I Was a Teenage Life Swapper [PRIMER]

Commander / EDH Jank Lifegain WB (Orzhov)

sczombie

Mana (49)

• 1x Ancient Tomb
• 1x Arcane Signet
• 1x Bojuka Bog
• 1x Burnished Hart
• 1x Cabal Coffers
• 1x Castle Locthwain
• 1x Caves of Koilos
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Expedition Map
• 1x Godless Shrine
• 1x Leechridden Swamp
• 1x Marsh Flats
• 1x Mind Stone
• 1x Orzhov Signet
• 1x Orzhova, the Church of Deals
• 10x Plains
• 1x Prismatic Lens
• 1x Reliquary Tower
• 1x Smothering Tithe
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Soul Shatter
• 13x Swamp
• 1x Tainted Field
• 1x Talisman of Hierarchy
• 1x Temple of Silence
• 1x Thought Vessel
• 1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
• 1x Weathered Wayfarer

Life Swap (3)

• 1x Axis of Mortality
• 1x Magus of the Mirror
• 1x Reverse the Sands

Removal (15)

• 1x Anguished Unmaking
• 1x Austere Command
• 1x Blind Obedience
• 1x Condemn
• 1x Damn
• 1x Decree of Pain
• 1x Legions to Ashes
• 1x Merciless Eviction
• 1x Rout
• 1x Snuff Out
• 1x Swords to Plowshares
• 1x Toxic Deluge
• 1x Utter End
• 1x Vindicate
• 1x Wrath of God

Draw (9)

• 1x Black Market Connections
• 1x Bolas's Citadel
• 1x Dark Confidant
• 1x Erebos, God of the Dead
• 1x Necropotence
• 1x Phyrexian Arena
• 1x Read the Bones
• 1x Sign in Blood
• 1x Vilis, Broker of Blood

Tutor/Reanimate (4)

• 1x Animate Dead
• 1x Demonic Tutor
• 1x Liliana Vess
• 1x Reanimate

Commander (1)

Combo Pieces (11)

• 1x Archfiend of Despair
• 1x Exquisite Blood
• 1x Exsanguinate
• 1x Hex Parasite
• 1x Phyrexian Unlife
• 1x Repay in Kind
• 1x Tainted Remedy
• 1x Tree of Perdition
• 1x Triskaidekaphobia
• 1x Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose
• 1x Vizkopa Guildmage

Life Go Up (8)

• 1x Arbiter of Knollridge
• 1x Beacon of Immortality
• 1x Children of Korlis
• 1x Exquisite Archangel
• 1x Oketra's Last Mercy
• 1x Resolute Archangel
• 1x Serra Ascendant
• 1x Tainted Sigil

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Maybeboard

Other (23)

• 1x Angel's Grace
• 1x Death Grasp
• 1x Debt to the Deathless
• 1x Divinity of Pride
• 1x Eternity Vessel
• 1x False Cure
• 1x Fellwar Stone
• 1x Font of Agonies
• 1x Greed
• 1x Hatred
• 1x Imp's Mischief
• 1x Kaya's Wrath
• 1x Killing Wave
• 1x Minion of the Wastes
• 1x Mortify
• 1x Near-Death Experience
• 1x Oketra's Last Mercy
• 1x Phyrexian Processor
• 1x Profane Command
• 1x Revival / Revenge
• 1x Sanguine Bond
• 1x Spoils of the Vault
• 1x Wall of Blood

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"I am light. I am dark. I must give my life to serve; not even death can release me."

All Hail the Juggalo Queen

Selenia is more than your average combo deck. The name of the game with this deck is to make your opponent's life zero by basically any way other than attacking them. Most of these ways involve making your own life zero or near-zero. This creates lots of exciting high-risk, high-reward plays. Read on to find out why Selenia is the one true life-swapping Juggalo queen.

Pros / Cons

In my opinion, Selenia is one of the most fun EDH decks to pilot, especially in 5+ player games. There is nothing quite the thrill of going to zero life with Phyrexian Unlife then casting Repay in Kind. But this deck isn't for everybody. There are pros and cons to playing a life swapping deck, which I've listed below.

Pros:

• Capable of one-shotting opponents in unconventional ways
• Orzhov gets some of the best removal cards in the format
• Doesn't need the commander to win
• Has lots of synergy and card redundancy

Cons:

• If your combo gets interrupted after you go to low life, you die (sometimes instantly)
• It's hard to not become the archenemy after making target opponent's life zero
• Your only interaction with combat is taking damage to the face
• Most of your wincons are sorcery speed (or on upkeep triggers)

On the whole, Selenia is a classic high-risk, high-reward deck. The highs are ever-so high but the lows... are deadly. For example, if you use Phyrexian Unlife to drop to zero so you can Redistribute the Sands and then an opponent responds by destroying your enchantment, yer dead, kid.

