Sidisi, Reanimator Vizier is a Reanimator archetype that focuses entirely on using Buried Alive to assemble the Necrotic Ooze + Triskelion + Phyrexian Devourer combo. Insofar as you have the former in play and the latter two in your graveyard you can continually exile the top card of library to grow your Ooze and proceed to ping your adversaries until they perish. Note that this combo is immune to any reasonable amount of removal given that you can respond to it by continuing to remove the top card of your library and pinging people. Insofar as you don't needless state "exile my whole library, ping you all" and clearly communicate the fact that you're going to exile cards one-at-a-time then people shouldn't be able to "get you" with anything but the most niche forms of interaction (such as Sudden Death and Sudden Spoiling). The easiest (and basically only) way to reliably assemble these 3 cards is with Buried Alive so that should be your priority tutor target in the vast majority of your games. This is where Sidisi enters the equation in that she herself acts as generic tutor for Buried Alive and/or Reanimation as needed. Since you only need to naturally draw (or tutor for if necessary) 1 of 9 possible revival spells to follow that up you'll frequently win the game on turn 4-5 through a simple sequence along the lines of: turn 1-2 ramp, turn 2-3 Sidisi/other tutors/disruption, turn 4-5 Buried Alive + Reanimate. The deck can easily goldfish on turn 4 with an average draw and while turn 1-3 wins aren't common they're still possible. This is because the rest of the deck is nothing but hard tutors, ramp and rituals which makes her one of the fastest and most reliable combo decks in the format. What she lacks in resilience and flexibility she makes up for in speed and reliability making her a high-tier threat in the world of cEDH.
Sidisi is what I like to call a "turn 4 kill deck." That isn't to say that she always kills on turn 4 nor that she can't kill sooner (there's multiple turn 1 kill sequences) but in general the deck will goldfish a turn 4 kill assuming reasonable mulligan decisions. The deck consistently achieves this result by emphasizing rituals, ramp, tutors and revival above all else which brings a level of consistency to the archetype that isn't present in many others. After all, the only requirements to achieve a turn 4 kill are that you cast one tutor for Buried Alive and draw one of your 9 revival spells. Past that all you need is the mana to cast everything and then you're good to go. Given that this deck usually plays around 35 lands, 25 ramp/ritual effects, 9 revival spells and 10 competitive tutors (including Sidisi herself) that isn't asking for very much to go right. Even below-average keeps can routinely get there and between the free multiplayer mulligna and the Scry on 6 seeing 3 hands of ~7 cards is typically sufficient to see one that will goldfish a quick kill. Obviously there's more to cEDH than goldfishing a kill but nevertheless speed is important and you want to be employing something powerful-yet-effective against a barrage of stiff opposition. That's where consistency, redundancy and speed are key and Sidisi has all 3 in spades.
Greeting fellow multiplayer enthusiasts! My name is Prid3 and I'm a 15+ year veteran of the game who's been playing Magic since the year 2000. Be it Constructed, Cube or EDH I play and follow every format at a competitive level and with nearly 2 decades of experience under my belt I consider myself to be a high-tier competitor. That being said unlike most players I grew up playing in large 6+ player free-for-all games in my spare time making me a "multiplayer specialist" of sorts. Given that EDH is the de facto multiplayer format it was clear from the onset that I would need to learns the ins-and-outs of the format and throughout my travels I've come across and built some of the meanest decks ever to have graced the Earth. Don't get me wrong, I'm a reasonable individual who enjoys having fun with his friends, family and co-workers but I'm also a cutthroat competitor who takes every form of competition seriously. While I'm more than happy to build and play reasonable decks that promote fun, fair games I'm equally excited to build the most degenerate nonsense imaginable and compete at the highest levels of play. Enter Sidisi, Undead Vizier. Ever since she was spoiled in Dragons of Tarkir I knew that she would pave the way to host of archetypes both fair and unfair alike. The ability to field "Demonic Tutor" as your Commander is absurdly powerful in a 100 card singleton format and she was always going to be a staple as a result. While there's any number of ways to build around her today I'd like to focus on an archetype that I've been fielding for some time now.
Sidisi, Reanimator Vizier was never designed to be a fun, fair deck. I built and optimized the archetype with the goal of maximizing my overall win %. This was never a pet project, there was no big evolution, I started from nothing with the goal of building the strongest, most consistent Reanimator list possible. The primary win condition has always been Necrotic Ooze + Triskelion + Phyrexian Devourer and I sincerely doubt that that will ever change. The reason why this combo is so brutally effective is because it beats any reasonable amount of removal from any number of players. Whereas most combos can be broken up by 2-3 forms on interaction it's basically Sudden Death or bust if you want to trounce a Nooze that hits play. After all, you can always elect to exile the cards from your library one-at-a-time if needed. This means that removal can responded to and ultimately circumvention entirely. The key card for this strategy is Buried Alive as it enables you to reliably bin your entire combo and since Sidisi can consistently tutor for it the only missing component required to win is a single revival spell. At the time of writing this there's currently 9 cards in the game that can accomplish that task for 3 or less mana and given that Black has access to a plethora of tutor effects (in addition to Sidisi herself) that's typically a trivial task.
With that in mind understand that the core of this deck will likely never change since you're more-or-less required to run every cheap tutor, every cheap revival spell, enough interaction to fight through hate/permission and enough removal to deal with opposing strategies. Given that you also need a deck with a converted CMC high enough to reliably kill 3 opponents (100-120 damage) in a list with 30+ lands and a whack of 1-2 CMC staples you don't have the same wiggle-room and flexibility that other archetypes do. Reanimator-based Sidisi decks will all look very similar for these reasons alone and I'm mostly here to explain the reasoning behind the card choices that you legitimately have some control over.
As someone who plays at local gaming stores, on Cockatrice, on MTGO and at home with friends my meta is too varied to concern myself with a specific subset of decks and/or strategies. Moreover, I consider myself to be equal parts teacher and player and as such I build decks for others to build and enjoy equally as much as I build them for myself. With that in mind I like promoting finished products that have plenty of value in unknown metas. Anyone should be able to field this list and reasonably expect to experience similar amounts of success with it. Before moving on I want to stress that I never build decks with a "best case scenario mentality." That is to say that I'll never promote an all-in pile of garbage that folds faster than Superman on laundry day to a touch of interaction. I'm accustomed to extremely cutthroat, hate-filled metas and my lists will always reflect that. Make no mistake; it would be trivially easy to build a faster, more consistent version of this deck. At the same time it would always come at the cost of reliability and it would decrease your overall win % against decks that "actually matter." I always assume that some of my opponents are going to have something capable of interacting with me and big part of optimizing this deck has gone into finding the best ways to mitigate the impact of hate while playing a relatively all-in combo deck. As with any graveyard-based strategy you always run the risk of being hated out by a combination of permission, removal and denial but I think that you'll come to see just how powerful this archetype can be even in the face of such menacing opposition.
You care about winning. This is a competitive deck designed to win competitive games of Magic. Period.
You enjoy playing combo decks. All of you wins will come off the back of combo kills as the deck is incapable of playing a "normal" game of Magic.
You enjoy playing Reanimator decks. All of your wins will come off the back of reanimation spells making it an ideal archetype for necromancers-in-training.
You want something linear and simple. Unlike similar combo decks this one has low execution requirements and a very linear gameplan that typically doesn't require much on-the-fly thinking.
You want something that can be played in a competitive 1v1 setting. You'll obviously have to make a few adjustments but on the whole the deck ports over to duel cEDH nicely.
You enjoy pro-active strategies. Sidisi asks "do you have it?" faster and more consistently than most other combo decks making her perfect for people who enjoy asking questions rather than frantically trying to answer them.
You enjoy killing creatures. Sidisi only fields one "real" creature and can thus afford to field as much mass removal as she pleases without hindering her gameplan.
You want "a good deck" as opposed to "a good metagame deck." Sidisi thrives in any setting, against any archetype and at any level of competition.
You wouldn't like Sidisi if:
You dislike linear decks that play out the same way each and every game. Be prepared to reenact the same game over and over again.
You want something that's fun to play with and against. The deck is extremely unfun to play against as she either wins quickly or loses handily with very little in between.
You don't want to do math. You will be required to perform addition and subtraction calculations in 100% of your games.
You want something with versatile answers, spot removal and permission. Sidisi is monoblack general that can afford to field some board wipes, a bit of removal and some discard but little else.
You're risk-adverse. Sidisi is a relatively all-in combo deck that can routinely find itself drawing dead.
General Notes: Unlike most tradition cEDH lists Sidisi is nothing but a pile of rituals and tutors making her one of the fastest and most reliable combo decks in the format. That being said she's also the most vulnerable to dedicated hate given that she only has one competitive way to win. Otherwise you can't overlook the fact that being monoblack is a major drawback since all 2-3 color Commanders will have access to significantly larger competitive card pools to draw from. With that in mind a general rule of thumb is that Sidisi is typically going to be faster than other Reanimator generals at the cost of flexibility and redundancy. She can do one thing very quickly, consistently and well but little else.
Chainer, Dementia Master/Xiahou Dun, the One-Eyed/Sheoldred, Whispering One/Iname, Death Aspect: Realistically I could still list another 2-3 monoblack Reanimator Commanders but luckily for me the difference between them and Sidisi is rather straight-forward. Simply put Sidisi is the fastest, most consistent option of the pack. When you cast Chainer, Dementia Master (or whatever) your plan isn't to win on the following the turn. Rather, with most of these Commanders you're generally looking to create an insurmountable advantage in the long-run by recurring value-based threats. That's perfectly fine if you're looking to play a fun, fair game of Magic but unfortunately it doesn't hold a candle to what Sidisi can muster. When you jam a turn 3-4 Sidisi you literally win the game on turn 4-5 which puts all of her competition to shame. Granted, the deck that I'm here to propose today can't play a fair game of Magic and literally can't win until it removes opposing graveyard hate but at the same time Sidisi's clock is still a half-dozen turns shorter than what the other monoblack Commanders can muster which makes her the only reasonable option in an extremely competitive setting. If you want something slow and fair that loops Gray Merchant of Asphodels then by all means, roll with something that will allow you play Magic. That being said if you're playing to win you can't argue with the sheer speed and consistency of Sidisi-based Reanimator lists.
Karador, Ghost Chieftain: Karador is a close proxy to Sidisi in the sense that it only needs to assemble a few cards in order to win. Insofar as the deck can find + cast/reanimate Boonweaver Giant then it can grab a Pattern of Rebirth. When paired with any free sac outlet this enables you to jam every creature from your deck into play and defeat any number of players on the spot. I'll spare you the gory details but just take my word for it if you've never seen the deck in action. Otherwise given that Karador is white it has access to bombs such as Iona, Shield of Emeria and Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite which are crazy powerful Reanimator targets. Moreover, since you're in Abzan colors you get to play with powerful tutors, plenty of hate bears, more reliable forms of interaction, on and on and on. In that sense Karador has a significantly better neutral game while still sporting the same stupidly oppressive combo finish. Why, then, run Sidisi over Karador? Let's quickly examine Cobblepott's list to find our answer. While the deck is significantly more interactive it's also slower and weaker against mass creature removal. The deck doesn't possess the same critical mass of tutors + recursion effects that Sidisi commands nor does it have as much fast mana/rituals. While his deck is unquestionably less susceptible to Null Rod/GY hate it's significantly weaker to ones sporting things like Toxic Deluge. As to which deck is superior there's no easy answer to that question. Abzan has better + cheaper answers to opposing graveyard hate and doesn't lose if one of its combos get disrupted (most lists have 3+) but from a pure goldfish perspective it's dead in the water if it merely tries to race Sidisi. In that sense neither deck is inherently better than the other in my opinion and I highly recommend something close to his Karador build if you're looking for something similar. Cobblepott is a fixture of the competitive EDH community and anyone looking to learn more about the format could stand to learn a lot from him.
Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord: Jarad is another reasonable alternative to Sidisi in the sense that he too enables a throng of 1-2 card "instant win" combos while sporting a reasonable neutral gameplan. In general these shells seek to quickly end games by using their Commander to Flinggiantcreatures at their adversaries while still sporting the same generic combo-kills present in most GBx combo decks. As previously explained with the Karador example playing Green allows you to field oppressive engines such as Survival of the Fittest while also fielding relevant removal such as Reclamation Sage. For anyone looking to break into the archetype I highly recommend Razzliox's list. He too is a fixture of the competitive EDH community and has a wealth of knowledge and experience with the format. He's written a series of articles that are well worth your time and covers some extremely high level scenarios. He even has a Sidisi ANT that you should probably check out while you're at it. As to where these decks splinter, again, it's mostly a matter of speed vs consistency. Jarad is a significantly more interactive that doesn't even need its graveyard in order to win but it's also slower and typically softer against permission. Whereas Sidisi can literally throw tutors at Boseiju, Who Shelters All/Defense Grid until one sticks Jarad tends to have a slightly tougher time setting one up. Moving on, whereas Sidisi hates seeing Null Rod Jarad isn't thrilled to have its mana dorks killed-off early on making it somewhat easier to hinder him early on. Otherwise the main difference between them is that whereas Jarad is more of a midrange deck Sidisi is very much a fast combo deck so when people aren't on Blue decks/permission Sidisi tends to win out given her extra speed and reliability.
The Mimeoplasm: Assuming that you're playing something close to this then you're looking at a deck that not only features the Necrotic Ooze combo kill but also the Hermit Druid into Dread Return + Laboratory Maniac + Deep Analysis win. Beyond that you can simply Entomb and Animate Dead a Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur or Consecrated Sphinx which will frequently be good enough to seal the deal. Otherwise adding Blue and Green enables you to field counter magic, card draw, looters, cantrips, mana dorks and any number of other powerful cards and effects. Given that The Mimeoplasm can reliably win on turn 4-5 (or threaten to win at the very least) it's clear that he's another top contender in the Reanimator world. As to why you would field Sidisi over him, it's mostly a matter of preference. Given that Sidisi can support countless archetypes it's virtually impossible for people to put you on a specific deck in the dark. Most people default into thinking Sidisi means ANT as opposed to Reanimator which will can easily cause them to approach the matchup the wrong way. On the other hand when you see Mimeo you know that you need GY-hate asap. Mimeo is also a touch inconsistent in my experience, especially when it comes to making the mana work for your spells. Believe it or not but the best card in this matchup in my experience is Smallpox since if you just hit their City of Brass and Birds of Paradise on turn 1 I truly don't believe that they can win. A lot of competitive BGx decks seem to suffer from this problem which is why that most of my lists place a higher emphasis on fielding additional lands (35+) and mass denial. That being said Green decks are significantly more resilient against Null Rod effects and if those are common then I'd rather sling Mimeo than Sidisi.
Lands: While the "optimal" manabase is rather expensive you could just as easily field 1x Boseiju, Who Shelters All alongside 34x Swamp and it would work just fine. Boseiju, Who Shelters All is crucial for shoring up your Blue matchups and can't realistically be cut but nothing else it truly required. Assuming that you have 25+ Cabal Coffers starts to look very tempting and since it's a great way to improve your Control matchups that's not a terrible exchange by any means. Moreover running this many Swamps means that can support things like Mire's Toll and Mutilate which are fantastic against Control and Midrange respectively. Otherwise feel free to add Bojuka Bog and/or Volrath's Stronghold, especially if you opt for a budget/75% version of the deck that might not have the same consistency. Either way the idea here is that you shouldn't let the manabase scare you since the fancy stuff is "nice to have" but not "need to have."
