The Flight of Dusk

This deck is a love letter to Liesa; using game mechanics to evoke her personality, techniques, history, and lore.

"We must know our enemies if we are to defeat our enemies" -- Liesa, Shroud of Dusk

Strategy

This deck aims to have mid-range strategy that utilizes a high density of hate and lifegain effects to control the board in the early game, cast Liesa and other large Fliers to pressure our opponents life totals in the mid-game, and eventually secure the win with life loss effects and good ol' beatdown. Our hate effects aren't meant to lock down the game, though - eventually, people will find answers to them. Instead, think of them like anti-ramp, or road bumps that slow down the rest of the table to our more battlecruiser speed. In fact, the nature of Liesa means that everyone's life totals will trend down, so I find that she can actually facilitate faster games.

You should mulligan any hands that don't have one or more hate effects that are relevant against at least two opposing commanders - or, a tutor to find ones that are. So, think carefully about what your opponents are going to try and abuse with their commanders, and target pieces that will limit their effectiveness in those areas. You then want to spend your first three or four turns playing those relevant pieces, until you can start casting Liesa. At this point, you want to keep Liesa on the field as much as possible. Players are going to be spending resources trying to remove or work around our hate pieces, and Liesa can convert all of that interaction into life loss. If done well, before too long, life totals should be relatively low, and simply Liesa's existence on the board will limit how many spells our opponents can reasonably resolve without dying. From here we can clean up by turning sideways, and hopefully winning.

Also keep in mind that Liesa will always cost exactly five mana. This means that once you can play her, you can theoretically keep playing her for the rest of the game, regardless of how many times she's been removed. If she's in your command zone, always ask yourself if any of the cards in your hand are actually better value than her. The life cost can become a problem in long games, but with a high enough density of life gain effects - one of which is built into Liesa herself - it's simply more difficult than usual for our opponents to keep her off the field. Politically, you can also avoid some removal spells entirely just by reminding people that you could just cast her again on your next turn. Sometimes this is enough to make the value proposition not worth it for them, and they'll save or use that removal for something else that can't come back so easily.

Flavor

Gameplay isn't the only important part of this deck, though. Liesa is a fascinating character, who has unique motivations and methods for an Angel, and a compelling story arc because of that. I wanted this deck to feel like it had those same motivations and methods which make Liesa so interesting. As such, I've imposed a few very important deckbuilding restrictions in order to achieve that feel. This deck is built to be as strong and competitive as possible without deviating from these limitations:

• All Creatures should be either Angels (of her flight); Demons and Monsters (with which she consorts); or Humans and Clerics (that she is sworn to protect).
• Non-Cleric Humans or Monsters are kept to minimum for flavor reasons, only being used when their mechanics strongly compliment the deck's playstyle and feel.
• Favor mechanics that feel morally grey, evoke the concept of "making deals", or have you using questionable means to achieve your goals.
• Whenever possible, cards (or artworks!) which evoke religious or Innistrad themes are preferred over other alternatives. For example: we use Wrath of God and Damnation instead of better board wipe options.

A subtheme of "dying and coming back" has also slowly and unintentionally emerged over time =)

Liesa <3