Teysa Karlov

Legendary Creature — Human Advisor

If a creature dying causes a triggered ability of a permanent you control to trigger, that ability triggers an additional time. (Dying is being put into the graveyard from the battlefield. Tokens enter the graveyard before they cease to exist.)

Creature tokens you control have vigilance and lifelink.

Combos

• Bog Initiate + Sifter of Skulls + Teysa Karlov

Legality

Format	Legality
1v1 Commander	Legal
Archenemy	Legal
Arena	Legal
Block Constructed	Legal
Canadian Highlander	Legal
Casual	Legal
Commander / EDH	Legal
Commander: Rule 0	Legal
Custom	Legal
Duel Commander	Legal
Gladiator	Legal
Highlander	Legal
Historic	Legal
Historic Brawl	Legal
Legacy	Legal
Leviathan	Legal
Limited	Legal
Modern	Legal
Modern Beyond Horizons	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Pioneer	Legal
Planar Constructed	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Pre-release	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (51)

Idoneity on Oh Jackdaw Sing Arrogance

1 week ago

Austin_Smith_of_Cards — Oooh! Thank you kindly for the suggestions. I'll pore through them one-by-one.

That Thalia is a lovely card and I do enjoy some taxes in competitive formats, but I do consider it a little too pesky for commander gameplay.

Thalia, Heretic Cathar, however, is one of my favourite cards. I am frankly surprised she did not find a home already. What to cut, I wonder...

Eiganjo, Seat of the Empire is certainly a strong card, and I will probably include it over a Swamp if I can ever find my spare. I am currently at the minimum number possible Plains.

To rack a few out of the way quickly Swords to Plowshares isn't my thing, as I don't like liminal kill spells all too much. Same goes for Path to Exile. I didn't want this to be a sac deck, so I avoided effects like Elas il-Kor and Nasty End. Primevals' Glorious Rebirth is a little grandiose for the "little guys" game plan I wanted to hone. And Teysa Karlov is only so good in this list, as only so many cards are dedicated to tokens.

As for the gleaming diamonds in this bunch, Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle might be simply too good to pass up. It synergies far too efficiently for me to exclude, so it will be the next card in. Secondarily, you are correct that this list struggles against noncreature strategies, so Kambal, Consul of Allocation slots in nicely.

Thank you for your feedback and have an excellent day!

Austin_Smith_of_Cards on Oh Jackdaw Sing Arrogance

3 weeks ago

Looking like a pretty solid list with lots of card advantage and ramp, and a fantastic mana curve to boot. Where this list could use some improvement is in the interaction category; 4 spot removals and 2 wraths is a bit too low, and makes you vulnerable to solitaire-style decks like combo or spellslinger.

Some cards that immediately come to mind are Thalia, Heretic Cathar, Thalia, Guardian of Thraben and Eiganjo, Seat of the Empire. The first two are cheap legendary creatures that impede ramp decks, haste decks, and spellslinger. Eiganjo, much like Witch Enchanter, is a sort of modal card that can serve as a land or removal if need be. Kambal, Consul of Allocation punishes spells-heavy lists hard. Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle recurs fodder on cast, which means that even with an otherwise empty board, you can get something from your yard for your legendary creature to sacrifice.

Path to Exile and Swords to Plowshares are the best bang for your buck removals white has access to; I'd make room for them as well.

Other random suggestions:

Elas il-Kor, Sadistic Pilgrim adds incidental life loss and gain as you're generating and sacrificing stuff. Bonus points for being legendary and a cheap rattlesnake effect.

Teysa Karlov unfortunately doesn't double up exploit triggers, but it does buffer your tokens defensively and double up any non-exploit death triggers.

Nasty End is a cheap synergistic one-shot card advantage effect.

Primevals' Glorious Rebirth is a solid way to bounce back from a boardwipe, or just outright recur everything you've lost over the course of the game.

TheoryCrafter on Liesa but Angels

5 months ago

If an Orzhov Angel Stompy deck is your objective I concur with multimedia's suggestions about ramp and draw. To add to ramp abilities, may I suggest adding Starnheim Aspirant? It will not only feed into Righteous Valkyrie, but get yer angels on the battlefield sooner. I also concur about the removal of Legion Angel. As a non singleton format, you can't keep extra cards in your sideboard unless they specifically state that you can have any number in your deck.

Speaking of wish cards, some players get salty about wishboards. You may want to find an alternate card for Sparring Regimen to switch in just in the event you have problems with someone and decide it's not worth the arguments. To make wishboard access a tad stronger may I suggest adding Mastermind's Acquisition to your deck? It will allow you to pull another lesson from outside the game or to search your library.

Considering your commander enables casting and, by extension etb triggers, and you have a lot of blink effects, you should consider having Seraph Sanctuary in your deck for the lifegain. And since you have a death trigger in your commander, Teysa Karlov could be a help throwing off counter spells that target triggered abilities.

