[Primer] Selenia, My Guardian Angel - High Power (Commander / EDH MTG Deck)

[Primer] Selenia, My Guardian Angel - High Power

Commander / EDH Combo Lifegain Necropotence Primer Suicide Black WB (Orzhov)

C7rimReaper

Land (34)

Insurance (8)

Grave Hate (5)

Board Wipe (4)

Life Manipulation (13)

Draw (10)

Creature Hate (9)

Tutor (8)

Commander (1)

Ramp (12)

Targeted Removal (10)

Key Piece (5)

Finisher (3)

Sideboard

Other (18)

An Intro to Our Angel

Selenia, Dark Angel can make for an unassuming commander herself, that has the capability to win on a whim with just the help of some support cards. A combo deck with a heavy life-altering focus, let's take a deep look into Selenia, Dark Angel.

Playstyle

If you're a fan of high risk/ high reward decks, surprise explosive combos, playing primarily enchantments to interact, and perhaps not afraid to play a bit of stax*, then read on! You're among friends here!

However, if you like playing lots of creatures, attacking/defending primarily, enjoy the combat step, prefer reactive interaction, then I wouldn't expect this to be the kind of deck you'd enjoy playing- which is fine! However if you play against a deck similar to this one regularly, go ahead and skip down to the checks and counters section so you can better prepare yourself for future matches!

*(Stax is something that could be worked out of the deck, though personally, I think it's a great way to level the playing fields when playing a near creatureless deck such as this. If that's not your thing though, you could easily replace the stax packages with recursion or extra draw. I just wont guarantee a similar level of performance. At the end of the day, you do you, and play what you think is fun!)

Primary Combo

Our main win condition of the deck falls into setting up a way to draw our deck with Ad Nauseam without killing ourselves using either Angel's Grace (to enable not being able to lose on our combo turn), Soul Echo or Phyrexian Unlife (to enable surviving past zero life), or Teferi's Protection (for unchanging life). After we have our deck in hand, all that's left is to finish off our opponents.

We have a few different lines at our disposal to win. Firstly, we'll dump any fast mana can onto the board, and if we end up coming short of what we need, we should have Rain of Filth to compensate. After that, we can finish with any of the following:

Sickening Dreams Show

Exsanguinate Show

Repay in Kind Show

With all of these finishers, setting up some insurance is always preferable when at all possible. Whether we do so with Silence, Grand Abolisher, were able to use Boseiju, Who Shelters All, or simply hold up the mana for Lapse of Certainty - insurance is always going to lead to more victories then not.

Alternate Wins

As in this list, since we don't run any recursion, we run different side combos that synergize with our overall themes. That way, if we fail at drawing our deck, we're not down for the count. These combos include:

Exquisite Blood + Sanguine Bond/Vizkopa Guildmage's ability + Lifegain/Opponent Dmg = Infinite Lifegain/Opponent Dmg

Lethal Vapors + Teferi's Protection = Protection from everything + Unchanging life for unbounded turns

Phyrexian Unlife/Soul Echo to survive at zero life + Selenia, Dark Angel/Hex Parasite/Toxic Deluge/Necropotence to drop our health to zero + Repay in Kind = All opponent's life is dropped to zero

While these little numbers aren't the greatest ways to achieve ourselves a victory, they will still be avaliable to us in the event we are able to go for them in a game.

Sideboard - Powering Down

I've included a sideboard of sorts to take the slots of the higher power cards in the list, and replace them with lower powered alternatives to accomplish an overall much slower and more telegraphed combo deck. Obviously, this powered down version of the deck is still on theme with our strategy, though instead of trying to accomplish an Ad Naus combo, or Blood-bond combo- the strategy revolves around sinking our life into cards such as Selenia, Dark Angel, Wall of Blood, Hex Parasite, etc. and simply switching life totals with our opponents using Axis of Mortality/Soul Conduit. A Repay in Kind + Soul Echo/Phyrexian Unlife combo is still in place as well, because at upwards of 10 mana plus the mana for a life sink, I personally don't feel it's unfair that it's not as telegraphed, even in a lower powered playgroup.

