Orzhov , is a color combination in MTG that focuses on themes like sacrifice and manipulating life totals.

The term Orzhov itself was first introduced in Guildpact in 2006, as one of the ten guilds that makes up the plane of Ravnica. The Orzhov Syndicate is a business that seeks to extort those below it, using various methods to satiate their greed.

Black-White is a two-color pair that rewards exploitation, and timely sacrifices, to gain advantages over your opponents. The top Orzhov Commanders to build around are all perfect examples of this strategy in action.

Best Orzhov Commanders

With over a hundred different Legendary Creatures in this color pair, there is a huge selection of cards that grows with every set release. Even though that's the case, the Commander format's solid meta means that the best Commanders can carry for years.

1. Liesa, Shroud of Dusk
2. Shilgengar, Sire of Famine
3. Eriette of the Charmed Apple
4. Teysa Karlov

These Commanders have earned their spots through consistency and impact. While they all fall under the same color identity, their strategies play out very differently. Let's take a look.

4. Liesa, Shroud of Dusk

Our first powerful Orzhov Commander is Liesa, Shroud of Dusk. Liesa is a bit more general of a Black-White Commander, since she doesn't revolve around a set strategy like many others.

She's very customizable as a leader, but she does focus on a key aspect of the Orzhov color combination: lifegain and lifeloss.

Liesa, Shroud of Dusk is expensive at . However, she does let you pay two life instead of losing mana to Commander Tax every time. This means in longer games, where other players might be burdened on mana to recast their Commanders, you can play Liesa for relatively cheap and keep her in play more often.

Liesa is a great Black-White Commander if you want to tax your opponents and prevent them from enacting their combos. You can play cards like Authority of the Consuls to boost your life total while stopping any Haste threats in their tracks. You can play Kambal, Consul of Allocation to punish opponents that might be playing more spell-based decks that don't rely on Creatures.

With lifegain resources you can offset the damage you'll take from having Liesa in play, while pressuring your opponents in the process.

Since your deck inherently gains life to offset Liesa's cost, you'll want to include ways to deal your opponent's damage at the same time. Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose and Sanguine Bond are the premier ways of accomplishing this. By playing these two cards you'll want to also include Exquisite Blood in your deck, depending on how competitive your play group is.

While a bit expensive, Exquisite Blood and Sanguine Bond with a lifegain source in play is a two-card combo that can instantly win you the game.

For engine cards you'll want to include permanents like Alhammarret's Archive and Well of Lost Dreams. Norn's Annex is a nice way to provide some soft protection for your life total, and Aetherflux Reservoir is another "Instant-win" card that can take out one of your opponents (or multiple) if you have the life to spare.

While there are specific Orzhov cards you'll want to include in this strategy to gain life repeatedly and have various win-cons, I do think that Liesa, Shroud of Dusk is one of the most flexible Black-White Commanders, giving you a Commander that has a powerful static ability that is easy to customize to your tastes.

3. Shilgengar, Sire of Famine

Shilgengar, Sire of Famine is kind of a fun Orzhov Commander to build around, especially if you want to lean into Angels. With a lot of Angel cards fitting half his color identity already, the addition of Black mana gives you access to ways to fill your graveyard in addition to flexible removal spells.

Shilgengar revolves around filling your graveyard with Angel cards to mass-reanimate them with his activated ability. To accomplish this, your deck is built around powerful Angel Creatures, self-mill cards, and other ways of gaining advantages over your opponents.

For Angels, you get access to Creatures like Avacyn, Angel of Hope, Drana and Linvala, and Angel of the Ruins (which is notable because you can cycle it easily).

Giada, Font of Hope is one of the best ways to ramp out these spells and Righteous Valkyrie being an incredible way to buff up your team while also gaining incremental life.

For even more flexibility, including both Bruna, the Fading Light and Gisela as just powerful cards that play into your reanimate strategy, gives you the chance at Brisela, Voice of Nightmares.

To self-mill, you have a variety of cards to choose from. One of the best cards you can play is Renegade Reaper, which also is an Angel. Ripples of Undeath is another nice mill engine that doubles as card advantage, giving you the option to essentially draw an extra card every turn at the cost of one mana and three life.

With so much inherent lifegain in this type of strategy, with cards like Lyra Dawnbringer, the upkeep cost of this card is pretty negligent. Buried Alive is also just a nice way to fill your graveyard to set up for big reanimation turns.

Other powerful on-theme cards you can play are cards like Rampage of the Valkyries, which will force your opponents to sacrifice a Creature every time one of your Angels dies, including when you sacrifice one to Shilgengar. Firja's Retribution is a handy saga that can help you remove some of your opponents' Creatures or just provide a way to win the game by granting your Angels Double Strike for a turn.

2. Eriette of the Charmed Apple

Next is an Orzhov Commander that is similar in deckbuilding style to Teysa Karlov but cares very specifically about Auras: Eriette of the Charmed Apple.

Eriette wants Auras on everything, including your opponents' and your own Creatures. She provides protection if you can enchant your opponents' board so they don't attack you, but even better, a potentially game-ending ability. Once you have enough Auras in play, you can start dealing multiple points of damage to your opponents a turn.

To accomplish this, you need to be playing a high amount of Aura Enchantments. A good amount of Eriette decks feature a "voltron"-style strategy. This means suiting up one of your Creatures with multiple Auras to make it hard for your opponents to block or destroy them in a meaningful way.