Revival/Recursion Note: Most recursion is designed to used on Necrotic Ooze after you've Buried Alive'd your combo into your GY. Otherwise "any graveyard" revival can clearly grab anything but in general your best bet is your own Sidisi, Undead Vizier. This is why you should virtually never put her back in your command zone since using her to turn recursion into "Demonic Tutors" is a big game. While some of the revival spells have drawbacks none of them are relevant when used on either Nooze (since you win anyways) or Sidisi (since you'll immediately Exploit her regardless) so feel free ignore them.
Animate Dead: Competitive "any graveyard" revival spell. Never cut. Dance of the Dead: Competitive "any graveyard" revival spell. Never cut. Corpse Dance: Competitive revival spell. Never cut. Exhume: Competitive revival spell. Never cut. Footsteps of the Goryo: Decent revival spell. Cut this one second if you need to shave your recursion suite. Necromancy: Competitive "any graveyard" revival spell. Never cut. Reanimate: Competitive "any graveyard" revival spell. Never cut. Shallow Grave: Competitive revival spell. Never cut. Wake the Dead: Weak revival spell. Cut this one first if you need to shave your recursion suite. Yawgmoth's Will: One of the most heinously oppressive cards in all of Magic. Turns rituals, tutors and recursion into straight game wins with ridiculous consistency. Note that Will has no Buried Alive synergy whatsoever since the creatures would all be exiled as opposed to put into the GY. This means that you cannot use Will to recur a BA that was stripped from your hand and/or countered.
Card Filtering/Draw Baleful Force: Powerful card advantage engine that you can Entomb/Corpse Connoisseur and Reanimate early on. #FreeGriselbrand Dark Confidant: Routinely hits on turn 1 and proceeds to double your draw steps. Absurd card that should always be played and never be cut unless your meta is oppressively hostile towards creatures. Sensei's Divining Top: Cheap filter effect that smooths your draws. Has immense synergy well with fetchlands given the free shuffle effect to constantly see new cards.
Removal/Disruption Defense Grid: While it serves many uses its primary one is to hose counter magic. Otherwise it mostly just makes it awkward for your opponents to play out their turns. Dismember, Slaughter Pact, Snuff Out,: Removes opposing hatebears and/or hinders opposing combos. Unmask, Thoughtseize: Disrupts combos and removes potential counter magic. Can be aimed on yourself to bin key combo pieces that you're unlucky enough to draw. Duress, Inquisition of Kozilek: Disrupts combos and removes potential counter magic. Karn Liberated: Removes opposing "hate" permanents such as Null Rod, Cursed Totem and Rest in Peace. Toxic Deluge: Most powerful Wrath effect in all of EDH. Oppressive form of mass creature removal. Ugin, the Spirit Dragon: Destroys most relevant threats/hate while leaving your ramp intact. Unstable Obelisk: Marginal ramp spell that also removes opposing (graveyard) hate. Void Winnower: Oppressively disruptive threat that meaningfully threatens life totals.
Step 1: Tutor for Buried Alive,
Step 2: Cast Buried Alive and bin Necrotic Ooze, Triskelion and Phyrexian Devourer,
Step 3: ReviveNecrotic Ooze. Whenever possible wait until you're able to simultaneously complete steps 2 and 3,
Step 4: Exile the top card of library and (if applicable) place +1/+1 counters on your Nooze and ping your opponents,
Step 5: Repeat step 4 ad nauseam.
It's important to play around potential forms of interaction and since discard is a legitimate concern in cEDH games I don't recommend tutoring for Buried Alive until you're ready to go for the win. That is, if you're going to have to tutor for a reanimation spell then you may as well grab that first since it's not a big deal if it gets stripped out of your hand shortly after. Again, the deck has 9 recursion spells that can revive the Nooze so it's not the end of the world if you lose some along the way. Magic rewards tight, patient play and correctly sequencing your actions will gain you significantly more % points than you probably realize. Now, clearly you will draw one or more revival spells in a large % of your games regardless and so far more often than not Buried Alive will be your target of choice so just be aware that discard is a legitimate threat and do what you can to play around it. After all, it's eminently beatable if you're cautious enough.
Even if you're not a rocket surgeon you should be able to piece this one together yourself. Note that Void Winnower is used as the secondary recursion target because of how powerful that effect is vs non-interactive combo decks such as Storm. It also survives most of your own mass removal and is reasonably difficult to remove (it does somewhat protect itself) which means that it will generally buy you enough time to combo off and win yourself.
Step 1: Cast and Exploit Sidisi, Undead Vizier,
Step 2: Elect to keep her in your graveyard as opposed to shipping her off to the Command Zone,
Step 3: Congratulations, all 9 of your recursion effects are now "Demonic Tutors."
This is why you should almost never exile Sidisi to your Command Zone after casting and exploiting her. Obviously in some instances it will make sense to do so (this deck can produce a lot of mana very quickly and it won't always have recursion on hand) but if you have any recursion burning a hole in your pocket then you'll almost always want to keep her in the bin where she can be reanimated on the cheap to BYO Demonic Tutor.
Occasionally you'll draw one your key combo pieces (Triskelion, Phurexian Devourer) which is annoying but not the end of the world. The simplest solution is to Buried Alive for Putrid Imp, Necrotic Ooze and your other combo piece and then have Necrotic Ooze use Putrid Imp's activated ability after you Renaimate it. You can also overdraw via Baleful Force or even point your discard spells at yourself to get them in the bin. Tutors like Insidious Dreams can also be reasonable inclusions in the deck for this purpose.
Mikaeus, the Unhallowed + Triskelion supported with things like Wake the Dead, Victimize, Living Death and Ever After: Assuming that you're able to simultaneously put Mikaeus, the Unhallowed + Triskelion into play you can have the Trike shoot itself twice and then an adversary for 1-2 (1 for the first iteration and 2 for every subsequent one thanks to Undying from Mikaeus, the Unhallowed) and repeat ad nauseam until you win. Note that shooting the Trike first plays around removal better and you must shoot it twice since Mikaeus pumps it by an additional +1/+1 to a base P/T of 2/2. This is easily the strongest combo that we're not playing and I wouldn't blame anyone for fielding it.
Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger: Generic Entomb/Corpse Connoisseur target that we can revive early on to start exiling libraries. Can randomly hose combo decks by nailing their marquee cards. This is a reasonable inclusion and if you're looking for a 75% version of the deck then this is a reasonable fatty to reliably recur.
Basalt Monolith + Rings of Brighthearth (+ Sensei's Divining Top): Anyone who's played any amount of EDH is probably familiar with the Basalt Rings combo by now. Together they can generate infinite mana and assuming that you have BB floating you can have Sidisi tutor for Sensei's Divining Top and use it to draw your deck by Rings-ing the Top activation ad nauseam. The problem with this combo is that we don't have a card like Exsanguinate that wins the game on the spot. In theory we could field something like Rain of Filth and Skirge Familiar to pitch our creatures and win on the spot but the problem with this gameplan is that it consumes too many deckslots and most of the cards have no standalone value. That being said this is still a reasonable inclusion if you want to make the deck more robust against GY hate at the cost of speed and reliability.
Leyline of the Void + Helm of Obedience: Doesn't make the cut since it's too slow in a multiplayer setting. That being said Helm of Obedience abuses opposing Rest in Peaces/Leyline of the Voids insanely well which can enable you to "hate out their hate" so to speak. In the dark I don't recommend maindecking this combo but it's reasonable if you have a firm grasp on your meta and can piggy-back off of opposing hate.
Goryo's Vengeance + Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre/Kozilek, Butcher of Truth: While Emrakul is banned the other Eldrazi Titans aren't and hastily returning them to play via cards like Shallow Grave can smash players to pieces. Unfortunately these combos only hinder single adversaries which makes them too weak to field in a MP setting.
Total CMC of the deck: 165
CMC required for combo: 19
Total CMC available to ping: 146
Nonessential CMC above 120: 26
Average card CMC: 1.65
Average number of cards drawn before being unable to deal 120 damage: 16 (turn 9)
Combo Damage: 165 - total CMC of cards in Hand, Graveyard and Exile
The Necrotic Ooze combo kill isn't a true infinite. The current iteration of my deck has a total CMC of 165 and since our combo is always going to reduce that number by 19 (3 for Buried Alive, 4 for Necrotic Ooze, 6 for Triskelion and 6 for Phyrexian Devourer) this gives us a maximum of 146 damage to work with. Assuming that we need to deal 120 damage in total that gives us 26 "extra damage" to play with and and since the average CMC of our deck is 1.65 that means that we can see 16 cards on average before we can longer deal 120 damage.
That being said this number is basically irrelevant for the purposes of a real-world game of cEDH. Players hemorrhage life for ramp, tutors, fetchlands, shocklands, painlands, draw spells, etc. and creature beats aren't insignificant either. The notion that you'll need to do anywhere near the full 120 is absurd unless you've got a turn 1-2 kill on the play. Besides, you're rarely going to draw 30+ cards in a cEDH game to begin with since the deck is mostly devoid of card draw and the number of games in which you reach 20+ turns are few and far between. Given that you're playing a fast combo deck with very little resilience and a boatload of redundancy you'll have already won or lost multiple times over by the time that turn 20 rolls around. In that sense "I might not have enough damage" is a trivial concern so don't lose any sleep over that aspect of the deck.
Clearly this means if someone gains a lot of life then you're screwed and that's where things like Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger and the Mikaeus, the Unhallowed + Triskelion combo come in handy. Still, make no mistake that you will win the overwhelming majority of games in which you successfully combo off.
Learning when to tutor for and cast Buried Alive is possibly the single most important aspect of the deck. Our list is virtually incapable of winning without resolving it and it's not as though we can lean on Yawgmoth's Will to save us should things go awry the first time around. After all, it doesn't do us any good if the creatures that it bins gets exiled. A big of chunk of the skill required to play the deck thus falls on your ability to navigate through hate and learn when, where and why to pick your spots to go for the win. Discard, counter magic, extraction and more will ruin you otherwise.
For starters I will virtually never tutor for Buried Alive until I'm ready to cast it in order to play around hand disruption. This clearly doesn't apply when people aren't playing Black decks or if they've already cast a discard spell (the probability of them drawing 2+ when they only play 2-3 is extremely low) but most Black lists will field Thoughtseize, Duress, Inquisition of Kozilek, Unmask, etc. and you don't want to convert them into live cards against you. In the games where you're forced to tutor up both a revival spell and BA fetch the recursion first and BA second since you have plenty of revival spells but only 1 BA. That being said you'll generally draw into a revival spell anyways (we do play 9 for a reason) and so this usually isn't a serious concern but it's still worth keeping in mind.
When it comes to Green/White decks the scariest play that you need to concern yourself with is Survival of the Fittest/Fauna Shaman (or any on-board tutor) for Aven Mindcensor. Obviously any creature tutor can fetch the Mindcensor and any given White deck can draw + play it but you never want to walk into an on-board "counter" such as this. This is where spot removal and Defense Grid come in handy and otherwise you can simply wait until people tap low enough for it to become a non-issue. Having some amount of spot removal would make these types of threats significantly less frightening and you should feel free to field some if GWx is popular in your meta. Cards like Slaughter Pact, Dismember, Snuff Out and Murderous Cut are great against Containment Priests, Mindcensors, etc. and make these GWx matchups slightly more favorable. We already race them and so insofar as we can deal with their hate we're definitely favored to win. Otherwise be cautious of casting BA into 3 open mana in general (assuming that one is White obviously) but as with most things playing scared will lose you more games than it'll win. The main thing that I'm trying to stress here is that Aven Mindcensor is very good against this deck so be mindful of on-board tutors that can fetch it.
Counter magic is equally troubling since, again, we basically can't win if BA doesn't resolve and we only get one opportunity to make it work. This is why the deck plays cards like Boseiju, Who Shelters All, Duress, Defense Grid and Praetor's Grasp for opposing Pact of Negations since it needs consistent solutions to this looming threat. Beyond that just remember that decks only get to field 1 Force of Will and that Pact of Negation can rarely-if-ever be used offensively. A tapped-out Blue mage is typically a defenseless one so don't be afraid to "make them have it" if that's your best option. Obviously you should look for protection if you can afford to but that's not always going to be the case. You'll lose significantly more games than you'll win trying to play around FoW and don't let hindsight or anecdotal evidence of failure deter you from making the correct play from a pure mathematical perspective.
As I've stated numerous times already the deck has 9 total reanimation spells and learning how to sequence them is pivotal. After all, there's a lot of % points to be gained by learning the various pros and cons of which to lead with/tutor for and why.
One of the most important tricks that you'll want to employ in order to play around hate is to lead with Sorcery-speed reanimation first and leave yourself the possibility of responding to hate with an Instant-speed answer. For example, I will usually lead with Reanimate and sandbag Shallow Grave so that if one of my opponents is holding an answer like Faerie Macabre or Containment Priest that I'll be able to respond to and beat it. While this may seem like an extremely narrow interaction don't forget that things like Survival of the Fittest are staples which makes it trivially easy to search for and cast hate bears at instant speed.
The next thing to remember is that Reanimate and the Enchantments cannot be protected with Boseiju, Who Shelters All. What this is means is that you should place a higher value on the spell-based options in Control matchups, especially in scenarios where you're tutoring for a revival spell or deciding which revival to "waste" when using one as a Demonic Tutor on Sidisi. It's the last one that counts so whenever possible sandbag the 2+ CMC spells to preserve the option of employing Boseiju protection.
Beyond that be mindful of Krosan Grip if you have reason to believe that it's being played. If you're not careful it can easily blow you out by nailing your Enchantment-based recursion. While I'm not suggesting that you play around K-Grip in the dark if you happen to strongly suspect that someone is playing with it then use that information to your advantage if you have the option of choosing between multiple revival spells. Clearly people are unlikely to draw/tutor for their 1-of K-Grip and since Green doesn't have "spell tutors" that can fetch it this will rarely be a serious concern. That being said it's still important to be mindful of these interactions in scenarios where you're tutoring for a revival spell.
Just so we're clear I'm not suggesting that these kinds of intricacies will matter every game. cEDH is frequently a turn 4-5 format and sometimes you'll draw exactly one revival spell and have exactly one sequence of plays to take. Where these considerations come into play are for the games where you draw Reanimate + Corpse Dance or are forced to decide which revival spell to Vampiric Tutor for on turn 1. That's when it's important to remember that card like Shallow Grave is only 2 CMC, is instant-speed, dodges Krosan Grip and is protectable with Boseiju, Who Shelters All.
Right off the bat you'll want to analyze your opening 7 and determine if there's any possibility in going for a a turn 1 Entomb/draw + discard into a turn 1-2 "Reanimate" on either Baleful Force or Void Winnower. I typically won't go for the draw + discard route if I won't immediately be able to recur the creature on the following turn because anything slower than that is rarely going to be competitive enough to keep pace with the rest of the field. Assuming that you have some fast mana then it's trivially easy to hit the 1-3 mana required. The decision is somewhat less obvious in the face of multiple Blue mages but even then giving them additional draw steps to find permission isn't ideal either and so I'll usually pursue any turn 1-2 revival sequence and force someone to have an answer right then and there. It's the winningest line on the whole.
