Twilight Shepherd

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Legality

Format Legality
1v1 Commander Legal
Archenemy Legal
Block Constructed Legal
Canadian Highlander Legal
Casual Legal
Commander / EDH Legal
Commander: Rule 0 Legal
Custom Legal
Duel Commander Legal
Highlander Legal
Legacy Legal
Leviathan Legal
Limited Legal
Modern Legal
Oathbreaker Legal
Planechase Legal
Quest Magic Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Twilight Shepherd

Creature — Angel

Flying, vigilance

When Twilight Shepherd enters the battlefield, return to your hand all cards in your graveyard put there from the battlefield this turn.

Persist (When this creature is put into a graveyard from the battlefield, if it had no -1/-1 counters on it, return it to the battlefield under its owner's control with a -1/-1 counter on it.)

CrystalQuarry on Liesa, Forgotten Archangel (Budget EDH, Combo)

1 year ago

Hey, thank you so much for commenting and taking the time to read through the deck description!

While this is intended to be a budget deck, I personally just really like foils and original printings of cards. The versions of each card listed in the deck here are what I actually have for it in paper.

Activated Sleeper is a card I have been looking at and considering adding to the deck, but it seems highly conditional given that it can only copy a creature that left the battlefield the same turn. I agree it can go infinite with Karmic Guide and Karmic Guide even helps set it up given that Echo would often force you to sacrifice it on your upkeep anyway. That said, I'm a bit worried about how effective the card is when you DON'T have access to Karmic Guide. I guess depending on the pod it could still be quite good at stealing an opponent's creature. I will have to test it a bit and see how it performs in practice.

Kaya's Ghostform is a card I've considered as well but what concerns me with it is the Sorcery speed nature of it and that it is a bit more telegraphed what the intention is. That said, the ability to bring back the creature even if it gets targeted with something like Swords to Plowshares is very cool! In the pods I've played this deck and where people have gotten to learn more or less how it works, they tend to try and remove Liesa, Forgotten Archangel very quickly, so I've found cards like Undying Evil to be essential for keeping Liesa in play. I've found the instant speed to be extremely relevant in many situations as well. That said, Legion's Landing  Flip is a particularly weak card in the deck and I could definitely see cutting that for testing Kaya's Ghostform.

Thran Vigil is a cool new card that I must have missed in the BRO spoilers. However, this deck isn't really all in on persist type effects. Twilight Shepherd is pretty much the only card it would strongly interact with. I would say it's pretty rare for this deck to win through combat and as such the value of the +1/+1 counters in it (even an arbitrarily large number of them) is a bit questionable. If the deck has assembled one of the infinite death engines, then it should be winning outright without the need to even go to combat. I like the interaction with Tortured Existence but it's such a shame that it only works on your turn! If you could suddenly pump up Liesa on an opponent's turn after they've already declared attackers at you, then that would make it a lot better.

Profane Tutor is a great budget tutor, but having to wait two entire turns is a major detriment to how useful of a card it is, especially as a mid to late game draw. The decks I've seen take the biggest advantage of Profane Tutor are the ones that somehow exile and cast a copy from exile or copy it from graveyard and cast the copy immediately, rather than having to wait the two turns. Mid to late game I would much rather pay a little extra mana to guarantee getting a card immediately rather than having to wait. If you get Profane Tutor in the early game, then yes it's definitely better than Diabolic Tutor or Mastermind's Acquisition for the lower mana cost. If I had a means of cheating on the suspend part of the card in Orzhov then it would warrant an inclusion over one of the other tutors in my opinion.

Vile Entomber is another card I considered and even in an earlier iteration of the deck I ran for a while. The issue I often found with it was that it only grabbed ONE card to put to the graveyard. Burning-Rune Demon and Final Parting are in the deck because they find TWO cards. With Vile Entomber I could find Karmic Guide but not another card to combo with it. With Burning-Rune Demon I can find Karmic Guide and another card to combo with it and often times whichever piece the opponent gives me is irrelevant. Blinking or reanimating Burning-Rune Demon is also significantly more value and helps assemble combos much faster than Vile Entomber can.

Bolas's Citadel is extremely powerful, but it is at least right now (12/17/2022) more than $5 which is where the line in the sand has been drawn for whether or not a card can be added to the deck. That said, even if it was a bit cheaper Bolas's Citadel would require leaning much harder into a life gain theme. While life gain is another very popular and powerful strategy, I feel it is a bit orthogonal to the direction of this deck which is more heavily focused on creature ETB/LTB triggers and the graveyard.

I've been working on a Liesa, Shroud of Dusk deck which leans very heavily into life gain/life loss shenanigans and in that deck I do run stuff like Children of Korlis. That's not to say that Children of Korlis isn't a good card in Liesa, Forgotten Archangel, but I feel like you have to already be on the life gain game plan to get the most out of it.

