Exalted Darkness is fairly mediocre. It's not terrible, but certainly not the best. The promo unlocks did give it a nice removal package, which helps the deck to some degree. During testing, I tried out several different builds, one of them being full on aggro, dropping pretty much everything from the 5+ mana cost, then I went back to the aggro-control roots I started with. Yeah, the aggro build can be quite aggressive, but it suffers not only from the usual flaws of aggro decks (mass removal) but flaws that aggro decks shouldn't have (getting chump blocked into oblivion). Most of the creatures are fairly small, save for the big ones, which meant this deck could do little on the defense. This also feels clunky since the exalted mechanic has you attacking with one creature while holding the rest back. Blocking with your creatures generally means trading them, so then you lose offensive power as well. Not a good combination for an aggro deck.
I call this deck aggro-control-ish, because it's not quite as adaptive as my Peacekeepers build is. With Peacekeepers, I had a number of cards that could be used for aggro purposes or control purposes (Raise the Alarm, Archon, etc.). Exalted Darkness feel a bit more like some aggro cards mixed with some control cards. Overall, it's an average deck. I'm not thrilled about some of the cards in the deck, but given the options available, I worked with what I had. The options aren't terrible, but there's things that I felt were missing to make this a really strong deck (more on this when we get to the card analysis). It's still a fun deck to play, but I was hoping for something a bit more. Well, I can save those hopes for when we get the Orzhov dlc deck.
Creatures - 21
2 Akrasan Squire
2 Duty-Bound Dead
2 Child of Night
3 Knight of Glory
2 Knight of Infamy
1 Royal Assassin
2 Silent Arbiter
1 Sublime Archangel
1 Battlegrace Angel
2 Deathbringer Leige
2 Divinity of Pride
1 Angel of Despair
Other Spells - 15
1 Sigil of Distinction
1 Demonic Tutor
2 Doom Blade
1 Mortify
1 Pillory of the Sleepless
1 Sword of Vengeance
3 Unmake
2 Vindicate
1 Whispersilk Cloak
1 No Mercy
1 Debtors' Knell
Land - 24
12 Swamp
8 Plains
4 Evolving Wilds
General Strategy: since this deck is pretty terrible on the defense, especially early on, we need to resort to lifelink to help alleviate this problem. Fortunately we have a few cards that do that. Removal is pretty self explainatory, but I'll touch on a few specifics in a bit. Yes, I threw in most 5 mana+ creatures, not entirely because I wanted to, but because the deck needed to. You see, unlike other control decks with game winning bombs (Grave Titan, Rune Scarred Demon, etc.) have an immediate impact and effect on the board, whether it's giving you more creatures/bodies or gaining you card advantage in some way. With Exalted Darkness, the only creature who can affect the board with a comes into play effect is Angel of Despair, which has it's own issue of costing 7 mana. However, all the big bombs in this deck can quickly become deadly if they last for more than a turn.
So what's the strategy here? Start with some early offense on turns 1-2, keeping the pressure on if you can. Once you reach 3-4 mana, all that juicy spot removal becomes available. After that comes the big guns with the angels, lieges, and dvinity of pride, any of which can do some major damage if left unchecked. The real downside to the control strategy is a lack of card draw and mass removal.
Evolving Wilds - mana fixes and thins land from the deck. Pretty good, only downside is the land coming into play tapped, but in the first turn or so, it shouldn't matter much. Not running these would mean the deck has 20 land, unless I go above 60 cards, and given the 7 mana spells, that's not a good idea, so these pretty much have to be in.
Cathedral of War - The other non-basic land option, which was excluded. The free exalted boost is nice, but I found Cathedral really interfering with my plays. If I play this card at all during the early turns, I won't be able to play Unmake on turn 3, Divity of Pride on turn 5, and it'll probably interfere with the cards that cost double black or double white mana to cast as well. For those reasons, I cut it. I'd play them in the aggro build though, as the extra exalted boost that isn't a creature can be helpful. The colorless mana it produces just hurts the deck too much.
