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Judgmental Eyes (Teysa) [[Primer]]

Commander / EDH Control Reanimator WB (Orzhov)

parallali

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Creature (28)

Instant (6)

Land (37)

Enchantment (8)

Planeswalker (2)

Commander (1)

Commander: foil Teysa, Envoy of Ghosts

Artifact (11)

Sorcery (7)

She's giving you that look. You know what you did.

As my first EDH deck, the history of this one begins in 2013, trying and failing to capitalize on extort cards (which is a viable deck with some tweaking, mine was just... not). It was bad enough that I finally gave in to the internet, did some research, dropped some cash, and overhauled 60+% of the whole thing. The idea began with reanimation, and as I became a better player, grew into the old-fashioned grindy WB control you see here today. It capitalizes on the large amounts of versatile removal, making it hard for your opponents to stick things while its own threats keep coming back from the graveyard. The early part of the game is spent playing small, incremental value pieces while encouraging opponents to go after each other by not being particularly threatening. Eventually, it stabilizes and wins the long game by just out-valuing opponents on a card-for-card basis.

Primer is updated and (mostly) complete below!

The art for this card is just... very good.

Back when I was new to the format, having barely played Magic for a year (I started just as Dark Ascension was released), the Dragon's Maze expansion came out and I pulled this badass legendary creature. She went right into the WB casual deck I had, and proceeded to kick ass there. I acquired two more copies and learned to love her very dearly. When my playgroup started getting more into EDH, I jumped on the bandwagon with her close to my heart. Many overhauls and years later, she's still one of my favorite cards.

Having Teysa as our commander (aside from her being cool as heck) grants us a bit of a unique advantage. The first time you sit down across the table from a new group, your opponents don't immediately know what your strategy is - unlike decks such as Uril, the Miststalker , Azami, Lady of Scrolls , or The Gitrog Monster . She could be lifegain, voltron, aristocrats, or any number of other things, as her abilities don't give much direction about how to build around them. Since there are better generals in WB for most strategies, why are we playing a 7 mana 4/4 to give us an edge? Well, people underestimate her strength for a few key reasons:

  1. She's unblockable - at least, that's what protection from creatures amounts to, and it's a very strong ability. Having only 4 power means it'll take 6 turns to reach 21 commander damage, but since the deck is built for the long game anyway, it's barely a downside. We also run a couple ways to pump her power and get the job done faster.
  2. Protection from creatures also means she's very resilient; being completely impervious to combat damage, she can fearlessly block nearly any creature on the ground. Having vigilance means we never have to decide between getting in a few points of damage and keeping up a defender, making it extra unfavorable for opponents to retaliate. Finally, ignoring the format's popular creature-based removal, Teysa forces your opponents to spend their spells on her, leaving openings for your other game-ending threats.
  3. Should something manage to get past Teysa as a blocker (usually by flying or trample), she blows up any creature that deals combat damage to us. While this isn't quite as powerful as Dread or No Mercy (and comes with the downside of having to actually take the damage), it is still a major deterrent for opponents, and our main method of keeping ourselves safe and encouraging them to attack each other instead. This will help us clean up in the late stages of the game. It should also be noted her ability does not target and will affect creatures with hexproof, protection, etc.
  4. The little spirits she makes are the icing on the cake - Teysa would be a strong card even without this second ability, and at times it feels more like flavor than function. Don't expect to get too many of them, as opponents won't be attacking you unless there's something in it for them (or they're protected), but they're great sac fodder, chump blockers, or itty bitty evasive attackers. The way the ability is worded also means that you get a token even if the creature that dealt damage wasn't destroyed because it was indestructible, flickered, etc.!

Long story short, Teysa does a great job of protecting us until we can eek out a win. Casting her on curve and/or as soon as you have 7 mana available is usually the correct call, but play it smart and don't windmill slam her into a counterspell or boardwipe; 7 mana is still a lot and we'd like to re-cast her as little as possible. Opponents who haven't seen her in action before often underestimate her as a pillowfort piece or passive threat, while those with more experience are almost as likely to leave her alone in favor of softer targets.

This deck is primarily a white/black reanimator list, with some elements of good old fashioned control. It keeps opponents in check by generating value over a longer series of turns while its large and versatile suite of removal makes sure their threats stay off the table. The reanimation strategy also ensures we get more value out of each of our cards than our opponents can get out of theirs.

The control cards that we run do make the deck a little on the rude side of the casual/competitive scale, but I do trying to keep away from hard lock pieces that make it so opponents can’t play the game at all (my meta treats fun as the primary goal of playing magic, and that’s hard to keep true if you’re preventing others from doing anything). While this deck runs a lot of removal that can sometimes have the effect of not playing nice with others, the flip side is that position give you a lot of political power within the game. There are a few card choices that are specific to my meta (pointed out below), all of which can be changed/adjusted as you see fit should you decide to take the deck for a spin.

