EDH Brew Primer: Alesha, Who Smiles at Death (and Taxes)

Posted on 2024-03-17

Introduction

I just got back into Magic: The Gathering after about 9 years away! I played for a few years (obsessively) in high school, but sold my cards when I was in college to fund a study abroad semester in Korea. Getting back into it, learning the new cards and mechanics, but having a lot of fun!

This Alesha deck is an EDH version of Death and Taxes, a Legacy/Modern archetype that I was a big fan of when I watched and played Magic back in the day.

It’s built to be a decently mid-powered EDH deck (maybe around 6/7) but does not include all the tutors it could run, does not include original duals, and tries to keep things decently on theme. I’m planning on bringing this deck to local card shops playing against people I don’t know well, so I tried to stray away from hard Stax pieces and Mass Land Destruction.

Theme

And what is the theme? There are multiple!

Alesha, when she attacks, allows you to return a creature with power 2 or less from your graveyard to the battlefield tapped and attacking. She generates a ton of value recurring small creatures with strong effects, so this deck makes sure to use creatures with power 2 or less to both maximize our recursion and bring down the deck’s power level slightly. I’ll call these small creatures Hatebears even though some of them aren’t 2/2s.

We’re in RWB (Mardu), so we’re playing relatively fair Magic in a format where blue and green can. We’re not ramping, playing counters, or drawing cards without a lot of effort, so we need to have a strategy to slow the game down so everyone has to play on our terms. For this, we’ll incorporate some Death and Taxes ideas with some Stax elements so we can force our opponents to use their mana less efficiently and choose what they play carefully.

Since Alesha puts creatures on the battlefield tapped and attacking, we can’t rely on abilities that trigger on creatures attacking – they don’t actually attack when they are put on the battlefield. However, we can cash in on any enter-the-battlefield triggers, so we’ve packed this deck with those as well as a few flicker and recursion effects to get these multiple times.

Since the D&T + Stax elements might annoy our opponents, we can reassure them that we’re playing fairly since we’re not running all the tutors we could (notably Demonic and Vampiric) and our D&T/Stax effects are all on creatures, the most interactable permanents in Magic! They should be running removal (even though we can always recur our creatures from the graveyard 😬). We also won’t mess with their lands, though we might mess up their ramp or mana rock strategies.

Breakdown

Let’s start with what makes the deck different!

Death and Taxes/Stax

These cards help us put our opponents behind while we pull ahead making creatures and getting in for small amounts of damage.

We’ll start with cards that keep our opponents from casting spells.

• Ethersworn Canonist, Archon of Emeria, and Eidolon of Rhetoric keep our opponents (and us) from playing multiple spells per turn. We’ll cover later how we can get around this, but it’s generally good to keep our opponents from pulling ahead by playing a ton of spells.

• Grand Abolisher keeps opponents from countering spells or otherwise messing with our turn.

• Drannith Magistrate makes our opponents play fair Magic by turning off reanimation or cast from exile strategies. (Cast from exile was not that common when I exited Magic in 2014, but has become an incredibly popular red/blue trope.)

Next, we have cards that make spells more expensive to cast. While they don’t completely stop our opponents from playing Magic, they slow down their strategies and make them think about whether they really need that spell this turn.

• Esper Sentinel applies a tax to the first non-creature spell each turn which, if ignored, can draw us cards!

• Thalia, Guardian of Thraben and Vryn Nightmare make all non-creature spells cost 1 more to cast. We play mostly creatures, so this is largely not an issue for us.

• Smothering Tithe also applies an optional tax which can generate Treasure tokens for us, providing much-needed mana in our colors.

We have some more taxing effects as well:

• Windborn Muse stops our opponents from attacking us.

• Michiko Konda, Truth Seeker makes our opponents sacrifice permanents if they do damage to us.

• Kataki, War Wage, which makes artifacts cost 1 more to keep on the battlefield each turn. We try to ramp with White’s land ramp strategies, letting us punish artifact-heavy decks

We round this section off with some more D&T/Stax effects that don’t fit with the categories above.