Cards like Kaya's Ghostform, Spirit Link, Sage's Reverie, All that Glitters, and Ethereal Armor are perfect for making your Creatures individually threatening on their own.

You have lots of flexibility in ways to not only increase its power and toughness but giving protection as insurance.

Auras like Parasitic Impetus are great at messing with other players, while still protecting yourself. This card, in particular, is great because it'll net you life gain and life loss every time that Creature attacks.

Two other important aspects of building around Eriette of the Charmed Apple are ways to make your spells cost less and making sure you can draw cards. Cards like Starfield Mystic are important to help you dump your hand and suit up your Creatures at a faster pace. Having multiple of these effects in play, cards like Danita, Capashen Paragon and Transcendent Envoy can make your spells basically free.

If you have multiple of these cards in play and you're able to do it fast, you'll want ways to refill your hand. Pearl-Ear, Imperial Advisor, Sram, Senior Edificer, Mesa Enchantress, and Kor Spiritdancer are all vital to this kind of deck since they'll help you replace all the auras you end up casting.

One thing to keep in mind when playing this type of strategy is that you'll want to protect the Creatures you're enchanting, in case your opponents have targeted removal or mass ways to remove Enchantments. Teferi's Protection is another important card to consider when building a Black-White EDH deck as insurance against cards like Farewell.

1. Teysa Karlov

In our number one spot: Teysa Karlov, arguably the most notable Orzhov Commander and funnily enough, the current guildmaster of the Orzhov Syndicate. Teysa Karlov revolves around a self-sacrifice theme, a strategy that involves destroying your own team to reap various benefits.

For example, a card like Doomed Traveler on its own is a pretty underwhelming common. However, when you pair this card with Teysa Karlov and a card like Bastion of Remembrance, you start creating an engine that can put pressure on multiple opponents.

On top of that, with your Doomed Traveler dying you get not one, but two Spirit tokens (that now have Vigilance and Lifelink).

To really get the ball rolling, however, you want to amass multiple ways of bringing down your opponents' life totals. In addition to Bastion of Remembrance, cards like Zulaport Cutthroat, Blood Artist, Cruel Celebrant, and Elas il-Kor, Sadistic Pilgrim are all ways you can essentially deal multiple points of damage, without even having to go to a combat step.

To actually get the rewards of these cards that care about other Creatures dying, you also need to incorporate a handful of sacrifice outlets into your deck, so you have ways of enacting your combos. Skullclamp is one of the easiest ways to do this.

Since Teysa Karlov decks usually include ways to make 1/1 tokens in various shapes and forms, Skullclamp is your easiest way to send these creatures to the graveyard while also drawing some cards in return. Skullclamp is so necessary in these types of decks because it acts as an outlet to kill off your own Creatures, while also providing a card-draw engine. Other sacrifice outlets include cards like Viscera Seer and Ashnod's Altar.

Aside from Doomed Traveler, you also should incorporate repeatable ways to make Creatures to sacrifice. Cards like Bitterblossom and Bitterbloom Bearer provide a 1/1 token every turn, at the small cost of a repeatable one life, which is not very detrimental with a starting life total of 40 and multiple ways to gain it back.

Ophiomancer and Pawn of Ulamog can also provide multiple tokens if used correctly.

In addition to the trio of sacrifice outlets, fodder, and lifegain/lifeloss effects, you can play a handful of powerful cards to pressure your opponents. Bolas's Citadel is a prime example of a card that can end games in one fell swoop, giving you a way to easily have your opponents each lose ten life.

Liliana Dreadhorde General can also be a great source of card advantage while also providing a game-ending ultimate ability. Raise the Past is also a nice way to mass-remainate all your fodder or drain life creatures and is insurance against board wipes.

There is a lot of value in cards that can reanimate a bunch of Creatures in one fell swoop, with cards like Funeral Room or Rise of the Dark Realms. Cards like these can provide a way to end the game in one turn, putting all your powerful puzzle pieces back into play to ping your opponents' life total down to zero.

Honorable Mentions

There are a ton of other Black and White Commanders to build around besides the four listed above. While maybe not as powerful, you can pretty much choose any of the most popular Orzhov Commanders and build a successful strategy around them.

If you like token strategies, King of the Oathbreakers is perfect for amassing a spirit token army. While spirit decks are historically Azorius, you can be more token-focused here with cards like Intangible Virtue and Haunted Library, with Black giving you removal spells, tutor-effects, and Lingering Souls.

Orath, Skyclave Hierophant is another Creature-focused strategy, as a cleric-centric Commander. While this deck is pretty similar in style to Teysa Karlov, you get to focus on more cleric-specific cards you might not play otherwise, like Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim, Doomed Necromancer, and Shadow-Rite Priest.

This can help you cheat powerful creatures into play, like Razaketh, the Foul-Blooded and Vilis, Broker of Blood.

It's important that you recognize what styles of play you enjoy and how you want to beat your opponents. This will help you choose between a lot of these specific Commanders that have overlapping strategies.

Conclusion

Orzhov is a color-combination that provides a variety of unique Commanders to choose from.

While a lot of the color pair's strategies are similar, revolving around self-sacrifice, reanimation, specific typal strategies, and lifegain and lifeloss, it's a rewarding color combination to build around.

If you like taxing your opponents and finding ways to slowly pressure a table, Orzhov is the way to go. Happy scheming!