Sisay is never going to win quickly short of a god hand plus some nut draws. Ulamog and Kamahl are finishers I can tutor for that dismantle my opponent's boardstates. Kamahl really isn't there for extra beats, he's ideally paired with Elesh Norn so I can ping my opponent's mana bases.
Additionally, taxes can really only get you so far as most competitive decks tend to have ways of generating enormous amounts of mana. Sure storm decks are easily disrupted, but anything more midrangey just needs to wait for rock or two and they can combo through the taxes no problem. If anything I've found the most valuable hate pieces are invariably Rule of Law effects which actually turn off (most) combos instead of just hindering them.
Teeg and Prelate turn off all the non-permanent sweepers you can think of, in the months I've spent playtesting I've only been hit by a 4+ CMC wrath once. They typically get stopped by Teeg without issue. The sweeper I worry about the most is Toxic Deluge.
As I've said before about Pod, I'm very rarely ever in a position where saccing part of my boardstate is going to be desirable. Climbing all the way to Seedborn means I've sacced either Linvala or Hokori (my only 4 mana slot creatures), both of which are infinitely more useful to me on the board than in my yard, especially since I'd much rather have Seedborn AND an Orb on the field at once to maximize board advantage. Really the biggest issue is the overall lack of reanimator effects in GW. If I was in Abzan colors Pod would be a lot less detrimental to my gameplan.
Nice list. I'd recommend cutting Sunpetal Grove for Gemstone Caverns, Kamahl and Ulamog for Glowrider and Vryn, Song for Grasp of Fate, and Voyaging Satyr for Pod
I tested Pod and found it worked against me more often than not. I run a lot of artifact hate which already complicates things, but you really, really don't want to be podding the majority of your bears on the field and that's largely all you have to work with for pod chains. Gemstone Caverns might be an addition worth testing, and I go back and forth on Grasp of Fate. Song of the Dryads hits everything which is excellent but might not be explicitly necessary.
Glowrider and Vryn are both great cards but Kamahl and Ulamog win me games; I have plenty of taxes already in the deck. Vryn and Glowrider would be okay in a sideboard in case I ran into a really heavy storm environment, but I do not believe they're necessary additions 100% of the time.
Mostly because of all the artifact hate I run, I do my best to keep the number of artifacts in the deck down, especially if they have activated abilities. Additionally I haven't found the extra draw necessary so far.
The rationale behind running one of the OG Eldrazi is pretty simple: it's a game finisher you can grab with Sisay. They generate value on cast and I've found them to be excellent (if expensive) recursion tools. Sisay decks tend to interact almost exclusively with the library, so having an avenue to shuffle your yard back into your library is very nice. The big draw of course is Annihilator. Short of Sigarda, Host of Herons and Tajuru Preserver Annihilator is extremely hard to turn off. By the time Ulamog hits the field your opponents should already be strapped for resources and one swing at the most developed board state on the field is often enough to snuff out your opponent's hopes of winning.
As for why I run Ulamog over Kozilek it really came down to Ulamog's Indestructible body. While card draw is nice, I'm not casting Kozilek to draw gas, I'm casting him so he can extend my advantage in permanents and win the game for me. In this context Indestructibility is relevant enough to warrant a slot over Kozilek as it means my big beat stick isn't going to be foiled by some mana dorks teaming up on the block. The vast majority of exile effects that would otherwise neutralize the Eldrazi threat are contained in white. Additionally most hyper competitive metas tend to be creature-light which means decks can often get away with running either fewer creature removal spells. I don't think I've ever seen a deck splashing green that didn't play Beast Within and a surprising number of deck's splashing white won't go past a single slot dedicated to Swords to Plowshares. The Vindicate on cast is just gravy.
I think Iona absolutely has a place in specific metas and I should probably add her into the sideboard section actually. In my testing I played against such a variety of multicolor decks that I was really hard pressed to get the kind of value I needed out of her to justify the high mana cost coupled with triple white. In a more consistent meta Iona becomes a lot more effective because you typically know what colors you need to block and when.
In the early section on why you should play Sisay I talk abut why Teeg isn't a good general. In my sideboarding section I talk specifically about Angel of Jubilation and her benefits.