The best way around this is slow-rolling your win cons so that your opponents eat up their removal. They'll quickly realize that almost every permanent in this deck can be game-winning. And with the amazing card advantage available in black, you'll be able to cast two at once in no time. But before you go dropping rattlesnakes there a few key interactions that you have to understand.

General Strategy

Selenia, Dark Angel is a commander that doesn't have any explicit strategy built into its text. Because of that, a lot of people don't understand what they're going up against when they shuffle up to play. The secret to Selenia is that we aren't playing her for her activated ability. We're playing here for the cost. Here is her text box:

Pay 2 life: Return Selenia, Dark Angel to its owner's hand.

What's so special about this? We can put as many activations of this ability on the stack as we want to make our life 1 or even 0. This is important because this deck runs about five different life swap abilities that allow you to trade this to an opponent for their total. This is the core concept of the deck, but in practice, life swapping can take a number of different forms. These are the five core lines of play that this deck wins games.

1. Make your life near-zero, swap it to an opponent, then finish them off with Leechridden Swamp, Orzhova, the Church of Deals, or a creature swing.
2. Make your life near-zero, then gain it back to full with a Resolute Archangel effect, and then kill someone with a Sanguine Bond effect.
3. Make your life insanely high, then abuse life outlets like Necropotence and/or Bolas's Citadel.
4. Make an opponent gains insane amounts of life and then kill them with a Tainted Remedy effect.
5. When all else fails, use mana doublers to cast a big Exsanguinate.

And that's it. Pretty simple, right? This deck has an insanely high synergy factor and it rewards creative use of life gain and life loss cards to remove opponents from the game. But things are rarely as linear as I describe them above. Some of my favorite plays have involved baiting a big swing at me and then surprise swapping away for a fresh life total. Now, let's go over cards that help accomplish these different strategies.

Key Interactions

How to Make Your Life Zero

Selenia is the easiest way to make your life zero because she is always available in the command zone, but there are several more cards we run that are equally potent for making our life near-zero.

Hex Parasite can be activated for 0 as many times as you want. Toxic Deluge and Necropotence can be used in a similar way while also delivering other potent effects. We don't run too many life outlets, though, as more often than not, chip damage from opponents and life costs on cards will usually get us to near-death fast enough.

How to Gain Your Life Back

Great so you've lost all your life. Now what? If you've got a life-swapping card in your hand, then your job is nearly finished. But sometimes you dump life into a draw outlet like Erebos, God of the Dead and come out empty-handed. That's when we hit the reset button

The best way is with classic life gain cards like Resolute Archangel, Beacon of Immortality, or Exsanguinate. Arbiter of Knollridge works great too since there is typically at least one opponent trying to fly under the radar. You can also use our premiere death insurance, Exquisite Archangel, as you can combine it with a life outlet to instantly reset your life total.

The most important life gain cards, however, are the ones that can be used to instantly gain back life lost in a turn. These include Children of Korlis and Tainted Sigil. These allow you to gain back massive amounts of life after spending them on a blowout effect. They can also be used to break parity in a life swap. Redistribute the Sands plus Tainted Sigil allows you to re-gain the life lost by all players as a result of swapping. If you use Selenia to make your life near-zero beforehand then you gain that back onto your new total while giving your opponent your near-zero total.

How to Swap Life Totals

This deck has a healthy suite of life-swapping cards including Magus of the Mirror, Tree of Perdition, Reverse the Sands, and Axis of Mortality. I would also include Arbiter of Knollridge and Repay in Kind in this category because they serve the same purpose of creating life gain and life loss triggers. And that is the most important thing to remember when swapping lives. Those who inherit a larger total just gained life and those who inherit a lower total just lost life. This fact is what makes this deck so rich in synergies, as there a surprising number of ways to turn a casual midgame life swap into a game-winning exchange.

Swaps trigger Exquisite Blood and the many different Sanguine Bond type effects in the deck. Erebos, God of the Dead also makes swaps incredibly unfair. Once you get a feel for the options at your disposal, you should be finding tons of unique ways to make life swaps swing in your favor.

Game-Ending Combos

Though there are many multi-card combos read to happen in this decklist, these combos, in particular, are the easiest to assemble when presented with a tutor.