• Peacekeeper keeps our opponents from attacking and when it comes back to our turn, we can just let it die by not paying its upkeep cost. Then, when we attack with Alesha, we can get it back for the next round of turns.

• Aven Mindcensor keeps our opponents from searching their decks with tutors and catches some fetchlands as well.

• Loxodon Gatekeeper taps down artifacts, creatures, and lands that our opponents play, keeping them a turn behind what they planned to do.

• Dauntless Dismantler also turns off mana rocks the turn that they enter the battlefield.

Reanimation/Creature Cheating

We want to get our creatures back from the graveyard, whether we discarded them, sacrificed them, or our opponents put them there through removal or blocking.

• Alesha is our big reanimation piece here, but we don’t want to rely on her as she’ll likely be a hate magnet for our opponents’ removal.

• Hell’s Caretaker provides us a once-a-turn sacrifice outlet and reanimation ability. We can get back an effect/trigger we want, while feeding our graveyard for subsequent turns.

• Aether Vial and Sneak Attack help us to cheat creatures into play in case we have a Rule of Law effect on the board. Our opponents will have to abide by the effect, while we’ll keep playing creatures. Aether Vial harkens back to the competitive Death and Taxes decks, while Sneak Attack also feeds our graveyard for subesequent recursion.

• Karmic Guide and Reveillark are reanimation ETB triggers, which in the case of Karmic Guide we can also recur reliably. This allows us to do some comboing in case we need it, but generally they’re a good card to draw and get back an important effect/trigger we need.

• Sun Titan is a big beater with reanimation that goes past creatures and lets us get anything we need with a low CMC. Most of the cards in the deck are 3 CMC or less, so we get a ton of value off of this.

• Sevinne’s Reclamation works similarly to Sun Titan getting us a 3 CMC permanent back, working even better with flashback.

Sacrifice Outlets

Dodging exile effects on our creatures is key, since we want our creatures in the graveyard where we can play them. We also can easily get them back, so why not get some value from them.

• High Market is more of an escape hatch. It’s a land that also helps us dodge an exile effect. We can use its lifegain in the rare chance that it would matter, but that’s mostly irrelevant to us.

• Altar of Dementia helps feed our graveyard for reanimation and can mill out opponents with an infinite combo.

• Ashnod’s Altar gets us some mana and Viscera Seer lets us scry, but mostly these just act as sacrifice outlets to get things off the battlefield.

Flicker Effects

Getting things to trigger without necessarily having to get them from the graveyard is great.

• Felidar Guardian resets a permanent, not just a creature, so we can reset mana rocks or get another creature’s ETB trigger again.

• Sword of Hearth and Home also flickers a creature for its ETB effects, along with its ramping ability.

Combo

I’m not a huge fan of combos that are the main part of a deck, but there are some good cards in this one that just happen to create infinite loops.

• Karmic Guide + Reveillark + a sac outlet can be used to create infinite enter/leave the battlefield/dies triggers. Zulaport Cutthroat is in the deck to make the dies triggers equal infinite life drain for our opponents.

• Karmic Guide + Reveillark + a sac outlet + an ETB triggering creature can be used to infinitely stack the ETB ability. Solumn Simulacrum would fetch all basic lands, Fiend Hunter + Leonin Relic Warder can exile all creatures/artifacts/enchantments on the opponents’ boards.

  Karmic Guide + Fiend Hunter in the graveyard, Reveillark + sac outlet on the board.