That's my fault, RattleAndHum is my original account and usual online handle. ShakeAndShimmy is one I registered recently to maintain name continuity across here and reddit where I'm also known as ShakeAndShimmy. But yes, we are the same person, I will endeavor to stay logged in the correct account going forward, again I apologize for the confusion.
Anyways, for the sake of maintaining discussion I will repeat myself here. I think you are overestimating your deck's abilities as well as the average power of the lists you're running into frequently. You're running an absolute minimum of both ramp and disruption. Feel free to walk me through your "sequencing" if you're so inclined but I fail to see how you could possibly race the defining decks in the competitive meta like Jeleva Storm or Booneweaver Karador.
Another thing that I do is run Kozilek, the Great Distortion, as you can get a soft lock, with tapping Captain Sisay for appropriate converted mana cost creature and counter any spell worth disrupting.
The problem with the way you're presenting this is that you're saying this is the only way to play competitive Captain Sisay.
You should NOT play Captain Sisay if:
You don't like stax
Your deck might be considered competitive within your own playgroup but is not something I would call truly Competitive. Keep in mind the decks that dominate the high end of this format are capable of extremely early wins (often with protection lined up). Ramping into some beaters is just too slow of a game plan on its own. There are almost no combos in GW that can out speed Storm which means we need to head the opposite route and utilize the brilliant hatebears GW has access to. I'm not saying you can't play Sisay other ways, but if you want to ever take a game off of Food Chain Proshh then Stax is going to be the only way you can realistically achieve that with any kind of consistency.
Hey Shake, really love the list and the guide, I'll be trying to make my primer as informational as this over the next few days. Lots of really cool stuff here! My list is pretty similar to yours in the basic core but we've got a bunch of interesting differences some of which I wanted to ask you about. I'll repost my list here just for convenience
So stuff I noticed:
You're playing Thorn of Amethyst and Sphere of Resistance where I play Vryn Wingmare and Glowrider. I have to admit to not having tested the artifacts as I have generally defaulted to creatures where possible just because this deck is focused so much on them. The bodies are more easily tutorable, feed Cradle/Skullclamp, etc. How/why did you come to playing the artifacts?
Would you recommend Eidolon of Rhetoric in any meta, or do you face extra storm decks? I have found myself OK against storm with the taxers/Teeg/Hokori but this is obviously a great hoser.
Is Craterhoof Behemoth really worth the slot when we have Kamahl, Fist of Krosa? How often is Hoof winning when you don't have Living Plane out? And does Hoof typically take a table from 40 to dead or does it rely on incremental damage first? Relatedly, if you hypothetically cut Hoof would you cut Natural Order (i.e. is this basically the main NO target)? Have you tested any kind of NO package with Terastodon and such (I haven't but interested)?
Why no MLD? I saw on the reddit thread you had problems with it hitting Cradle, have you tried it with Titania, Protector of Argoth? The synergy between Titania and MLD both before and after casting the wipe (Titania before = win with token army, Titania after = rebuy Cradle) has been insane for me.
And some specific cards I haven't tested yet that I'd love to just hear your general thoughts on why they're good: Root Maze, new Thalia, Sanctum Prelate, Voyaging Satyr
Thanks in advance!
It's great to see you over here! Like I mentioned before it was your primer that convinced me to play Sisay in the fist place. I've gone back and forth on running Vryn Wingmare and friends over their artifact counterparts and ultimately ended up with the artifacts. The difference in mana cost is noticeable and makes them much easier to get on the field early with things like Mana Crypt. Additionally, I don't like that they take up the 3 mana slot in Yisan chains. That slot is already filled with important hatebears like Eidolon of Rhetoric, Hushwing Gryff, Aven Mindcensor, and Sanctum Prelate. I already run Thalia, Guardian of Thraben which is at the less crowded 2 slot AND is easily tutorable with Sisay. I rarely need more than one tax on the field to stop certain decks, but if my meta was nothing but storm I would probably slot in the creature taxers too just to make sure I had a critical mass of hate pieces.
I would recommend Eidolon of Rhetoric in all but the absolute slowest of metas. Eidolon and other Rule of Law effects just hose way more than just storm. They shut down the vast majority of viable combos in the format. Teferi, Temporal Archmage + The Chain Veil, Tazri Food Chain, High Tide combo (assuming they don't have a way to kill you with infinite mana on the board already) Food Chain Prossh, certain Yisan shenanigans, certain Selvala shenanigans, anything with Cascade, and just about any Animar combo you care to name all fold to Eidolon. Even if the meta isn't very combo heavy it can help keep a leash on decks that otherwise like to dump their hands on the field every turn and even prevents Narset from getting full value from her swings each turn (although that's still a long way from stopping her completely).
