This is my Captain Sisay EDH. This was the first edh deck I built, and I think it is the best of my 3. It is primarily a 1v1 deck, and I play multi player about 1 in 15 games of edh.
If I were to rank aspects of magic in a list of importance for edh:
1. Having more mana than your opponents/Playing a land every turn
2. Having something to do with that mana
3. Everything else (winning)
To use a general that isn't card advantage seems questionable, and Captian Sisay seems like the easiest way to abuse card advantage. The basic plan with this deck is Ramp & Smash. To help me live I play a lot of wrath variants and other removal.
I play alot of mana excel and both Mana Reflection and Mirari's Wake because they are completely broken. I always have things to do with my mana. I don't play Harmonize or Reki because they are very redundant and I never need more cards to play. I never have Sisay out and nothing relevant to get.
A typical game goes:
T1: Land
T2: Land, maybe excel
T3: Land, Removal, Excel
T4: Land, Creature, Excel
T5 or later: Play Sisay
At this point I begin to tutor up two distinct packages. Against control, 8.5 Tails, Teeg and Saffi are almost always enough for me to just win, and I begin to assemble those pieces, usually in the form of Saffi then Teeg then 8.5. Predator Flagship also is really good against decks with few creatures.
Against aggro I usually get lands for a few turns to help me play a wrath variant or just color fix. I get Saffi to slow them down. Then I get Yosei/Akroma/Myojin/Reya and smash with them while getting back more creatures.
The only decks that I have trouble with are combo, and I am willing to have a bad matchup there.
I play alot of Artifact/Enchantment hate. I like to kill peoples tempo by blowing up their artifact excel and enchantments/artifacts can cause problems.
I really like this deck, Suggestions are welcome.
Private Mod Note
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Accomplishments:
1800+ in Limited
3-0ing after drafting 17 non-basics in Cube
I really want to commend you for having a really good sense of how a deck like this works. Using Sisay's renewable tutoring with a robust mana base is what the deck is focused on. Disrupting your opponent's mana can leave them unable to answer your eventual horde of legendary threats.
It's also clear you put a lot of thought into your list; most of the cards I was going to suggest are already in there!
I do have a bunch suggestions designed strengthen the key parts of your deck: acceleration, tempo/mana denial and threats.
Tutorable acceleration: Gaea's Cradle
Generates much, much more mana than a normal land. Usually the first card I tutor for.
Patron of the Orochi
Is generally played with the mana you gained from Rofellos and Gaea's Cradle. Generates absurd amounts of mana with Rofellos while also allowing you to use Sisay multiple times. Remember: he untaps himself and can be used both on your turn and your opponent's!
Honor-Worn Shaku
A cheap accelerant that can generate tons of mana when combined with vanilla legends and patron of the orochi. An optional fourth tutor target.
Mana Denial
We generate an substantial amount of mana in the early game, and the best way to insure our victory is to stop our opponents from playing additional spells. Destroying a few of our opponent's lands in the opening turns merely stints our development, while it greatly slows our opposition, sometimes locking them out of the game.
The Early Game Play: Hokori, Dust Drinker
When your opponent plays a spell, you'll generally want to tutor up and play Hokori while his lands are tapped. Hokori only stints your development as you can still tutor and play Gaea's cradle into Rofellos Into Patron of the Orochi. After that, Hokori barely affects you. Your opponents will often struggle to untap enough lands to play even a few more spells. Hokori helps neuter your opponent's resistance.
Backup for the midgame: The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
With Hokori in play, this puts our opponent in a really tough spot. They only untap 1 land a turn, but need to invest mana every turn to keep their creatures alive. This forces them to skimp on spells even more. Our deck, with it's vast generation potential isn't as affected. In fact, Gaea's Cradle can be used to pay the upkeep every turn, while Rofellos, Patron of the Orochi and nonland accelerants keep our board position developed.
Once you have developed a significant amount of mana, you can completely lock your opponent out of the game. First, play Crovax, Ascendant Hero, then play Kamahl and turn all of your opponent's lands into 0/0 creatures because of Crovax (Jitte counters also work). Your opponent is unable to cast additional spells, and you're left with an army of creatures, tons of mana, and a unlimited supply of overruns. The threat is built into the mana denial plan.
This entire gameplan can be tutored off a Sisay. You can do this absolutely every game you have four mana sources and your opponent doesn't disrupt you. The plan is also fairly resiliant to disruption because 1) You disrupt your opponent's mana at every oppurtunity, 2) You can replay Sisay (or tutor for her in case of hinder), 3) Mana generators are somewhat interchangeable, and 4) You play plenty of other win conditions that you can grab with Sisay.
That entire gameplan fills only 7-8 slots in the maindeck, enabling the deck to play 50+ largely flexible support cards. Here're some different cards that I chose to play in my version:
SUPPORT CARDS
Additional Land destruction Strip Mine Wasteland
Always useful. Tap for mana to get Sisay in play, then set their mana back.
Acceleration
A faster Sisay means you roll your gameplan out faster and your opponent has less time to react. This means that accelerants are crucial. In order to develop a robust amounts of mana and play Sisay early, I reccomend 15-20 accelerants. Sol Ring, Mox Diamond, Chrome Mox and Mana Crypt are especially good, because they enable a turn 2 Sisay when played alongside rampant growth.
These cards enable you to untap Sisay multiple times per turn, which makes comboing go much more quickly and smoothly. This speed (and forest return) means that it is well worth it to play Azusa, Lost but Seeking because 1) you have extra tutors to spare and 2) you need to play lands to keep up with the speed of the tutoring.
Other cards: Akroma's Memorial
Only tutorable source of haste, makes your guys harder to remove.
Mindslaver
Tutor this up anytime you have ten mana. Your opponent shouldn't be able to come back from this, followed by another threat.
Other expensive threats: very few. In the late game, Sisay can tutor up all the threats I need; so I dedicate most of my slots to early game cards I want in my opening hand.
I was going to suggest Gaea's Cradle, Rofellos, Hokori, and Kamahl, but Dan beat me to it. I echo all of his sentiments. I'm not sure you need that many untappers or the Honor-Worn Shaku (it's not tutorable acceleration...), but other than that I can get behind the suggestions. This is already one of the most solid Sisay lists I've seen. No fluff, just business.
Dan, since your list seems to be similar, and you're suggesting a lot of additions but no cuts, would you mind posting your list in this thread?
At a glance, I think you could afford to cut Crib Swap, Wing Shards (you have a lot of removal), Planar Portal, Chord of Calling (you hardly need much more tutoring; these are expensive), Behemoth Sledge (meh), Deadwood Treefolk (too expensive for the effect), Glory (way too awkward without Survival of the Fittest), Oversoul of Dusk (you don't need random fat), Runed Halo (this doesn't actually do anything vs. any of the generals you should be afraid of), Wild Pair (not sure on this one, but I think it'll be a 6-mana-meh a lot of the time), Elspeth (+1 abilities are not very relevant, and you can't count on getting the -8. It happens so rarely).
You should consider adding Condemn (better than Wing Shards for sure) and Miren, the Moaning Well. Another legendary land can't hurt, it helps to protect you vs. blue steal-your-stuff decks, and, most importantly, it lets you Sisay up a potentially infinite Yosei lock. Fetching Yosei, followed by Miren (and activating it), followed by Reya Dawnbringer ought to win you a lot of games. Also, throw in Vesuva, because why not? It's almost never bad, and it's often a Wasteland for nasty things like Tolarian Academy. I see no reason at all not to run it.
Also, stuff like Sensei's Divining Top, Sylvan Library, Scroll Rack, and Mirri's Guile are incredible when you can shuffle your library every turn. If you do run some of these, you might consider Lurking Predators (perhaps in the Wild Pair slot). It's potentially insane card and tempo advantage even without library manipulation.
Harmonic Sliver probably deserves a slot amidst your artifact/enchantment removal. I think it's usually better than Qasali Pridemage in EDH, though they're very similar cards. Acidic Slime is the new hotness when it comes to utility removal, and may well be worthwhile here. I think it's better than Wickerbough Elder and some of your other options. Especially if you keep Wild Pair... Stonecloaker is another great utility creature that can save your guys, replay citp (etb now?) abilities, and, most importantly, hate on the graveyard. Most combo decks in EDH rely on the graveyard to go off, so this is a pretty good way to slow those decks down.
Is your experience with Captain Sisay? There is certainly such a thing as too much tutoring, especially in this deck. Congregation at Dawn and Sylvan Tutor are bad here, because they interfere with using Sisay optimally. Time of Need is extremely redundant. Worldly Tutor isn't bad, but there's so much tutoring already in here that I'm not sure there's a need for it.
The primary use of these tutors would be to get back Sisay if she gets shuffled into your deck somehow. This is important, but not THAT important, considering it shouldn't happen too often with smart play, and that Sisay isn't absolutely required for the deck to function.
assemble voltron and make your general undistructable 'till he's out.
steelshaper's gift can help, but general is fine. can help get your lighting greaves as well.
it's a bit of card addage, but is pretty ammusing when he's assembled.
I've been playing this deck on magicworkstation for about a week now and it's been a load of fun.
This is a combo deck, first and foremost. Getting an early Sisay is key, because you'll be tutoring the cards you need with her. With acceleration and aggressive mulliganing, this can consistently be done on turns 2-3.
One you get an active Sisay, disrupting your opponent's gameplan is key. Get Hokori, Dust Drinker , Magus of the Corondor, Kataki, War's Wage , and The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale to put pressure on their mana and prevent them from casting many spells.
That's the basic gameplan; the rest of the cards are mainly for situational disruption and utility. Akroma's Memorial provides tutorable haste and protection from removal Mangara of Corondor destroys lands and other troublesome permanents Patron of the Orochi can untap Sisay and your mana once during your turn and once during your opponent's. Best with haste.
This is a rough draft of a competitive list. I plan to cut down on unnecessary tutor targets and play more acceleration and utility cards in a final list.
Hey Dan,
Thanks for posting your list; sorry it took me so long to respond. Did you ever finish editing it? I finally had a chance to test out your list, and I've got some feedback on the underperformers, as well as some cards that should be in there.
The Lands:
This is a tricky deck to get a proper landbase for--but yours is really good. You have to maximize your forest count for Rofellos, but also consistently have white mana by turn 3. My only comment is that you should find room for a few more lands:
Horizon Canopy: The lifeloss is quite negligible, and sometimes you want that draw. You could cut Sungrass Prairie for this.
Kor Haven: Absolutely required. It's legendary, and it's really very good in EDH--I can't count how many games it's allowed me to stall long enough to win. It's just brutal against most decks that rely on attacking with their general.
Yavimaya Hollow: One of the only tutorable things that can help you to protect Sisay or a certain other key creature. You should have this.
Rishadan Port: It's pretty mean, but this makes it so much harder for an opponent to break out from under Hokori, Dust Drinker. You need mana elves to support it under Hokori, but that's not hard to do.
The Acceleration:
Most of your acceleration boosts you into playing Sisay faster, and many of them fix your mana to boot. Acceleration is a lot better in my opinion if it can get you white mana--you always have access to green in this deck (a result of running so many forests), but you often need the help of an accelerator to find white mana. You have a ton of acceleration, but that's good--it's one of the most important factors in making a deck competitive. These are the accelerators I'm not so sure I like:
Emerald Medallion: This is just bad here. While it does speed you into Sisay, it doesn't affect enough of your other spells, and it doesn't color fix at all. You can do better, easily.
Overgrowth: Doesn't even accelerate you into Sisay, and, like all auras, it's dangerous to boot. I get that it has some synergy with Hokori, Dust Drinker and with Garruk Wildspeaker, but that doesn't justify its inclusion. Especially because using it effectively with Hokori usually dictates putting it on Gaea's Cradle, and that's just asking for trouble. This card backfires on you too often, and isn't strong enough to be worth the risk.
Wild Growth: Better than Overgrowth, but still not so good. It doesn't fix your colors, it doesn't help Rofellos, and it opens you up to card and tempo disadvantage. There's not enough synergy to make this worthwhile.
Honor-Worn Shaku: It doesn't accelerate you into Sisay, and it doesn't fix mana. There also aren't all that many things you really want to tap for 1 measly colorless mana. You have 1 land and about 5 cheap legendary creatures you can probably tap for this. Even with Sisay going full speed, I rarely have more than 2-3 things I'll tap for this. That makes it...about as good as Thran Dynamo. If I'm lucky. Often, it's worse. I have tested this, and it's never done anything meaningful for me at all.
Channel: This card has been really good for me once, and utterly dead the other 6 times. The tricky thing about it is that it really only works if you have a ton of colored mana and a bunch of expensive cards in hand--but if you have a ton of colored mana, your acceleration has already worked, so what do you need Channel for? Any game where Channel helps you, you're probably winning anyways. (Besides, I found a replacement for Channel that's so much better...read on to my suggested inclusions.)