Cards Out Show

Cards In Show

Card Choices, Descriptions, and Interactions

Lands

Bloodstained Mire, Flooded Strand, Polluted Delta, & Windswept Heath: We run 4 off-color fetches mainly as shuffle effects in case we have Scroll Rack in play, as well as obviously to tutor duals.
Bojuka Bog: Effectively 1 black mana to wipe a recursion deck's graveyard. Worth the small tempo loss 100% of the time.
Boseiju, Who Shelters All: Makes cards like Ad Nauseam, Exsanguinate, & Repay in Kind uncounterable.
Cabal Coffers & Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth: Big mana if we assemble the combo.
Caves of Koilos: Dual that has the add on of pinging us for 1 life, which can prove valuable if we want to get ourselves to zero life while at an odd life total. (Selenia's ability reduces our life by increments of two.)
Command Tower, Scrubland, Fetid Heath, Godless Shrine, Isolated Chapel, & Tainted Field: All good duals, Godless Shrine and Scrubland being tutorable off fetches.
Reflecting Pool: A decent "dual" land. Occasionally we'll draw an opener where it may only tap for one of our colors (or colorless) for a few turns, which is when Reflecting Pool is at it's worst for sure.
Wasteland: Classic answer to the ones around us playing lands like Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, or Gaea's Cradle.
Exotic Orchard: A decent land that at most tables will tap for our colors, and can also be used in combination with Praetor's Grasp for easier casting.
Kor Haven & Maze of Ith: Valuable means to keep attacking creatures away from us.
Silent Clearing: Again, another land that can bring us to an even life total when we need it, and can also draw us a card in the late game.
Temple of Silence: Small loss of tempo in exchange for scrying the top card of out library, not bad by any means when we keep the number of lands that enter tapped in our list down.
Swamp x7 & Plains x4 : Enough basics to not be completely annihilated by a Blood Moon (though seeing one hit the board will still not feel great.)

Ramp

Chrome Mox, Mox Diamond, Mana Crypt, & Lotus Petal: Fast mana is important for when we draw our library with Ad Nauseam, allowing us to have the mana to close out the game.
Rain of Filth: For use to close out the game when we had to use our fast mana to draw our library.
Skirge Familiar: It's mana ability is a key piece to fueling a massive Exsanguinate, for when we draw our library.
Sol Ring: Cheap, efficient, Sol Ring.
Thought Vessel: There will be times where we draw a lot of cards with either Necropotence or Necrologia, and having to discard them at means less ammunition for our combo finishers Sickening Dreams and Exsanguinate.
Talisman of Hierarchy: Mana accelerant that also allows us to place ourselves at an even life total when we need it.
Fellwar Stone: Does allow for easier casting of spells stolen with Praetor's Grasp, however we could also slot in Arcane Signet in it's place for a more consistent rock- because there will be times where Fellwar Stone won't tap for either of our colors.
Land Tax: While not actually ramp, it does ensure we hit land drops, helps think our deck, and in combination with Scroll Rack allows us to create a decent value engine.

Draw

Dark Tutelage & Phyrexian Arena: These serve as our incremental draw, while not as potent as some of our other draw spells, they can still draw us many cards throughout a game if dropped early and left unchecked. It's worth noting that we run Dark Tutelage over it's creature counterpart Dark Confidant simply because we want to limit the creatures in our deck as best as we can, because of the creature hate we end up running would likely end up killing him.
Foreboding Fruit, Night's Whisper, Read the Bones, Sign in Blood, & Skeletal Scrying: All burst draw spells that function well. Read the Bones probably being the best, usually seeing the most cards. Skeletal Scrying is a special case, where it has a low floor and a high ceiling where at it's worst we have out graveyard exiled and can't draw anything, but at it's best we can draw as any cards as we have mana available.
Necrologia & Necropotence: Our mass draw spells. When used with spells that can return the life points we sink into them, such as Children of Korlis, Tainted Sigil, or Oketra's Last Mercy we can draw a massive amount of our library and ideally assemble a win.
Scroll Rack: Not technically draw, and not card advantage either- but a valuable tool to dig further into our deck. When used with shuffle effects from fetchlands and tutors we can pitch what we don't need back into our deck and start to get new draws entirely.

Tutors Show

While not actually draw or card advantage, tutors are extremely effective at assembling pieces of our combo to achieve a quicker win.

