Captain Sisay is my go-to general of choice. Most players usually have a general they can fall back onto to be their favorite general of the format. To me, that general for me is Captain Sisay. One of the main reasons I love Sisay is just because of her ability. Toolbox-style decks are one of my favorite things to play in Magic, because I enjoy being able to answer whatever problem I may be facing at the moment.
Captain Sisay might be the general for you if:
- You want a general and a deck that is solid and able to stand on its own, yet not a broken one that will get you hated off the table immediately.
- You like having the ability to have answers to virtually any situation.
- You like having access to a very solid card pool.
You should not play Captain Sisay if:
- You want a general that has a definitive, linear strategy focused around it.
- You want a deck that you can pick up and do immediately well with it.
- You hate shuffling. You will be doing that a lot with this deck.
- You don't want a general that is very frail and tends to die a lot.
This above list is for a 1v1 environment that does not follow either the MTG Salvation or French ban lists. Some areas indeed do this, so if that's the case for you, this is what I would run. For a 1v1 list that follows either MTGS or France's ban list, go to the next post.
Card Explanations
Birds of Paradise: Hellz yes. Color fixing + mana accel + turn 3 Sisay = win
Bloom Tender: It accelerates you to turn 3 Sisay and then after you play her, Bloom Tender then gets to tap for GW.
Sakura-Tribe Elder: Pretty obvious. Accelerates into turn 3 Sisay, which is a major factor.
Fauna Shaman: Finally, Wizards makes Survival on a stick. This deck has quite a few creatures to dump to her, and the toolbox necessary to abuse it as well. When you also factor in her synergy with Reveillark and other cards like Karmic Guide (great for dumping that Iona in your hand!), you can see why she is a shoe-in for this deck.
Steward of Valeron: This guy is like a mana elf on steroids. He has a beefy 2/2 body with vigilance and furthers the plan of accelerating to turn 3 Sisay. He gets pumped by Crovax and double-pumped by Wolfbood. Much welcomed.
Aven Mindcensor: Oh my god is this guy amazing. People have no idea how HEAVILY reliant decks are at searching their libraries. This guy puts an end almost all relevant search cards. Good luck hoping the card you're looking for is in the top 4 of a massive EDH deck.
Mirror Entity: Part of the infinite Lark combo, but outside of that he is a must-answer threat. This deck can generate a lot of mana, and what better way to use that mana than to turn your army into CHANGELINGS OF DOOM! Oh yeah, Sliver decks won't like it when they get beat up by your newly created slivers that steal all their slivers' abilities.
Eternal Witness: Of course. Simply busted when combined with Reveillark.
Harmonic Sliver: So I like this guy. I used to have Krosan Grip here but I like having a creature that disenchants all on his own and thus can be used as another body for Mirror Entity/Kamahl assaults and also for recursion. Also randomly good against sliver decks as he snatches their awesome abilities as well.
Knight of the Reliquary: Not much needs to be said about her other than the fact that SHE HAS TWO POWER FOR REVEILLARK GOODNESS! Ok, I think I'm done here.
Academy Rector: She cheats Wild Pair right into play past Teeg. With a tutorable sac outlet in Miren, it's quite convenient to trigger her when your opponent doesn't feel like attacking into her. Getting Aura Shards can be a very feasible choice as well if the situation calls for it.
Brooding Saurian: This is my answer to blue decks that like to jack my ****, especially Sisay. When this guy resolves, he flips the bird to all theft cards. He's also hilariously awesome against Sen Triplets.
Reveillark: All hail Reveillark, quite possibly the best creature in deck, if not THE best card overall. When he's not going infinite, he's creating a monsterous avalanche of card advantage that makes even blue and black decks jealous of his awesomeness.
Genesis: Because I need to win the constant attrition wars in EDH, duh. A shoe-in when I also play Survival; I can also get Genesis into my graveyard via Miren. Mana intensive, but hey it works. Too good of a recursion engine once he's in the graveyard doing his magic.
Karmic Guide: Reveillark's partner-in-crime, and it's just simply awesome reanimating utility creatures and using their ETB abilities again. Or just reanimate a fatty. I hear that works too. Don't forget she has pro-black; many people forget that
Acidic Slime: The newest most awesome utility creature on the block. Acidic Slime neutralizes most problematic threats and then plugs up the ground with his deathtouch body. He loves Reveillark, he loves Yavimaya Hollow, he loves a lot of different stuff. I especially like the fact he can destroy lands; quite good for color starving multicolore generals, and also for destroying critical individual lands.
Duplicant: Of course this is an EDH staple. I like using it to exile non-general creatures so they are effectively gone for good, because recursion is abused heavily in this format. And isn't it quite convenient that he has two power?
Primeval Titan: Ridiculous doesn't even begin to explain how good this card is. If he resolves, searching for both Strip Mine and Dust Bowl can threaten to put your opponent severely behind, especially with the additional threat of swinging and fetching two more lands. Such an incredible standalone card. He will quickly win games if he is not answered quickly.
Kataki, War's Wage: The vast majority of EDH decks love artifacts for mana acceleration. Kataki puts an end to that by effectively disabling those sources of artifact mana and slowing down the ones that produce bigger amounts. Kataki is at its best against the most artifact-reliant decks such as Sharuum, Dagsson, and Karn. Other generals such as red Akroma and Godo also rely heavily on artifacts as well, and Kataki will slow them down quite a bit until they can use up a burn spell to dispatch her. Kataki is already excellent considering this deck runs few artifacts as it is, but when combined with Hokori, your opponent is left with very little choice.
Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary: Now you know why I play a huge amount of Forests. Rofellos is simply too good to pass up. We all know how silly Rofellos can be as a general, and he isn't too much worse here in a G/w deck. This is a good first target for Sisay to tutor for, especially when you can easily have Sisay come back over and over from Rofellos producing huge quantities of mana.
Saffi Eriksdotter: Plays a role in the Reveillark cheese, but by herself Saffi is a perfect fit for this deck. She protects Sisay and other valuable creatures in play from all non-exiling spot removal and is an amazing insurance policy against sweepers. Saffi is also very good with ETB abilities to trigger them once more.
Gaddock Teeg: I tutor for this guy a lot on my first activation for Sisay, and I can't blame myself too much for doing so. Gaddock Teeg is simply one of the best, if not the best disruption card in all of EDH. He blocks so many bomb spells and turns off most sweeper cards that would cause problems for my developing board. Teeg provides G/W the necessary leverage it needs to preemptively keep itself from getting wrecked by big spells that it would ordinarily have no way of stopping.
Mangara of Corondor: Point and click removal. Rids you of virtually ANY problematic permanent that doesn't have shroud, and it exiles it to circumvent indestructibility and recursion. This guy can get really silly with Thousand-Year Elixir and a tutor sac outlet like Miren.
Glissa Sunseeker: Tutorable, repetitive artifact destruction. I like the feeling of having her om nom nom away at artifacts. And a 3/2 first striking body for 4 mana is great stuff, especially with Jitte. People really underrate first strike as a mechanic.
Hokori, Dust Drinker: Tutorable Winter Orb that Reveillark reanimates! With Gaea's Cradle and Rofellos, it isn't too hard for this deck to get around Hokori and stay ahead of your opponent(s) struggling to recover should they tap out their lands. Dropping Hokori down to freeze everyone's lands with an active Sisay out can quickly win you the game.
Linvala, Keeper of Silence: Puts an end to Rofellos, Arcum Dagsson, Azami, Jhoira, and other generals that abuse their activated abilities. A very potent silver bullet that also is nothing to sneeze at for beating down.
Arashi, the Sky Asunder: Blast away at pesky fliers at instant speed, and without blue mages getting in the way. He's also a great midrange body and then can pick off fliers with sniper-like precision.
Kamahl, Fist of Krosa: This is a great mana sink for all the mana this deck can produce. It is not uncommon to be able to generate 50-60+ damage in a single combat step with a few overrun activations from Kamahl plus animating the random land here and there. Kamahl is also an amazing deterrent to sweepers, and combos with Crovax for my favorite combo in EDH.
Crovax, Ascendant Hero: This guy shuts down an alarmingly high amount of creatures. He blanks most token strategies, most weenie hordes, makes utility creatures cry, and disables all the X/1 non-white generals. Good luck killing him as well with 30 life. Just don't get Mindslavered!
Yosei, the Morning Star: Great deterrent and beatstick at the same time. Can be used for locks (Reveillark and Mistveil Plains) when combined with the oh-so-fun tutorable sac outlet in Miren, or just to freeze the blue player for a turn so you can resolve something truly nasty through their wall of countermagic.
Myojin of Life's Web: The top of the curve. I hear 8/8 indestructible beatdown machines for 9 mana are pretty good last time I checked, and so is creating a handful of creatures into play as well at instant speed. He's excellent for getting Crovax/Kamahl into play at instant speed so you can go ape**** on lands, and he's also an excellent deterrent to people attacking you.
Iona: Don't get hit by Bribery if she isn't in your hand. If she does get plucked out via Bribery, you will have to resort to either Arashi or Lignify to stop her since they will usually call white to stop the expected answers for her.
Mana Crypt: Sickly powerful. Crypt and Sol Ring give the opportunity of accelerating Sisay straight to turn 2. The three damage you can potentially take from Crypt each turn is negligable with 40 life point totals, as the godly acceleration is more than worth it. I have managed to do the god draw of turn 1 land, Crypt, Thousand-Year Elixir with a turn 2 Sisay that can tutor immediately.
Sensei's Divining Top: I like card selection. A fantastic card with all the shuffling effects integrated into the deck. Without too many true card advantage machines in G/W, card selection is excellent with this deck's excellent threat density.
Sol Ring: No duh. See Mana Crypt, except you can't get the god draw like you can with Crypt.
Lightning Greaves: No wonder this is an EDH staple. Gives Sisay haste AND protects her frail ass. Killing two birds with one stone never sounded so cliche'.
Talisman of Unity: Better than Selesnya Signet because you can play something off the mana it provides on turn 2 right away. Taking 1 damage will almost never matter.
Umezawa's Jitte: Turns even the lowliest of utility creatures into wrecking balls, kills stuff, and provides a life cushion if needed. Yes, I love threat density that also happens to be diversity as well. And it's legendary of course.
Crucible of Worlds: This is just awesome stuff with seven fetchlands while simultaneously protecting your utility lands. Mouth of Ronom also becomes a repetitive source of creature removal as well. Of course, I shouldn't have to explain too much about the synergies with Strip Mine and Dust Bowl.
Thousand-Year Elixir: We're killing two birds with one stone again! Gives Sisay haste as well as an extra activation. Probably one of the best cards in the deck. I'm not joking. You will be losing very, VERY few games when you're tutoring for two cards each turn.
Mindslaver: Yes, Einstein, of course we're playing Mindslaver with a general that can tutor for it. Just remember to play nice :].
Concordant Crossroads: This is a savage piece of tech I discovered about a week and a half before the Elemental Blitz tourney. It gives Sisay another source of haste that is very cheap. Getting the ability to tutor immediately is HUGE. Just be careful against aggro decks that can take advantage of the universal haste, as well as any random world enchantment that could wipe this off the board.
Mirri's Guile: A less-resilient Top, but it requires no mana investment to do its thing. Redundancy is good when you have a great ability like card selection with the shuffling in this deck.
Worldly Tutor: Who cares about the wait? This gets you any creature in your deck.
Enlightened Tutor: Yuuuhsss. I like fetching Thousand-Year Elixir and Aura Shards with this guy. Other than that, this is a pretty much self-explanatory card along with Worldly Tutor.
Swords to Plowshares: The best piece of spot removal ever. Better than Path to Exile because the life gain is pretty much inconsequential compared to mana ramping. Swords is also better at slowing down generals as well.
Lignify: Turning off every single ability on a creature is way too good. This deck also attacks in one fell swoop thanks to Kamahl or Mirror Entity, so having them chump block with their 0/4 usually won't matter. A very powerful general disabling tool.
Life from the Loam: Recurring fetchlands is awesome. Recurring Strip Mine and Dust Bowl are awesome. Recurring Mouth of Ronom is awesome. Recurring destroyed utility lands is awesome. Therefore, Life from the Loam is awesome.
Nature's Lore: This and a bunch of other cards provide a backbone of accelerating Sisay to turn 3. This guy does just that while finding a dual land and putting it into play untapped!
Farseek: Grabs a dual land or Mistveil Plains. I really like getting the Mistveil Plains though. No kidding. That card is amazingly awesome as I will cover later on.
Into the North: Mana ramp that acts as color fixing (Arctic Flats) and utility (Mouth of Ronom). Remember, redundancy is good when it's a goal you want to accomplish!
Rampant Growth: Good ol' Rampant Growth is still a standby staple for a deck that WANTS that turn 3 Sisay. Acceleration is a key factor in EDH.
Three Visits: Yay for functional reprints :]. See Nature's Lore.
Sylvan Library: It's Mirri's Guile, but for one more mana I can get my own Howling Mine effect as well! Paying 4 life per card (you rarely want to go 8 for all 3 cards) isn't that big of a deal with EDH's starting life of 40.
Sylvan Scrying: It's not mana ramp, but it does get you ANY land in your deck. And there are a lot of amazing non-basic lands you can get. Choose wisely young grasshopper, for it is the situation that calls for the correct decision.
Survival of the Fittest: Go infinite and win with Reveillark, or generate an absurd card advantage machine with Genesis and non-infinite Reveillark tricks. Most playgroups will likely want you to do the latter, but you do have that option of going nuclear when you're left with no other choice. In 1v1 though, let 'em have it. Probably THE best green card in EDH.
Eladamiri's Call: Worldly Tutor, except there's no waiting or card disadvantage. An exclusive treat for G/W.
Oblation: Who cares if your opponent just drew 2 cards? You just whisked away their general for god knows how long. Oblation can also be used as a stop-gap answer for problematic permanents that you HAVE to get rid of, such as planeswalkers.
Aura Shards: My favorite card in EDH without question. Aura Shards tears the board to shreds while giving you an absolutely absurd amount of card advantage. It can be surprisingly hard to remove since it's an enchantment, and it will make the rest of the table scared to play any of their artifacts or enchantments as they will almost certainly be mowed down by Aura Shards.
Primal Command: Who cares if this gets blocked by Teeg? It's too versatile of a spell to pass up, especially when you can tutor for any creature and hose someone's graveyard.
Wild Pair: Yeah, this guy gets stuffed by Teeg as well, but Wild Pair simply wins the game outright when its in play. It usually sees play through Academy Rector to let me bypass an active Teeg, and from there it's basically a matter of burying the opponent in an avalanche of utility + creatures.
Snow-Covered Forest: I play a lot of Forests because of Rofellos. This is mainly a green-based deck as most of the white cards need only double white at the maximum.
Snow-Covered Plains: I play just one to keep the Forest count as high as it can be, yet I still have an out to fetch for in case a Blood Moon hits play or I fear Wasteland/non-basic LD. This way I can still get a white mana which will make most of the deck function as don't play with too much double white stuff.
Fetchlands: I play all the possible fetchlands in the G/W color combination. They're simply incredible in the deck. They get my dual lands, the white fetches can get Mistveil Plains, they shuffle the deck to make my card selection engines happy, and they have incredible synergy with Crucible, Loam, and Knight of the Reliquary.
Savannah + Temple Garden: They're Forests that also tap for white mana! Rofellos approves.
Brushland, Wooded Bastion, Horizon Canopy, Sunpetal Grove: All of these guys are solid manafixers. Nothing to see here -- move along folks...
Gaea's Cradle: My other souce of tutorable, massive mana production besides Rofellos.
Eiganjo Castle: This has been randomly good to me. Preventing 2 damage to any of my legendary creatures can make people think twice about making certain combat decisions. It can also kill the occasional super-random Horobi, Death's Wail, but that's just a cool side-effect.
Flagstones of Trokair: Provides a bit of an insurance policy against land destruction by fetching a dual land or Mistveil Plains when it dies. Has excellent synergy with Dust Bowl as well. Flagstones of Trokair also really shines against Stax decks by giving you a card to feed to an active Smokestack and not losing any ground at all.
Mistveil Plains: What an amazing utility land. The prerequisite isn't too hard to meet, and once after that you have a silly awesome recursion engine when combined with Sisay. Legendary card dies... just put it on the bottom with Mistveil Plains and retutor it with Sisay. This is also a great card with Sylvan Scrying and Knight of the Reliquary (especially the latter).
Dust Bowl: Once I put this guy in the deck, I never looked back. People really love to get greedy by running one too many non-basic lands in EDH. Dust Bowl punishes such strategies by singlehandedly creating its own lock. Watch 3+ color generals cry as their lands go down the drain, one by one.