Mox Diamond: This is arguable. It does accelerate you, and it does fix mana. However...for every hand where Mox Diamond has helped me accelerate into Sisay, I've had another hand where I didn't have enough lands and was just wishing the Mox was another land. Any hand with 1-2 lands and Mox Diamond might as well be a mulligan. Overall, I don't think Mox Diamond has been more helpful more times than it's been annoying. Depending on your other card choices though, the Mox could certainly still stay.
Suggested inclusions:
Three Visits: Nature's Lore is one of your best accelerators...this is just Nature's Lore #2. It's great.
Boreal Druid: It doesn't color-fix, but it's another 1-drop accelerator, and it does double-duty with Gaea's Cradle or Priest of Titania out. I think it's pretty good. Quirion Elves might also be considered for similar reasons--it's a 2-drop, but it also does double-duty, and color-fixes as well.
Here's my favorite acceleration suggestion--though it's usually considered to be one of the weakest cards from one of the weakest sets ever, and it's never to my knowledge seen any constructed play whatsoever, it's amazing in this deck: Myojin of Life's Web. It's hilarious that a nine-mana card can be considered acceleration, but it really is in this deck. I very often find myself with a hand full of nice, yet expensive, legends due to Sisay, with access to around 9-12 green mana through Rofellos and/or Gaea's Cradle. This is usually as early as turn 5 or 6. Before, the best I could do was to play one or two of these legends and pass. With the Myojin though (which is tutorable), I can just play the Myojin, then dump my hand onto the board at the end of my opponent's turn. This gives me a huge army, ready to attack. What's more, I can usually combo off with the Myojin, by dropping Kamahl + Crovax, or Yosei + Reya (and tutoring up Miren). I only thought to add him very recently, but he's won me so many games already. This is the Channel replacement--it does everything Channel does well, but does it so much better, is tutorable, and comes with an 8/8 body to boot. It's incredibly good in this deck. Please try it.
I'm loathe to add too many artifacts (due to Kataki, mostly), but if you still feel you need more accelerators, I would go with Coldsteel Heart and maybe even Marble Diamond. They both accelerate you into Sisay and colorfix. You could do a lot worse. I'm pretty sure all the accelerators I mentioned are better in this deck than the ones I pointed out above (with the possible exception of Mox Diamond).
Instill Energy I have mixed feelings about, but I'm leaning towards no. It's annoying that it's limited to one creature (whereas the others can work well with either Sisay or Rofellos, depending on what resource you need more), that it's an aura (yuck), and that the haste is rarely relevant (I usually want to cast Sisay as fast as I can, and that's almost always at 4 mana). It's been really good for me in one game, but it's usually disappointing. Even when I do get it on Sisay and she doesn't get blown up in response, I really don't need 2 legends a turn most of the time. I don't think this is worthwhile.
Quirion Ranger/Scryb Ranger: These have been awful and irrelevant every single time I drew them. Like I said, 2 Sisay activations a turn is usually overkill, and it's not worth slowing your mana development to get extra activations. These can work with Rofellos, but there's considerable long term negative synergy there, as he really wants those Forests in play. These guys are a bit better with Azusa, Lost but Seeking out, but still not good enough--Azusa is rarely the card I want to be tutoring for or playing, and it's really not worth it just to turn these into Seeker of Skybreak. These aren't acceleration--if anything, they're negative acceleration. Get rid of them.
Non-legendary creatures:
Interestingly, aside from your acceleration, most of these are actually pretty awful.
Seedborn Muse:
Usually a great card in EDH...but dreadful in this deck. About all she really does in this deck is get you another Sisay activation and let you block better, and that's not worth it for 5 mana on a non-legendary creature. This deck really has nothing to do on an opponent's turn, so the Muse is pretty pointless. If you had something like Vedalken Orrery, she might be worthwhile...but as neither is consistently tutorable, this "combo" isn't really tight enough to be worth the slots I think.
Dauntless Escort:
It's not terrible, but it's not that good either. You can't usually find it when you really want it, and it's only much good against mass removal--and even then, it does nothing against sweepers like Hallowed Burial or Final Judgment, which see a lot of play. Many of the kinds of spot removal common in EDH also get around indestructibility (StP, Path, Faith's Fetters, Spin into Myth, etc.). As your deck is now, sweepers are by far it's biggest weakness--but there's a much better answer to those than this poor rhino (Gaddock Teeg, duh).
Stuff to add:
Uh, maybe Genesis. It has no particular synergy with this deck (except that you can sac it to Miren, I guess), but you really should have more ways to recur creatures. In your list, do you know how many ways you have to get a creature again when it's been destroyed? Just one--and it's Primal Command, which sucks for that job. Genesis is quite good, so you may as well run it.
Knight of the Reliquary: Could be unnecessary, but I really love this card in g/w decks. The tutor effect is very powerful, and it gets big too. I'm going to suggest running Cruclble of Worlds as well, and together with that and Azusa, Lost but Seeking, (and perhaps Strip Mine?), this knight can get very good very fast. It finds you Rishadan Port for your Hokori lock too.
Academy Rector might be nice too, if you fit in some killer enchantments. You always have access to Miren, the Moaning Well, so the Rector is a quick ticket to whatever enchantment you want.
Legendary Creatures:
Reki, the History of Kamagawa: He's okay, but really nothing special. This deck has so much tutoring power that drawing a few cards is not that consequential. I'll still run him if I have room, but I won't be sad if I have to cut him. He doesn't really win me any games.
Azusa, Lost but Seeking: I don't really like her in your list, because by the time I can play her, I never have enough lands in hand for her to actually do anything. That said, she's potentially a very powerful card. I'm going to suggest adding Crucible of Worlds shortly, and with that addition alone, she becomes quite good.
Yomiji, Who Bars the Way: I tried really hard to like this guy, and I still can't. He's far too expensive for what he does. He really only has 2 roles: 1) stall mass removal, and 2) combo with Yosei, the Morning Star or Mindslaver. In the first role, he is hugely outclassed by Gaddock Teeg. He doesn't do anything vs. Hallowed Burial/Final Judgment, and he doesn't even make a Wrath bad--it still kills Yomiji, bounces all your legends, and kills your other stuff. He's also so slow and ineffective that it's really quite hard to find the time and mana to play him before the rest of your army, so he sits in your hand and does nothing most of the time.
That leaves the combo role. This is better, but it's still not even that solid a win condition. Reya Dawnbringer does the Yosei combo almost as well as Yomiji, and is a thousand times better and more versatile on her own (she's another way to recur your lost creatures too). Reya demands to be included I think, so the question is whether Yomiji is worthwhile just for the Mindslaver combo--as we've established that's just about all he's good for. I really don't think he is, considering I've played 20+ games with both Yomiji and Mindslaver in the deck, and never bothered assembling the combo even once--there was always a safer, better option. Perhaps I'm wrong, and I should have been assembling that combo--I doubt it, but it's possible he does actually belong in this deck. Testing will see, if I have room.
Akroma's Memorial: Really bad in this deck. I've never bothered tutoring for it or playing it even once. You say it's tutorable haste and protection from removal...but by the time you can play it, you really don't need haste, and if your opponents are holding removal, they've probably used it by now or your creatures are otherwise protected. Red/Black removal isn't really that scary either--you should be more worried about the white and blue removal. This is really an extraneous and unnecessary card.
Now stuff to add:
The most massive omission you've made is Gaddock Teeg. He was MADE for this deck. He barely hurts you at all (and will hurt you even less, once you make a few edits), but he shuts down huge portions of most decks in this format, including almost every board sweeper that sees any play (the only exceptions I can think of are Oblivion Stone and Kagemaro, First to Suffer). This is tremendous for you, considering that most decks can sneak out a Wrath or a Damnation from under Hokori, Dust Drinker, and that that Wrath absolutely wrecks your board position every time. You NEED this card. Your whole gameplan is based around "disrupting your opponent's gameplan." Nothing at all does that better than Teeg against most decks, and he's dirt-cheap to play as well. Many people just concede when I get him down alongside Hokori.
Reya Dawnbringer: She's just really good and versatile, and part of a combo to boot. The triple white can actually be problematic in this deck, but you'll get there eventually. Myojin of Life's Web also helps out with the cost.
Akroma, Angel of Wrath: Perhaps not necessary, but she really does win games by herself sometimes. Especially off the Myojin, she gives you a very solid beatdown plan. I like her.
Tolsimir Wolfblood: Okay. He isn't a great card, but he solves a major negative synergy problem that this deck runs into a lot without access to him. Crovax, Ascendant Hero is a really great card. He's majorly disruptive against certain decks, he's part of a great, extremely easy to assemble 2-card combo, and he's next to impossible to kill. You want to play him, usually early. Unfortunately, Crovax does terrible things to your elvish mana acceleration, most notably Rofellos. Just playing him tends to nuke half of your potential mana, which is a terrible thing. The solution is to make Rofellos and friends at least X/2. Tolsimir Wolfblood accomplishes that, and gives you a lot more power to beat down with as well. Gaea's Cradle kind of likes him too. You should really run him: Rofellos implores you. Day of Destiny could also be a good, slightly cheaper option, but I don't like it as much because it won't save your non-Rofellos mana-dorks, and because it doesn't play nice with Gaddock Teeg. Kongming, "Sleeping Dragon" would work well, but is a complete bastard to find, and maybe isn't even as good as Tolsimir. (Note: Tolsimir getting destroyed with Crovax in play isn't a problem, as you can always bounce Crovax back to your hand in response if he's going to be killing something you want to keep.)
Rune-Tail, Kitsune Ascendant: This is actually pretty good. Against any red deck, or any deck that's going to go aggro on you, you can tutor for this first, and play it immediately. It protects all your creatures from burn and from combat damage. It's fairly dead against some decks, but it's amazing enough against others that I think it's worth running.
Hua Tuo, Honored Physician: This is maybe too cute, and not an easy card to find either, but I think it could actually be very good in this deck, given your lack of recursion. I haven't tested him yet, but a free Volrath's Stronghold effect every turn is pretty strong for 3 mana.
Kiyomaro, First to Stand: Probably no room or need for him, but this guy is very efficient. It's really pretty common for me to have 7 cards in hand, and a 5 mana, 7/7-8/8 Vigilance creature that gains me life can't be that bad. He is bad after I use Myojin of Life's Web though, which probably disqualifies him.
Predator, Flagship, Myojin of Cleansing Fire, and Arashi, the Sky Asunder are all cards to keep in mind, though I don't think they'll make the cut for the maindeck. If you find yourself desperately needing one of these effects a lot, one of these cards might be a worthwhile inclusion. I suspect that Predator and the Myojin are too mana-intensive for their effect, however. Arashi is actually very efficient, but I don't have enough trouble with flyers to justify running him right now. Maybe if you play against a lot of dragons.
And finally, Spells:
Most of your choices are pretty good, but Gaddock requires a little adjusting. Given that he's very likely going to pop up by turn 4 or 5 in most games, you don't want to run many spells that he'll interfere with.
Primal Command is probably sufficiently strong to run anyways.
Austere Command: Eh...it's alright, but Gaddock will get in its way a lot, as he'll almost always come out first. How about running Oblivion Stone (which is fine with Gaddock) and Enlightened Tutor instead? The Tutor, in addition to grabbing your mass removal, is also great when finding Lightning Greaves, Mana Crypt, Duplicant, Survival of the Fittest, etc. In this format, any good tutor you can run, you probably should run.
Faith's Fetters: Meh. I like having access to an enchantment removal spell, but Gaddock doesn't like this, and the 4 life is almost always irrelevant. How about Arrest instead? Does the same thing, Gaddock lets it through, and it's even effective against Rofellos, whereas Faith's Fetters isn't. Sounds good to me.
Garruk Wildspeaker: He can stay, I think. You could cut him if you need the room though.
This sounds like blasphemy, but I've been considering cutting Survival of the Fittest as well. In your deck, as it's posted, Survival is actually quite terrible--you don't have any great creatures that Sisay can't find for you, and you don't have any cards that create card advantage with Survival--no recursion. However, if you add all the creatures I suggested (especially Genesis), you probably have enough gas to make this worth running. It's such a great card, I wouldn't be surprised. You do need to add those utility creatures to make it worthwhile though.
And spells to add...
As I've mentioned a couple times, this deck really wants Crucible of Worlds. Another Enlightened Tutor target, gives you your only way to recur Gaea's Cradle (which is very important), and has great interactions with Strip Mine/Wasteland, your fetchlands, Azusa, and Knight of the Reliquary. Life from the Loam would be the other way you could approach land recursion, but I think that the Crucible is a much better fit in this deck.
I'm not usually a fan of Regrowth in EDH, but I think this deck wants the recursion. Sometimes, something you really want gets destroyed at a bad time, and you have a really hard time getting it back. This is a good option to have.
