creature and we can repeat the process.
Other combos include the Buried Alive lines which consist of: If Teysa is in play, cast Buried Alive targeting Karmic Guide and Reveillark and usually Necrotic Sliver. Cast some form of reanimation spell which targets the Karmic Guide. The Karmic Guide ETBS and targets the Reveillark. Now that we have Teysa, Karmic Guide, and Reveillark in play we can use Teysa's first ability to sac all three. This triggers the Reveillark's LTB ability which will target Karmic Guide and Teysa. Once Teysa and Karmic return to the battlefield Karmic targets Reveillark again resetting our field with Teysa, Karmic, and Reveillark again. This give us an infinite loop which can infinite exile our opponent's creatures and with a Blood Artist or similar creature on board, it will give us infinite life while draining our opponent's lives to 0.
A similar combo can be done without Teysa but we'll need a mana generating sac outlet like Phyrexian Altar. It goes like this: Cast Buried Alive targeting Karmic, Necrotic Sliver, and Reveillark. Reanimate Karmic which will then reanimate Reveillark. Sacrifice Karmic to the Altar, then Sacrifice the Reveillark. Each Sacrifice will net us one mana of any color of your choice. Upon Saccing Reveillark, it's LTB will trigger allowing us to target Karmic and Necrotic Sliver to bring back onto the field. Karmic's ETB triggers bringing back Reveillark and now we have all three on the field with our Altar. Proceed to generate infinite mana by saccing the Sliver, then the Karmic, then the Reveillark and bringing them all back to the field. Once infinite mana is established, instead of saccing the Sliver to the Altar we will sacrifice it to itself to destroy a target permanent an opponent controls. This can be ANY permanent. Land, artifact, enchantment, creature, you name it. Then we sac the Karmic to the Altar and finally sac the Reveillark resetting our field again. This loop allows us to infinitely destroy all permanents our opponents control. Again, with a Blood Artist type of effect this also give us a win.
You may have noticed that a lot of the combos in this deck don't require our permanents to tap to go off. This is a serious advantage because we can run incredibly powerful stax synergies like Static Orb and Orb of Dreams at the same time without it effecting our gameplan nearly as much as it will effect our opponents.
Another thing that makes this deck resilient is its ability to sacrifice the hate pieces that might interfere with our plans once we're ready to go off. We can safely play a Hushwing Gryff despite the fact that it will shut down our Karmic Guide lines, because we can simply sacrifice the Gryff to one of our many sac outlets once we're ready to combo off.
Dark Privilege might seem like a head scratcher in this deck, but this obscure enchantment allows us to combo off if Cursed Totem and Stony Silence are on the field at the same time because the Enchantment itself provides a sacrifice ability. Because the Darkest Hour combo is reliant on Teysa's static ability and not her activated ability, we can still combo off. We can also use the Dark Privilege to activate our Karmic Guide loops even if Cursed Totem and Hushwing are in play, by simply sacrificing the Hushwing to the Privilege before starting the rest of the chain.
Cons to the deck: This deck is very slow. The reason for playing such a heavy and oppressive stax package is that the new meta is very quick and Teysa just can't keep up with card draw abilities like Tymna's, so the game plan is to slow those decks down fast enough to allow us to combo off first.
Another major con is its color identity. No access to green mean much less opportunity for ramp, and we're lacking in some of the better tutors.
Why play this deck? You like stax. It's that simple. You don't mind being enemy #1 every game you play, and actually enjoy slow grindy games.
Pros to this deck. Can run ALL of the most relevant hate pieces in the format without messing up our plans much. Runs 4 different basic lands to get around Moon Effects. It also runs the forbidden tutors like a champ.