The general strategy of this deck is to stay quiet in the early turns of the game, using that time to ramp, protect our life total, and eliminate any game-changing threats on our opponents' boards. Mid-game is for generating card advantage and making sure we can protect Teysa, then casting her. Late game the strategy flips, with Teysa doing the protecting while we use her + any other threats to finish off whatever's left of our opponents. Eventually we'll win by sacrificing and returning our own cards, nullifying much of the removal directed at our creatures, and generally out-valuing the rest of the table.

As always, this section falls into 2 parts: categories that are standard for any deck, and categories that are specific to this deck/strategy.
  • Standard: ramp, draw, removal, finishers
  • Specific: sacrifice outlets, reanimation, protection/control

Ramp: Mana accelerants to keep up with (or even play more quickly than) our opponents. The deck has a fairly high curve/average CMC, and Teysa costs 7, so I put particular emphasis on this category with this deck.

Draw: Card advantage, also necessary for any deck, but particularly in a control shell where much of our strategy for winning relies on having a full grip of versatile threats and answers as needed. Being able to apply pressure via gas or removal right as they are necessary is part of what gives this deck its edge.

Removal: As mentioned, part of our strategy for winning is keeping our opponents off their threats, which means the deck runs a somewhat higher-than-normal amount of answers.

Finishers: Some decks have this category, some have a variation such as "wincons", and some decks lack it all together. For us, these are the cards we're digging to find to close out the game.

Sacrifice Outlets: These cards allow us to put things in our graveyard for value, generally either to make use of their death triggers or to keep (fairly) safe until we’re ready to use them again later.

Reanimation: Counterpart to the sac outlets, these are the cards that let us get the things in our graveyard back again. They make the backbone of our winning strategy, as they allow us to reanimate our handful of very good cards to use again instead of having to run duplicate or second-best effects.

Protection/Control: This is a category that ends up in a lot of my decklists, but isn't necessarily universal. Cards in this category help protect our other cards, or are answers to our opponents’ strategies that don't count as removal or similar answers. It's a somewhat wide-ranging but very important category.

A bit of an odd category for me personally, as I tend to build my decks around their commander (sweet legendary creatures yo) rather than a particular strategy or card interaction. As mentioned in the intro, I wanted to build around Teysa, and eventually wandered into the reanimation strategy since it's WB's primary way to generate value. I find there are many more positives than negatives to this particular color combo.

Strengths:

  • WB has the best removal/answers of any color combo in terms of both efficiency and versatility.
  • Both colors have strong, evasive creatures.
  • B's card draw is second only to U.

Weaknesses:

  • B's ramp doesn't play nice with others: Cabal Coffers , Crypt Ghast , etc.
  • W has absolutely no card draw, and B's usually comes with a payment of life.

I find myself drawn to playing W, B, and G the most out of all the options the color pie has to offer. I like midrange and 1-for-1 value decks, and this lines up with that strategy decently well.

One of this deck's greatest strengths is its resilience and flexibility. Since we don't rely on any one particular card to win, having any one thing removed from our arsenal doesn't hurt us very much. The WB color combo has answers to all types of threats - even a few janky counterspells - and so when we don't want something to stick, it's very easy to stop or remove it. In addition, the deck's ability to recover from removal or sweepers is very solid, due to the reanimation spells and card advantage.

The deck doesn't run any direct spell disruption, which can leave it vulnerable to fast/infinite combo or storm strategies. Part of the reason for this is because my playgroup doesn't really run those types of decks (so I don't need to dedicate slots to dealing with them) but is also somewhat the nature of our archetype - control can be slow. If combo is prevalent in your playgroup, however, you can overcome the weakness fairly easily by slotting in traditional white tax/slow down cards such as Silence , Eidolon of Rhetoric , and Leonin Arbiter . Our deck is, however, very good at disrupting any type of combo that relies on a permanent staying on the battlefield (looking at you, Laboratory Maniac ), as our removal suite is large and efficiently costed.

We're very good against most creature or aggro strategies (and at least even in the rest), again thanks to the high amount of removal we run and the efficiency with which we get our dudes back if they die. Since we're a bit on the slow side, decks that dump their hands and deal most of their damage before turn 5 can give us trouble (since we try to spend those turns ramping/stabilizing), but if we can survive until that point, the game swings very strongly in our favor thanks to boardwipes and Blind Obedience effects. Other control strategies have a hard time dealing with Teysa once she hits the field, and we usually make enough mana to match them card-for-card even if they dedicate all their energy to countering everything we try to lay down. We do rely somewhat on other opponents softening up hard control decks before we close out the endgame, but since we're much better at protecting ourselves than your average Grand Arbiter Augustin IV shell, we can keep everyone else at each other's throats and wait for our moment to close.