If you do add Academy Rector, you need some more enchantments to abuse it with. Survival of the Fittest, Sylvan Library, and Arrest is a start, but a pretty poor one. This deck actually has no need for Mirari's Wake/Mana Reflection, so those are out. Priviledged Position is the best I can come up with...I think it's good enough to justify running, even alongside Teeg. Teeg + Priviledged Position in play should make most people cry.
And...my brain is drained for now. I'll probably come up with more later, after more testing. I hope you're still around--let me know what you think. Hopefully this short book will be useful to anyone working on a Sisay deck.
Nothing like cracking fetchlands over and over again to get far ahead in mana. Or replaying Strip Mine and blowing up multiple lands. Horizon Canopy also becomes a very potent draw engine as well.
Heck, Crucible is great by itself. It protects all your utility lands and is already great with fetches + Horizon Canopy. Azusa just pushes it to the next level.
Captian Sisay might be my next EDH project after I just finish up acquiring random cards for my Maga deck.
Magewright's Stone seems like a win-more card to me IMO. Thousand-Year Elixir does the same thing as stone except it also gives Sisay haste. I can't think of too many situations where you would want to activate Sisay twice in a turn. Once per turn is usually more than enough considering how powerful her ability is to begin with.
For me, I'm also trying to make the deck less reliant on Sisay in case she gets hit by a tuck spell (Hinder/Spin into Myth/etc) or she draws early hate.
I'm in the middle of making this deck in real life since I did some quick testing with it on MWS and this deck is just way too fun to play. It's like one huge massive toolbox that has answers to pretty much everything.
I was looking through other possible legendary creatures to play in the deck, and I stumbled across Chorus of the Conclave. 8 mana is really expensive, but this deck is definately capable of mana ramping with land fetching and cards like Rofellos and Gaea's Cradle. Chorus of the Conclave seems like a great way to take the huge glut of mana that this deck produces going into the late game and putting it to good use. Turning a Sakura-Tribe Elder into a 9+ power monstrosity is a great way to make all the small creatures huge threats. Hell, you could even pump Sisay with it and crush someone through general damage if you really needed to. I'm pretty sure this card needs testing, but in practice it seems pretty good.
Also, I LOVE Reveillark in this deck. It has such a ridiculous amount of synergy in this deck that it's crazy. Bringing back land fetching elves, Eternal Witness, Acidic Slime, Duplicant, Knight of the Reliquary, Karmic Guide, Rofellos, Saffi, Gaddock Teeg, Hokori, and friends is just simply amazing. It provides this deck a lot of card advantage and an excellent way to recover from a board sweeper. Combo it with Survival of the Fittest and things can get really nutty.
It is also quite convenient that Sisay has 2 power herself.
Thanks for all the feedback and advice. Alot of the cards suggested (tabernacle, rofellos, gaes crade, sol ring, mox diamond, mana crypt, fetchlands, savanah) I just don't own. I don't use workshop so I'm midly limited to what I have, however I could probably trade for all of those except tabernacle.
I recently got an academy rector, and I'm pleasantly suprised. I threw in lurking predators, and fetching that is awesome.
I know this is blasphemy, but I want to take out Jitte. I have been disappointed in it every time I draw it. It doesn't actually do anything that you want it to. The only time I ever play it is when I have two unused mana available and it in my hand. I have never wanted to fetch it to kill things because Managara of Corondor is just better at removing stuff (plus he's super synergistic with thousand year elixir/any untap effect).
I'm thinking about adding Llanowar Reborn. Having the extra +1 toughness on teeg or sisay would be relevant often.
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It might be kinda tough to play this deck without Gaea's Cradle and Rofellos. Both cards give you a great deal of tutorable acceleration that this deck needs because it can get quite mana hungry.
I like Jitte because it provides threat density. It turns any creature in the deck into a must-answer threat, even if it's a lowly utility creature.
Llanowar Reborn really isn't needed to protect smaller creatures and Sisay. Okina and Eiganjo Castle already have good defensive abilities to protect your legendary creatures, and Yavimaya Hollow regenerates creatures as well.
Good job. Now find Rofellos too, and you're golden.
Honestly, without Rofellos and Gaea's Cradle, you weren't even playing the same deck as me. My first three Sisay targets are almost always Rofellos, Gaea's Cradle, and Hokori, with the order depending on the state of the game.
The whole reason this deck works, and works so well, is the consistent access to large amounts of mana, early in the game. As a general, only Rofellos and maybe Sasaya are faster and more consistent in producing mana, but mono-green decks don't have nearly the card selection and versatily gained from tutoring every turn and having access to the best white cards.
For other cards mentioned: Umezawa's Jitte should stay. It's the only good tutorable equipment (and it's one of the best equipment, period), and sometimes you want to tutor for equipment. Also, you can't rely on Mangara to do your removal for you--he's pretty much a one-shot effect. What if you've used him already, or you're missing double white, or you can't afford to wait a turn and don't have Thousand-Year Elixir? Umezawa's Jitte you can tutor, equip to something, attack immediately, and have that removal ready.
Llanowar Reborn isn't worthwhile. Coming into play tapped is bad, and not being a forest for Rofellos is even worse. What's it going to save Sisay or Gaddock from? Shock? Volcanic Fallout? No one plays these cards in EDH, so don't bother.
I quite like Lurking Predators, but I'm not sure it's quite good enough to make the cut, considering Gaddock doesn't like it, and Gaddock is king in this deck. I'll think about it.
Chorus of the Conclave is a horrible, horrible card. Sure, we can play it, but both it and it's ability are extremely inefficient uses of mana. We make a lot of mana, yes, but we can use all of it without resorting to junk like this.
Reveillark is good, and it helps with the recursion issue that worries me. Running Reveillark basically requires me to also add Karmic Guide and Acidic Slime...I just can't resist. There's no infinite combo here, with no sacrifice outlet (although Mirror Entity might actually be good, and a much better mana sink than Chorus of the Conclave...), but these cards have a tons of synergy together, besides just being really good cards. Karmic Guide is more awesome recursion, and Acidic Slime is the most versatile 187 creature available, beating out options like Harmonic Sliver, Wickerbough Elder, or Indrik Stomphowler in this deck. We can answer artifacts pretty well with Glissa Sunseeker, but it's probably a good idea to have answers to enchantments too, and this is the best way to do it.
If you want more recursion look into a mistviel plains, with sisay in play you only need one more white permanent. It let's you tutor bak for yor legends that ended up in your graveyard. If you play farseek and eternal dragon it's tutorable.
First things first, I'll talk about Lurking Predators. I don't play it; I play with Survival of the Fittest instead and I have never looked back. SotF is Gaddock Teeg-friendly for one thing unlike Lurking Predators, but most importantly it's far more reliable than Lurking Predators could be. This deck can produce gobs of mana thanks to Rofellos and Gaea's Cradle, so I don't see too much value into having a chance to cheat a creature into play.
SotF also allows us to play Genesis, another great recursion card against sweepers and for protecting the fragile stuff in the deck.
Additionally, Survival easily sets up the ability to go infinite with Reveillark and Karmic Guide. Here is an excellent post from Donald explaining how the combo works:
6. Repeat step 5 for all remaining triggers except for the very last one. Each time, Yosei, the Morning Star will die and you will choose 5 permanents to tap, tap every permanent all your opponents have and they have to skip their untap step. When the last trigger resolves, Reveillark will come into play and trigger. Get back Mirror Entity & Saffi Ericksdotter. You can now repeat the combo for 0 mana at instant speed.
You can do this with a number of other creatures other than just Yosei though obviously. If you don't want to play the infinite combo for some reason (and I can definately understand if one doesn't want to go infinite), just Survival alone will generate some obscene card advantage in the deck especially when you combo it with Reveillark and Karmic Guide.
Reveillark seems like a slam dunk to me for this deck. I had mentioned in a previous post at all the relevant creatures that Lark recurs, and in my build that runs the Survival shell it just too good not to play.
As for Chorus of the Conclave, you're probably right. In theory, she seems like a good card to help break through stalemates and to turn utility creatures into wrecking balls. By herself though, a 3/8 for 8 mana is pretty underwhelming. And good call on reminding me about how Mirror Entity can pump to huge levels. That effectively does what CotC does except without being a crap card by itself.
I'm currently assembling the cards for this deck in real life, so my experiences have been on MWS (which obviously need to be taken with a grain of salt sometimes lol) for the most part. However, this doesn't take away the fact that I have so much fun with Sisay. This deck like one massive toolbox that has so many answers available at its disposal.
@ schneiders: Yes, I do play Mistveil Plains. It's also a decent card not only at recycling stuff to retutor for, but also against graveyard hate. If Riftsweeper gets unbanned in the future because of the possibility of adopting the command zone like Wizards is doing to differentiate generals from being in exile, then I will be absolutely ecstatic.
I don't really understand why you're comparing Lurking Predators with Survival of the Fittest...one is a random card/tempo advantage machine, while the other is a tutoring machine. They don't have any overlap in function at all. That said, I agree that Survival makes the cut in a tuned deck, while the Predators don't.
That combo you listed is pretty complex...but I'm already running most of the cards in it, so why not add Mirror Entity too. I like it as a mana sink to pump my elves anyways. It's also possible to do a slightly smaller combo with Reveillark, Mirror Entity, Acidic Slime, and Karmic Guide or Saffi Eriksdotter. Reveillark is extremely strong in this deck anyways though.
As promised, here's the list I'm currently testing on MWS. It's been performing extremely well: though I've been playing against quite decent decks (Maga, Rafiq, Erayo, Rofellos), I haven't lost any matches. I did lose one game against Rafiq, but it was very close, and I kept a hand I shouldn't have (no acceleration at all). My list is designed for 1v1 play, though I don't think I'd make any changes for multiplayer.
This won't be a final list, but it's close. I started with Dan's list, posted earlier, and made changes to my liking. In addition to most of the cuts I suggested earlier, I ended up cutting some stuff like Krosan Verge...I realized that I never really had time to crack it until I was winning anyways, and having another colorless producing land at the start was missing.
The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale also got the axe (hooray for those trying to actually build this deck...it's not a cheap card.). It always wound up making me pay a lot more mana than my opponents, and it was close to dead a lot of the time. Most games I drew it during testing, I didn't even want to play it.
I also ended up cutting Mox Diamond. I tested 25 keepable opening hands, containing Mox Diamond and 6 random cards. Of those 25 hands, I found that 10 were improved by having the Mox, and 15 were worsened--playing the Mox in those hands would not have accelerated Sisay at all. Considering that the Mox only gets worse if you draw it later, I think that you need to run about 50% land in your deck to make the Mox usually help you out. Of the 6 other cards in your hand, you usually need at least 3 of them to be lands for the Mox to work well, and the odds are against that happening in this deck. Mox Diamond simply hurts you in more games than it helps you.
These are the cards I could still consider cutting, which will have to prove their worth during testing.
Dosan, the Falling Leaf:
Has been irrelevant in all of my games thus far. Never tutored for him or played him. That said, mono-blue control is a very strong strategy in 1v1, and if Dosan significantly improves that matchup, it might be worth keeping him around...I'm not sure. A lot hinges on how consistently I can resolve Sisay and get him onto the board eventually. My gut tells me that even against the one deck he should be good against, Dosan isn't going to be good enough to make a difference, but we'll see. I need to play a bunch of games against a Teferi deck or something and find out. I wonder if Brooding Saurian might be better, considering that Sisay getting stolen is just about the most annoying thing ever.
Hua Tuo, Honored Physician:
I've only gotten him out a few times so far. Most times I didn't need to use him, but once he did get a Yosei, the Morning Star recursion loop going. Even in the games I didn't use him, I did like having him around. He makes me feel very safe, basically allowing me to draw any creature from my graveyard if I choose to. Gaddock got sniped? No problem! He's fairly nice with Yosei/Eternal Witness and Miren, the Moaning Well too. He's definitely not a win-more card either, as he's really at his best when things have hit the fan and all the things you want are dead. I need to play with him more, but I think he'll be sticking around. Good luck finding him though.
Seeker of Skybreak/Knight of the Reliquary:
I have yet to draw these in any game. There's some question in my mind as to whether the Seeker might be win-more, considering that both Rofellos and Sisay seem to do absolutely fine without him helping them. I also wonder whether the Knight will do enough/be fast enough. I just don't know yet if these will make the cut in the end.
Search for Tomorrow:
I actually just decided to add this in over Kodama's Reach while writing up critique of Kodama's Reach, which was my least favorite piece of acceleration. I haven't tested this at all yet, but I think it will be good. Anyone know of another 2 mana Rampant Growth variant that I missed, or another great mana elf? Maybe I should even try Elvish Spirit Guide...
