[PRIMER] Between politics and violence

Commander / EDH Aggro Counters Flying Stax Tokens WB (Orzhov)

yurixquest

Stax (21)

• 1x Archon of Emeria
• 1x Athreos, God of Passage
• 1x Aura of Silence
• 1x Author of Shadows
• 1x Aven Mindcensor
• 1x Blind Obedience
• 1x Deafening Silence
• 1x Drannith Magistrate
• 1x Eidolon of Rhetoric
• 1x Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
• 1x Ghostly Prison
• 1x Gisa, Glorious Resurrector
• 1x Hushwing Gryff
• 1x Knowledge Pool
• 1x Linvala, Keeper of Silence
• 1x Lion Sash
• 1x Opposition Agent
• 1x Sanctum Prelate
• 1x Strict Proctor
• 1x Thalia, Heretic Cathar
• 1x Tocatli Honor Guard

Draw (8)

• 1x Cunning Rhetoric
• 1x Cut a Deal
• 1x Keen Duelist
• 1x Master of Ceremonies
• 1x Rankle, Master of Pranks
• 1x Shadrix Silverquill
• 1x Smuggler's Share
• 1x Welcoming Vampire

Recursion (6)

• 1x Athreos, God of Passage
• 1x Incarnation Technique
• 1x Infernal Offering
• 1x Phyrexian Reclamation
• 1x Sun Titan
• 1x Unforgiving One

Tutor (5)

• 1x Dark Petition
• 1x Opposition Agent
• 1x Scheming Symmetry
• 1x Shred Memory
• 1x Wishclaw Talisman

Ramp (14)

• 1x Arcane Signet
• 1x Archaeomancer's Map
• 1x Crypt Ghast
• 1x Fain, the Broker
• 1x Master of Ceremonies
• 1x Mind Stone
• 1x Monologue Tax
• 1x Orzhov Signet
• 1x Pearl Medallion
• 1x Prismatic Lens
• 1x Scholarship Sponsor
• 1x Smuggler's Share
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Talisman of Hierarchy

Land (32)

• 1x Arcane Lighthouse
• 1x Bojuka Bog
• 1x Caves of Koilos
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Isolated Chapel
• 1x Opal Palace
• 14x Plains
• 1x Snowfield Sinkhole
• 1x Study Hall
• 9x Swamp
• 1x Tainted Field

+1/+1 (6)

• 1x Cathars' Crusade
• 1x Elenda, the Dusk Rose
• 1x Fain, the Broker
• 1x Felisa, Fang of Silverquill
• 1x Shadrix Silverquill
• 1x Shaile, Dean of Radiance  ^Flip

Protect (5)

• 1x Devoted Caretaker
• 1x Flawless Maneuver
• 1x Inkshield
• 1x Malakir Rebirth  ^Flip
• 1x Your Temple is Under Attack

Commander (1)

Removal (12)

• 1x Author of Shadows
• 1x Cathar Commando
• 1x Cleansing Nova
• 1x Despark
• 1x Dictate of Erebos
• 1x Fracture
• 1x Infernal Offering
• 1x Lion Sash
• 1x Rankle, Master of Pranks
• 1x Rite of Oblivion
• 1x Shred Memory
• 1x Swords to Plowshares

Politic (7)

• 1x Combat Calligrapher
• 1x Cunning Rhetoric
• 1x Keen Duelist
• 1x Master of Ceremonies
• 1x Scheming Symmetry
• 1x Scholarship Sponsor
• 1x Shadrix Silverquill

Token (6)

• 1x Combat Calligrapher
• 1x Elenda, the Dusk Rose
• 1x Fain, the Broker
• 1x Felisa, Fang of Silverquill
• 1x Gisa, Glorious Resurrector
• 1x Shadrix Silverquill

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Maybeboard

Stax (5)

• 1x Ashes of the Abhorrent
• 1x Dauthi Voidwalker
• 1x Rule of Law
• 1x Silence
• 1x Stony Silence

Other (2)

• 1x Vampiric Tutor
• 1x Weathered Wayfarer

Ramp (2)

• 1x Land Tax
• 1x Mana Crypt

Combo (4)

• 1x Altar of Dementia
• 1x Ashnod's Altar
• 1x Blasting Station
• 1x Kaya's Ghostform

Control (2)

• 1x Angel's Grace
• 1x Silence

Tutor (2)

• 1x Diabolic Intent
• 1x Grim Tutor

Draw (3)

• 1x Esper Sentinel
• 1x Geier Reach Sanitarium
• 1x Necropotence

Land (3)

• 1x Ancient Tomb
• 1x Godless Shrine
• 1x Phyrexian Tower

SpotRemoval (1)

• 1x Path to Exile

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Introduction

Hello and welcome to my prototype political deck for Breena, the Demagogue.