Demonic Tutor: A strong mana efficient tutor with no restrictions on what we can grab. Even at sorcery speed this is a great tutor.
Enlightened Tutor: Instant speed tutor that allows us to grab a combo piece in Phyrexian Unlife/Soul Echo, or powerful mana accelerants like Mana Crypt. Having to reveal our choice can draw aggro from our opponents, so we just have to remain aware, and perhaps tutor when there are bigger things for our opponents to worry about on the table.
Expedition Map: We have a lot of great targets for map, including ways to ward off attackers like Glacial Chasm/Maze of Ith/Kor Haven, utility lands such as Reliquary Tower/Boseiju, Who Shelters All, and part of our mana accelerant combo in Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth/Cabal Coffers.
Idyllic Tutor: Preforms similarly to Enlightened Tutor, but to a far lesser degree at sorcery speed and cannot grab artifacts.
Praetor's Grasp: Dual purpose card which can function to either remove a future threat from an opponents library though, as a tutor, at it's best we grab free counter magic from a blue player at the table, ideally Pact of Negation whenever possible as that can save our combo line when we go to win. At it's worst, we can usually grab something to assist us in some fashion like a decent ramp spell (Sol Ring/Mana Crypt), or sometimes we can hit a Necropotence from a fellow black player for massive draw.
Scheming Symmetry: This card may very well be the most mana efficient tutor ever printed in Magic, tutoring two cards for one mana- the trick of course that the cards are tutored between two decks. This card has a low floor and a high ceiling, where we are either letting our opponent actively tutor against us, or having them advance themselves. As well, because it is a sorcery, they will almost always draw their tutored card before we draw ours, so in effort to maximize the effectiveness of this tutor, we will want to target ourselves and an opponent who is either very behind on mana (because they are most likely to tutor for ramp), or an opponent who is being oppressed by a third party separate from us (because they are likely to tutor an answer for whatever is stopping them). Scheming Symmetry is a double edged sword, and to use it properly we will have to take into account what our opponent would be searching for every time we cast it.
Shred Memory: Another duel purpose tutor functioning as a way to grab combo pieces like Soul Echo, or can be used to stop reanimation at instant speed.
Vampiric Tutor: Instant speed, one mana, can tutor anything. Most likely the best tutor we have access to.

Proactive Removal

Removal that we play before the threat is introduced, in sense slowing down our opponent so we can get ahead. In the list we run a number of cards that hate on creatures because we won't be playing many of those ourselves- allowing us to break parody. While we don't expect these cards to stick around for long on the board, the fact that our opponents will want to get rid of them means there will be less removal they'll have access to when we play out other enchantments our win relies on such as Phyrexian Unlife or Soul Echo.

Praetor's Grasp: As mentioned before, we can proactively remove future threats from our opponents libraries.
Lethal Vapors: Slows down aggro decks, making them think twice about casting their creatures. There is of course Lethal Vapors second line of text, which allows anyone to destroy it, however at the cost of their next turn. Someone is bound to destroy it not too long after we play it out, but slowing an opponent down by a turn can be worth it in itself. On top of all that, Lethal Vapors and Teferi's Protection when used together allow us to attain unchanging life and protection from everything for unbounded turns by stacking Lethal Vapor triggers in response to Teferi's Protection. Against many decks, this will result in our win, because 1,000,000 turns later our opponents will long have decked themselves out.
Pestilence: A wonderful recycling board wipe, and a perfect answer to little mana dorks and small tokens. We'll keep the creature with the highest toughness alive to keep Pestilence around as long as possible.
Tainted AEther: Similar in vein to Lethal Vapors, but will usually stick around longer. Stops infinite token strategies.
No Mercy: Will not protect us from a game ending attack, but will stop players from attacking us almost altogether for the majority of the game if it sticks around on the board.
Spreading Plague: I view this in a similar fashion to Pestilence, it will stick around for as long as it can, but is a must remove for any opponent playing a decent amount of creatures in their deck. As well, it enables one opponent to effectively boardwipe another.

Apart from creature hate pieces, we also run grave hate to stop graveyard decks- as we break parody on them as well by not having any recursion ourselves.