Most decks would like at least 3 lands in their opening hand, but with this deck it is absolutely necessary and anything with two or fewer needs to have a VERY important card or two to avoid being immediately unkeepable. Ideally, you're keeping something closer to 3 lands, at least one ramp card/mana rock, and a creature you can cast turn 3 at the latest. With this deck's higher mana curve and a general that costs 7, it's important to make sure you get to late-stage mana production in a timely manner.

As a reanimation deck, we notably can have a hard time with graveyard hate. Permanents that provide a continuous effect that we can remove such as Rest in Peace or Grafdigger's Cage are much easier for us to deal with than one-and-done nukers like Bojuka Bog or Relic of Progenitus , as we have plenty of answers to the former, but can't Stifle the latter. Even cards that only care about keeping out creatures like Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet or Anafenza, the Foremost need to be exiled as soon as possible, as they prevent us both from getting death triggers and reanimating creatures entirely. The good news on this front is since we don't run Entomb effects, we can plan for graveyard hate and mostly avoid getting blown out with a little caution. I've never had a game where all the outs in my deck ended up in my yard, only to be exiled.

The largest problem I find the deck having is getting stuck on four lands with a hand full of 5-7 drops - which is certainly not an issue unique to this strategy (or land count, for that matter). While we do have an interesting out to this problem, where we can discard big creatures and then cast our much cheaper Reanimate style spells to get them on the battlefield anyway, we lose out on the value of casting them in the first place, and it can be very hard to recover from the turns we spent vulnerable and behind.

You can check out the "exclusions" tab below for a complete list of cards I'm deliberately not running. My playgroup is fairly casual, and we have a definitely-banned list alongside a looser list of cards that are frowned upon but not forbidden entirely. Of note in this section, I'm deliberately not running cards that search and dump in the graveyard directly (such as Entomb or Buried Alive ) for a couple of reasons. First, graveyard hate is fairly common in my meta, and not tempting fate prevents us from being blown out entirely. Secondly, I follow the philosophy that tutoring generally makes EDH less interesting, as the variance of 100-card singleton is part of what give the format its unique fun (lands and jank are the exception to this rule).

This deck is definitely not kind to your average wallet, but it's only become that way over many years of gathering individual cards one at a time to make improvements. Here's what I would change if budget were no object:

Also of note, Tainted Remedy is a pet card of mine because there are a couple dirty lifegain decks in my meta.

This deck doesn't run traditional "combos" per se - it's more about getting repeated value from a handful of permanents. There are a handful of cards that synergize particularly well together, however.

Cabal Coffers + Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth : A classic, Urborg turns all of our lands into Swamps, allowing Coffers to make absurd amounts of mana.

Tainted Remedy + Swords to Plowshares : More of a cute synergy than a combo, I've killed a few people in my time by hitting their giant creature with Swords while Remedy is on the battlefield.

The goal of this deck is to control the board by playing small threats/incremental value creatures and removal until we can take over and win the game with a bomb of our own.
  • T1 through T5 or so is spent playing ramp spells, and setting up with card advantage engines.
  • T6 though T8 is our window to play Teysa (if safe) and start attacking a threatening player. Her pillowfort ability will protect us from retaliation strikes.
  • T8+ is when we go off with bombs such as Kokusho and Ashen Rider. Our opponents have spent time and resources whittling each other down, and we should be in position to finish the job.

The wincon of the deck doesn't change much, regardless of matchup. At least one player is likely to die to commander damage thanks to Teysa's resilience and unblockabilty, while fliers and drain effects take care of the rest. I try to prioritize ramping quickly when up against fast, aggressive decks, as they'll have a hard time dealing with Teysa once she hits the field. Blind Obedience effects also really ruin their day, and much earlier in the game. Against other control decks, I prioritize keeping removal and timing its use well. Teysa can take those games out of nowhere with a pump effect behind her. Voltron decks will scoop to edicts, so dig for them.

Our opening hand needs at least three lands. The deck is slow, so try to keep a hand with at least one creature to play before turn 3 or 4. No one card in the deck is worth a risky hand, as it's very flexible and you're much more likely to draw into a helpful card than win off the one that made you keep it.

Teysa, on her own, takes 6 turns to kill with commander damage. This is not an unreasonable goal (it happens more often than you'd think), but is far less likely to occur if you spend different turns attacking different opponents. Use good judgement based on board state and deck style to decide who to point her at, and let your other creatures spread the love. Opponents will get grumpy taking 4 damage every turn, especially if something sets them behind on board. Ignore any attempts to politick about it, as you need every swing you can get.

