ChocoDude wrote: ↑2 years ago
But I never truly committed to a full theme in any of my versions and most folks that have written in this thread pointed that out to me at various times. Now I'm liking how Liesa plays with my current build, so I'm leaning more into it finally. My last stax swap-out of the deck will probably be Drannith Magistrate for what yet I don't know. I need to see if I need more ramp or draw or gain/pain, so more playtesting will be needed.
Cool to see you are dedicating your build to a specific build and trying to go all in on it - always a good choice in the commander format imho! Even cooler that it is actually working out for you - assuming you have brought some 'W'-s home since then. I've been comparing my list to yours and it seems they are becoming more and more alike. Do have some questions/tips regarding your list though.
1. Why are you incorporating certain go-wide cards in your list? Cards like
Suture Priest,
Auriok Champion and
Soul Warden shine in decks that are creature-heavy and like to go wide. These decks usually contain pay-off's for many seperate lifegain triggers. In your list I see only
Archangel of Thune as a real pay-off.
Imho this (sub)-strategy contradicts to the more Voltron-aspect of your deck: cards like
Blackblade Reforged,
Unspeakable Symbol, [
Duelist's Heritage and
Hatred. Why not swap these go-wide cards for more useful cards that support this strategy instead? I'm talking
Wall of Reverence or the before-mentioned
Cradle of Vitality.
Going for a 'Voltron' sub-strategy in a Liesa deck makes a lot of sense to me though. Liesa is a pain to get rid off, since you can always re-cast her for 5 mana. Also boosting her power combined with her in-built lifelink ability allows you to get insane amounts of life. Besides being able to kill someone with commander damage easily, it also synergizes perfectly with other cards you were running already anyway (
Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose,
Vizkopa Guildmage and the other usual suspects).
2. Never really understood the whole staxy subtheme with Liesa, especially the
Rule of Law type effects. I see you tuned your staxxy cards down to only 4. Still I am not sure why you are running
Drannith Magistrate - it's not a fun card and as far as I can tell there is no real synergy with him and other cards that you run. It's mainly to annoy your opponents I guess, but I think it's better to add other pieces that support your own strategy. Also I want to point out to you that
Kunoros, Hound of Athreos is a non-bo with
Sevinne's Reclamation and
Lurrus of the Dream-Den - might as well cut him. Finally a card like
Bloodchief Ascension makes more sense to me in a more Sluggish kind of build: one in which you drain your opponents gradually to 0 rather than sniping them down in once. When my deck is going off it usually doesn't matter whether your opponent is at 15, 40 or 100 life.
3. Another point brought up in this topic was the question on the importance of ramp in a Liesa deck. I've been playing the deck for quite a while now, and I think ramp is one of the most important factors in a Liesa deck, at least in the way that me and you have currently built it. The main reason for this is that you want to cast multiple 'deadly' spells/abilities in one turn as possible. There usually is little to no reason to get a
Vizkopa Guildmage on board, ready to get removed by your opponents, without even have had the chance (mana) to get some use out of it. Same applies to
Bolas's Citadel - feels bad to cast it for 6 mana, only to find a land on top without the possibility to get rid of this top-deck through something like
Greed, granting your opponent's a full turn-cycle worth of time to get rid of the Citadel. Hopefully you get my point - to be able to win with this deck you want to give your opponent's as little information as possible, and close out games in the blink of an eye (requiring large amounts of mana). At least that's how it works within my playgroup/our meta. It's safe to say that many of the times that my Liesa deck won it was because
Smothering Tithe laid the basis for me.
4. Finally I want to point you to some cards that did wonders for me, which you might want to consider.
*
Burnished Hart - Awesome ramp! The early game is all about ramping. It's also a useful recursion target with cards like
Unearth,
Sevinne's Reclamation or
Revival // Revenge to ramp even more. Remember - lands are hard to get rid off, and this investment will definately pay off in the mid to late game. You might want to consider
Wayfarer's Bauble as well: getting an extra land with this plus being able to re-cast it with
Lurrus of the Dream-Den is a great way to spend your mana in the early game.
*
Doom Whisperer - Basically fits in the same category as
Necropotence in the sense of it gives you a
free way to pitch away that land that prevents you from combo'ing off with
Bolas's Citadel.
*
Insidious Dreams - Synergizes greatly with
Bolas's Citadel. Gives you the possibility to stack your library in such a way that you can finish the game off 10 out of 10 times with a
Bolas's Citadel on-board. Seems way more useful than a
Demonic Tutor imho - Enlightened Tutor and Vampiric Tutor really trump Demonic Tutor in this deck, because with a Citadel you would rather want specific cards on the top of your deck instead of in your hand.
* As you can see in my build I did focus a lot on a
Bolas's Citadel win-con. This is also the reason why I don't run any boardwipes at all! They are awful top-decks. I don't want to be forced to kill my wincon's such as
Vizkopa Guildmage or
Children of Korlis. In case you would like to focus on this win-con as well (you are running it already after all), think about other ways to pitch that land on top as well, cards like
Mind Stone,
Unearth,
Greed,
Arguel's Blood Fast // Temple of Aclazotz,
Weathered Wayfarer,
Myriad Landscape,
Marsh Flats,
Wayfarer's Bauble are good alternative ways to do so. You run a lot of these already - just wanted to point out that you can get this type of use out of them as well.
5. After going through your list you got me interested in
Blackblade Reforged! Definately going to test this one out. Also like how you can re-cast it from your graveyard with something like
Lurrus of the Dream-Den or
Sevinne's Reclamation.
6. A recent addition to my own list which I still have to run into in my games is
Resolute Archangel. Included him because in certain games I was being targetted a lot (
Sorin Markov set me back a lot). This card allows me to 'reset' the game for me and try to re-build my gameplan. Combined with
Boon Reflection or
Alhammarret's Archive it could even result in a huge swing.