Kor Haven: Tutorable Maze of Ith that taps for mana! We all know how amazingly powerful Kor Haven is. Now imagine a deck that can consistently tutor for it. Just an amazing answer for freezing powerful creatures, especially Voltron generals. Just make sure you get rid of their shroud outlet first though if they have it.
Miren, the Moaning Well: A sac outlet that simultaneously provides a life buffer. This is mainly used in conjunction with Yosei to trigger his pseudo-Time Walk ability and with Mangara to sac him in response to activating his ability (so he never gets exiled). Additionally, Miren can be used as a way to foil creature theft should you not have Brooding Saurian and you have the mana open to do so.
Hall of the Bandit Lord: It's a haste outlet for Sisay that's tutorable and doesn't take up a real deck slot all at the same time. Very much needed, and paying 3 life isn't too bad with the bigger life buffer.
Strip Mine: A staple utility card. Zero mana LD. What's left to say?
Yavimaya Hollow: Great way to mess up combat. It can also be like a pseudo-Kor Haven against non-trampling beatsticks by just throwing out a random chump blocker and regenerating them. Additionally, the regeneration can prove to be quite good to survive through a good amount of sweepers such as Oblivion Stone and Disk.
How to play the deck
Sisay is a mana ramp deck that focues on the mid to late game. In the early game, you want to focus on mana ramping to 4 mana by turn 3 for Sisay. This is why you see a lot of two mana Rampant Growth-like effects all around in the deck. Speed is the key in EDH. Speed and acceleration separate the good decks from the bad ones. As fragile as Sisay can be, you can maximize her chances of survival if you get her out on turn 3 as much as possible. Keep in mind that in EDH, very few decks run good amounts of cheap removal that would be ubiquitous in other formats. This means cards like Lightning Bolt are usually substituted for stuff such as Beacon of Destruction. That's good for all fragile generals in this format, especially the ones that hit the table early.
Upon untapping with Sisay and being able to start tutoring for her, you want to constantly evaluate your board position AND your opponents' boards as well. Sisay won't always last forever, especially with a powerful ability like tutoring for any legendary card each turn, so you'll have to make every activation count. When I tutor for Sisay, I ask myself what I need the most of. Identify your biggest concern, and then rectify it by tutoring for the appropriate card.
As I mentioned in the last section, it's a good idea to identify your main priority on what you need in order to figure out what exactly you're tutoring for first. Remember, Sisay is a very fragile general! You cannot afford to squander an activation, because that activation you just did might be your last.
This is not a deck you can just automatically pick up and do really good with. I've been playing with Sisay for nearly 3 months now, and I still make a mistake from time to time. Understanding all the hidden nuances, tricks, and what to tutor for at the correct time can make the difference in a game... whether it be short-term or long-term.
While recognizing the game state is of utmost critical importance in tutoring for the correct card, I'll also give you a generalized idea of what you should be fetching depending on what you want.
Land drop (if you're mana screwed): Get either Cradle or Kor Haven. There's nothing wrong with fetching any of the other legendary lands as well if the situation presents itself though. The former two are just the two big ones as they are the most powerful lands in the deck.
Acceleration: Cradle or Rofellos.
Disruption: Gaddock Teeg, Kataki, or Hokori.
Offense: Kamahl, Crovax, Tolsimir Wolfblood, Jitte, Yosei (doubles as a defensive rattlesnake card)
Defense: Crovax (against X/1s), Kor Haven (against massive individual creatures), Yosei (as a deterrant), Arashi, Hua Tao
Knockout punch: Mindslaver, Crovax/Kamahl combo, Myojin of Life's Web, Mangara (if you have Thousand-Year Elixir in play), Yosei lock
Winning
You have many ways to win. I will just keep it simple and list the paths to victory:
1) Beatdown with creatures. It’s simple enough, especially when you can tutor for legends to smash your opponent(s) to a pulp. Recursion and card advantage engines in this deck help to augment this strategy. If you want to wipe out a player in one combat step, tutor for Kamahl, Fist of Krosa and use a huge amount of mana to Overrun a few times. Mirror Entity is also very, very strong.
2) Go infinite with Reveillark/Karmic Guide/Saffi/Mirror Entity. This will be explained in further detail in the section of tricks and combos.
3) Set up a Yosei or Mindslaver lock. This will be covered in slightly more detail in the tricks and combos section, but it’s a pretty straightforward win in 1v1 games, and it effectively disables one person in multiplayer. Expect to be called all sorts of names for pulling this off though.
4) And extremely sparingly, beatdown with Sisay for a general damage kill. Extremely rare and almost never done, but you need some other alternate way to kill the person who has a life total equal to Graham’s number. You can also use general damage to your advantage if you want to kill multiple players at once. If it's late game and you have a huge amount of mana to spend on the likes of Kamahl or Mirror Entity, you can send one part of your 14+/14+s at one person, another half at another person, and then hammer another person with Sisay for a general damage kill.
Tricks and Combos
This is what I like about my decklist and Sisay. There are so many little hidden tricks and combos in the deck, and possibly even more not listed here. IMO, they make playing this deck extremely fun due to all the interactions that exist.
Keep in mind, this isn't everything. All of these interactions are basically scratching the surface of what this deck can do.
Going infinite with the Reveillark/Karmic Guide/Saffi/Mirror Entity combo: This is easily set up with Survival, since it will singlehandedly tutor for all the combo pieces. With a filler creature you don’t need in hand, pitch it to Survival and fetch Saffi, Karmic Guide, Mirror Entity, and then Yosei into the graveyard. After dumping the final combo piece, get Reveillark last. Evoke Reveillark, reanimating Karmic Guide and Mirror Entity. Use Karmic Guide to reanimate Reveillark.
Next, activate Mirror Entity a bunch of times for zero mana. I’ll use 100 as a base value, but you can choose any other huge number.
The first trigger resolves, turning all your creatures into 0/0s and killing them. Reveillark’s ability triggers; use it to reanimate Saffi and Karmic Guide. Karmic Guide reanimates Reveillark again. Now sac Saffi, targeting Reveillark.
The next Mirror Entity trigger resolves, killing everyone again. Reveillark triggers again to reanimate Saffi and Karmic Guide. Reveillark itself comes back into play thanks to when you sacked Saffi. Karmic Guide can now reanimate any creature in your graveyard; this is when you use it to reanimate Yosei.
Sac Saffi targeting Reveillark again, and let the next Mirror Entity trigger resolve to kill everyone again. This will kill Yosei, triggering his ability. You can now simply trigger the last procedure over and over again, continuously killing Yosei and effectively not letting your opponents have an untap step for the rest of the game amongst their tapped permanents. For the last Mirror Entity trigger, have Reveillark reanimate Mirror Entity and Saffi. You can now repeat the combo and continue to go infinite at instant speed.
Mindslaver/Yosei lock: This can be set up a few ways, but I find the easiest and cheapest way to do it is Mistveil Plains + Sisay + some other white permanent + Mindslaver/Yosei. Tutor for your lock piece with Sisay, and cast and sac it right away if you have the mana to do so.
Kamahl + Crovax: My personal favorite combo. Animate your opponent’s land with Kamahl, and Crovax immediately kills it. Rinse and repeat for just one green each, and you can quickly massacre everyone’s lands. Don’t make it a habit to aggressively assemble this combo however if your playgroup hates LD taken to this level of effectiveness lol. Alternatively, you can use Jitte to kill the animated lands if for some reason you can’t get Crovax, or if playing Crovax would be more deterimental to you (for example, it pumps another white player's tokens).
Mangara + Miren: Activate Mangara to exile whatever you want to get rid of. With Mangara’s ability on the stack, sac him to Miren. Because Mangara exiling himself is not part of the cost to activate the ability, Mangara doesn’t care about if he leaves play in some way before the ability resolves. The targeted permanent will still be exiled and Mangara won’t be exiled himself because he was already sacked to Miren. This opens the door to recurring Mangara through a number of ways and exiling cards at will. Combined with Thousand-Year Elixir, this combo turns into a grossly powerful lock.
Additionally, Stonecloaker can be used to bounce Mangara in response to activating him. This gives you another outlet to Mangara abuse; showcasing the amazing versatility and utility that Stonecloaker provides to the deck.
Hokori + Kataki: This works best against decks that rely heavily on artifacts. Hokori’s winter orb effect slows the game down immensely. Combined with Kataki, this presents people controlling artifacts a tough situation: do you pay the upkeep cost to keep your artifacts in play and stay locked down under Hokori, or do you sac them and get out of Hokori’s grip?
Crucible + Strip Mine/Dust Bowl: The quintessential lock combo that any deck can play. Dust Bowl can also be substituted as well and can act as a de facto Strip Mine against many multicolored generals.
Crucible + fetchlands: For when you need mana. Pretty obvious.
Crucible + Horizon Canopy: Draw an extra card each turn. Not used a whole lot, but good to know.
Aura Shards + Stonecloaker: Aura Shards is probably one of my favorite cards in EDH because it munches away at artifacts and enchantments like Pac-Man munches away at dots. Use Stonecloaker to bounce himself, triggering both Aura Shards and Stonecloaker's exiling effect. When needed, you can use Stonecloaker to bounce one of your own creatures in response
Knight of the Reliquary tricks: Grabbing utility lands in response to something such as Yavimaya Hollow or Kor Haven can be a nice surprise for someone. Yavimaya Hollow especially is great for giving a creature you control much-needed protection from something such as a board sweeper.
Wild Pair is an unbelievably powerful card that can quickly win you the game because if you have Sisay out, you can tutor for the exact legendary creature you need and tutor for the exact nonlegendary creature you need in the process. Worse comes to worse, you can drop a random creature and almost certainly find some other creature worth having. The card advantage and board presence that Wild Pair provides makes it a card worth playing even when Gaddock Teeg is a focal point in 1v1 play, as well as opening the door to playing Academy Rector to cheat it into play under his nose. Legendary creatures are bolded.
3: Rofellos, Kataki, Aven Mindcensor, Eternal Witness, Academy Rector
4: Gaddock Teeg, Saffi Eriksdotter, Hokori, Karmic Guide, Steward of Valeron, Fauna Shaman, Acidic Slime, Knight of the Reliquary
5: Glissa, Stonecloaker
6:
Duplicant
7: Linvala, Kamahl, Reveillark
8: Crovax, Genesis, Brooding Saurian
9:
10: Yosei, Reya, Arashi
11:
12:
Primeval Titan, Sun Titan
13:
14: Iona
15:
16: Myojin of Life's Web
This is only the tip of the iceberg though! There are many different types of tricks, synergies, and combos this deck can provide. Some of them are a bit extraneous to say the least. You need to actually play this deck a fair amount to understand a lot of the different mixups and approaches the deck has other than its primary goal of using Sisay to assemble certain combos. This is important when you need a plan B should Sisay get tucked or just die to multiple removal spells before she gets a chance to untap.
Losing Sol Ring and Mana Crypt both greatly reduce the chance of getting a second turn Sisay out, so inferior but still solid replacements have been implemented such as Chrome Mox and more 2 mana acceleration. Losing Crucible and Mindslaver were also very significant, but thankfully the deck can function very well due to the excellent amount of interchangability.
With no one else to disrupt you in multiplayer, the goal is simple in 1v1: accelerate to Sisay and play your Big Three to systematically choke your opponent off their resources: Teeg, Kataki, and Hokori. Teeg is usually the first target I tutor for, because he ruins so many decks and generates a monsterous amount of virtual card advantage. With 30 life, aggro also becomes a viable strategy as well, which is good when Sisay gets countered/killed the moment you cast her. Take advantage of your speed with a lot of the mana dudes and the fact that some utility creatures also are very threatening in combat as well (KotR, and especially Mirror Entity). Your speed and threat density provide a great combination together for putting a lot of pressure on the opponent in addition to making them worry about having to deal with Sisay as well.
In multiplayer, having the ability to generate card advantage over time and have bigger and splashier effects is needed over pure efficiency that you have in 1v1 play. You'll notice I play a lot more ETBT lands, and I took out the mana dorks for their slower variants. That's because the board is bound to be reset at least more than once at the table, and when your Birds and 2 CMC mana producers go, so does your acceleration. Cards like Yavimaya Dryad ensure that you keep your mana acceleration that they got you even after they get whisked away. Accelerating into Sisay is much less of a factor, because there is a MUCH greater chance she'll die or the table turns on you.
I've also stuck some cards in that normally I wouldn't play in 1v1 because they get blocked by Teeg. Getting Teeg out in 1v1 is something I do very often, because Teeg alone can just crush the other player. However, 3-5 will not enjoy being able to play most of their hand with Teeg out. I haven't taken Teeg out completely though because he still is needed as players die and the game centers between just a few players left. He's also very good for making the Jhoira player look like a fool when they're about ready resolve huge spells that have been suspended. Just make sure you go about playing Teeg in multiplayer in a political manner. i.e., "Guys, let me play Teeg to make sure that suspended Time Stretch stays exiled forever, and then I'll sac him to Miren so you guys can still cast your stuff."
Also keep in mind that I am changing my multiplayer list a lot, which is the list I usually play in general. Keep in mind that I'll continuously just sub out some of the cards for other ones so on some of the cards I just posted the ones on average I use the most.
The general rule to keep in mind is that the 1v1 list focuses on speed and efficiency while the multiplayer build focuses on power and fortification.
F.A.Q.
Q: Why aren't you playing ________?
A: Check the alternate card choices section. If it's not there, the card you're thinking about probably 1) gets blocked by Teeg and/or 2) does not fulfill some other purpose I'm looking for in the deck.
Q: Is this deck expensive to build?
A: Yes. I would not recommend building this deck if you're on a budget, as cards such as Gaea's Cradle and Jitte go for big wads of cash. I went to SCG to price the whole deck, and it amounted to over $500 USD. I probably built the whole deck for roughly about $200-$250 (it also helped I had some old school staples to start out from scratch as well, and SCG does overprice on a lot of their stuff), but that still doesn't detract from the point that building a good Sisay deck is expensive.
Q: What are the deck's strengths?
A: In a nutshell, speed and versatility.
Q: What are the deck's weaknesses?
A: The main one is getting Sisay stolen. If Sisay gets stolen, you are in BIG trouble. Getting Mindslavered will also result in a very quick loss, at the very least getting severely crippled. If your opponent can cast Crovax during the Slavered turn, you lose on the spot unless you're at an odd life total (in that case you get dropped to 1).
Q: How can I play this deck without being labeled a douchebag/hated off the table?
A: Don't assemble combos/locks as aggressively as usual. Focus more on splashy effects and less on Teeg/Hokori/Mindslaver/Iona. Other than that, it's going to depend on the context of what your playgroup is like.
Keep in mind that this video is quite dated and refers to my real-life Sisay deck. It too has undergone drastic reiterations and changes.
Alternate card choices
Stonecloaker: Creature protection and constant graveyard hate. That's a pretty nice combination for a utility creature, though three mana can be slightly tough to leave open, and a 3/2 flying body isn't exactly the best in EDH.
Enlisted Wurm: Cascade makes for some really huge swings, especially in this deck. I love this guy.
Phantom Nishoba: Makes the red decks cry. He dominates combat, gives you a nice chunk of life each turn, and has ridiculous synergy with Reveillark. That's right, Phantom Nishoba has ZERO power, which means he's fair game for Reveillark recursion.
Rhys the Redeemed: If you're playing with a good share of token generators, this is obviously quite powerful. And it gets reanimated with Reveillark to boot. <3
Rune-Tail, Kitsune Ascendant: This card will always certain flip automatically. This is a very powerful foil against red decks as well as making your creatures close to unassailable in normal combat.
Dosan, the Falling Leaf: If you need extra leverage against blue, look to Dosan as another "must counter" threat before he freezes all their countermagic and other instant-speed plays.
Yomiji, Who Bars the Way: I don't like this guy for a recursion engine because I usually have Mistveil Plains do that job to begin with. Nevertheless, I do see many Sisay decks play this guy as an extra recursion engine. As a little side note, he also makes other great legendary cards such as Jitte and Cradle that much harder to get rid of.
Kaldratron: Sword of Kaldra, Shield of Kaldra, and Helm of Kaldra. These are very splashy, very powerful cards, but the problems are threefold: 1) two of the arifacts are blocked by Teeg 2) All the equipment with the slight exception of Helm is very mana intensive and 3) It requires *three* activations of Sisay to assemble the entire combo. For a more casual Sisay deck though, these are excellent cards by themselves to turn any random creature into a wrecking ball.
Tatsumasa, the Dragon's Fang: Aside from getting blocked by Teeg, this is an incredibly mana intensive card. With the amount of mana you're pumping into this guy, you're better off getting Mindslaver instead and creating much more of an impact on the gamestate. If you don't wish to play Mindslaver though (for whatever reasons), then I could see this being an ok replacement.