Since the majority of your opening hands won't be cookie-cutter Entomb draws a more common opening sequence is a small barrage of ramp into a quick Sidisi, Undead Vizier. We play 20 ramp spells for a reason and you'll usually see them early and often as a result. In an ideal world you'll be able to curve fast mana into a quick Worn Powerstone/Coalition Relic at which point you'll be able to untap with enough mana to jam Sidisi, Undead Vizier and prepare for a quick turn 4-5 kill. The deck is flush with tutors (all of which cost less than 5 mana) and so you definitely don't need nut draws to enable them. Something as simple as turn 2 Charcoal Diamond, turn 3 Diabolic Tutor for Buried Alive, turn 4 Buried Alive + reanimation spell is good enough to seal the deal and don't give me any nonsense about that being an unreasonable or overly-optimistic sequence. Between our 20 ramp spells, Sensei's Divining Top, Dark Confidant, 8 hard tutors and 9 recursion spells you'll come across draws like that all the time. Turn 4 kills are relatively common with turn 3 being possible albeit unlikely. Clearly the deck can nut draw turn 1-2 kills by naturally drawing Buried Alive, Reanimate and fast mana such as Mana Crypt and Dark Ritual but those are too infrequent to be concerned about.
Since the kill sequence is extremely basic and only has one possible configuration most of the skill involved in playing the deck stems from your ability to leverage the resources at your disposal to win the game where you don't get to goldfish your combo against inadequate opposition. Again, I recommend that you hold off on tutoring for Buried Alive until you're prepared to use it in order to shield it against discard effects. Moreover, be mindful of the other Commanders at the table and don't be afraid to use your own discard effects proactively if needed. Whenever possible you'll want to sandbag them until you're ready to combo-off and need to clear the way but Sidisi is by no means the fastest deck in the format. Stripping combo decks of their key tutors/draw spells/combo pieces can significantly hinder their clock and stripping Control decks of their permission is always relevant.
Never forget that insofar as Sidisi in your graveyard that all of your revival effects turn into Demonic Tutors. It's incredibly important to keep her in the GY as opposed to the Command Zone for that reason alone.
With respect to playing against hate, again, I can't stress enough enough how important it is to only go for the kill when you have all of your key components assembled. If you simply fire off a random Buried Alive with no ability to recur the Nooze then you deserve to lose to a Rest in Peace or whatever. Period. Clearly you're going to face off against proactive opponents who cast their Null Rods and Leyline of the Voids ahead of time and that's where your Unstable Obelisk, Karn Liberated and Ugin, the Spirit Dragon shine. Your mass removal is also extremely effective against any and all hate bears which means that you should have the tools to fight through most things. The hardest card for this deck to beat in general is Null Rod and your best bet of toppling it are simply going for a quick kill as opposed to trying to remove it. Your list has plenty of tutors that cost less than 5 mana and naturally drawing a revival spell isn't difficult either.
For clarity's sake when I say "Blue decks" I'm taking about lists with dedicated Counterspell suites. You should generally assume that your cEDH opposition will be sporting them but clearly if you know for a fact that they aren't fielding any (and/or if they aren't holding mana up for them) then none of this applies. The reason why we care so much about counterspells is because our deck basically cannot win without resolving Buried Alive. Bear in mind that Yawgmoth's Will is worthless at recurring it and so you literally only get one opportunity to resolve it. With that in mind Sidisi is, in my opinion, one of the better combo generals at thwarting permission-heavy builds.
The strongest card against Blue mages is Defense Grid. It makes it virtually impossible to hold counters up while still playing Magic and since sitting around "doing nothing" isn't a winning proposition your opponents will be forced to abandon their permission. It also more-or-less forces people to play at Sorcery speed and since Sidisi is one of the fastest and most consistent combo decks in the format it's trivially easy to go for the throat when everyone is tapped-out and incapable of interacting with you. That being said Grid isn't the be-all-end-all since the card itself can be countered or removed and depending on the state of the game it's still possible to fight through it by paying the extra 3. In the dark it's still my favorite tool for thwarting permission-heavy builds but it will often take more than this to clear the path.
Sidisi has access to cheap Black discard effects such as Duress, Thoughtseize and Unmask that can strip opposing permission directly from your opponents' grips. Otherwise it can also deny opposing discard spells to protect your win conditions or even removes things like Null Rod, Praetor's Grasp and Sadistic Sacrament that can make it extremely difficult/impossible for you to win. While discard spells are obviously significantly less effective in the face of multiple adversaries they still serve a role in a format and a small number of them should typically always be played. It's a losing line to field them in large numbers since you rarely want to see more than 1-2 in a game (and 0 is frequently ideal) but since this deck literally can't beat a card like Praetor's Grasp or win after having its Buried Alive countered having a proactive answer to interaction can be quite relevant.
Otherwise the cards that influences the Blue matchups moreso than anything else are Cavern of Souls and Boseiju, Who Shelters All. Given that our deck is literally swimming with tutors (including Expedition Map) you'll reliably be able to locate and play an early Boseiju when needed. From there you can use it to cast Buried Alive in addition to a reasonable % of your recursion effects while dodging any and all permission in the process. Now, what I will say is that this plan isn't exactly bullet-proof. First of all it's slow as Hell. Boseiju ETBT and assuming that you use to cast both BA and your recursion spell that's 3 full turns until you can win. Someone can easily secure the victory in that time and you're not exactly the best deck and thwarting people trying to combo off. Moreover, if you Buried Alive and don't go for the win immediately then you open yourself up to dedicated GY-hate. Whenever possible you want to go for the win all at once to ensure that you're not suddenly drawing dead to a resolved Rest in Peace or Scavenging Ooze. That's not possible if you try to play around permission and this is where you'll have to make judgment calls based on the Commanders, the players, the state of the game, on and on and on.
With all of that that in mind you'll want to prepare gameplan as early as possible and decide how you'll want to go about trying to win the game. The safest bet is obviously to tutor up a Boseiju and take it slow and steady but that plan is also the slowest and the most susceptible to other forms of hate. Generally I'm content to simply tutor up a Defense Grid, jam it and go for the win the following turn and I'll willing to accept that it won't always pan out in my favor. It helps if you manage to find a discard spell or two but given that we only play a handful that's rarely going to be the case. Otherwise if permission is a serious concern for you I highly recommend adding Cabal Coffers since that card is utterly insane against Control. It enables you to build an insurmountable mana advantage which can reasonably convert to a deterministic win given enough time.
Spell-based Storm decks (think Jeleva, Nephalia's Scourge and Zur the Enchanter) are some of our worst matchups. Our creature-based removal is typically worthless against them and they're more than capable of racing us if left unchecked. Most of them also have access to permission (whereas we do not) and and powerful draw spells (which we lack) and given that most are 2-3 colors they even gain access to plethora of relevant tutor/removal/interaction spells that a monoblack deck will never be privy to. Bluntly put these matchups were so bad (relatively speaking) that I've gone as far as to field Void Winnower as a recursion target in an attempt to salvage it. I've never played against a single spell-based Storm deck that could reasonably win through the effect and by forcing them to interact with the card we can frequently buy enough time to win ourselves. Remember, it's not as easy "oh they can just Plow it." I mean yes, that's possible, but most cEDH decks play very little removal and locating it isn't always trivial. Otherwise the Winnower brings the beats and since many Storm decks are Ad Nauseam lists dealing 11 damage per turn is no laughing matter. Beyond that feel free to try and race them since we're the ones playing a boat-load of mana and tutors and taking the game to a straight race shouldn't bother you. As long as you draw some piece of interaction that will be frequently be good enough to blank their lone permission spell and don't forget that Praetor's Grasp can nab Pact of Negation if needed. Praetor's Grasp can also grab things like Hermit Druid, Doomsday, Ad Nauseam, etc. and since many combo decks can't win without having access to those kinds of cards you can sometimes screw them over. Other cards that help the spell-based combo matchups are things like Bojuka Bog, Nihil Spellbomb, Mind Twist and Sadistic Sacrament so you can always metagame against the archetype if needed.
Creature-based Combo decks (think Yisan, the Wanderer Bard and Animar, Soul of Elements) are significantly less frightening. Cards like Toxic Deluge and Ugin, the Spirit Dragon prevent them from ever reaching the critical-mass of threats that they sorely need to secure victories which is typically good enough to shut them down. Beyond that our clock tends to be faster, more consistent and significantly less susceptible to creature-based removal. Should they fail to interact with us then winning is trivially easy with a simple tutor -> Buried Alive -> revival spell sequence putting the onus on them to find some sort of disruption/interaction that we (for whatever reason) can't easily remove.
Sidisi tends to be favored against Stax builds in general given her speed, consistency and unparalleled access to mass removal. We play significantly more lands and ramp than most similar cEDH builds and given that we can easily win on the 4th or 5th turn while interacting with creatures that doesn't leave players with much of an opportunity to mess with us. This is also where cards such as Unstable Obelisk, Karn Liberated and Ugin, the Spirit Dragon shine and don't forget that Praetor's Grasp can dig for opposing "Oblivion Stones" if needed. Heck, you can even ask the other players if they have relevant mass removal to borrow in case they're also fed up of being locked-up in the prison. Clearly if they nut draw Null Rod + Rest in Peace or some other ridiculous sequence then we're basically dead but in practice their draws are rarely consistent enough to keep us from doing our thing. Ultimately most builds lean heavily on creatures such as Gaddock Teeg and Linvala, Keeper of Silence to keep the board under control which means that any draw consisting of fast mana -> tutors -> Toxic Deluge -> combo kill usually trumps their gameplan. That isn't to say that an experienced Derevi, Empyrial Tactician pilot with a reasonable draw can't stomp you but at the same time I don't look at those types of Commanders and feel as though I'm drawing dead. Your mass removal is very effective against them and unless they naturally draw their Null Rod (bear in mind that most lists suck at actually tutoring for it) you have a solid gameplan against them. That being said you should still play around MLD as much possible (i.e. don't play lands if you don't need them) and don't be afraid to look for things like Unstable Obelisk and Karn Liberated that can nuke their problematic forms of interaction.
Random nonblue decks are the bread and butter than make Sidisi one of the most brutally effective Commanders in the entire game. When you sit down and see Marath, Will of the Wild, Prossh, Skyraider of Kher and Karador, Ghost Chieftain you should already be celebrating in your head as you should feel extremely favored to win. Suddenly the game is nothing but a straight-race and realistically speaking you're going to win that gambit far more often than not. You play significantly more tutors, ramp and rituals than they do and if they put you on the ANT build then they probably won't even look for the right interaction to try and thwart you. The primary "trick" to remember (if you can even call it that) is that you should always try to go for the win all at once which means sandbagging Buried Alive until you have the revival spell to pair with it. Since you'll also want to play around discard spells (assuming that there's one or more Black mages obviously) this means tutoring for a revival spell first (only if needed obviously) and Buried Alive second since you can always find more revival if needed. That being said the deck has 9 revival spells that work off of BA which means that you'll typically draw at least 1 by the time that you're ready to go for the win so this won't be required a large % of the time. Turn 4 wins are reasonably consistent and given your unbound access to mass removal spells people shouldn't be able to pressure you hard enough in the interim. Besides, unlike the Ad Nauseam builds of the deck we don't care nearly as much about our life total. Even if we fall to a low one it's not as though we struggle to win from that position.
Minor threat. Our list is filled of cheap ramp, our win conditions top out at 3 CMC and we only need to be able to cast 2 spells in a single turn in order to win.
Medium threat. Counters recursion such as Animate Dead. Even though you can always cast additional recursion spells later on this opens you up to GY-hate which isn't ideal. Combat by using "safe" recursion, targeted discard, Defense Grid and/or Praetor's Grasp nabbing Pact of Negation or opposing discard spells. That being said Stifle effects are rarely-if-ever played in cEDH and generally aren't worth playing around.
Medium threat. Even though you can always cast additional recursion spells later on this opens you up to GY-hate which isn't ideal. Combat by using "safe" revival that can't be Krosan Gripped, targeted discard, Defense Grid and/or Praetor's Grasp nabbing opposing discard spells. That being said Split Second spells are uncommonly played (other than maybe Krosan Grip) and generally aren't worth playing around.
Medium threat. A discarded Buried Alive leaves us drawing (mostly) dead. Combat by only tutoring for Buried Alive when you're ready to cast it (which obviously requires a revival spell), your own discard spells and/or Praetor's Grasp nabbing opposing discard spells.
Severe threat. Neutralizes 20ish cards in the deck all which are necessary to reach the 7+ mana required to remove it (Unstable Obelisk, Karn Liberated and/or Ugin, the Spirit Dragon). I recommend ignoring it and praying playing for a fast combo win.
Extreme threat. Unstable Obelisk, Karn Liberated and/or Ugin, the Spirit Dragon can all remove it but we have to naturally draw one which isn't likely. You can obviously preemptively tutor for an answer if needed but that's going to be a losing line in general given how improbable that it is to draw a specific card in EDH (i.e. it's unlikely that someone will field, draw and cast Stranglehold in an average cEDH match).
Lethal threat. We're basically drawing dead to resolved Library hate. Even if we were to add Mikaeus, the Unhallowed for an alternate kill condition they could simply remove the Triskelion instead and we'd still be drawing dead. You either have to hope to dodge these kinds of effects entirely, strip them with discard spells or field additional generic fatties that you can lean on for a beat-down plan when needed.
What makes it so special compared to any other piece of hate that you need to remove before you can win? Sure, it clears your GY which removes Sidisi and nerfs Yawg Win but realistically speaking it's not that much more threatening than any other piece of hate. You can't win until you remove them and they all go down to the same cards.
I was very lazy about adding "examples" because they're basically all the same card. The answer to all of them is "tutor up removal." Torpor Orb only works against Sidisi which is annoying but beatable.
a little tech i did in multiplayer deck as griselbrand is no option: putrid imp
if you have devourer or triskelion in hand you can buried for the imp and discard the same turn to combo. its a nice upside sometimes drawing a behemoth along a reanimate.
Maybe I'm missing something but how does this work? You BA for Nooze, Imp and Trike and revive the Imp? Don't you also have to revive the Nooze?
my pet tech is Deserted Temple to double boseiju in one single turn.
Buried Alive + Exhume/Wake the Dead (can't be Reanimate, Animate Dead, etc.) + Temple is a lot of mana and tutoring for both Boseiju and the Temple is extremely slow and resource intensive. Seems very optimistic to me.
2) when i transitioned my duel commander deck to multiplayer and exchanged all excess fair ramp with even cheaper sol ring and others i ended at about 110-120 damage max.
in a real game you use and lose cards so the real possible amount of damage becomes less the more time passes.
90-100 damage will not kill a table. it is important to know.
3)more redundancy is never irrelevant as redundancy itself is the reason to play this deck.
It's not a free additional though. Adding colorless, nonbasic lands that aren't Swamps carries small opportunity costs. Bubbling Muck gets that much weaker. Your colored spells are slightly harder to cast, especially if you want to jam multiple on the same turn. Buried Alive + Wake the Dead requires BBB and that's not guaranteed. Ruination gets better against you.
I'm not saying that you're wrong, just that I don't consider this scenario to be as simple as "more redundancy = good."
4) i guess i was a little unclear:
if you have the combo (buried + recursion) in hand while having the mana and the time is to go off now
BUT on of your pieces is in hand. how do you win?
in duel commander griselbrand is the solution as he is a good target himself but you can overdraw and discard eot to win at opponents upkeep.
imp lets you win the same turn.
this scenario is not rare - i have played the deck hundreds of times and you can keep otherwise unplayable starting hands if you have the option to pitch without the need of an extra card in hand like thoughtseize.
I still don't really understand where the Imp comes into play. So we have the combo of BA + Revival spell in hand but also a combo piece like Trike. Now we BA for Imp, Ooze and Mik. How does that helps us?
5)it might be slower but it can be the ultimate safe game against lots of U.
