Lich deck. Need ideas and how to make it possibly work.

[schweinefett]

I have a Selenia, dark angel life-control deck that I've been thinking about changing to becoming a more "lich.dec" build.

I have only one copy of original lich, which sorta started it all, but I've no idea how to build around the idea.

Colour-wise, it's gonna have to be BWx, where X could be red for rain of gore, or U for card sifting/control elements. I'm not sure green gives me anything aside from mana.

Any ideas where to start?

[folding_music]

Lich is so gorgeous and strange, what a card <3

If you have Transcendence or Phyrexian Unlife in play you can safely bounce Lich to your hand without immediately losing the game. so stuff like Shepherd of the Flock that can rescue any type of permanent would rule? could end up as a Starfield of Nyx deck?

edit: can't actually tell if Transcendence and Lich is a combo or a terrible idea, sorry for mentioning that card lol. Was thinking that one card that would make green worth it is Sterling Grove for its shroud text, and then Overgrown Estate could feed the lich?

[Dunharrow]

I would just keep it BW. It's a color combo that can do everything. Early game you can have a lot of black card draw spells, which cost life -- because once you play Lich you go to 0 anyway.

I would play a general that can gain a lot of life.

[schweinefett]

Oloro is the only life gain guy I could think of right now. Good idea? Bad idea?

[DirkGently]

edit: can't actually tell if Transcendence and Lich is a combo or a terrible idea, sorry for mentioning that card lol.

I would think it'd be fine, why wouldn't it? You won't be able to gain any life, so it just reads as "whenever you take damage, draw twice that many cards" which is pretty nifty. Plus it gives you a way to stay alive if lich gets destroyed (provided you also have an angel's grace or something to avoid dying to the trigger...it's REAL hard to live through having lich destroyed).

I actually can't think of any way to get above 0 life while lich is on the battlefield...I think you can with words of worship, since you can replace the lifegain with draw, then replace the draw with lifegain, and then lich will leave the lifegain alone because it already modified the event? Or you could have transcendence/platinum angel/etc in play, donate it, gain life, and then gain control of it back somehow. but that's a bit much. I think if you have exquisite archangel and lich is destroyed, you'll still lose, because you'll lose to 0 life first, your life will reset, and then you'll lose again to the trigger. Lol.

[darrenhabib]

A combo you can look for with Lich is to use Confessor. Any discard outlet will allow you to keep filtering through your deck.
You can even just discard down to hand size at end of turn, and you can filter through as much of your deck as you want. So you can literally get the perfect 7 card hand that you want, while also putting lots of cards into your graveyard.
Confessor life-gain is a may ability so you can stop when you are satisfied.

Lich's Mastery doubles up on Lich but is a bit safer. Nefarious Lich is another one.

Repay in Kind..well can repay in kind for any wrong doings.

Glacial Chasm, Platinum Emperion, Solitary Confinement are ways to protect you from taking damage.
Platinum Angel means that you can sacrifice the Lich and not die on zero life or to the lose game trigger.

Words of Worship allows you to draw 5 cards for every 1 you spend with Lich in play.

[EDIT]
Its important to know the exact wording for Lich..

As Lich enters the battlefield, you lose life equal to your life total.
You don't lose the game for having 0 or less life.
If you would gain life, draw that many cards instead.
Whenever you're dealt damage, sacrifice that many nontoken permanents. If you can't, you lose the game.
When Lich is put into a graveyard from the battlefield, you lose the game.

You can Stifle/Disallow/Repudiate // Replicate/Tale's End/Trickbind/Voidslime losing your life as it enters the battlefield.
I'm also assuming that "When Lich is put into a graveyard from the battlefield, you lose the game" is a leaves the battlefield trigger so you can also counter that with similar cards.

[DirkGently]

Platinum Emperion[...] are ways to protect you from taking damage.

Words of Worship allows you to draw 5 cards for every 1 you spend with Lich in play.

FYI, platinum emperior does nothing much with lich:

Abilities that trigger whenever damage is dealt to you will still trigger because that damage is still dealt, even though your life total doesn't change as a result.

I think (please feel free to verify) that Words of Worship can't keep looping itself. You replace your draw step with gain 5, then you replace that gain 5 with draw 5. If you wish, you can activate WoW multiple times to replace some of those draws with lifegain, but that lifegain won't become draw again because lich has already replaced that event. One replacement effect can't replace the same event repeatedly (why, for example, thought reflection doesn't keep doubling its own draw). I think each activation of WoW is a separate thing doing the replacing, hence why it can apply as many times as you activated it, but lich being one thing can only affect each event once.