This guide is based on my experience with orzhov and monowhite decks, which, by the way, is quite broad since most of my physical decks are of this color combination. Having said that, let's start the explanation of the deck. Most Orzhov decks have a strategy very well based on the themes of Aristocrats, tokens and lifegain. Silverquil arrived to change a little of this spectrum of action giving us many political tools, new types of files and interactions with coUnters. Also expanding our range of moves. This deck aims to offer you the versatility to play more casual tables and have fun with political moves or oppress your opponents at optimized tables (not cEDH) with armies of large and numerous creatures. Breena provides us with a solid buying engine and Buff. Despite giving away cards to opponents, if you pay attention, you can always draw 2 cards while each of your opponents draws 1.

This deck presented here is an optimization of the Precon 2021 Silverquil, and will tend to use a lot of cards that came in the deck. This deck was designed for Power Level optimized tables respecting a budget line that fits in the pocket of Brazilians. Here the cards are very expensive, so the mana base is not so optimized. In this way, all the best possible cards that are still within my strategy are in the Maybeboard

Topics

{W} Strategies {B}

Politics

This deck provides many ways to interact politically with the rest of the players. The policy here may have a primary or secondary role depending on your playgroup. Using cards like Breena himself or Combat Calligrapher, Infernal Offering and Shadrix Silverquill you will be able to try to balance the table in your favor, forging alliances and giving give players the ability to react to moves that could damage their own game. How about giving that colorless mana to the player in blue so he can nullify a global or respond to an imminent threat to the table?

In this strategy it is important that you do not show overwhelming danger and try to extract as much of your opponents' value as possible by playing against each other and being the worst possible choice to be targeted, using cards like Ghostly Prison and Cunning Rhetoric.

If there were more cards of this type they would definitely be in this deck, this may seem counterintuitive due to the slow need to put them on the table and then activate their effects but... if there's something that works in a meson they're real threats. Telling your enemy that he's better off not doing something to you because you've got the answer in hand makes room for bluffing, and if they understand your pattern of bluffing, none of your bluffs will work anymore.

These cards above, when on the field, constantly make you the least attractive target at the table without the need for a bluff. And because they have low cost, their recursion is very decent on this deck (Sun Titan like this).

In my experience as a player, my policies of agreement between my enemies were much more effective using these types of cards than saying I could make something out of my hand if someone attacked me.

*Note that I avoid using political cards that give the opposing player a choice, such as voting cards. The most efficient cards related to politics are the ones that depend on your will to choose

Tokens

In this second approach, we can still use the element of politics, but we have enough cards and synergy so that we can play without paying attention to pacts and betrayals during the game. The traditional orzhov strategy here is present using important pieces so that we can fill our board with aggressive chips and that can become more and more powerful with the tertiary + 1 / + 1 strategy.

In this part of the game, we will use our commander as the main pieces to accumulate markers in our creatures and we will pay attention mainly to the cards Felisa, Fang of Silverquill, Combat Calligrapher and Elenda, the Dusk Rose.

Bringing these pieces together in any combination we can have a board consistent with chips that can become bigger and bigger when we combine them with the tertiary strategy of markers + 1 / + 1

Here is the condition of the main deck victory, an explosive aggro that can appear in a few turns if handled well.

After many games and evaluations, the main strategies of this deck were changing and the Stax plan started to overcome the Tokens plan, and have good synergy with the +1/+1 counters, in this way, many white cards for stax were added to As cards aimed at token creation and sacrifice were withdrawn

Felisa Oriented Strategy

I created this type to group several cards that also appear separately in sacrifice and +1/+1 categories, in order to better organize the visualization of strategies. Felisa is an important card for this deck, being a kind of secondary commander and that's why it's worth explaining the cards with synergy

Stax

The strongest strategy of this deck is the StaxBall which you can configure with the large amount of stax pieces in this deck, Breena will help make each piece a big worrying behemoth, and her focus is to kill enemies with an aggro strategy. As inefficient as aggro is in EDH, if you can lock all players, the strategy becomes viable. Here we have some combos with Knowledge Pool like Eidolon of Rhetoric, Drannith Magistrate and Archon of Emeria

{W} Recovery and Ramp {B}

it is a fact that decks that need to sacrifice their creatures will eventually run out of breath. In this case we need a lot of graveyard recursion tools to continue to consistently use our strategy until the end of the game. So the deck uses cards like Incarnation Technique.

These types of cards will be very important when starting a game plan based on the creation of chips as mentioned above, so always make sure you have at least one piece of recursion in hand to be able to follow up on a more aggressive game plan.

Despite the small number of ramp cards in orzhov colors and also little space for manarocks, this deck has at least 10 ways to speed up your moves. In the metrics it is possible to observe that most of the interesting plays will be performed on the 3/4 turn, so bringing this curve as early as possible can be beneficial in an explosive game in which you intend to eliminate your opponents quickly. However, if you will follow the political route, try to grab mana in a more humble way, or you will quickly become a target of your opponents.