Duty-Bound Dead - Early game it provides exalted for some early-aggro pressure, and 2 defense to hold off 1/X creatures. Late game it's a regenerating chump blocker. The 0 power is still underwhelming, and I still maintain my stance that if this guy was a 1/2, I'd run all 4 copies. It's still a decent card, but still isn't necessarily something you want to see later in the game.
Akrasan Squire - Contrast Duty bound dead with this, and we have 1 power (yay) at the cost of 1 toughness. So that means it will be trading with 1/1s on the defense, but most of the time, I'd rather trade than to stall. Also, Squire can be a bit more aggressive, allowing us to attack for 3 on turn 2, which isn't bad at all, and given the card pool, I'll take what I can get.
Child of Night - one of the lifelink creatures, and it comes down early game. combo it with a couple exalted boosts and you can easily gain enough life to last until you can play the bigger threats. Also, don't feel bad trading this either early on.
Demonic Tutor - I hope I don't have to explain why this card is good.
Doom Blade - We know this card is awesome against all but 4 of the decks, so let's just analysis Doom Blade in those matchups.
-Against Exalted Darkness: It can hit opposing Silent Arbiters, Sublime Archangel, or Battlegrace Angel. That alone makes it worthwhile, but it can also hit a couple of the white weenies.
-Against Obedient Dead: The only place Doom Blade is really a dead card. It can still be used as discard fodder to Liliana's Specter, since it would be best to discard DB than anything else.
-Against Grinning Malice: Again, there's very few mono-red creatures, but there are some notable ones, such as Vexing Devil, Dragonmaster Outcast, Rockslide Elemental, and Hissing Iguanar. Like the Obedient Dead matchup, you could also pitch your DBs to a Blightning or some other discard as well, since most people don't run all of those cards mentioned, and there are some lists without any of those mono-red creatures.
-Against Sepuchral Strength: It can hit Master of the Wild Hunt, Oracle of Mul Daya, the big green wurms, and a few other odd mono-green creatures make DB worthwhile in these matchups.
-Against any other deck: It's a 2 mana Murder.
All in all, I still find it worth to run as a 2-of in the main deck.
Pacifism - my least favorite type of "removal" in this game, so much so that I don't run this card in any of the decks that it's available, and the only Pacifism-style card that I do run is the Pillory of the Sleepless. It's just too easy for most decks to play around this, either with creature abilities that still work through the Pacifism, bouncing their creature, or destroying the enchantment. Most decks can do one or more of those things, which really hampers Pacifism's usefulness. This deck already has one of the best spot removal packages in the game, and I don't feel the desire to add this in the mix.
Knight of Glory/Infamy - Not bad, not bad at all. Protection from black and white help against spot removal, and can block those colored creatures indefinately, which helps make some matchups more bearable. Even against a green or blue deck, they're still 2/1 with exalted, swinging alone it will at least be a 3/2, so they can be of good use.
Pillory of the Sleepless - Pacifism + life drain. Again, not a fan of it being an aura, but the pinging effect makes it more worthwhile.
Unmake - It exiles at instant speed (bye Chandra's Phoenix). Only downside is the conflict with Cathedral of War, but I'd rather take superb creature removal than the Cathedral.
Mortify - pretty much auto include, can hit creatures and enchantments at instant speed.
Vindicate - not instant speed, but still worthwile. It can hit any targetable permanent. Fun thing to do, if your opponent get's stuck on 2-3 land, and you see they aren't playing much, blast one of their lands and buy yourself some more time and tempo.
Royal Assassin - it's the "quick, throw removal at it!" creature. It can also make some cute combos with Deathbringer Leige + a white spell, and Silent Arbiter. You can use its effect after your opponent declares an attack, and their creature won't hit you.
Whispersilk Cloak - 2 problems with this deck is pushing damage through (especially when you only have one attack) and your creatures not having much protection. This card alleviates both these problems. It takes a total of 5 mana to cast and equip, but it can really help break stalemates. Careful when you try to equip it and your opponent has untaped mana with the possiblity of instant speed bounce/removal. Wouldn't reccommend two of these, since you don't really want more than 1.
No Mercy/Silent Arbiter - Yay, we get to slow the game down. Not too much else to say about these guys, they're pretty good for this deck.