Rest in Peace: Classic grave wipe for all players, and then continues it's effect replacing cards even hitting the grave with having them go directly to exile. Amazing effect, and for only two mana it can come down at any time in the game and have a lasting impact.
Planar Void: Underrated masterpiece of a card. While it does not have the replacement effect like Rest in Peace, or outright exile graves on entering the battlefield, for one mana this card throws a massive wrench into recursion decks plans simply by being on the board. It will have to be dealt with normally with around three mana by our opponent, making it a mana positive transaction for us. While it's fancier counterpart Leyline of the Void can come in for free (and has the replacement effect), the Leyline will cost us 4 mana in 90% of our games, which could've been a turn where we double spelled playing Planar Void and something else.
Shred Memory
Bojuka Bog
Scavenger Grounds

Reactive Removal

Reactive removal comes in a few different forms. Boardwipes and targeted removal being the most common.

Boardwipes Show

Targeted Removal Show

Insurance

Another form of reactive removal, but mostly focused on removal of opponents spells targeting our permenants and/or spells on the stack.

Boseiju, Who Shelters All: Makes our instants and sorceries uncounterable.
Faith's Shield: Protects us when we're hovering at a negative life total, only being kept alive by Phyrexian Unlife or Soul Echo.
Grand Abolisher: Guarantees our combo turn to go off without a hitch.
Silence: Also guarantees a safe combo turn, and can stop an opponent from comboing off on their turn if we see it coming.
Lapse of Certainty: Maybe the best counterspell we have access to in our colors. It only delays their spell by their next draw, but we can still protect our combo decently well. There exists another counterspell of sorts we can slot in here depending on our preference called Imp's Mischief, but Imp's Mischief is able to whiff in some situations.
Teferi's Protection: One of the most versatile cards in our deck. It can be used to protect our permanents, to allow us to draw our deck with Ad Nauseam, combos with Lethal Vapors, and saves us from an opponents attempt to take the game on their turn.

Other Inclusions

Apart from everything already touched on, we want to run a package of spells that weave everything together with a life manipulation strategy, giving us a way to abuse the interactions between them and our life total.

Children of Korlis, Tainted Sigil, & Oketra's Last Mercy: All ways to attain maximum value off of Necropotence or Necrologia, not to mention also simply being able to stall us a few more turns as we assemble our combo.
Exquisite Blood, Sanguine Bond, & Vizkopa Guildmage: When combined with each other create a situation where if we gain life, or opponents lose life, they will infinitely trigger each other. However, even without the two of them, a lot of value can be reaped from having only one. Exquisite Blood will more often then not gradually gain us life over a game, though keen opponents will try to aggro to us a bit more while it's in play. Sanguine Bond can also team with any of the above lifegain spells and a life sink to nuke a single opponents life total.
Selenia, Dark Angel, Hex Parasite, Toxic Deluge, & Necropotence: All excellent life sinks, ways to plummet our life total to nearly nothing (or in combination with Phyrexian Unlife or Soul Echo, literally nothing) to push what we can do with life matters cards to the limit.

Checks and Counters Show

If at your LGS, or in your playgroup of friends, you find yourself playing against a combo deck in a similar vein to this, read on to hopefully learn a bit more about how you could adjust your own play, or list, to counteract some of the shenanigans you've seen here.

Our Achilles' Heel

There exists a couple ways to catch us at our most vulnerable, most of which try to capitalize on when we are tapped out on mana. If we have set up Phyrexian Unlife to survive drawing our deck with Ad Nauseam, our opponents should target Phyrexian Unlife to destroy after we place our deck in hand -IF- we are tapped out on mana. They should not let us play out any fast mana like Lotus Petal or Mox Diamond, because us having even one white mana available after drawing our deck can enable us to survive a lot easier by casting Faith's Shield, or Angel's Grace in response to the , for example, Beast Within targeting Phyrexian Unlife. Remembering this, if our opponents are in green, they may find Krosan Grip very useful against us. The point being made, is that our combo is an all in strategy that hinges on a permeant being in play 1/2 of the time. If that permanent is destroyed, we will die to a state based action immediately.
But we don't always rely on Phyrexian Unlife or Soul Echo when attempting to draw our deck. The other 1/2 of the time we attempt our combo, it'll be pairing Ad Nauseam with Angel's Grace or Teferi's Protection. This is obviously more preferable for us, as we don't have to worry about our enchantment being destroyed resulting in us dying. If this is the case, a well placed counterspell targeting Ad Nauseam will probably be the play for our opponent to make- denying us any draw will be worth their effort. I would say that in attempt to stop us in one swift motion, these two strategies would be the most efficient.

