Orzhov Death and Taxes is designed to exploit ongoing damage effects and impose control. Give opponents death by a thousand cuts! Make them suffer whenever I act, or whenever they want to act. I want to prevent them from being able to effectively attack me, and maybe pull a combo or auto-win out of nowhere as a bonus surprise. This deck is a work in progress, and will soon be combined with cards from my Pauper Commander experiment.

The General

Kambal, Consul of Allocation. He makes opponents choose to suffer consequences for any non-creature spells they may cast. It's not a heavy loss, especially in a 40-life format, but it can be anything from an irritation to a serious problem depending on the opponent's deck.

He is vulnerable to spot removal, but is it worth it for an opponent to target him? At CMC 3, I can pull him back from the command zone once or twice in a game easily enough even with the re-casting tax. And there are other threats in the deck, too. He forces opponents choose between bad options. When you try to choose the lesser evil, evil still wins...

Combo Option

Exquisite Blood and Sanguine Bond are each good on their own, but together they guarantee the elimination of at least one opponent should either one be triggered by any other effect.

In combination with cards using the Extort ability, these two can wipe the table.

Auto-win

Felidar Sovereign benefits from the constant life gain effects throughout the deck to all but guarantee a victory if he is not eliminated. If he works, great! If he makes opponents burn spells and abilities to prevent him from surviving, it's still OK, since he distracted them from other targets.

Control

Aside from the general's ability, there are also cards like Arrest, Curse of Wizardry, Ghostly Prison, Sphere of Safety, and Pacifism. These are not as numerous as a pure control deck, but are part of a strategy to target specific threats and shut them down before they can interfere with my plans.

Conclusion

All told, this deck has potential to be incredibly irritating. The downside is that this can result in everyone at the table dog-piling me. It needs more punch in the late game as their strategies begin to unfold. It's a fun way to avoid my usual deck strategy of throwing cannon fodder at my opponents until they lose, and I look forward to refining it over time.

As always, experiment with different deck archetypes to see what styles you prefer to play, and to learn how to beat the ones others might use against you! If this deck seems like your style, it's less than $40 to replicate its current form at time of posting.

Edit: I have already begun reworking the deck. Duplication cost is now in the neighborhood of $50, but the deck seems more capable now than it was. The core functions discussed above remain, only they are reinforced with better support.

Edit 2: I have further altered the deck, increasing the duplication cost again to about $60. This was primarily due to adding Darien, King of Kjeldor, but the extra control cards also pushed the value up a bit too.

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Previous posts in this series:
Commander Introduction
Deck 1 - Goblins Incorporated
Deck 2 - Azorius Shenanigans
Deck 3 - Bruna Voltron
Deck 4 - Green Tide Elves
Deck 5 - Special Forces
Deck 6 - Dimir Mill
Deck 7 - Golgari Elves
Deck 8 - Simic Proliferation
Deck 9 - Gruul Rage
Deck 10 - Black Death
Casual and Competitive Decks
Deck 11 - Gruul Landfall
Deck 12 - Wizards of Nope
Deck 13 - Dimir Zombies Eat Brains

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