I also noticed the inexpensive controlling aspects of your deck are largely inexpensive exile cards that benefit the target's controller. I see two options for you. The first is to replace those out. Revoke Existence and Soul Tithe are examples of options if yer interested. In fact, these would make make great additions to what you already have. The second is adding Divine Visitation. If you end up having to use those exile cards on your own stuff then you'll be able the turn them into angels. It also will also allow Halo Fountain to feed into the Enchantment. All of this of course will feed into Seraph Sanctuary.

Speaking of control, I would recommend having Angels that can do that job would help to solidify the tribal aspect of your Angel deck. This would include, but not be limited to Angel of Finality(for decks strong in graveyard interaction) and Metropolis Reformer(Gives you hexproof).Since you already have an angel with landfall in your deck, that would give you the opportunity to add another. Admonition Angel will allow you to exile more creatures.

Speaking of landfall, if you choose to add Divine Visitation, May I suggest adding Emeria Angel? These cards together would feed into Seraph Sanctuary. Also, if you wish to lean a bit more into landfall you should consider more cards you can sacrifice for basic lands. These include, but are not limited to, Esper Panorama, Fabled Passage and Obscura Storefront. These should help with landfall triggers and maybe free up a card somewhere else.

I understand this is a lot. Regardless of which direction you choose to take for this deck you are off to an awesome start. Thank you for reading me out and I hope this helps. Happy Hunting!

DemonDragonJ on Do Trigger Doublers Bypass "One …

5 months ago

Does a card that doubles triggered abilities bypass abilities that normally trigger only once per turn? For example, if a player controls both Morbid Opportunist and Teysa Karlov, and then a third creature dies, will the opportunist's ability trigger twice?

_AoxomoxoA_ on Veni, Vidi, Vici

6 months ago

10/21/2024 Revisions

Why?

I would consider this update the final trimming of the really fatty parts of this deck. The main goal here was to remove some cards that only semi-synergized with the deck and to replace them with cards that really shine light on where this deck succeeds. These changes massively upgrade the token generation capability and the payoff for having them. The cards removed from here were in no ways bad cards, they just didn't quite see eye-to-eye with what the deck should be doing: Generating tokens and being very aggressive, punishing a lack of removal and interaction while also being resilient to creature board wipes. The legion always has more bodies to throw at the problem. See notes on each removal/addition and my thought process for doing so below:

Removed

General Kudro of Drannith: Kudro is a very interesting choice, but has 2 big downsides: He requires sacrificing of humans and is restricted to only dealing with creatures with power 4 or greater. This deck doesn't generate enough human tokens to justify using the second ability, especially since I'm limited to only targeting creatures with power 4 or greater. Often threats appear in the form of artifacts, enchantments or weenies that can deny my board and unfortunately, Kudro isn't equipped to handle these.

Lethal Scheme: Probably the worst card of the bunch. At best it's 0 mana to destroy 1 creature/planeswalker, at worst it's 4 mana to destroy 1 creature/planeswalker. Not great removal, and I have plenty of other removal spells

Fervent Charge: The ideal situation is to not have to rely on attack damage to kill my opponents, it's more about the attack triggers here. I think Mirror entity is just a much better/cheaper version of this card if I'm trying to win off of attack damage. It also provides no other value past +2/+2 to only attacking creatures

Commander's Sphere: I'm not starving for card draw, especially with the One Ring, and the extra mana rock is fine, but a nice to have more than anything.

Skullclamp: Similar to Command Sphere, the card draw is nice, but often my tokens end up being used for attacking or attack triggers and quickly build up past 1/1s, so Skullclamp becomes useless. Ashnod's Alter provides much more value than Skullclamp especially when combined with X-cost spells.

Queen Marchesa: She's pretty threatening just because she has Deathtouch and haste, Monarch is also a huge plus, but the last part of the card is way too slow. Generating 1 token with deathtouch per turn just isn't worth passing monarch back and forth between players, and once she's gone, all I am left with is Monarch, her having deathtouch incintivises me to use her to kill a big threat, but her 2rd ability incintivises me to keep her alive, which conflicts with Deathtouch/Haste.

Teysa Karlov: There's like no death triggers in this deck, only sacrifice triggers, and honestly I don't want to build into benefiting off of death triggers, so her first ability provides essentially nothing. Her second ability is a huge up side, but she never stuck around long enough to really use it, and other cards provide me vigilance.

Craig Boone, Novac Guard: Boone essentailly reads "Target player takes X damage where X is the number of Quest Counters on him", he's a cool card, but any good player would take face damage over having their important card be killed. The life gain and reach were big incintives to keeping him in the deck, but he's too slow and doesn't synergize enough with the rest of the deck.

Diabolic Tutor: Worse Demonic Tutor

The Nipton Lottery: I love this card. It's so chaotic and leans into my gambling addiction, but overall, Austere Command is the better boardwipe

Added

Rabble Rousing: Great enchantment to really pump out the tokens, pretty similar to Horn of Gondor and also is less punishing to my board when blocks happen. Ensures I will always be replacing any blocked tokens.

