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Licia is Mommy - PRIMER

Commander / EDH RBW (Mardu)

Glerma


Sideboard


Licia Mardu Lifegain babbyyyyy

    Sorry this is a mess, first real primer

General

How Licia works in the Deck

Her ability allows her to be cast for 1 mana cheaper for each life gained this turn, this allows her to be cast for 3 mana most of the time you get her out with the help of a couple cards that just give you a bump in health such as:

Once she is on the battle field your goal is to protect and ramp her by paying the life every time. She is consistent lifegain and a combat threat with a few ways to beef her up.

Lifegain Shenanigans

Paying Life

Surprisingly, this deck is not just about lifegain. It also utilizes the idea of life as a payment for good effects and makes the cost basically free as we will heal. There are many benifits to paying life, but I will list the ones that you can keep dumping life into below for different combos.

Creature Lifegain

Good creatures for lifelink and protection in combat.

  • Serra Ascendant - Great 1 drop, trash if under 30 life though.
  • Lone Rider   - Cheap creature that is easy to flip, solid blocker with bonus lifelink
  • Divinity of Pride - Great creature, kinda tough mana cost with 5W or B. But massive if over 25 health.

Consistent Lifegain

While everyone loves the big flashy heals, those usually need some build up or prep to work. In the meantime, we need some consistent, small lifegain to help balance out the life cost in the deck. The following cards help with this steady lifegain:

Phat Lifegain

This is where some steady build up and patience (or just lucky card draw...) can finally pay off into some massive chunks of lifegain. If you pull off any of the below with Sanguine Bond, Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose, or Vizkopa Guildmage on the field, you likely have killed a person if not the entire table.

  • The biggest part of pulling off massive life gains if having a lifegain doubler out, of which there are three in the deck: Alhammarret's Archive, Boon Reflection, and Rhox Faithmender.
  • Beacon of Immortality - This is one of those lucky card draws, if you are really low and need to crawl out of a pit of life this card is useless. But if you draw it early in the game it turns into a massive amount of lifegain. Combine this with cards such as then you can delete someone or the entire table as well!
  • One way to gain a bunch of life is to initially pay a bunch of life to the variety of life outlets described above. Once you do this, you can use Children of Korlis or Tainted Sigil to gain it all back.
  • Fumigate - If someone has flooded the board with creatures this can be a massive life boost while dealing with opponents board states.

Protection, General Utility, Extra Win Cons

Protection

For some wild reason, people do not like it when your just a silly little guy gaining life. Because of this, the deck needs to be able to protect itself.

  • Blind Obedience - Generally slows the game down and allows you to ramp and gain more life, out scaling our opponents. It has the added bonus of Extort which can be used if extra mana is available.
  • Ghostly Prison - Nobody wants to pay taxes, so nobody will likely pay taxes just to hit your silly little ass
  • Phyrexian Unlife - We play dangerous games with our life total, this is a nice security blanket to keep us alive that one extra turn to heal and bring the game back
  • Platinum Angel - Don't want to lose the game? Just say no. Don't want your opponents to win the game? Just say no. It is that easy.
  • Teferi's Protection - If the enemy wants to interact with your board state without your consent, they legally cannot do that. Please ask them to wait one turn to get a warrant.
  • Silence - This card works both ways, if you are ratting to live anther turn, you can cast this at an opponents upkeep and they just do not get a turn beyond combat. Or, if you are about to combo off you can cast this at the start of your turn and prevent any pesky counter spells or "interaction" to happen.
  • Maze of Ith - A creature cant smack me, good for dealing with voltron since the deck is weak to it.
  • Hushbringer - Who wants to deal with those pesky ETB and ETG triggers? It is much faster and nicer to skip those.

General removal, always good to have in a deck

Graveyard Recursion options. These are just generally good to have to cycle useful cards.

  • Sevinne's Reclamation and Lurrus of the Dream-Den let you cast permanents from your graveyard of cmc 3 and 2 respectively. This is huge for our deck to bring back destroyed artifacts and enchantments as well as recycle useful creatures.
  • Primary focus for recursion: Children of Korlis, Honestly, very situational. Just whatever is available and needed.

Utility

The main utility to focus on is card draw. The options for card draw are laid out below.

  • Sensei's Divining Top - Great for getting the card you want on top of your deck and getting it quickly. Also combos
  • Archivist of Oghma - Great when an opponent is ramping, kinda mid with the decks I play against other wise.
  • Necropotence - Gets your hand to 7 cards every turn and combos, best card draw option
  • Phyrexian Arena - Consistent card draw, great if you don't have three black mana and just keeps your hand decently full.
  • Read the Bones - Good with scry, gives a higher chance of getting a card you need/want.
  • Underworld Connections - Consistent card draw as well, only downside is loosing a land when used.
  • Cosmos Elixir- Either gain life or draw cards. Not very consistent, but doubles as a lifegain tool.
  • Ad Nauseam - The ideal "I have a shit ton of life and nothing to do with it" card. If you have all the life, but have not drawn into a win con yet, this bad boy is your answer
  • Imposing Grandeur - The best card for "oh, you are playing a reasonable cmc commander? Well get fucked I guess, maybe run an 8 cmc commander next time"
  • Bolas's Citadel - Great for getting an extra card or two out. Win con with aether flux reservoir. Just cracked without it tho.

Additional Utility that focuses on mana generation or important lands.

Tutors! General useful cards to get what you need, if you need card draw get that, you need a win con, get that. Do NOT get Exquisite Blood That is bitch made, we are not bitch made.

Combos and any other missed win cons

There are a couple of lifegain combos that are in here that are obvious choices. You could tutor for these and win reasonably fast if you get lucky in the card draws. I try to avoid tutoring for them and use that primarily for card draw so the deck is not too strong with my play group.

Random Missed Win Cons:

  • Exsanguinate - Good late game, either to win or to just get a bump in life and cling on longer.

Changes to be made:

Add to increase power:

Cut Cards:

Venser's Journal - good but too much mana

Queen Marchesa - Good protection

Felidar Sovereign - Good win con, but kinda boring and lowkey situational to make it around a full turn

Marauding Blight-Priest - Exguisite Blood combo piece, but not that good outside of the combo, just annoying for others

Solemn Simulacrum - ramp if land is a common issue

Cleric Class - Just too expensive to upgrade

Repay in Kind - Too situational and expensive, used it for a W once and loved it, but removing it for practicality

Axis of Mortality - Love the concept, but same issues as above

Visions of Ruin - Treasure Creation

Vona, Butcher of Magan and Verrak, Warped Sengir - Great removal, just liked other removal cards more

Suggestions

Updates Add

Comments

98% Casual

Competitive

Date added 2 years
Last updated 2 years
Legality

This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.

Rarity (main - side)

12 - 1 Mythic Rares

44 - 3 Rares

19 - 1 Uncommons

10 - 0 Commons

Cards 100
Avg. CMC 3.06
Tokens Assassin 1/1 B w/ Haste, Companion Zone, Elephant 3-3 G, Energy Reserve, Spirit 1/1 C, The Monarch, Treasure
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