Craterhoof tends to win me games outright whereas Kamahl tends to more of an incremental beatdown that's augmented by Elesh Norn. Having them both gives me very reliable paths to victory. Craterhoof, however, is undeniably more explosive which I like very much. The issue with incremental beatdowns is that every turn that goes by is another turn where an opponent might draw an answer, so being able to win suddenly in one turn is a huge upside, plus I can Natural Order him into play. I have not tested other Natural Order lines beyond Craterhoof and Vorinclex. Terastadon seems interesting but I'm not convinced it's worth running just yet. I may test it more thoroughly though just to be sure.
Your comments on Titania and MLD interest me, I do miss having my MLD at times. My issue with MLD is I was struggling to find good times to cast it in a way that didn't hamstring me. There might be some value there though which I'm very interested in testing.
Turn 1 Root Maze will slow faster decks down significantly, especially if they're greedier 3+ color decks that rely heavily on fetchlands. The idea with this list is to force the fastest decks in the format to play at Sisay's speed where she's better equipped to handle threats. New Thalia plays a similar role to Root Maze (while also turning of Kiki/Splinter Twin shenanigans), but if I was going to test something new I'd probably cut her first. Voyaging Satyr untaps Cradle and Nykthos which makes him an auto-include in my book.
I talk about Sanctum Prelate in depth in the primer, but I'll paste what I said up there down here for easy reading:
"Honestly she's my favorite thing WOTC has printed all year. She is the glorious guardian angel that will protect you from Cyclonic Rift and Toxic Deluge, the two boardwipes that can sneak past Teeg. Putting her on 2 blocks the vast majority of counterspells and some notable removal, putting her on 1 protects you from the format's best instant speed removal and blocks a lot of excellent tutors, and having her on 3 keeps you safe from Deluge and cockblocks Food Chain. If you are worried about both then you really have to gauge which one is more likely to happen. Sometimes you have to guess, and that's fine, but more often than not this card will make your opponent's lives way harder."
I appreciate the shoutout! Your list and your primer were actually hugely influential when I first put together my Sisay list over a year ago. You had the only Primer on the market and was really helpful in getting my list started. I'd love to get more thoughts and opinions on my list (and any formatting suggestions, first time writing a guide like that here), so feel free to drop by to share what you think!
Exiling cards can be very nice, but the way my deck is set up I'm more interested in maintaining an advantage in permanents. Annihilator is an excellent tool for staying ahead while often irreparably damaging someone's boardstate. Ideally it won't matter much what they're top decking because they won't have the resources to play anything through my stax pieces and their now extremely diminished board presence.
Howdy everyone, my name is ShakeAndShimmy, and over the course of this thread I hope to impart upon you everything I know about playing Captain Sisay at the highest level of play the Commander format has to offer. I will go over, in detail, the entirety of my decklist and provide explanations for my card choices as well as some notable omissions. I will break down Sisay's lines of play, card synergies, standard avenues to victory, and provide some insight on dealing with the format's popular archetypes. Finally, I will provide a section on adjusting and tuning this decklist to better fit your local meta. As this thread progresses I will endeavor to answer any questions posted below.
Q: Who are you and why should I listen to anything you say?
Excellent question! As I mentioned before, my name is ShakeAndShimmy, and I've been playing Magic for over five years now. I started with the Innistrad block with a janky mono-white humans tribal deck that a number of my friends grew to hate. At some point I stumbled upon this beautiful format and promptly converted my playgroup and I don't think I've touched the other formats since. By this point I had played nothing but white weenies, so naturally I started my EDH career with Eight-and-a-half-Tails pillowfort. Predictably, I lost a lot of games. Now, I'm an unhealthily competitive person (I blame my parents), so losing as often as I was at the time did not sit well with me. Determined to get better at this game, I spent much of my time reading every guide and primer I could get my hands on, trying to learn this format inside and out. Naturally I stumbled upon this board quite quickly, but my preferred stomping grounds were over at reddit. I spent much of my time on their /r/EDH subreddit, but after a while I found it's content lacking. Clearly competitive play was discouraged, my favorite archetype (stax) was met with more disdain than advice, and god forbid anyone try to run counterspells or a combo that didn't require 8 awful cards to pull off. Fed up with the hostility and sub-par advice, I founded my own subreddit dedicated to competitive discussion: /r/CompetitiveEDH. I didn't expect much, but we've grown from a scant handful of subscribers to over 7,000 people. I've had the absolute pleasure of working with some of the brightest deckbuilders in the world and this Sisay list is as much a reflection of their experience as it is a reflection of mine.