1vs1 it is a legitimate way to fight the control matchup. if you can hit an early boseiju or cavern just get corpse dance and you will win.
the only cards to prevent this are wasteland and blood moon.
it is also nice to have because it allows to use boseiju the same turn you play it.
this of course is not to aim if your position is to race a table. facing control is the harder matchup - therefore i opted at max against that. against any other matchup this deck can easy win races.
so i counted your max damage output:
if you use only lands and your Win Condition (4)
1x Buried Alive
1x Necrotic Ooze
1x Phyrexian Devourer
1x Triskelion165
NO other cards used or in hand.
the maximum damage you can do is 165 if you exile ALL other cards!
I have the information on my deck and its capacities. That being said I've never have to come close to dealing 120 damage except when I've gone for extremely fast kills (i.e. turn <= 3). Assuming turn 4-5 kills people usually deal at least 10 damage to themselves and if they haven't then it means that they usually haven't played many tutors, ramp spells, draw spells, or any "good lands" which means that they probably aren't a legitimate threat.
-buried for putrid imp, necrotic ooze & combopiece.
-reanimate the ooze
-discard the last combo piece to the ooze to give it flying because it is an activated ability from a creature in your graveyard.
now all your pieces that belong in the yard are in the yard.
I've tested Rain of Filth and found the card to be utterly horrible. You have significantly more Swamps than I do so I could understand it working out for you but I think that the card is heinous for my deck.
Oloro is like the 4th best cEDH Esper build behind Zur, Sharuum and Sidri and so I'm not overly concerned about facing him down (maybe I'm missing more, I'm not thinking too hard about it atm). He's 6 mana and doesn't do much of anything the turn that you cast him whereas Sharuum wins the game on the spot. I get that Oloro is lifegain which "hurts my gameplan" but you still have to beat 3 other players and Oloro is not especially good at doing that compared to Doomsday Zur, combo Sidri, combo Sharuum, etc.
Cards like Mox Diamond and Lotus Petal are perplexing. When drawn on turn 1 they can be absolutely amazing and enable easy turn 3 kills or turn 4 if you need to disrupt/answer disruption. That being said they can also be total mulligans since you sometimes can't afford to take the 2-for-1 hit and they're (usually) miserable topdecks.
Putrid Imp still strikes me as odd. I get that it has functionality if you draw Mike/Trike (we can obviously hardcast Ooze np) but isn't it just awful like 90% of the time that you draw it? You said that it lets you keep otherwise unkeepable opening hands but isn't the opposite also true? Doesn't it transform very reasonable 7 card hands into 6 card ones? I could be wrong, I don't play with the card, but unless I tutor for and pitch a Baleful Force/Void Winnower then it's literally a mulligan isn't it? I've certainly lost games because I've drawn Mike/Trike without an easy way to bin them, I'm not suggesting otherwise, but at the same time adding a card to my deck that has questionable stand-alone value doesn't seem like an ideal answer.
You're absolutely right that it's not a lot of ways. That being said I personally treat this as a math problem. Since we can cast our Ooze the only cards that don't want to draw are Trike and Devourer. Assuming that we play a 5 turn game (reasonable for a cEDH match) I will draw 12 cards and have an 88.3316582914573% probability of not drawing either of them. That figure is also significantly more inflated than it should be since I can elect to mulligan every opening hand that includes a combo piece if I desire. In practice I will draw a combo piece less than 10% of the time (I'm being generous here) in games that last for roughly 5 turns. Also, if 5 turns is too few, bear in mind that 6 is 87%, 7 is is 86%, on and on and on. Even if your average game is slightly longer/shorter the math doesn't change significantly.
My problem with Putrid Imp is "what do I do with this card when I draw it in an average game?" 90+% of the time I don't draw a combo piece, have I not just mulliganed? Believe me, I understand where you two are coming from, but from a pure math perspective isn't the Imp unlikely to matter in the overwhelming majority of your games? Isn't it a losing proposition to add that card to your deck pure win % maximization perspective?
Bear in mind that I'm fine with losing a small of the time I will draw both combo pieces in 5 draw steps and lose. I will not build my deck to avoid an event that will occur a trivial % of the time. This is multiplayer cEDH and you're going to lose a ton of games to begin and so the threat of "disastrous draws" shouldn't turn you off entirely. My argument is that Putrid Imp will have next-to-no value in the 90% of games where I don't draw a combo piece and so I don't believe that it will increase my overall win % to add it to my list. That sometimes means receiving an "automatic loss" but if it's still the winningest line on the whole then I'm perfectly fine with that.
Using Hypergeometric Distribution:
Population: 99
Failures in Population: 2
Sample Size: Variable (6 or 7)
Number of Failures in Sample: 0
Probability of not drawing a combo piece in opening 7: P(X = 0) 0.862914862914863 = 86%
Using free multiplayer mulligan, conditional probability of not drawing a combo piece by second opening 7: P(X = 0) 0.86 + (1-0.86)(0.86) = 0.9804 = 98%
You have a 98% probability of drawing a 7 card hand that doesn't contain a combo piece.
For anyone curious as to the math on 6+ card hands it's P(X = 0) 0.86 + (1-0.86)(0.86) + (1-0.86)(1-0.86)(0.88) = 0.997648 = 99.75% That's once every 400 games.
Everything past this is inconsequential as far as I'm concerned.
Now let's analyze the probability of drawing into combo pieces assuming that we keep 7 card hands devoid of them:
Using Hypergeometric Distribution:
Population: 92
Failures in Population: 2
Sample Size: Variable (5, 10, 15)
Number of Failures in Sample: 0
Probability of drawing into zero combo pieces after drawing 5 cards: P(X = 0) 0.893693263258481 = 90%
Probability of drawing into zero combo pieces after drawing 10 cards: P(X = 0) 0.793358815097945 = 80%
Probability of drawing into zero combo pieces after drawing 15 cards: P(X = 0) 0.698996655518395 = 70%
You get the idea.
Since the multiplier that we'd use to calculate the final % is either 98% or 99.75% it's inconsequential either way. The math clearly isn't perfect since you can't keep all 7 card hands that don't contain a combo piece and it also doesn't take into account your ability to bin combo pieces to your own discard effects. I don't have the patience to run "the best math" on this but these numbers are still reasonable approximations.
From where I'm sitting it's a matter of your meta and its speed. If turn 5 wins are the norm then you probably don't need to worry about drawing combo pieces. Clearly a card like Baleful Force can force you to draw many more but at the same time it can also dig you into discard and/or allow you to pitch things to hand size which is a wash from what I can tell. Dark Confidant draws might be sketchier than others, especially if you jam one on turn 1 and he sticks around for 5+ turns. At ~11 cards drawn you're at 20% to have hit a combo piece and that's not staggeringly low.
Just so we're clear, I'm not arguing that drawing combo pieces doesn't suck. I'm simply not sold on the idea that adding Putrid Imp to the deck will increase my overall win %.
Can´t really argue with that, math looks solid and your points concerning the draw of combo pieces make sense. I still find him SO usefull for T1-T2 reanimation (Not combo!), but with only Void Winnower / Baleful Force in your list, I see him potentially not making the cut.
OOC what would you recommend cutting from my deck in order to make room for the Imp? I'm strapped for cuts.
How many fatties do you run? Do you get consistent value from Rune-Scarred Demon even though he's a 7 drop? Isn't he a conditional version of Sidisi and given that we'll almost always leave Sidisi in our GY do you really need another version of that effect?
i dont know how to do such math. i also dont exactely understand it. but in the end i get your point and see its a preference thing.
For the record I'm only using math to throw some "credibility" to my claim that Imp isn't likely to increase my overall win %. I'll be the first person to tell you that the math that I posted isn't perfect but at the same time "perfect math" is virtually impossible to calculate. If I were being paid a salary to figure it out then I could eventually write a program that could do it but I'm not willing to do anything other than a basic approximation using hypergeometric distributions and conditional probabilities.
In layman's terms the math is something objective that moves the argument away from "I think" and "I feel" and more towards "here's some objective proof that 100% of players can calculate and re-create for themselves." I'm still not saying that I shouldn't play the Imp, but having a bit of math never hurts to sway the decision one way or another. For example, I wasn't aware that I'm 20% to draw a combo piece if I draw 10 cards. My games tend to end around turn 5 and since I don't field cards like Night's Whisper I rarely draw my combo pieces. I already knew that the % was low but I had no idea if it was "1% low" or "5% low" or "10%" low and now I know that it's "10% low." 10% isn't a trivial number and I'm not going to let anecdotal experience or other biases influence my decision if the math proves otherwise.
stil you exclude the matchups where you have all the time because you face no clock but die to only one mistake.
OOC are you mostly a duel player? I realize that you've stated on numerous occasions that you also play this a duel deck but I feel as though we might be comparing apples to oranges. In multiplayer cEDH there is no "you face no clock." Period. Everyone is playing Stax with MLD, a fast combo kill, 1 card win cons like Tooth and Nail, on and on and on. There are no fair, grindy, value decks that don't clear the entire table in a single turn. No one plays a Control Tasigur list with 20 counterpsells. That doesn't win MP games.
Don't get me wrong, I appreciate your input and I've already taken some of your suggestions to heart, I'm just wondering if we both experience cEDH the same way.
your scenario also excludes the fact that you have other cards that u can use to discard BUT this turns the situation in a 3 card combo + maybe more mana needed. if you have another tutor thats gonna slow you down alot.
That type of conditional probability is extremely difficult to accurately calculate unfortunately. There's no "quick and dirty" solution that I can knock out to give us rough numbers.
That's the same reason why I run Wake the Dead. It's another 3 CMC revival spell that I can Boseiju.
I never bothered to talk about the Reanimation spells and how to use them but in hindsight that was probably wrong of me. I'll add a discussion for these kinds of interactions.
OOC what would you recommend cutting from my deck in order to make room for the Imp? I'm strapped for cuts.
How many fatties do you run? Do you get consistent value from Rune-Scarred Demon even though he's a 7 drop? Isn't he a conditional version of Sidisi and given that we'll almost always leave Sidisi in our GY do you really need another version of that effect?
I can´t tell for sure, but to me, Karn Liberated + Ugin, the Spirit Dragon + All is Dust seems like overkill. Having solutions and all is fine, but (as you said) games don´t tend to go this long, so I imagine you would be fine with two of those (+Praetor's Grasp if needed). I guess they also increase your overall cmc, so not sure if you can / want to cut one of those.
And sorry if I was unclear (sometimes language can be a barrier lol), but I don´t run Sidisi at my head (see signature), so Rune-Scarred Demon simply adds redundancy. My fatties are Rune-Scarred Demon, Sidisi, Undead Vizier, Void Winnower and Baleful Force, together with Triskelion and Phyrexian Devourer. I played around 25 games since I included the little Imp and, for reasons I tried to explain earlier, was happy to see him more often than not. I can´t back it up with data, so my feelings, oberservations and thoughts are all I can offer
Considering that you're the second person to promote the card it's definitely worth testing.
As much as I hate Karn and would love to cut him I only have 2 answers in the entire deck to colorless hate such as Cursed Totem. The other is obviously Unstable Obelisk. Both cards are complete and total garbage but they ensure that you're not drawing dead to a single hate spell. As such I would cut All is Dust if anything since it's a strictly worse version of Ugin. It's certainly possible that my list is too greedy and that I should stop trying to field both. In a perfect world I would love to cut Obelisk + Karn though.
Table of Contents
What is Sidisi, Reanimator Vizier?
Sidisi, Reanimator Vizier is a Reanimator archetype that focuses entirely on using Buried Alive to assemble the Necrotic Ooze + Triskelion + Phyrexian Devourer combo. Insofar as you have the former in play and the latter two in your graveyard you can continually exile the top card of library to grow your Ooze and proceed to ping your adversaries until they perish. Note that this combo is immune to any reasonable amount of removal given that you can respond to it by continuing to remove the top card of your library and pinging people. Insofar as you don't needless state "exile my whole library, ping you all" and clearly communicate the fact that you're going to exile cards one-at-a-time then people shouldn't be able to "get you" with anything but the most niche forms of interaction (such as Sudden Death and Sudden Spoiling). The easiest (and basically only) way to reliably assemble these 3 cards is with Buried Alive so that should be your priority tutor target in the vast majority of your games. This is where Sidisi enters the equation in that she herself acts as generic tutor for Buried Alive and/or Reanimation as needed. Since you only need to naturally draw (or tutor for if necessary) 1 of 9 possible revival spells to follow that up you'll frequently win the game on turn 4-5 through a simple sequence along the lines of: turn 1-2 ramp, turn 2-3 Sidisi/other tutors/disruption, turn 4-5 Buried Alive + Reanimate. The deck can easily goldfish on turn 4 with an average draw and while turn 1-3 wins aren't common they're still possible. This is because the rest of the deck is nothing but hard tutors, ramp and rituals which makes her one of the fastest and most reliable combo decks in the format. What she lacks in resilience and flexibility she makes up for in speed and reliability making her a high-tier threat in the world of cEDH.
Turn 4 Kill
Sidisi is what I like to call a "turn 4 kill deck." That isn't to say that she always kills on turn 4 nor that she can't kill sooner (there's multiple turn 1 kill sequences) but in general the deck will goldfish a turn 4 kill assuming reasonable mulligan decisions. The deck consistently achieves this result by emphasizing rituals, ramp, tutors and revival above all else which brings a level of consistency to the archetype that isn't present in many others. After all, the only requirements to achieve a turn 4 kill are that you cast one tutor for Buried Alive and draw one of your 9 revival spells. Past that all you need is the mana to cast everything and then you're good to go. Given that this deck usually plays around 35 lands, 25 ramp/ritual effects, 9 revival spells and 10 competitive tutors (including Sidisi herself) that isn't asking for very much to go right. Even below-average keeps can routinely get there and between the free multiplayer mulligna and the Scry on 6 seeing 3 hands of ~7 cards is typically sufficient to see one that will goldfish a quick kill. Obviously there's more to cEDH than goldfishing a kill but nevertheless speed is important and you want to be employing something powerful-yet-effective against a barrage of stiff opposition. That's where consistency, redundancy and speed are key and Sidisi has all 3 in spades.
History of the Deck
Greeting fellow multiplayer enthusiasts! My name is Prid3 and I'm a 15+ year veteran of the game who's been playing Magic since the year 2000. Be it Constructed, Cube or EDH I play and follow every format at a competitive level and with nearly 2 decades of experience under my belt I consider myself to be a high-tier competitor. That being said unlike most players I grew up playing in large 6+ player free-for-all games in my spare time making me a "multiplayer specialist" of sorts. Given that EDH is the de facto multiplayer format it was clear from the onset that I would need to learns the ins-and-outs of the format and throughout my travels I've come across and built some of the meanest decks ever to have graced the Earth. Don't get me wrong, I'm a reasonable individual who enjoys having fun with his friends, family and co-workers but I'm also a cutthroat competitor who takes every form of competition seriously. While I'm more than happy to build and play reasonable decks that promote fun, fair games I'm equally excited to build the most degenerate nonsense imaginable and compete at the highest levels of play. Enter Sidisi, Undead Vizier. Ever since she was spoiled in Dragons of Tarkir I knew that she would pave the way to host of archetypes both fair and unfair alike. The ability to field "Demonic Tutor" as your Commander is absurdly powerful in a 100 card singleton format and she was always going to be a staple as a result. While there's any number of ways to build around her today I'd like to focus on an archetype that I've been fielding for some time now.