{WB} Maybeboard {WB}

The cards in the maybeboard are substitutes that can raise the deck's power level (which should be in the range of 6 ~ 7). If your group has high powered optimized decks, the response cards should be priorities, which are: Angel's Grace, Geier Reach Sanitarium (to stop combos using Thasa's oracle, Opposition Agent, Orim's Chant, Ranger-Captain of Eos and Silence

The cards above will help delay possible combos or stop them altogether. Unfortunately, white and black do not have more responsive cards that can help to avoid a combo, the few options are for Lapse of Certainty.

Adding more cards with reduced CMC frees you up to reduce the amount of Lands. I recommend leaving at least 30 lands if Mox Amber, Mana Vault, Mana Crypt, Land Tax and Ancient Tomb are added

However, due to the commander's special features and the deck's general strategies, this deck can hardly face tables with cEDH decks. I recommend that you use this deck for tables that have maximum decks with power level 9

For other options to "be responsive" at tables with higher power levels, I advise you to migrate to a Stax-based tertiary strategy. It is a more budget strategy and can be as efficient as counters. Letters like Tocatli Honor Guard, Containment Priest, Rule of Law, Leonin Arbiter and Kunoros, Hound of Athreos will help avoid ETBs that are often responsible through combos and strategy focused on the cemetery. Some of these cards can negatively affect any of your ETB cards. The impaired cards will be: Knight of the White Orchid, Scholarship Sponsor, Author of Shadows and Cathars' Crusade

{W} Weak Points {B}

Like any deck that lacks the blue and green color, the biggest weaknesses that will reach this deck will be the lack of response and the premature ramp. To get around the second problem, we added several ways to ramp inside the white color. They're not great but they serve the purpose very well. As you can see, the deck's mana curve is mainly found in CMC 3, so it is extremely important that by round 4 you are already able to generate some kind of value at the table. Bringing in Breena as early as possible and abusing his markers and draws is the best opportunity to grow in value in the first rounds.

The primary problem for Orzhov decks that play on optimized tables is the high response. It is almost impossible to respond to combos that could end the game. This deck has many ways to deal with dangers that are on the field, but responding to moves when they are made is not your specialty. Therefore, using the political versatility of this deck to help an ally who may be your "right hand" can be an outlet for this weakness.

{INFINITY} Combos and additions {INFINITY}

The deck does not have combos to end the game and therefore also does not have as many tutors. If you prefer to build a strategy more focused on combos, I recommend removing the policy engine from the deck. Breena can still be a good commander that gives you a card advantage. The combos that can be added to the deck and that can continue with the synergy are:

1) Sun Titan + Kaya's Ghostform / Minion's Return + Ashnod's Altar / Altar of Dementia / Blasting Station

2) Necropotence + Angel's Grace

3) basri's liutenant + Carrion Feeder / Viscera Seer / Fanatical Devotion + Cathars' Crusade

1) This combo gives you infinite ETBs and can be very useful if you take advantage of this. Combined with altars they can cause instant victory or give you infinite colorless mana.

2) This combo gives you access to draw all the cards in the library

3) This combo gives you access to many ETBs and can be very useful depending on the SacOutlet you use. Along with the crusade can be fatal

In order to make these plays possible, the use of tutors, at least 5 tutors, is imperative for these strategies to be viable quickly. Therefore, Vampiric Tutor, Demonic Tutor, grimm tutor, Beseech the Queen and Diabolic Intent are recommended.

This guide is being continuously improved and may receive updates. If you can contribute with tips and suggestions, I would like to hear from you. This deck was built using my expertise in the Orzhov color and you can use it as a guide and change it as you please, so I've listed several cards for different strategies that I think are viable for this commander. With this in mind, my considerations for new cards from the upcoming collections are below with notes on which different strategies cards may be included.

{W} Updates {B}

Modern Horizons 2

The cards below were the ones that have caught some attention from MH2 and can be added to the deck depending on the strategy followed.

• Break Ties - A somewhat heavy removal but with versatility to interact with +1/+1 counters. A budget alternative for more expensive removals.
• Esper Sentinel - A great piece of Draw that could become a staple of many decks, I consider using it
• Out of Time - A very useful global removal at low cost and a great ofensive/defensive card. You can remove enemys commander's (cannot back to commander zone) or protect you board.
• Sanctifier en-Vec - A great piece of stax, I advise using it only in strategies more focused on control
• Search the Premises - Great piece for draw. Helps with pillowfort strategy for political plays. is a card to consider if you develop this deck more focused on political plays.
• Damn - I don't even need to comment on the versatility of this card. great addition to any Orzhov deck
• Dauthi Voidwalker - One more addition for more control and stax oriented strategy.
• Persist - Reanimate
• Profane Tutor - Tutor, for more combo oriented plays
• Graceful Restoration - A versatile reanimate that synergizes very well with the deck's often small creatures.