Swords to Plowshares:
I can't tutor this at all, so it ends up being very random. I can't rely on finding it at all, so maybe it would be better to find a replacement I can rely on. That said, it's been good every time I've drawn it so far, so I'm not in such a hurry to replace it.
Lignify: I decided to try testing this over Arrest, mostly because it's cheaper and green. I'm not really sure which is better. Lignify is much better against generals with triggered abilities, for what that's worth. There are actually a lot of potential generals like this, but now that black Braids is banned, most of them don't see very much play. Erayo, Soratami Ascendant is probably the best/most played one, though she's a little hard to catch with removal sometimes. Lignify does have 2 distinct disadvantages though, one of which has already cost me the one game I did lose. Because it doesn't stop creatures from attacking or blocking, you can't safely attack with non-flyers with greater than 4 power. Perhaps more importantly, it doesn't stop that creature from effectively wielding equipment. The one game I lost was due to a Trygon Predator holding Sword of Fire and Ice. I was holding Lignify, but it was useless there, whereas Arrest could have saved me. So...both have their advantages, and I'm not sure which is better. I'm keeping a tally of times I think "Wow, I really wish that was Arrest" (1) or "I'm so glad that was Lignify" (0, so far). Depending on which happens more, I may well make the swap.
Oblivion Stone:
It feels weird to have no mass removal, and this is the mass removal spell that makes the most sense to play in this deck. The trouble is that this deck produces so very permanents that I never really want to use this unless the board has already been wrathed, or unless I'm intentionally slow-rolling. I think the latter leads to bad play sometimes--the one game I lost, I kept a slow hand with Oblivion Stone, thinking I could get a big advantage out it. Krosan Grip foiled that plan, and probably cost me the game. Every time I've drawn Oblivion Stone in other games, it's just sat in my hand and been useless, because it wasn't worth casting it. I'm not convinced that mass removal is truly necessary in this deck, considering how rarely it's worth using here.
Umbral Mantle/Steelshaper's Gift:
If Umbral Mantle goes, Steelshaper's Gift will probably go too. If the Mantle stays, the Gift can probably stay too. I'm not sure about these yet. Gift is okay, because Lightning Greaves really is that good, but it's quite narrow. Umbral Mantle is even more narrow--it's not really worth 3 mana to get another Sisay activation, but it goes absolutely nuclear with Rofellos, who always shows up pretty quick. I've drawn Umbral Mantle in 2 games so far. Once I had it early, and I won quickly with an infinitely huge Rofellos. Once I had it late, when Rofellos had bitten the dust and I had no recursion, and it was useless. The infinite mana this combo can produce is pretty decent with Mirror Entity, but not very useful otherwise. So...I don't know really. The odds of getting it aren't that good, but the question is how often it wins me the game when I do get it. More testing is needed.
These are the only cards I could really consider cutting at this point (and I'm pretty sure that at least Hua Tuo, Honored Physician and Search for Tomorrow are going to be sticking around.). That's a pretty tight deck for a first draft.
The list is already very solid, and I feel that it's competitive--it should be able to hang with Zur, Arcum, Rofellos, whatever. The key to a competitive EDH deck is 1) fast, consistent mana, and 2) tutoring ability. This deck has both in spades. I encourage anyone to try this list--it's tremendously fun to play. Please offer suggestions--and reasoning behind those suggestions--if you have any.
As a rampant growth variant:Utopia Tree or elf wise: Bloom TenderDevoted DruidHeart WardenQuirion Elves although these all seem mediocre.
I took out Dosan after casting him three times. They were all against blue decks that also had another color so he just got killed. He's alot like Vexing Shusher- Good in theory, bad in practice. Attaching your counter hate to a 2/2 just isn't good enough.
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you guys have obviously put a lot of effort into the deck, i really like it in fact im building my own version. That brings me to why im posting- Karakas
a fantastic card to have in edh even better if you have a mangara since you can bounce him in resp to his ability essentially 3-remove target at sorcery speed
@ Khymera: I really like the decklist. It seems quite solid, and I think the package with utility creatures and the rest of the deck's toolbox keeps the deck as a whole from being too over-reliant on Sisay.
That's my main goal for this deck. I still obviously want for it to be amazing with an active Sisay, but I also want to be able to have the deck hold its own in case she gets hit by a tuck spell or draws early hate (since I'll be playing Sisay in both 1v1 and multiplayer games).
For cards you would be cutting, here are some substitutes that I like to play myself:
Sensei's Divining Top: Excellent with all the shuffling that goes on. Card selection is really good stuff, and needed in decks that don't have blue or black's brute force card draw/tutors.
Myojin of Cleansing Fire: Here's what I play as a sweeper. I play this guy over the green Myojin. Gaddock Teeg friendly, tutorable, and it leaves you with a decent 4/6 beater after you use him.
Azusa, Lost but Seeking: Mainly to combo with LftL and Crucible. Strip Mining someone 3 times in a row continuously or popping a fetchland a whole bunch of times is pretty good stuff.
As for more land fetching that costs 2 and less, I think going with snow-covered lands, Arctic Flats, Mouth of Ronom, and Into the North seems quite feasible. Into the North accelerates you into 4 mana by turn 3, and it can fetch both Arctic Flats for color fixing or Mouth of Ronom for utility. Mouth of Ronom also has great synergy with Crucible and LftL.
you guys have obviously put a lot of effort into the deck, i really like it in fact im building my own version. That brings me to why im posting- Karakas
a fantastic card to have in edh even better if you have a mangara since you can bounce him in resp to his ability essentially 3-remove target at sorcery speed
Karakas would be an automatic shoe-in for the deck, but unfortunately Karakas is banned because it ruins the nature of EDH by effectively blanking someone's general. If you want to abuse Mangara, sac him in response to his ability to Miren, the Moaning Well and abuse recursion spells to bring back Mangara for more exiling action.
An update on Umbral Mantle/Steelshaper's Gift: they stay. I knew the interaction with Rofellos of course, and that's pretty good. What I hadn't quite realized is that after making infinite mana, you can activate Sisay infinite times, making her huge and fetching all the legends you want. This lets you play most of your deck, including, most relevantly, Kamahl, Fist of Krosa. Basically, if you have Sisay, Rofellos, and at least 4 forests, Umbral Mantle just wins. Considering that I usually have Sisay, Rofellos, and at least 4 forests, these are definitely worth keeping.
I don't really like any of the mana critters mentioned except Quirion Elves, which I'm already running (it's been good). Into the North/Mouth of Ronom are pretty good, and probably worth running. I'd probably cut Boreal Druid for Into the North, though I've actually been pretty happy with the Druid thus far. The trouble is just in maximizing your forest count--I probably have to cut 2 of them to make room for Arctic Flats/Mouth of Ronom, because there's nothing else left to cut. I'll try it out, but I hate going below 17 basic Forests.
I agree that Dosan, the Falling Leaf is pretty useless. I still haven't had any use for him.
Sensei's Divining Top/Mirri's Guile are both okay...if you can find the room. They're really much inferior to Sylvan Library in this deck though. I'm actually not a fan of SDT in this deck, because it interacts quite poorly with Hokori, Dust Drinker and Kataki, War's Wage, both of which are commonly appear on my board (usually together). Mirri's Guile bugs me just by how much worse it is than Sylvan Library, but it's probably still pretty good. I'm not sure where I'll find room for it, but I'd like to test it.
Life from the Loam is decent as Crucible #2, but I still don't like it here. It's not tutorable at all, it doesn't work nearly as well with Azusa, Lost but Seeking, and I'm scared that I'll dredge a card I need to tutor up, and not be able to get at it in time. I can really easily imagine losing games to an unlucky dredge, so I don't think I want to mess with it. Also, LftL makes me want to add the onslaught cycling lands, but my forest count can't support those.
Myojin of Cleansing Fire: Yeah, maybe. You shouldn't be running this guy over Myojin of Life's Web; they have very different functions. Whether you run one really shouldn't effect whether you run the other. I remain skeptical that I need a wrath--I've been paying attention during my games (I played about 8 more matches on MWS tonight, and lost none of them), and never once did I wish I could tutor for the white Myojin. My goal in every game is to STOP wraths from resolving, or recover swiftly from the ones I can't stop, not to resolve them myself. I always have so many creatures out that it makes no sense at all to wrath. If I don't have creatures out, a wrath just resolved, and then I don't need one of my own. I truly don't see a need for this card. Furthermore, the 3 white mana requirement scares me off, as that can sometimes be very difficult to get, especially under Hokori. Green mana is abundant, but white mana is often not. The only triple-white card I run is Reya Dawnbringer. She's been great, but I never really bother hardcasting her--she piggybacks in on Myojin of Life Web in most games.
I already run Azusa, Lost but Seeking. To be honest, she's usually pretty mediocre, but occasionally she's good enough to justify her spot, I think.
And yes, the deck performs pretty well without Sisay. In the games I've tested, I've had her tucked into my deck once (Bant Charm), stolen with Treachery or Desertion 3 times, and been unable to keep her on the board due to a surfeit of removal twice. Every one of those games I still managed to win. When she got tucked into my deck, I tutored her out. Every time she got stolen, she was gone for good that game, which sucked, but I still pulled out a win. Survival of the Fittest was very important in two of those games, and does a pretty decent Sisay impression. When I couldn't keep her on the board, I just ground out wins--it took a while, but I was never really in danger. So yes, the deck does okay without Sisay in play. Obviously it doesn't do quite as well, but it's been fine for me. I am seriously considering trying out Brooding Saurian though, probably instead of Dosan, the Falling Leaf, just because Sisay getting stolen is quite frustrating--it's very hard to get her back.
I've been very happy with the deck so far. I'll try out Brooding Saurian, and perhaps Mirri's Guile and the snow land package as well.
Mana Excel
2 Selesnya Signet
3 Farseek
4 Rampant Growth
5 Darksteel Ingot
6 Coalition Relic
7 Knight of the Reliquary
8 Solemn Simulacrum
9 Gilded Lotus
10 Mirari's Wake
11 Mana Reflection
Wrath Effects
12 Wrath of God
13 Hallowed Burial
14 Austere Command
15 Akroma's Vengeance
16 Martial Coup
Tutorable Wrath Effects
17 Myojin of Cleansing Fire
Targeted Removal
18 Path to Exile
19 Swords to Plowshares
20 Crib Swap
21 Duplicant
Tutorable Targeted Removal
22 Mangara of Corondor
23 Predator, Flagship
Sac Effects
24 Wing Shards
Artifact/Enchament Hate
25 Qasali Pridemage
26 Krosan Grip
27 Aura Shards
28 Dust to Dust
29 Wickerbough Elder
30 Return to Dust
31 Woodfall Primus
32 Glissa Sunseeker
Tutor Effects
33 Enlightened Tutor
34 Eladamri's Call
35 Planar Portal
36 Tooth and Nail
37 Chord of Calling
Equipment
38 Lightning Greaves
39 Behemoth Sledge
Tutorable Equipment
40 Umezawa's Jitte
Creature Recursion
41 Eternal Witness
42 Reveillark
43 Deadwood Treefolk
Tutorable Creature Recursion
44 Reya Dawnbringer
Combos w/ Sisay
45 Thousand-Year Elixir
Legendary Creatures
46 Gaddock Teeg
47 Saffi Eriksdotter
48 Eight-and-a-Half-Tails
49 Dosan the Falling Leaf
50 Crovax, Ascendant Hero
51 Yosei, The Morning Star
52 Akroma, Angel of Wrath
Other Creatures
53 Mirror Entity
54 Galepowder Mage
55 Glory
56 Seedborn Muse
57 Oversoul of Dusk
58 Twilight Shepard
59 Runed Halo
60 Vedalken Orrery
61 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
62 Wild Pair
Non-Basic Lands
63 Grasslands
64 Terramorphic Expanse
65 Krosan Verge
66 Forbidding Watchtower
67 Selesnya Sanctuary
68 Temple Garden
69 Secluded Steppe
70 Mistveil Plains
71 Vivid Meadow
72 Elfhame Palace
73 Wooded Bastion
74 Saltcrusted Steppe
Tutorable Lands
75 Kor Haven
76 Yavimaya Hollow
77 Okina, Temple to the Grandfathers
78 Pendelhaven
79 Eiganjo Castle
If I were to rank aspects of magic in a list of importance for edh:
1. Having more mana than your opponents/Playing a land every turn
2. Having something to do with that mana
3. Everything else (winning)
To use a general that isn't card advantage seems questionable, and Captian Sisay seems like the easiest way to abuse card advantage. The basic plan with this deck is Ramp & Smash. To help me live I play a lot of wrath variants and other removal.
I play alot of mana excel and both Mana Reflection and Mirari's Wake because they are completely broken. I always have things to do with my mana. I don't play Harmonize or Reki because they are very redundant and I never need more cards to play. I never have Sisay out and nothing relevant to get.