Condemn: This card I have found to be feast or famine. Many generals don't have to attack to do their thing being as they serve utility purposes, and making Condemn much less effective. If you do have a metagame where generals are going into the red zone instead of sitting out of combat, then having an additional general hoser card is an excellent add.
Path to Exile: Unlike Swords, Path is not a very effective answer for generals, as if they have a land drop for next turn, they will be able to immediately recast their general. This is also why I play other cards hating more on generals such as Arrest and Oblation. If you want a spot removal card that is better off against singleton creatures, then Path isn't too bad in that sense.
Arrest: Lignify is cheaper and stops static and triggered abilities that Arrest can't touch.
Faith's Fetters: Fetters provides versatility (the life gain will be inconsequential for the most part) at the expense of getting blocked by Gaddock Teeg. Since I tutor for Teeg a lot (mainly in 1v1), Arrest bypasses Teeg and also shuts down mana abilities *coughRofelloscough*.
Okina, Temple to the Grandfathers: I have practically never seen its ability be relevant. Replaced for another Forest in my deck, because Rofellos likes those and I don't want to get raped to badly by non-basic hate.
The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale: This can potentially be a life saver against white, non-flying token/weenie decks. Combine this with Hokori and Cradle, and you have a extremely crushingly powerful lock. The only downsides to this guy are that he doesn't tap for mana (so treat him as a 0 mana enchantment that can't be countered) and it's ungodly expensive to acquire in real life.
Krosan Verge: Absolutely amazing accelerant, but is bad in 1v1 due to the slowness of it. A shoe in for multiplayer though.
Stirring Wildwood: Good manland, and gets double pumped by Tolsimir Wolfbood to turn it into a formidable 5/6. Slows you down though, so it's just like Krosan Verge: excellent in multiplayer, bad in 1v1.
Vitu-Ghazi, the City Tree: This card does too little just to make a 1/1. I might have this in my multiplayer deck if I throw in Rhys the Redeemed in it though.
Tournament Accomplishments
- 2nd in Winter 2010 Elemental Blitz tournament
Wishlist (future cards that I would want to see printed that I would add to the deck)
- A legendary creature that Disenchants when it comes into play, and has <2 power.
- A legendary card that reliably exiles cards in graveyards.
- Another awesome legendary land.
- Any usable utility land that generates green and/or white mana preferably.
- A G/W planeswalker (preferrably one that has a CMC of 3 so it doesn't get blocked by Teeg)
Captain Sisay is an EDH deck that I want to build, purely out of casualness i.e. EVERY CARD is going to be legendary (enchantments/artifacts etc). As a result, the deck is probably going to suck, but it'll be really stylish to play an all-permanent, all-legendary EDH deck.
You need to fix your post though. It's hard to read.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I like designing decks and I am primarily a control player. Using Drain to fight Workshops is like using Exclude to fight Dark Confidant.
It should be fixed now. I had this as a Word document and then copypasted to the forums. I'm going to have to talk to some of the techs here to see if this can't be fixed, because all the font tags happens every frickin' time I copypaste from Word.
I'm pretty sure Riftsweeper is banned. Like the list though. I have a Saffi EDH too. It was my first and is the most foily. You also might want a few more legendary targets, but maybe not if you're just looking to win through combo.
Also, I had Rofellos in for a while, but dropped him because I never usually had a ton of forests out. You only have 12 so I'm not sure.
I'm pretty sure Riftsweeper is banned. Like the list though. I have a Saffi EDH too. It was my first and is the most foily. You also might want a few more legendary targets, but maybe not if you're just looking to win through combo.
Also, I had Rofellos in for a while, but dropped him because I never usually had a ton of forests out. You only have 12 so I'm not sure.
Riftsweeper has been unbanned now that generals use the Command zone:
I usually don't have a lack of legendary cards to tutor for. Some of this comes from threat density in my deck because many standalone creatures can be pretty threatening. That's probably why I've dialed back a bit on the amount of legendary creatures a typical Sisay deck might pack and focused less on the reliance on Sisay and more on card advantage/general utility.
As for Rofellos, I'm starting to reconsider him a bit. You're right in that I don't run a TON of forests, but don't forget that fetchlands are de facto forests as well. Though I do get vexed because of his frail body.
I already have a good amount of recursion in the deck... Reveillark, Karmic Guide, Genesis, Hua Tao, Mistveil Plains, etc. Loyal Retainers seems underwhelming to me as a utility creature when compared to everything else. Plus, it doesn't help that he costs $35+ in real life because he's out of P3K lmao.
Hey guys, I'm bumping this thread to let you know that I will be making a video for this deck in a few days. I'll cover my real-life Captain Sisay decklist (minus a few money cards that I don't have in real-life)
- You like having the ability to have answers to solutions.
i find that i rarely need the answers to solutions...it's already solved, that's why it's a solution. problems, on the other hand, i often need answers to problems.
Hey Chaos, nice job with the videos. Very comprehensive and well organized. Just wanted to note too that Mangara of Corondor also works with Stonecloaker. Mangara can also be interchangeable with Yosei in your Survival-based combo but you really have to jump through hoops to make it work (ie Thousand-Year Elixir and a sac outlet like Greater Good, etc.)
Hey Chaos, nice job with the videos. Very comprehensive and well organized. Just wanted to note too that Mangara of Corondor also works with Stonecloaker. Mangara can also be interchangeable with Yosei in your Survival-based combo but you really have to jump through hoops to make it work (ie Thousand-Year Elixir and a sac outlet like Greater Good, etc.)
Thanks for the compliments. I could have covered a lot more when it came to combos and tricks, but that would have taken probably another video and a half.
And thanks for reminding me about Stonecloaker + Mangara. Just another reason why Stonecloaker is so versatile in this deck :]
Hey guys, I'm bumping this thread to let you know that I will be making a video for this deck in a few days. I'll cover my real-life Captain Sisay decklist (minus a few money cards that I don't have in real-life)
Hey, we are the folks that run the elderdragonhighlandr EDH channel!! Thanks for posting your videos as a "video response." This is pretty smooth, nice work!
Some cards I really want to try and squeeze into the deck for testing:
Ohran Viper. Just another source of continous card advantage since drawing extra cards is almost always good in EDH. Takes out pretty much anything in combat it blocks that doesn't regenerate or is indestructible. 1 power = fun times with Reveillark.
Aven Mindcensor. Metagame call, but a VERY powerful ability since I know many decks that rely a lot on searching their library, and a Mindcensor can really screw someone over. 2 power also makes Reveillark happy.
Scute Mob. Mainly to increase the threat density. In theory, he can get out of control very quickly due to the mana ramp I play with and the fact that he can be reanimated through Reveillark, but this guy can potentially turn me into a target and it sucks when he keeps banging into tokens and not getting damage through.
These were a few creatures that I think could be potentially great in filling more niches in this deck. The decklist is already pretty tight though, but I think some testing should obviously be warranted in the future.
Have you tested Hunting Grounds. This gives you a Teferish ability once you get Threshold. Player plays x, you either Sisay or SotF for a creature and play it in response.
I watched the video last night. I thought it was really well done, and thinking about adding your reveillark/karmic guide/saffi combo to my Mayael's deck. Instead of Yosei, I think I'm going to substitute that with Acidic Slime.
Is there anyway i can get the videos emailed to me? They have to be under 5MB. I'm on deployment and ship blocks youtube. I would like to get into this format and this deck looks perfect for me. Let me know and I can pm you my email addy. Thanks.
I am thinking of putting together a Sisay deck (Rafiq gets too much hating), and this looks like a really excellent base. I will watch the videos at some point, but they look pretty neat.
Suggestions: Land Tax is nice, especially with Scroll Rack. Abundance combos with Sylvan library for 3 draws a turn
I'd say Faith's Fetters is better than Arrest.
No O-ring?
No mass removal at all?
I meant to comment on this deck ages ago, and kept procrastinating until I had time to do it justice. I still don't really have time...but I'll make an effort.
I have a very similar Captain Sisay deck, and it's one of my favorites. I love the consistency and versatility of this kind of deck. My deck is close enough that, rather than posting a list, I'll just post the differences between our lists. You focus on many of the same themes as I do, and do it pretty well. The one thing that I think I really emphasize over you is acceleration: I play many, many more ways to land a turn 2-3 Sisay than you do. It's possible that I run too much acceleration--however, it's been my experience that, especially in 1v1 games, acceleration is usually the key factor in determining the winner. Regardless of how much acceleration is correct, I'm quite confident that the 1-2cc acceleration I run is superior to the 3cc acceleration you run--in a deck this focused, a card that boosts you into getting Sisay online faster is markedly superior to one that does not.
Here are the cards you include, that I currently do not.
Let's try to make sense of this. I'll start by justifying the cards in my deck.
Lands:
This is simplest, so I'll start here.
As I mentioned, acceleration is king in EDH. One of the primary reasons this deck is so damn good is because of Rofellos. The weakness of mono-green Rofellos decks is their lack of card selection--playing with Sisay as general completes negates that weakness, and only slows Rofellos down a bit. Rofellos is still your best and most reliable source of major mana, especially with Hokori down. Because acceleration is so important, and because Rofellos tends to make an early appearance in just about every game, I consider it to be worthwhile to focus on maximizing your forest count. With a lot of forests, Rofellos is extremely powerful...but without them, he's fairly meh, as you've noticed.
The ideal situation is that by turn 4 or 5, all or almost all of your lands are basic Forests, Savannah, or Temple Garden. With my build, this is realistic, and happens very frequently. It's powerful enough to be worth squeezing out weaker non-basics. All the lands you're running and I'm not, with the possible exception of Mouth of Ronom, are of low enough utility that I can justify playing basic Forests instead. You only need access to 1 white mana early on, and even later, you rarely need more than 2 until end-game. With my configuration, I don't have any issues with colorscrew, so most of those Savannah knockoffs are unnecessary. Okina may be legendary, but you never tutor for it, and it's ability is irrelevant 999/1000 games, so make it a Forest instead. Vitu-Ghazi is just bad (even with Aura Shards...the "combo" is way overkill).
With Mouth of Ronom, I'm just not sure. It's possible that running snow-lands, Mouth of Ronom, and Into the North is the best call (or even just snow-lands and Into the North, as I think is more likely the case).
I run a huge amount of 0-2cc mana acceleration spells. In addition to the ones you play, I have a whopping 12 that you don't play (you have 1 I don't, so the difference is 11). This allows me to essentially ALWAYS play Sisay by turn 3, and frequently on turn 2. Considering that this deck runs like a machine with Sisay going, I think that this goal is well worth pursuing.
I have a very minor elf theme going (which makes Gaea's Cradle and Priest of Titania (along with Rofellos) a force to be reckoned with), as well as a focus on Rampant Growth effects, with also boosts the aforementioned Rofellos. In this way, most of my accelerants do double duty, boosting me by 1 mana themselves, and then giving me another mana off of Gaea's Cradle or Rofellos.
I think these are all well worth running. They all either 1) cost 0-1 mana, thus not overcrowding the 2cc slot, 2) colorfix, or 3) accelerate into Sisay while potentially producing extra mana later (Priest of Titania). If you were to cut some, Boreal Druid is probably weakest, followed by Talisman of Unity and Selesnya Signet (I hate playing artifacts alongside Kataki), but they all pull their weight. With Sisay providing fantastic card selection, there's not really any such thing as too much acceleration.
Here's a list of cards you run that broadly serve the function of acceleration/mana fixing:
Wood Elves, Farhaven Elf, Yavimaya Dryad, Yavimaya Elder, Solemn Simulacrum, Krosan Tusker, Eternal Dragon, Expedition Map
...however, none of them can actually accelerate you into playing Sisay faster. Therefore, they're probably inferior to the spells that can accelerate you into Sisay. I don't have room in my curve for cards like Eternal Dragon--I always have a 2cc spell to accelerate me into Sisay, so there's no time to cycle stuff until it's too late to matter. I feel that any one of these spells would be better as the acceleration options that I play.
Legendary Creatures:
You must play Myojin of Life's Web. It is flat-out one of the most powerful cards available to this deck. Despite it costing 9 mana, it's so strong that I actually count it as acceleration. If you tested it and still cut it, you didn't test it enough, or you were using it wrong.
Consider the most typical game-state, around turn 5. Turn 3 Sisay, turn 4 Rofellos or Gaea's Cradle (depending on your forest:elf ratio). If you don't get messed with too hard you can get to 9 mana as early as this, and even with some disruption, not too much later. Myojin is a card you can kind of just run out there, as not too much kills it, and it just leads to disgusting plays. In addition to the huge monsters you can grab (Iona, Reya Dawnbringer), Myojin is important for assembling your combos--it's easy to tutor for Kamahl and Crovax, but it's much more difficult to get them both in play at once, and still have mana up to use them (especially with Hokori in play, as he usually is). Typically it takes 3 turns to go off like this, and any removal spoils your day. With Myojin, you just have to gather them into your hand, and then you can drop them on the table whenever you're ready, along with whatever other goodies you've found. In my experience, Myojin is really not a win-more card--especially under Hokori, when both players are struggling along (but you have green mana from Gaea's Cradle or Rofellos), Myojin allows you to just break the game open. If you have enough mana and think you can resolve him, the green Myojin is frequently the best Sisay target.
Reya Dawnbringer is worth running because she's extremely powerful and versatile, and because she provides a relatively simple, all-legendary I-win combo (Reya, Yosei, Miren). I haven't tested Iona much yet, but I think she's probably worth running, simply because she's so ungodly difficult for most decks to deal with (it's possible she's win-more though). Against many decks, if you can manage to get her into play, you've probably stolen the game right there. Though Reya and Iona have somewhat prohibitive mana costs, the aforementioned green Myojin is wonderfully efficient at getting both of them into play.
Tolsimir Wolfblood has a very specific role. Essentially, I needed some card that would stop Crovax from killing Rofellos and the rest of my mana elves. The Crovax/Kamahl combo is great, but it's risky to have to sacrifice Rofellos when you try to pull it off. The answer is to make Rofellos tougher. Alternatives to Tolsimir include Kongming, Sleeping Dragon (annoying WW mana cost, much worse for beatdown), Day of Destiny (annoying WW mana cost, doesn't save other elves, and most crucially, prevented by Gaddock Teeg). I suppose Mirari's Wake is also an option, but I think it's not easy enough to tutor for when needed (and Teeg's interference is a serious strike against it). Tolsimir isn't great, but he does his job. It doesn't hurt that he's also very good when all else fails and you're just trying to go aggro.
I don't like Rhys the Redeemed...the elf tokens just aren't that big a deal. I never have a point where it's worth spending 3 mana a turn just to make a 1/1, so he seems very underpowered. Again, the Aura Shards "combo" is overkill...this deck is heavy enough on creatures that you shouldn't need this.
I'm not a fan of Myojin of Cleansing Fire either. It's quite difficult to cast--by the time I have enough mana, Hokori is usually on the table, making WWW tricky to achieve. This deck is so creature-heavy that I rarely want to wrath anyways...it's just not worth losing all my other creatures in play. Again, I think your "combo" with this Myojin is pretty weak--you can only pull it off if you're in a good board position, and if you're in a good board position, why would you want to wrath the rest of your board? It's overkill.
Other Creatures:
Seeker of Skybreak isn't really necessary, but I've found it to be a very solid card. It interacts very favorably with both Rofellos and Sisay, thus acting as a kind of modular mana acceleration/card advantage engine, depending on what you need more.
Garruk Wildspeaker is likewise unnecessary, but nice to have. You'll rarely make beasts, but untapping 2 lands is hugely relevant with Gaea's Cradle and with Hokori, and occasionally his overrun is useful. Despite him clashing with Teeg (one of only 2 cards I run that do), he's been good for me.
Stonecloaker is a fine card, but didn't do enough for me in my testing. There aren't enough creatures I actually want to blink, I never want to hold 3 mana open for protection, and he costs too much mana per card to be effective graveyard hate. Nothing wrong with running him really, but I think you can do better.
Riftsweeper I tested, and it was just bad. Maybe 20% of the time it did something relevant, the other 80% it was just a grizzly bear. It's a totally reactive card, and reactive cards are generally bad in a deck with a rapid, consistent gameplan, like this one.
Enlisted Wurm just isn't good enough. Once again, the "combo" with the mirage tutors is dreadful, and the Wurm isn't good enough in any situation I can think of. If the 5/5 body was more relevant it might be good here--but as this isn't, primarily, an aggro deck, it doesn't cut it.