Finally, this deck can be difficult to pilot in 1v1 matches, and even 3-player games. It thrives best in an environment where your opponents are incentivized to attack one another instead of you, and then capitalize on the damage they've done to each other to finish the job.

Orzhov Signet / Gilded Lotus / Worn Powerstone / Thran Dynamo / Hedron Archive : Standard package of mana rocks. Teysa costing 7 on the first cast means we want a good number of these to get her out earlier. They also help us keep pace with the green decks that are digging lands out of their library to try and accelerate ahead of the rest of the table. Lotus and Signet provide some color fixing, and we can sacrifice Archive for cards when the game goes long and we don't need the ramp any more. I find these cards are also good candidates to ditch to Infernal Tribute in late turns to dig for more impactful cards.

Solemn Simulacrum / Burnished Hart : Dig lands out of our deck for safer ramp (basic land destruction is far less common than artifact destruction), and are also on bodies that we can reanimate later in a pinch.

Dowsing Dagger   / Sword of the Animist : While we generally don't attack much with our early creatures, both of these equipment encourage some early beats for some extra mana. Look for a player who's open or reluctant to block with their Llanowar Elves and turn that Grand Abolisher sideways.

Cabal Coffers : Though a bit of a risk in a 2-color deck, we do lean black-heavy, and the benefit Coffers can offer is high enough I'm willing to risk it occasionally being a dead draw. We need 3 Swamps to break even, and the deck runs a couple ways to search them out (in addition to Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth ).

Draw engines are the backbone of any good control deck, and we gain a lot of power/advantage by digging until we have a spread of answers and threats in our hand at all times.

Skullclamp : Since we’re sacrificing creatures regularly anyway, it’s pretty easy to pay 1 to draw two cards while we do so. Note the creature does have to hit the graveyard for us to draw, so if we’re sending Teysa to the command zone, this won’t work with her (thankfully, we like to let her die sometimes).

Phyrexian Arena / Bloodgift Demon : A little slow, as neither card does anything until our next upkeep, but doubling our card draw every turn keeps our hand nice and full of stuff to do. Demon has two added benefits over Arena, the first being it's a 5/4 evasive beatstick or blocker, and the second being you can force your opponent to draw/lose life. Once in a while, the stars align and you can kill an opponent in this hilarious way.

Twilight Prophet : Similar to Arena and Demon above, Prophet draws us an extra card every upkeep; however, she comes with the additional upside of draining opponents’ life totals. It’s very easy to turn on Ascend by turn 4 or 5 in this format, but I would wait until you’re guaranteed to have it before casting her – that upside often means she’s a target for removal.

Disciple of Bolas : Also qualifies as a sacrifice outlet. This card is value even if we're only drawing two cards from its ability, so the majority of our creatures will qualify. Generally I like to cast it right before a boardwipe (either my own or predicted), since the creature sacrificed would die anyway, and it gives us a chance to refill our hand to recover.

Krav, the Unredeemed : Krav offers really strong value as both a sacrifice outlet and a card draw engine. While we don't run tokens or lots of small creatures to make the best use of his ability, even just pitching one creature to draw a card (AND gain a life AND grow Krav) is really good value for . The fact that the Battlebond partner mechanic basically comes with a very specific ETB cantrip is an added benefit.

Tymna the Weaver : Tymna is a bit of an oddball compared to our other card draw, as she encourages attacking to refill our hand - however, she's a strong three drop that will likely allow us to get some early game cards that smooth out the rest of the curve.

And boy howdy, this is our largest category. As mentioned previously, much of this deck’s strength comes from being able to answer most threats at a moment's notice, while gaining incremental value with our own. I've broken it down into smaller categories for ease of navigation, and so if you decide to build the deck on your own, it's easier to adjust the amount needed for your personal meta.

For Creatures

Teysa, Orzhov Scion : Though her removal price is steep, baby Teysa provides her own fodder when our black creatures die - and we make sure they do a lot of that. She also synergizes well with general Teysa, whose tokens are both white and black.

Swords to Plowshares / Path to Exile : Best creature removal in the format, likely in all of Magic. One mana, gets around indestructible and other reanimation decks, and the value your opponents get in return is negligible over the course of a long game.

Mortify : Can also hit a pesky enchantment, but usually we'll end up using this on a creature. A little flexibility for a little more mana.

Dictate of Erebos : This card has an interesting effect of also protecting our creatures, as opponents will be reluctant to destroy them unless they have fodder to ditch. We have the tools to abuse Dictate very effectively, as we already sacrifice our own creatures for value - now it will pull double duty by getting rid of anything our opponents' try to play as well. Finally, flash adds from great flexibility, as you can turn a one-sided boardwipe or some chump blocking into a blowout.

Other / Any Target

Anguished Unmaking / Utter End : Efficient and comprehensive answers to any threat.