A typical game goes:
T1: Land
T2: Land, maybe excel
T3: Land, Removal, Excel
T4: Land, Creature, Excel
T5 or later: Play Sisay
At this point I begin to tutor up two distinct packages. Against control, 8.5 Tails, Teeg and Saffi are almost always enough for me to just win, and I begin to assemble those pieces, usually in the form of Saffi then Teeg then 8.5. Predator Flagship also is really good against decks with few creatures.
Against aggro I usually get lands for a few turns to help me play a wrath variant or just color fix. I get Saffi to slow them down. Then I get Yosei/Akroma/Myojin/Reya and smash with them while getting back more creatures.
The only decks that I have trouble with are combo, and I am willing to have a bad matchup there.
I play alot of Artifact/Enchantment hate. I like to kill peoples tempo by blowing up their artifact excel and enchantments/artifacts can cause problems.
I really like this deck, Suggestions are welcome.
1800+ in Limited
3-0ing after drafting 17 non-basics in Cube
It's also clear you put a lot of thought into your list; most of the cards I was going to suggest are already in there!
I do have a bunch suggestions designed strengthen the key parts of your deck: acceleration, tempo/mana denial and threats.
Tutorable acceleration:
Gaea's Cradle
Generates much, much more mana than a normal land. Usually the first card I tutor for.
Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary
Generates significantly more mana than rampant growth. Can also be untapped.
Patron of the Orochi
Is generally played with the mana you gained from Rofellos and Gaea's Cradle. Generates absurd amounts of mana with Rofellos while also allowing you to use Sisay multiple times. Remember: he untaps himself and can be used both on your turn and your opponent's!
Honor-Worn Shaku
A cheap accelerant that can generate tons of mana when combined with vanilla legends and patron of the orochi. An optional fourth tutor target.
Mana Denial
We generate an substantial amount of mana in the early game, and the best way to insure our victory is to stop our opponents from playing additional spells. Destroying a few of our opponent's lands in the opening turns merely stints our development, while it greatly slows our opposition, sometimes locking them out of the game.
The Early Game Play:
Hokori, Dust Drinker
When your opponent plays a spell, you'll generally want to tutor up and play Hokori while his lands are tapped. Hokori only stints your development as you can still tutor and play Gaea's cradle into Rofellos Into Patron of the Orochi. After that, Hokori barely affects you. Your opponents will often struggle to untap enough lands to play even a few more spells. Hokori helps neuter your opponent's resistance.
Backup for the midgame:
The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
With Hokori in play, this puts our opponent in a really tough spot. They only untap 1 land a turn, but need to invest mana every turn to keep their creatures alive. This forces them to skimp on spells even more. Our deck, with it's vast generation potential isn't as affected. In fact, Gaea's Cradle can be used to pay the upkeep every turn, while Rofellos, Patron of the Orochi and nonland accelerants keep our board position developed.
Late Game Plan:
Kamahl, Fist of Krosa
Once you have developed a significant amount of mana, you can completely lock your opponent out of the game. First, play Crovax, Ascendant Hero, then play Kamahl and turn all of your opponent's lands into 0/0 creatures because of Crovax (Jitte counters also work). Your opponent is unable to cast additional spells, and you're left with an army of creatures, tons of mana, and a unlimited supply of overruns. The threat is built into the mana denial plan.
This entire gameplan can be tutored off a Sisay. You can do this absolutely every game you have four mana sources and your opponent doesn't disrupt you. The plan is also fairly resiliant to disruption because 1) You disrupt your opponent's mana at every oppurtunity, 2) You can replay Sisay (or tutor for her in case of hinder), 3) Mana generators are somewhat interchangeable, and 4) You play plenty of other win conditions that you can grab with Sisay.
That entire gameplan fills only 7-8 slots in the maindeck, enabling the deck to play 50+ largely flexible support cards. Here're some different cards that I chose to play in my version:
SUPPORT CARDS
Additional Land destruction
Strip Mine
Wasteland
Always useful. Tap for mana to get Sisay in play, then set their mana back.
Mangarar of the Corondor
I use this card primarily to hit lands and mana producers.
Acceleration
A faster Sisay means you roll your gameplan out faster and your opponent has less time to react. This means that accelerants are crucial. In order to develop a robust amounts of mana and play Sisay early, I reccomend 15-20 accelerants. Sol Ring, Mox Diamond, Chrome Mox and Mana Crypt are especially good, because they enable a turn 2 Sisay when played alongside rampant growth.
Untappers
These cards enable you to untap Sisay multiple times per turn, which makes comboing go much more quickly and smoothly. This speed (and forest return) means that it is well worth it to play Azusa, Lost but Seeking because 1) you have extra tutors to spare and 2) you need to play lands to keep up with the speed of the tutoring.
Other cards:
Akroma's Memorial
Only tutorable source of haste, makes your guys harder to remove.
Steelshaper's Gift
Lightning greaves provide us with speed and resilience, so we're happy to play a second copy.
Mindslaver
Tutor this up anytime you have ten mana. Your opponent shouldn't be able to come back from this, followed by another threat.
Other expensive threats: very few. In the late game, Sisay can tutor up all the threats I need; so I dedicate most of my slots to early game cards I want in my opening hand.
Hope this helps with your deck!
(PM me if you respond to this)
Dan, since your list seems to be similar, and you're suggesting a lot of additions but no cuts, would you mind posting your list in this thread?
At a glance, I think you could afford to cut Crib Swap, Wing Shards (you have a lot of removal), Planar Portal, Chord of Calling (you hardly need much more tutoring; these are expensive), Behemoth Sledge (meh), Deadwood Treefolk (too expensive for the effect), Glory (way too awkward without Survival of the Fittest), Oversoul of Dusk (you don't need random fat), Runed Halo (this doesn't actually do anything vs. any of the generals you should be afraid of), Wild Pair (not sure on this one, but I think it'll be a 6-mana-meh a lot of the time), Elspeth (+1 abilities are not very relevant, and you can't count on getting the -8. It happens so rarely).
You should consider adding Condemn (better than Wing Shards for sure) and Miren, the Moaning Well. Another legendary land can't hurt, it helps to protect you vs. blue steal-your-stuff decks, and, most importantly, it lets you Sisay up a potentially infinite Yosei lock. Fetching Yosei, followed by Miren (and activating it), followed by Reya Dawnbringer ought to win you a lot of games. Also, throw in Vesuva, because why not? It's almost never bad, and it's often a Wasteland for nasty things like Tolarian Academy. I see no reason at all not to run it.
Also, stuff like Sensei's Divining Top, Sylvan Library, Scroll Rack, and Mirri's Guile are incredible when you can shuffle your library every turn. If you do run some of these, you might consider Lurking Predators (perhaps in the Wild Pair slot). It's potentially insane card and tempo advantage even without library manipulation.
Harmonic Sliver probably deserves a slot amidst your artifact/enchantment removal. I think it's usually better than Qasali Pridemage in EDH, though they're very similar cards. Acidic Slime is the new hotness when it comes to utility removal, and may well be worthwhile here. I think it's better than Wickerbough Elder and some of your other options. Especially if you keep Wild Pair... Stonecloaker is another great utility creature that can save your guys, replay citp (etb now?) abilities, and, most importantly, hate on the graveyard. Most combo decks in EDH rely on the graveyard to go off, so this is a pretty good way to slow those decks down.
And yeah, definitely fit in Gaea's Cradle, Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary (you can skew your mana base a little more for him), Hokori, Dust Drinker, and Kamahl, Fist of Krosa. These 4 cards help make the Sisay deck tick.
For Rofellos, Savannah would be very helpful, if you can track one down, along with Windswept Heath, Wooded Foothills, and Flooded Strand. Savannah also makes Nature's Lore/Three Visits better Rampant Growths.
I'm sure more will come to me later. I'll chime in again when it does.
Is your experience with Captain Sisay? There is certainly such a thing as too much tutoring, especially in this deck. Congregation at Dawn and Sylvan Tutor are bad here, because they interfere with using Sisay optimally. Time of Need is extremely redundant. Worldly Tutor isn't bad, but there's so much tutoring already in here that I'm not sure there's a need for it.
The primary use of these tutors would be to get back Sisay if she gets shuffled into your deck somehow. This is important, but not THAT important, considering it shouldn't happen too often with smart play, and that Sisay isn't absolutely required for the deck to function.
some fun is also the kaldra set:
Shield of kaldra -- first
sword of kaldra
helm of kaldra
assemble voltron and make your general undistructable 'till he's out.
steelshaper's gift can help, but general is fine. can help get your lighting greaves as well.
it's a bit of card addage, but is pretty ammusing when he's assembled.
R Grenzo, Havoc Raiser
BG Varolz, the scar-striped
1 Krosan Verge
1 Grasslands
4 Plains
1 Brushland
1 Temple Garden
1 Savannah
1 Wooded Bastion
1 Windswept Heath
1 Wooded Foothills
1 Flooded Strand
1 Sunpetal Grove
1 Sungrass Prairie
1 Miren, The Moaning Well
1 The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
1 Eiganjo Castle
1 Flagstones of Trokair
1 Gaea's Cradle
1 Okina, Temple to the Grandfathers
1 Strip Mine
1 Wasteland
17 Forest
1 Dust Bowl
Creatures
1 Seeker of Skybreak
1 Seedborn Muse
1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
1 Llanowar Elves
1 Captain Sisay
1 Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary
1 Mangara of Corondor
1 Yosei, the Morning Star
1 Reki, the History of Kamigawa
1 Saffi Eriksdotter
1 Dosan the Falling Leaf
1 Glissa Sunseeker
1 Hokori, Dust Drinker
1 Birds of Paradise
1 Kamahl, Fist of Krosa
1 Patron of the Orochi
1 Azusa, Lost but Seeking
1 Quirion Ranger
1 Scryb Ranger
1 Crovax, Ascendant Hero
1 Dauntless Escort
1 Fyndhorn Elves
1 Eternal Witness
1 Kataki, War's Wage
1 Priest of Titania
1 Yomiji, Who Bars the Way
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Overgrowth
1 Wild Growth
1 Austere Command
1 Faith's Fetters
1 Kodama's Reach
1 Garruk Wildspeaker
1 Sol Ring
1 Selesnya Signet
1 Rampant Growth
1 Talisman of Unity
1 Mindslaver
1 Akroma's Memorial
1 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Honor-Worn Shaku
1 Lightning Greaves
1 Mox Diamond
1 Steelshaper's Gift
1 Reap and Sow
1 Plow Under
1 Nature's Lore
1 Chrome Mox
1 Instill Energy
1 Sylvan Library
1 Chord of Calling
1 Thousand-Year Elixir
1 Primal Command
1 Survival of the Fittest
1 Umbral Mantle
1 Mana Crypt
1 Channel
1 Emerald Medallion
1 Eladamri's Call
I've been playing this deck on magicworkstation for about a week now and it's been a load of fun.
This is a combo deck, first and foremost. Getting an early Sisay is key, because you'll be tutoring the cards you need with her. With acceleration and aggressive mulliganing, this can consistently be done on turns 2-3.
One you get an active Sisay, disrupting your opponent's gameplan is key. Get Hokori, Dust Drinker , Magus of the Corondor, Kataki, War's Wage , and The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale to put pressure on their mana and prevent them from casting many spells.
Then, fetch up mana sources like Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary and Gaea's Cradle.
Once you hit 10 mana, tutor and cast Mindslaver.
From there, you really shouldn't lose, as you can follow up with Yosei, the Morning Star and Miren, the Moaning Well, or simply blow up all of their lands with Kamahl, Fist of Krosa and Crovax, Ascendant Hero. From there, you can either finish them with Kamahl's overrun ability or set up infinite Mindslavers and Yosei's with Yomiji, Who Bars the Way.
That's the basic gameplan; the rest of the cards are mainly for situational disruption and utility.
Akroma's Memorial provides tutorable haste and protection from removal
Mangara of Corondor destroys lands and other troublesome permanents
Patron of the Orochi can untap Sisay and your mana once during your turn and once during your opponent's. Best with haste.
This is a rough draft of a competitive list. I plan to cut down on unnecessary tutor targets and play more acceleration and utility cards in a final list.
Thanks for posting your list; sorry it took me so long to respond. Did you ever finish editing it? I finally had a chance to test out your list, and I've got some feedback on the underperformers, as well as some cards that should be in there.
The Lands:
This is a tricky deck to get a proper landbase for--but yours is really good. You have to maximize your forest count for Rofellos, but also consistently have white mana by turn 3. My only comment is that you should find room for a few more lands:
Horizon Canopy: The lifeloss is quite negligible, and sometimes you want that draw. You could cut Sungrass Prairie for this.