Adventures in the Forgotten Realms

1. Guardian of Faith - A really cool piece of protection, I'm evaluating if it deserves a slot in this deck, it depends if the stax strategy starts to take effect

2. Pladin class - Very strong stax piece, cheap to get in early and mess up your enemies. You can see slots on this deck

Innistrad: Midnight Hunt

1. Slaughter Specialist - I really liked the art of the letter, I would like to say the same for the effect. I don't think it's a good piece of policy or markers, but it can be inserted in a more marker-oriented strategy

2. Morbid Opportunist - Good draw piece, I believe it will be used a lot in orzhov decks in general, here it can be added easily

3. Rite of Oblivion - Interesting removal for a more aristocratic-oriented strategy

4. Adeline, Resplendent Cathar - I like this kind of aggro and you can find good places here. An egalitarian attack engine helps a lot but it can make you a very big target, so make sure your policy is more advantageous than your absence from the table.

5. Chaplain of Alms   - I predict the headache this can cause considering that the dekc has many good pieces of its own and that protected from this form are less appetizing for opponents to snap up.

6. Liesa, Forgotten Archangel - Good stax piece but I don't think I see play on this deck due to its high CMC and low synergy

7. Curse of Silence - Boring, and inefficient, locking a commander for 2 turns can be cool, but this is not a duel

8. Enduring Angel   - A bomb would easily change my Necropolis Regent for that

Innistrad: Crimson Vow

1. Welcoming Vampire - An interesting buy for white that uses small tokens, if breena's draw engine is weak is a good consideration to use. Personally I have no problems with the draw engine on this deck.

2. Wedding Announcement   - It's very interesting the versatility of this card to give us 2 types of effects commonly used here, tokens and draw. The transformation is pretty disappointing, so I'd look for ways to remove counters from this card to make it useful.

3. Sigarda's Summons - If you want to be aggressive like a devil

4. Hopeful Initiate - A continuous removal of artifacts and enchantments. I believe it is very strong

Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty

This time I will put a level from 1 to 5 of the possibility of integrating the commented card into the deck where 1 is "not very interesting" and 5 is "must enter if possible"

1. Ao, the Dawn Sky 2/5 - A heavy card that helps us a lot, both speeding up our board, taking into account that most of our creatures are small, and with +1/+1 counters

2. Eiganjo, Seat of the Empire 5/5 - Why not?

3. Farewell 4/5 - Best global removal, this very well replaces any global removal card previously in the deck

4. Lion Sash 3/5 - More gravehate, more counters, its good

5. Release to Memory 4/5 - Its a good gravehate, can give us a lot of tokens, and we like this. I will use this card in future tests

6. Myojin of Blooming Dawn 3/5 - Take the place of Elesh norm as the deck's boss monster. Will the addition of this card depend on your goal, total aggro or stax?

7. Ruthless Technomancer 3/5 - Good way of creating a ramp

8. Mukotai Soulripper 2/5 - It can help us both in the need for a sac outlet and in the addition of counters. The crew annoys us a little

9. Nashi, Moon Sage's Scion 5/5 - This card is absurdly strong on its own. Does not need synergy with the rest of the deck, it will be good in any situation

New Capenna Commander / Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur's Gate

From the new capena the political exchange strategy for breena got a boost, now we have key pieces like Master of Ceremonies and Cut a Deal that are induction pieces and at the same time reward you in more ways efficient, so weaker political tools left the deck in exchange for these. With this, the deck can be a little more proactive than reactive. At the same time we had strong reinforcements like Smuggler's Share and Life Insurance that have synergy with the deck. I also increased the reanimation pieces due to better strength in mana generation, so we gained space for Elesh Norm and Linvala, Keeper of Silence

The new white and black elder dragons are great revive targets (especially the black one), can be added in place of Elesh / Shadrix and even Sun titan (less relevant now).

Don't forget to UPVOTE, It's important to bring visuability and improve even more!

Top Ranked	Achieved #12 position overall 3 years ago Achieved #7 position in Commander / EDH 3 years ago Achieved #1 position in Commander / EDH Aggro 3 years ago Achieved #1 position in Commander / EDH Aristocrats 3 years ago
Date added	3 years
Last updated	2 years
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	10 - 0 Mythic Rares 38 - 0 Rares 20 - 0 Uncommons 9 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.06
Tokens	Citizen 1/1 GW, Inkling 2/1 WB, Treasure, Vampire 1/1 W
Folders	Commander, 4Fun, saved decks, Kewl Decks, CMDER, EDH Decks, Great Decks, EDH Sources, Tapped Out - User Decks, Political edh decks