Archon of Justice / Ashen Rider : Similar to above. Both cards are strong in any deck, but especially strong in ours due to our ability to sacrifice either for instant-speed, no-mana (or almost no mana) removal. On decently-sized, evasive bodies, both creatures can also get in a bit of damage or protect us from attackers while waiting on the battlefield for their target. Ashen Rider can be expensive to cast, but the benefit of being a reanimation deck is you should only have to pay for it once before you begin looping with other spells.

Aura of Silence : 3 mana to remove an artifact/enchantment is a fine deal even if you have to sacrifice it right away. Otherwise, it sits on the battlefield and makes it harder for opponents to cast their valuable spells (both through taxation and fear of anything scary being immediately removed) until the right target comes along. This card on curve

Graveyard

Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet : Prevents opponents' most important card type from ever hitting the graveyard, denying them both death triggers and the chance to ever return them. The zombies are a nice extra benefit; they usually end up as chump blockers that grow Kalitas or sacrifice fodder for cards like Yahenni, Undying Partisan .

Leyline of the Void : One of the best graveyard checks in the game. It’s a hard permanent type to remove, doesn’t hold back our own reanimation strategy, and sometimes we get it for free in the very beginning.

Bojuka Bog : Instant nuke of one person's entire graveyard, for those spellslinger decks running Past in Flames , or other reanimators like Muldrotha, the Gravetide . Entering tapped is a fine price to pay, even though you'll occasionally have it in your opener or draw it early for little to no value.

Boardwipes

Fumigate : 5CMC white boardwipe like so many of those WotC has been fond of printing the last few years. Not as good as Wrath of God or Damnation , but since I don't have a copy of either for this deck, one extra mana for a bit of lifegain is a fine price to pay.

Hour of Revelation : In multiplayer, your opponents will have to try very hard to get this card to cost more than . Triple white can be a bit daunting in early turns, but it comes with the benefit of hitting everything on the board - this levels the playing field, especially against artifact or superfriends strategies trying to do unfair things. It can set us back a few turns since it hits our mana rocks, but it's going to do the same to any non-green deck, so our opponents are at least experiencing the same problem.

Black Sun's Zenith : Can be a bit expensive to cast, and you may not be able to hit absurdly large creatures like those in a +1/+1 counter deck, but gets around indestructible and regeneration. You can also get cute with Mikaeus, the Unhallowed by casting for 1 to remove the +1/+1 counters on your creatures that have already gotten the benefit of undying. Finally, it shuffles back into the deck to potentially use again (extra value!).

Merciless Eviction : Another boardwipe that gets around indestructible and regeneration, as well as hosing other reanimation decks by exiling creatures instead of putting them in the graveyard. However, this card's real value is in its flexibility, as we can just as easily choose artifacts or enchantments to punish the Sharuum the Hegemon or Bruna, Light of Alabaster players at the table. Enchantress and artifact-reliant strategies often have a hard time recovering from this card targeting their favored permanent type. If choosing creature-mode, it's beneficial to try to sacrifice as many dudes of our own as possible before we cast this - that way our creatures end up in our graveyard for later use, while our opponents' are removed for good.

Phyrexian Scriptures : The deck wanted one more board wipe to cross into the realm of true control, but sweeper #5 can definitely afford to be a little weird. Scriptures is an interesting card that lets us keep our best creature, and follows it up by hosing opposing graveyards so no one else can get their cards back. Though it does sit vulnerable on the battlefield for a turn (and doesn't allow us to cast other spells before firing in our first main phase), generally we're okay with opponents using their removal on this card rather than one of our other, stronger pieces.

Sacrifice outlets are secretly the most necessary component to any reanimation strategy, not only because some of our creatures have abilities that trigger when they die, but because they allow us to decide when and how they hit the graveyard. This lets us set up for more combo-like play on later turns, respond at instant speed to our opponents, and gives us more control over the game as a whole.

Viscera Seer / Cartel Aristocrat / Yahenni, Undying Partisan : Cheap, efficient creatures that also act as our free sacrifice outlets. Seer and Aristocrat offer a minor (if only occasionally relevant) benefit, while Yahenni is an aggressive card that is very hard to kill when we have literally anything else on board. In particular, Yahenni can grow huge by ditching something to their ability, then casting one of our "destroy" boardwipes once they're indestructible - putting us in a position to hit someone for 10+ hasty damage.

Phyrexian Altar : Our other free sacrifice outlet - usually, the mana goes unspent, but once in a while we don’t mind pitching a creature to get a card out a little early.

Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim : Ayli is a terrifyingly efficient creature - a 2/3 body with deathtouch for only two mana is a considerable threat by itself, but we're using her mainly for her cheap ability to sac other creatures. Compared to others with similar abilities for the same CMC like Disciple of Griselbrand and Thoughtpicker Witch , it's easy to see why she's the best of the bunch and worth a deck slot. She defends us from almost all attackers in the early game, and can even prevent some aggro in the later stages thanks to deathtouch. The lifegain her first ability offers is nice, but secondary to our goal of getting creatures in (and later out of) the graveyard. Finally, her ability to exile something once we're at 50+ life is rare in beginning turns, but achievable as the game goes on thanks to the likes of Kokusho, the Evening Star and Gray Merchant of Asphodel . All together, Ayli is a card I'm almost always happy to draw.

Infernal Tribute : The most expensive of our sacrifice outlets, Tribute is worth including for two reasons: first, because its benefit is the always strong "draw a card", and second, because we can sacrifice any nontoken permanent. This means we can trade lands for cards when flooding out, turn our mana rocks like Worn Powerstone into cards when we don't need them in the late game, or ditch equipment and enchantments in response to a Planar Cleansing or similar destroy-everything boardwipe.

High Market / Miren, the Moaning Well : The main benefit of having sacrifice abilities on lands is that they're hard to remove - though since the release of Ixalan and its flip-lands, single-target land destruction is becoming more and more common. I'm still inclined to believe these two cards will stay fairly resilient, as they're not on the same threat level as most flip-lands, but it is something I'm paying attention to.

The ability to bring back a creature after it dies allows our deck to generate more value per individual card - instead of running the second and third best Grave Titan s, we can just run Grave Titan and two reanimation spells to return him from the graveyard after he dies. This allows us to cheat the singleton format a little (at the cost of variance, sometimes drawing all reanimation spells without any targets for them).

Sun Titan : With 20+ targets not counting lands, Titan gets us back our small value permanents, while attached to a respectably-sized attacker and/or blocker. He combines especially well with Animate Dead and Necromancy to get back another creature with CMC >4.

Karmic Guide : Guide is just very efficient value for her mana cost. Whether or not it's worth it to pay her echo cost really depends on board state and if you need your mana for other things next turn. If you're playing against other black decks, she can be very useful thanks to protection - on the other hand, letting her die has some cute synergy with Mikaeus, the Unhallowed or Athreos, God of Passage .

Athreos, God of Passage : While generally I'm not a fan of cards that put creatures back to our hand instead of directly to the battlefield, Athreos has proved enough of a thorn in our opponents' collective side that I can't bring myself to cut him just yet. Barring political alliances, I like to target the player with the lowest life total with his ability, as they're least likely to want to eat 3 damage when we're probably going to get the creature back with another card anyway. While he's offline, he lets us cycle the smaller creatures in our deck - people are pretty likely to let you get back your Grand Abolisher or Burnished Hart , while they want the likes of Grave Titan and Ashen Rider gone for good. While online, he's an excellent blocker and even an aggressive beater if you find yourself needing one. The deck's high permanent count and color-intensive mana costs mean Athreos is a creature more often than not.

Mikaeus, the Unhallowed : While not true "reanimation", Mikaeus remains one of the strongest and most breakable cards in the deck - so strong, we run him in spite of the fact that our general is a human, thus a nonbo. He shuts down certain attackers completely thanks to a Teysa-like destruction ability, and is pretty busted with cards like Ashen Rider and Solemn Simulacrum plus a sacrifice outlet. Finally, lording everything except a handful of our creatures helps close out the game even faster.

Sheoldred, Whispering One : Another reanimator classic and one of the more feared cards in the format, Sheoldred is one of our curve-toppers. She punishes opponents for having good creatures or going tall, and gets something back for us for free every turn if she survives the next round. Combine that with a large, evasive body, and it’s easy to see why she draws lots of removal very quickly. I try to play her only when I can protect her for at least a round, or have a backup plan to turn the tables and reanimate her once she is destroyed.

Reanimate : Exactly what it says on the tin, this card is the cheapest reanimation spell in the game at the cost of a bit of life. Since life is peanuts in EDH and the most we can pay into this is 8, it allows us to do some really gross things like a turn 2 Ashen Rider by dumping it into the graveyard with Orzhov Basilica on turn one. Unlike a lot of reanimation we run, this can also target things in other people's graveyards, expanding its potential.

Unburial Rites : Straightforward spells that bring creatures back for varying efficient costs. Beacon is reusable and can target opponent's cards, and Rites does double duty with flashback.

Animate Dead : This card is a little weaker because both enchantment and creature removal get rid of whatever we bring back, but it's so efficiently costed with such little downside there's no way we can't run it. The -1/-0 is relevant only on Teysa, and otherwise this enchantment is the second strongest reanimation spell we have.