Artifacts:
Umbral Mantle is extremely sexy in this deck. With a high forest count, it's actually a better I-win card in this deck than it is in Rofellos. Its use is fairly limited outside of the combo (paying 3 mana for another Sisay activation is okay, but not great), but it just wins if you have 4+ forests, Rofellos, and Sisay (this is very easy to achieve by turn 4 or 5). The key thing to notice is that, in addition to making Rofellos infinitely large and making infinite mana, you can then move it to Sisay, pumping her up and tutoring out every legend in your deck. At that point, you just need to drop Kamahl, which makes all your creatures infinitely large and trampley, and wins you the game. From a competitive viewpoint, it's just too good to cut. It also Steelshaper's Gift worth running: Lightning Greaves is also extremely strong in this deck, so an additional chance to get whichever equipment you want more is worth the slot.
Sensei's Divining Top and Scroll Rack are both fine cards, but I think they're both inferior to Sylvan Library and Mirri's Guile in this deck. Considering the frequency at which Kataki and Hokori hit play, it's definitely in your interest to minimize the number of artifacts you play as much as possible, and to minimize activation costs. As you only ever want one of these cards, you really don't need to run too many...I've found that 2 is plenty, so I don't need SDT or Scroll Rack, which are considerably inferior (both by being artifacts and by requiring activation costs).
Other:
You run Arrest, I run Lignify. They're very similar cards; Arrest is probably a little better, now that black Braids is banned.
Primal Command is pretty solid. It's a tutor, graveyard hate, recursion, and bounce, all in one card. Teeg doesn't like it, but it does enough stuff that I think it's okay.
Life from the Loam and Aura Shards are two cards that I should probably be running...the trick is just finding room.
Krosan Grip...eh, I'd rather run a creature I can tutor for more easily. I'd probably play Harmonic Sliver over this.
I don't really like Regrowth. It's another reactive card that you can't tutor for...in your opening hand, it won't advance your early gameplan at all, so drawing it early is like a mulligan. Eternal Witness, being tutorable, is much better, and I don't think there's a need for too much more recursion. You're already playing a lot.
My brain is starting to melt down, so I've got to wrap this up. I'll try to post more later, including the summary of changes I would make to your list and the few weaknesses I've found and would like to shore up.
When you're making changes, try to keep this in mind: almost every game, you will want to have at least one of the disruptive elements Gaddock Teeg, Hokori, Dust Drinker, and/or Kataki, War's Wage in play in the early turns of the games. Since you can select whichever is best under the circumstances, your opponents should be unprepared to deal with this disruption. It's very important to make sure that these symmetrical effects don't hinder you badly as well--this means minimizing artifacts, activation costs, and 4+ mana non-creature spells. Also, maximize that Forest count as much as you can, because Rofellos is the card that sets this deck apart from the rest of the pack. I'm running 7 more Forests than you and it works pretty well, but I'd like to run even a couple more.
Hey guys! I was going to reply to this thread earlier, but school and work have taken up a good chunk of my free time. I'll try to get to everyone that's posted here recently:
Have you tested Hunting Grounds. This gives you a Teferish ability once you get Threshold. Player plays x, you either Sisay or SotF for a creature and play it in response.
As powerful as Hunting Grounds can be with this deck, I get the feeling it might be a win-more card. If I have Sisay actively tutoring legendary cards out or an active Survival, I'm already in excellent shape. Especially with Survival; if you want to just end the game on the spot you can go grab Mirror Entity/Karmic Guide/Reveillark/Saffi/Yosei and go infinite. Likewise, Sisay by herself will tutor disruption spells and game-ending combos (Kamahl/Crovax, Mindslaver)
I watched the video last night. I thought it was really well done, and thinking about adding your reveillark/karmic guide/saffi combo to my Mayael's deck. Instead of Yosei, I think I'm going to substitute that with Acidic Slime.
Yeah, the fifth piece of the combo can be any creature that has a relevant comes into play/leaves play ability. Acidic Slime is a fine substitute for Yosei, and it can actually be the combo piece of choice in certain situations if obliterating all your opponents' artifacts/enchantments/lands is needed over just tapping them down forever.
Is there anyway i can get the videos emailed to me? They have to be under 5MB. I'm on deployment and ship blocks youtube. I would like to get into this format and this deck looks perfect for me. Let me know and I can pm you my email addy. Thanks.
I don't know how this could even be possible, since even the smallest of videos are well over 5 MB. Sorry :(.
I am thinking of putting together a Sisay deck (Rafiq gets too much hating), and this looks like a really excellent base. I will watch the videos at some point, but they look pretty neat.
Suggestions: Land Tax is nice, especially with Scroll Rack. Abundance combos with Sylvan library for 3 draws a turn
I'd say Faith's Fetters is better than Arrest.
No O-ring?
No mass removal at all?
Land Tax is a great card, but not so much in this deck when you accelerate and ramp a lot.
Abunance seems kinda meh outside of the Sylvan Library combo, and Gaddock Teeg does block it.
O-Ring definately seems plausible. I could swap out PtE for it (Path has been ok for me and it would be nice to have some extra versatility), and having the ability to fetch it with Enlightened Tutor is pretty good.
Faith's Fetters could be a viable option over Arrest, but I like how Arrest is Gaddock Teeg-friendly and it also shuts down mana abilities on creatures that FF doesn't stop *coughRofelloscough*.
@ Khymera: As always, your posts are simply amazingly insightful and I thoroughly enjoy reading them.
Accelerating Sisay to turn 3 consistently appears to be the best game plan for this deck in 1v1. I agree with you there, especially when you bring up the point that EDH hinges a lot on acceleration, and that is only further magnified in 1v1 play. My only possible problem with focusing the deck on get turn 2/3 Sisay is a possiblity that she eats an early removal spell, which slows down the deck. Granted, the acceleration will help you get two more mana to recast her, but this requires resources to spend, and it's a bit annoying G/W doesn't have the pure card draw like blue and black have. This would probably only come up more often in multiplayer format where the probability of someone having a removal spell for Sisay increases, because anyone with a brain won't let you tutor up card for card each turn with such ease. At least, that's just me, but maybe I'm a tad paranoid when it comes to something like that. It probably explains why I have more general utility and acceleration in the deck over more cheaper acceleration to get the early Sisay out.
Still, I'm finding ways to further increase my chances of fast starts without having to sacrifice too much in the way of traditional acceleration/utility. My online version of the deck is something I try to just continously make small adjustments and changes to.
Regarding a lot of the changes and suggestions, you've considered, I've been doing pretty recently. Myojin of Life's Web at a second glance is a lot more promising when you're running with more forests to fuel Rofellos. Good catch on bringing up the fact you can cheat your other creatures into play at instant speed and with uncounterability as well as under an active Hokori. Reya seems win-more as a recursion engine when I can usually use Mistveil Plains to recur a lot of the cards can sac... such as Yosei and Mindslaver. It would take a huge glut of mana to get the lock off though, but Rofellos/Cradle help massively.
Vitu-Ghazi is gone and replaced with Dust Bowl. I can't believe I forgot Dust Bowl... it's such a ****ing amazing card in this format when many multicolored decks rely so heavily on nonbasics. I still like Mouth of Ronom as additional spot removal though. Killing generals like Zur is pretty good, and 4 damage is generally enough to clear out most mid-range threats. The snow base does open up Into the North as another 2 mana accelerant that can fetch Mouth of Ronom or color fix with Arctic Flats. Okina is gone as well and replaced with another snow-covered forest.
Stonecloaker is a personal favorite card of mine because he fills a lot of holes for this deck. Other than just protecting your creatures, he reuses comes into play abilities (which will also trigger Reveillark as well) and he gives me true graveyard hate aside from Primal Command's shuffling graveyards. Stonecloaker also has great synergy with Mangara. 3 mana to exile one card is a tad expensive, but it IS selective and it's at instant speed. Sometimes you don't need to wipe out your opponent's entire graveyard (Primal Command can do that if you really need it), but exiling one or two critical cards in their graveyard is what you need... such as Genesis or Stonecloakering a creature in response to a reanimation spell targeting it.
Graveyard hate is pretty much mandatory in this format; nearly every deck will have someway to try and abuse it.
Riftsweeper looks to be axed as well. A very hit-or-miss card, and even when it hits it isn't *super* amazing.
I'll try to cover more on your post potentially later, but there is so much awesome stuff to continously try out and mess around with that I've just scratched the surface... for now. It's simply amazing how versatile and fun Captain Sisay is to play. In almost every single game, I'm learning new tricks, different decision making skills for certain situations, and increasing the modality of the deck to try and keep it increasingly less reliant on Sisay. That was one of the main goals I want in the deck, especially since Sisay is frail and powerful enough to warrant her getting killed early by someone on the table.
This is one of the best Sisay primers I've read - Khymera's insightful response also adds a lot to the already interesting thread. My first EDH deck happened to be Sisay, and I'd just like to share a few things that haven't been mentioned before.
Like Khymera, I had an elf theme for acceleration, and also included 1x Lin Sivvi and 1x Skyshroad Poacher. Sisay gets Sivvi, Sivvi gets Poacher, Poacher gets elves. It's another way to find Rofellos, and it came in handy quite often as opponents want to shut down your engine a.s.a.p. - but it's hard to shut down THREE engines at once. Sisay's tutoring requires no mana, but can provide for it in crap tons through Cradle/Rofellos. Having Sivvi and Poacher on-line, as well as ability copyers like Elixir meant searching out 3-4 cards each turn...
Almost everything in the deck was tutorable or a tutor in the end, apart from a few removal spells and accelerants. Lots of legendary stuff, a few elves and rebels, some enchantments... I also found access to the Survival/Witness/Genesis engine along with all the enchantment tutors in W/GW to be a very strong reason to play this deck.
I should also mention that playing Sivvi allows you to run a small rebel toolbox too. For example, it's very easy to assemble infinite life combo with Sivvi tutoring up Task Force and Outrider, and Sisay tutoring up Miren (after Sivvi). In fact, this was the route to victory I most often found me taking, so in the end I just dropped Sisay and made a mono-white Sivvi deck instead and that's what I play to this day. Made me hit life combo even faster, but that's another story!
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This is one of the best Sisay primers I've read - Khymera's insightful response also adds a lot to the already interesting thread. My first EDH deck happened to be Sisay, and I'd just like to share a few things that haven't been mentioned before.
Like Khymera, I had an elf theme for acceleration, and also included 1x Lin Sivvi and 1x Skyshroad Poacher. Sisay gets Sivvi, Sivvi gets Poacher, Poacher gets elves. It's another way to find Rofellos, and it came in handy quite often as opponents want to shut down your engine a.s.a.p. - but it's hard to shut down THREE engines at once. Sisay's tutoring requires no mana, but can provide for it in crap tons through Cradle/Rofellos. Having Sivvi and Poacher on-line, as well as ability copyers like Elixir meant searching out 3-4 cards each turn...
Almost everything in the deck was tutorable or a tutor in the end, apart from a few removal spells and accelerants. Lots of legendary stuff, a few elves and rebels, some enchantments... I also found access to the Survival/Witness/Genesis engine along with all the enchantment tutors in W/GW to be a very strong reason to play this deck.
I should also mention that playing Sivvi allows you to run a small rebel toolbox too. For example, it's very easy to assemble infinite life combo with Sivvi tutoring up Task Force and Outrider, and Sisay tutoring up Miren (after Sivvi). In fact, this was the route to victory I most often found me taking, so in the end I just dropped Sisay and made a mono-white Sivvi deck instead and that's what I play to this day. Made me hit life combo even faster, but that's another story!
Wow, this is a very interesting idea. Skyshroud Poacher by itself is excellent at fetching Rofellos and Mirror Entity; two critical cards that make the deck run very well and have excellent synergy with each other. I would probably have to adjust the deck to put a few more good elves in there. Tolsimir Wolfblood is another good notable Elf as well, and I'm almost certainly going to be replacing Enlisted Wurm with him. As fun as Enlisted Wurm can be, it wasn't exactly getting the job done.
I'm not a big fan myself of going for infinite life when I other viable win conditions that get the job done however. Infinite life isn't as powerful as it is in other formats due to general damage.
I'm not a big fan myself of going for infinite life when I other viable win conditions that get the job done however. Infinite life isn't as powerful as it is in other formats due to general damage.
The reason this works as a strategy in Sisay isn't actually the life combo, but the fact that you're in a very good position to win anyway even if it fails. Get Sivvi, a few combo rebels, a mana accelerant and go for life combo. Whether you succeed or not, Sivvi could just go grab Mirror Entity next turn and you can start swinging for the win with the small army of utility creatures you've assembled. By that time, even if they handle Sisay or disrupt the life combo, you still come out strong. Even without Sisay, you can keep growing your army of utility elves and rebels using Sivvi/Poacher/Mirror Entity.
The reason it works in mono white Sivvi is because you have Bound in Silence to handle attacking generals anyway. I'd recommend it for Sisay-with-Sivvi too. Also, you have Pariah/Cho-Manno and numerous sweepers as general protection, and can tutor up Test of Endurance to just win thanks to your life total. Back when Braids was legal, having Lightbringer on hand was also very neat. If your play group uses sideboards and you decide to go for Sivvi, I heartily recommend Light/Lawbringer in two SB slots.
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My only possible problem with focusing the deck on get turn 2/3 Sisay is a possiblity that she eats an early removal spell, which slows down the deck. Granted, the acceleration will help you get two more mana to recast her, but this requires resources to spend, and it's a bit annoying G/W doesn't have the pure card draw like blue and black have.
I don't think it makes any sense to worry about this. Yes, Sisay eating removal slows down the deck...but so does playing her later. If you play her later, she's still going to eat that removal, and you'll be slowed down even more, especially because you might not have mana to replay her without all that acceleration. Lightning Greaves helps if you can find it, but there's really no other solution than to try to power through the spot removal. Frequently, Sisay won't stick the first time I play her, so I just keep accelerating and replaying her until she does.
Slow-rolling Sisay is not going to result in getting her active faster than just playing her when you can, so the acceleration still helps. I wouldn't worry too much about card advantage...even if you're out of cards in hand by the time you get her to stick, Sisay inherently produces such a huge amount of card advantage that it's not a problem. I find it's well worth devoting your hand to getting her going.
Reya seems win-more as a recursion engine when I can usually use Mistveil Plains to recur a lot of the cards can sac... such as Yosei and Mindslaver. It would take a huge glut of mana to get the lock off though, but Rofellos/Cradle help massively.
I have both the Reya Dawnbringer combo and the Mistveil Plains combo in my deck. I've won with the Reya combo numerous times, whereas I've never managed to pull it off with Mistveil Plains (though, admittedly, Mistveil Plains is now a lot easier to find with Zendikar fetchlands). I'm not saying you should cut Mistveil Plains...it's good to have access to that loop. In my experience though, the Reya combo is a lot easier to pull off, so I wouldn't call her win-more. To complete the combo with Mistveil Plains, you need to have 12 mana per turn, 2-4 of it white, and an active Sisay. To complete it with Reya (assuming you can cheat her into play), you need only 4 mana, and it doesn't matter if Sisay has been dealt with.
I won't say she's flat-out better, and I certainly wouldn't run her without the green Myojin, but the amount of games you can just win off of her make her well worth inclusion, in my eyes.
Like Khymera, I had an elf theme for acceleration, and also included 1x Lin Sivvi and 1x Skyshroad Poacher. Sisay gets Sivvi, Sivvi gets Poacher, Poacher gets elves. It's another way to find Rofellos, and it came in handy quite often as opponents want to shut down your engine a.s.a.p. - but it's hard to shut down THREE engines at once. Sisay's tutoring requires no mana, but can provide for it in crap tons through Cradle/Rofellos. Having Sivvi and Poacher on-line, as well as ability copyers like Elixir meant searching out 3-4 cards each turn...
I like your Lin Sivvi deck (I better, I helped develop it...), but I think the rebel chain should stay in that deck. The problem with this kind of strategy is that you need to run a lot of cards to make it work--you can't just run the ones you like best, or it's very weak. In this case, you need to run Lin Sivvi and Skyshroud Poacher to get it going, and then you need to run enough targets to give them something to do. There aren't enough non-legendary elves that are important enough to warrant jumping through this many hoops to get them. If I really want an elf, I get it with Sisay for free...I'd rather not pay 7 more mana, over 2 more turns, to get it with Poacher. I don't have the time, and I don't have the card slots.
There is no good time to tutor up Lin Sivvi, or to blow 4 mana tutoring up Skyshroud Poacher. If Captain Sisay is active, that's absolutely all the tutoring you need. My first two activations are almost always for an acceleration card (Rofellos, Gaea's Cradle) and a disruption card (Gaddock Teeg, Hokori, Kataki), in some order. I stop what my opponent is doing, and I enable my own gameplan of making massive amounts of green mana and playing whatever I want. After that, I just get whatever I need to win.
I can't see ever going for Lin Sivvi on one of my first 2 activations, and I can't see her being a powerful choice after that--it's just too late in the game. It's cool to be able to tutor up 3 cards a turn, but it's also slow and not all that powerful. By the time I get that set up, I could just as easily have dominated the board and be about to win. This just isn't the deck for that strategy (Lin Sivvi is).