Exquisite Blood + Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose/Defiant Bloodlord/Vizkopa Guildmage (Defiant Bloodlord is no longer in my decklist)

When they lose life you gain life. When you gain life they lose life. The game ends with you infinitely draining all of your opponents' life. And that's why Exquisite Blood is one of the best cards in this deck. You can use Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose, Defiant Bloodlord or Vizkopa Guildmage, all of which are A+ Reanimate targets.

Triskaidekaphobia + Tree of Perdition

Make their life 13 and then wait for your upkeep trigger. Enough said. Often enough, you'll be able to stick one tutor for the other and nab a free player kill if left unanswered. If you have a life swap spell, you can also swap someone a life total of 13 so you don't have to risk getting Gut Shot'd when you go to 1.

Tainted Remedy/False Cure + Beacon of Immortality (False Cure is no longer in my list)

Pick your least favorite opponent and un-double their life total. Tainted Remedy and False Cure can also kill with a life swap since exchanging totals counts as life gain/loss.

Selenia + Repay in Kind + Phyrexian Unlife

Resolve Phyrexian Unlife, then use Selenia (or any other life outlet) to go to zero, then use Repay in Kind to make each opponent's life zero. If you don't have Phyrexian Unlife, you can also bring them to near-zero then finish the job with Leechridden Swamp, Read the Bones, Sign in Blood, or an extort trigger from Blind Obedience.

Selenia + Resolute Archangel + Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose/Defiant Bloodlord/Vizkopa Guildmage

As long as you have more life than your opponents, you can typically nuke the whole table by paying all of your life into a life outlet, then gaining it all back with a Resolute Archangel type effect while Vizkopa Guildmage is out. The Guildmage is preferred over Vito or Defiant Bloodloord because VG hits each opponent. There are so many different permutations of this same combo in the deck that it would be hard to list them all.

Necropotence + Bolas's Citadel

Both Necropotence and Bolas's Citadel are strong enough to let you take over the game on their own. However, if you happen to get both in play, you have a pretty big chance of winning the game depending on what's still in your deck. As long as you hit a good number of life gain spells, the Citadel should allow you to play through your entire deck. Anytime you get stuck with a land, use Necropotence to exile it off the top of your deck and keep going. But be careful with this play, though. Overspend your life without a safety net and you will die.

NO LONGER USING: Soul of Eternity + Swords to Plowshares + Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose/Defiant Bloodlord/Vizkopa Guildmage

If your life total is higher or as high as an opponent's, then you can nuke them by Swordsing your own Soul of Eternity and then killing one player with Vito triggers. If you don't have Swords to Plowshares, you can also give Soul of Eternity lifelink using Vizkopa Guildmage.

Past Cuts & Updates

11/28/22: -False Cure +Legions to Ashes

-Defiant Bloodlord +Mind Stone

6/11/22: -Soul of Eternity +Arcane Signet

-Magus of the Coffers +Black Market Connections

-Crypt Ghast (needed it in another deck) +Prismatic Lens

6/5/21: -Erebos' Intervention

+Archfiend of Despair

-Buried Ruin

+Ancient Tomb

-Sin Collector

+Thought Vessel

10/28/20: -Debt to the Deathless

+Soul Shatter

-Kaya's Wrath

+Oketra's Last Mercy

Debt just isn't as good as Exsanguinate and Soul Shatter is really damn good. And I only recently realized that Kaya's Wrath only triggers on your creatures, which makes it not very good compared to gaining potentially 39 life for 3 mana like you can with Oketra's Last Mercy.

4/27/20: -Hall of Heliod's Generosity

+Font of Agonies

-Academy Rector

+Erebos's Intervention

-Faith's Reward

+Vilis, Broker of Blood

6/28/21

-1x Obzedat's Aid

+Damn

None of these cards were underperforming. I mostly cut these because I built a new enchantment-themed deck that benefits from them more. Plus Academy Rector was total overkill in this deck.

12/6/21-

-Font of Agonies +Dark Confidant

-Vault of the Archangel +Plains

Older cards I cut: Profane Command (doesn't offer strong enough removal to warrant the slot) Imp's Mischief (this deck already handles targetted removal fine) Divinity of Pride (got purely outclassed by Serra Ascendant) Kokusho, the Evening Star (doesn't hit opponents for as much as Exsanguinate) Felidar Sovereign (didn't feel good to win with) Near-Death Experience (same)

Date added	9 years
Last updated	2 years
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	11 - 0 Mythic Rares 40 - 0 Rares 17 - 0 Uncommons 9 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.59
Tokens	Shapeshifter 3/2 C, Treasure
Folders	Dmg, EDH Decks (Active), cool decks