While complete opposites at first glance, the colors black and white in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Magic: The Gathering actually have more in common than most players realize. Both are sources of the best unconditional removal and boar🌜d wipes in the game, and both colors are quite efficient at generating tokens.
Consequently, Orzhov decks are quite good at providing consistent draws full of removal and pesky creatures that will be painstaking for your opponents to deal with, whether it's due to life-loss abilities or taxing effects. Let's take a look at some of the notable cards that make this combination great no matter what specific Orzhov strategy you want to play.
Themes
The dominant themes among Orzhov Commander players include Lifegain, Aristocrats, Party, Token, and Shadowborn Apostle. All of these themes are creature based and involve going wide on your board in order to achieve certai🐟n synergies between𒆙 your creatures.
These creatures are supplemented by some of the best removal and board wipes in the game. Orzhov contains the most versatile kinds of these two types of cards in all of Magic and is unmatched by any other color pair when it comes to these tools. Additionally, a large number of tutor spells allow Orzhov to more easily enact combos that other decks can only dream of drawing.
Ramp
Surprisingly enough, Orzhov is a bit lacking when it comes to producing extra mana. Of course, the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:classic Sol Ring and Commander's Sphere are present, but besides that, you've really only got slim pickings including Arcane Signet, Orzhov Signet, Talisman of Hierarchy, Mind Stone, and Fellwar Stone.
There are a couple of nontraditional ways of achieving ramp as well including Solemn Simulacrum, Ashnod's Altar, Black Market Connections, the notorious Smothering Tithe, and Lotho, Corrupt Shirriff.
As far as mana generation is concerned, it's really not the angle that Orzhov is looking to gain an edge from.
Draw
168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Additional draw comes in two primary forms: cards that require you to pay life and cards that require you to sacrifice a creature in exchange for card advantage. As far as paying life goes, we've got some real classics including Phyrexian Arena, Sign in Blood, and Read the Bones.
Sacrificing creatures is a much more common way to achieve card advantage in Orzhov though. This is also part of the reason why all the most popular strategies involve going wide. As long as you have a handful of creatures on the board, it will be difficult to run out of gas thanks to cards like Deadly Dispute, Village Rites, Skullclamp, Viscera Seer, Minas Tirith, Corrupted Conviction, and Grim Haruspex.
It's important to note that you can sacrifice a creature to one of these draw engines in response to opposing removal, providing you a 2-for-1 gain.
Removal
Here's where Orzhov really excels. There's no more cost effective and versatile removal in the game than the cards that the Orzhov color pair offers, so if you're tired of losing to opposing creatures this is a great archetype to consider sleeving up.
This busted removal suite includes Swords to Plowshares, Path to Exile, Generous Gift, Damn, Despark, Anguished Unmaking, Fracture, Mortify, Utter End, and Vindicate. As you may notice, many of these cards actually exile their targets as opposed to simply destroying them, making certain that you won't have to deal with whatever threat you hit ever again.
You can further supplement this ridiculous string of cards with even more powerful removal such as Go For the Throat, Doom Blade, and other cards, however, it's important to leave room in your decklist for the creature strategies that will win you the game.
Board Wipes
It might seem counterintuitive to include 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:board wipes in a deck where you're looking to go wide yourself, but there are many times in Commander where you'll find your board reduced to dust. This makes for opportunities for you to play board wipes as well.
Instead of trying to rebuild your board after your opponents have already gotten a head start, it's often a better play to reset the board again and take initiative yourself.
Aside from the previously mentioned Damn, which can be upcast to become a board wipe, we've also got access to wipes such as Sunfall, Farewell, Damnation, Languish, Wrath of God, and Planar Outburst.
The great thing about these board wipes is that they can take care of most creatures no matter their siz🔯e. Some can even get around the indestructible keyword.
Key Threats
Many of our threats revolve around either going wide and pinging opponents with life loss through sacrificial means or returning creatures from the graveyard to the battlefield. As you can imagine, these two angles of attack supplement each other quite well as you can sacrifice an important creature only to see it returned to the bꦫattlefield on a later turn.
Our go-wide life loss threats consist of Zulaport Cutthroat / Elas, il-Kor Sadistic Pilgrim / Blood Artist / Cruel Celebrant / and Suture Priest. Meanwhile, cards that can bring back our heavy hitters from the graveyard include Liesa, Forgotten Archangel / Victimize / Sun Titan / and effects like Reanimate and Animate Dead.
Most of the more powerful, higher mana value creatures in Orzhov have something to do with taxing the opponent in some way. This might require the opponent to pay life, discard a card, or sacrifice a creature to prevent an effect. Examples of these taxing threats are found in cards such as Athreos, God of Passage / Elesh Norn / Esper Sentinel / Thalia, Guardian of Thraben / Kambal, Consul of Allocation / and Orcish Bowmasters.
Giving the opponent a choice is never ideal, but you can often c💙atch them between a rock and a hard place.
Tutors
Orzhov is particularly good at finding the exact cards it needs from its deck thanks to having access to the best tutor cards in the game. Tutors are cards that allow you to search your library for a specific card and either place it in your hand or on to♒p of your library.
This list of tutor cards include Vampiric Tutor, Imperial Seal, Demonic Tutor, Demonic Consultation, Opposition Agent, Idyllic Tutor, Academy Rectory, and Enlightened Tutor. Access to so many tutors makes it easy for Orzhov decks to string together combinaꦉtions of cards that synergize incredibly well. Speaking of which . . .
Combos
Orzhov combos usually result in either infinite lifegain, infinite life loss for opponents, or both. Each of these outcomes can result in you just straight up winning the game on the spot depending on the strategies that yo👍ur opponents are playing൩.
Cards that are involved in the most common combos include Exquisite Blood, Vizkopa Guildmage, Cliffhaven Vampire, Sanguine Bond, and Beacon of Immortality. Another common combo is pairing Leonin-Relic Warded with Animate Dead to create infinite enter the battlefield and leave the battlefield triggers. This results in an instan𝔍t♔ win when paired with a creature like Zulaport Cutthroat.
It would be a fool's errand to attempt to name all of the combos possible in Orzhov decks, so we'll simply leave it at the cards mentioned above which are all very easily slotted into a typical Orzhov-themed decks and can provide victories from seemingly out of nowhere. What better way to♔ defeat three other plays at once than simultaneously with a niche interaction?
If comboing off is your favorite Commander playstyle, Orzhov runs very deep with combos that many opponents will have di💞fficulty identifying. However, tutoring for cards can definitely be a tell that something is up.