Q: What does any of that have to do with Captain Sisay?
Oh, right. Captain Sisay was my first real attempt at building something competitive. I had since upgraded from pillow-fort pilot to a full blown stax player and I needed a Commander that worked with that playstyle. Two colors kept the cost down, and Selesnya got me the best suite of hatebears in the format. My first iteration was rather poorly designed and gathered dust on tappedout while college ate my free time. After some years of neglect, I decided to finally get off my ass and turn the deck into something worth playing. I have spent six or seven months playtesting list after list online with Cockatrice. I roped a number of my sub's better players into playing with me, pitting my deck against some of the best lists in the format. It has gone through dozens of iterations; as it reached its current state I was playing dozens of games just to test the effectiveness of one or two cards. I know this list inside and out and I can confidently say it is as close to peak effectiveness as I could possibly hope to get it.
Q: Why should I play Captain Sisay?
You should play Captain Sisay if:
You like tutoring for things
You enjoy preventing your opponents from playing Magic
You like being able to turn off whole decks with one card
You prefer your decks to be resilient and difficult to turn off
You like having a silver bullet for every situation
You enjoy flexible avenues to victory
Storm makes your head hurt
You like shuffling your deck
You are morally opposed to the rest of the color pie
You still like to kill people by swinging at them
Your skin is thick enough to weather the extraordinary amount of salt stax lists generate from your opponents
You are fueled by the despair of your enemies as you slowly dismember their hopes of winning
You should NOT play Captain Sisay if:
You don't like tutors
You don't like stax
You don't like shuffling (Seriously, you can be shuffling 2 or 3 times a turn sometimes, so if shuffling even mildly annoys you then this deck is not for you)
You want to interact with the stack
You like being able to win during someone else's end step
You don't mind trading resiliency for speed
You don't like land destruction
Storm gets you hard
You had a bad experience with a geography project involving some Nigeria themed cupcakes and some expired food coloring and now the colors green and white make you nauseous
Q: Why should I play Sisay over [INSERT OTHER G/W COMMANDER HERE]?
Good question, lets go through the GW commanders that are worth playing and explain why Sisay is the best choice in this part of the color pie.
Rhys the Redeemed: Can build a cute elfball, but she does nothing to break stax parity and a token theme like this is not going to be competitively viable.
Karametra, God of Harvests: Lets you dump all of your lands onto the field and then vomit your hand. After that you've pretty much run out of gas, and you better hope nobody is running Armageddon. She's got strong ramp, but struggles to clinch victory after otherwise explosive starts.
Gaddock Teeg: I love Teeg, but there's very little advantage in having him as your commander. He's not impactful enough to be worth running in the command zone; he's way better as part of your 99 as opposed to sitting at the helm of things.
Sigarda, Host of Herons: She can be okay as part of your 99 in some specific metas, but otherwise she underperforms. She's not a bad Voltron commander, but Zur Doomsday and Jelava Storm have won by the time Sigarda is swinging at you with some swords.
Selvala, Explorer Returned: Okay now we're cooking with some gas here. She's easy to ramp into and handily breaks stax parity AND she draws you cards, what's not to love? Oh right, she draws your opponents cards too. Stax is about limiting available resources for your opponents so drawing them cards is a big no-no. She still does some work, and I've seen some good lists with her at the helm, but Sisay has the same benefits without benefiting your opponents at all.
Saffi Eriksdotter: I think Saffi is criminally underrated. I think there's room for her to be a surprisingly fast combo deck if someone were willing to really spend some time playing with her. Of the available GW commanders, she probably is the only one with potential to be on par with Sisay, but since she does nothing to advance a stax plan I'm not particularly interested.