Tried him, he's useless. Best case scenario, he's like a fragile Phyrexian Arena, which doesn't sound too bad, but is actually totally unnecessary here. This deck is all about finding the perfect card for the situation, not just raw card advantage. Reki is never good enough to tutor for, and he's quite weak when you draw into him, so I just cut him and never looked back.
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Banner by spiderboy4
Captain Sisay is my go-to general of choice. Most players usually have a general they can fall back onto to be their favorite general of the format. To me, that general for me is Captain Sisay. One of the main reasons I love Sisay is just because of her ability. Toolbox-style decks are one of my favorite things to play in Magic, because I enjoy being able to answer whatever problem I may be facing at the moment.
Captain Sisay might be the general for you if:
- You want a general and a deck that is solid and able to stand on its own, yet not a broken one that will get you hated off the table immediately.
- You like having the ability to have answers to virtually any situation.
- You like having access to a very solid card pool.
You should not play Captain Sisay if:
- You want a general that has a definitive, linear strategy focused around it.
- You want a deck that you can pick up and do immediately well with it.
- You hate shuffling. You will be doing that a lot with this deck.
- You don't want a general that is very frail and tends to die a lot.
1 Captain Sisay
Non-Legendary Creatures (19)
1 Birds of Paradise
1 Bloom Tender
1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
1 Fauna Shaman
1 Steward of Valeron
1 Aven Mindcensor
1 Mirror Entity
1 Stonecloaker
1 Eternal Witness
1 Harmonic Sliver
1 Knight of the Reliquary
1 Academy Rector
1 Brooding Saurian
1 Reveillark
1 Genesis
1 Karmic Guide
1 Acidic Slime
1 Duplicant
1 Primeval Titan
Legendary Creatures (13)
1 Kataki, War's Wage
1 Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary
1 Saffi Eriksdotter
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Mangara of Corondor
1 Glissa Sunseeker
1 Hokori, Dust Drinker
1 Arashi, the Sky Asunder
1 Kamahl, Fist of Krosa
1 Crovax, Ascendant Hero
1 Yosei, the Morning Star
1 Myojin of Life's Web
1 Iona, Shield of Emeria
1 Mana Crypt
1 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Sol Ring
1 Lightning Greaves
1 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Talisman of Unity
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Thousand-Year Elixir
1 Mindslaver
Other (20)
1 Concordant Crossroads
1 Mirri's Guile
1 Worldly Tutor
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Lignify
1 Life from the Loam
1 Nature's Lore
1 Farseek
1 Into the North
1 Rampant Growth
1 Three Visits
1 Sylvan Library
1 Sylvan Scrying
1 Survival of the Fittest
1 Eladamri's Call
1 Oblation
1 Aura Shards
1 Primal Command
1 Wild Pair
13 Snow-Covered Forest
2 Snow-Covered Plains
1 Windswept Heath
1 Flooded Strand
1 Wooded Foothills
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Arid Mesa
1 Marsh Flats
1 Savannah
1 Temple Garden
1 Brushland
1 Wooded Bastion
1 Horizon Canopy
1 Sunpetal Grove
1 Gaea's Cradle
1 Eiganjo Castle
1 Flagstones of Trokair
1 Mistveil Plains
1 Dust Bowl
1 Kor Haven
1 Hall of the Bandit Lord
1 Miren, the Moaning Well
1 Strip Mine
1 Yavimaya Hollow
Card Explanations
Bloom Tender: It accelerates you to turn 3 Sisay and then after you play her, Bloom Tender then gets to tap for GW.
Sakura-Tribe Elder: Pretty obvious. Accelerates into turn 3 Sisay, which is a major factor.
Fauna Shaman: Finally, Wizards makes Survival on a stick. This deck has quite a few creatures to dump to her, and the toolbox necessary to abuse it as well. When you also factor in her synergy with Reveillark and other cards like Karmic Guide (great for dumping that Iona in your hand!), you can see why she is a shoe-in for this deck.
Steward of Valeron: This guy is like a mana elf on steroids. He has a beefy 2/2 body with vigilance and furthers the plan of accelerating to turn 3 Sisay. He gets pumped by Crovax and double-pumped by Wolfbood. Much welcomed.
Aven Mindcensor: Oh my god is this guy amazing. People have no idea how HEAVILY reliant decks are at searching their libraries. This guy puts an end almost all relevant search cards. Good luck hoping the card you're looking for is in the top 4 of a massive EDH deck.
Mirror Entity: Part of the infinite Lark combo, but outside of that he is a must-answer threat. This deck can generate a lot of mana, and what better way to use that mana than to turn your army into CHANGELINGS OF DOOM! Oh yeah, Sliver decks won't like it when they get beat up by your newly created slivers that steal all their slivers' abilities.
Eternal Witness: Of course. Simply busted when combined with Reveillark.
Harmonic Sliver: So I like this guy. I used to have Krosan Grip here but I like having a creature that disenchants all on his own and thus can be used as another body for Mirror Entity/Kamahl assaults and also for recursion. Also randomly good against sliver decks as he snatches their awesome abilities as well.
Knight of the Reliquary: Not much needs to be said about her other than the fact that SHE HAS TWO POWER FOR REVEILLARK GOODNESS! Ok, I think I'm done here.
Academy Rector: She cheats Wild Pair right into play past Teeg. With a tutorable sac outlet in Miren, it's quite convenient to trigger her when your opponent doesn't feel like attacking into her. Getting Aura Shards can be a very feasible choice as well if the situation calls for it.
Brooding Saurian: This is my answer to blue decks that like to jack my ****, especially Sisay. When this guy resolves, he flips the bird to all theft cards. He's also hilariously awesome against Sen Triplets.
Reveillark: All hail Reveillark, quite possibly the best creature in deck, if not THE best card overall. When he's not going infinite, he's creating a monsterous avalanche of card advantage that makes even blue and black decks jealous of his awesomeness.
Genesis: Because I need to win the constant attrition wars in EDH, duh. A shoe-in when I also play Survival; I can also get Genesis into my graveyard via Miren. Mana intensive, but hey it works. Too good of a recursion engine once he's in the graveyard doing his magic.
Karmic Guide: Reveillark's partner-in-crime, and it's just simply awesome reanimating utility creatures and using their ETB abilities again. Or just reanimate a fatty. I hear that works too. Don't forget she has pro-black; many people forget that
Acidic Slime: The newest most awesome utility creature on the block. Acidic Slime neutralizes most problematic threats and then plugs up the ground with his deathtouch body. He loves Reveillark, he loves Yavimaya Hollow, he loves a lot of different stuff. I especially like the fact he can destroy lands; quite good for color starving multicolore generals, and also for destroying critical individual lands.
Duplicant: Of course this is an EDH staple. I like using it to exile non-general creatures so they are effectively gone for good, because recursion is abused heavily in this format. And isn't it quite convenient that he has two power?
Primeval Titan: Ridiculous doesn't even begin to explain how good this card is. If he resolves, searching for both Strip Mine and Dust Bowl can threaten to put your opponent severely behind, especially with the additional threat of swinging and fetching two more lands. Such an incredible standalone card. He will quickly win games if he is not answered quickly.
Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary: Now you know why I play a huge amount of Forests. Rofellos is simply too good to pass up. We all know how silly Rofellos can be as a general, and he isn't too much worse here in a G/w deck. This is a good first target for Sisay to tutor for, especially when you can easily have Sisay come back over and over from Rofellos producing huge quantities of mana.
Saffi Eriksdotter: Plays a role in the Reveillark cheese, but by herself Saffi is a perfect fit for this deck. She protects Sisay and other valuable creatures in play from all non-exiling spot removal and is an amazing insurance policy against sweepers. Saffi is also very good with ETB abilities to trigger them once more.
Gaddock Teeg: I tutor for this guy a lot on my first activation for Sisay, and I can't blame myself too much for doing so. Gaddock Teeg is simply one of the best, if not the best disruption card in all of EDH. He blocks so many bomb spells and turns off most sweeper cards that would cause problems for my developing board. Teeg provides G/W the necessary leverage it needs to preemptively keep itself from getting wrecked by big spells that it would ordinarily have no way of stopping.
Mangara of Corondor: Point and click removal. Rids you of virtually ANY problematic permanent that doesn't have shroud, and it exiles it to circumvent indestructibility and recursion. This guy can get really silly with Thousand-Year Elixir and a tutor sac outlet like Miren.
Glissa Sunseeker: Tutorable, repetitive artifact destruction. I like the feeling of having her om nom nom away at artifacts. And a 3/2 first striking body for 4 mana is great stuff, especially with Jitte. People really underrate first strike as a mechanic.
Hokori, Dust Drinker: Tutorable Winter Orb that Reveillark reanimates! With Gaea's Cradle and Rofellos, it isn't too hard for this deck to get around Hokori and stay ahead of your opponent(s) struggling to recover should they tap out their lands. Dropping Hokori down to freeze everyone's lands with an active Sisay out can quickly win you the game.
Linvala, Keeper of Silence: Puts an end to Rofellos, Arcum Dagsson, Azami, Jhoira, and other generals that abuse their activated abilities. A very potent silver bullet that also is nothing to sneeze at for beating down.
Arashi, the Sky Asunder: Blast away at pesky fliers at instant speed, and without blue mages getting in the way. He's also a great midrange body and then can pick off fliers with sniper-like precision.
Kamahl, Fist of Krosa: This is a great mana sink for all the mana this deck can produce. It is not uncommon to be able to generate 50-60+ damage in a single combat step with a few overrun activations from Kamahl plus animating the random land here and there. Kamahl is also an amazing deterrent to sweepers, and combos with Crovax for my favorite combo in EDH.
Crovax, Ascendant Hero: This guy shuts down an alarmingly high amount of creatures. He blanks most token strategies, most weenie hordes, makes utility creatures cry, and disables all the X/1 non-white generals. Good luck killing him as well with 30 life. Just don't get Mindslavered!
Yosei, the Morning Star: Great deterrent and beatstick at the same time. Can be used for locks (Reveillark and Mistveil Plains) when combined with the oh-so-fun tutorable sac outlet in Miren, or just to freeze the blue player for a turn so you can resolve something truly nasty through their wall of countermagic.
Myojin of Life's Web: The top of the curve. I hear 8/8 indestructible beatdown machines for 9 mana are pretty good last time I checked, and so is creating a handful of creatures into play as well at instant speed. He's excellent for getting Crovax/Kamahl into play at instant speed so you can go ape**** on lands, and he's also an excellent deterrent to people attacking you.
Iona: Don't get hit by Bribery if she isn't in your hand. If she does get plucked out via Bribery, you will have to resort to either Arashi or Lignify to stop her since they will usually call white to stop the expected answers for her.
Mana Crypt: Sickly powerful. Crypt and Sol Ring give the opportunity of accelerating Sisay straight to turn 2. The three damage you can potentially take from Crypt each turn is negligable with 40 life point totals, as the godly acceleration is more than worth it. I have managed to do the god draw of turn 1 land, Crypt, Thousand-Year Elixir with a turn 2 Sisay that can tutor immediately.
Sensei's Divining Top: I like card selection. A fantastic card with all the shuffling effects integrated into the deck. Without too many true card advantage machines in G/W, card selection is excellent with this deck's excellent threat density.
Sol Ring: No duh. See Mana Crypt, except you can't get the god draw like you can with Crypt.
Lightning Greaves: No wonder this is an EDH staple. Gives Sisay haste AND protects her frail ass. Killing two birds with one stone never sounded so cliche'.
Talisman of Unity: Better than Selesnya Signet because you can play something off the mana it provides on turn 2 right away. Taking 1 damage will almost never matter.
Umezawa's Jitte: Turns even the lowliest of utility creatures into wrecking balls, kills stuff, and provides a life cushion if needed. Yes, I love threat density that also happens to be diversity as well. And it's legendary of course.
Crucible of Worlds: This is just awesome stuff with seven fetchlands while simultaneously protecting your utility lands. Mouth of Ronom also becomes a repetitive source of creature removal as well. Of course, I shouldn't have to explain too much about the synergies with Strip Mine and Dust Bowl.
Thousand-Year Elixir: We're killing two birds with one stone again! Gives Sisay haste as well as an extra activation. Probably one of the best cards in the deck. I'm not joking. You will be losing very, VERY few games when you're tutoring for two cards each turn.
Mindslaver: Yes, Einstein, of course we're playing Mindslaver with a general that can tutor for it. Just remember to play nice :].
Concordant Crossroads: This is a savage piece of tech I discovered about a week and a half before the Elemental Blitz tourney. It gives Sisay another source of haste that is very cheap. Getting the ability to tutor immediately is HUGE. Just be careful against aggro decks that can take advantage of the universal haste, as well as any random world enchantment that could wipe this off the board.
Mirri's Guile: A less-resilient Top, but it requires no mana investment to do its thing. Redundancy is good when you have a great ability like card selection with the shuffling in this deck.
Worldly Tutor: Who cares about the wait? This gets you any creature in your deck.
Enlightened Tutor: Yuuuhsss. I like fetching Thousand-Year Elixir and Aura Shards with this guy. Other than that, this is a pretty much self-explanatory card along with Worldly Tutor.
Swords to Plowshares: The best piece of spot removal ever. Better than Path to Exile because the life gain is pretty much inconsequential compared to mana ramping. Swords is also better at slowing down generals as well.
Lignify: Turning off every single ability on a creature is way too good. This deck also attacks in one fell swoop thanks to Kamahl or Mirror Entity, so having them chump block with their 0/4 usually won't matter. A very powerful general disabling tool.
Life from the Loam: Recurring fetchlands is awesome. Recurring Strip Mine and Dust Bowl are awesome. Recurring Mouth of Ronom is awesome. Recurring destroyed utility lands is awesome. Therefore, Life from the Loam is awesome.
Nature's Lore: This and a bunch of other cards provide a backbone of accelerating Sisay to turn 3. This guy does just that while finding a dual land and putting it into play untapped!
Farseek: Grabs a dual land or Mistveil Plains. I really like getting the Mistveil Plains though. No kidding. That card is amazingly awesome as I will cover later on.
Into the North: Mana ramp that acts as color fixing (Arctic Flats) and utility (Mouth of Ronom). Remember, redundancy is good when it's a goal you want to accomplish!
Rampant Growth: Good ol' Rampant Growth is still a standby staple for a deck that WANTS that turn 3 Sisay. Acceleration is a key factor in EDH.
Three Visits: Yay for functional reprints :]. See Nature's Lore.
Sylvan Library: It's Mirri's Guile, but for one more mana I can get my own Howling Mine effect as well! Paying 4 life per card (you rarely want to go 8 for all 3 cards) isn't that big of a deal with EDH's starting life of 40.
Sylvan Scrying: It's not mana ramp, but it does get you ANY land in your deck. And there are a lot of amazing non-basic lands you can get. Choose wisely young grasshopper, for it is the situation that calls for the correct decision.
Survival of the Fittest: Go infinite and win with Reveillark, or generate an absurd card advantage machine with Genesis and non-infinite Reveillark tricks. Most playgroups will likely want you to do the latter, but you do have that option of going nuclear when you're left with no other choice. In 1v1 though, let 'em have it. Probably THE best green card in EDH.
Eladamiri's Call: Worldly Tutor, except there's no waiting or card disadvantage. An exclusive treat for G/W.
Oblation: Who cares if your opponent just drew 2 cards? You just whisked away their general for god knows how long. Oblation can also be used as a stop-gap answer for problematic permanents that you HAVE to get rid of, such as planeswalkers.
Aura Shards: My favorite card in EDH without question. Aura Shards tears the board to shreds while giving you an absolutely absurd amount of card advantage. It can be surprisingly hard to remove since it's an enchantment, and it will make the rest of the table scared to play any of their artifacts or enchantments as they will almost certainly be mowed down by Aura Shards.
Primal Command: Who cares if this gets blocked by Teeg? It's too versatile of a spell to pass up, especially when you can tutor for any creature and hose someone's graveyard.
Wild Pair: Yeah, this guy gets stuffed by Teeg as well, but Wild Pair simply wins the game outright when its in play. It usually sees play through Academy Rector to let me bypass an active Teeg, and from there it's basically a matter of burying the opponent in an avalanche of utility + creatures.
Snow-Covered Forest: I play a lot of Forests because of Rofellos. This is mainly a green-based deck as most of the white cards need only double white at the maximum.
Snow-Covered Plains: I play just one to keep the Forest count as high as it can be, yet I still have an out to fetch for in case a Blood Moon hits play or I fear Wasteland/non-basic LD. This way I can still get a white mana which will make most of the deck function as don't play with too much double white stuff.
