Basic Gameplan/ Sales Pitch
This deck is a Midrange list that sits on the controlling side of the Aggro-Control spectrum. You play efficient card after efficient card, grinding your opponent down and removing their resources while you develop your own synergistic, recursive deathball. If you like playing a card every turn and watching the light fade from your opponent's eyes, then this deck is for you!
Advanced Gameplan
Your objective in the majority of games is to play cards on curve in the way that most efficiently uses your mana. Look for cards such as Dig Up, Prosperous Innkeeper, Old Rutstein, and Yasharn to make sure you are constantly advancing in mana for your stupidly strong lategame (which you can also use Dig Up to fetch once you get there). You still have game without ramp, but always try to get a hand with at least 3 land.
Your deck is packed to the gills with removal. You've got Meathook Massacre, Skyclave Apparition, and Kaya the Inexorable so don't be shy about using them. If your opponent has Esika's Chariot, kill it. If the board isn't in your favor, clear it and then use your single target stuff to keep it locked down. It's typically better to remove an opponent's threats before developing your own, but since all of our answers are permanent-based (more on that in a second) we can do both.
We've also got a great deal of early game stall in the form of Prosperous Innkeeper's lifegain, Rutstein's body and token generation, Meathook Massacre, Edgar's token generation and infinite value, Reidane's landstun and taxing, and Silverquill Silencer's hate effect. To most effectively stall with Silencer, try to name removal or card draw. Naming removal makes it so removing your current threats can still give you more threats later, while naming card draw will keep you even in card advantage.
Before we get to the main event, let's talk late game threats. We have Liesa, Forgotten Archangel to make our board of threats even harder to remove and set up loops (explained below), all while threatening in the air with lifelink. We have Kaya's ultimate that can recur our wide selection of legendary threats, along with her +1 to make our creatures immortal. We have Nissa of Shadowed Boughs to recur our most powerful creatures and cheat mana costs. And lastly we have a card that I've saved for its own section.
Storm the Festival! This is the card that really pushes this deck over the top and ties it all together, and why we're running so few non-permanent cards. This Collected Company on steroids makes it so we rarely run out of juice. Casting it once can win you the game, but being able to cast it from the graveyard too makes your victory almost assured. Even in the event that you only find land or two-drops, you are still technically drawing past them to find your more useful cards. Just make sure to use your planeswalker abilities before you cast it, as you may find more and get to use them again!
Combos and Synergies
Kaya the Inexorable + Liesa, Forgotten Archangel: Kaya's +1 being activated on Liesa makes it so your entire board gets returned to your hand in the event of a board wipe.
Kaya the Inexorable + Skyclave Apparition: Skyclave Apparition is ETB removal. Making that ETB removal repeatable makes an already powerful effect even more disgusting.
Liesa, Forgotten Archangel + Legendary Creatures: Our deck has a lot of legendary creatures, some of which have pretty nice etb effects. Old Rutstein in particular lets you get an additional free activation every turn, getting your graveyard nice and full for Nissa while also giving you a variety of helpful tokens.
Edgar, Charmed Groom + Edgar, Charmed Groom: Now here's a spicy one- a card that combos with itself! Due to the legend rule, when your second Edgar enters the battlefield, you have to sacrifice one of them. This allows you to have both of his forms active simultaneously, giving you a board of 2/2 lifelinking vampires that allow you to stall out most aggro opponents. We only run 2 of them specifically for this combo, and his recursive nature means we don't need more.
Prosperous Innkeeper + Old Rutstein: These two combined make for a potent early game stall that also gains you the life necessary to make it so Alrund's Epiphany decks can't kill you in their first few extra turns.
Esika's Chariot + Wrenn and Seven: While not in the main deck, this is a classic combo and one of the strongest board-builders in standard right now. Because of our suite of universal answers game 1, we have the freedom to evaluate if our opponents will be able to deal with the raw stat power that these two offer together.
Other Considerations
Pestilent Cauldron: You actually wind up gaining a lot of life with this list. The gravehating ability is surprisingly potent for fighting Lier Piles. Also you can get it off Storm the Festival, but that's true of all of this maybeboard.
Sarulf, Realm Eater: I feel like this card got completely forgotten, but could be a very relevant hate card if Orzhov Clerics gets too big.
Masked Vandal: A reanimateable hate piece that would also be used to fight Orzhov Clerics or Azorius Spirits. Neither is super relevant ATM though.
Felidar Retreat: While we are not entirely a landfall deck, it's so hard to argue against the value that this thing generates. If you don't have Edgar, this is a decent second option.
Last Words
If you got to this part of the post, hi and thanks! Hope you enjoy playing with this, let me know if you need to know "Why is X Here?"