Plumb the Forbidden is a great card, but you need sufficiently many throw away bodies and a sufficiently high life total to manage it. Without sufficient life gain or creature token generators it runs the risk of being a dead draw. Body Count can also be a completely dead draw at times, but it has a much higher ceiling in this deck specifically than Plumb the Forbidden does. Body Count can literally draw the entire deck for 1 black mana with a death engine assembled. Plumb the Forbidden could never draw more than the greatest number of creatures in play at one moment and I must have the life available to pay for it plus 2 mana. If the deck was more of an aristocrats style build spewing creature tokens left and right and running things like Soul Warden then Plumb the Forbidden would be a much more natural inclusion I feel.

Fanatical Devotion is a really cool sacrifice outlet that can do relevant things like protect Liesa which is very important. That said, thanks to BRO another arguably much better sacrifice outlet just became budget (<$5). And that's Ashnod's Altar. I will be adding this to the deck shortly as a third sacrifice outlet.

Thanks again for reading the long description and commenting!

multimedia on Liesa, Forgotten Archangel (Budget EDH, Combo)

1 year ago

Hey, this is one of the better budget Commander decks I've seen and great description. Really good job with the card choices keeping within the price restriction. If you're on card price restriction, why all foils and alternative card arts?

Activated Sleeper and Kaya's Ghostform are good budget cards when you want your creatures to die. Sleeper is another creature who infinite die combos with Karmic Guide and Ghostform infinite die combos with Sun Titan.

Thran Vigil is the new budget infinite persist enabler, it infinite combos with Twilight Shepherd or another persist creature such as Lesser Masticore. If a creature dies on your turn and you control Liesa then Vigil will trigger to put a counter on a creature for each creature who died. Tortured Existence interacts with Vigil if you activate it on your turn equal to the amount of black mana you have available as long as you have a creature in your graveyard and a creature in your hand to repeatedly swap them. Put the counters from Vigil on Liesa making her huge to threaten lethal Commander damage.

Profane Tutor is the budget lesser Demonic, it's still powerful for it's price. Because you have lots of reanimation and recursion than Vile Entomber can be great support especially to get and bin Leonin Relic-Warder. Entomber getting any card of your choice is nice with Sun Titan.

Bolas's Citadel, is less than $6, the card is amazing when your Commander can gain life, you have a lower avg. CMC and even if you don't have top of library manipulation. Children of Korlis goes well with Citadel, to sac to gain all the life back you lost casting spells. Greed interacts well with Citadel and Children, it's budget repeatable draw when you can gain life. It can help to draw land that's revealed on top of your library so that you can keep Citadel going.

Plumb the Forbidden can instant sac all creatures you control to draw for each one for 2 mana. I'm a big fan of Fanatical Devotion for a budget sac outlet that can protect your Commander from many types of removal and also protect creatures in combo while being the sac outlet in the combo.


Some changes to consider:

Good luck with your deck.

Poolplayer on Angel of Death Blender

1 year ago

Serra Paragon is too rich for my blood. I really like the recycle effect from the graveyard, but I can't bite at almost 7 dollars each for MTGO per angel... Iona, Shield of Emeria + Liesa, Forgotten Archangel + Twilight Shepherd will have to help round out the creature renewal from the grave. I needed more card draw so Inspiring Overseer + Scroll of Avacyn help get me there. Again, if I had Paragon to work those cards twice over that'd be great. And we're at 80 cards.... There's fluff in this but you can't have a one path victory only or you'll always fall flat.

I'll take some critique.

Pool.

airsoftsniper91 on Giada, Font of Hope

1 year ago

Saw that you were looking for help and this commander seems pretty cool. Not sure what your budget is, but I'm going to make some suggestions at different price points.

Here's some cards I'd cut: Angel's Grace, Cleric Class, Angelic Accord, Treasure Chest, The Book of Exalted Deeds, Panharmonicon, Arcane Signet, Marble Diamond, Campfire, Mass Calcify, Brave the Elements, Cleansing Nova, Everflowing Chalice, and Gift of Estates

I can provide more explanation on why, but generally these cards are low impact, less helpful than they may seem, or off theme a bit. Some of these are life gain or ETB payoffs but they don't have many ways to trigger them.

I'm seeing a wincon through combat with the deck as is. Giada is Ramp in the command zone but only for Angels, and the starting list only has 17 Angel spells. Turn 2 Giada and hitting all your land drops means we can send out 4 CMC angels turn 3.

I recommend Emeria Angel, Guardian Seraph, Angel of Condemnation

A lot of the Angel's are high CMC but you're running a lot of cost reducers. Due to this I think you need more lands and more Draw. Arch of Orazca, Geier Reach Sanitarium, Sea Gate Wreckage and War Room are all utility lands you can run in mono color that tap for colorless mana and help you draw.