Sidisi, Reanimator Vizier was never designed to be a fun, fair deck. I built and optimized the archetype with the goal of maximizing my overall win %. This was never a pet project, there was no big evolution, I started from nothing with the goal of building the strongest, most consistent Reanimator list possible. The primary win condition has always been Necrotic Ooze + Triskelion + Phyrexian Devourer and I sincerely doubt that that will ever change. The reason why this combo is so brutally effective is because it beats any reasonable amount of removal from any number of players. Whereas most combos can be broken up by 2-3 forms on interaction it's basically Sudden Death or bust if you want to trounce a Nooze that hits play. After all, you can always elect to exile the cards from your library one-at-a-time if needed. This means that removal can responded to and ultimately circumvention entirely. The key card for this strategy is Buried Alive as it enables you to reliably bin your entire combo and since Sidisi can consistently tutor for it the only missing component required to win is a single revival spell. At the time of writing this there's currently 9 cards in the game that can accomplish that task for 3 or less mana and given that Black has access to a plethora of tutor effects (in addition to Sidisi herself) that's typically a trivial task.
With that in mind understand that the core of this deck will likely never change since you're more-or-less required to run every cheap tutor, every cheap revival spell, enough interaction to fight through hate/permission and enough removal to deal with opposing strategies. Given that you also need a deck with a converted CMC high enough to reliably kill 3 opponents (100-120 damage) in a list with 30+ lands and a whack of 1-2 CMC staples you don't have the same wiggle-room and flexibility that other archetypes do. Reanimator-based Sidisi decks will all look very similar for these reasons alone and I'm mostly here to explain the reasoning behind the card choices that you legitimately have some control over.
Metagame
As someone who plays at local gaming stores, on Cockatrice, on MTGO and at home with friends my meta is too varied to concern myself with a specific subset of decks and/or strategies. Moreover, I consider myself to be equal parts teacher and player and as such I build decks for others to build and enjoy equally as much as I build them for myself. With that in mind I like promoting finished products that have plenty of value in unknown metas. Anyone should be able to field this list and reasonably expect to experience similar amounts of success with it. Before moving on I want to stress that I never build decks with a "best case scenario mentality." That is to say that I'll never promote an all-in pile of garbage that folds faster than Superman on laundry day to a touch of interaction. I'm accustomed to extremely cutthroat, hate-filled metas and my lists will always reflect that. Make no mistake; it would be trivially easy to build a faster, more consistent version of this deck. At the same time it would always come at the cost of reliability and it would decrease your overall win % against decks that "actually matter." I always assume that some of my opponents are going to have something capable of interacting with me and big part of optimizing this deck has gone into finding the best ways to mitigate the impact of hate while playing a relatively all-in combo deck. As with any graveyard-based strategy you always run the risk of being hated out by a combination of permission, removal and denial but I think that you'll come to see just how powerful this archetype can be even in the face of such menacing opposition.
Is Sidisi for me?
You might like Sidisi if:
You wouldn't like Sidisi if:
Commander Comparisons
General Notes: Unlike most tradition cEDH lists Sidisi is nothing but a pile of rituals and tutors making her one of the fastest and most reliable combo decks in the format. That being said she's also the most vulnerable to dedicated hate given that she only has one competitive way to win. Otherwise you can't overlook the fact that being monoblack is a major drawback since all 2-3 color Commanders will have access to significantly larger competitive card pools to draw from. With that in mind a general rule of thumb is that Sidisi is typically going to be faster than other Reanimator generals at the cost of flexibility and redundancy. She can do one thing very quickly, consistently and well but little else.
Chainer, Dementia Master/Xiahou Dun, the One-Eyed/Sheoldred, Whispering One/Iname, Death Aspect: Realistically I could still list another 2-3 monoblack Reanimator Commanders but luckily for me the difference between them and Sidisi is rather straight-forward. Simply put Sidisi is the fastest, most consistent option of the pack. When you cast Chainer, Dementia Master (or whatever) your plan isn't to win on the following the turn. Rather, with most of these Commanders you're generally looking to create an insurmountable advantage in the long-run by recurring value-based threats. That's perfectly fine if you're looking to play a fun, fair game of Magic but unfortunately it doesn't hold a candle to what Sidisi can muster. When you jam a turn 3-4 Sidisi you literally win the game on turn 4-5 which puts all of her competition to shame. Granted, the deck that I'm here to propose today can't play a fair game of Magic and literally can't win until it removes opposing graveyard hate but at the same time Sidisi's clock is still a half-dozen turns shorter than what the other monoblack Commanders can muster which makes her the only reasonable option in an extremely competitive setting. If you want something slow and fair that loops Gray Merchant of Asphodels then by all means, roll with something that will allow you play Magic. That being said if you're playing to win you can't argue with the sheer speed and consistency of Sidisi-based Reanimator lists.
Karador, Ghost Chieftain: Karador is a close proxy to Sidisi in the sense that it only needs to assemble a few cards in order to win. Insofar as the deck can find + cast/reanimate Boonweaver Giant then it can grab a Pattern of Rebirth. When paired with any free sac outlet this enables you to jam every creature from your deck into play and defeat any number of players on the spot. I'll spare you the gory details but just take my word for it if you've never seen the deck in action. Otherwise given that Karador is white it has access to bombs such as Iona, Shield of Emeria and Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite which are crazy powerful Reanimator targets. Moreover, since you're in Abzan colors you get to play with powerful tutors, plenty of hate bears, more reliable forms of interaction, on and on and on. In that sense Karador has a significantly better neutral game while still sporting the same stupidly oppressive combo finish. Why, then, run Sidisi over Karador? Let's quickly examine Cobblepott's list to find our answer. While the deck is significantly more interactive it's also slower and weaker against mass creature removal. The deck doesn't possess the same critical mass of tutors + recursion effects that Sidisi commands nor does it have as much fast mana/rituals. While his deck is unquestionably less susceptible to Null Rod/GY hate it's significantly weaker to ones sporting things like Toxic Deluge. As to which deck is superior there's no easy answer to that question. Abzan has better + cheaper answers to opposing graveyard hate and doesn't lose if one of its combos get disrupted (most lists have 3+) but from a pure goldfish perspective it's dead in the water if it merely tries to race Sidisi. In that sense neither deck is inherently better than the other in my opinion and I highly recommend something close to his Karador build if you're looking for something similar. Cobblepott is a fixture of the competitive EDH community and anyone looking to learn more about the format could stand to learn a lot from him.
Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord: Jarad is another reasonable alternative to Sidisi in the sense that he too enables a throng of 1-2 card "instant win" combos while sporting a reasonable neutral gameplan. In general these shells seek to quickly end games by using their Commander to Fling giant creatures at their adversaries while still sporting the same generic combo-kills present in most GBx combo decks. As previously explained with the Karador example playing Green allows you to field oppressive engines such as Survival of the Fittest while also fielding relevant removal such as Reclamation Sage. For anyone looking to break into the archetype I highly recommend Razzliox's list. He too is a fixture of the competitive EDH community and has a wealth of knowledge and experience with the format. He's written a series of articles that are well worth your time and covers some extremely high level scenarios. He even has a Sidisi ANT that you should probably check out while you're at it. As to where these decks splinter, again, it's mostly a matter of speed vs consistency. Jarad is a significantly more interactive that doesn't even need its graveyard in order to win but it's also slower and typically softer against permission. Whereas Sidisi can literally throw tutors at Boseiju, Who Shelters All/Defense Grid until one sticks Jarad tends to have a slightly tougher time setting one up. Moving on, whereas Sidisi hates seeing Null Rod Jarad isn't thrilled to have its mana dorks killed-off early on making it somewhat easier to hinder him early on. Otherwise the main difference between them is that whereas Jarad is more of a midrange deck Sidisi is very much a fast combo deck so when people aren't on Blue decks/permission Sidisi tends to win out given her extra speed and reliability.
The Mimeoplasm: Assuming that you're playing something close to this then you're looking at a deck that not only features the Necrotic Ooze combo kill but also the Hermit Druid into Dread Return + Laboratory Maniac + Deep Analysis win. Beyond that you can simply Entomb and Animate Dead a Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur or Consecrated Sphinx which will frequently be good enough to seal the deal. Otherwise adding Blue and Green enables you to field counter magic, card draw, looters, cantrips, mana dorks and any number of other powerful cards and effects. Given that The Mimeoplasm can reliably win on turn 4-5 (or threaten to win at the very least) it's clear that he's another top contender in the Reanimator world. As to why you would field Sidisi over him, it's mostly a matter of preference. Given that Sidisi can support countless archetypes it's virtually impossible for people to put you on a specific deck in the dark. Most people default into thinking Sidisi means ANT as opposed to Reanimator which will can easily cause them to approach the matchup the wrong way. On the other hand when you see Mimeo you know that you need GY-hate asap. Mimeo is also a touch inconsistent in my experience, especially when it comes to making the mana work for your spells. Believe it or not but the best card in this matchup in my experience is Smallpox since if you just hit their City of Brass and Birds of Paradise on turn 1 I truly don't believe that they can win. A lot of competitive BGx decks seem to suffer from this problem which is why that most of my lists place a higher emphasis on fielding additional lands (35+) and mass denial. That being said Green decks are significantly more resilient against Null Rod effects and if those are common then I'd rather sling Mimeo than Sidisi.
Decklist by Card Type
1x Ancient Tomb
1x Bloodstained Mire
1x Boseiju, Who Shelters All
1x Cavern of Souls
1x City of Traitors
1x Crystal Vein
1x Ebon Stronghold
1x Gemstone Caverns
1x Lake of the Dead
1x Marsh Flats
1x Peat Bog
1x Polluted Delta
21x Swamp
1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1x Verdant Catacombs
Creature (8)
1x Baleful Force
1x Corpse Connoisseur
1x Dark Confidant
1x Necrotic Ooze
1x Phyrexian Devourer
1x Putrid Imp
1x Triskelion
1x Void Winnower
Sorcery (19)
1x Beseech the Queen
1x Bubbling Muck
1x Buried Alive
1x Dark Petition
1x Demonic Tutor
1x Diabolic Tutor
1x Dimir Machinations
1x Duress
1x Exhume
1x Footsteps of the Goryo
1x Grim Tutor
1x Imperial Seal
1x Inquisition of Kozilek
1x Praetor's Grasp
1x Reanimate
1x Thoughtseize
1x Toxic Deluge
1x Unmask
1x Yawgmoth's Will
1x Charcoal Diamond
1x Chrome Mox
1x Coalition Relic
1x Coldsteel Heart
1x Defense Grid
1x Expedition Map
1x Fellwar Stone
1x Grim Monolith
1x Jet Medallion
1x Lotus Bloom
1x Lotus Petal
1x Mana Crypt
1x Mana Vault
1x Mind Stone
1x Mox Diamond
1x Prismatic Lens
1x Sensei's Divining Top
1x Sol Ring
1x Star Compass
1x Unstable Obelisk
1x Worn Powerstone
Instant (10)
1x Slaughter Pact
1x Cabal Ritual
1x Corpse Dance
1x Dark Ritual
1x Dismember
1x Entomb
1x Shallow Grave
1x Snuff Out
1x Vampiric Tutor
1x Wake the Dead
1x Karn Liberated
1x Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
Enchantment (4)
1x Animate Dead
1x Dance of the Dead
1x Heartless Summoning
1x Necromancy
Decklist by Function
1x Buried Alive
1x Necrotic Ooze
1x Phyrexian Devourer
1x Triskelion
Tutors (11)
1x Beseech the Queen
1x Corpse Connoisseur
1x Dark Petition
1x Demonic Tutor
1x Diabolic Tutor
1x Dimir Machinations
1x Entomb
1x Grim Tutor
1x Imperial Seal
1x Praetor's Grasp
1x Vampiric Tutor
Recursion (10)
1x Animate Dead
1x Corpse Dance
1x Dance of the Dead
1x Exhume
1x Footsteps of the Goryo
1x Necromancy
1x Reanimate
1x Shallow Grave
1x Wake the Dead
1x Yawgmoth's Will
Card Filtering/Draw (3)
1x Baleful Force
1x Dark Confidant
1x Sensei's Divining Top
1x Putrid Imp
Disruption/Removal (12)
1x Defense Grid
1x Dismember
1x Duress
1x Inquisition of Kozilek
1x Karn Liberated
1x Slaughter Pact
1x Snuff Out
1x Thoughtseize
1x Toxic Deluge
1x Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
1x Unmask
1x Void Winnower
Ramp (23)
1x Bubbling Muck
1x Cabal Ritual
1x Charcoal Diamond
1x Chrome Mox
1x Coalition Relic
1x Coldsteel Heart
1x Dark Ritual
1x Expedition Map
1x Fellwar Stone
1x Grim Monolith
1x Heartless Summoning
1x Jet Medallion
1x Lotus Bloom
1x Lotus Petal
1x Mana Crypt
1x Mana Vault
1x Mind Stone
1x Mox Diamond
1x Prismatic Lens
1x Sol Ring
1x Star Compass
1x Unstable Obelisk
1x Worn Powerstone
1x Ancient Tomb
1x Bloodstained Mire
1x Boseiju, Who Shelters All
1x Cavern of Souls
1x City of Traitors
1x Crystal Vein
1x Ebon Stronghold
1x Gemstone Caverns
1x Lake of the Dead
1x Marsh Flats
1x Peat Bog
1x Polluted Delta
21x Swamp
1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1x Verdant Catacombs
Budget Replacements
Lands: While the "optimal" manabase is rather expensive you could just as easily field 1x Boseiju, Who Shelters All alongside 34x Swamp and it would work just fine. Boseiju, Who Shelters All is crucial for shoring up your Blue matchups and can't realistically be cut but nothing else it truly required. Assuming that you have 25+ Cabal Coffers starts to look very tempting and since it's a great way to improve your Control matchups that's not a terrible exchange by any means. Moreover running this many Swamps means that can support things like Mire's Toll and Mutilate which are fantastic against Control and Midrange respectively. Otherwise feel free to add Bojuka Bog and/or Volrath's Stronghold, especially if you opt for a budget/75% version of the deck that might not have the same consistency. Either way the idea here is that you shouldn't let the manabase scare you since the fancy stuff is "nice to have" but not "need to have."
Tutors (Imperial Seal, Grim Tutor): Shred Memory, Insidious Dreams, Liliana Vess
Fast Mana (Mana Crypt et al.): Swamp, Everflowing Chalice, Thought Vessel, Fractured Powerstone
Building Against
Control: Cabal Coffers, Volrath's Stronghold, Mind Twist, Mire's Toll, Imp's Mischief, Distress, Addle, Shred Memory (Transmutes for Defense Grid), Phyrexian Arena, Liliana Vess
Combo: Bojuka Bog, Nihil Spellbomb, Sadistic Sacrament, Leyline of the Void
Midrange: Innocent Blood, Fleshbag Marauder, Merciless Executioner, Smallpox, Pox, Death Cloud, Damnation, Languish, Mutilate, Massacre, Crux of Fate
Stax: Crucible of Worlds, Massacre (most Stax decks are White)
Lands
Ancient Tomb: ETBU, taps for 2 mana and has a negligible drawback. Staple in 100% of EDH decks.
Bloodstained Mire, Marsh Flats, Polluted Delta, Verdant Catacombs: : Thin the deck, fill the graveyard, add shuffle effects for Sensei's Divining Top, etc.
Boseiju, Who Shelters All: Most important land in the deck by many orders of magnitude. Neutralizes the impact of permission on your key spells such as Buried Alive. Must-have for competitive metas.
Cavern of Souls: Renders your commander/Necrotic Ooze immune to counter Magic. Note that both Sidisi and Fleshbag Marauder are Zombies.
City of Traitors: While the drawback is significant (unlike Ancient Tomb) it's still too powerful to omit when your deck wins by casting multiple 5+ CMC spells/sequences of spells.
