Liesa, Shroud of Dusk - Combo Midrange

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ChocoDude
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Post by ChocoDude » 2 years ago

Thanks Rog!

So, a potentially large lifegainer that can hit your opponents with Sanguine Bond or Vito. Then a card drawer, if needed. Then...got it. I have an unused Recruiter of the Guard sitting in a binder. Maybe I'll throw him in. Not sure yet.

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Vedran
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Post by Vedran » 2 years ago

ChocoDude wrote:
2 years ago
Have you thought of trying out Tainted Remedy and/or Duelist's Heritage? Since you're running Beacon of Immortality, Congregate, and Heliod's Intervention you could target an opponent with either and they'd lose that life instead with Tainted Remedy on the board. You're also running Heliod, so you could give an opponent's creature(s) lifelink and they'd lose life for damaging their opponents instead. Duelist's Heritage is a decent Liesa buff card that you can also use to buff (double strike) your opponents creatures during their attack phases (obviously, when not attacking you). It's a good political card. I really like both cards in my deck. @RogHimself tipped me off to Tainted Remedy.

Has Fumigate provided you with enough life to make it worth it? I took it out of my build as it was OK, but I decided to lower my curve and add more targeted removal. You could probably ask me the same about the soul sisters in my deck. BTW, Promise of Loyalty gets around Indestructible and doesn't allow your opponents remaining creatures to attack you although whatever abilities they have could still affect you.

Yeah, I have, I am still considering it tbh, but I am not quite sure what to take out for it, since taking out any existing card from my deck would be destabilizing the strategies I've built around. Or at least it seems that way to me, I'll be testing today. So far I took out Prof Onyx for Wall of Reverence - Prof is strong and a pet card, but it isn't worth 6 mana if it will die the next turn if I can't defend it. Although, there is always a probability I will have creatures to throw in front of her + Field of the Dead gives me zombies, however the probability isn't high, so off to the maybeboard she goes. The Wall is great with a voltron strategy, plus I like the high toughness part of it - it can survive multiple activations of Pestilence, so that's nice.

I was thinking about taking Cradle of Vitality out for Tainted Remedy, but then I would lose an important piece of that voltron-esque edge. I will see today, but I reckon it will be a tough decision making process.

Fumigate did pretty good so far, I would say I'd usually gain 8 to 12 life and that seems pretty decent. So far I have dropped Farewell, went back to Tragic Arrogance, but today I will test Promise of Loyalty - I think it would be a great choice, thank god that I bought the Silverquill precon. Syr Konrad will stay for now since his synergies with removal and boardwipes always took a ton of opponents' life.

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ChocoDude
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Post by ChocoDude » 2 years ago

You could swap out Erebos, God of the Dead. This doesn't allow opponents to gain life, whereas Tainted Remedy causes them to lose life if they gain it. And you have a few cards that allow you to target either yourself or opponents with life gain. If you have Erebos on the board, you can't target your opponents with life gain cards. You'd lose some card draw potential without Erebos, but you gain flexibility in who you target.

Also, how has Akroma's Will played out for you in your build? I run it in a few decks, but they're all creature-heavy decks where I can alpha strike with it. Your deck only has 15 creatures, so I'm guessing you play it more defensively. True?

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Post by Vedran » 2 years ago

The reasons I prefer Erebos a bit more are because it is pretty hard to remove him and when my devotion gets to 5+ he is good as an attacker or a blocker and of course, the draw power part is pretty important because of Bolas' Citadel and actually in general, the deck really needs consistency. But, I do agree with your points, I tried it and Tainted Remedy worked really well when it was in the deck.

Good point on Akroma's Will, I actually ran it when my deck was angel-centric, so I just left it there and I wasn't disappointed, but I was thinking about it whether I have too much protection in my deck. I use it mostly after I cast a board wipe or an opponent does the same, so mostly for protection, yeah. Rarily does it enable me to eliminate another player.

Did you guys try Pontiff of Blight, any experiences?

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Ruiner
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Post by Ruiner » 2 years ago

ChocoDude wrote:
2 years ago
Have any of you tried Bastion Protector in your Liesa builds? If so, what has been your experience with it?
I've liked Bastion Protector in this and other decks. It may be easy to remove since it is a creature, but on the flip side it is easy to recur. Even without recursion, helping to dodge just one board wipe can be significant.

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Post by ChocoDude » 2 years ago

I have not tried out Pontiff of Blight, but I didn't ever try a group slug deck. It seems like a good option if you can keep it online.

With Erebos have you been able to get to 5 devotion easily and often?

I playtested this morning, Liesa going first this time. She took the table beating my Ayara, Tuvasa, and Nekusar decks. Tuvasa put up a very strong fight taking out Ayara AND Nekusar, but lost to a blocking choice between Liesa and Serra Ascendant with Hatred being cast on the other. My Tuvasa is a voltron deck and she just happened to be the only creature on her board. Liesa ramped really well again.

