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Sorcery (1)

Creature (1)

Enchantment (1)


Note: This primer is under construction. I will be re-writing it into a full guide based upon the most current list I am running. Some of the old guide below may be outdated. Pardon my dust!

I remember playing the original Teysa during the original Ravnica block, and as such when the new art was revealed for her for the Ravnica: Allegiance guild kits and I pulled her newer incarnation at the prerelease, I decided that it was time to build her. I pulled apart my underperforming mono-white token deck and never looked back. Since then she has gone through various incarnations and revisions, and I have benefited greatly from the great primer by Schondetta on MTGSalvation, Tolarian Community College's Teysa guide, and especially Substax's primer here on tappedout. Its evolved into an effective deck that can grind out even the grindiest games, and win all at once with the darkest hour combo, or more incrementally with grain and drain from some of the aristocrats we are playing or with mass drain spells combined with powerful ramp. Along the way, I try to play and enjoy the most degenerate spells black mana has to offer such as Necropotence, card:Bolas' Citadel, and K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth. I also enjoy playing the best suite of token generating planeswalkers available, including the whole suite of Elspeths and Sorin, Lord of Innistrad.

In the early game, I generally seek to ramp as much as possible, get Teysa on the board as soon as possible, and get some tokens on the board for value. With three white tokens you always have the threat of exiling any one of your opponent's creatures at instant speed. I've found that just having this available often causes my opponents to leave me alone. If you're playing against creature-heavy decks, this can be especially oppressive with Dictate of Erebos, Grave Pact, or Martyr's Bond on board as we can make them sacrifice their stuff at instant speed in exchange for tokens. Ideally we'll get another sac outlet on hand early on to get double use out of our black tokens, and set up some sort of draw engine, ideally with Necropotence or Erebos, Bleak-Hearted, and one of our power ramp cards (Smothering Tithe, Black Market, or Pitiless Plunderer). If our opponents' boards get too crazy, we'll cut them down to size with one of our powerful boards wipes, and remove pesky permanents with Teysa or one of our other premium removal spells. If we don't need the removal, we can Path or Oblate a token for a little extra ramp or card draw. We're also playing an exceptionally degenerate card with card:Bolas' Citadel, and if we draw into it early we'll gladly play fast and loose with our life totals to get way out ahead of our opponents. I've found that its often hard for them to come back from to catch up in these instances.

We'll win in one of three ways. The most powerful way is the Darkest Hour combo, and we have multiple versions of the pieces of it in our deck so that we can consistently put it together. In its most simple form, the Darkest Hour combo involves Teysa, Orzhov Scion + Darkest Hour + Free Sac Outlet (not Teysa) + Kill Spell. In short, Darkest Hour makes all creatures black, which shuts off Teysa's first ability (hence why we NEVER want to play Darkest Hour unless we can abuse it) but makes it so that whenever we sacrifice a creature we get it back as a black spirit with flying. At this point, if we have an aristocrat on board (Blood Artist, Syr Konrad, the Grim, or Bastion of Remembrance) we can just drain them out by sacrificing and re-sacrificing our creatures until we drain them out. Alternatively if we have Phyrexian Altar or Ashnod's Altar as a sac outlet, we can generate infinite mana and drain them out with Exsanguinate, Torment of Hailfire, or Debt to the Deathless (we can also use Damnable Pact here to one-shot a single player in a pinch). If we don't have the combo together, we can still use any of the these drain spells manually, especially if we've been able to generate extra ramp via Black Market, Pitiless Plunderer, or Smothering Tithe. A final way that we can win is with good old token aggro, especially if we get a little help from our friend Jazal Goldmane. Don't underestimate this guy, with nine mana its very easy to play him and immediately activate him to kill your opponents out of nowhere. I was able to do this the other day when I had just four tokens against a large, but tapped army (they had just finished hitting me hard the turn before). All of the sudden I was positioned to take him out with twenty power, and this is just one of many instances where Jazal was able to provide this service.

I have found this to be one of my most effective and fun decks. It can win a variety of ways so it seldom gets boring, and its almost always a threat. Moreover, I've found that when playing outside of my normal group people often underestimate her, allowing me to take control of the game subtly and win through value, which is truly the Orzhov way!

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Revision 14 See all

(1 year ago)

-1 Coldsteel Heart main
-1 Keen Duelist main
+1 Smuggler's Share main
+1 Sword of Hearth and Home main
Date added 3 years
Last updated 1 year
Legality

This deck is Commander / EDH legal.

Rarity (main - side)

7 - 0 Mythic Rares

51 - 0 Rares

19 - 0 Uncommons

10 - 0 Commons

Cards 100
Avg. CMC 3.03
Tokens Elephant 3-3 G, Emblem Elspeth, Sun's Champion, Goat 0/1 W, Goblin Rogue 1/1 B, Human 1/1 W, Human Soldier 1/1 W, Rat 1/1 B, Serf 0/1 B, Snake 1/1 B, Soldier 1/1 W, Spirit 1/1 W, Treasure, Warrior 1/1 W, Zombie 2/2 B w/ Decayed, Zombie Army 0/0 B
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