  1. Sacrifice Reveillark targeting Karmic Guide + Fiend Hunter.
  2. Karmic Guide enters the battlefield, placing reanimation trigger targetting Reveillark on the stack
  3. Fiend Hunter enters the battlefield, placing exile trigger on the stack
  4. Sacrifice Fiend Hunter, placing leaves the battlefield trigger on the stack
  5. Sacrifice Karmic Guide
  6. Leaves the battlefield trigger from 4 resolves, returning nothing to the battlefield
  7. Exile trigger from 3 resolves, exiling creature permanently
  8. Reanimation trigger from 2 resolves returning Reveillark to the battlefield.
  9. Repeat

• Felidar Guardian + Reveillark + sac outlet + ETB triggering creature

  Felidar Guardian in hand, Fiend Hunter in the graveyard, Reveillark + sac outlet on the board

  1. Play Felidar Guardian
  2. Felidar Guardian enters the battlefield, placing flicker effect targeting Reveillark on the stack
  3. Sac Felidar Guardian
  4. Allow flicker effect to resolve
  5. Reveillark trigger resolves returning Felidar Guardian + Fiend Hunter to the battlefield
  6. Felidar Guardian enters placing flicker on the stack targeting Reveillark
  7. Fiend Hunter enters placing exile trigger on the stack
  8. Sacrifice Fiend Hunter, placing leave the battlefield trigger on the stack
  9. Sacrifice Felidar Guardian
  10. Repeat from 4

We can also get infinite mana or mill our opponents with our two altars as well. Again, this isn’t the point of the deck, but if I’m late game and the pieces come up, I’ll win with this if I can.

Other Win Conditions

We could combo off, but let’s say we want to win with fair Magic. We run 4 creatures that provide our hatebears with a little more oomph to whittle our opponents down.

• Drana, Liberator of Malakir buffs our board when she connects after being reanimated with Alesha.

• Blade Historian makes our creatures do double damage to our opponents either on board or being brought back in combat.

• Minthara, Merciless Soul is another buff, but the progress we make with experience counters lasts even when she dies and is brought back.

All of these will let us get decent amounts of damage in each turn.

Now, let’s move onto some standard pieces of an EDH deck:

Card Draw/Advantage

• Sensei’s Divining Top and Skullclamp are classic pieces of card draw. Top is just good and lets us reorder the top of our library to stack our draws. Skullclamp works well with our sacrifice outlets, drawing us cards when things die.

• Key to the City, while being mostly an evasion card, is incidental card draw as well.

• Esper Sentinel as we’ve covered will draw us cards as our taxes mount and our opponents focus their mana into casting spells.

• Mentor of the Meek synergizes nicely with almost all of our creatures having power 2 or less and should draw us cards regularly.

• Assemble the Players is a relatively new card that also synergizes with low power creatures, letting us play them from the top of our library.

Ramp

We’re out of the traditional ramp colors – however, while we could lean on artifacts, we run a few wraths that would hit our own mana rocks. Luckily, there are some cards in white that help us ramp with lands.

• Land Tax helps us get basic lands in hand if we’re behind. Similarly, Oreskos Explorer does this with Plains when it enters the battlefield. Weathered Wayfarer also helps us on this front, albeit a little slower.

• Knight of the White Orchid is even better at this, putting a Plains on the battlefield when it enters the battlefield.

• Solemn Simulacrum is a staple (at least it was for me). While it’s apparently a little weak, we can easily abuse it with reanimation getting us both basic lands on enter and card draw on death.

• Sword of Hearth and Home gets us a land if it connects which is a bit slow but nice to have.

• Smothering Tithe fits in with our Tax theme and ramps us with its Treasure tokens.

• Sol Ring and Arcane Signet are auto-includes at this point.

Evasion

Avoiding blocks is important for this deck. While we can get creatures back, it’s nice to connect and not have our creatures die through combat. Especially important is protecting Alesha so we can get in for commander damage and continue recurring in future turns.

• Access Tunnel allows us to get most of our creatures through albeit for a steep mana cost.

• Break Through the Line, while not applying to Alesha, will get most other creatures through and give them haste in case we play them directly from our hand.

• Key to the City will grant our most important creature unblockable, while also letting us feed our graveyard and draw more cards.

• Delney, Streetwise Lookout grants most of our creatures unblockable to anything that will kill them, while also doubling the amount of triggers we get!

• Whispersilk Cloak will grant mostly Alesha unblockable and protect her from targeting as well.

• Iroas, God of Victory makes our creatures virtually unblockable and allows us to ignore combat damage done to our attacking creatures. It’s also a nice body since we’ll likely have devotion if we have any board presence at all.