Fetchlands: I play all the possible fetchlands in the G/W color combination. They're simply incredible in the deck. They get my dual lands, the white fetches can get Mistveil Plains, they shuffle the deck to make my card selection engines happy, and they have incredible synergy with Crucible, Loam, and Knight of the Reliquary.
Savannah + Temple Garden: They're Forests that also tap for white mana! Rofellos approves.
Brushland, Wooded Bastion, Horizon Canopy, Sunpetal Grove: All of these guys are solid manafixers. Nothing to see here -- move along folks...
Gaea's Cradle: My other souce of tutorable, massive mana production besides Rofellos.
Eiganjo Castle: This has been randomly good to me. Preventing 2 damage to any of my legendary creatures can make people think twice about making certain combat decisions. It can also kill the occasional super-random Horobi, Death's Wail, but that's just a cool side-effect.
Flagstones of Trokair: Provides a bit of an insurance policy against land destruction by fetching a dual land or Mistveil Plains when it dies. Has excellent synergy with Dust Bowl as well. Flagstones of Trokair also really shines against Stax decks by giving you a card to feed to an active Smokestack and not losing any ground at all.
Mistveil Plains: What an amazing utility land. The prerequisite isn't too hard to meet, and once after that you have a silly awesome recursion engine when combined with Sisay. Legendary card dies... just put it on the bottom with Mistveil Plains and retutor it with Sisay. This is also a great card with Sylvan Scrying and Knight of the Reliquary (especially the latter).
Dust Bowl: Once I put this guy in the deck, I never looked back. People really love to get greedy by running one too many non-basic lands in EDH. Dust Bowl punishes such strategies by singlehandedly creating its own lock. Watch 3+ color generals cry as their lands go down the drain, one by one.
Kor Haven: Tutorable Maze of Ith that taps for mana! We all know how amazingly powerful Kor Haven is. Now imagine a deck that can consistently tutor for it. Just an amazing answer for freezing powerful creatures, especially Voltron generals. Just make sure you get rid of their shroud outlet first though if they have it.
Miren, the Moaning Well: A sac outlet that simultaneously provides a life buffer. This is mainly used in conjunction with Yosei to trigger his pseudo-Time Walk ability and with Mangara to sac him in response to activating his ability (so he never gets exiled). Additionally, Miren can be used as a way to foil creature theft should you not have Brooding Saurian and you have the mana open to do so.
Hall of the Bandit Lord: It's a haste outlet for Sisay that's tutorable and doesn't take up a real deck slot all at the same time. Very much needed, and paying 3 life isn't too bad with the bigger life buffer.
Strip Mine: A staple utility card. Zero mana LD. What's left to say?
Yavimaya Hollow: Great way to mess up combat. It can also be like a pseudo-Kor Haven against non-trampling beatsticks by just throwing out a random chump blocker and regenerating them. Additionally, the regeneration can prove to be quite good to survive through a good amount of sweepers such as Oblivion Stone and Disk.
How to play the deck
Upon untapping with Sisay and being able to start tutoring for her, you want to constantly evaluate your board position AND your opponents' boards as well. Sisay won't always last forever, especially with a powerful ability like tutoring for any legendary card each turn, so you'll have to make every activation count. When I tutor for Sisay, I ask myself what I need the most of. Identify your biggest concern, and then rectify it by tutoring for the appropriate card.
As I mentioned in the last section, it's a good idea to identify your main priority on what you need in order to figure out what exactly you're tutoring for first. Remember, Sisay is a very fragile general! You cannot afford to squander an activation, because that activation you just did might be your last.
This is not a deck you can just automatically pick up and do really good with. I've been playing with Sisay for nearly 3 months now, and I still make a mistake from time to time. Understanding all the hidden nuances, tricks, and what to tutor for at the correct time can make the difference in a game... whether it be short-term or long-term.
While recognizing the game state is of utmost critical importance in tutoring for the correct card, I'll also give you a generalized idea of what you should be fetching depending on what you want.
Land drop (if you're mana screwed): Get either Cradle or Kor Haven. There's nothing wrong with fetching any of the other legendary lands as well if the situation presents itself though. The former two are just the two big ones as they are the most powerful lands in the deck.
Acceleration: Cradle or Rofellos.
Disruption: Gaddock Teeg, Kataki, or Hokori.
Offense: Kamahl, Crovax, Tolsimir Wolfblood, Jitte, Yosei (doubles as a defensive rattlesnake card)
Defense: Crovax (against X/1s), Kor Haven (against massive individual creatures), Yosei (as a deterrant), Arashi, Hua Tao
Knockout punch: Mindslaver, Crovax/Kamahl combo, Myojin of Life's Web, Mangara (if you have Thousand-Year Elixir in play), Yosei lock
Winning
1) Beatdown with creatures. It’s simple enough, especially when you can tutor for legends to smash your opponent(s) to a pulp. Recursion and card advantage engines in this deck help to augment this strategy. If you want to wipe out a player in one combat step, tutor for Kamahl, Fist of Krosa and use a huge amount of mana to Overrun a few times. Mirror Entity is also very, very strong.
2) Go infinite with Reveillark/Karmic Guide/Saffi/Mirror Entity. This will be explained in further detail in the section of tricks and combos.
3) Set up a Yosei or Mindslaver lock. This will be covered in slightly more detail in the tricks and combos section, but it’s a pretty straightforward win in 1v1 games, and it effectively disables one person in multiplayer. Expect to be called all sorts of names for pulling this off though.
4) And extremely sparingly, beatdown with Sisay for a general damage kill. Extremely rare and almost never done, but you need some other alternate way to kill the person who has a life total equal to Graham’s number. You can also use general damage to your advantage if you want to kill multiple players at once. If it's late game and you have a huge amount of mana to spend on the likes of Kamahl or Mirror Entity, you can send one part of your 14+/14+s at one person, another half at another person, and then hammer another person with Sisay for a general damage kill.
Tricks and Combos
Keep in mind, this isn't everything. All of these interactions are basically scratching the surface of what this deck can do.
Going infinite with the Reveillark/Karmic Guide/Saffi/Mirror Entity combo: This is easily set up with Survival, since it will singlehandedly tutor for all the combo pieces. With a filler creature you don’t need in hand, pitch it to Survival and fetch Saffi, Karmic Guide, Mirror Entity, and then Yosei into the graveyard. After dumping the final combo piece, get Reveillark last. Evoke Reveillark, reanimating Karmic Guide and Mirror Entity. Use Karmic Guide to reanimate Reveillark.
Next, activate Mirror Entity a bunch of times for zero mana. I’ll use 100 as a base value, but you can choose any other huge number.
The first trigger resolves, turning all your creatures into 0/0s and killing them. Reveillark’s ability triggers; use it to reanimate Saffi and Karmic Guide. Karmic Guide reanimates Reveillark again. Now sac Saffi, targeting Reveillark.
The next Mirror Entity trigger resolves, killing everyone again. Reveillark triggers again to reanimate Saffi and Karmic Guide. Reveillark itself comes back into play thanks to when you sacked Saffi. Karmic Guide can now reanimate any creature in your graveyard; this is when you use it to reanimate Yosei.
Sac Saffi targeting Reveillark again, and let the next Mirror Entity trigger resolve to kill everyone again. This will kill Yosei, triggering his ability. You can now simply trigger the last procedure over and over again, continuously killing Yosei and effectively not letting your opponents have an untap step for the rest of the game amongst their tapped permanents. For the last Mirror Entity trigger, have Reveillark reanimate Mirror Entity and Saffi. You can now repeat the combo and continue to go infinite at instant speed.
Mindslaver/Yosei lock: This can be set up a few ways, but I find the easiest and cheapest way to do it is Mistveil Plains + Sisay + some other white permanent + Mindslaver/Yosei. Tutor for your lock piece with Sisay, and cast and sac it right away if you have the mana to do so.
Kamahl + Crovax: My personal favorite combo. Animate your opponent’s land with Kamahl, and Crovax immediately kills it. Rinse and repeat for just one green each, and you can quickly massacre everyone’s lands. Don’t make it a habit to aggressively assemble this combo however if your playgroup hates LD taken to this level of effectiveness lol. Alternatively, you can use Jitte to kill the animated lands if for some reason you can’t get Crovax, or if playing Crovax would be more deterimental to you (for example, it pumps another white player's tokens).
Mangara + Miren: Activate Mangara to exile whatever you want to get rid of. With Mangara’s ability on the stack, sac him to Miren. Because Mangara exiling himself is not part of the cost to activate the ability, Mangara doesn’t care about if he leaves play in some way before the ability resolves. The targeted permanent will still be exiled and Mangara won’t be exiled himself because he was already sacked to Miren. This opens the door to recurring Mangara through a number of ways and exiling cards at will. Combined with Thousand-Year Elixir, this combo turns into a grossly powerful lock.
Additionally, Stonecloaker can be used to bounce Mangara in response to activating him. This gives you another outlet to Mangara abuse; showcasing the amazing versatility and utility that Stonecloaker provides to the deck.
Hokori + Kataki: This works best against decks that rely heavily on artifacts. Hokori’s winter orb effect slows the game down immensely. Combined with Kataki, this presents people controlling artifacts a tough situation: do you pay the upkeep cost to keep your artifacts in play and stay locked down under Hokori, or do you sac them and get out of Hokori’s grip?
Crucible + Strip Mine/Dust Bowl: The quintessential lock combo that any deck can play. Dust Bowl can also be substituted as well and can act as a de facto Strip Mine against many multicolored generals.
Crucible + fetchlands: For when you need mana. Pretty obvious.
Crucible + Horizon Canopy: Draw an extra card each turn. Not used a whole lot, but good to know.
Aura Shards + Stonecloaker: Aura Shards is probably one of my favorite cards in EDH because it munches away at artifacts and enchantments like Pac-Man munches away at dots. Use Stonecloaker to bounce himself, triggering both Aura Shards and Stonecloaker's exiling effect. When needed, you can use Stonecloaker to bounce one of your own creatures in response
Knight of the Reliquary tricks: Grabbing utility lands in response to something such as Yavimaya Hollow or Kor Haven can be a nice surprise for someone. Yavimaya Hollow especially is great for giving a creature you control much-needed protection from something such as a board sweeper.
Wild Pair is an unbelievably powerful card that can quickly win you the game because if you have Sisay out, you can tutor for the exact legendary creature you need and tutor for the exact nonlegendary creature you need in the process. Worse comes to worse, you can drop a random creature and almost certainly find some other creature worth having. The card advantage and board presence that Wild Pair provides makes it a card worth playing even when Gaddock Teeg is a focal point in 1v1 play, as well as opening the door to playing Academy Rector to cheat it into play under his nose. Legendary creatures are bolded.
1:
Birds of Paradise
2:
Mangara, Llanowar Elves, Quirion Elves, Bloom Tender, Mirror Entity, Harmonic Sliver, STE
3:
Rofellos, Kataki, Aven Mindcensor, Eternal Witness, Academy Rector
4:
Gaddock Teeg, Saffi Eriksdotter, Hokori, Karmic Guide, Steward of Valeron, Fauna Shaman, Acidic Slime, Knight of the Reliquary
5:
Glissa, Stonecloaker
6:
Duplicant
7:
Linvala, Kamahl, Reveillark
8:
Crovax, Genesis, Brooding Saurian
9:
10:
Yosei, Reya, Arashi
11:
12:
Primeval Titan, Sun Titan
13:
14:
Iona
15:
16:
Myojin of Life's Web
This is only the tip of the iceberg though! There are many different types of tricks, synergies, and combos this deck can provide. Some of them are a bit extraneous to say the least. You need to actually play this deck a fair amount to understand a lot of the different mixups and approaches the deck has other than its primary goal of using Sisay to assemble certain combos. This is important when you need a plan B should Sisay get tucked or just die to multiple removal spells before she gets a chance to untap.
1 Captain Sisay
Non-Legendary Creatures (19)
1 Birds of Paradise
1 Bloom Tender
1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
1 Quirion Elves
1 Fauna Shaman
1 Steward of Valeron
1 Aven Mindcensor
1 Mirror Entity
1 Eternal Witness
1 Harmonic Sliver
1 Knight of the Reliquary
1 Academy Rector
1 Brooding Saurian
1 Reveillark
1 Genesis
1 Karmic Guide
1 Acidic Slime
1 Duplicant
1 Primeval Titan
Legendary Creatures (14)
1 Kataki, War's Wage
1 Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary
1 Saffi Eriksdotter
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Mangara of Corondor
1 Glissa Sunseeker
1 Hokori, Dust Drinker
1 Linvala, Keeper of Silence
1 Arashi, the Sky Asunder
1 Kamahl, Fist of Krosa
1 Crovax, Ascendant Hero
1 Yosei, the Morning Star
1 Myojin of Life's Web
1 Reya Dawnbringer
1 Chrome Mox
1 Mana Vault
1 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Lightning Greaves
1 Selesnya Signet
1 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Thousand-Year Elixir
Other (21)
1 Concordant Crossroads
1 Mirri's Guile
1 Worldly Tutor
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Life from the Loam
1 Lignify
1 Nature's Lore
1 Farseek
1 Into the North
1 Steely Resolve
1 Three Visits
1 Sylvan Library
1 Sylvan Scrying
1 Survival of the Fittest
1 Eladamri's Call
1 Oblation
1 Oblivion Ring
1 Aura Shards
1 Primal Command
1 Wild Pair
Lands (38)
13 Snow-Covered Forest
2 Snow-Covered Plains
1 Windswept Heath
1 Flooded Strand
1 Wooded Foothills
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Arid Mesa
1 Marsh Flats
1 Savannah
1 Temple Garden
1 Brushland
1 Wooded Bastion
1 Horizon Canopy
1 Sunpetal Grove
1 Gaea's Cradle
1 Eiganjo Castle
1 Flagstones of Trokair
1 Mistveil Plains
1 Dust Bowl
1 Kor Haven
1 Hall of the Bandit Lord
1 Miren, the Moaning Well
1 Strip Mine
1 Yavimaya Hollow
With no one else to disrupt you in multiplayer, the goal is simple in 1v1: accelerate to Sisay and play your Big Three to systematically choke your opponent off their resources: Teeg, Kataki, and Hokori. Teeg is usually the first target I tutor for, because he ruins so many decks and generates a monsterous amount of virtual card advantage. With 30 life, aggro also becomes a viable strategy as well, which is good when Sisay gets countered/killed the moment you cast her. Take advantage of your speed with a lot of the mana dudes and the fact that some utility creatures also are very threatening in combat as well (KotR, and especially Mirror Entity). Your speed and threat density provide a great combination together for putting a lot of pressure on the opponent in addition to making them worry about having to deal with Sisay as well.
1 Captain Sisay
Non-Legendary Creatures (18)
1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
1 Aven Mindcensor
1 Mirror Entity
1 Stonecloaker
1 Eternal Witness
1 Yavimaya Dryad
1 Yavimaya Elder
1 Harmonic Sliver
1 Knight of the Reliquary
1 Academy Rector
1 Brooding Saurian
1 Reveillark
1 Genesis
1 Karmic Guide
1 Acidic Slime
1 Duplicant
1 Primeval Titan
1 Sun Titan
Legendary Creatures (15)
1 Kataki, War's Wage
1 Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary
1 Saffi Eriksdotter
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Mangara of Corondor
1 Glissa Sunseeker
1 Hokori, Dust Drinker
1 Linvala, Keeper of Silence
1 Arashi, the Sky Asunder
1 Kamahl, Fist of Krosa
1 Crovax, Ascendant Hero
1 Yosei, the Morning Star
1 Tolsimir Wolfblood
1 Myojin of Life's Web
1 Reya Dawnbringer
1 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Sol Ring
1 Lightning Greaves
1 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Thousand-Year Elixir
1 Mindslaver
Other (21)
1 Concordant Crossroads
1 Mirri's Guile
1 Worldly Tutor
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Life from the Loam
1 Farseek
1 Into the North
1 Kodama's Reach
1 Cultivate
1 Sylvan Library
1 Sylvan Scrying
1 Survival of the Fittest
1 Eladamri's Call
1 Oblation
1 Oblivion Ring
1 Aura Shards
1 Garruk Wildspeaker
1 Primal Command
1 Mirari's Wake
1 Wild Pair
Lands (38)
11 Snow-Covered Forest
2 Snow-Covered Plains
1 Windswept Heath
1 Flooded Strand
1 Wooded Foothills
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Arid Mesa
1 Marsh Flats
1 Savannah
1 Temple Garden
1 Brushland
1 Stirring Wildwood
1 Wooded Bastion
1 Horizon Canopy
1 Sunpetal Grove
1 Gaea's Cradle
1 Eiganjo Castle
1 Flagstones of Trokair
1 Mistveil Plains
1 Dust Bowl
1 Krosan Verge
1 Kor Haven
1 Hall of the Bandit Lord
1 Miren, the Moaning Well
1 Strip Mine
1 Yavimaya Hollow
I've also stuck some cards in that normally I wouldn't play in 1v1 because they get blocked by Teeg. Getting Teeg out in 1v1 is something I do very often, because Teeg alone can just crush the other player. However, 3-5 will not enjoy being able to play most of their hand with Teeg out. I haven't taken Teeg out completely though because he still is needed as players die and the game centers between just a few players left. He's also very good for making the Jhoira player look like a fool when they're about ready resolve huge spells that have been suspended. Just make sure you go about playing Teeg in multiplayer in a political manner. i.e., "Guys, let me play Teeg to make sure that suspended Time Stretch stays exiled forever, and then I'll sac him to Miren so you guys can still cast your stuff."