For those who are so inclined, I have included a tappedout.net link to the list here here as well as a deckstats.net link to the list here. III. Playing the Deck
Your Win Conditions
OR+
This right here is your go-to winning combo. It's simple, it's effective, and it almost always closes out the game in your favor. Linvala, Keeper of Silence and Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite are both easily tutorable with Captain Sisay AND have amazing utility when on the field regardless of whether or not Living Plane is on the field as well. That said, there are some notable downsides worth mentioning. First, once people are aware of the combo they can see it coming from a mile away. Now, if you've been playing correctly then your opponents should be unable to respond to either hitting the field, that said, nobody plays perfectly 100% of the time. If an acceptable lock has not been achieved then cards like Force of Will or Pact of Negation can still ruin your day. Once you've landed both pieces you need to keep an eye out for opponents with Artifact mana who may still be able to function without their lands. Landing Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite will be preferable to Linvala, Keeper of Silence almost every time because if Linvala gets removed then gameplay tends to continue as normal. If Norn gets removed after he's landed, you've still managed to inflict a one sided Armageddon onto the board, so you should still be in excellent position to advance to either another wincon or to go find Linvala and reestablish the lock. This combo's second major weakness is that you will struggle to consistently find Living Plane. The list runs as many enchantment tutors it can reasonably rely on, and drawing into those are really your only way of getting Living Plane onto the field. So, in the cases when Living Plane might remain elusive, its best to advance to one of your other win conditions like:
AND/OR
This card combo is going to function with Kamahl, Fist of Krosa playing the part of a less efficient Living Plane. With one G mana per enemy land, you can effectively ping your opponent's lands to death to your heart's content. The downsides to this combo is that players can still play lands on their turn and tap them for mana before you can ping them, and the combo as a whole requires a consistent expenditure of mana. Both pieces can be grabbed by Sisay, but the two of them represent an enormous mana investment that practically mandates Gaea's Cradle already be out on the field to pay for both cards plus Kamahl's ability. It is worth noting that getting either Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite or Kamahl, Fist of Krosa onto the field can often be enough to win on its own. A typical game with this deck involves getting a critical mass of 2/2 hatebears and 1/1 mana dorks onto the field, and boosting them with Norn or Kamahl can often be more than enough to beat down your opponents.
OR
Thanks to the wonderful thing that is green mana ramp, you will be producing an obscene amount of mana very quickly. When this happens, its nice to dump it into something fat, and Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre and Craterhoof Behemoth are exactly what we want. Ulamog will extend your advantage in permanents every time he swings. The fact that he shuffles your graveyard into your library AND Vindicate's something on CAST (not on Entering the Battlefield) is just gravy on the cake. Craterhoof Behemoth requires some setup and is really only effective if you have a board state built up. If you don't, then odds are good you were not going to win that game anyways. Keep in mind you don't need to have lethal ready for the whole board when you drop Craterhoof, you just need lethal for your biggest threat, and when his pump wears off you're left with an excellent 5/5 Trample beater for whoever is left.
Man this is such a great card. Now, my meta is very creature-light, so having a Biorythym on a stick is absolutely invaluable. He's low cost and easy to grab with Yisan, the Wanderer Bard and, in a pinch, can generate some extra mana if you need to power out something fat. Again, with the critical mass of hate bears you should have on the field hitting his activation requirements should almost never be an issue. Even in creature heavy metas suddenly dropping someone's life to 4-8 can be devastating, if done at the right time.
Overview of an Average Game
Sisay is extremely flexible and thus rewards good piloting and thorough game knowledge. A poor, largely uninformed deck pilot is going to struggle to be effective at all with this list. While this is true of almost all good decks, stax decks in particular are going to play differently than something like Hermit Druid combo, which has a more linear game plan. Captain Sisay specifically thrives in established metas where the list can evolve to accommodate your local threats. The lists provided above are about as close to a "one-size fits all" kind of list as I could reasonably make it without compromising it's ability to compete with the Tier 1 format boogeymen decks. EDH at the tippy top of competitiveness favors artifact ramp and non-creature spells so my list is skewed to handle those lines of attack more effectively. Playing Sisay effectively relies heavily on a thorough knowledge of the meta you will be playing in. You have a silver bullet for every situation, so the game is really about figuring out which ones need to be brought to bear and when. From here I will do my best to break down the different phases of the game and what you should be doing during each.