Necromancy : Very similar to its cheaper cousin above, Necromancy has the benefit of being able to stick a creature on the battlefield at instant speed for a turn if necessary. This is great with Teysa in particular, giving us the ability to punish an opponent for being aggressive while they think our defenses are down.

Volrath's Stronghold : Like Mikaeus, this isn't truly a reanimation spell, but does serve several other important functions. First, being on a land, it's a more difficult permanent type to remove. Second, it ensures we draw action when we're running low on gas. Finally, and perhaps most useful, it can save our best creature from being permanently removed from the game by a stray Rest in Peace or Bojuka Bog .

Our finishers are the main targets of our reanimation spells, as sacrificing them and bringing them back again eventually will win us the game.

Grave Titan : Ideal when the board favors a go-wide strategy for winning, or when an opponent is playing zombie tribal and you want in on the fun. Deathtouch makes the Titan hard to block, and allows us to block with near-impunity in tight situations.

Regna, the Redeemer : Very similar to Grave Titan above, Regna trades deathtouch for flying and makes 1/1 tokens instead. To her benefit, she can make them at each endstep instead of just one our turn, and comes with a free specific-cantrip of searching out her partner Krav, the Unredeemed if we don't have him already. Together they work to gum up the board with small tokens and draw us cards, both major advantages that will help us win the game in the long run (which is right where we like games with this deck).

Elenda, the Dusk Rose : Rounding out our token-making finishers is Elenda, the perfect witness to the aristocrats side of our strategy. She passively grows as we kill and/or sacrifice creatures, eventually becoming a large, lifelinking threat. Once she’s large enough, we can sacrifice her to create a small army and go wide - or be the only one with a boardstate after a sweeper.

Yosei, the Morning Star : Yosei has historically come in and out of this deck a couple of times, but ultimately I decided I like him quite a bit. He’s great for buying a turn vs combo or ramp decks, and is a respectable flying beater on top of that.

Kokusho, the Evening Star : Draining life from our opponents is one of the easiest ways to win the game, while simultaneously padding our life total to remain stable for any retaliatory strikes. Attached to a big flying body, Kokusho is also quite good at getting in a hit or two before needing to die - just keep an eye out for the occasional stray Path to Exile and don't cast him unless you have an instant-speed sac outlet to tuck him out of the way in a pinch.

Gray Merchant of Asphodel : A feared creature in any one- or two-color black deck, our color-intensive mana costs are a huge boon when it comes to this card. This common all-star is a more powerful game-ender than many rares or mythics, having an immediate impact on the board and swinging the game heavily in our favor even when our devotion is only 4 or 5. Sacrifice and reanimate him a few times, and you can easily drain opponents of 15 or 20 life each in the space of a turn or two.

Teysa Karlov : There was no way I could watch a third Teysa be printed and not find a way to fit her into the deck; thankfully, she’s great! Her first ability is the one we’re trying to take greatest advantage of, doubling up triggers like Kokusho, the Evening Star and Elenda, the Dusk Rose to close out the game, or Ashen Rider and Dictate of Erebos to clear the board. We do make an incidental handful of tokens on the side, so her second ability certainly doesn’t go to waste.

Blackblade Reforged / Loxodon Warhammer : These cards allow us to close out the game much faster with commander damage, a 3-turn clock with Warhammer and usually 2-turn with Blackblade. The lifegain and trample on Warhammer can also be useful on our other creatures to punch through some damage; Grave Titan or a large Yahenni, Undying Partisan are great examples.

Cards in this section are mostly control elements that don't fit in the "removal" category. A few exist primarily to shut down decks in my personal meta, so YMMV - they can be swapped around as necessary to fit your playgroup and style.

Blind Obedience / Thalia, Heretic Cathar : These cards exist mainly to slooooow our opponents down in the early turns of the game, as our deck almost never has fast starts and we don't want to get run over immediately. Each has an added benefit, gaining life or allowing us to plan for weird land shenanigans.

Grand Abolisher : Prevents opponents from interfering with anything we try to do on our turns. Helpful for when we're trying to loop things through the graveyard or use removal on a resilient deck like Roon of the Hidden Realm .

Tainted Remedy : A bit niche, but the absolute bane of decks like Trostani, Selesnya's Voice or Brion Stoutarm . There's a particularly nasty Bruse Tarl, Boorish Herder / Tymna the Weaver partner deck that runs around my meta, so the card was initially to counter that combo, but quickly proved its worth in a general sense by preventing other incremental lifegain that might pluck the game from our sticky fingers.

Arcane Lighthouse : Gives us the ability to target creatures that might otherwise be difficult to remove, like Sigarda, Host of Herons or Inkwell Leviathan .

