Gameplay Examples can be watched at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pD6YEVhJ50k
UPDATE - 2019 Rotation
Removed
Elenda, the Dusk Rose
and replaced her with
Sephara, Sky's Blade
You always have lots of flyers so she is easy to get out and she is great.
This deck has no real bad hand but you want at least one of each mana in your starting hand. But what you want is to get
Orzhov Enforcer
and
Ministrant of Obligation
out on the field followed by
Pitiless Pontiff
, you should have 1 mana free when playing Pontiff so that you can sacrifice the ministrant if they try to remove your Pontiff. 1 mana to save her from board wipes is nice. You will want to be aggressive with your Ministrants and save your enforcers for blocking with their death touch.
Once
Teysa Karlov
is out on the battlefield you will quickly fill the board with tokens. Swing with your spirits when ever you can since Teysa gives them vigilance and life link.
If you can hold of on sacrificing or allowing anything to die until
Elenda, the Dusk Rose
hits the field, try to do so. She will grow very quickly. If someone tries to remove exile her, either sacrifice her using
Pitiless Pontiff
or use
Consecrate / Consume
or
Final Payment
on yourself to make sure you get the life gain and a board full of tokens. Save as many enforcers and ministrants as you can and with Teysa's double death effect she will grow very quickly. Giving great life gain as well as leaving a ton, and I mean a ton, of life link tokens when she dies.
If you're having trouble getting your ministrants to die and the fliers will help you out, you can use Pontiff to sacrifice them, but you can also use
Final Payment
to either kill 2 of your own ministrants for 8 tokens(as long as Teysa is still out) or you can destroy one of theirs and sacrifice one of your ministrants. You will also have enough life link that you can sometimes just spend the 5 life instead of sacrificing anything.
Consecrate / Consume
is a great card because you can use consume to get rid of their biggest guy and gain some health, but you can also use it on yourself if
Elenda, the Dusk Rose
is about to get killed. I've had her at 20/20 and someone attempted to exile her on my turn so I used consume on myself giving me 20 health and 40 life link tokens because of Teysa's affect.
Mortify
has been a great card for this deck. Great for getting rid of sealed away and bindings and it has also helped me get rid of
Captive Audience
a number of times. Also good to get rid of Gruul and Simic enchantments or to use on your ministrants if you really need to.
EDIT
I now use 0
Ethereal Absolution
and now 4
Glass of the Guildpact
These are much cheaper and buff everyone you need them to. I found I had an Absolution sitting in my hand some games and not getting played before the game ended. Really enjoying this modification to this deck. EDIT
(so that I have a good chance of seeing it mid to late game. It's devastating and gives you a good upper hand over other token decks. This card destroys Golgari Midrange since most creatures are 1 toughness until they explore. They trigger their explore but the creatures die before any counters can be placed on them. This card helps by boosting all of your tokens to 2/2 and since you will have so many, and with Teysa on the field, they will start piling on the lifelink. This card also gets Teysa out of range of lava coil and double shocks)
Sorin, Vengeful Bloodlord
I found Sorin made for a great replacement to
Revival / Revenge
. I find with his passive giginv all your creatures liflink, Revenge isn't as necessary. Sorin's X ability replaces Revival nicely as well except you can get any of your creatures back, making blue counter spells less of a threat. With Sorin's +2 ability and a max creature mana cost it doesn't take long to get your creatures from the graveyard onto the board. Drop Sorin and use his +2, on your next turn throw Teysa or Seraph from the graveyard out in front of Sorin and he's secure with 2 loyalty left and a blocker. The +2 ramp up is very nice.
Revival/Revenge moved to Sideboard to make room for Sorin---
Revival / Revenge
is great because for 2 you can get your ministrant or deathtouch enforcer back on the field to either block or just produce more tokens, but I tend to not need to do that and end up using revenge more often than revival. For obvious reason revenge sets you up for a near win condition.