Crystal Vein, Ebon Stronghold, Peat Bog: Ritual effects for when you're ready to go all-in on your combo. Useful given that you generally need to resolve 10 CMC worth of spells in order to win.
Gemstone Caverns: The best version of Mox Diamond/Chrome Mox to see on turn 1 and has more value when drawn late since it's not a 2-for-1 down the road. Competitive staple for 100% of decks.
Lake of the Dead: Provides massive amounts of mana in the short-run which is ideal for a combo deck such as this.
Swamp: Required for things like Cabal Coffers and Bubbling Muck.
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth: Massive synergy with things like Cabal Coffers and Bubbling Muck.
Ramp
Grim Monolith, Mana Vault: Powerful ritual effects that enable you to quickly and reliably curve Sidisi, Undead Vizier into a Buried Alive + Reanimation spell and/or big sweepers. Can be untapped and re-used if the game drags on.
Bubbling Muck, Cabal Ritual, Dark Ritual, Lotus Petal: Powerful, single-shot ritual effects that significantly increase your clock. Have immense synergy with Yawgmoth's Will.
Charcoal Diamond, Coldsteel Heart, Fellwar Stone, Mind Stone, Star Compass, Prismatic Lens: Cheap, efficient ramp that produce Black mana for your colored spells.
Chrome Mox, Mox Diamond: 0 CMC ramp than enable you to quickly power out your key tutors and ramp spells. They significantly increase your clock when drawn early on (ideally turn 1).
Coalition Relic, Worn Powerstone: 3 CMC ramp that tap for 2 mana which is obviously ideal for curving out into turn ~3-4 Sidisi, Undead Vizier and subsequently a turn 4-5 win.
Expedition Map: Primary role is to locate Boseiju, Who Shelters All but can obviously nab any land.
Heartless Summoning: Another "Sol Ring" in the sense that it enables you to immediately cast Sidisi the following turn. Also turns Fleshbag Marauder into an Innocent Blood that you can recur if needed.
Jet Medallion: You need to cast multiple Black spells (at least 3) to win with the deck and it makes it significantly easier to double-spell when needed. In many ways it's another "Sol Ring" of sorts.
Lotus Bloom: Enables consistent turn 4 wins when suspended on turn 1. Insofar as you draw any amount of additional ramp and/or Sol Lands you should have the mana required to cast yours tutors, Buried Alive and reanimation spells all on the same turn.
Mana Crypt: 0 mana Sol Ring with a negligible drawback. Stupidly oppressive card that should be played in 100% of decks.
Sol Ring: The poster-child of EDH itself. 1 CMC for a 2 mana ramp spell is broken as Hell.
Unstable Obelisk: Marginal ramp spell that doubles as removal for "hate" permanents such as Null Rod, Cursed Totem and Rest in Peace.
Win Conditions
Buried Alive: Simultaneously bins Necrotic Ooze, Phyrexian Devourer and Triskelion so that you can Reanimate the Ooze to immediately win the game.
Necrotic Ooze: Combos with Triskelion + Phyrexian Devourer (both in graveyard) to win the game on the spot.
Phyrexian Devourer: See above.
Triskelion: See above.
Tutors
Note: Tutors are typically used to either find Buried Alive or ways to protect it.
Beseech the Queen: Reasonable tutor. Being a "3 CMC" 6 CMC tutor is mildly relevant for Phyrexian Devourer.
Buried Alive: Oppressive tutor. Simultaneously bins Necrotic Ooze, Phyrexian Devourer and Triskelion so that you can Reanimate the Ooze to immediately win the game.
Corpse Connoisseur: Marginal tutor. Bins Baleful Force and/or Void Winnower for easy recursion.
Dark Petition: Competitive tutor.
Demonic Tutor: Competitive tutor.
Diabolic Tutor: Marginal tutor. Still enables quick turn 4 wins with basic sequences such as turn 2 mana rock, turn 3 Diabolic Tutor, turn 4 Buried Alive + Reanimate.
Dimir Machinations: Reasonable tutor. Usually Transmutes for either Buried Alive, Toxic Deluge or Necromancy.
Entomb: Competitive tutor. Bins Baleful Force and/or Void Winnower for easy recursion.
Grim Tutor: Competitive Tutor.
Imperial Seal: Competitive Tutor.
Praetor's Grasp: Staple tutor. Steals Boseiju, Who Shelters All, Sol Ring, Demonic Tutor, Buried Alive, Toxic Deluge, Pact of Negation, etc.
Vampiric Tutor: Competitive Tutor.
Revival/Recursion
Note: Most recursion is designed to used on Necrotic Ooze after you've Buried Alive'd your combo into your GY. Otherwise "any graveyard" revival can clearly grab anything but in general your best bet is your own Sidisi, Undead Vizier. This is why you should virtually never put her back in your command zone since using her to turn recursion into "Demonic Tutors" is a big game. While some of the revival spells have drawbacks none of them are relevant when used on either Nooze (since you win anyways) or Sidisi (since you'll immediately Exploit her regardless) so feel free ignore them.
Animate Dead: Competitive "any graveyard" revival spell. Never cut.
Dance of the Dead: Competitive "any graveyard" revival spell. Never cut.
Corpse Dance: Competitive revival spell. Never cut.
Exhume: Competitive revival spell. Never cut.
Footsteps of the Goryo: Decent revival spell. Cut this one second if you need to shave your recursion suite.
Necromancy: Competitive "any graveyard" revival spell. Never cut.
Reanimate: Competitive "any graveyard" revival spell. Never cut.
Shallow Grave: Competitive revival spell. Never cut.
Wake the Dead: Weak revival spell. Cut this one first if you need to shave your recursion suite.
Yawgmoth's Will: One of the most heinously oppressive cards in all of Magic. Turns rituals, tutors and recursion into straight game wins with ridiculous consistency. Note that Will has no Buried Alive synergy whatsoever since the creatures would all be exiled as opposed to put into the GY. This means that you cannot use Will to recur a BA that was stripped from your hand and/or countered.
Card Filtering/Draw
Baleful Force: Powerful card advantage engine that you can Entomb/Corpse Connoisseur and Reanimate early on. #FreeGriselbrand
Dark Confidant: Routinely hits on turn 1 and proceeds to double your draw steps. Absurd card that should always be played and never be cut unless your meta is oppressively hostile towards creatures.
Sensei's Divining Top: Cheap filter effect that smooths your draws. Has immense synergy well with fetchlands given the free shuffle effect to constantly see new cards.
Utility
Putrid Imp: Can be Buried Alive'd for in scenarios where you draw one of your key combo pieces.
Removal/Disruption
Defense Grid: While it serves many uses its primary one is to hose counter magic. Otherwise it mostly just makes it awkward for your opponents to play out their turns.
Dismember, Slaughter Pact, Snuff Out,: Removes opposing hatebears and/or hinders opposing combos.
Unmask, Thoughtseize: Disrupts combos and removes potential counter magic. Can be aimed on yourself to bin key combo pieces that you're unlucky enough to draw.
Duress, Inquisition of Kozilek: Disrupts combos and removes potential counter magic.
Karn Liberated: Removes opposing "hate" permanents such as Null Rod, Cursed Totem and Rest in Peace.
Toxic Deluge: Most powerful Wrath effect in all of EDH. Oppressive form of mass creature removal.
Ugin, the Spirit Dragon: Destroys most relevant threats/hate while leaving your ramp intact.
Unstable Obelisk: Marginal ramp spell that also removes opposing (graveyard) hate.
Void Winnower: Oppressively disruptive threat that meaningfully threatens life totals.
Building a Gameplan
Primary Gameplan
Step 1: Tutor for Buried Alive,
Step 2: Cast Buried Alive and bin Necrotic Ooze, Triskelion and Phyrexian Devourer,
Step 3: Revive Necrotic Ooze. Whenever possible wait until you're able to simultaneously complete steps 2 and 3,
Step 4: Exile the top card of library and (if applicable) place +1/+1 counters on your Nooze and ping your opponents,
Step 5: Repeat step 4 ad nauseam.
It's important to play around potential forms of interaction and since discard is a legitimate concern in cEDH games I don't recommend tutoring for Buried Alive until you're ready to go for the win. That is, if you're going to have to tutor for a reanimation spell then you may as well grab that first since it's not a big deal if it gets stripped out of your hand shortly after. Again, the deck has 9 recursion spells that can revive the Nooze so it's not the end of the world if you lose some along the way. Magic rewards tight, patient play and correctly sequencing your actions will gain you significantly more % points than you probably realize. Now, clearly you will draw one or more revival spells in a large % of your games regardless and so far more often than not Buried Alive will be your target of choice so just be aware that discard is a legitimate threat and do what you can to play around it. After all, it's eminently beatable if you're cautious enough.
Secondary Gameplan
Step 1: Use Putrid Imp, Entomb, Corpse Connoisseur or overdraw + discard on turn 1 to bin a behemoth,
Step 2: Reanimate said behemoth.
Even if you're not a rocket surgeon you should be able to piece this one together yourself. Note that Void Winnower is used as the secondary recursion target because of how powerful that effect is vs non-interactive combo decks such as Storm. It also survives most of your own mass removal and is reasonably difficult to remove (it does somewhat protect itself) which means that it will generally buy you enough time to combo off and win yourself.
Demonic Tutor Parade
Step 1: Cast and Exploit Sidisi, Undead Vizier,
Step 2: Elect to keep her in your graveyard as opposed to shipping her off to the Command Zone,
Step 3: Congratulations, all 9 of your recursion effects are now "Demonic Tutors."
This is why you should almost never exile Sidisi to your Command Zone after casting and exploiting her. Obviously in some instances it will make sense to do so (this deck can produce a lot of mana very quickly and it won't always have recursion on hand) but if you have any recursion burning a hole in your pocket then you'll almost always want to keep her in the bin where she can be reanimated on the cheap to BYO Demonic Tutor.
Putrid Imp
Occasionally you'll draw one your key combo pieces (Triskelion, Phurexian Devourer) which is annoying but not the end of the world. The simplest solution is to Buried Alive for Putrid Imp, Necrotic Ooze and your other combo piece and then have Necrotic Ooze use Putrid Imp's activated ability after you Renaimate it. You can also overdraw via Baleful Force or even point your discard spells at yourself to get them in the bin. Tutors like Insidious Dreams can also be reasonable inclusions in the deck for this purpose.
Additional Opportunities
Unused Combos
Mikaeus, the Unhallowed + Triskelion supported with things like Wake the Dead, Victimize, Living Death and Ever After: Assuming that you're able to simultaneously put Mikaeus, the Unhallowed + Triskelion into play you can have the Trike shoot itself twice and then an adversary for 1-2 (1 for the first iteration and 2 for every subsequent one thanks to Undying from Mikaeus, the Unhallowed) and repeat ad nauseam until you win. Note that shooting the Trike first plays around removal better and you must shoot it twice since Mikaeus pumps it by an additional +1/+1 to a base P/T of 2/2. This is easily the strongest combo that we're not playing and I wouldn't blame anyone for fielding it.
Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger: Generic Entomb/Corpse Connoisseur target that we can revive early on to start exiling libraries. Can randomly hose combo decks by nailing their marquee cards. This is a reasonable inclusion and if you're looking for a 75% version of the deck then this is a reasonable fatty to reliably recur.
Basalt Monolith + Rings of Brighthearth (+ Sensei's Divining Top): Anyone who's played any amount of EDH is probably familiar with the Basalt Rings combo by now. Together they can generate infinite mana and assuming that you have BB floating you can have Sidisi tutor for Sensei's Divining Top and use it to draw your deck by Rings-ing the Top activation ad nauseam. The problem with this combo is that we don't have a card like Exsanguinate that wins the game on the spot. In theory we could field something like Rain of Filth and Skirge Familiar to pitch our creatures and win on the spot but the problem with this gameplan is that it consumes too many deckslots and most of the cards have no standalone value. That being said this is still a reasonable inclusion if you want to make the deck more robust against GY hate at the cost of speed and reliability.
Leyline of the Void + Helm of Obedience: Doesn't make the cut since it's too slow in a multiplayer setting. That being said Helm of Obedience abuses opposing Rest in Peaces/Leyline of the Voids insanely well which can enable you to "hate out their hate" so to speak. In the dark I don't recommend maindecking this combo but it's reasonable if you have a firm grasp on your meta and can piggy-back off of opposing hate.
Goryo's Vengeance + Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre/Kozilek, Butcher of Truth: While Emrakul is banned the other Eldrazi Titans aren't and hastily returning them to play via cards like Shallow Grave can smash players to pieces. Unfortunately these combos only hinder single adversaries which makes them too weak to field in a MP setting.
Dark Depths + Thespian's Stage: Too unreliable to assemble, kills far too slowly, too vulnerable to spot removal such as Swords to Plowshares, on and on and on.
Maximum Damage
Total CMC of the deck: 165
CMC required for combo: 19
Total CMC available to ping: 146
Nonessential CMC above 120: 26
Average card CMC: 1.65
Average number of cards drawn before being unable to deal 120 damage: 16 (turn 9)
Combo Damage: 165 - total CMC of cards in Hand, Graveyard and Exile
The Necrotic Ooze combo kill isn't a true infinite. The current iteration of my deck has a total CMC of 165 and since our combo is always going to reduce that number by 19 (3 for Buried Alive, 4 for Necrotic Ooze, 6 for Triskelion and 6 for Phyrexian Devourer) this gives us a maximum of 146 damage to work with. Assuming that we need to deal 120 damage in total that gives us 26 "extra damage" to play with and and since the average CMC of our deck is 1.65 that means that we can see 16 cards on average before we can longer deal 120 damage.
That being said this number is basically irrelevant for the purposes of a real-world game of cEDH. Players hemorrhage life for ramp, tutors, fetchlands, shocklands, painlands, draw spells, etc. and creature beats aren't insignificant either. The notion that you'll need to do anywhere near the full 120 is absurd unless you've got a turn 1-2 kill on the play. Besides, you're rarely going to draw 30+ cards in a cEDH game to begin with since the deck is mostly devoid of card draw and the number of games in which you reach 20+ turns are few and far between. Given that you're playing a fast combo deck with very little resilience and a boatload of redundancy you'll have already won or lost multiple times over by the time that turn 20 rolls around. In that sense "I might not have enough damage" is a trivial concern so don't lose any sleep over that aspect of the deck.
Clearly this means if someone gains a lot of life then you're screwed and that's where things like Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger and the Mikaeus, the Unhallowed + Triskelion combo come in handy. Still, make no mistake that you will win the overwhelming majority of games in which you successfully combo off.
Sequencing Buried Alive
Learning when to tutor for and cast Buried Alive is possibly the single most important aspect of the deck. Our list is virtually incapable of winning without resolving it and it's not as though we can lean on Yawgmoth's Will to save us should things go awry the first time around. After all, it doesn't do us any good if the creatures that it bins gets exiled. A big of chunk of the skill required to play the deck thus falls on your ability to navigate through hate and learn when, where and why to pick your spots to go for the win. Discard, counter magic, extraction and more will ruin you otherwise.
For starters I will virtually never tutor for Buried Alive until I'm ready to cast it in order to play around hand disruption. This clearly doesn't apply when people aren't playing Black decks or if they've already cast a discard spell (the probability of them drawing 2+ when they only play 2-3 is extremely low) but most Black lists will field Thoughtseize, Duress, Inquisition of Kozilek, Unmask, etc. and you don't want to convert them into live cards against you. In the games where you're forced to tutor up both a revival spell and BA fetch the recursion first and BA second since you have plenty of revival spells but only 1 BA. That being said you'll generally draw into a revival spell anyways (we do play 9 for a reason) and so this usually isn't a serious concern but it's still worth keeping in mind.