Kor Haven: Absolutely required. It's legendary, and it's really very good in EDH--I can't count how many games it's allowed me to stall long enough to win. It's just brutal against most decks that rely on attacking with their general.
Yavimaya Hollow: One of the only tutorable things that can help you to protect Sisay or a certain other key creature. You should have this.
Rishadan Port: It's pretty mean, but this makes it so much harder for an opponent to break out from under Hokori, Dust Drinker. You need mana elves to support it under Hokori, but that's not hard to do.
The Acceleration:
Most of your acceleration boosts you into playing Sisay faster, and many of them fix your mana to boot. Acceleration is a lot better in my opinion if it can get you white mana--you always have access to green in this deck (a result of running so many forests), but you often need the help of an accelerator to find white mana. You have a ton of acceleration, but that's good--it's one of the most important factors in making a deck competitive. These are the accelerators I'm not so sure I like:
Emerald Medallion: This is just bad here. While it does speed you into Sisay, it doesn't affect enough of your other spells, and it doesn't color fix at all. You can do better, easily.
Overgrowth: Doesn't even accelerate you into Sisay, and, like all auras, it's dangerous to boot. I get that it has some synergy with Hokori, Dust Drinker and with Garruk Wildspeaker, but that doesn't justify its inclusion. Especially because using it effectively with Hokori usually dictates putting it on Gaea's Cradle, and that's just asking for trouble. This card backfires on you too often, and isn't strong enough to be worth the risk.
Wild Growth: Better than Overgrowth, but still not so good. It doesn't fix your colors, it doesn't help Rofellos, and it opens you up to card and tempo disadvantage. There's not enough synergy to make this worthwhile.
Honor-Worn Shaku: It doesn't accelerate you into Sisay, and it doesn't fix mana. There also aren't all that many things you really want to tap for 1 measly colorless mana. You have 1 land and about 5 cheap legendary creatures you can probably tap for this. Even with Sisay going full speed, I rarely have more than 2-3 things I'll tap for this. That makes it...about as good as Thran Dynamo. If I'm lucky. Often, it's worse. I have tested this, and it's never done anything meaningful for me at all.
Channel: This card has been really good for me once, and utterly dead the other 6 times. The tricky thing about it is that it really only works if you have a ton of colored mana and a bunch of expensive cards in hand--but if you have a ton of colored mana, your acceleration has already worked, so what do you need Channel for? Any game where Channel helps you, you're probably winning anyways. (Besides, I found a replacement for Channel that's so much better...read on to my suggested inclusions.)
Mox Diamond: This is arguable. It does accelerate you, and it does fix mana. However...for every hand where Mox Diamond has helped me accelerate into Sisay, I've had another hand where I didn't have enough lands and was just wishing the Mox was another land. Any hand with 1-2 lands and Mox Diamond might as well be a mulligan. Overall, I don't think Mox Diamond has been more helpful more times than it's been annoying. Depending on your other card choices though, the Mox could certainly still stay.
Suggested inclusions:
Three Visits: Nature's Lore is one of your best accelerators...this is just Nature's Lore #2. It's great.
Farseek: Another Rampant Growth, basically. The ability to get white mana AND a forest with Temple Garden or Savannah is pretty decent.
Boreal Druid: It doesn't color-fix, but it's another 1-drop accelerator, and it does double-duty with Gaea's Cradle or Priest of Titania out. I think it's pretty good. Quirion Elves might also be considered for similar reasons--it's a 2-drop, but it also does double-duty, and color-fixes as well.
Here's my favorite acceleration suggestion--though it's usually considered to be one of the weakest cards from one of the weakest sets ever, and it's never to my knowledge seen any constructed play whatsoever, it's amazing in this deck: Myojin of Life's Web. It's hilarious that a nine-mana card can be considered acceleration, but it really is in this deck. I very often find myself with a hand full of nice, yet expensive, legends due to Sisay, with access to around 9-12 green mana through Rofellos and/or Gaea's Cradle. This is usually as early as turn 5 or 6. Before, the best I could do was to play one or two of these legends and pass. With the Myojin though (which is tutorable), I can just play the Myojin, then dump my hand onto the board at the end of my opponent's turn. This gives me a huge army, ready to attack. What's more, I can usually combo off with the Myojin, by dropping Kamahl + Crovax, or Yosei + Reya (and tutoring up Miren). I only thought to add him very recently, but he's won me so many games already. This is the Channel replacement--it does everything Channel does well, but does it so much better, is tutorable, and comes with an 8/8 body to boot. It's incredibly good in this deck. Please try it.
I'm loathe to add too many artifacts (due to Kataki, mostly), but if you still feel you need more accelerators, I would go with Coldsteel Heart and maybe even Marble Diamond. They both accelerate you into Sisay and colorfix. You could do a lot worse. I'm pretty sure all the accelerators I mentioned are better in this deck than the ones I pointed out above (with the possible exception of Mox Diamond).
The Sisay-Boosters:
Thousand-Year Elixir is fantastic, and Seeker of Skybreak is pretty good too.
Instill Energy I have mixed feelings about, but I'm leaning towards no. It's annoying that it's limited to one creature (whereas the others can work well with either Sisay or Rofellos, depending on what resource you need more), that it's an aura (yuck), and that the haste is rarely relevant (I usually want to cast Sisay as fast as I can, and that's almost always at 4 mana). It's been really good for me in one game, but it's usually disappointing. Even when I do get it on Sisay and she doesn't get blown up in response, I really don't need 2 legends a turn most of the time. I don't think this is worthwhile.
Quirion Ranger/Scryb Ranger: These have been awful and irrelevant every single time I drew them. Like I said, 2 Sisay activations a turn is usually overkill, and it's not worth slowing your mana development to get extra activations. These can work with Rofellos, but there's considerable long term negative synergy there, as he really wants those Forests in play. These guys are a bit better with Azusa, Lost but Seeking out, but still not good enough--Azusa is rarely the card I want to be tutoring for or playing, and it's really not worth it just to turn these into Seeker of Skybreak. These aren't acceleration--if anything, they're negative acceleration. Get rid of them.
Non-legendary creatures:
Interestingly, aside from your acceleration, most of these are actually pretty awful.
Seedborn Muse:
Usually a great card in EDH...but dreadful in this deck. About all she really does in this deck is get you another Sisay activation and let you block better, and that's not worth it for 5 mana on a non-legendary creature. This deck really has nothing to do on an opponent's turn, so the Muse is pretty pointless. If you had something like Vedalken Orrery, she might be worthwhile...but as neither is consistently tutorable, this "combo" isn't really tight enough to be worth the slots I think.
Dauntless Escort:
It's not terrible, but it's not that good either. You can't usually find it when you really want it, and it's only much good against mass removal--and even then, it does nothing against sweepers like Hallowed Burial or Final Judgment, which see a lot of play. Many of the kinds of spot removal common in EDH also get around indestructibility (StP, Path, Faith's Fetters, Spin into Myth, etc.). As your deck is now, sweepers are by far it's biggest weakness--but there's a much better answer to those than this poor rhino (Gaddock Teeg, duh).
Stuff to add:
Uh, maybe Genesis. It has no particular synergy with this deck (except that you can sac it to Miren, I guess), but you really should have more ways to recur creatures. In your list, do you know how many ways you have to get a creature again when it's been destroyed? Just one--and it's Primal Command, which sucks for that job. Genesis is quite good, so you may as well run it.
Duplicant: Just a really good, efficient removal spell, and you're light on removal. You're still running Eladamri's Call, Primal Command, Survival of the Fittest--it's good to be able to find removal if necessary.
Knight of the Reliquary: Could be unnecessary, but I really love this card in g/w decks. The tutor effect is very powerful, and it gets big too. I'm going to suggest running Cruclble of Worlds as well, and together with that and Azusa, Lost but Seeking, (and perhaps Strip Mine?), this knight can get very good very fast. It finds you Rishadan Port for your Hokori lock too.
Academy Rector might be nice too, if you fit in some killer enchantments. You always have access to Miren, the Moaning Well, so the Rector is a quick ticket to whatever enchantment you want.
Legendary Creatures:
Reki, the History of Kamagawa: He's okay, but really nothing special. This deck has so much tutoring power that drawing a few cards is not that consequential. I'll still run him if I have room, but I won't be sad if I have to cut him. He doesn't really win me any games.
Azusa, Lost but Seeking: I don't really like her in your list, because by the time I can play her, I never have enough lands in hand for her to actually do anything. That said, she's potentially a very powerful card. I'm going to suggest adding Crucible of Worlds shortly, and with that addition alone, she becomes quite good.
Yomiji, Who Bars the Way: I tried really hard to like this guy, and I still can't. He's far too expensive for what he does. He really only has 2 roles: 1) stall mass removal, and 2) combo with Yosei, the Morning Star or Mindslaver. In the first role, he is hugely outclassed by Gaddock Teeg. He doesn't do anything vs. Hallowed Burial/Final Judgment, and he doesn't even make a Wrath bad--it still kills Yomiji, bounces all your legends, and kills your other stuff. He's also so slow and ineffective that it's really quite hard to find the time and mana to play him before the rest of your army, so he sits in your hand and does nothing most of the time.
That leaves the combo role. This is better, but it's still not even that solid a win condition. Reya Dawnbringer does the Yosei combo almost as well as Yomiji, and is a thousand times better and more versatile on her own (she's another way to recur your lost creatures too). Reya demands to be included I think, so the question is whether Yomiji is worthwhile just for the Mindslaver combo--as we've established that's just about all he's good for. I really don't think he is, considering I've played 20+ games with both Yomiji and Mindslaver in the deck, and never bothered assembling the combo even once--there was always a safer, better option. Perhaps I'm wrong, and I should have been assembling that combo--I doubt it, but it's possible he does actually belong in this deck. Testing will see, if I have room.
Akroma's Memorial: Really bad in this deck. I've never bothered tutoring for it or playing it even once. You say it's tutorable haste and protection from removal...but by the time you can play it, you really don't need haste, and if your opponents are holding removal, they've probably used it by now or your creatures are otherwise protected. Red/Black removal isn't really that scary either--you should be more worried about the white and blue removal. This is really an extraneous and unnecessary card.
Now stuff to add:
The most massive omission you've made is Gaddock Teeg. He was MADE for this deck. He barely hurts you at all (and will hurt you even less, once you make a few edits), but he shuts down huge portions of most decks in this format, including almost every board sweeper that sees any play (the only exceptions I can think of are Oblivion Stone and Kagemaro, First to Suffer). This is tremendous for you, considering that most decks can sneak out a Wrath or a Damnation from under Hokori, Dust Drinker, and that that Wrath absolutely wrecks your board position every time. You NEED this card. Your whole gameplan is based around "disrupting your opponent's gameplan." Nothing at all does that better than Teeg against most decks, and he's dirt-cheap to play as well. Many people just concede when I get him down alongside Hokori.
Reya Dawnbringer: She's just really good and versatile, and part of a combo to boot. The triple white can actually be problematic in this deck, but you'll get there eventually. Myojin of Life's Web also helps out with the cost.
Akroma, Angel of Wrath: Perhaps not necessary, but she really does win games by herself sometimes. Especially off the Myojin, she gives you a very solid beatdown plan. I like her.
Tolsimir Wolfblood: Okay. He isn't a great card, but he solves a major negative synergy problem that this deck runs into a lot without access to him. Crovax, Ascendant Hero is a really great card. He's majorly disruptive against certain decks, he's part of a great, extremely easy to assemble 2-card combo, and he's next to impossible to kill. You want to play him, usually early. Unfortunately, Crovax does terrible things to your elvish mana acceleration, most notably Rofellos. Just playing him tends to nuke half of your potential mana, which is a terrible thing. The solution is to make Rofellos and friends at least X/2. Tolsimir Wolfblood accomplishes that, and gives you a lot more power to beat down with as well. Gaea's Cradle kind of likes him too. You should really run him: Rofellos implores you. Day of Destiny could also be a good, slightly cheaper option, but I don't like it as much because it won't save your non-Rofellos mana-dorks, and because it doesn't play nice with Gaddock Teeg. Kongming, "Sleeping Dragon" would work well, but is a complete bastard to find, and maybe isn't even as good as Tolsimir. (Note: Tolsimir getting destroyed with Crovax in play isn't a problem, as you can always bounce Crovax back to your hand in response if he's going to be killing something you want to keep.)
Rune-Tail, Kitsune Ascendant: This is actually pretty good. Against any red deck, or any deck that's going to go aggro on you, you can tutor for this first, and play it immediately. It protects all your creatures from burn and from combat damage. It's fairly dead against some decks, but it's amazing enough against others that I think it's worth running.
Hua Tuo, Honored Physician: This is maybe too cute, and not an easy card to find either, but I think it could actually be very good in this deck, given your lack of recursion. I haven't tested him yet, but a free Volrath's Stronghold effect every turn is pretty strong for 3 mana.
