Gisela, Blade of Goldnight
Gisela, Blade of Goldnight - Punishing Enchantments
Approximate Total Cost:
About the Deck
Generally you win with some combination of punishing effects, Gisela, Blade of Goldnight herself swinging, and/or animated enchantments swinging. Your general gameplan is to sit back and throw out various punisher effects to drain the table's life totals, and some other elements to slow others down. This is not a very reactive deck.
Once Gisela, Blade of Goldnight is in play, you take minimal/no damage from most of the punisher effects in your deck unless you have another damage doubler/enhancer such as Furnace of Rath in play (which is totally worth it, you will take normal damage and opponents will be taking quadruple damage).
Since this is a boros deck, it is not the quickest as far as ramping is concerned. This is why the deck plays cards like Null Rod and Stony Silence, to hopefully temporarily slow artifact based mana, and Stranglehold to try to shutdown land search functions.
Cards like Smoke, Mudslide, Ghostly Prison, Lightmine Field, and Silent Arbiter all serve to buy you time against more aggressive decks.
Solitary Confinement can be fantastic at buying you some time once you have some punisher effects in play. You can play it and just buy yourself a turn, failing to discard a card to keep it in play. If you have Sun Titan in play, you can forget about the upkeep discarding and then return Solitary Confinement to play every turn. Starfield of Nyx allows you to have Solitary Confinement in play every other turn without being concerned about discarding cards to keep it in play. The discard upkeep requirement can also be used to advance your gameplan by discarding enchantments to return with Starfield of Nyx or Replenish effects.
This deck runs the classic Parallax Wave + Opalescence or Starfield of Nyx combo. With Parallax Wave and either of the other two cards you can, at instant speed, exile all creatures you do not want in play. With Opalescence, since all other enchantments become creatures, you can exile any enchantments you don't like as well. The way this combo works is Parallax Wave targets a creature and removes a fading counter, you hold priority and then target Parallax Wave itself (since it is a creature). Once the the stack starts resolving, Parallax Wave is exiled first and then returns to play immediately. Other creatures you targeted for exiling will then be exiled but since the Parallax Wave left play and returned before this happened it is treated as a new Parallax Wave and the creature you want permanently removed will stay removed forever since it never sees the original leave play while it itself is in exile.
Other Cards to Consider
Sigil of the Empty Throne - This card has been in and out of this deck over the years. It really can add up to a significant amount of tokens. I exchanged it for Court of Grace since they serve similar functions but the Court is one mana cheaper.
Axis of Mortality - This card combos wonderfully with Sulfuric Vortex and without the combo, makes sure you have the highest life total on the board every upkeep. I had it in the deck until fairly recently but removed it to try something else out (can't remember what card exactly).
Zo-Zu the Punisher - I've had this card ready to put into the deck for a while now but I just haven't found the space to try it out. It very much fits the gameplan.
Karn, the Great Creator - If you want a third Null Rod/Stony Silence effect, this hits the spot. It is one sided as well, which is great. The activated abilities are pretty negligible, although occasionally you can use the +1 ability to kill off an opposing artifact with creature kill or the Parallax Wave/Opalescence combo. I've played it before in the deck and it is worth trying if you want to give it a shot.
Sphere of Safety - If you think you need even more anti-aggro, this is a good card to include. I haven't felt the need to include yet another one of these effects.
Norn's Annex - Another solid anti-aggro card that you can include if needed.
Obliterate - I've played it in the past and it works great but I had enough games where I was staring at it in my hand without it being ideal to play and eventually I ended up dropping it. This card does work since most of the cards you care about are enchantments and it doesn't touch them.
Rule of Law - This and similar cards could easily be included. It is tough to find space for everything. If you find yourself less in need of anti-aggro effects, this could probably be swapped in.