[Ardeyn]

If you have any Lich effect in play you can win the game with Faith of the Devoted and Skirge Familiar: Discard a card to the familiar for one black mana, pay for the Faith to drain the table for two, which will draw you two cards. Rinse and Repeat. It's limited by the size of your deck unless you play an eldrazi titan.

Ardeyn

[hyalopterouslemur]

You'll want Platinum Angel. I mean, it won't do much in a format where every gw deck runs Aura Shards and every {b/r} deck runs Nevinyrral's Disk, so you'll need a way to protect both of them. If you think blue is (finally, for once!) hosed, bounce and stealing effects also will kill you.

Basically the problem with Lich is, it'll kill you.

[Sinis]

I've played with Lich and Nefarious Lich before. They're entertaining, but, if you want it to be 'good' (for some value of 'good'), you need to limit your exposure to the idea that you're going to lose. You're basically one Krosan Grip away from losing without a heap of precautions.

Those precautions are basically not worth it, so, you're pretty much looking at using it as a combo piece with some massive lifegain in order to win on the spot, rather than a deck that is going to use sustained lifegain to get you buckets of cards over time. The favourite pieces to roll with it are Children of Korlis and Tainted Sigil. Since Lich sets you to 0, both of these are basically "Draw cards equal to your former life total."

What do you want to do with all these cards? We'll say you're digging for a combo wincon. Resolving Repay in Kind will kill the table, but there are probably other ways of going about it.

As for commanders, I would go with Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim. Ayli has aggressively-costed lifegain and enough control features to get you to the Lich-game.

I would not use Selenia; Selenia is good for decks that actively want to have a low life total (like ones utilizing Mirror Universe, Magus of, Axis of Mortality, etc.), but I don't think she (or cards she plays with) have a ton of synergy with Lich.

[schweinefett]

Mirror universe seems to work well with lich, no? Kill a player, draw tonnes of cards?
Also, the sac permanents clause is a trigger. It can be stopped with stuff like time stop and that artifact that ends the turn. Also, a well timed stifle could stop a lot of saccing.
Also, does anyone think donate/the same effect in red is good here?
Haha and since we're on it, illusions of grandeur? 4 mana draw 20 seems good.

[Sinis]

Mirror universe seems to work well with lich, no? Kill a player, draw tonnes of cards?

That would work, though, it's a huge timing issue. Mirror Universe can only be activated during your upkeep, and Lich is cast two phases later. So, you could table both, and pass, but I don't think that'll go well for you.

You're basically depending on extra pieces; you could play Mirror Universe and Lich and take an extra turn to do that. Or, you could use something like Leyline of Anticipation to flash Lich and MU in on your opponent's end step, and then activate on your turn.

Also, the sac permanents clause is a trigger. It can be stopped with stuff like time stop and that artifact that ends the turn. Also, a well timed stifle could stop a lot of saccing.

You could; but, you're basically facing the same problem every turn. You could stifle the trigger from a 10-damage something, only to eat another trigger moments later.

Lich attracts attention, and realistically people will want to punish you for playing it. Also, you'd have to be taking a lot of damage on your own turn for Sundial of the Infinite to do much (though, you could cancel the lose trigger when someone destroys/bounces it, and you had a way of not losing the game for having 0 life).

Also, does anyone think donate/the same effect in red is good here?

Original Lich, no. You donate it, and then... you lose, for having 0 life. Once again, extra pieces, like Phyrexian Unlife, Platinum Angel etc. would be needed. Also, Lich doesn't just instantly kill the other guy; you'd need to also destroy or bounce Lich to kill the player you donated it to.

This would work with Nefarious Lich, though, since it doesn't set you to zero. Also, it'd be fun to

Haha and since we're on it, illusions of grandeur? 4 mana draw 20 seems good.

Definitely one of the cards I would use to 'jackpot draw' with it. The bonus is that Illusions of Grandeur won't deal you any damage and won't make you sacrifice anything when it leaves play; you 'lose' life, which doesn't do anything while Lich is on the table (except put you into the negatives, but that doesn't matter).

[schweinefett]

Well, i sure don't play EDH expecting to win (in a 4 player game and everything else equal, there's a 1 in 4 chance ill actually win)!

Unfortunately, my only copy of lich is stuck in my cube. I'm not sure if ill get around to finding one more, but as of now, this project is on hold. Gonna sketch up a decklist soon-ish to playtest it somewhat soon!