MTG Salvation

Back in the glory days of 2011 or so, I made a teysa, orzhav scion deck with a bunch of tokens and planeswalkers that was maybe my favorite deck I'd built at that time (minus zirilan). That deck is lost to recorded history, but I've assembled a new deck with a bunch of the things that made that deck fun - tons of plaeswalkers, plenty of tokens, and control up the yang.

The commander is pretty flexible since 4 of them fit pretty well - personally I think Ayli is who I'll officially call the commander, but I'll probably try all of them. You could even do the orzhov partner commanders, though I think that's a little less synergistic. The commanders themselves are not part of the deck.

Deck seems pretty strong, maybe a little too powerful for my playgroup (game 1 was a little ridiculous, went crypt into luminarch ascension t1, starting making 2 angels turn 2...game only lasted about 5 turns). Overall I like it although I think it's more of a 4-star than 5-star deck by today's standards (the rating system I use for commanders I've done). Ayli I think is the best option for the deck, making enough white tokens can be a little tricky to get teysa going, and merely having a sac outlet isn't usually enough to make GCO as strong as Ayli is. Having fairly potent lifegain in the command zone is a major bonus too.

After playing the deck some more, I'm a little tired of it. And it made me realize that superfriends isn't all that much fun tbh. Keeping constant control over the board is basically required, which frequently means I'm forced to play many-v-one, which, which I can certainly do it, makes for pretty tedious games and the feeling that I'm winning simply by being the most powerful, which is not the goal. The risk of planeswalker ults especially basically forces everyone to target me. So then it gets pretty staxy (got khans sorin's ult off twice...gross). And the BW planeswalkers ults don't generally win very quickly. It's still kind of fun to play pws and wraths, but it's too much like winning with a sledgehammer. Plus it's weak to non-creature based wincons.

Quote from Wildfire393 »

There's a couple notable token generators that seem to have been excluded - Mobilization and Sacred Mesa chief among them.

I'm not a huge fan of Oblation since the Tuck rules went away. I'd rather have straight Vindicate.

March of Souls isn't tremendous because it gives your opponents who have creatures already more creatures. It's completely useless for clearing a large token army. There's a lot of good mid-level wraths missing here though - Rout, Hallowed Burial, Terminus, Descend Upon the Sinful, etc, so I think you can pick any of those to replace it.

I haven't found myself with a lot of extra mana to burn with this deck, generally. They're both ok token generation but I don't think they quite make the cut. Tokens are more of an incidental synergy because so many BW planeswalkers make tokens, than the core focus of the deck. You'll notice I'm not running any anthem effects or anything.

instant speed uber alles. Especially for targeted removal. I'll always run oblation over vindicate, easily.

March seemed synergistic because I'm generating a decent number of tokens for myself, and it gives me tokens post-wrath to feed to my commander. It's a somewhat experimental inclusion. Certainly it has risks. Other wraths are all reasonable, I picked some of these for synergy purposes because I've never used them in other decks.