Kiyomaro, First to Stand: Probably no room or need for him, but this guy is very efficient. It's really pretty common for me to have 7 cards in hand, and a 5 mana, 7/7-8/8 Vigilance creature that gains me life can't be that bad. He is bad after I use Myojin of Life's Web though, which probably disqualifies him.
Predator, Flagship, Myojin of Cleansing Fire, and Arashi, the Sky Asunder are all cards to keep in mind, though I don't think they'll make the cut for the maindeck. If you find yourself desperately needing one of these effects a lot, one of these cards might be a worthwhile inclusion. I suspect that Predator and the Myojin are too mana-intensive for their effect, however. Arashi is actually very efficient, but I don't have enough trouble with flyers to justify running him right now. Maybe if you play against a lot of dragons.
And finally, Spells:
Most of your choices are pretty good, but Gaddock requires a little adjusting. Given that he's very likely going to pop up by turn 4 or 5 in most games, you don't want to run many spells that he'll interfere with.
Primal Command is probably sufficiently strong to run anyways.
Austere Command: Eh...it's alright, but Gaddock will get in its way a lot, as he'll almost always come out first. How about running Oblivion Stone (which is fine with Gaddock) and Enlightened Tutor instead? The Tutor, in addition to grabbing your mass removal, is also great when finding Lightning Greaves, Mana Crypt, Duplicant, Survival of the Fittest, etc. In this format, any good tutor you can run, you probably should run.
Faith's Fetters: Meh. I like having access to an enchantment removal spell, but Gaddock doesn't like this, and the 4 life is almost always irrelevant. How about Arrest instead? Does the same thing, Gaddock lets it through, and it's even effective against Rofellos, whereas Faith's Fetters isn't. Sounds good to me.
Garruk Wildspeaker: He can stay, I think. You could cut him if you need the room though.
Mindslaver: Keep it, of course.
Reap and Sow/Plow Under: Eh, you don't need these. Knight of the Reliquary is really better than Reap and Sow anyways. Plow Under doesn't have too much synergy.
Chord of Calling: You really don't need this at all. Eladamri's Call will suffice.
This sounds like blasphemy, but I've been considering cutting Survival of the Fittest as well. In your deck, as it's posted, Survival is actually quite terrible--you don't have any great creatures that Sisay can't find for you, and you don't have any cards that create card advantage with Survival--no recursion. However, if you add all the creatures I suggested (especially Genesis), you probably have enough gas to make this worth running. It's such a great card, I wouldn't be surprised. You do need to add those utility creatures to make it worthwhile though.
And spells to add...
As I've mentioned a couple times, this deck really wants Crucible of Worlds. Another Enlightened Tutor target, gives you your only way to recur Gaea's Cradle (which is very important), and has great interactions with Strip Mine/Wasteland, your fetchlands, Azusa, and Knight of the Reliquary. Life from the Loam would be the other way you could approach land recursion, but I think that the Crucible is a much better fit in this deck.
I'm not usually a fan of Regrowth in EDH, but I think this deck wants the recursion. Sometimes, something you really want gets destroyed at a bad time, and you have a really hard time getting it back. This is a good option to have.
If you do add Academy Rector, you need some more enchantments to abuse it with. Survival of the Fittest, Sylvan Library, and Arrest is a start, but a pretty poor one. This deck actually has no need for Mirari's Wake/Mana Reflection, so those are out. Priviledged Position is the best I can come up with...I think it's good enough to justify running, even alongside Teeg. Teeg + Priviledged Position in play should make most people cry.
And...my brain is drained for now. I'll probably come up with more later, after more testing. I hope you're still around--let me know what you think. Hopefully this short book will be useful to anyone working on a Sisay deck.
Nothing like cracking fetchlands over and over again to get far ahead in mana. Or replaying Strip Mine and blowing up multiple lands. Horizon Canopy also becomes a very potent draw engine as well.
Heck, Crucible is great by itself. It protects all your utility lands and is already great with fetches + Horizon Canopy. Azusa just pushes it to the next level.
Captian Sisay might be my next EDH project after I just finish up acquiring random cards for my Maga deck.
Magewright's Stone seems like a win-more card to me IMO. Thousand-Year Elixir does the same thing as stone except it also gives Sisay haste. I can't think of too many situations where you would want to activate Sisay twice in a turn. Once per turn is usually more than enough considering how powerful her ability is to begin with.
For me, I'm also trying to make the deck less reliant on Sisay in case she gets hit by a tuck spell (Hinder/Spin into Myth/etc) or she draws early hate.
I was looking through other possible legendary creatures to play in the deck, and I stumbled across Chorus of the Conclave. 8 mana is really expensive, but this deck is definately capable of mana ramping with land fetching and cards like Rofellos and Gaea's Cradle. Chorus of the Conclave seems like a great way to take the huge glut of mana that this deck produces going into the late game and putting it to good use. Turning a Sakura-Tribe Elder into a 9+ power monstrosity is a great way to make all the small creatures huge threats. Hell, you could even pump Sisay with it and crush someone through general damage if you really needed to. I'm pretty sure this card needs testing, but in practice it seems pretty good.
Also, I LOVE Reveillark in this deck. It has such a ridiculous amount of synergy in this deck that it's crazy. Bringing back land fetching elves, Eternal Witness, Acidic Slime, Duplicant, Knight of the Reliquary, Karmic Guide, Rofellos, Saffi, Gaddock Teeg, Hokori, and friends is just simply amazing. It provides this deck a lot of card advantage and an excellent way to recover from a board sweeper. Combo it with Survival of the Fittest and things can get really nutty.
It is also quite convenient that Sisay has 2 power herself.
I recently got an academy rector, and I'm pleasantly suprised. I threw in lurking predators, and fetching that is awesome.
I know this is blasphemy, but I want to take out Jitte. I have been disappointed in it every time I draw it. It doesn't actually do anything that you want it to. The only time I ever play it is when I have two unused mana available and it in my hand. I have never wanted to fetch it to kill things because Managara of Corondor is just better at removing stuff (plus he's super synergistic with thousand year elixir/any untap effect).
I'm thinking about adding Llanowar Reborn. Having the extra +1 toughness on teeg or sisay would be relevant often.
1800+ in Limited
3-0ing after drafting 17 non-basics in Cube
I like Jitte because it provides threat density. It turns any creature in the deck into a must-answer threat, even if it's a lowly utility creature.
Llanowar Reborn really isn't needed to protect smaller creatures and Sisay. Okina and Eiganjo Castle already have good defensive abilities to protect your legendary creatures, and Yavimaya Hollow regenerates creatures as well.
1800+ in Limited
3-0ing after drafting 17 non-basics in Cube
Honestly, without Rofellos and Gaea's Cradle, you weren't even playing the same deck as me. My first three Sisay targets are almost always Rofellos, Gaea's Cradle, and Hokori, with the order depending on the state of the game.
The whole reason this deck works, and works so well, is the consistent access to large amounts of mana, early in the game. As a general, only Rofellos and maybe Sasaya are faster and more consistent in producing mana, but mono-green decks don't have nearly the card selection and versatily gained from tutoring every turn and having access to the best white cards.
For other cards mentioned:
Umezawa's Jitte should stay. It's the only good tutorable equipment (and it's one of the best equipment, period), and sometimes you want to tutor for equipment. Also, you can't rely on Mangara to do your removal for you--he's pretty much a one-shot effect. What if you've used him already, or you're missing double white, or you can't afford to wait a turn and don't have Thousand-Year Elixir? Umezawa's Jitte you can tutor, equip to something, attack immediately, and have that removal ready.
Llanowar Reborn isn't worthwhile. Coming into play tapped is bad, and not being a forest for Rofellos is even worse. What's it going to save Sisay or Gaddock from? Shock? Volcanic Fallout? No one plays these cards in EDH, so don't bother.
I quite like Lurking Predators, but I'm not sure it's quite good enough to make the cut, considering Gaddock doesn't like it, and Gaddock is king in this deck. I'll think about it.
Chorus of the Conclave is a horrible, horrible card. Sure, we can play it, but both it and it's ability are extremely inefficient uses of mana. We make a lot of mana, yes, but we can use all of it without resorting to junk like this.
Reveillark is good, and it helps with the recursion issue that worries me. Running Reveillark basically requires me to also add Karmic Guide and Acidic Slime...I just can't resist. There's no infinite combo here, with no sacrifice outlet (although Mirror Entity might actually be good, and a much better mana sink than Chorus of the Conclave...), but these cards have a tons of synergy together, besides just being really good cards. Karmic Guide is more awesome recursion, and Acidic Slime is the most versatile 187 creature available, beating out options like Harmonic Sliver, Wickerbough Elder, or Indrik Stomphowler in this deck. We can answer artifacts pretty well with Glissa Sunseeker, but it's probably a good idea to have answers to enchantments too, and this is the best way to do it.
Magewright's Stone isn't versatile enough here. Definitely win-more.
Any comments on all the cards I suggested earlier, and the cuts I suggested? I'll see if I can't post an updated list tonight.
First things first, I'll talk about Lurking Predators. I don't play it; I play with Survival of the Fittest instead and I have never looked back. SotF is Gaddock Teeg-friendly for one thing unlike Lurking Predators, but most importantly it's far more reliable than Lurking Predators could be. This deck can produce gobs of mana thanks to Rofellos and Gaea's Cradle, so I don't see too much value into having a chance to cheat a creature into play.
SotF also allows us to play Genesis, another great recursion card against sweepers and for protecting the fragile stuff in the deck.
Additionally, Survival easily sets up the ability to go infinite with Reveillark and Karmic Guide. Here is an excellent post from Donald explaining how the combo works:
You can do this with a number of other creatures other than just Yosei though obviously. If you don't want to play the infinite combo for some reason (and I can definately understand if one doesn't want to go infinite), just Survival alone will generate some obscene card advantage in the deck especially when you combo it with Reveillark and Karmic Guide.
Reveillark seems like a slam dunk to me for this deck. I had mentioned in a previous post at all the relevant creatures that Lark recurs, and in my build that runs the Survival shell it just too good not to play.
As for Chorus of the Conclave, you're probably right. In theory, she seems like a good card to help break through stalemates and to turn utility creatures into wrecking balls. By herself though, a 3/8 for 8 mana is pretty underwhelming. And good call on reminding me about how Mirror Entity can pump to huge levels. That effectively does what CotC does except without being a crap card by itself.
I'm currently assembling the cards for this deck in real life, so my experiences have been on MWS (which obviously need to be taken with a grain of salt sometimes lol) for the most part. However, this doesn't take away the fact that I have so much fun with Sisay. This deck like one massive toolbox that has so many answers available at its disposal.
@ schneiders: Yes, I do play Mistveil Plains. It's also a decent card not only at recycling stuff to retutor for, but also against graveyard hate. If Riftsweeper gets unbanned in the future because of the possibility of adopting the command zone like Wizards is doing to differentiate generals from being in exile, then I will be absolutely ecstatic.
1800+ in Limited
3-0ing after drafting 17 non-basics in Cube
I don't really understand why you're comparing Lurking Predators with Survival of the Fittest...one is a random card/tempo advantage machine, while the other is a tutoring machine. They don't have any overlap in function at all. That said, I agree that Survival makes the cut in a tuned deck, while the Predators don't.
That combo you listed is pretty complex...but I'm already running most of the cards in it, so why not add Mirror Entity too. I like it as a mana sink to pump my elves anyways. It's also possible to do a slightly smaller combo with Reveillark, Mirror Entity, Acidic Slime, and Karmic Guide or Saffi Eriksdotter. Reveillark is extremely strong in this deck anyways though.
As promised, here's the list I'm currently testing on MWS. It's been performing extremely well: though I've been playing against quite decent decks (Maga, Rafiq, Erayo, Rofellos), I haven't lost any matches. I did lose one game against Rafiq, but it was very close, and I kept a hand I shouldn't have (no acceleration at all). My list is designed for 1v1 play, though I don't think I'd make any changes for multiplayer.
