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Ayli, Eternal Lifebomber

Commander / EDH Combo Infinite Combo Lifegain WB (Orzhov)

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Creature (26)

Instant (4)

Land (36)

Enchantment (11)

Planeswalker (1)

Commander (1)

Commander: Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim

Artifact (13)

Sorcery (8)

So, making a super budget, as in under $50, EDH deck here centered around Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim , particularly what differentiates her from Karlov of the Ghost Council and Teysa Karlov , two other popular Orzhov commanders -- what can she do the others absolutely can not? Utterly explosive life loss and gain. How do I mean? Well, lets look at the single most core interaction we are building around:

Wall of Blood + Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim

Using this simple combo we can pay 39 life into the wall to make a 39/41 creature, then sacrifice it for a single mana to gain 41 life. Well, that's. . . nice. And what, exactly, are we going to DO with that interaction? Well, it'd certainly be a shame for our opponents if a Vizkopa Guildmage were hanging around to deal 42 damage to them. Or, perhaps, a Sunbond or Cradle of Vitality ? Perhaps a Dying Wish ? That basically sums up the idea of our deck. The most basic way of looking at this is: Method to lose life + Method to regain life + Payoff.

Fairly budget landbase, we are hitting up all of the cheap dual lands, and two fetches and two cycling lands. There are more cycling options and utility lands, but almost a third of this landbase are taplands already, so we are sticking with this distribution.

These four provide us affordable ramp and card draw

These two provide filtering and ramp, though the latter is only ramp if we DON'T filter.

The two ramp us and poke our lifetotal

Low cost ramp, the chimes are a super fun political tool, and Keyrune can gain us life.

Moor, Steppe, Stone, Locket, Archive, and Cluestone above all provide minor draw. Beyond those:

This combos with Pristine Talisman super well, and it can generate a lifelink token for us to buff.

We don't actually have any particular landfall synergy in the deck, so this is vastly weaker than it would be elsewhere, but we do have two fetchlands and a bounceland, effectively pushing our number of on-demand swamps up a slight bit. And we can draw a card off of Dawn of Hope for 2 mana here if we want to poke a target for 2, due to the lifegain.

Weak appearing at first, we do have access to Cradle of Vitality , Sunbond , and Unspeakable Symbol in the deck, all of which we can use to turn our +1 counters into a draw engine with this. It also CAN play well with an infinite/semi-infinite engine we are running elsewhere in the deck, not to mention is a decent Gift of Immortality target if we lack a better one, as this can be sac'ed to itself for free for a card and ETB trigger for Mentor of the Meek or Soul Warden 's effects.

The overwhelming amount of creatures we are running will trigger this, including our commander. The draw isn't free, but it is low cost enough we shouldn't mind paying for the sheer draw power this nets us.

Ayli is quite reliable removal on her own, and we do have lifegain options to pop over the 50 from some pretty dire situations, but we still need at least some removal in case we aren't at that point, especially since we aren't building around her second ability.

1x Fiend Hunter

Part of an engine we are running with Vesperlark and a sac outlet, as this can exile the Lark to put its ability on the stack, then we can respond by sacrificing the Hunter, place it into the graveyard and returning the lark to play. Then the lark's ability resolves, returning the Hunter to play targeting the lark and starting the loop again. This gives us infinite ETB and LTB triggers, which we can abuse in various ways depending on what our sac outlet is and what else is on the board. Ayli will not be able to make this loop infinite, but she will gain us a ton of life through it, which fuels Sunbond , Cradle of Vitality , Angelic Accord , and Unspeakable Symbol ; Soul Warden and Soul's Attendant also do this if we have another sac outlet. Carrion Feeder grows infinitely large, and is especially dangerous with Dying Wish in play on it, or with Ayli to sac it, or, really, for whatever reason, as we can swing with it and kick this engine off at instant speed. Altar of Dementia mills out all of our opponents. Outside of the engine usage, this card also has the upside of being a creature removal spell, as we can sacrifice it to Ayli in response to its first trigger going on the stack to set off its second trigger first, meaning the creature it targets is permanently exiled. We can then recur it later with one of our small set of recursion tools, but do NOT waste Gift of Immortality on this for that purpose -- Dawn of the Dead is miles away the better option.

Turns out, we do actually intend to pay life for several effects in this deck, enough for this to be a somewhat reliable removal battery.

Instant speed and hits enchantments as well, which is important when Tainted Remedy could drop on us. :x

Very versatile removal, this can hit ANY kind of permanent, and with our budget this is our only land removal spell.

We can recur this off of Dawn of the Dead or Gift of Immortality , but we need to be careful about the latter, as we will lose it if we don't have other things to sac to it.

Remember the Fiend Hunter above? Same story here, only this time we are using either Dance of the Dead or Animate Dead , whichever costs less at the time, for the effect. Everything said above applies here as well, only we do NOT get to reanimate Warder with a Vesperlark, which is beyond unfortunate.

We can remove up to two troublesome things at instant speed, and it is exile removal! WHOO!

We can recur this via, well, numerous methods, and can choose between both artifacts and enchantments. Almost modal! :D This is also a valid Vesperlark target, which places it above Reliquary Monk , which wins otherwise.

One of the best boardwipes around for our deck, because this is a creature that deals damage, meaning if we can grant this baby lifelink, we net huge HP swings, and we can tailor how hard it pops for to avoid killing things we don't want to kill. It can also be recurred via Lark. Effectively, with lifelink, this becomes our budget Exsanguinate .

Most of our creatures won't be hit by this, which is super nice, and we can get some serious recursion off of it afterwards, since we are mostly running creatures Vesperlark can hit and reanimate.

Though not a full boardwipe, this can kill off a TON of stuff, and it gets past hexproof, protection, indestructible, and shroud. And we have a good budget tutor for it.

