Combos Browse all Suggest
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 |
| Freeform | Legal |
| Highlander | Legal |
| Legacy | Legal |
| Leviathan | Legal |
| Limited | Legal |
| Modern | Legal |
| Modern Beyond Horizons | Legal |
| Oathbreaker | Legal |
| Planar Constructed | Legal |
| Planechase | Legal |
| PreDH | 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.)
hyalopterouslemur on Bottom-up deck design
3 weeks ago
Technically, it's top, bottom, top, bottom, but that's harder to say.
Step 1: Create a deck concept, and choose a Commander. You can do either first, but you must do both before continuing.
Step 2: Nuts and bolts So this is your stuff you need: Removal/counterspells, draw, ramp, wipes, recursion, tutors, protection, and land destruction. Here we're looking for reasonable overlap with our deck concept, and with each other. Boundless Realms is not a ramp spell; it's a landfall enabler. Spread the Sickness is a proliferate spell that happens to kill a creature. Rhystic Study is a Stax piece, pretty much until an opponent plays a wincon.
Step 3: Themes So, these are the cards that make our deck unique. Again, look for overlap between your themes, and continue to look for overlap with your necessities; that's where infinite combos are born.
Step 4: Lands There really isn't much here. Like. if you're hating nonbasic lands with [card:Back to Basics]] or Ruination or the like, you should probably limit yourself to five nonbasic lands at most. On the flip side, if you're in four or five colors, maybe limit yourself to exact;y ten basic lands so you have something to play with if someone drops a Path to Exile or Assassin's Trophy or Boseiju, Who Endures. You can just use an algorithm to find your ideal land configuration for properly matched mana. And be aware, if you're in 3+ colors and playing mostly basics, something like Bolas's Citadel or March of the World Ooze or Twilight Shepherd or Garruk, Primal Hunter or Necropotence is unlikely to be hardcast.
Step 5: Testing and revisions The final step. Test your deck. Goldfish. Play it against friends. Make revisions where it's weak.
Does anyone else make decks like this?
clayperce on
8 months ago
theNeroTurtle -
Thinking about this a little more, and wondering if there are any Angel-focused combos worth adding. Please take this as brainstorming though, not an actual suggestion, as I'm not sure if it would help or harm the deck! :-D
Unfortunately, the only "pure" Angel combo I know of is Giada, Font of Hope + Twilight Shepherd + an artifact-based sac' outlet (e.g., Phyrexian Altar or Blasting Station).
There are others, based around Karmic Guide, Restoration Angel, and Archangel of Thune, but I'm not sure any of those can be accomplished without pulling in other creature types :-/
Cheers!
CrystalQuarry on
Liesa, Forgotten Archangel (Budget EDH, Combo)
3 years 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)
3 years 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:
- Activated Sleeper --> Priest of Ancient Lore
- Kaya's Ghostform --> Undying Evil
- Thran Vigil --> Legion's Landing
- Profane Tutor --> Mastermind's Acquisition
- Vile Entomber --> Burning-Rune Demon
- Bolas's Citadel --> Thaumatic Compass
- Children of Korlis --> Ephemerate
- Greed --> Ghostly Prison
- Plumb the Forbidden --> Body Count
- Fanatical Devotion --> Mortify
Good luck with your deck.
Poolplayer on
Angel of Death Blender
3 years ago
Giada, Font of Hope + Twilight Shepherd + Altar of Dementia for the mill I guess.
Poolplayer on
Angel of Death Blender
3 years 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
4 years 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
