Alesha, Who Smiles at Death
Ever since her printing I was excited to make a commander deck with her leading the 99. I thought it was a real cool reanimation effect in a fun set of colors. Unfortunately I was way too tied up being a dungeon master for my D&D group that I wasn't really making new edh decks for a bit. Recently got some inspiration and had a lot of fun going through all the possibilities. Turns out there's a lot of really fun creatures with power 2 or less in red, black, and white! There's so many different ways to play it that I had a hard time picking. Originally I was going with a heavy token generating theme but decided on kind of a flavorful reanimator tool-kit/hate theme.
UPDATE: 11-7-21 Just made a pretty big change, a good few of them were trading out just straight up better cards like adding Village Rites for Altar's Reap. Don't have a lot of time to go trhu this description to reflect all the changes, hopefully I can get to that later this week. Moving away from some of the more combo-y stuff in favor of more hate/tax effects.
So what's the point?
Take advantage of Alesha, Who Smiles at Death attack triggers to grab fun creatures. Stuff your graveyard full of creatures with various wheel effects and sac-outlets, or flavorful gems like Buried Alive, Entomb, and Stitcher's Supplier So, let's get started!
Setting the Stage
I like to get off to a quick Start so I'm running various mana rocks a pair of altars oh and a drum that I find is sadly underplayed. And I thought that Impulsive Pilferer was a neat card so I've included it to see how it runs. I've already named a few sac outlets so making sure it dies isn't an issue. Aside from previously mention wheels to fill your hand Skullclamp works well with the low power and toughness present in the deck. Altar's Reap is a solid fit thematically and real good at instant speed - still need to pick up Village Rites. Recently picked up Subira, Tulzidi Caravanner which seems on point for an Alesha deck so I've been playtesting it, so far I've been enjoying it. Pitching a handful of creatures then refilling my hand is beautiful. Still not sure how I feel about Mentor of the Meek but I can't wait to get my hands on Esper Sentinel so maybe that will be the tradeout? Or maybe I'll run both, kind of undecided at this point. I'll update later once I've made a decision.
Combat Plan
Alesha, is the lady with the plan, best to keep her protected. Outside of format staple and its clone I am running the wonderful Reconnaissance alongside it Maze of Ith and it's newer cousin. And Key to the City helps get her or another creature through damage-wise while potentially adding another creature to the bin to bring back and bringing some always welcome draw. So much value in one card! Anyways, I also included a couple other ways to give her haste so she can hit the table in a Fervor and bring back a friend from the grave. One of my favorite one-two punches is to grab Master of Cruelties because Alesha's trigger will have him enter attacking, great for taking someone out real quick! Silly tricks aside, there's plenty of good creatures to grab depending on the what the situation needs. Then I'm running some hate-y tax-y effects so if you don't have combo pieces set up you can help trip up your opponents game. Damping Sphere and Magus of the Tabernacle have definitely pulled their weight in gold for me.
Supporting Spells
Decent amount of the removal is exile effects to get around regeneration or indestructible creatures. Fiend Hunter and Leonin Relic-Warder can make their targets disappear forever with any sac-outlet. I have omitted Faceless Butcher and Ravenous Chupacabra due to mana value but do have them set aside if I feel the need for even more abuseable removal effects. There's a lack of board wipes because I've found them unnecessary in the meta I found myself in but this may change as I am about to be joining a new group after covid kinda disbanded my old group. That said, if I do add in mass removal one of my favorites is Cataclysm and by extension Mythos of Snapdax and the new Damn seemed kind of interesting but I'd probably run the other two before trying that. Then there's the other reanimation effects like well Reanimate but Victimize is beastly! And Animate Dead is good as it can be brought back with Sun Titan and I want to pick up Dance of the Dead for the same reason. I thought Agadeem's Awakening
was really cool and I've really been wanting to try out these modal cards so I've included a few (still looking to get my hands on Malakir Rebirth
too.) My group was worried about peoples decks getting too competitive/consistent so I've tried to keep tutor effects to a minimum but aside from the aforementioned Entomb and Buried Alive I am also running Imperial Recruiter and it's white counterpart as they are potentially repeatable.
The Good Stuff
So now how do we clean up and win this thing? If you don't want to go with the Alesha, Who Smiles at Death + Master of Cruelties
whammy slammy there's still quite a few ways to get to the finish line. Many are going to involve Blood Artist, Goblin Bombardment, or Altar of Dementia with cards that can go infinite (yes I know you need to choose a number, hush! :P ). Karmic Guide + Reveillark
is one of the solid go-to combos for setting this off and being able to grab another creature as well. Murderous Redcap makes for a great second target. Another sometimes overlooked one is Fiend Hunter
+
Sun Titan
or Animate Dead + Sun Titan
. Could even do Leonin Relic-Warder and Animate Dead. A lot of these need some sort of way to sacrifice so if you don't have that much needed sac-outlet Mirror Entity's ability is great to stack up a few thousand times if you make X be 0. Even if the creatures die immediately from their toughness being zero their abilities will still trigger. I tried to add some insurance in case you have a vital combo piece removed from the game in the form of Pull from Eternity but if they continue to remove more I have included Brutal Hordechief and Mardu Ascendancy to nickel and dime them down the rest of the way as a last ditch effort lol.
Final Thoughts n Comments
Despite being my first iteration here on tapped out this is actually the second list for this deck. Originally I had a slightly different list without stuff like the Harsh Mentor and Grand Abolisher that was running more blood artist effects like Syr Konrad, the Grim and Mindcrank on top of more tutors. My group at the time didn't like how quick and consistent it was and I was kinda forced to change it up (despite other players having very similar stuff and very similar power level). Now that I am no longer in that group I may look into changing it again because it feels a bit messy, I want to clean it up. For the immediate future I am planning to get Dance of the Dead, Esper Sentinel, and Dockside Extortionist. I'd also like to try out Flamescroll Celebrant
. Then once the list is cleaned up I will clean up the description so it's not this disaster haha.
Any input or suggestions are welcome. :)