When it comes to Green/White decks the scariest play that you need to concern yourself with is Survival of the Fittest/Fauna Shaman (or any on-board tutor) for Aven Mindcensor. Obviously any creature tutor can fetch the Mindcensor and any given White deck can draw + play it but you never want to walk into an on-board "counter" such as this. This is where spot removal and Defense Grid come in handy and otherwise you can simply wait until people tap low enough for it to become a non-issue. Having some amount of spot removal would make these types of threats significantly less frightening and you should feel free to field some if GWx is popular in your meta. Cards like Slaughter Pact, Dismember, Snuff Out and Murderous Cut are great against Containment Priests, Mindcensors, etc. and make these GWx matchups slightly more favorable. We already race them and so insofar as we can deal with their hate we're definitely favored to win. Otherwise be cautious of casting BA into 3 open mana in general (assuming that one is White obviously) but as with most things playing scared will lose you more games than it'll win. The main thing that I'm trying to stress here is that Aven Mindcensor is very good against this deck so be mindful of on-board tutors that can fetch it.
Counter magic is equally troubling since, again, we basically can't win if BA doesn't resolve and we only get one opportunity to make it work. This is why the deck plays cards like Boseiju, Who Shelters All, Duress, Defense Grid and Praetor's Grasp for opposing Pact of Negations since it needs consistent solutions to this looming threat. Beyond that just remember that decks only get to field 1 Force of Will and that Pact of Negation can rarely-if-ever be used offensively. A tapped-out Blue mage is typically a defenseless one so don't be afraid to "make them have it" if that's your best option. Obviously you should look for protection if you can afford to but that's not always going to be the case. You'll lose significantly more games than you'll win trying to play around FoW and don't let hindsight or anecdotal evidence of failure deter you from making the correct play from a pure mathematical perspective.
Sequencing Reanimation
As I've stated numerous times already the deck has 9 total reanimation spells and learning how to sequence them is pivotal. After all, there's a lot of % points to be gained by learning the various pros and cons of which to lead with/tutor for and why.
One of the most important tricks that you'll want to employ in order to play around hate is to lead with Sorcery-speed reanimation first and leave yourself the possibility of responding to hate with an Instant-speed answer. For example, I will usually lead with Reanimate and sandbag Shallow Grave so that if one of my opponents is holding an answer like Faerie Macabre or Containment Priest that I'll be able to respond to and beat it. While this may seem like an extremely narrow interaction don't forget that things like Survival of the Fittest are staples which makes it trivially easy to search for and cast hate bears at instant speed.
The next thing to remember is that Reanimate and the Enchantments cannot be protected with Boseiju, Who Shelters All. What this is means is that you should place a higher value on the spell-based options in Control matchups, especially in scenarios where you're tutoring for a revival spell or deciding which revival to "waste" when using one as a Demonic Tutor on Sidisi. It's the last one that counts so whenever possible sandbag the 2+ CMC spells to preserve the option of employing Boseiju protection.
Beyond that be mindful of Krosan Grip if you have reason to believe that it's being played. If you're not careful it can easily blow you out by nailing your Enchantment-based recursion. While I'm not suggesting that you play around K-Grip in the dark if you happen to strongly suspect that someone is playing with it then use that information to your advantage if you have the option of choosing between multiple revival spells. Clearly people are unlikely to draw/tutor for their 1-of K-Grip and since Green doesn't have "spell tutors" that can fetch it this will rarely be a serious concern. That being said it's still important to be mindful of these interactions in scenarios where you're tutoring for a revival spell.
Just so we're clear I'm not suggesting that these kinds of intricacies will matter every game. cEDH is frequently a turn 4-5 format and sometimes you'll draw exactly one revival spell and have exactly one sequence of plays to take. Where these considerations come into play are for the games where you draw Reanimate + Corpse Dance or are forced to decide which revival spell to Vampiric Tutor for on turn 1. That's when it's important to remember that card like Shallow Grave is only 2 CMC, is instant-speed, dodges Krosan Grip and is protectable with Boseiju, Who Shelters All.
General Gameplay
Right off the bat you'll want to analyze your opening 7 and determine if there's any possibility in going for a a turn 1 Entomb/draw + discard into a turn 1-2 "Reanimate" on either Baleful Force or Void Winnower. I typically won't go for the draw + discard route if I won't immediately be able to recur the creature on the following turn because anything slower than that is rarely going to be competitive enough to keep pace with the rest of the field. Assuming that you have some fast mana then it's trivially easy to hit the 1-3 mana required. The decision is somewhat less obvious in the face of multiple Blue mages but even then giving them additional draw steps to find permission isn't ideal either and so I'll usually pursue any turn 1-2 revival sequence and force someone to have an answer right then and there. It's the winningest line on the whole.
Since the majority of your opening hands won't be cookie-cutter Entomb draws a more common opening sequence is a small barrage of ramp into a quick Sidisi, Undead Vizier. We play 20 ramp spells for a reason and you'll usually see them early and often as a result. In an ideal world you'll be able to curve fast mana into a quick Worn Powerstone/Coalition Relic at which point you'll be able to untap with enough mana to jam Sidisi, Undead Vizier and prepare for a quick turn 4-5 kill. The deck is flush with tutors (all of which cost less than 5 mana) and so you definitely don't need nut draws to enable them. Something as simple as turn 2 Charcoal Diamond, turn 3 Diabolic Tutor for Buried Alive, turn 4 Buried Alive + reanimation spell is good enough to seal the deal and don't give me any nonsense about that being an unreasonable or overly-optimistic sequence. Between our 20 ramp spells, Sensei's Divining Top, Dark Confidant, 8 hard tutors and 9 recursion spells you'll come across draws like that all the time. Turn 4 kills are relatively common with turn 3 being possible albeit unlikely. Clearly the deck can nut draw turn 1-2 kills by naturally drawing Buried Alive, Reanimate and fast mana such as Mana Crypt and Dark Ritual but those are too infrequent to be concerned about.
Since the kill sequence is extremely basic and only has one possible configuration most of the skill involved in playing the deck stems from your ability to leverage the resources at your disposal to win the game where you don't get to goldfish your combo against inadequate opposition. Again, I recommend that you hold off on tutoring for Buried Alive until you're prepared to use it in order to shield it against discard effects. Moreover, be mindful of the other Commanders at the table and don't be afraid to use your own discard effects proactively if needed. Whenever possible you'll want to sandbag them until you're ready to combo-off and need to clear the way but Sidisi is by no means the fastest deck in the format. Stripping combo decks of their key tutors/draw spells/combo pieces can significantly hinder their clock and stripping Control decks of their permission is always relevant.
Never forget that insofar as Sidisi in your graveyard that all of your revival effects turn into Demonic Tutors. It's incredibly important to keep her in the GY as opposed to the Command Zone for that reason alone.
With respect to playing against hate, again, I can't stress enough enough how important it is to only go for the kill when you have all of your key components assembled. If you simply fire off a random Buried Alive with no ability to recur the Nooze then you deserve to lose to a Rest in Peace or whatever. Period. Clearly you're going to face off against proactive opponents who cast their Null Rods and Leyline of the Voids ahead of time and that's where your Unstable Obelisk, Karn Liberated and Ugin, the Spirit Dragon shine. Your mass removal is also extremely effective against any and all hate bears which means that you should have the tools to fight through most things. The hardest card for this deck to beat in general is Null Rod and your best bet of toppling it are simply going for a quick kill as opposed to trying to remove it. Your list has plenty of tutors that cost less than 5 mana and naturally drawing a revival spell isn't difficult either.
Vs Blue Decks
For clarity's sake when I say "Blue decks" I'm taking about lists with dedicated Counterspell suites. You should generally assume that your cEDH opposition will be sporting them but clearly if you know for a fact that they aren't fielding any (and/or if they aren't holding mana up for them) then none of this applies. The reason why we care so much about counterspells is because our deck basically cannot win without resolving Buried Alive. Bear in mind that Yawgmoth's Will is worthless at recurring it and so you literally only get one opportunity to resolve it. With that in mind Sidisi is, in my opinion, one of the better combo generals at thwarting permission-heavy builds.
The strongest card against Blue mages is Defense Grid. It makes it virtually impossible to hold counters up while still playing Magic and since sitting around "doing nothing" isn't a winning proposition your opponents will be forced to abandon their permission. It also more-or-less forces people to play at Sorcery speed and since Sidisi is one of the fastest and most consistent combo decks in the format it's trivially easy to go for the throat when everyone is tapped-out and incapable of interacting with you. That being said Grid isn't the be-all-end-all since the card itself can be countered or removed and depending on the state of the game it's still possible to fight through it by paying the extra 3. In the dark it's still my favorite tool for thwarting permission-heavy builds but it will often take more than this to clear the path.
Sidisi has access to cheap Black discard effects such as Duress, Thoughtseize and Unmask that can strip opposing permission directly from your opponents' grips. Otherwise it can also deny opposing discard spells to protect your win conditions or even removes things like Null Rod, Praetor's Grasp and Sadistic Sacrament that can make it extremely difficult/impossible for you to win. While discard spells are obviously significantly less effective in the face of multiple adversaries they still serve a role in a format and a small number of them should typically always be played. It's a losing line to field them in large numbers since you rarely want to see more than 1-2 in a game (and 0 is frequently ideal) but since this deck literally can't beat a card like Praetor's Grasp or win after having its Buried Alive countered having a proactive answer to interaction can be quite relevant.
Otherwise the cards that influences the Blue matchups moreso than anything else are Cavern of Souls and Boseiju, Who Shelters All. Given that our deck is literally swimming with tutors (including Expedition Map) you'll reliably be able to locate and play an early Boseiju when needed. From there you can use it to cast Buried Alive in addition to a reasonable % of your recursion effects while dodging any and all permission in the process. Now, what I will say is that this plan isn't exactly bullet-proof. First of all it's slow as Hell. Boseiju ETBT and assuming that you use to cast both BA and your recursion spell that's 3 full turns until you can win. Someone can easily secure the victory in that time and you're not exactly the best deck and thwarting people trying to combo off. Moreover, if you Buried Alive and don't go for the win immediately then you open yourself up to dedicated GY-hate. Whenever possible you want to go for the win all at once to ensure that you're not suddenly drawing dead to a resolved Rest in Peace or Scavenging Ooze. That's not possible if you try to play around permission and this is where you'll have to make judgment calls based on the Commanders, the players, the state of the game, on and on and on.
With all of that that in mind you'll want to prepare gameplan as early as possible and decide how you'll want to go about trying to win the game. The safest bet is obviously to tutor up a Boseiju and take it slow and steady but that plan is also the slowest and the most susceptible to other forms of hate. Generally I'm content to simply tutor up a Defense Grid, jam it and go for the win the following turn and I'll willing to accept that it won't always pan out in my favor. It helps if you manage to find a discard spell or two but given that we only play a handful that's rarely going to be the case. Otherwise if permission is a serious concern for you I highly recommend adding Cabal Coffers since that card is utterly insane against Control. It enables you to build an insurmountable mana advantage which can reasonably convert to a deterministic win given enough time.
Vs Storm/Combo Decks
Spell-based Storm decks (think Jeleva, Nephalia's Scourge and Zur the Enchanter) are some of our worst matchups. Our creature-based removal is typically worthless against them and they're more than capable of racing us if left unchecked. Most of them also have access to permission (whereas we do not) and and powerful draw spells (which we lack) and given that most are 2-3 colors they even gain access to plethora of relevant tutor/removal/interaction spells that a monoblack deck will never be privy to. Bluntly put these matchups were so bad (relatively speaking) that I've gone as far as to field Void Winnower as a recursion target in an attempt to salvage it. I've never played against a single spell-based Storm deck that could reasonably win through the effect and by forcing them to interact with the card we can frequently buy enough time to win ourselves. Remember, it's not as easy "oh they can just Plow it." I mean yes, that's possible, but most cEDH decks play very little removal and locating it isn't always trivial. Otherwise the Winnower brings the beats and since many Storm decks are Ad Nauseam lists dealing 11 damage per turn is no laughing matter. Beyond that feel free to try and race them since we're the ones playing a boat-load of mana and tutors and taking the game to a straight race shouldn't bother you. As long as you draw some piece of interaction that will be frequently be good enough to blank their lone permission spell and don't forget that Praetor's Grasp can nab Pact of Negation if needed. Praetor's Grasp can also grab things like Hermit Druid, Doomsday, Ad Nauseam, etc. and since many combo decks can't win without having access to those kinds of cards you can sometimes screw them over. Other cards that help the spell-based combo matchups are things like Bojuka Bog, Nihil Spellbomb, Mind Twist and Sadistic Sacrament so you can always metagame against the archetype if needed.
Creature-based Combo decks (think Yisan, the Wanderer Bard and Animar, Soul of Elements) are significantly less frightening. Cards like Toxic Deluge and Ugin, the Spirit Dragon prevent them from ever reaching the critical-mass of threats that they sorely need to secure victories which is typically good enough to shut them down. Beyond that our clock tends to be faster, more consistent and significantly less susceptible to creature-based removal. Should they fail to interact with us then winning is trivially easy with a simple tutor -> Buried Alive -> revival spell sequence putting the onus on them to find some sort of disruption/interaction that we (for whatever reason) can't easily remove.
Vs Stax Decks
Sidisi tends to be favored against Stax builds in general given her speed, consistency and unparalleled access to mass removal. We play significantly more lands and ramp than most similar cEDH builds and given that we can easily win on the 4th or 5th turn while interacting with creatures that doesn't leave players with much of an opportunity to mess with us. This is also where cards such as Unstable Obelisk, Karn Liberated and Ugin, the Spirit Dragon shine and don't forget that Praetor's Grasp can dig for opposing "Oblivion Stones" if needed. Heck, you can even ask the other players if they have relevant mass removal to borrow in case they're also fed up of being locked-up in the prison. Clearly if they nut draw Null Rod + Rest in Peace or some other ridiculous sequence then we're basically dead but in practice their draws are rarely consistent enough to keep us from doing our thing. Ultimately most builds lean heavily on creatures such as Gaddock Teeg and Linvala, Keeper of Silence to keep the board under control which means that any draw consisting of fast mana -> tutors -> Toxic Deluge -> combo kill usually trumps their gameplan. That isn't to say that an experienced Derevi, Empyrial Tactician pilot with a reasonable draw can't stomp you but at the same time I don't look at those types of Commanders and feel as though I'm drawing dead. Your mass removal is very effective against them and unless they naturally draw their Null Rod (bear in mind that most lists suck at actually tutoring for it) you have a solid gameplan against them. That being said you should still play around MLD as much possible (i.e. don't play lands if you don't need them) and don't be afraid to look for things like Unstable Obelisk and Karn Liberated that can nuke their problematic forms of interaction.
Vs Nonblue Decks
Random nonblue decks are the bread and butter than make Sidisi one of the most brutally effective Commanders in the entire game. When you sit down and see Marath, Will of the Wild, Prossh, Skyraider of Kher and Karador, Ghost Chieftain you should already be celebrating in your head as you should feel extremely favored to win. Suddenly the game is nothing but a straight-race and realistically speaking you're going to win that gambit far more often than not. You play significantly more tutors, ramp and rituals than they do and if they put you on the ANT build then they probably won't even look for the right interaction to try and thwart you. The primary "trick" to remember (if you can even call it that) is that you should always try to go for the win all at once which means sandbagging Buried Alive until you have the revival spell to pair with it. Since you'll also want to play around discard spells (assuming that there's one or more Black mages obviously) this means tutoring for a revival spell first (only if needed obviously) and Buried Alive second since you can always find more revival if needed. That being said the deck has 9 revival spells that work off of BA which means that you'll typically draw at least 1 by the time that you're ready to go for the win so this won't be required a large % of the time. Turn 4 wins are reasonably consistent and given your unbound access to mass removal spells people shouldn't be able to pressure you hard enough in the interim. Besides, unlike the Ad Nauseam builds of the deck we don't care nearly as much about our life total. Even if we fall to a low one it's not as though we struggle to win from that position.