1 Sunpetal Grove
1 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
1 Okina, Temple to the Grandfathers
1 Gaea's Cradle
1 Flagstones of Trokair
1 Eiganjo Castle
1 Miren, the Moaning Well
17 Forest
1 Flooded Strand
1 Wooded Foothills
1 Windswept Heath
1 Wooded Bastion
1 Savannah
1 Temple Garden
1 Brushland
2 Plains
1 Grasslands
1 Dust Bowl
1 Kor Haven
1 Yavimaya Hollow
1 Mistveil Plains
1 Horizon Canopy
Legendary Creatures:
1 Kataki, War's Wage
1 Crovax, Ascendant Hero
1 Dosan the Falling Leaf
1 Azusa, Lost but Seeking
1 Patron of the Orochi
1 Kamahl, Fist of Krosa
1 Hokori, Dust Drinker
1 Glissa Sunseeker
1 Saffi Eriksdotter
1 Yosei, the Morning Star
1 Mangara of Corondor
1 Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary
1 Reya Dawnbringer
1 Tolsimir Wolfblood
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Hua Tuo, Honored Physician
1 Myojin of Life's Web
1 Genesis
1 Reveillark
1 Karmic Guide
1 Mirror Entity
1 Priest of Titania
1 Eternal Witness
1 Fyndhorn Elves
1 Birds of Paradise
1 Llanowar Elves
1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
1 Seeker of Skybreak
1 Boreal Druid
1 Quirion Elves
1 Acidic Slime
1 Duplicant
1 Knight of the Reliquary
Acceleration:
1 Garruk Wildspeaker
1 Selesnya Signet
1 Rampant Growth
1 Talisman of Unity
1 Sol Ring
1 Lightning Greaves
1 Search for Tomorrow
1 Three Visits
1 Mana Crypt
1 Thousand-Year Elixir
1 Chrome Mox
1 Nature's Lore
1 Farseek
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Lignify
1 Oblivion Stone
1 Umezawa's Jitte
Tutors:
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Eladamri's Call
1 Steelshaper's Gift
1 Survival of the Fittest
1 Primal Command
Utility:
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Mindslaver
1 Umbral Mantle
1 Sylvan Library
The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale also got the axe (hooray for those trying to actually build this deck...it's not a cheap card.). It always wound up making me pay a lot more mana than my opponents, and it was close to dead a lot of the time. Most games I drew it during testing, I didn't even want to play it.
I also ended up cutting Mox Diamond. I tested 25 keepable opening hands, containing Mox Diamond and 6 random cards. Of those 25 hands, I found that 10 were improved by having the Mox, and 15 were worsened--playing the Mox in those hands would not have accelerated Sisay at all. Considering that the Mox only gets worse if you draw it later, I think that you need to run about 50% land in your deck to make the Mox usually help you out. Of the 6 other cards in your hand, you usually need at least 3 of them to be lands for the Mox to work well, and the odds are against that happening in this deck. Mox Diamond simply hurts you in more games than it helps you.
These are the cards I could still consider cutting, which will have to prove their worth during testing.
Dosan, the Falling Leaf:
Has been irrelevant in all of my games thus far. Never tutored for him or played him. That said, mono-blue control is a very strong strategy in 1v1, and if Dosan significantly improves that matchup, it might be worth keeping him around...I'm not sure. A lot hinges on how consistently I can resolve Sisay and get him onto the board eventually. My gut tells me that even against the one deck he should be good against, Dosan isn't going to be good enough to make a difference, but we'll see. I need to play a bunch of games against a Teferi deck or something and find out. I wonder if Brooding Saurian might be better, considering that Sisay getting stolen is just about the most annoying thing ever.
Hua Tuo, Honored Physician:
I've only gotten him out a few times so far. Most times I didn't need to use him, but once he did get a Yosei, the Morning Star recursion loop going. Even in the games I didn't use him, I did like having him around. He makes me feel very safe, basically allowing me to draw any creature from my graveyard if I choose to. Gaddock got sniped? No problem! He's fairly nice with Yosei/Eternal Witness and Miren, the Moaning Well too. He's definitely not a win-more card either, as he's really at his best when things have hit the fan and all the things you want are dead. I need to play with him more, but I think he'll be sticking around. Good luck finding him though.
Seeker of Skybreak/Knight of the Reliquary:
I have yet to draw these in any game. There's some question in my mind as to whether the Seeker might be win-more, considering that both Rofellos and Sisay seem to do absolutely fine without him helping them. I also wonder whether the Knight will do enough/be fast enough. I just don't know yet if these will make the cut in the end.
Search for Tomorrow:
I actually just decided to add this in over Kodama's Reach while writing up critique of Kodama's Reach, which was my least favorite piece of acceleration. I haven't tested this at all yet, but I think it will be good. Anyone know of another 2 mana Rampant Growth variant that I missed, or another great mana elf? Maybe I should even try Elvish Spirit Guide...
Swords to Plowshares:
I can't tutor this at all, so it ends up being very random. I can't rely on finding it at all, so maybe it would be better to find a replacement I can rely on. That said, it's been good every time I've drawn it so far, so I'm not in such a hurry to replace it.
Lignify: I decided to try testing this over Arrest, mostly because it's cheaper and green. I'm not really sure which is better. Lignify is much better against generals with triggered abilities, for what that's worth. There are actually a lot of potential generals like this, but now that black Braids is banned, most of them don't see very much play. Erayo, Soratami Ascendant is probably the best/most played one, though she's a little hard to catch with removal sometimes. Lignify does have 2 distinct disadvantages though, one of which has already cost me the one game I did lose. Because it doesn't stop creatures from attacking or blocking, you can't safely attack with non-flyers with greater than 4 power. Perhaps more importantly, it doesn't stop that creature from effectively wielding equipment. The one game I lost was due to a Trygon Predator holding Sword of Fire and Ice. I was holding Lignify, but it was useless there, whereas Arrest could have saved me. So...both have their advantages, and I'm not sure which is better. I'm keeping a tally of times I think "Wow, I really wish that was Arrest" (1) or "I'm so glad that was Lignify" (0, so far). Depending on which happens more, I may well make the swap.
Oblivion Stone:
It feels weird to have no mass removal, and this is the mass removal spell that makes the most sense to play in this deck. The trouble is that this deck produces so very permanents that I never really want to use this unless the board has already been wrathed, or unless I'm intentionally slow-rolling. I think the latter leads to bad play sometimes--the one game I lost, I kept a slow hand with Oblivion Stone, thinking I could get a big advantage out it. Krosan Grip foiled that plan, and probably cost me the game. Every time I've drawn Oblivion Stone in other games, it's just sat in my hand and been useless, because it wasn't worth casting it. I'm not convinced that mass removal is truly necessary in this deck, considering how rarely it's worth using here.
Umbral Mantle/Steelshaper's Gift:
If Umbral Mantle goes, Steelshaper's Gift will probably go too. If the Mantle stays, the Gift can probably stay too. I'm not sure about these yet. Gift is okay, because Lightning Greaves really is that good, but it's quite narrow. Umbral Mantle is even more narrow--it's not really worth 3 mana to get another Sisay activation, but it goes absolutely nuclear with Rofellos, who always shows up pretty quick. I've drawn Umbral Mantle in 2 games so far. Once I had it early, and I won quickly with an infinitely huge Rofellos. Once I had it late, when Rofellos had bitten the dust and I had no recursion, and it was useless. The infinite mana this combo can produce is pretty decent with Mirror Entity, but not very useful otherwise. So...I don't know really. The odds of getting it aren't that good, but the question is how often it wins me the game when I do get it. More testing is needed.
These are the only cards I could really consider cutting at this point (and I'm pretty sure that at least Hua Tuo, Honored Physician and Search for Tomorrow are going to be sticking around.). That's a pretty tight deck for a first draft.
The list is already very solid, and I feel that it's competitive--it should be able to hang with Zur, Arcum, Rofellos, whatever. The key to a competitive EDH deck is 1) fast, consistent mana, and 2) tutoring ability. This deck has both in spades. I encourage anyone to try this list--it's tremendously fun to play. Please offer suggestions--and reasoning behind those suggestions--if you have any.
I took out Dosan after casting him three times. They were all against blue decks that also had another color so he just got killed. He's alot like Vexing Shusher- Good in theory, bad in practice. Attaching your counter hate to a 2/2 just isn't good enough.
1800+ in Limited
3-0ing after drafting 17 non-basics in Cube
a fantastic card to have in edh even better if you have a mangara since you can bounce him in resp to his ability essentially 3-remove target at sorcery speed
thnx to ".torrent" at Heroes of the Plane Studios
That's my main goal for this deck. I still obviously want for it to be amazing with an active Sisay, but I also want to be able to have the deck hold its own in case she gets hit by a tuck spell or draws early hate (since I'll be playing Sisay in both 1v1 and multiplayer games).
For cards you would be cutting, here are some substitutes that I like to play myself:
Sensei's Divining Top: Excellent with all the shuffling that goes on. Card selection is really good stuff, and needed in decks that don't have blue or black's brute force card draw/tutors.
Mirri's Guile: Top #2.
Life from the Loam: Another land recursion spell alongside Crucible.
Myojin of Cleansing Fire: Here's what I play as a sweeper. I play this guy over the green Myojin. Gaddock Teeg friendly, tutorable, and it leaves you with a decent 4/6 beater after you use him.
Azusa, Lost but Seeking: Mainly to combo with LftL and Crucible. Strip Mining someone 3 times in a row continuously or popping a fetchland a whole bunch of times is pretty good stuff.
As for more land fetching that costs 2 and less, I think going with snow-covered lands, Arctic Flats, Mouth of Ronom, and Into the North seems quite feasible. Into the North accelerates you into 4 mana by turn 3, and it can fetch both Arctic Flats for color fixing or Mouth of Ronom for utility. Mouth of Ronom also has great synergy with Crucible and LftL.
Karakas would be an automatic shoe-in for the deck, but unfortunately Karakas is banned because it ruins the nature of EDH by effectively blanking someone's general. If you want to abuse Mangara, sac him in response to his ability to Miren, the Moaning Well and abuse recursion spells to bring back Mangara for more exiling action.
I don't really like any of the mana critters mentioned except Quirion Elves, which I'm already running (it's been good). Into the North/Mouth of Ronom are pretty good, and probably worth running. I'd probably cut Boreal Druid for Into the North, though I've actually been pretty happy with the Druid thus far. The trouble is just in maximizing your forest count--I probably have to cut 2 of them to make room for Arctic Flats/Mouth of Ronom, because there's nothing else left to cut. I'll try it out, but I hate going below 17 basic Forests.
I agree that Dosan, the Falling Leaf is pretty useless. I still haven't had any use for him.
Sensei's Divining Top/Mirri's Guile are both okay...if you can find the room. They're really much inferior to Sylvan Library in this deck though. I'm actually not a fan of SDT in this deck, because it interacts quite poorly with Hokori, Dust Drinker and Kataki, War's Wage, both of which are commonly appear on my board (usually together). Mirri's Guile bugs me just by how much worse it is than Sylvan Library, but it's probably still pretty good. I'm not sure where I'll find room for it, but I'd like to test it.
Life from the Loam is decent as Crucible #2, but I still don't like it here. It's not tutorable at all, it doesn't work nearly as well with Azusa, Lost but Seeking, and I'm scared that I'll dredge a card I need to tutor up, and not be able to get at it in time. I can really easily imagine losing games to an unlucky dredge, so I don't think I want to mess with it. Also, LftL makes me want to add the onslaught cycling lands, but my forest count can't support those.
Myojin of Cleansing Fire: Yeah, maybe. You shouldn't be running this guy over Myojin of Life's Web; they have very different functions. Whether you run one really shouldn't effect whether you run the other. I remain skeptical that I need a wrath--I've been paying attention during my games (I played about 8 more matches on MWS tonight, and lost none of them), and never once did I wish I could tutor for the white Myojin. My goal in every game is to STOP wraths from resolving, or recover swiftly from the ones I can't stop, not to resolve them myself. I always have so many creatures out that it makes no sense at all to wrath. If I don't have creatures out, a wrath just resolved, and then I don't need one of my own. I truly don't see a need for this card. Furthermore, the 3 white mana requirement scares me off, as that can sometimes be very difficult to get, especially under Hokori. Green mana is abundant, but white mana is often not. The only triple-white card I run is Reya Dawnbringer. She's been great, but I never really bother hardcasting her--she piggybacks in on Myojin of Life Web in most games.
I already run Azusa, Lost but Seeking. To be honest, she's usually pretty mediocre, but occasionally she's good enough to justify her spot, I think.
And yes, the deck performs pretty well without Sisay. In the games I've tested, I've had her tucked into my deck once (Bant Charm), stolen with Treachery or Desertion 3 times, and been unable to keep her on the board due to a surfeit of removal twice. Every one of those games I still managed to win. When she got tucked into my deck, I tutored her out. Every time she got stolen, she was gone for good that game, which sucked, but I still pulled out a win. Survival of the Fittest was very important in two of those games, and does a pretty decent Sisay impression. When I couldn't keep her on the board, I just ground out wins--it took a while, but I was never really in danger. So yes, the deck does okay without Sisay in play. Obviously it doesn't do quite as well, but it's been fine for me. I am seriously considering trying out Brooding Saurian though, probably instead of Dosan, the Falling Leaf, just because Sisay getting stolen is quite frustrating--it's very hard to get her back.
I've been very happy with the deck so far. I'll try out Brooding Saurian, and perhaps Mirri's Guile and the snow land package as well.