Protection

We want Alesha to stick around as long as possible. Additionally, while we don’t care about destruction, we do care about our permanents being exiled.

• Whispersilk Cloak and Lightning Greaves protect our creatures from targeting.

• Jirina protects from targeting as well, but also grants Humans indestructible for combat damage or ping effects.

• Rune-Tail, Kitsune Ascendant will also protect against damage after it flips automatically if we play it early enough.

• Giver of Runes will protect our most important creature from being targeted, as well as negating combat damage.

Removal

There’s bound to be some things that we don’t want our opponents to keep on the board. We’re leaning towards the theme of removal being on creatures, but sometimes we just need to reset the board.

• Swords to Plowshares and Eijango, Seat of the Empire are good for a single pesky creature.

• Dauntless Dismantler is a wrath for artifacts, which will likely effect our opponents more than us.

• Leonin Relic-Warder and Fiend Hunter allow for targeted removal that can become permanent with a sac outlet and some clever trigger stacking. Skyclave Apparition is similar, but doesn’t require the trigger stacking – but is a little less versatile.

• We have Wrath effects in the form of Retribution of the Meek and Dusk // Dawn which will usually leave our board intact while impacting our opponents’ big creatures.

• Finally, we have Magus of the Disk if the game is running away from us with a lot of artifacts and enchantments affecting the board.

Tutors

I’ve decided to keep this section of the deck very light since having free reign on tutors would make this deck both faster and more powerful than I’d like it.

• Between Imperial Recruiter and Recruiter of the Guard, we can tutor for most of our creatures and assemble most of combos if we need to.

• Stoneforge Mystic finds us protection, flicker effects, or card draw depending on what we need at the moment.

Graveyard Hate

We want to use our graveyard, but we don’t want our opponents to use theirs.

• Jirina, Dauntless General lets us remove a single player’s graveyard.

• Drannith Magistrate turns off Flashback and other cast from graveyard effects.

Lands

Finally, we can round it off with lands! Unfortunately, we’re in three colors which means our landbase is fairly complex. While we only have a few red cards, we want to be reliably cast our commander.

I’m playing:

• Command Tower, Mana Confluence, City of Brass, and Exotic Orchard to tap for multiple colors (sometimes in the case of Exotic Orchard)

• The 3 on-color fetchlands in Arid Mesa, Bloodstained Mire, and Marsh Flats

• The 3 on-color shocklands in Sacred Foundry, Blood Crypt, and Godless Shrine

• The 3 painlands in Battlefield Forge, Caves of Koilos, and Sulfurous Springs. These could be replaced with the Horizon lands, but I love the full art on these lands.

• The 3 on-color bondlands in Spectator Seating, Vault of Champions, and Luxury Suite

• The 3 on-color dual-sided lands in Blightstep Pathway, Needleverge Pathway, and Brightclimb Pathway

• Savai Triome, the Mardu triland

• Strip Mine and Wasteland for land destruction

• Winding Canyons to cast our creatures at instant speed

• Access Tunnel for a little more evasion

• High Market as an emergency sac outlet

• Eiganjo, Seat of the Empire as removal

• Maze of Ith for emergency Alesha protection or a big beater on our opponent’s board

• A single Swamp, single Mountain, and 7 Plains.

Still Considering

• Dockside Extortionist is too expensive and might be banned. Otherwise, I think it fits nicely in with the theme.

• Professional Face-Breaker seems to work with the theme as well, but just ramps more poorly than Dockside Extortionist.

• Tymna the Weaver would be great card draw, is on theme, and works well with her ability not triggering on attack. However, she’s not available in anything other than foil – while it might be silly, I refuse to play foils unless I can get every card in foil. With the prices of fetches and other lands in foil, that’s probably not happening. I’ll definitely reassess when she’s released in non-foil. and provides us needed ramp.

• Liliana, Heretical Healer is a very tempting addition. We can very easily flip her with a sacrificed creature, then she is at least a reanimation spell for one creature. She’s also an easily recurrable Planeswalker if she is removed.