Also keep in mind that I am changing my multiplayer list a lot, which is the list I usually play in general. Keep in mind that I'll continuously just sub out some of the cards for other ones so on some of the cards I just posted the ones on average I use the most.
The general rule to keep in mind is that the 1v1 list focuses on speed and efficiency while the multiplayer build focuses on power and fortification.
F.A.Q.
Q: Why aren't you playing ________?
A: Check the alternate card choices section. If it's not there, the card you're thinking about probably 1) gets blocked by Teeg and/or 2) does not fulfill some other purpose I'm looking for in the deck.
Q: Is this deck expensive to build?
A: Yes. I would not recommend building this deck if you're on a budget, as cards such as Gaea's Cradle and Jitte go for big wads of cash. I went to SCG to price the whole deck, and it amounted to over $500 USD. I probably built the whole deck for roughly about $200-$250 (it also helped I had some old school staples to start out from scratch as well, and SCG does overprice on a lot of their stuff), but that still doesn't detract from the point that building a good Sisay deck is expensive.
Q: What are the deck's strengths?
A: In a nutshell, speed and versatility.
Q: What are the deck's weaknesses?
A: The main one is getting Sisay stolen. If Sisay gets stolen, you are in BIG trouble. Getting Mindslavered will also result in a very quick loss, at the very least getting severely crippled. If your opponent can cast Crovax during the Slavered turn, you lose on the spot unless you're at an odd life total (in that case you get dropped to 1).
Q: How can I play this deck without being labeled a douchebag/hated off the table?
A: Don't assemble combos/locks as aggressively as usual. Focus more on splashy effects and less on Teeg/Hokori/Mindslaver/Iona. Other than that, it's going to depend on the context of what your playgroup is like.
Video tutorial of my deck on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ehsm9XsTPU&feature=PlayList&p=4E26AB0F1E5A3335&index=0
Keep in mind that this video is quite dated and refers to my real-life Sisay deck. It too has undergone drastic reiterations and changes.
Alternate card choices
Enlisted Wurm: Cascade makes for some really huge swings, especially in this deck. I love this guy.
Phantom Nishoba: Makes the red decks cry. He dominates combat, gives you a nice chunk of life each turn, and has ridiculous synergy with Reveillark. That's right, Phantom Nishoba has ZERO power, which means he's fair game for Reveillark recursion.
Rune-Tail, Kitsune Ascendant: This card will always certain flip automatically. This is a very powerful foil against red decks as well as making your creatures close to unassailable in normal combat.
Dosan, the Falling Leaf: If you need extra leverage against blue, look to Dosan as another "must counter" threat before he freezes all their countermagic and other instant-speed plays.
Yomiji, Who Bars the Way: I don't like this guy for a recursion engine because I usually have Mistveil Plains do that job to begin with. Nevertheless, I do see many Sisay decks play this guy as an extra recursion engine. As a little side note, he also makes other great legendary cards such as Jitte and Cradle that much harder to get rid of.
Tatsumasa, the Dragon's Fang: Aside from getting blocked by Teeg, this is an incredibly mana intensive card. With the amount of mana you're pumping into this guy, you're better off getting Mindslaver instead and creating much more of an impact on the gamestate. If you don't wish to play Mindslaver though (for whatever reasons), then I could see this being an ok replacement.
Path to Exile: Unlike Swords, Path is not a very effective answer for generals, as if they have a land drop for next turn, they will be able to immediately recast their general. This is also why I play other cards hating more on generals such as Arrest and Oblation. If you want a spot removal card that is better off against singleton creatures, then Path isn't too bad in that sense.
Arrest: Lignify is cheaper and stops static and triggered abilities that Arrest can't touch.
Faith's Fetters: Fetters provides versatility (the life gain will be inconsequential for the most part) at the expense of getting blocked by Gaddock Teeg. Since I tutor for Teeg a lot (mainly in 1v1), Arrest bypasses Teeg and also shuts down mana abilities *coughRofelloscough*.
Pendelhaven: See Okina.
The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale: This can potentially be a life saver against white, non-flying token/weenie decks. Combine this with Hokori and Cradle, and you have a extremely crushingly powerful lock. The only downsides to this guy are that he doesn't tap for mana (so treat him as a 0 mana enchantment that can't be countered) and it's ungodly expensive to acquire in real life.
Krosan Verge: Absolutely amazing accelerant, but is bad in 1v1 due to the slowness of it. A shoe in for multiplayer though.
Stirring Wildwood: Good manland, and gets double pumped by Tolsimir Wolfbood to turn it into a formidable 5/6. Slows you down though, so it's just like Krosan Verge: excellent in multiplayer, bad in 1v1.
Vitu-Ghazi, the City Tree: This card does too little just to make a 1/1. I might have this in my multiplayer deck if I throw in Rhys the Redeemed in it though.
Tournament Accomplishments
Wishlist (future cards that I would want to see printed that I would add to the deck)
- A legendary card that reliably exiles cards in graveyards.
- Another awesome legendary land.
- Any usable utility land that generates green and/or white mana preferably.
- A G/W planeswalker (preferrably one that has a CMC of 3 so it doesn't get blocked by Teeg)
You need to fix your post though. It's hard to read.
Using Drain to fight Workshops is like using Exclude to fight Dark Confidant.
VERY CHEAP LEGACY SALE (priced to move before April 09!)
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?p=8172551#post8172551
Also, I had Rofellos in for a while, but dropped him because I never usually had a ton of forests out. You only have 12 so I'm not sure.
Riftsweeper has been unbanned now that generals use the Command zone:
http://forum.dragonhighlander.net/EDH_Forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=2768
I usually don't have a lack of legendary cards to tutor for. Some of this comes from threat density in my deck because many standalone creatures can be pretty threatening. That's probably why I've dialed back a bit on the amount of legendary creatures a typical Sisay deck might pack and focused less on the reliance on Sisay and more on card advantage/general utility.
As for Rofellos, I'm starting to reconsider him a bit. You're right in that I don't run a TON of forests, but don't forget that fetchlands are de facto forests as well. Though I do get vexed because of his frail body.
Spam Warning given
~~ DC
Custom Set: Pokemon: Generation 1
My mind numbing DC-10 stack!
I already have a good amount of recursion in the deck... Reveillark, Karmic Guide, Genesis, Hua Tao, Mistveil Plains, etc. Loyal Retainers seems underwhelming to me as a utility creature when compared to everything else. Plus, it doesn't help that he costs $35+ in real life because he's out of P3K lmao.
Hey guys, I'm bumping this thread to let you know that I will be making a video for this deck in a few days. I'll cover my real-life Captain Sisay decklist (minus a few money cards that I don't have in real-life)
My YouTube channel is www.youtube.com/user/SurgingChaos19
If any of you subscribe to the EDH channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/ElderDragonHighlandr), I'll also post the the video(s) there as a video response.
I'm bumping this again to let everyone know that I have uploaded the vids!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ehsm9XsTPU&feature=PlayList&p=4E26AB0F1E5A3335&index=0
Enjoy guys. Rate, comment, and subscribe please :).
Posts Merged due to being a triple post. Please refrain from such activity in the future. Thanks — DC
i find that i rarely need the answers to solutions...it's already solved, that's why it's a solution. problems, on the other hand, i often need answers to problems.
english major attack!
Current EDH Decks:
G Multani, Maro-Sorcerer
B Xiahou Dun, the One-Eyed
GU Momir Vig, Simic Visionary
Thanks for the compliments. I could have covered a lot more when it came to combos and tricks, but that would have taken probably another video and a half.
And thanks for reminding me about Stonecloaker + Mangara. Just another reason why Stonecloaker is so versatile in this deck :]
Hey, we are the folks that run the elderdragonhighlandr EDH channel!! Thanks for posting your videos as a "video response." This is pretty smooth, nice work!
Ohran Viper. Just another source of continous card advantage since drawing extra cards is almost always good in EDH. Takes out pretty much anything in combat it blocks that doesn't regenerate or is indestructible. 1 power = fun times with Reveillark.
Aven Mindcensor. Metagame call, but a VERY powerful ability since I know many decks that rely a lot on searching their library, and a Mindcensor can really screw someone over. 2 power also makes Reveillark happy.
Scute Mob. Mainly to increase the threat density. In theory, he can get out of control very quickly due to the mana ramp I play with and the fact that he can be reanimated through Reveillark, but this guy can potentially turn me into a target and it sucks when he keeps banging into tokens and not getting damage through.
These were a few creatures that I think could be potentially great in filling more niches in this deck. The decklist is already pretty tight though, but I think some testing should obviously be warranted in the future.
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=519290
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=519290
Suggestions:
Land Tax is nice, especially with Scroll Rack.
Abundance combos with Sylvan library for 3 draws a turn
I'd say Faith's Fetters is better than Arrest.
No O-ring?
No mass removal at all?
I have a very similar Captain Sisay deck, and it's one of my favorites. I love the consistency and versatility of this kind of deck. My deck is close enough that, rather than posting a list, I'll just post the differences between our lists. You focus on many of the same themes as I do, and do it pretty well. The one thing that I think I really emphasize over you is acceleration: I play many, many more ways to land a turn 2-3 Sisay than you do. It's possible that I run too much acceleration--however, it's been my experience that, especially in 1v1 games, acceleration is usually the key factor in determining the winner. Regardless of how much acceleration is correct, I'm quite confident that the 1-2cc acceleration I run is superior to the 3cc acceleration you run--in a deck this focused, a card that boosts you into getting Sisay online faster is markedly superior to one that does not.
Here are the cards you include, that I currently do not.
1 Riftsweeper
1 Wood Elves
1 Farhaven Elf
1 Stonecloaker
1 Yavimaya Dryad
1 Yavimaya Elder
1 Solemn Simulacrum
1 Enlisted Wurm
1 Krosan Tusker
1 Eternal Dragon
1 Rhys the Redeemed
1 Myojin of Cleansing Fire
Artifacts
1 Expedition Map
1 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Scroll Rack
Other
1 Worldly Tutor
1 Path to Exile
1 Arrest
1 Regrowth
1 Life from the Loam
1 Into the North
1 Krosan Grip
1 Aura Shards
1 Mirari's Wake
1 Okina, Temple to the Grandfathers
1 Brushland
1 Arctic Flats
1 Sungrass Prairie
1 Sunpetal Grove
1 Mouth of Ronom
1 Vitu-Ghazi, the City-Tree
Here's the cards I include, which you do not.
1 Priest of Titania
1 Fyndhorn Elves
1 Birds of Paradise
1 Llanowar Elves
1 Boreal Druid
1 Quirion Elves
1 Seeker of Skybreak
Legendary Creatures
1 Reya Dawnbringer
1 Tolsimir Wolfblood
1 Myojin of Life's Web
1 Iona, Shield of Emeria
1 Garruk Wildspeaker
Artifacts
1 Chrome Mox
1 Talisman of Unity
1 Umbral Mantle
Other
1 Search for Tomorrow
1 Rampant Growth
1 Three Visits
1 Nature's Lore
1 Steelshaper's Gift
1 Primal Command
1 Lignify
1 Wasteland
1 Dust Bowl
7 Forest (1)
Let's try to make sense of this. I'll start by justifying the cards in my deck.
Lands:
This is simplest, so I'll start here.
As I mentioned, acceleration is king in EDH. One of the primary reasons this deck is so damn good is because of Rofellos. The weakness of mono-green Rofellos decks is their lack of card selection--playing with Sisay as general completes negates that weakness, and only slows Rofellos down a bit. Rofellos is still your best and most reliable source of major mana, especially with Hokori down. Because acceleration is so important, and because Rofellos tends to make an early appearance in just about every game, I consider it to be worthwhile to focus on maximizing your forest count. With a lot of forests, Rofellos is extremely powerful...but without them, he's fairly meh, as you've noticed.
The ideal situation is that by turn 4 or 5, all or almost all of your lands are basic Forests, Savannah, or Temple Garden. With my build, this is realistic, and happens very frequently. It's powerful enough to be worth squeezing out weaker non-basics. All the lands you're running and I'm not, with the possible exception of Mouth of Ronom, are of low enough utility that I can justify playing basic Forests instead. You only need access to 1 white mana early on, and even later, you rarely need more than 2 until end-game. With my configuration, I don't have any issues with colorscrew, so most of those Savannah knockoffs are unnecessary. Okina may be legendary, but you never tutor for it, and it's ability is irrelevant 999/1000 games, so make it a Forest instead. Vitu-Ghazi is just bad (even with Aura Shards...the "combo" is way overkill).
With Mouth of Ronom, I'm just not sure. It's possible that running snow-lands, Mouth of Ronom, and Into the North is the best call (or even just snow-lands and Into the North, as I think is more likely the case).
As far as Wasteland and Dust Bowl, you're running Crucible of Worlds, Life from the Loam, and Knight of the Reliquary. You just run these. They're too good to pass up.
Acceleration:
I run a huge amount of 0-2cc mana acceleration spells. In addition to the ones you play, I have a whopping 12 that you don't play (you have 1 I don't, so the difference is 11). This allows me to essentially ALWAYS play Sisay by turn 3, and frequently on turn 2. Considering that this deck runs like a machine with Sisay going, I think that this goal is well worth pursuing.
I have a very minor elf theme going (which makes Gaea's Cradle and Priest of Titania (along with Rofellos) a force to be reckoned with), as well as a focus on Rampant Growth effects, with also boosts the aforementioned Rofellos. In this way, most of my accelerants do double duty, boosting me by 1 mana themselves, and then giving me another mana off of Gaea's Cradle or Rofellos.
I think these are all well worth running. They all either 1) cost 0-1 mana, thus not overcrowding the 2cc slot, 2) colorfix, or 3) accelerate into Sisay while potentially producing extra mana later (Priest of Titania). If you were to cut some, Boreal Druid is probably weakest, followed by Talisman of Unity and Selesnya Signet (I hate playing artifacts alongside Kataki), but they all pull their weight. With Sisay providing fantastic card selection, there's not really any such thing as too much acceleration.
Here's a list of cards you run that broadly serve the function of acceleration/mana fixing:
Wood Elves, Farhaven Elf, Yavimaya Dryad, Yavimaya Elder, Solemn Simulacrum, Krosan Tusker, Eternal Dragon, Expedition Map
...however, none of them can actually accelerate you into playing Sisay faster. Therefore, they're probably inferior to the spells that can accelerate you into Sisay. I don't have room in my curve for cards like Eternal Dragon--I always have a 2cc spell to accelerate me into Sisay, so there's no time to cycle stuff until it's too late to matter. I feel that any one of these spells would be better as the acceleration options that I play.
Legendary Creatures:
You must play Myojin of Life's Web. It is flat-out one of the most powerful cards available to this deck. Despite it costing 9 mana, it's so strong that I actually count it as acceleration. If you tested it and still cut it, you didn't test it enough, or you were using it wrong.
Consider the most typical game-state, around turn 5. Turn 3 Sisay, turn 4 Rofellos or Gaea's Cradle (depending on your forest:elf ratio). If you don't get messed with too hard you can get to 9 mana as early as this, and even with some disruption, not too much later. Myojin is a card you can kind of just run out there, as not too much kills it, and it just leads to disgusting plays. In addition to the huge monsters you can grab (Iona, Reya Dawnbringer), Myojin is important for assembling your combos--it's easy to tutor for Kamahl and Crovax, but it's much more difficult to get them both in play at once, and still have mana up to use them (especially with Hokori in play, as he usually is). Typically it takes 3 turns to go off like this, and any removal spoils your day. With Myojin, you just have to gather them into your hand, and then you can drop them on the table whenever you're ready, along with whatever other goodies you've found. In my experience, Myojin is really not a win-more card--especially under Hokori, when both players are struggling along (but you have green mana from Gaea's Cradle or Rofellos), Myojin allows you to just break the game open. If you have enough mana and think you can resolve him, the green Myojin is frequently the best Sisay target.