Ojer Taq, Deepest Foundation  ^Flip: Triple the tokens = triple the fun. Gives me more options than Annointed Processon

Goblin Bombardment: Need to push some extra damage/kill a target? We have tons of tokens to do so. Start killing the tokens generated and hit face. Darien + Goblin Bombardment + Bastion of Rememberance = win condition. In fact, Darien + Goblin Bombardment is a pretty nasty way to generate tokens if I start pinging myself for 1 damage and have a Annointed Processon/Ojer Taq on board. Super flexible card when attacking isn't an option

Impact Tremors: We're generating all these tokens, let's get another purphoros adjacent card in the deck to do some real damage more consistently

Ashnod's Altar: When combined with an X-cost spell like Grand Crescendo, or Secure the Wastes, you can double the amount of tokens you have out already

Darien, King of Kjeldor: Punishes hitting my face as well as just an overall good combo enabler.

Greymond, Avacyn's Stalwart: Probably the best human tribal card in Magic, while he doesn't enable alot of my tokens, he gives all my humans insane amounts of value. Since almost all of my creatures spells are human, I think he will be a huge boon.

Mirror Entity: This card is super versatile. I can use it to pump my tokens, avoid board wipes like Austere Command and Meathook Massacre, but it can also be used to turn my tokens into humans/soldiers for cards like Greymond, Horn of Gondor, Myrel, ect.... I have a feeling this card will be a great enabler.

Austere Command: Selective Boardwipe, what's more to say?

Demonic Tutor: Better Diabolic Tutor

TheRavenOne on Will Hardened Scales effect Mazirek …

7 months ago

I had Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest and Hardened Scales on the battlefield. Then I cast Wave of Vitriol forcing my opponents to sacrifice and also make myself sacrifice the Hardened Scales. Would Hardened Scales see itself and the other permanents effected be sacrificed, and would I get its replacement effect on the following Mazirek triggers? Wondering that if a card like Teysa Karlov can double death triggers even if it itself dies, would this not work in a similar way?

Nunu312 on Beware of Spooky Spirits

7 months ago

Love a good spirit deck, and nice to see a new commander doing it!

I think you've got some great cards in there that probably don't work as well as you want them to. Luminous Angel is incredibly expensive for a 4/4 flyer that might generate 2-3 tokens. By the time you put it down that's just not a relevant amount. Oyobi, Who Split the Heavens Is in very much the same boat. Because it only happens on casting, it can at most happen 5 times, as that's the amount of spirits you have to cast (and you have no arcane spells). Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite Is a fantastic card but can occasionally create friction at the table. I don't necessarily suggest that you cut it, but do consider it. It can easily create an environment where some people are unable to play their decks at all until it is delt with.

A bit of the same but Long-Forgotten Gohei definitely fits, but you only have 6 spirit spells and no arcane spells, so you're only using half of it. Etchings of the Chosen is the same price but has an extra ability. You may just want to run both though?

The first thing for additions are the token doublers. These will really help you capitalise on your commander as they will act upon each instance. So instead of casting Triplicate Spirits and getting a rather underwhelming 3, you instead get 6. Then at the end of turn you get another 6... only this is doubled as well, instead of 3, you get 18.Mondrak, Glory Dominus and Anointed Procession are the standouts here, although they are pretty pricy in real world dollars.

Overall though, I feel your ways of generating tokens is very on theme, but not very sustainable. A key thing that you might have missed is that your commander generate spirits for each tokens you make, not spirit tokens. So Collector's Vault, makes a treasure token, free spirit. You have a huge amount of ways to make tokens but a lot of them are humans or other some such (Call the Coppercoats, Martial Coup) so they may not be on brand. Look into ways you can make those one or two treasure / clue / food tokens as you just otherwise play normally.

A conspicuous absence is any of the Teysas. Teysa, Envoy of Ghosts is expensive but fun. Teysa, Opulent Oligarch is much cheaper and synergises VERY well with your commander. Teysa, Orzhov Scion requires a bit more of the black/white spirits, but might still work very well. Teysa Karlov doesn't synergise super well, but has good abilities regardless and certainly isn't a bad pick. The Kaya planeswalkers also often deal with white black spirits as well as having a bit of control so they might be good to look at Kaya the Inexorable being the standout.

another fun card that is changed entirely by your commander Afterlife Insurance and having any method of sacrificing your spirits changes it from just saving those spirits, to doubling their amount. It would go well with Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim, but that starts to lean more into aristocrats than pure spirit tokens.

Another thing is that a lot of white ramp works well with bounce or sac land, you've got the obvious one but you might be able to increase it with Lotus Field and Lotus Vale. Things like Land Tax is a staple for white, but even when you're just running Priest of the Blessed Graf they can help you make him work.

My final point is that you don't seem to have a good way of protecting your quite expensive commander. Your group might not place that big an emphasis on commanders, but it's more fun if she sticks around. There are the old standouts of Lightning Greaves and Swiftfoot Boots, but there are a lot of options.

Last_Laugh on Death by Tokens

11 months ago

As the first poster said, you're trying to take the deck in too many different directions. You're going Aristocrats but have cards for treasure strats like Revel in Riches and Lotho as well as aggro stuff like Cathar's Crusade and Shadrix.

You're honestly better off with Teysa Karlov in the Command Zone to lean even harder into the Aristocrats theme with Kambal in the 99.