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 uses a mid-range strategy that utilizes a high density of Hate Bear/Staxx pieces and Lifegain effects to control the board in the early game, and then cast Liesa and other large Fliers to pressure our opponents life totals in the mid-game - eventually securing the win with life loss effects and good ol' beatdown before anyone can stabilize. Don't make the mistake of assuming our hate/staxx effects are 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 facilitates faster games.

You should mulligan any hands that don't have one or more stax/tax 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, because players are going to be spending resources trying to remove or work around your stax/tax pieces, and we want to capitalize on that with as much life loss as possible. 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 your opponents to keep your commander off the field. Politically, you can also avoid some removal spells by reminding people that you're just going to cast her again on your turn. Sometimes this is enough to make the value proposition not worth it, 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:

• All Creatures must be either Angels (of her flight); Gods, Demons, and Innistrad Monsters (with which she consorts); or Humans (that she is sworn to protect).
• Non-Cleric Humans or Monsters are kept to an absolute minimum, only being used when their mechanics strongly compliment the deck's playstyle and feel, and restricting monsters to only those found on Innistrad.
• 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.

The two Praetors are the only exceptions to the above rules, because they feel a lot like Demons in spirit, and I think Liesa might indeed see some value in learning from, and making deals with them. Also, as of MOM, it's officially canon that Phyrexians are on Innistrad =D Otherwise, this deck is built to be as strong and competitive as possible without deviating from those limitations. I've utilized the sideboard as a second maybeboard to separate them into two categories: You can strengthen the deck by adhering to the above rules more loosely (Sideboard), or weaken the deck with more flavorful alternatives (Maybeboard) - whatever better suites your own personal preferences, playstyle, playgroup, etc.

Liesa <3