Reya Dawnbringer is worth running because she's extremely powerful and versatile, and because she provides a relatively simple, all-legendary I-win combo (Reya, Yosei, Miren). I haven't tested Iona much yet, but I think she's probably worth running, simply because she's so ungodly difficult for most decks to deal with (it's possible she's win-more though). Against many decks, if you can manage to get her into play, you've probably stolen the game right there. Though Reya and Iona have somewhat prohibitive mana costs, the aforementioned green Myojin is wonderfully efficient at getting both of them into play.
Tolsimir Wolfblood has a very specific role. Essentially, I needed some card that would stop Crovax from killing Rofellos and the rest of my mana elves. The Crovax/Kamahl combo is great, but it's risky to have to sacrifice Rofellos when you try to pull it off. The answer is to make Rofellos tougher. Alternatives to Tolsimir include Kongming, Sleeping Dragon (annoying WW mana cost, much worse for beatdown), Day of Destiny (annoying WW mana cost, doesn't save other elves, and most crucially, prevented by Gaddock Teeg). I suppose Mirari's Wake is also an option, but I think it's not easy enough to tutor for when needed (and Teeg's interference is a serious strike against it). Tolsimir isn't great, but he does his job. It doesn't hurt that he's also very good when all else fails and you're just trying to go aggro.
I don't like Rhys the Redeemed...the elf tokens just aren't that big a deal. I never have a point where it's worth spending 3 mana a turn just to make a 1/1, so he seems very underpowered. Again, the Aura Shards "combo" is overkill...this deck is heavy enough on creatures that you shouldn't need this.
I'm not a fan of Myojin of Cleansing Fire either. It's quite difficult to cast--by the time I have enough mana, Hokori is usually on the table, making WWW tricky to achieve. This deck is so creature-heavy that I rarely want to wrath anyways...it's just not worth losing all my other creatures in play. Again, I think your "combo" with this Myojin is pretty weak--you can only pull it off if you're in a good board position, and if you're in a good board position, why would you want to wrath the rest of your board? It's overkill.
Other Creatures:
Seeker of Skybreak isn't really necessary, but I've found it to be a very solid card. It interacts very favorably with both Rofellos and Sisay, thus acting as a kind of modular mana acceleration/card advantage engine, depending on what you need more.
Garruk Wildspeaker is likewise unnecessary, but nice to have. You'll rarely make beasts, but untapping 2 lands is hugely relevant with Gaea's Cradle and with Hokori, and occasionally his overrun is useful. Despite him clashing with Teeg (one of only 2 cards I run that do), he's been good for me.
Stonecloaker is a fine card, but didn't do enough for me in my testing. There aren't enough creatures I actually want to blink, I never want to hold 3 mana open for protection, and he costs too much mana per card to be effective graveyard hate. Nothing wrong with running him really, but I think you can do better.
Riftsweeper I tested, and it was just bad. Maybe 20% of the time it did something relevant, the other 80% it was just a grizzly bear. It's a totally reactive card, and reactive cards are generally bad in a deck with a rapid, consistent gameplan, like this one.
Enlisted Wurm just isn't good enough. Once again, the "combo" with the mirage tutors is dreadful, and the Wurm isn't good enough in any situation I can think of. If the 5/5 body was more relevant it might be good here--but as this isn't, primarily, an aggro deck, it doesn't cut it.
Artifacts:
Umbral Mantle is extremely sexy in this deck. With a high forest count, it's actually a better I-win card in this deck than it is in Rofellos. Its use is fairly limited outside of the combo (paying 3 mana for another Sisay activation is okay, but not great), but it just wins if you have 4+ forests, Rofellos, and Sisay (this is very easy to achieve by turn 4 or 5). The key thing to notice is that, in addition to making Rofellos infinitely large and making infinite mana, you can then move it to Sisay, pumping her up and tutoring out every legend in your deck. At that point, you just need to drop Kamahl, which makes all your creatures infinitely large and trampley, and wins you the game. From a competitive viewpoint, it's just too good to cut. It also Steelshaper's Gift worth running: Lightning Greaves is also extremely strong in this deck, so an additional chance to get whichever equipment you want more is worth the slot.
Sensei's Divining Top and Scroll Rack are both fine cards, but I think they're both inferior to Sylvan Library and Mirri's Guile in this deck. Considering the frequency at which Kataki and Hokori hit play, it's definitely in your interest to minimize the number of artifacts you play as much as possible, and to minimize activation costs. As you only ever want one of these cards, you really don't need to run too many...I've found that 2 is plenty, so I don't need SDT or Scroll Rack, which are considerably inferior (both by being artifacts and by requiring activation costs).
Other:
You run Arrest, I run Lignify. They're very similar cards; Arrest is probably a little better, now that black Braids is banned.
Primal Command is pretty solid. It's a tutor, graveyard hate, recursion, and bounce, all in one card. Teeg doesn't like it, but it does enough stuff that I think it's okay.
Life from the Loam and Aura Shards are two cards that I should probably be running...the trick is just finding room.
Krosan Grip...eh, I'd rather run a creature I can tutor for more easily. I'd probably play Harmonic Sliver over this.
I don't really like Regrowth. It's another reactive card that you can't tutor for...in your opening hand, it won't advance your early gameplan at all, so drawing it early is like a mulligan. Eternal Witness, being tutorable, is much better, and I don't think there's a need for too much more recursion. You're already playing a lot.
My brain is starting to melt down, so I've got to wrap this up. I'll try to post more later, including the summary of changes I would make to your list and the few weaknesses I've found and would like to shore up.
When you're making changes, try to keep this in mind: almost every game, you will want to have at least one of the disruptive elements Gaddock Teeg, Hokori, Dust Drinker, and/or Kataki, War's Wage in play in the early turns of the games. Since you can select whichever is best under the circumstances, your opponents should be unprepared to deal with this disruption. It's very important to make sure that these symmetrical effects don't hinder you badly as well--this means minimizing artifacts, activation costs, and 4+ mana non-creature spells. Also, maximize that Forest count as much as you can, because Rofellos is the card that sets this deck apart from the rest of the pack. I'm running 7 more Forests than you and it works pretty well, but I'd like to run even a couple more.
Hope that helps.
As powerful as Hunting Grounds can be with this deck, I get the feeling it might be a win-more card. If I have Sisay actively tutoring legendary cards out or an active Survival, I'm already in excellent shape. Especially with Survival; if you want to just end the game on the spot you can go grab Mirror Entity/Karmic Guide/Reveillark/Saffi/Yosei and go infinite. Likewise, Sisay by herself will tutor disruption spells and game-ending combos (Kamahl/Crovax, Mindslaver)
Yeah, the fifth piece of the combo can be any creature that has a relevant comes into play/leaves play ability. Acidic Slime is a fine substitute for Yosei, and it can actually be the combo piece of choice in certain situations if obliterating all your opponents' artifacts/enchantments/lands is needed over just tapping them down forever.
I don't know how this could even be possible, since even the smallest of videos are well over 5 MB. Sorry :(.
Land Tax is a great card, but not so much in this deck when you accelerate and ramp a lot.
Abunance seems kinda meh outside of the Sylvan Library combo, and Gaddock Teeg does block it.
O-Ring definately seems plausible. I could swap out PtE for it (Path has been ok for me and it would be nice to have some extra versatility), and having the ability to fetch it with Enlightened Tutor is pretty good.
Faith's Fetters could be a viable option over Arrest, but I like how Arrest is Gaddock Teeg-friendly and it also shuts down mana abilities on creatures that FF doesn't stop *coughRofelloscough*.
@ Khymera: As always, your posts are simply amazingly insightful and I thoroughly enjoy reading them.
Accelerating Sisay to turn 3 consistently appears to be the best game plan for this deck in 1v1. I agree with you there, especially when you bring up the point that EDH hinges a lot on acceleration, and that is only further magnified in 1v1 play. My only possible problem with focusing the deck on get turn 2/3 Sisay is a possiblity that she eats an early removal spell, which slows down the deck. Granted, the acceleration will help you get two more mana to recast her, but this requires resources to spend, and it's a bit annoying G/W doesn't have the pure card draw like blue and black have. This would probably only come up more often in multiplayer format where the probability of someone having a removal spell for Sisay increases, because anyone with a brain won't let you tutor up card for card each turn with such ease. At least, that's just me, but maybe I'm a tad paranoid when it comes to something like that. It probably explains why I have more general utility and acceleration in the deck over more cheaper acceleration to get the early Sisay out.
Still, I'm finding ways to further increase my chances of fast starts without having to sacrifice too much in the way of traditional acceleration/utility. My online version of the deck is something I try to just continously make small adjustments and changes to.
Regarding a lot of the changes and suggestions, you've considered, I've been doing pretty recently. Myojin of Life's Web at a second glance is a lot more promising when you're running with more forests to fuel Rofellos. Good catch on bringing up the fact you can cheat your other creatures into play at instant speed and with uncounterability as well as under an active Hokori. Reya seems win-more as a recursion engine when I can usually use Mistveil Plains to recur a lot of the cards can sac... such as Yosei and Mindslaver. It would take a huge glut of mana to get the lock off though, but Rofellos/Cradle help massively.
Vitu-Ghazi is gone and replaced with Dust Bowl. I can't believe I forgot Dust Bowl... it's such a ****ing amazing card in this format when many multicolored decks rely so heavily on nonbasics. I still like Mouth of Ronom as additional spot removal though. Killing generals like Zur is pretty good, and 4 damage is generally enough to clear out most mid-range threats. The snow base does open up Into the North as another 2 mana accelerant that can fetch Mouth of Ronom or color fix with Arctic Flats. Okina is gone as well and replaced with another snow-covered forest.
Stonecloaker is a personal favorite card of mine because he fills a lot of holes for this deck. Other than just protecting your creatures, he reuses comes into play abilities (which will also trigger Reveillark as well) and he gives me true graveyard hate aside from Primal Command's shuffling graveyards. Stonecloaker also has great synergy with Mangara. 3 mana to exile one card is a tad expensive, but it IS selective and it's at instant speed. Sometimes you don't need to wipe out your opponent's entire graveyard (Primal Command can do that if you really need it), but exiling one or two critical cards in their graveyard is what you need... such as Genesis or Stonecloakering a creature in response to a reanimation spell targeting it.
Graveyard hate is pretty much mandatory in this format; nearly every deck will have someway to try and abuse it.
Riftsweeper looks to be axed as well. A very hit-or-miss card, and even when it hits it isn't *super* amazing.
I'll try to cover more on your post potentially later, but there is so much awesome stuff to continously try out and mess around with that I've just scratched the surface... for now. It's simply amazing how versatile and fun Captain Sisay is to play. In almost every single game, I'm learning new tricks, different decision making skills for certain situations, and increasing the modality of the deck to try and keep it increasingly less reliant on Sisay. That was one of the main goals I want in the deck, especially since Sisay is frail and powerful enough to warrant her getting killed early by someone on the table.
Wow, gotta love posting at 2am in the morning.
Like Khymera, I had an elf theme for acceleration, and also included 1x Lin Sivvi and 1x Skyshroad Poacher. Sisay gets Sivvi, Sivvi gets Poacher, Poacher gets elves. It's another way to find Rofellos, and it came in handy quite often as opponents want to shut down your engine a.s.a.p. - but it's hard to shut down THREE engines at once. Sisay's tutoring requires no mana, but can provide for it in crap tons through Cradle/Rofellos. Having Sivvi and Poacher on-line, as well as ability copyers like Elixir meant searching out 3-4 cards each turn...
Almost everything in the deck was tutorable or a tutor in the end, apart from a few removal spells and accelerants. Lots of legendary stuff, a few elves and rebels, some enchantments... I also found access to the Survival/Witness/Genesis engine along with all the enchantment tutors in W/GW to be a very strong reason to play this deck.
I should also mention that playing Sivvi allows you to run a small rebel toolbox too. For example, it's very easy to assemble infinite life combo with Sivvi tutoring up Task Force and Outrider, and Sisay tutoring up Miren (after Sivvi). In fact, this was the route to victory I most often found me taking, so in the end I just dropped Sisay and made a mono-white Sivvi deck instead and that's what I play to this day. Made me hit life combo even faster, but that's another story!
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Wow, this is a very interesting idea. Skyshroud Poacher by itself is excellent at fetching Rofellos and Mirror Entity; two critical cards that make the deck run very well and have excellent synergy with each other. I would probably have to adjust the deck to put a few more good elves in there. Tolsimir Wolfblood is another good notable Elf as well, and I'm almost certainly going to be replacing Enlisted Wurm with him. As fun as Enlisted Wurm can be, it wasn't exactly getting the job done.
I'm not a big fan myself of going for infinite life when I other viable win conditions that get the job done however. Infinite life isn't as powerful as it is in other formats due to general damage.
The reason this works as a strategy in Sisay isn't actually the life combo, but the fact that you're in a very good position to win anyway even if it fails. Get Sivvi, a few combo rebels, a mana accelerant and go for life combo. Whether you succeed or not, Sivvi could just go grab Mirror Entity next turn and you can start swinging for the win with the small army of utility creatures you've assembled. By that time, even if they handle Sisay or disrupt the life combo, you still come out strong. Even without Sisay, you can keep growing your army of utility elves and rebels using Sivvi/Poacher/Mirror Entity.
The reason it works in mono white Sivvi is because you have Bound in Silence to handle attacking generals anyway. I'd recommend it for Sisay-with-Sivvi too. Also, you have Pariah/Cho-Manno and numerous sweepers as general protection, and can tutor up Test of Endurance to just win thanks to your life total. Back when Braids was legal, having Lightbringer on hand was also very neat. If your play group uses sideboards and you decide to go for Sivvi, I heartily recommend Light/Lawbringer in two SB slots.
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I don't think it makes any sense to worry about this. Yes, Sisay eating removal slows down the deck...but so does playing her later. If you play her later, she's still going to eat that removal, and you'll be slowed down even more, especially because you might not have mana to replay her without all that acceleration. Lightning Greaves helps if you can find it, but there's really no other solution than to try to power through the spot removal. Frequently, Sisay won't stick the first time I play her, so I just keep accelerating and replaying her until she does.
Slow-rolling Sisay is not going to result in getting her active faster than just playing her when you can, so the acceleration still helps. I wouldn't worry too much about card advantage...even if you're out of cards in hand by the time you get her to stick, Sisay inherently produces such a huge amount of card advantage that it's not a problem. I find it's well worth devoting your hand to getting her going.
I have both the Reya Dawnbringer combo and the Mistveil Plains combo in my deck. I've won with the Reya combo numerous times, whereas I've never managed to pull it off with Mistveil Plains (though, admittedly, Mistveil Plains is now a lot easier to find with Zendikar fetchlands). I'm not saying you should cut Mistveil Plains...it's good to have access to that loop. In my experience though, the Reya combo is a lot easier to pull off, so I wouldn't call her win-more. To complete the combo with Mistveil Plains, you need to have 12 mana per turn, 2-4 of it white, and an active Sisay. To complete it with Reya (assuming you can cheat her into play), you need only 4 mana, and it doesn't matter if Sisay has been dealt with.
I won't say she's flat-out better, and I certainly wouldn't run her without the green Myojin, but the amount of games you can just win off of her make her well worth inclusion, in my eyes.
I like your Lin Sivvi deck (I better, I helped develop it...), but I think the rebel chain should stay in that deck. The problem with this kind of strategy is that you need to run a lot of cards to make it work--you can't just run the ones you like best, or it's very weak. In this case, you need to run Lin Sivvi and Skyshroud Poacher to get it going, and then you need to run enough targets to give them something to do. There aren't enough non-legendary elves that are important enough to warrant jumping through this many hoops to get them. If I really want an elf, I get it with Sisay for free...I'd rather not pay 7 more mana, over 2 more turns, to get it with Poacher. I don't have the time, and I don't have the card slots.
There is no good time to tutor up Lin Sivvi, or to blow 4 mana tutoring up Skyshroud Poacher. If Captain Sisay is active, that's absolutely all the tutoring you need. My first two activations are almost always for an acceleration card (Rofellos, Gaea's Cradle) and a disruption card (Gaddock Teeg, Hokori, Kataki), in some order. I stop what my opponent is doing, and I enable my own gameplan of making massive amounts of green mana and playing whatever I want. After that, I just get whatever I need to win.
I can't see ever going for Lin Sivvi on one of my first 2 activations, and I can't see her being a powerful choice after that--it's just too late in the game. It's cool to be able to tutor up 3 cards a turn, but it's also slow and not all that powerful. By the time I get that set up, I could just as easily have dominated the board and be about to win. This just isn't the deck for that strategy (Lin Sivvi is).
Tried him, he's useless. Best case scenario, he's like a fragile Phyrexian Arena, which doesn't sound too bad, but is actually totally unnecessary here. This deck is all about finding the perfect card for the situation, not just raw card advantage. Reki is never good enough to tutor for, and he's quite weak when you draw into him, so I just cut him and never looked back.