Vault of the Archangel : This card doesn't get used much, but it can gain us some life in a pinch or turn an opponent's big attack into a big mistake. It combines particularly well with Teysa's spirit tokens, as we don't particularly care about losing them - trading them for real creatures is all the sweeter.

The essential function of the deck can be kept as long as you're sure to fill out the categories described in the sections above. Most of the specific card choices I've made are because of personal preference, what I had around at a given time, or have been slowly gathered over 5+ years of piloting this list.

The deck does run some expensive cards, however, and I'll address those here. My threshold for "expensive" is anything over $10.

If your meta is full of aggressive, creature-based strategies, Teysa can absolutely dominate the format. On the other hand, we run almost no interruption besides battlefield removal for infinite or other fast combo decks - so if your playgroup is fond of winning in those ways, you'll probably struggle. While I think the deck can certainly be piloted (and changed) for more competitive environments, she's been adjusted and played over the past few years in a setting that prioritizes "fair and fun" over ultimate fine-tuning. For example, my group doesn't run Sol Ring or Iona, Shield of Emeria , even though those cards (among others) would undoubtedly make the deck "better".

Finally, as a control deck, there is definitely a learning curve to this strategy. It takes practice to learn exactly when to extend your hand and take over the game, vs when to play more conservatively and preserve what you have until other threats have been dealt with. It's very easy to overextend onto the battlefield or into the graveyard, only to have a well-timed Rest in Peace or Merciless Eviction from an opponent shut down your deck for the rest of the game. While we don't run combos, there's a fair amount of complex interaction and always many different options of cards to play on a given turn - enough that relying on intuition alone probably won't get you the win. The best advice I can give is to practice practice practice, first with goldfishing for consistency and then vs real people when you have a good idea about how each card contributes to the deck's function. Your first few games will be messy, but as time goes on you'll develop a better sense of how to prioritize threats vs answers (on both sides of the battlefield) and hopefully have a great time with my favorite deck!

Suggestions, questions, and general discussion are welcome! Please peek at the "Exclusions" section below to be aware of cards I'm deliberately not running.

If you want to run these in place of other pieces of the deck, please do! This section just explains why I choose not to.
  • Sol Ring : Playgroup ban.
  • Unconditional tutors a la Demonic Tutor , Vampiric Tutor , Sidisi, Undead Vizier etc: One of my favorite things about EDH is the variance that comes up in a 100-card singleton format, and I’m not interested in tutoring out the same pieces every game to try and win for the sake of ~consistency~
  • Necropotence : Partially because we don’t want to exile our own cards for any reason; partially because tbh, I’m just not brave enough to run this.
  • Iona, Shield of Emeria : A little too mean for my taste. I don’t like locking players out of the game completely.
  • Debtors' Knell : Too slow. 7 mana for a card that won't do anything until next upkeep is hard when Teysa also costs that much. That's a lot of time for an enchantment to sit on the battlefield and have an opponent topdeck an answer.
Cards I've considered, ones that have come in and out, and ones I'd definitely try if I owned a copy (marked with a *).

Suggestions

Updates Add

Jan. 19, 2019
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  • Authority of the Consuls -> Sun Titan: After playing with it in another deck, I was reminded how ridiculous Sun Titan is. With 20+ targets not counting lands, it was time to put it back in the deck.
  • Solemnity -> Loxodon Warhammer: The decks Solemnity was meant to police have mostly died down in my meta. Warhammer is another great tool that makes Teysa a 3-turn clock.
  • Erebos, God of the Dead -> Skullclamp: Erebos was a little slow, and I probably should have been running 'clamp a long time ago.
  • Beacon of Unrest -> Yosei, the Morning Star: Yosei is back to party as the meta is leaning a little more competitive. He's also great at buying a turn vs ramp, and a decent beater in the air.
  • Grand Abolisher -> Teysa Karlov: Very excited about new Teysa! Doubling death triggers of things like Kokusho and Ashen Rider seems sweet as hell. Abolisher was always fine, but somewhat unexciting.
Oct. 1, 2018
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June 30, 2018
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Board Overhaul! — April 23, 2018
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Swaps 3.0 — July 17, 2017
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Swaps 2.0 — Dec. 5, 2016
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Description Update — Nov. 10, 2016
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Swaps 1.0 — Oct. 13, 2016
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Revision 35 See all

(3 years ago)

Date added 10 years
Last updated 3 years
Legality

This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)

15 - 0 Mythic Rares

44 - 0 Rares

18 - 0 Uncommons

4 - 0 Commons
Cards 100
Avg. CMC 3.71
Tokens City's Blessing, Emblem Liliana of the Dark Realms, Plant 0/2 G, Spirit 1/1 W, Spirit 1/1 WB, Vampire 1/1 W, Warrior 1/1 W, Zombie 2/2 B, Zombie Warrior 4/4 B
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