That leaves seven more cards to add back in. I'd go with Karmic Guide, Twilight Shepherd, Battlegrace Angel, Angelic Sleuth, Herald of the Host, Dawnbreak Reclaimer, and Aegis Angel

Noholdmine on Garth One Eyed Cheater

1 year ago

Some easy ways to add interaction to this deck would be to add some enchantment and creature removal spells. Krosan Grip, Return to Dust, Rapid Hybridization/Pongify, Arcane Denial to replace Dissolve, Anguished Unmaking, Damn, and Swords to Plowshares/Path to Exile are all clean and efficient methods of interaction. Saryth, the Viper's Fang, Lightning Greaves/Swiftfoot Boots, Shalai, Voice of Plenty, and Veil of Summer/Heroic Intervention are solid protection options for your creatures as well. Right now you're running Anger with only 2 Mountains in the entire deck, so that means either the mana base needs to be reworked or Anger needs to be replaced. Some easy ways to rectify the mana base a bit is to swap out some of your duals for the Red/x options (i.e, Blood Crypt, Stomping grounds, etc.). We can also make the deck more efficient by changing up the ramp so that it has utility or generates more than one color of mana. Cards like Deathrite Shaman, Kiora's Follower, Noble Hierarch/Ignoble Hierarch, Faeburrow Elder, and Birds of Paradise are all decent options. Right now Anger and Chainer, Nightmare Adept are the only cards that can give Garth haste. Since we only have a few creatures that actually benefit from the haste, cards that generate value outside of simply providing haste would be beneficial. Rhythm of the Wild would not only give our creatures haste, but would make it harder for opponents to counter the creatures and combos with the persist creatures in the deck by giving them +1/+1 counters. Temur Ascendancy is another decent option since we can draw cards even when our creatures don't benefit from haste and it synergizes with our Flicker and Undying/Persist effects. An infinite combo option would be Jeskai Ascendancy + Garth One-Eye + Any haster + Deadeye Navigator and even if we're not comboing, we can still generate value from each card individually. I personally feel that cards like Frantic Search and Careful Study are too good to not have in this type of deck, since a good majority of our cards benefit in some way from being in the graveyard or we have easy ways of getting them back. In tandem with this idea, I think that cards like Regrowth (even though Garth One-Eye already has a Regrowth) and Eternal Witness are musts, especially since Eternal Witness generates value with the Flicker effects and other revive effects in the deck. An honorable mention that didn't quite make it into my comment but could be effective is Spark Double since it would allow us to have multiple versions of legendary creatures if we so chose, 2 Muldrotha's could lead to quite the turn! Unfortunately, however, Commander has a deck maximum, which means that cards must be let go to make room for all the new fun stuff we want to play with. For this deck I suggest cutting Diamond Lion, Thespian Stage, Dark Depths, Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger, Arixmethes, Slumbering Isle, Kitchen Finks, Desperate Ravings, Nim Deathmantle, Harrow, Magus of the Will, Gaea's Will, Scapeshift, Chronozoa, Raving Visionary, Thought Courier, Dissolve, possibly Twilight Shepherd, possibly Rampant Growth, possibly Seize the Spoilsand possibly, Purphoros, God of the Forge. At the end of the day, this deck is yours and you should play it and build it in the way that best suits you! Have fun gayming!

Guerric on [Primer] Helming the Host of Heaven *Update*

1 year ago

Hi king-saproling! Thanks for the suggestions! I guess I'll give some thoughts in as orderly a way as I can.

1) Coat of Arms I love this card and play it in a couple of my decks. My thoughts are that, though a great tribal card, it caters more to pumping weenies. In this case Giada pumps our weenies just fine, and the card is a bit redundant. At 5 mana in mono-white its also a bit high for this deck, but it is a great card and I could see maybe someone having success with it.

2) Icon of Ancestry I really like this card on release, but didn't enjoy it too much in other decks in commander (it was a decent Brawl card when that was a thing). 3 mana is a lot to look for a card that you might never draw, and it can be unsatisfying to play it. The anthem could be good in other context, but this deck doesn't really need it.

3) Adaptive Automaton and other changelings. My general thought on these is that I'd rather just play real angels. While they changelings get counters, they don't fly, and flying makes them way more threatening. If there were a shortage of angels I'd consider putting them in, but I'd rather add Angelic Curator than Impostor of the Sixth Pride. That being said, Giada is weenie angels, and I could see a case for Universal Automaton and Metallic Mimic based on cmc value alone. I'm not sure I could fit them in here, but they are the better options of this group!

4) Slate of Ancestry is a really interesting draw option. Its a bit mana intensive to get going, but it could provide the burst draw this deck needs more of. I'll definitely consider it!

5) Urza's Incubator is a great card, there's no doubt about it. I wouldn't question it in anyone's list! As for me, three of my ramp cards discount creatures, and Giada can only ramp angels, so I need more ramp that can put lands in play or at least help me cast non-creature, non-white stuff. If I already had this in my binder and it wasn't $50 in real world money (I own all my decks in paper), I might consider it. But I think my ramp is working now. That being said, by all means play it because its great!

6) Cauldron of Souls This is good protection from sweepers, and the counters are effectively negated. Nice! I'll definitely consider it.

7) Adarkar Valkyrie This is a good effect, but Cauldron does it better, and Twilight Shepherd is probably a better option. That being said, its a halfway decent angel but I probably won't do it myself.

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