• Imposing Sovereign, Kinjalli’s Sunwing, and Thalia, Heretic Cathar would cause creatures to come in tapped, but didn’t seem strong enough in their Stax ability, slowing opponents down only marginally. However, I might reconsider since they synergize well with Thalia, Guardian of Thraben and the like by tapping down the only spells that are not taxed.

• Taj-Nar Swordsmith has the ability to be better than Stoneforge Mystic if we recur it. However, that’s not guaranteed and wouldn’t synergize as well with the two Recruiters.

• Leonin Arbiter might be better in some situations than Aven Mindcensor. However, it is symmetric and we’re playing fetchlands.

• Thief of Blood is neat but seems a little situational. On a bad board, it could come in as a 3/3 if there aren’t many counters being used.

I’m considering some cards in case the level of Stax I’ve chosen is too much for casual play.

• Harsh Mentor punishes but does not tax or stop an opponent from activating abilities. Still, this could be included if true Stax is deemed too much or if I run into a lot of combo with activated abilities.

• Charismatic Conqueror provides an option to get out of tapping down entering creatures and artifacts, which might be useful with poor Stax reception.

• Mangara, the Diplomat taxes our opponents for attacking or casting spells, but puts us ahead instead of putting them behind. It’s also fairly situational and not guaranteed. I might consider including this only if the playgroups I find are extremely unreceptive to other tax effects.

• Monologue Tax also puts us ahead for our opponents’ casting.

• Kambal, Consul of Allocation doesn’t stop our opponents from casting spells, but does punish them. Again, might include this depending on Stax reception.

• Baird, Steward of Argive is a worse Windborn Muse but also covers Planeswalkers. Still, could come in to replace a stronger Stax piece

• Archivist of Oghma puts us ahead instead of punishing our opponents for searching.

If I could just play more cards, I’d include:

• Glowrider – another Thalia effect, but just ran out of room.

• Thieves Tools protects almost all of our deck, but costs a bit too much to not also provide protection.

What’s Missing?

There are few cards that would be great in this deck, but I’ve left out because of price or because I think they would be too oppressive for a more casual table.

• Dauthi Voidwalker + Opposition Agent are better search and graveyard hate respectively, but don’t fit in with the power 2 or less theme and I feel would be a little too oppressive to pull out against strangers in the case of Opposition Agent.

• Stronger tutors like Vampiric Tutor, Demonic Tutor, Gamble would fit in the deck, but would be a little too much for the power level I’m going for.

• Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit would only be included to work in a combo, and only with Murderous Redcap at that. One might be able to say it could be used as a buffing strategy, but I think it’s too weak to include.

• There are a few out-of-universe cards that would be very useful but I refuse to play until they get in-universe reprints. This includes Battle of Bywater, which is a great wrath with an additional upside, and MacReady, Lamplight Mayor, which gives evasion to our small creatures and taxes our opponents’ life totals for attacking us with larger creatures.

There are some cards that just didn’t synergize quite right:

• Carmen, Cruel Skymarcher has a great ability, but since her ability doesn’t trigger when Alesha brings her back, she doesn’t quite fit. Still, interesting idea for another reanimating Stax deck.

• Subira, Tulzidi Caravanner’s ability that could be activated after Alesha brings her back wouldn’t protect either her or Alesha. Her second ability, although useful, could be only useful on the second turn that she’s out.

• War Cadence fits well with the tax effect, but is trumped by cards that just give unblockable with no alternative.

• Buried Alive, Vile Entomber and other cards that put cards directly into the graveyard are basically tutors for this deck, but are a little more risky with graveyard hate.

• Disciple of Bolas – card draw on a creature is great and would put another of our creatures in the graveyard, but since most of our creatures have power 2 or less, it’s 4 mana for a conditional 2 cards usually and at worse could draw us no cards at all.

• Serra Redeemer seems to be great, but is a bit costly and at that mana cost, we could have a stronger buff for all of our creatures.

