Primer Aetherlich 2.0

Commander / EDH Casual Combo Enchantment GWUB Lifegain Primer

3n3rgy2

Land (35)

Sorcery (8)

Creature (21)

Enchantment (21)

Commanders (2)

Commander: altered Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix

Instant (8)

Artifact (5)

Welcome to Aetherlich 2.0

This is my take on an Aetherlich strategy! You can find the main deck that I drew from over on the Spikefeeder's youtube channel it's Season 1 Episode 3! I made some adjustments to fit my playgroup!

Aetherlich is a type of deck referring to the use of 'burst' lifegain and lich effects to accrue massive amounts of card advantage. There are MANY ways to build an aetherlich deck and strategy and I am by no means a pioneer of the archtype. This is my rendition of a list and I feel a 4 color variant (sans red) is the most consistent and resilient forms of the deck!

I call this 2.0 only because I believe the adjustments I made is better suited for my table and the play patterns are still about the same as the original list! I literally bult the exact list that JimTSF did on Moxfield (minus like... 3 cards) and have refined it a bit further. Notably I am using Peer into the Abyss and Cadaverous Bloom in tandem with an X spell to close out the game rather than using something like Aetherflux Reservoir. I might end up putting Reservoir back into the deck as its passive lifegain synergy is very hard to ignore, also the fact that I do not also need to find an X cost card to win, I can do it off of the Reservoir. More on this later. I have also been fiddling with the idea of putting a copy of Omniscience in the list as well but a lot of testing needs to be done to decide if thats even the way we want to go! A Large chunk of this primer is pulled from impropriety's explanation of the effects and general game plan of this deck off Tappedout here, I encourage you to go find their lists and show them some love as well!

Foundation of Lichdom

By the very nature of this deck is to land a Lich effect to turn lifegain into card draw! We are using Lich and Lich's Mastery and notably leaving out the worst of the 3 cards Nefarious Lich. Nefarious doesn't have any ability that stops us from losing the game or keeping us alive after hitting 0 life. This again, may change but I think the 2 Lich effects with the tutoring is more than enough!

The OG Lich

This is the only Lich effect that changes your life total. This means we have to be pretty careful deploying it, because even if we can avoid the downside of losing the game if it leaves play, we’ll still be at 0 life.

You don't lose the game for having 0 or less life. Important to note here that you can lose the game for other reasons – namely infect damage, commander damage, someone else winning the game (via alternate win conditions like Laboratory Maniac), loss conditions like Door to Nothingness, or drawing from an empty library.

If you would gain life, draw that many cards instead. This is a replacement effect. Once Lich is in play and your life total is at 0, life gain effects that would modify your life total don’t modify your life total at all.

Whenever you're dealt damage, sacrifice that many nontoken permanents. If you can't, you lose the game. This is a triggered effect. You will actually lose life and go to a negative life total if you take damage or lose life. Once you’re at 0 life, you can’t pay life for anything because you don’t have life to pay. It’s also worth noting that this only triggers on damage, not loss of life. This is going to be very important for some of the card choices later on.

When Lich is put into a graveyard from the battlefield, you lose the game. This is a trigger that rarely resolves. State-based actions (SBA) get checked before a player would get priority and before triggers go on the stack. Because Lich starts you off at 0 and allows you to lose life but doesn’t allow you to gain life, you’re usually going to be at 0 or less life when this hits the bin. The upside is that you can exile Lich or bounce it to your hand and still live if you manage to end up at a positive life total before SBAs are checked, which is possible with this list.

Lich's Mastery

This will be my primary go-to effect. The extra mana is worth it! "Hexproof This one word makes Lich’s Mastery worth the extra 2 mana. Yowza. This drastically reduces the number of cards that can deal with Lich’s Mastery once it’s on the battlefield. (If you watched Season 1 Episode 3 of The Spike Feeders, you’ll know exactly what one of those cards is.)

You can't lose the game. Can’t lose. Full stop. This opens up a huge list of cards that Lich’s Mastery combos with. Whenever you gain life, draw that many cards. This is a trigger, not a replacement effect! This is extremely important when it comes to a few key cards in this list.

Whenever you lose life, for each 1 life you lost, exile a permanent you control or a card from your hand or graveyard. Also a trigger. This one gives you a ton of flexibility when it comes to keeping Lich’s Mastery in play. It also gives you an opportunity to respond to this trigger, as well as the trigger that causes you to lose the game (provided you’re at a positive life total when this hits the graveyard), which is super important for certain win conditions in this deck. Important to note that this triggers on life loss and not damage.

When Lich's Mastery leaves the battlefield, you lose the game. Because both the life loss and life gain effects are triggers, you might be at a negative life total or not after Lich’s Mastery leaves the game. If you are, the SBA will kill you unless you’ve got another effect that prevents you from losing. If you aren’t, you’ll have an opportunity to respond to the trigger.

