If you've read some of my previous work, you'll know I'm a huge fan of Orzhov, aka . My love of this color pair has funny roots. After a long hiatus from the game, I reintroduced myself to it with a $30 1,000 card box from eBay ("includes 25 rares!" the ad proclaimed). It was Lorwyn, and my dad and I eagerly sat down to sort through them and build decks. I was drawn immediately to Shorecrasher Mimic, because even though it had been a while, 5/3 Trample for two mana seemed good. My dad, on the other hand, found Nightsky Mimic. He stuck in some Nip Gwyllions and all four Edge of the Divinities, and before I knew it he was swinging for 4/4 Lifelink on turn two. His deck regularly trounced mine. It made me mad... but it also made me fall in love with the color pair.

So, as I was looking through the various Legendary creatures and other Commander options from Commander Legends, I was drawn immediately to an Orzhov deck.

Akroma wants lots of creatures with keywords to attack. Tevesh Szat makes creatures and draws cards. Seems like a perfect pair to me. Let's take a look at the deck, then talk through the ideas behind it.

Akroma/Tevash | Commander | Mark Wischkaemper

• Commanders (2)
• 1 Akroma, Vision of Ixidor
• 1 Tevesh Szat, Doom of Fools

• Creatures (17)
• 1 Angelic Field Marshal
• 1 Archetype of Courage
• 1 Archetype of Finality
• 1 Corpse Knight
• 1 Cruel Celebrant
• 1 Deathbringer Liege
• 1 Filth
• 1 Heliod, God of the Sun
• 1 Mentor of the Meek
• 1 Phantom General
• 1 Prava of the Steel Legion
• 1 Scion of Vitu-Ghazi
• 1 Teysa Karlov
• 1 Thalisse, Reverent Medium
• 1 Twilight Drover
• 1 Valor
• 1 Zulaport Cutthroat

• Planeswalkers (1)
• 1 Kaya the Inexorable

• Instants (10)
• 1 Eyes in the Skies
• 1 Hero's Downfall
• 1 Rise of the Dread Marn
• 1 Rootborn Defenses
• 1 Secure the Wastes
• 1 Swords to Plowshares
• 1 Szat's Will
• 1 Tragic Slip
• 1 Trostani's Judgment
• 1 Village Rites

• Sorceries (7)
• 1 Crux of Fate
• 1 Day of Judgment
• 1 Hour of Reckoning
• 1 Increasing Devotion
• 1 Lingering Souls
• 1 Martial Coup
• 1 Starnheim Unleashed

• Enchantments (13)
• 1 Anointed Procession
• 1 Banishing Light
• 1 Bastion of Remembrance
• 1 Court of Grace
• 1 Divine Visitation
• 1 Ethereal Absolution
• 1 Felidar Retreat
• 1 Intangible Virtue
• 1 Knighthood
• 1 Oblivion Ring
• 1 Righteous War
• 1 Song of the Worldsoul
• 1 True Conviction

• Artifacts (10)
• 1 Akroma's Memorial
• 1 Hedron Archive
• 1 Mind Stone
• 1 Orzhov Cluestone
• 1 Orzhov Keyrune
• 1 Orzhov Locket
• 1 Orzhov Signet
• 1 Skullclamp
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Whip of Erebos

• Lands (38)
• 1 Plains
• 2 Swamp
• 1 Arcane Lighthouse
• 1 Blighted Fen
• 1 Blighted Steppe
• 1 Bojuka Bog
• 1 Castle Ardenvale
• 1 Command Beacon
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Concealed Courtyard
• 1 Cradle of the Accursed
• 1 Desert of the Glorified
• 1 Desert of the True
• 1 Dunes of the Dead
• 1 Fetid Heath
• 1 Forsaken Sanctuary
• 1 Foundry of the Consuls
• 1 Godless Shrine
• 1 Great Hall of Starnheim
• 1 Hall of Heliod's Generosity
• 1 Haunted Fengraf
• 1 Isolated Chapel
• 1 Karn's Bastion
• 1 Memorial to Folly
• 1 Memorial to Glory
• 1 New Benalia
• 1 Orzhov Guildgate
• 1 Scoured Barrens
• 1 Sejiri Steppe
• 1 Shambling Vent
• 1 Silent Clearing
• 1 Springjack Pasture
• 1 Tectonic Edge
• 1 Temple of Silence
• 1 Temple of the False God
• 1 Vault of the Archangel
• 1 Westvale Abbey

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Additionally, we've got several mana rocks, most of which also tap for either White or Black. A few of our lands sacrifice themselves for their effects, and even with a relatively mana-hungry deck like this, mana rocks can help stave off the pain of using a Cradle of the Accursed or whatever. Just jumping to turn six for Akroma can make a pretty big difference, since often we can start attacking the turn she comes into play.

Any deck that makes little tokens should run Skullclamp for card draw, so we are. What's nice is we can also sacrifice creatures to Tevesh to draw cards, so we can attack, make them bigger with Akroma, then equip the 'Clamp and sac to Tevesh and draw four cards. But because Tevesh draws us cards, we're not loaded with the stuff. We have Mentor of the Meek, which is nice, and a few lands that help, but mostly we're going to rely on Tevesh (and a bunch of Vigilant tokens keeping him alive) to draw.

One thing about token decks is figuring out how to win with the tokens. Sometimes you can simply make an arbitrarily large number and win by outnumbering your opponents, but without some sort of infinite combo, we're stuck doing something else. In our case, it's going to be making them big. Akroma's +1/+1 till end of turn buff stacks for each keyword a creature has, so if we can put four keywords on a 1/1 creature, it'll be a 5/5 attacking. A few of those will add up pretty quickly. To do this, we need two things: tokens and ways to give them keywords.

We can also make Soldiers, Cats, Humans, Zombies, Thrulls, and Warriors (oh, and Heliod, God of the Sun makes Clerics). None of those has any keywords. That means we're going to need to give them some. We do that with cards like Archetype of Courage and Archetype of Valor, Whip of Erebos, and Filth. Righteous War will normally only give one Protection, but occasionally it'll give two. True Conviction is great here, but the real beast is Akroma's Memorial, which will give a whopping +7/+7 to our attacking creatures.

As long as we're doing this, we may as well give them bonuses the old-school way too, so of course we're running Intangible Virtue and Phantom General. Any opportunity to run one of the Lieges is always worth taking, so Deathbringer Liege is here, being gross and awesome. This is also useful if we lose Akroma somehow and can't get her back; those times are rare, but it's nice to know we won't be left with a pile of 1/1s in that event.

We have a couple of Wrath effects; I picked the ones I picked, but they really don't matter except for Hour of Reckoning and Martial Coup, both of which work really well here. Otherwise, run your favorites or the ones you have around. We've also got a few spot-removal spells. My guess is there is going to need to be some amount of adjustment after playing the deck a few times, because there are probably too many spells that give keywords to creatures and not enough token generators or answers.

It's pretty simple, but should be fun. We play a few lands, maybe a rock, make a couple tokens. We play our 'Walker and start making more tokens, maybe draw a few cards. Then we play Akroma and start smashing with big tokens that get bigger every time we give them an additional keyword. We get wrathed, we rebuild. We get attacked, we probably have Vigilance. Eventually we'll be doing so much damage it'll be hard to stop it all.

Pro tip: always Foretell Starnheim Unleashed. The benefit of multiple Angel Warriors is well worth the extra turn or two.

What's your favorite Partner combination? Heck, what's your favorite color combination? Any Orzhov fans out there? Let us know!

Until then, have fun helping out the little guys.

Thanks for reading.