There are a lot of Stax pieces I’d love to fit in, but couldn’t justify.

• Spirit of the Labyrinth would stop excessive draws, as would Alms Collector, but have too high of a power.

• Spelltithe Enforcer has a super strong effect, but has too high of a power.

• Any Stax effect on an enchantment or artifact (minus Smothering Tithe) – omitted as it would be too hard for opponents playing removal to remove them. I think this increases the “fairness” of the deck substantially since all of the Stax/Tax effects die fairly easily.

• Blood Moon effects, especially Magus of the Moon, would probably slow us down as much as they would our opponents. Additionally, I want to avoid hard-locking anyone out of the game.

• To lock down activated abilities, Phyrexian Revoker, while in theme, is too targeted to be useful. While it could be flickered, it’s useless to flicker in response to an ability being activated. Drana and Linvala and Linvala, Keeper of Silence would cover this, but are outside the theme of power 2 or less and would just be jamming value.

• Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines stops permanents from triggering opponents’ abilities but is too large of a body and too high costing to justify breaking the theme.

• Strict Proctor, Hushbringer, Tocatli Honor Guard, and Hushwing Griff all affect our strategy of getting things onto the battlefield.

• Mass Land Destruction would be too oppressive and slowing since I’m not sure if this deck could recover as fast as it would need to justify destroying all lands. However, I may include something like Fulminator Mage or Avalanche Riders to destroy single lands, and I do run Wasteland + Strip Mine for targeted removal.

Some cards are just too underpowered to take up a card slot.

• Aegis of the Gods – useful effect when it’s needed, but not always useful.

• Tomik, Distinguished Advokist – only useful against land reanimation decks.

• Reidane, God of the Worthy has a useful back side, but the front side that we could recur is just too limited to fit in the deck.

• Tithe Taker is a worse Grand Abolisher and even if there are complaints about the heaviness of the Stax on interaction, I’d consider that not a guaranteed thing in Magic.

• Recursion instead of reanimation – if we can get reanimation, we want to take it, especially if spell casting is limited.

• Reconnaissance is popular in netdecks, but it seems gimmicky and doesn’t provide a lot of value unless we’re using it with Alesha. We don’t care really care if our creatures die and we still want to win using damage, so removing our creatures from combat seems a little weak.

Some cards have strong effects, but would take the deck in a different direction than I chose:

• Token generators (Angel of Invention, Siege-Gang Commander, Evangel of Heliod, Darksteel Splicer)

• Anthems (Angel of Invention, Boss’s Chauffeur, Celestial Crusader, Warleader’s Call, Flowering of the White Tree)

• Counter buffs (Boss’s Chauffeur, Filigree Vector)

• ETB/LTB life gain/life drain cards (Blood Artist, Cruel Celebrant, Suture Priest)

What’s Next?

I think I’ll brew a bit more before putting this deck together in paper. While I’m excited to play it, I feel like the manabase is a little expensive for the amount of White that’s in the deck. It’s really mono-White splashing Black for a few cards and Red for even fewer.

I also need to consider some options for maximizing value from Knight of the White Orchid, Weathered Wayfarer, Land Tax, and Oreskos Explorer. We’re rewarded by having fewer lands than our opponents, but ultimately still want to keep ramping. There are some bounce lands and Lotus Field/Lotus Vale that are worth looking into.

Looking over the cards I was considering, I realized that Carmen, Cruel Skymarcher might do almost the same thing as Alesha, without the restriction on the cards not being useful if they have triggers on attacking. It would also reduce the manabase requirements and reduce the power restriction somewhat. However, if I realize that I badly need Dockside Extortionist, I’d stay in Red for just that one card.

I also thought about taking the deck away from reanimation in Black and focusing on more of the cheating creatures into play through Rule of Law effects with Birthing Pod by using a Naya commander like Rocco, Cabaretti Caterer or Jetmir, Nexus of Revels.

All in all, though, I think I’ve made a fairly unique deck with a heavy Death and Taxes/Stax component that utilizes my commander – something that I usually ignore when building EDH decks.