Saving our bacon!

The downside to Lich effects backbreaking and for that reason, we have a few slots specifically for not getting blown out by our own triggers on the Lich cards! Platinum Angel

Sundial of the Infinite

Teferi's Protection

Karmic Justice

Stifle and Trickbind, andTale's End are really useful for dealing with "lose the game" triggers that Lich and Lich's Mastery have. You're able to remove them at will through something like an Auratog or Faith Healer, You can also counter the ability that triggers on life loss if you want to avoid having to sacrifice permanents or exile things to your Liches.

Angel's Grace is a little more situational. Because Lich sets you to 0 life, it won't actually prevent you from losing life and going to negative values. Angel's Grace is worded to replace any damage that would take you from a life total greater than 1 to a life total below 1. Damage that would take you from below 1 to a life total lower than that happen as usual, so they'll still cause the effects that happen when you take damage or lose life. The upside here is that there's additional "can't lose the game" text that will give you until the end of your turn to close the game out.

Teferi's Protection is a single use, get out of jail free card, good for one use. If someone goes to cast a mass enchantment removal spell in the form of a Bane of Progress or an overloaded Cyclonic Rift we can respond to that and phase out. It doesn't do anything against a Krosan Grip.

Karmic Justice helps us in our war on attrition. It's not here because it protects us, it's here because it really deters opponents from playing a mass enchantment removal spell. Sometimes the threat of using it is enough to have people leave you alone! Enchantment and artifact hate is NOT uncommon in commander. Do not be afraid to start Vindicateing some lands while this is out! We do have some failsafes in place in the land base to bring things back and we probably should be running a copy of Replenish in the main too...

Finally, we've got Sundial of the Infinite. This lets you to circumvent the getting rid of things clauses from the various Lich effects and lets you avoid the "lose the game" trigger. Notably this DOESN'T work with Nefarious Lich because losing the game happens as a result of the damage you take and can't be responded to, which is another reason I chose to remove it from my version of this list!

Sundial and Platinum Angel won't survive artifact/creature wipes so for that reason we have included the non-permanent answers to a wipe!

Taking Damage is for Chumps

Ideally, if the game's going our way we won't have to deal with any of the "lose the game" situations that the Lich effects can create. We do this by including a package of cards that are designed to prevent their damage and life loss effects from occurring at all, removing even more downsides from the enchantments!

Delaying Shield is probably the best card to fill this role. It just straight up converts damage to life loss, avoiding the downsides on Lich. Lich's Mastery's downside triggers on life loss, but at least this gives us a bit of time and a way to pay mana to avoid exiling a few things. Delaying Shield also interacts favourably with Solemnity, as Solemnity prevents the counters from being placed so there's nothing to pay for on your upkeep. If you take a lot of damage but don't have Solemnity out and you don't want to lose life on your upkeep, you can also sacrifice Delaying Shield to Auratog or Faith Healer before the upkeep trigger happens.

Solitary Confinement is great with the Lich effects because it straight up prevents all damage that would be dealt to you. Once a Lich effect is in play, it's usually not a problem satisfying the discard on upkeep, and skipping your draw step doesn't really matter.

Phyrexian Unlife's role in the deck is twofold. First, it changes the result of damage from life loss to poison counters, which avoids the downside of Lich's Mastery. Lich's Mastery also prevents you from losing the game due to having 10 or more poison counters, so it's a match made in heaven. Phyrexian Unlife also combos with Solemnity as a soft lock that will hold your life total where it is as soon as you dip below zero.

Island Sanctuary is simply in the deck as a pillowfort piece that prevents us from taking incidental combat damage if we need to stall a little bit, only limited to Flying and Islandwalk. A harder prevention choice could be made in the form of a Propaganda and Ghosly Prison. ( A change ive been looking at due to Alela, Artful Provocateur and locust god being prevalent at my table ) Peacekeeper could also fill this role very effectively.

Worshp is pretty self explanitory here. I moved away from using Gideon of the Trials as most prison effects do not stop people attacking planeswalkers. This was an easy swap to make.

Tons of Life and Cards

Children of Korlis

Gray Merchant of Asphodel

There are a lot of ways to gain big chunks of life, but focus had to be semi-minimal because this deck is already trying to do so much!

Children of Korlis and Tainted Sigil are probably the best pieces here - especially since they work really well with OG Lich. Lich sets your life total to zero, and you can immediately activate either of these effects to gain back whatever life you had before Lich took it all away, often resulting in a few dozen cards drawn.

Gray Merchant is a really nice piece because of how many black pips you're likely to have in play when you go off. Even just having Lich or Lich's Mastery in play is enough to give you 5-6 devotion to black when Merchant hits the field, which is good for 1 cards drawn if you have 3 opponents. You can actually put both Gray Merchant and your Lich effect of choice directly into play by sacrificing an Academy Rector to our Eldritch Evolution.