Now I'm thinking of taking out the soul sisters package etc since it's just smaller incremental lifegain. I also don't have a lot of creatures to take advantage of the Archangel of Thune counters.

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Post by Vedran » 2 years ago

Oh yes, enchantments get me to 5+ devotion easily. Cards like Sanguine Bond, Necropotence, Bolas' Citadel, Oubliette and Painful Quandary help a lot. Heliod on the other hand is never a creature, but I don't mind since he is first and foremost a combo piece with Walking Ballista and his second use is making Liesa bigger with +1/+1 counters. I ordered Pontiff of Blight the other day, even with 3 to 5 creatures on my battlefield, I think he can push some decent damage through and gain me a good amount of life.

You don't like the way the deck plays with smaller incremental life gain? Maybe adding more pay offs would help to make that strategy more powerful?

Btw. I gotta say I totally understand now why you are playing Promise of Loyalty, fits perfectly with Liesa as commander. Such an awesome card!

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Post by ChocoDude » 2 years ago

I'm not sure. I wondering if those bits of incremental lifegain don't actually add up to much. Last night, I didn't come across any of those cards and won quite handily. However, Liesa did go first, so that's an advantage for winning. The previous playtest I got out a Soul Warden and gained maybe 5 life and I gained another 3 life from Suture Priest. Suture Priest dealt some damage too, so that was a benefit. But they weren't large chunks of life gain, like Tainted Sigil, Children of Korlis, Riot Control, and Congregate can do. I can see adding more recursion to get them back as well as adding more protection for Liesa.

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Post by ChocoDude » 2 years ago

Well, I've got in two more playtests and Liesa did just fine winning them both and going third each time. And both times, I didn't come across the main soul sisters, but I did get out the Archangel of Thune and Suture Priest. The Archangel did some nice work. Suture Priest...meh. I'm contemplating swapping out Suture Priest for Mother of Runes to protect Liesa or Sensei's Divining Top for more card filtering/draw and it plays nicely with Bolas's Citadel. We'll see.

I've finally decided to break up my Osgir deck as it's a bit too muddled and not easy to play because their are SOOO many options it's basically too many. But additionally, I don't really have many decent wincons and I don't want to go get specific expensive combo pieces that create more wincons like Mycosynth Lattice because I don't really like playing combo. So...I've got a bevy of cards that I can use to upgrade a few of my decks instead of diluting their strengths with yet another commander deck. I thought of all the Boros commanders that Osgir would be the one to get me to play in those colors. Nope!!

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Post by ChocoDude » 2 years ago

Well, I've got three more playtests in now and I've decided to keep my soul sisters suite after all. They actually have helped a fair bit the last three games. However, I actually paid much more attention to how I feel about cards in hand during play and realized just how bad Well of Lost Dreams is in this deck and in my Heliod deck for that matter. It's just too expensive for the payoff. I thought of swapping it out for Greed, Mother of Runes, Unearth, or Gisela, the Broken Blade, but instead made the following:

Well of Lost Dreams --> Sensei's Divining Top

As I mentioned before, it's plays well with Bolas's Citadel. It's obviously a great card. I just fortunately have access to one.

On another note: have any of you thought of putting in Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx? At one point, I had eight white pips, including Weathered Wayfarer on the board and thought how handy that would be. I'm going to pay more attention to the number of black or white pips here and there to see if it'd be worth it.
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Vedran
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Post by Vedran » 2 years ago

I think as long as you have life gain pay offs and you are playing against creature heavy decks that small incremental life gain is great and will net you lots of life. In less creature heavy metas/ combo/ control/ stax metas or a combination of the listed I would say it is better to go with cards that give you bigger chunks of life at once. So my opinion on them would be that their usefulness really depends on the meta. As soon as my meta went from a "precon-meta" to an "arms race/ everything-goes" meta, I experienced a huge drop in their usefulness and even in the usefulness of life gain related pay offs and I realized I need to adapt to that.

I haven't thought about Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, it is a bomb if you can get your devotion high enough consistently.

Draw power in Liesa is still something I am struggling with, since I often get into a topdeck mode. Maybe I should just play a bit conservatively, that could be a part of the solution, but I am curious to hear about your experiences - do you happen to run out of cards in your hand while playing Orzhov and how often?

I diversified my draw power (and card advantage) resources as much as I could, yet sometimes I run out of cards way too quickly.

"last resort" draw - War Room, Castle Locthwain, Mind Stone
burst draw - Night's Whisper, Read the Bones
recursion - Restoration Specialist, Phyrexian Reclamation
tutors - Demonic Tutor, Dark Petition
draw power allstars (from experience) - Bolas' Citadel, Necropotence, Stinging Study, Damnable Pact, Erebos, God of the Dead
creature - Twilight Prophet

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ChocoDude
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Post by ChocoDude » 2 years ago

I haven't had too many problems with draw. Once in a great while, but decent for the most part. Orzhov isn't super great at it in general.