Dealing with Disruption
Spot Removal
Examples: Swords to Plowshares
No threat. No significant interaction with the Necrotic Ooze kill. Exile cards one-by-one and respond to removal by winning over top of it.
Stax Effects
Examples: Winter Orb, Sphere of Resistance, Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, Tangle Wire
Minor threat. Our list is filled of cheap ramp, our win conditions top out at 3 CMC and we only need to be able to cast 2 spells in a single turn in order to win.
Stifle Effects
Examples: Stifle
Medium threat. Counters recursion such as Animate Dead. Even though you can always cast additional recursion spells later on this opens you up to GY-hate which isn't ideal. Combat by using "safe" recursion, targeted discard, Defense Grid and/or Praetor's Grasp nabbing Pact of Negation or opposing discard spells. That being said Stifle effects are rarely-if-ever played in cEDH and generally aren't worth playing around.
Split Second
Examples: Sudden Death, Sudden Spoiling, Krosan Grip
Medium threat. Even though you can always cast additional recursion spells later on this opens you up to GY-hate which isn't ideal. Combat by using "safe" revival that can't be Krosan Gripped, targeted discard, Defense Grid and/or Praetor's Grasp nabbing opposing discard spells. That being said Split Second spells are uncommonly played (other than maybe Krosan Grip) and generally aren't worth playing around.
Hateful Lands/Permanents
Examples: Bojuka Bog, Tormod's Crypt, Grafdigger's Cage, Pithing Needle, Relic of Progenitus, Nihil Spellbomb, Cursed Totem, Scavenging Ooze, Rest in Peace, Leyline of the Void, Humility
Medium threat. Combat cards like Bojuka Bog by only casting Buried Alive when you have the follow-up revival spell ready to go. Otherwise we have plenty of hard tutors for Unstable Obelisk, Karn Liberated and/or Ugin, the Spirit Dragon and hate bears are easily taken care of by our spot/mass removal.
Discard Effects
Examples: Duress, Thoughtseize, Unmask
Medium threat. A discarded Buried Alive leaves us drawing (mostly) dead. Combat by only tutoring for Buried Alive when you're ready to cast it (which obviously requires a revival spell), your own discard spells and/or Praetor's Grasp nabbing opposing discard spells.
Counterspells
Examples: Pact of Negation, Swan Song, Counterspell, Negate, Mana Drain, Force of Will
Severe threat. A countered Buried Alive leaves us drawing (mostly) dead. Combat with Boseiju, Who Shelters All, targeted discard, Defense Grid and/or Praetor's Grasp nabbing Pact of Negation or opposing discard spells.
Null Rod
Examples: Null Rod
Severe threat. Neutralizes 20ish cards in the deck all which are necessary to reach the 7+ mana required to remove it (Unstable Obelisk, Karn Liberated and/or Ugin, the Spirit Dragon). I recommend ignoring it and
prayingplaying for a fast combo win.Instant-Speed Hate/Disruption
Examples: Crop Rotation/Knight of the Reliquary for Bojuka Bog, Survival of the Fittest for Faerie Macabre, Containment Priest, instant-speed Scavenging Ooze, Aven Mindcensor, Ravenous Trap
Extreme threat. We basically cannot win if our Necrotic Ooze combo gets disrupted and cards like Survival of the Fittest and Chord of Calling can find hate bears at instant-speed. Combat with spot removal, discard spells, Defense Grid, and/or by removing opposing Survival of the Fittests with things like Unstable Obelisk, Karn Liberated and/or Ugin, the Spirit Dragon. Otherwise mass removal can neutralize Chord of Calling fairly effectively.
Search Prevention
Examples: Stranglehold, Mindlock Orb
Extreme threat. Unstable Obelisk, Karn Liberated and/or Ugin, the Spirit Dragon can all remove it but we have to naturally draw one which isn't likely. You can obviously preemptively tutor for an answer if needed but that's going to be a losing line in general given how improbable that it is to draw a specific card in EDH (i.e. it's unlikely that someone will field, draw and cast Stranglehold in an average cEDH match).
Library Removal
Examples: Praetor's Grasp, Bitter Ordeal, Sadistic Sacrament
Lethal threat. We're basically drawing dead to resolved Library hate. Even if we were to add Mikaeus, the Unhallowed for an alternate kill condition they could simply remove the Triskelion instead and we'd still be drawing dead. You either have to hope to dodge these kinds of effects entirely, strip them with discard spells or field additional generic fatties that you can lean on for a beat-down plan when needed.
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
What makes it so special compared to any other piece of hate that you need to remove before you can win? Sure, it clears your GY which removes Sidisi and nerfs Yawg Win but realistically speaking it's not that much more threatening than any other piece of hate. You can't win until you remove them and they all go down to the same cards.
I was very lazy about adding "examples" because they're basically all the same card. The answer to all of them is "tutor up removal." Torpor Orb only works against Sidisi which is annoying but beatable.
Good point, I should talk about this if only to explain how utterly irrelevant that it is.
I agree that it has a low opportunity cost and a reasonable upside against slower matchups but at the same time it's rarely relevant in my experience.
Maybe I'm missing something but how does this work? You BA for Nooze, Imp and Trike and revive the Imp? Don't you also have to revive the Nooze?
Buried Alive + Exhume/Wake the Dead (can't be Reanimate, Animate Dead, etc.) + Temple is a lot of mana and tutoring for both Boseiju and the Temple is extremely slow and resource intensive. Seems very optimistic to me.
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Fair enough.
It's not a free additional though. Adding colorless, nonbasic lands that aren't Swamps carries small opportunity costs. Bubbling Muck gets that much weaker. Your colored spells are slightly harder to cast, especially if you want to jam multiple on the same turn. Buried Alive + Wake the Dead requires BBB and that's not guaranteed. Ruination gets better against you.
I'm not saying that you're wrong, just that I don't consider this scenario to be as simple as "more redundancy = good."
I still don't really understand where the Imp comes into play. So we have the combo of BA + Revival spell in hand but also a combo piece like Trike. Now we BA for Imp, Ooze and Mik. How does that helps us?
What does your manabase look like if I might ask?
I have the information on my deck and its capacities. That being said I've never have to come close to dealing 120 damage except when I've gone for extremely fast kills (i.e. turn <= 3). Assuming turn 4-5 kills people usually deal at least 10 damage to themselves and if they haven't then it means that they usually haven't played many tutors, ramp spells, draw spells, or any "good lands" which means that they probably aren't a legitimate threat.
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/facepalm
Makes sense now.
Which Ritual?
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I've tested Rain of Filth and found the card to be utterly horrible. You have significantly more Swamps than I do so I could understand it working out for you but I think that the card is heinous for my deck.
Lotus Bloom should probably be in the deck.
Oloro is like the 4th best cEDH Esper build behind Zur, Sharuum and Sidri and so I'm not overly concerned about facing him down (maybe I'm missing more, I'm not thinking too hard about it atm). He's 6 mana and doesn't do much of anything the turn that you cast him whereas Sharuum wins the game on the spot. I get that Oloro is lifegain which "hurts my gameplan" but you still have to beat 3 other players and Oloro is not especially good at doing that compared to Doomsday Zur, combo Sidri, combo Sharuum, etc.
Cards like Mox Diamond and Lotus Petal are perplexing. When drawn on turn 1 they can be absolutely amazing and enable easy turn 3 kills or turn 4 if you need to disrupt/answer disruption. That being said they can also be total mulligans since you sometimes can't afford to take the 2-for-1 hit and they're (usually) miserable topdecks.
Putrid Imp still strikes me as odd. I get that it has functionality if you draw Mike/Trike (we can obviously hardcast Ooze np) but isn't it just awful like 90% of the time that you draw it? You said that it lets you keep otherwise unkeepable opening hands but isn't the opposite also true? Doesn't it transform very reasonable 7 card hands into 6 card ones? I could be wrong, I don't play with the card, but unless I tutor for and pitch a Baleful Force/Void Winnower then it's literally a mulligan isn't it? I've certainly lost games because I've drawn Mike/Trike without an easy way to bin them, I'm not suggesting otherwise, but at the same time adding a card to my deck that has questionable stand-alone value doesn't seem like an ideal answer.
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Thoughtseize, Unmask, Smallpox and discarding to hand size via Baleful Force are the 4 ways that I can bin combo pieces that I draw.
You're absolutely right that it's not a lot of ways. That being said I personally treat this as a math problem. Since we can cast our Ooze the only cards that don't want to draw are Trike and Devourer. Assuming that we play a 5 turn game (reasonable for a cEDH match) I will draw 12 cards and have an 88.3316582914573% probability of not drawing either of them. That figure is also significantly more inflated than it should be since I can elect to mulligan every opening hand that includes a combo piece if I desire. In practice I will draw a combo piece less than 10% of the time (I'm being generous here) in games that last for roughly 5 turns. Also, if 5 turns is too few, bear in mind that 6 is 87%, 7 is is 86%, on and on and on. Even if your average game is slightly longer/shorter the math doesn't change significantly.
My problem with Putrid Imp is "what do I do with this card when I draw it in an average game?" 90+% of the time I don't draw a combo piece, have I not just mulliganed? Believe me, I understand where you two are coming from, but from a pure math perspective isn't the Imp unlikely to matter in the overwhelming majority of your games? Isn't it a losing proposition to add that card to your deck pure win % maximization perspective?
Bear in mind that I'm fine with losing a small of the time I will draw both combo pieces in 5 draw steps and lose. I will not build my deck to avoid an event that will occur a trivial % of the time. This is multiplayer cEDH and you're going to lose a ton of games to begin and so the threat of "disastrous draws" shouldn't turn you off entirely. My argument is that Putrid Imp will have next-to-no value in the 90% of games where I don't draw a combo piece and so I don't believe that it will increase my overall win % to add it to my list. That sometimes means receiving an "automatic loss" but if it's still the winningest line on the whole then I'm perfectly fine with that.
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Using Hypergeometric Distribution:
Population: 99
Failures in Population: 2
Sample Size: Variable (6 or 7)
Number of Failures in Sample: 0
Probability of not drawing a combo piece in opening 7: P(X = 0) 0.862914862914863 = 86%
Using free multiplayer mulligan, conditional probability of not drawing a combo piece by second opening 7: P(X = 0) 0.86 + (1-0.86)(0.86) = 0.9804 = 98%
You have a 98% probability of drawing a 7 card hand that doesn't contain a combo piece.
For anyone curious as to the math on 6+ card hands it's P(X = 0) 0.86 + (1-0.86)(0.86) + (1-0.86)(1-0.86)(0.88) = 0.997648 = 99.75% That's once every 400 games.
Everything past this is inconsequential as far as I'm concerned.
Now let's analyze the probability of drawing into combo pieces assuming that we keep 7 card hands devoid of them:
Using Hypergeometric Distribution:
Population: 92
Failures in Population: 2
Sample Size: Variable (5, 10, 15)
Number of Failures in Sample: 0
Probability of drawing into zero combo pieces after drawing 5 cards: P(X = 0) 0.893693263258481 = 90%
Probability of drawing into zero combo pieces after drawing 10 cards: P(X = 0) 0.793358815097945 = 80%
Probability of drawing into zero combo pieces after drawing 15 cards: P(X = 0) 0.698996655518395 = 70%
You get the idea.
Since the multiplier that we'd use to calculate the final % is either 98% or 99.75% it's inconsequential either way. The math clearly isn't perfect since you can't keep all 7 card hands that don't contain a combo piece and it also doesn't take into account your ability to bin combo pieces to your own discard effects. I don't have the patience to run "the best math" on this but these numbers are still reasonable approximations.
From where I'm sitting it's a matter of your meta and its speed. If turn 5 wins are the norm then you probably don't need to worry about drawing combo pieces. Clearly a card like Baleful Force can force you to draw many more but at the same time it can also dig you into discard and/or allow you to pitch things to hand size which is a wash from what I can tell. Dark Confidant draws might be sketchier than others, especially if you jam one on turn 1 and he sticks around for 5+ turns. At ~11 cards drawn you're at 20% to have hit a combo piece and that's not staggeringly low.
Just so we're clear, I'm not arguing that drawing combo pieces doesn't suck. I'm simply not sold on the idea that adding Putrid Imp to the deck will increase my overall win %.
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OOC what would you recommend cutting from my deck in order to make room for the Imp? I'm strapped for cuts.
How many fatties do you run? Do you get consistent value from Rune-Scarred Demon even though he's a 7 drop? Isn't he a conditional version of Sidisi and given that we'll almost always leave Sidisi in our GY do you really need another version of that effect?
For the record I'm only using math to throw some "credibility" to my claim that Imp isn't likely to increase my overall win %. I'll be the first person to tell you that the math that I posted isn't perfect but at the same time "perfect math" is virtually impossible to calculate. If I were being paid a salary to figure it out then I could eventually write a program that could do it but I'm not willing to do anything other than a basic approximation using hypergeometric distributions and conditional probabilities.
In layman's terms the math is something objective that moves the argument away from "I think" and "I feel" and more towards "here's some objective proof that 100% of players can calculate and re-create for themselves." I'm still not saying that I shouldn't play the Imp, but having a bit of math never hurts to sway the decision one way or another. For example, I wasn't aware that I'm 20% to draw a combo piece if I draw 10 cards. My games tend to end around turn 5 and since I don't field cards like Night's Whisper I rarely draw my combo pieces. I already knew that the % was low but I had no idea if it was "1% low" or "5% low" or "10%" low and now I know that it's "10% low." 10% isn't a trivial number and I'm not going to let anecdotal experience or other biases influence my decision if the math proves otherwise.
Agreed. It's an undeniable fact that your list will draw more cards on average than mine will.
OOC are you mostly a duel player? I realize that you've stated on numerous occasions that you also play this a duel deck but I feel as though we might be comparing apples to oranges. In multiplayer cEDH there is no "you face no clock." Period. Everyone is playing Stax with MLD, a fast combo kill, 1 card win cons like Tooth and Nail, on and on and on. There are no fair, grindy, value decks that don't clear the entire table in a single turn. No one plays a Control Tasigur list with 20 counterpsells. That doesn't win MP games.
Don't get me wrong, I appreciate your input and I've already taken some of your suggestions to heart, I'm just wondering if we both experience cEDH the same way.
That type of conditional probability is extremely difficult to accurately calculate unfortunately. There's no "quick and dirty" solution that I can knock out to give us rough numbers.
That's the same reason why I run Wake the Dead. It's another 3 CMC revival spell that I can Boseiju.
I never bothered to talk about the Reanimation spells and how to use them but in hindsight that was probably wrong of me. I'll add a discussion for these kinds of interactions.
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Considering that you're the second person to promote the card it's definitely worth testing.
As much as I hate Karn and would love to cut him I only have 2 answers in the entire deck to colorless hate such as Cursed Totem. The other is obviously Unstable Obelisk. Both cards are complete and total garbage but they ensure that you're not drawing dead to a single hate spell. As such I would cut All is Dust if anything since it's a strictly worse version of Ugin. It's certainly possible that my list is too greedy and that I should stop trying to field both. In a perfect world I would love to cut Obelisk + Karn though.
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