Soul Warden and Souls Atendant AKA The Soul sisters! Passive lifegain and free cards for you or your opponents playing creatures is very good! I have half a mind to take one of them out for an Authority of the Consuls as they do the same thing and again, as stated above I have lots of tokens haste creatures and craterhoof in my meta.. Not a terrible Idea to slow down hasty creatures. Also adds to our creature count

Words of Worship basically just reads "1: Draw 5 cards" and you can activate it whenever you draw a card. This is one of the most impactful cards you can draw in this deck in the mid- to late-game.

Martyr of Sands can be explosive. Reveal 2 white cards in your hand and gain/ draw 6 for only 1 mana is sweet!

Thinking about adding a Righteous Confluence back into the list. It just straight up draws you 15 cards if you have a Lich effect in play. If you've got a Stifle effect to play alongside it you can draw 10, exile your own Lich effect, and Stifle the "lose the game" trigger. This can be a pretty nice line for when you need to ditch the Lich before you can win (Assuming you take the Reservoir or if you're in danger!)

Winconditions

There are multiple ways to leverage our Lich effects to win the game.

Vizkopa Guildmage is a very good wincon! The rules interaction for its 2nd ability, creates a delayed trigger that resolve seperately. As per gatherer "Each time Vizkopa Guildmage's second ability resolves, a delayed triggered ability is created. Whenever you gain life that turn, each of those abilities will trigger. For example, if you activate the second ability twice, let those abilities resolve, then gain 2 life, each opponent will lose a total of 4 life." Which means we can put 9 mana into our guildmage to activate his ability 3 times and when we crack a life gain effect for, say 7, we gain 7 life and each opponent loses 21 life. This is a great way to close out the game. It can also be done during your main phase for sizeable drain even if you're not poised to win on the spot. Drawing cards is good!

Psychosis Crawler finishes the game really effectively once you've got a Lich effect out alongside one of the burst life gain options listed above. Remember that OG Lich sets your life to 0, so if you were at 30 life before, Tainted Sigil or Children of Korlis will draw you 30 cards alongside a Lich effect, which will cause Psychosis Crawler to deal 30 damage to each of your opponents. Very spicy!

Aetherflux Reservoir is one of the more common ways to win the game in this archetype. I do not play it in this list, but it is worth talking about! The life gain trigger off of casting spells draws us cards, this is very good. If you're planning on going off with Lich's Mastery, you'll actually gain the life (unlike the OG Lich), which is great if you intend to activate Aetherflux Reservoir to kill people.. Kinda. See, with the Lich's Mastery, it's a little trickier than that. Generally speaking, you can play it like a regular storm turn but you'll have to sandbag as many instants as you can until you've gotten the storm count up to 14 or 15. Then due to the loss of life clause with Lich's Mastery, you will have to remove 50 cards from the game or threaten losing due to the fact you have to pay life. You can sometimes deal with the life loss trigger by creating burst life gain to offset it. As an example, if you're activating Aetherflux Reservoir (which would require you to exile 50 cards from your hand/board/graveyard), you can activate Children of Korlis in response to the Lich's Mastery trigger to draw 50 cards in response, giving you enough cards to discard. I just don't see this as a reliable way to rid your opponents from the game.

With aetherflux you have to find a way to remove a Lich effect before you can win and it only gains you life to activate through Mastery. I'm not a fan. I'd rather have the option to win with them in play! To do this I chose to use Peer into the Abyss just in case we didnt draw one of our 2 X spells Torment of Hailfire and Exsanguinate in tandem with Cadaverous Bloom. Sadly the missing Red color in the deck stops us from using things like Comet Storm or Crackle with Power. Cadaverous Bloom synergizes by paying for the entire spell (, ) by just removing a card from our hand from the game! Also if we have bloom and peer in our hand but no X spell, We can cast it reliably through bloom! I know I have to run 2 more cards to win than the Aetherflux but you will be at the mercy of having a way to remove the Lich effect before paying any kind of life. It also requires you cast a bunch of spells in one turn so in the long run Bloom and an X spell is much more efficient!

Closing thoughts!

If you stuck around this long, thank you! I did not highlight each and every card in this list but this should give you a good enough idea for what we are trying to do here.. Like I said in my opening statements, there is many ways to build an aetherlich deck and in my opinion this is the most efficient way to do it! Go shoe JimTSF some love on his list on Moxfield and Impropriety's on Tappedout! You can find both of my lists on these sites as well!

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Casual

94% Competitive

Date added	3 years
Last updated	2 years
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	5 - 0 Mythic Rares 56 - 0 Rares 13 - 0 Uncommons 12 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.60
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