Laying it out like you did, I'm running:

"last resort" draw: War Room, Mind Stone
burst draw: Night's Whisper, Sign in Blood, Read the Bones
recursion: Lurrus of the Dream Den, Sevinne's Reclamation
tutors: Enlightened Tutor, Vampiric Tutor
land tutors: Weathered Wayfarer, Land Tax, Tithe, Archaeomancer's Map, Prismatic Vista
all-stars: Necropotence, Stinging Study, Bolas's Citadel, Arguel's Blood Fast
draw doublers: Alhammarret's Archive
creature: Esper Sentinel
filter: Sensei's Divining Top

Based solely on the number of "draw" cards listed, you have less than I do. 15 vs 21. I can't say the total quality of my "draw" is excellent, but it works pretty well for me. Maybe add a few more. I do have quite a bit of land tutors, but they really help with my land drops. I was tempted to try out Necrologia also. Have you tried that?

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Post by Vedran » 2 years ago

I thought that around 10 would be enough, then I bumped it up more and ended up with 15, but I should probably add at least 1 or 2 more.

I've heard of the card, I will proxy it and test it. It being an instant spell is a huge upside, but the end step clause seems problematic and almost negates that very fact. It is interesting to me how Orzhov actually doesn't have that many good instant spells that draw cards. :(

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Post by Ruiner » 2 years ago

I've always been a big fan of Sword of Fire and Ice for card draw. The protections are nice, making Liesa a bigger threat is nice.

Sword of Light and Shadow is good also. Amazing protections, and the recursion is like card draw. The little bit of life gain is useful too.

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Post by Vedran » 2 years ago

So, I tested Necrologia. It seemed clunky... The end step part hurts the card a lot, sadly. :/

I am testing Blood Pact now. The card isn't anything great, nor is it flashy, but the simplicity of the card and the fact that it is at instant speed is something I really like. Gift of Estates is an option as well, for some more land drop draw/ consistency.

I'm rotating between Syr Konrad, the Grim, Pontiff of Blight and Mangara, the Diplomat at the moment to see which one fits my deck the best. Konrad and Pontiff are pretty close in terms of usefulness, Mangara could be a decent pseudo-deterent to attacks and draw power.

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Post by ChocoDude » 2 years ago

Personally, I'm a big fan of Gift of Estates! It's essentially draw 3 cards for 2 mana AND you can grab a Godless Shrine with it. If Wizards would just complete the battle lands cycle for enemy colors (i.e. Prairie Stream), all the better. The only reason why I'm not running Gift of Estates in Liesa anymore is that I replaced it with Tithe, which is instant speed for 1 less mana (and 1 less Plains).

I'm curious to find out what you determine from your Syr Konrad, Pontiff, and Mangara test.

I had a really fun ramp interaction while playtesting this morning! Liesa had four lands, two of the three other "opponents" had five lands. Cast Tithe on my turn (as I was tapped out the previous turn) to draw two plains (including Godless Shrine), did NOT play a land yet that turn, played Archaeomancer's Map to draw two more Plains, then played Orzhov Basilica and returned an already tapped land to my hand. I ended up with five lands in hand. Over the next round I got to lay down two more lands on opponents turns with the ArchMap and basically was up three lands by my next turn. It was GREAT!!

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Post by ChocoDude » 2 years ago

A couple of things: Richard of the MTG Goldfish's Commander Clash Podcast makes an interesting case for Secret Rendezvous in terms of card draw. Liesa often being an archenemy type of Commander may not benefit as much from it, but this could be a decent political draw card for you. I'm thinking of testing it out in my Heliod lifegain/+1 / +1 counters deck. See here at around 2:56: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/co ... draw-guide. The whole episode are their thoughts on the current state of mono-white card draw. You can also read a ton of comments if you watch the video on You Tube instead.

Also, while going through a few of my equipment cards I came across Hero's Blade. There's a good chance you can pump up Liesa +3/+2 for just two colorless. If you have any other legendary creatures in your deck...even better. I'm going to playtest this one out. Seems like a slam-dunk for my build.

Thoughts?

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Post by Vedran » 2 years ago

I was just about to mention Secret Rendezvous today, since I wanted to hear your opinion on it. I actually think the card might work, especially if I'm making a group slug deck which is pissing everybody off equally haha.

As for Tithe/ Gift of Estates, I tried it today and then I remembered why I took them out a couple of weeks ago - they aren't that good mid- to late-game, especially because I'm not running that many plains. But, thanks for reminding me, I'll test Secret Rendezvous one of these days. I wasn't that high on it because I'm giving my opponents cards, but maybe that is just the card a Liesa build needs to soften the tension and make friends when you are the arch enemy.