Sublime Archangel - Another auto-include. Just having a few creatures out when you drop this can make them absolutely huge, combining it with lifelink will be a huge boost as well.
Battlegrace Angel - one of the "meh" cards from the bigger creatures, but it does grant lifelink, and it does fly.
Deathbringer Leige - So not only does this boost all our creatures, but now every white + black spell we play now has an added effect of "destroy taget creature." Well timed white or black spells can also really help control the board and win you the game with this guy.
Divinity of Pride - Flying, lifelink, and the possibility of getting bigger. A good choice overall, can't really go wrong with it.
Nefarox, Overlord of Grixis - My issue with this guy isn't so much that he's a 6 mana card, it's that his sacrifice effect only works when Nefarox attacks, as opposed to Battlegrace Angel which will give any single-attacking creature lifelink. This makes Nefarox the weakest of the 4+ mana cards imo, and thus I cut it to make room for the equipment, since Sigil makes for a pretty nice 6 mana card.
Angel of Despair - A decent enters the battlefield effect. The downside with this big creature is the 7 mana casting cost, but it's the only thing we have with an enters the battlefield effect here, which will go great with our next card.
Debtors' Knell - If this card survives for a turn or 2, you should be able to win. steal your opponent's creatures from their graveyard, or revive yours. I'd like it if there were more enters the battlefield effect creatures in this deck, as that would make playing Debtors' Knell that much better. Still a great game winning card, even if it does cost 7 mana.
Tormented Soul - It's unblockability helps push damage through, goes great with exalted, but more for the aggro deck.
Darklit Gargoyle - These guys can put a lot of pressure on your opponent when you've got some exalted triggers. Flying also helps.
Mark of Asylum - pretty much hoses burn (all their burn spells will start going to your face, but hey, you've got lifelink stuff). The reason I didn't include it is because it's not that useful outside of the burn matchup. I don't like including cards in a deck that are only useable in 1 or 2 matchups. Sure, it stops Garruk's fight mechanic and Tendrils of Corruption, but it's still not worth it, imo.
Guardians of Akrasa - The 4 toughness is nice, but I'm not liking 0 power creatures in this format. They only stall 1 creature, they have no killing power. If it had just 1 power, I'd be running at least a couple of them.
Sword of Vengence - If there's one thing I learned from some of my more recent DotP deck building and testing (specifically Celestial Light and Dream Puppets), it's that good equipment wins games. The Sword happens to be in the category of making just about any given creature into a huge threat. The sword is also great here because it helps patch up 2 of the weaknesses of this deck. First, with vigilance and first strike, your creature can now perform offense and defense. And second, with trample, you can break through stalemates and chump blocking issues.
Angelic Bendiction - I generally don't like 4 mana cards that can't do things on their own. sure, you can make some cute combos with Royal Assassin, but you only have one Assassin. Sorry, but 1-of combos aren't worth including this card.
Duskmantle Prowler - 4 mana for a 2/2, no thanks. Haste and Exalted don't really go together, because you don't really want to attack with a bunch of 1/1s, 2/1s, 0/2s, and 1/2s that would all just get chump blocked and killed.
Worship - This is one of those cards that I hate playing against, but when I use it, it never seems to work in my favor much. It's more of a stall card that stops you from losing the game, but it's dependant on having a creature. Most decks have ways to play around this (save for a few), and I'd rather be playing something that's more pro-active (arbiter/no mercy) than something that can be ignored until I have 1 life left, at which point the card just gets bounced, destroyed, or you meet a board sweeper or sign in blood.
Sigil of Distinction - I admit it, I severly underestimated this card the first time around. It was after I got dominated by this card in an online match that made me reconsider it. Generally, this is a card you want to spend 4 or more mana on. Yeah, the downside is that it gets weaker over time, but how many times are you going to equip it during a game? Maybe 2-3? Sigil does bring one huge advantage to the table, and that's that this peice of equipment doesn't cost any mana to equip. This is huge. You can now spend all your mana on casting Sigil to get the most counters on it, then equip it right away and swing for huge damage from out of nowhere. This is especially helpful to the lifelink cards, since lifelink is another means of overcoming the weak defenses of this deck.