WARNING: LONG DESCRIPTION INCOMING
I mention all 67 non-land cards in this deck in this description, and why they're in the deck. Read at your own risk ;)
My Black/White Teysa, Orzhov Scion Commander Deck. Mostly focuses on creating lots of tokens to fuel Teysa's activated and triggered abilities, removing creatures that are troublesome and turning my black tokens into white tokens. It also has a side of life gain to keep me alive for long enough to build up my board, and to not get aggro'd to death. It usually looks relatively harmless at first (aside from Teysa being able to remove your things from the game), just putting 1, 2, or 3 small tokens on the field at a time and not attacking very much, but once I can build up a small army of tokens and get Razaketh, the Foulblooded onto the battlefield, I can tutor up anything I want (for zero mana!) to pretty much win the game on the spot, or in the next turn in a few different possible methods.
The first thing I always need to search for is my main man Anointed Procession, as it makes my deck twice as efficient, which makes it disgustingly effective. I'm so happy they printed this card, I've been waiting for a white version of Parallel Lives for a long time. It works really well with my commander, as it makes her second ability twice as efficient, as well as the rest of the token generation in the deck. Her sister Teysa Karlov also makes her second ability twice as efficient as well (as well as all the other 'dying triggers' in the deck), and buffs all my tokens. As far as making her first ability twice as efficient, I have Illusionist's Bracers for that, letting me remove 2 enemy creatures from the game for a measly 3 white creatures. Also if I feel the need, I can bring out Lightning Greaves to give her some added protection. I did build the deck around her after all. Now that Teysa is ready for action, I can start building my board. I then search for a few of the "Soul Sisters" effects in the deck (Soul Warden, Soul's Attendant, Suture Priest, and the big guns: Angelic Chorus) to make it so that Razaketh's "pay 2 life" tutor cost doesn't matter to me when I start searching for my big token cards such as Army of the Damned, Increasing Devotion, Conqueror's Pledge, Nomads' Assembly, Devout Invocation, and of course, Storm Herd. Thus, making Razaketh's "sacrifice a creature" tutor cost not matter to me either. I can also grab Corpse Knight for the 'reverse Soul Sisters effect', as this can start draining the opponents life pretty quickly even before I attack with anything. If for some reason they have an instant removal spell ready for Razaketh during any of this, in response I just search for Phyrexian Reclamation to bring him right back to my hand for hardly any cost, and I also have Hell's Caretaker that I can use once every upkeep to keep Teysa, Razaketh, or anything else really important in play.
How do I play all these high cost token cards, you say? Somewhere along the way I search for Ashnod's Altar and Phyrexian Altar, pretty much giving me as much colorless and black/white mana as I could need, only needing to sacrifice a fraction of my tokens to get there. I could also use both of those altars to get infinite mana using Painter's Servant, probably the most potent card in my deck with my commander because if I name "black" when he enters, every time I activate Teysa's first ability sacrificing 3 white creatures, they are also black because of Painter's Servant, which means they come back as 3 white spirits, but they're white/black spirits because of Painter's Servant, rinse and repeat. Darkest Hour more or less accomplishes a similar thing, but I need another sacrifice outlet on the board in order for it to work because it turns the spirits from Teysa into just black spirits instead of black/white spirits, meaning she can no longer sacrifice them anymore. These two cards lead to many infinite combos in this deck, some of which being infinte colored and colorless mana with both Altars, infinite creature removal with Teysa/Painters Servant, and infinite life gain with the Soul Sisters in play. In addition to that, using Grave Pact I can also achieve infinite creature removal with a sacrifice loop going, even if they somehow manage to kill or cripple Teysa. I could also get a lot of card draw with Welcoming Vampire as the tokens are coming in too, in case I don't have tutoring available to me. And of course, if i'm getting a lot of 1/1 spirits or anything else with 1 toughness Skullclamp can get out of hand very quickly even if I don't have infinite mana, but if I do I can pretty much draw my entire deck on command. I can also fix my draws with Viscera Seer by sacrificing my tokens and scrying an obscene amount of times, until I’m pretty much guaranteed what I want for my next draw. For additional "once every turn" draw, I have Phyrexian Arena and card:Priest or Forgotten Gods (RNA) to speed things up. Priest of Forgotten Gods even gives a little bit of ramp, which is very much appreciated in this deck, as besides the 2 altars the only other real ramp the deck has is the mana rocks, Orzhov Signet, Talisman of Hierarchy, and of course the GOAT: Sol Ring. Pitiless Plunderer is in there too, and as you can imagine he can get pretty out of control with the amount of things that are dying and being sacrificed in this deck. Pretty much all I need is either Reassembling Skeleton or Nether Traitor to get him to go infinite pretty easily. Another Potent 2 card combo in this deck is Darien, King of Kjeldor and any of the Soul Sisters, thus making me effectively immortal from combat damage. Every damage I take, I get a soldier token, as they enter, I gain one life for each of them. So if I'm at 40 Life and the opponent deals 10 damage to me, I go down to 30, get 10 soldiers, gain 10 life, I'm back at 40 again where I started, except I have 10 more creatures at my disposal. If I have 2 or more of the Soul Sisters in play at once, I actually begin to profit creatures AND life when I'm attacked. Would you want to attack me after that?