I like Hero's Blade too, tbh. I stumbled upon one nice equipment piece fairly recently Mask of Memory. Seems pretty nice

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Post by ChocoDude » 2 years ago

I still haven't played yet, so I have no experience with Secret Rendezvous in my Heliod deck.

I plan to pay attention to how many +1/+1 counter triggers I get off of the Archangel of Thune and how much life it gains me via attacks. If it doesn't seem to provide much prior to being removed, which is often the case, I may slot in Hero's Blade there. As it stands now, I feel my list is pretty tight for how I like it to play.

Mask of Memory is a good one and it's funny that you mentioned it as I had added into my Heliod deck a couple days ago. Heliod is weaker on card draw because...mono-white. At least with Liesa we have black card draw options as well, so it seems stronger in Heliod to me.

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Post by Vedran » 2 years ago

I came to a conclusion that running Heliod, Sun-Crowned and Walking Ballista means I am actually running 14 creatures total and that seems to me like a low number. Furthermore, running those two seems like I am breaking the synergy of my deck, since they are practically dead without each other. The deck already has two win conditions - Debt to the Deathless/ Exsanginate + Crypt Ghast + Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth and Sanguine Bond/ Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose/ Vizkopa Guildmage + Exquisite Blood, so it came to my mind that I probably don't need a third one. I have a feeling that removing the 3rd win condition is gonna make the deck tighter and more on theme.

I added Mangara, the Diplomat and Syr Konrad, the Grim along with the Pontiff of Blight that was in the deck since the other day. Sangromancer is something I am considering too, since the deck has many board wipes and removal.

Yeah, I love Mask of Memory too, I am thinking about where I could find some space for it.

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Post by ChocoDude » 2 years ago

I think those were good changes. I had been wondering about the inclusion of the Heliod/Walking Ballista combo, but I figure maybe you were using the counters produced from Heliod to pump Liesa so I didn't think too much about it.

I decided a long time ago to purposely NOT run Walking Ballista in my Heliod deck. It was too easy to win that way and my friends weren't super happy about losing that way. So, that's why it's less artifact tutor and recursion oriented and way more lifegain and +1/+1 counter oriented. You can see it if you click the mana symbols next to Heliod.


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Post by Vedran » 2 years ago

I think it is pretty cool how you can build one commander in so many ways, following so many diverse strategies.

So you are happy with Hero's Blade?

So far Mangara, Konrad and Pontiff have proven really good. I am pretty happy with them. Removing Heliod and WB was a right decision. Blood Pact took Despark's spot and there is a chance Arguel's Blood Fast will take Pestilence's spot - that might make the deck a bit less of a group slug deck, but probably more consistent.

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Post by ChocoDude » 2 years ago

Nice!!! Glad your changes are working out for you. Yeah Liesa really lends herself to many builds. I'm glad I've finally settled on something that's working for me. I have Rog to thank mostly, but I pay attention to what all of you are saying on this thread.

As for my swap, I made it AFTER playtesting this morning. Liesa lost to my Heliod deck albeit, Heliod went first and Liesa fourth. Varina didn't draw into enough zombies for some reason to really get going with draw triggers. Ranar played quite well and took out Varina and nearly took out Heliod (down to 3 life). Had Heliod not bounced back to take out Ranar, Ranar would've won. With Liesa I didn't see many permanents this game, mostly my interaction cards and a couple of mana rocks, so that was quite weird. But in this particular game Authority of the Consuls was a superstar as Heliod and Ranar (and Varina too, but not this game) are very creature heavy.

I'll eventually let you know how Hero's Blade plays for me. I have a Hagra Mauling coming to me in the mail from another Cardsphere user, so that'll probably replace a swamp. When that arrives, I plan to remove one spot removal card, either Vanishing Verse or Path to Exile and put in another mass removal card, either Vanquish the Horde or Tragic Arrogance. Vanishing Verse is more expensive, but a bit more flexible. Path is great for it's low cost, but does give up some ramp to an opponent. I'm leaning towards removing Path. As for adding VtH or TA, I'm really undecided. VtH will nearly always be cheaper, but I like that I can sculpt the board to my favor with TA and possibly remove troublesome artifacts or enchantments. Any thoughts on that swap?

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Post by RogHimself » 2 years ago

If you're planning to make some changes in your removal, let me complicate it a tad more for you, and point you to Aura of Silence. It does so much work! And it's recurrable with Sevinne's Reclamation, so three times the value ;-).

Actually this exact combination did wonders for our table last week. My friend had succesfully casted an Enduring Ideal, so he was able to find gamechangers each turn (Dovescape, Exquisite Blood and Humility). Happened to kill all three (after greatly delaying his enchantment-focussed deck prior). Too bad he could put them back onto his library with his Hall of Heliod's Generosity though.

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