[EDH / Commander] Orzhov Aristocrats

[Blisk45]

Orzhov Aristocrats

my 4th try at this kind of deck finally deciding on Teysa Karlov as the commander rather than Athreos

[Ryad]

Who is the commander in your deck?

And do you consider to include Teysa Karlov? It has very great sinergies with a lot of cards in your deck.

[Blisk45]

Revision 2

Added/removed cards:
+1 Teysa Karlov

Changed amounts:
-1 Plains

[Blisk45]

Lol got too excited about.making the deck forgot to add her in, she is the commander for.the deck

[Ylhyssia]

Hey, me again

One of the things you have to keep in mind when building a deck is that Redundancy = Consistency.

Essentially, the more you want your deck to be consistent regarding a certain theme, the more cards of that theme you need to run. If you only have 1 card, in your whole deck, that does a certain thing, then your chances of seeing it during a game are pretty slim.

So the fewer themes you have in a deck, the more consistent it'll be, because you'll have slots open to support your existing themes.

A very common mistake that people make when building a deck is having too many themes; the problem that it causes is that it dilutes your strategy, and you end up with a lot of cards in your hand that don't interact with each other.

Right now your decks has 4 themes: Aristocrats (sacrifying stuff to get value), recursion, tokens, and lifegain.

Aristocrats and tokens go hand in hand, because you can have many tokens. Aristocrats and recursion go well together too, since you can kill stuff over and over again. However if you try to mix and max those themes, your strategy will probably a bit too diluted. My suggestion, just like I suggested with your Athreos deck, would be to cut one or 2 of those themes, and focus the strategy otherwise you won't have enough room to properly support each strategy.

Teysa gives lifelink to all tokens, so going full tokens + lifegain could work (in this case Sanguine Bond / Exquisite Blood becomes a viable win-con).

Going Aristocrats + tokens works wonders.

Going Aristocrats + recursion works too.

However you also have to consider your Commander: if you build a recursion deck, with a commander that doesn't provide any recursion, you're at risk of your deck not doing much until you draw one of your recursion piece. This is why people usually run Athreos as the recursion/aristocrats commander: he gives you recursion in the command zone.

Teysa gives support to tokens, and death triggers, which is why I personally decided to go with those 2 things as the main themes of the deck. Cutting some stuff from the themes you decide to disregard would allow more consistency, since you could add other cards that support your main strategy.

Let's take your Lifegain theme for example.

The cards that give lifegain in your deck (except for Blood Artist and friends) are:

Exquisite Blood (5)
Sanguine Bond (5)
Debt to the Deathless (X4)
Fumigate (5)
Ob Nixilis of the Black Oath (5)
Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim (2)

All your lifegain cards are expensive, and the only cheap one only gives you life by sacrificing creatures. This means most of the time, you won't get lifegain until turn 5, and Blood/Bond don't give you lifegain by themselves, only under certain conditions. They're also only a win-con if you have them together. Debt to the deathless can only win you the game if you have an absurdly high amount of mana, and fumigate is a one-time use. This means that right now, the lifegain from your deck is unsupported, and therefore unreliable.

"But Ylh, Teysa gives lifelink to tokens"

Ok, well let's talk about your token generators.

Wurmcoil Engine, Elenda, the Dusk Rose and Orzhov Enforcer are one time effects. Unless you have a way to abuse Elenda to really pump her, she'll be a one and done, and wurmcoil and Enforcer won't give value unless you can recur them.

Your other token generators rely on creatures dying to do anything.

So, right now for your deck to work, you require 1. Cards that make tokens, 2. creatures to sac, to make those tokens, 3. a way to make those creatures die (sac outlet) all so you can generate tokens, 4. your commander, to give tokens lifelink, 5. a recursion outlet, so you can bring back those creatures, and kill them again.

As you can see, your deck relies on a lot of things to get going, so it'll probably be easy to shut down by removing either your recursion outlet, or your sac outlet/commander.

My suggestions, either go:

Reanimation + death triggers: cut all token support, and this way your cards that rely on non-tokens dying will be more supported (like Grim Haruspex for draw, Pawn of Ulamog for mana, etc.). Add more self-reanimating creatures, right now you only have reassembling skeleton. you could add Nether Traitor, Bloodsoaked Champion, Oathsworn Vampire, etc. If you add cards that create tokens, the tokens must be a side-effect of them dying (like Orzhov Enforcer, Seraph of the scales), so the focus will be on death triggers, not tokens, the tokens will just be an added benefit (sac fodder, chump blockers, etc.). Hell's caretaker would also probably be a good card to add.

If you want to go aristocrats with this strategy, then you'll have to find ways to go infinite with recursion outlets. This can be done with self-reanimating creatures, or cards like Nim Deathmantle.

Lifegain + tokens: cut all reanimation and most death triggers (at least cut one-time effects like Orzhov Enforcer and Wurmcoil engine) and focus on cards that can generate tokens consistently, and get you life consistently (Ajani's Welcome, Grave Titan, Bitterblossom, Elspeth, Sun's champion, Ophiomancer are all wonderful cards that are very consistent, or you can mix those, and get lifelink tokens with Legion's landing or Leonin Warleader). With this strategy it might be best to focus on other win-cons that use lifegain (Aetherflux Reservoir maybe) instead of Aristocracy, and add more tutors like Enlightened Tutor so you can get your combo pieces easier.

Tokens + death triggers: this is the strategy I'm personally using. The very few reanimation that I run in my deck (Ahtreos, Karmic guide, etc), are mostly either used as combo pieces, or they benefit from Teysa. My deck includes almost no cards that generate tokens only once, unless they can generate a very high number of tokens (like Elenda), otherwise most token engines are consistent, and my death triggers don't come from creatures themselves (since I can't recur them), instead the deck focuses on triggering my permanents by sacrificing tokens (which I have a lot of).

This is, in my opinion, the most reliable strategy for aristocrats with Teysa, since it's relatively easy to go infinite with tokens, and therefore easier to win with an Aristocrats strategy. Teysa also acts as a combo piece in some of the infinite combos I run in my deck. The deck also uses both of Teysa's ability, the lifegain/vigilance allows you to be more aggressive with your tokens, and you don't care if they die since you can get value out of them due to your permanents' death triggers (or sac them in response to them being blocked for even more value).