Staxing Out Selenia

Below is a compile of cards and effects that work relatively well against our strategy, and explanations on as to why;

Rule of Law, Arcane Laboratory, Eidolon of Rhetoric, Deafening Silence, Archon of Emeria, & Curse of Exhaustion: These all shine as the best possible cards to have us play around, and are remove on sight for us if we are anywhere close to wanting to combo off. If we are far from a win however, we might be alright with letting it stay around a while in attempt to draw cards while most of the other players are slowed down as well, though generally, these are the best effects to play against us.
Wheel of Fortune, Windfall, Dark Deal: While they are not stax cards, any wheel effect, or spell that disrupts our hand denies us important resources we have been saving, and could take us from winning next turn, to having to assemble an entirely different win and depending on how long that takes, could simply be a game loss as soon as the wheel resolves. Keeping combo pieces in our hand is extremely important until we are ready to cast them, and if there exists a way to disrupt that and have us discard those cards, our opponents would be wise to use it. This being said, some of our worst matchups are clearly discard themed decks, piloted by commanders like Nekusar, the Mindrazer, Crosis, the Purger, Nicol Bolas, Gwendlyn Di Corci and others of the sort.

I am always keeping my eyes peeled for potential changes to the list- so stay tuned for updates as I experiment over time! :^) Thanks for stopping by, leave me an upvote or some feedback, I'd be happy to receive either~ +1 Upvote

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Updates Add

Big Changes — Nov. 12, 2020

Edit

With Commander Legends at our door, now seemed like the perfect time to revise some of slots in the deck I felt were under-preforming in games.

On top of a few cards not pulling their weight, I thought it best to look towards the future of the format a bit. With new cards on their way such as Opposition Agent, and Jeweled Lotus I have a suspicion that as a whole, people will find greater success in their games by running more instant speed removal for commanders dropped crazy early, or just other generic threats. All this being said, here are the changes I deemed fit to make:

Pithing Needle to Path to Exile: Both are targeted removal on 1 cmc, but I see Path being useful far more then Pithing Needle in the future.

Cleansing Nova to Austere Command: Sometimes I've wanted to destroy artifacts without having to destroy my enchantments alongside them in games. I feel like the selectable modes are well worth the extra 1 mana to cast.

Axis of Mortality to Spreading Plague: Axis was always too high cmc to normally matter, especially having to wait a turn cycle for any sort of payoff. Obviously, this sort of effect is the soul of the deck, so Axis will be heading to the sideboard. In it's place we have another way to slow down aggro and creature decks, and perhaps a way to enable multiple creature wipes for 5 mana.

Vedalken Orrery to No Mercy: On paper, V. Orrery is great. Enables instant speed wins, and 'flashing' out some of the meatier enchantments in the deck, but I found that V. Orrery on curve feels like a big tempo loss. I don't dislike the Orrery, and there are games it's been very solid, but I feel like 4 mana could be better spent doing something else- like keeping creatures off you with No Mercy.

Emergence Zone to Wasteland: Similar to V. Orrery, though in a more extreme case. I can count the times Emergence Zone has helped win a game on one hand, and to count the times Ive watched Gaea's Cradle come down and steamroll the table I would need fare more then my own digits. This one is just a no brainer.

Painful Lesson to Foreboding Fruit: This is pretty funny to me, it's just Painful Lesson with a pear slices on the side. Strictly better card so why not run it.

So here we go, a good chunk of changes. Hoping to see a little more consistency with staxing creatures, and having opponents remove the stax cards earlier so our combo wins that rely on Phyrexian Unlife or Soul Echo are a bit more safe later on in games. As well, I'm interested to see what Commander Legends will bring to the table in the manner of format staples.

One last note for the update is I managed to get a couple foils more foils that were on the buylist: I'm happy to add Eventide's Fetid Heath and the 2001 FNM Swords to the collection.

Sideboarding to Power Down — June 20, 2020

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Date added	5 years
Last updated	4 years
Legality	This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	1 - 2 Mythic Rares 55 - 8 Rares 21 - 3 Uncommons 12 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.53
Tokens	Elephant 3-3 G, Food
Folders	Other Decks
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