In addition to Teysa's creature removal I have other removal cards as well to remove pretty much anything that's causing me a problem, such as Fumigate, Merciless Eviction, Utter End, Anguished Unmaking, Vindicate, and Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim. These pretty much just get rid of immediate threats, or reset the board state to stall the game if they get something too crazy going on early before I manage to get Razaketh into play. The deck can win pretty easily without him, but he makes it very much easier to get any cards I need that combo well with each other.
As well as those nice big sorceries that give me lots of tokens, I also have many other cards in here that gradually give me smaller amounts of tokens, but add up quickly when stacked together, such as Ophiomancer, Sengir Autocrat, Teysa, Envoy of Ghosts, Knight-Captain of Eos, Emeria Angel, Twilight Drover, Luminarch Ascension, Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder, Bloodline Keeper
, Bitterblossom, Skirsdag High Priest, Spectral Procession, and Lingering Souls. I can get even more value from all of these cards if Thalisse, Reverent Medium is present on the board, as she effectively matches my token output each turn with spirits. These all gradually help me build up my board state, and assure that I always have the creature advantage over the opponent. I know most of them are small power/toughness creatures, but they are good blockers and sacrifice fodder. If I need to buff them up to attack, I have Intangible Virtue, which also gives them all vigilance which is pretty nice.
I'm sure you also may have noticed all the planeswalkers in this deck as well. 3 Elspeths (Elspeth, Knight-Errant, Elspeth Tirel, and Elspeth, Sun's Champion), 1 Sorin (Sorin, Lord of Innistrad), and 1 Ajani (Ajani, Caller of the Pride). Those are mostly there to draw aggro off of me and force the opponent to deal with them or face the consequences of their powerful ultimate abilities, which if they get off, help me immensely. They also just have many abilities that help me out for as long as they're alive, like make tokens, gain me life, and buff my creatures, so I like to have them around. Also if I have a lot of tokens in play, it becomes more and more difficult for the planeswalkers to be killed, as they are protected by a wall of creatures.
But none of that stuff actually wins me the game now does it? Well how do I win? Well there's a couple different ways. Obviously swinging with combat damage is one of them, with an army of small creature tokens it becomes very hard to block them all. However I could swing with one very large creature too if I have Sublime Archangel in play with all my tokens. If their field is entirely empty at this point I like to swing with Teysa for a massive amount of commander damage. However If I can't get any creatures through, I can use the power boost off of the exalted, and sacrifice the buffed up creature to Ghoulcaller Gisa to effectively double my creature count in the form of zombie tokens that I can attack with next turn. I can also use the power off of the exalted to sacrifice the buffed up creature to Ayli, and gain life equal to the number of creatures I control. If you haven't noticed yet, I have a few ways in here to double my creatures and also double or even triple/quadruple my life total with enough of the Soul Sisters in play, and I can also give all of my creatures lifelink (and deathtouch) with Vault of the Archangel if I really want to bring a painful attack that will gain me life equal to the power of creatures i'm attacking with, or counter an opponents attack by blocking and killing all their creatures with 1/1 deathtouch tokens. Speaking of life gain, it brings me to my next win condition: life loss. If I'm sacrificing a lot of creatures and a lot of the opponent's creatures are dying too due to Grave Pact, I can put Blood Artist into play and just chip them down trough life loss, while I'm gaining the same amount of life. Naturally if I have an infinite sacrifice loop going, I can make any amount of players lose any amount of life, and I gain that much life. This is my most effective win condition for big multiplayer games, as I can take all of them out without even dealing combat damage. If I have Painter's Servant in play I can also use Blasting Station to do a similar thing, because Blasting Station will untap itself infinitely because of Teysa's ability bringing spirits into play. While it doesn't gain me life, it can also take out all their creatures too, and if I can do infinite damage to them do I really need to gain life?
What happens If someone else has infinite life, you say? Well guess what, I have infinite life too so I guess we both win. I guess I could put a Felidar Sovereign in there as an alternate win condition, but i'm not really sure I want to. This deck's primary focus is creating tokens, not gaining life, so if I don't really have much life gain going, he's kinda a dead card that doesn't really help my deck much, and I don't want to draw him in a dire situation instead of a powerful token card that I need, or my Batwing Brume, which has won me games that I never should have won (you ever been swung at by 1,000 Krenko haste goblins? Cause I sure have).
Suggestions for anything you think I could add that would work well, or any good black and/or white token cards that I might not know about are welcome. I've had the deck for years and have been constantly editing it as new cards come out that work well with it, and it's becoming so polished (I feel) that it's becoming more and more difficult to edit. So please let me know what you feel my weakest cards are, and if there's something better I could replace it with. (No i'm not taking out Storm Herd, it's won me the game too many times lol)
Any and all comments/suggestions are welcome. This is my favorite deck, so I want it to be at its best. If you read all of this, thank you. I'd really appreciate a comment on your feelings of this deck, It would mean a lot to me.