Sometimes untargetted exile is what we need, and this not only achieves that, it can be recurred if we need it again.

We don't generally like option 2, but sometimes we NEED option 2.

A free outlet that gets +1 counters, we can use this in either of our engines to gain absurd health or to deal absurd damage.

We basically win off of either engine with this, AND . . . we can also sac big creatures to it to massively mill our opponents.

All three of these are fundamentally similar cards. Of the three, Harvest is the weakest, as they can respond by killing our creature when it is on the stack, while Rite requires a counterspell, and Wish requires . . . exile or bounce before it gets big and we sac it, I suppose.

All three of these allow us to immediately regain large amount of spent life. Children is the most valuable here, as we can recur it the most easily, but Sigil is the most powerful by a mile

All five of these are massive payoff cards for lifegain

These allow us to pay/lose tons of life at will.

1x Vesperlark

Absolutely stellar reanimation for our deck, it hits ALMOST everything we care about, really only missing out on the guildmage. Alongside Gift of Immortality our board is aggravatingly resilient

1x Animate Dead

Second engine card, and can recover other things if it will win us the game.

1x Dawn of the Dead

Regens something every turn for us, most useful for hitting creatures Lark misses, like Guildmage, and for Plague Crafter, Leonin Relic-Warder , and Fiend Hunter

1x Gift of Immortality

Basically we want to enchant anything valuable here, which, it turns out, makes up most of our deck. Ideal targets include: Vesperlark , Wall of Blood , Evra, Halcyon Witness , Loxodon Lifechanter , Children of Korlis , Crypt Rats , Mindless Automaton , and, really, whatever else we feel like putting here. Other than Fiend Hunter and Leonin Relic-Warder .

1x Sorin, Vengeful Bloodlord

Most of our key cards are under 3 mana, so we can pull them back with this and still have lifelink on everything. Quite nice. :D This also gives out Crypt Rats lifelink, and is one of the few ways we have to do that in this deck.

Looking at our deck, we mostly sit around the 2-3 mana range for our cards, so this is a tutor that floats around a dollar that can hit 20 other cards in our deck, including many important combo piece like Essence Harvest , Fiend Hunter , Gift of Immortality , Tainted Sigil , Wall of Blood , Unspeakable Symbol , and Oketra's Last Mercy . We also have removal options living here, but combos are probably more ideal to track down.

Far, FAR less useful than our 3 drop tutor, Memories IS still useful to us, pulling up Vizkopa Guildmage , Altar of Dementia , Dawn of Hope , Dying Wish , Capashen Unicorn , Animate Dead , Leonin Relic-Warder , Rite of Consumption , and Suture Priest .

Honestly, I need to pick up more of these before they spike, because this is basically a better Imperial Seal for multiplayer games, since you can use it politically to get yourself ahead. Someone at the table with a huge threat and you know someone else has an answer? Let them tutor, and get a free tutor for yourself! If we break the budget, it'll probably be over this card.

Our secondary method of gaining life, we aren't really BUILT around these methods and abusing them, but they do get us more life to fuel Unspeakable Symbol and Sunbond

The staple, this triggers whenever ANY creature enters the battlefield, so our opponents can heal us a bit, especially ones making tokens, which our deck otherwise has major trouble with. :D

Identical to the above, to my knowledge, only the lifegain is a 'may' trigger.

Only triggers when we play something, but also hates on our opponents playing creatures a bit. Especially tokens. >:D

VERY expensive, flipped this provides our two engines a direct killcon, but otherwise we just want the lifegain triggers from its unflipped side.

Simply amplifies all other minor lifegain in our deck, and is evasive so we can get it through if we pump it.

Gaining 4 life to start this train isn't hard, and after we do we can sac the token each turn for 1 mana to Ayli to keep making new ones and gaining life. We also have the option of keeping said token around to bap people in the air. >:3

This is vastly stronger in boards that can go wide, which we really can't, but it does naturally have the potential to generate free tokens for us each turn, which trigger the lifegain off our previous cards. This effectively gives us a lifegain trickle we can probably capitalize on.

Generally a non-threatening card to MOST boards we can easily flip, It That Rides as One is absurdly dangerous pumped due to Trample and First Strike, and that lifelink is just icing.

Gift of Immortality here is hilarious as we drain our opponents each turn, but this is a major lifeswing most times we can drop it, and thus we love Gary for being his super budget self.

Both of these form infinite engines, the former requiring a sac outlet of some kind and the latter not, that generate infinite ETB and LTB triggers. These infinite triggers work to generate infinite life for us via Soul Warden , Soul's Attendant , Suture Priest , and Pious Evangel  , and also kill our opponents via a Wayward Disciple . In the case of the former engine, we need to run a sac outlet, and Altar of Dementia all but wins us the game on the spot there, while Carrion Feeder will grow infinitely large, which we can use for basically any effect we wanted to use Wall of Blood for, only the Feeder CAN attack, but CANNOT block, so, I mean, lewl.

An example of the simple combo at the heart of our deck, Guildmage will turn all lifegain into multitarget lifeloss, Wall lets us pay all but one of our life, then Korlis simply recovers all of it, thus damaging all our opponents for whatever we paid. Many of the pieces here have redundant other parts in the deck as well.

Though exactly HOW the combo will play out will change depending on pieces, the general plan is the same.

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Date added 5 years
Last updated 5 years
Legality

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

23 - 0 Rares

36 - 0 Uncommons

16 - 0 Commons
Cards 100
Avg. CMC 3.05
Tokens Angel 4/4 W, Elephant 3/3 G, Human Cleric 1/1 BW, Minion X/X B, Soldier 1/1 W w/ Lifelink
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