Opening Hands and Mulligans (Turn 0)
Ideally you want to be staring at a way to get four mana on the field by turn 2 or 3. Typically this involves two lands and a pair of dorks or possibly a mana rock. The faster you get that four mana on the field, the better. If your hand is predominantly lands with no Turn 1 dorks, go for the mulligan. If you've got two mana only, you might want to consider mulliganing. Don't focus so much on how much mana you have, focus on what you can be doing with that mana. A hand with Survival of the Fittest in it can function on very small amounts of mana if necessary. Similarly, Sylvan Library will let you sculpt your hand over the next few turns giving you some wiggle room on what you can keep. Finally, you should be looking for ways to assemble your hate pieces against the decks you're fighting. If you know in advance you have to deal with an extremely fast storm deck, it very well might be worth keeping a subpar hand if it has Eidolon of Rhetoric in it. This deck is very hard to mana screw, so you can occasionally gamble with one-land hands and come out on top. That said, this is no advisable to do often unless the rest of your hand is absolute gold. Having Gaea's Cradle in your opener can be a bit of a double edged sword. You always want to find Cradle, but she doesn't work if you have nothing on the field so you can't use her to cast any of your dorks. If its your only source of green mana early then you may be forced to mulligan. You almost always want an early green source as the first two turns or so are going to involve dropping a lot of one G costing dorks. Ideally you want to have an avenue of getting WW on the field as soon as you can because the amount of W you can produce is almost always going to be a limiting factor. Your ramp is green, but your hate is white, so be mindful of how much mana you need to generate and what colors you'll need.
Beyond threat assessment, turns 1-3 are going to focus on two specific things when it comes to setting up your boardstate: ramp and deceleration. Ramp is straightforward, you want to land your dorks and rocks as soon as possible and hopefully get Sisay onto the field by turn 3 at the latest. Alternatively, you may have some excellent options for deceleration. What I mean by deceleration are things like Root Maze and Thalia, Heretic Cathar. Sisay does not win on Turn 4, but lots of other decks can, so its important to level the playing field quickly to prevent the early wins. By slowing down the field you force your opponents to play at your Sisay's speed, and that's where Sisay begins to build her advantage.
Q: When should I cast Sisay?
Most of the time the answer is going to be "As soon as possible," but this is only the answer MOST of the time, not ALL of the time. You have to be paying very careful attention to what the field looks like. Can you get her out on Turn 2 but the mono-blue player has UU open? Hold Sisay a turn or try to bait the counterspell with something else. Alternatively, you notice the Karador player is off to a crazy fast start with two mana rocks and a tutor played on turn one. Hold off on Sisay and play/tutor for a hate piece early, if you can. If you can play Sisay turn one, do it. It is incredibly hard to lose a game with a turn one Sisay. Turn 2 is almost as good, but Turns 3 and 4 might necessitate other things be played first. Don't be afraid to delay Sisay indefinitely if you don't feel like you need her yet. If you've dropped an early Survival of the Fittest or Yisan, the Wanderer Bard then odds are you may not need her until later, if at all.
Middle Game (Turns 4-5)
This part of the game is going to be devoted almost exclusively to disruption. This list runs a few dozen hate pieces, and by this point in the game anywhere from 2-4 of them should be on the field by now. By this point in the game you should have an idea of what your opponents are actually playing. Plus, the board state should now be developed enough for you to make more accurate threat assessments. For example, you've noticed that its Turn 4 and the Maelstrom player is on 3 lands and has yet to cast anything. He's probably pretty mana screwed, so you can delay getting Eidolon of Rhetoric and instead use Sisay to grab Yisan and begin working towards Hushwing Gryff instead to foil the impending Boonweaver combo.
This is a very delicate part of the game and where you are at your most vulnerable. Much of what you will be doing here effectively amounts to educated guesswork and playing the odds. Your board presence will be robust, which means you are prone to wipes. I find Gaddock Teeg almost every game specifically to avoid getting blown out by Wrath of God and its ilk. Linvala, Keeper of Silence and Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite can basically force scoops just by being out on the field. Norn in particular absolutely ruins most Edric, Spymaster of Trest and Derevi, Empyrial Tactician decks because they lose all their little dorks and evasive 1/1s.
During this portion of the game, depending on how hard you've been ramping, you should be angling to set up your own victory. It is entirely possible that you've managed to power out your hate pieces a turn or two earlier and you've forced your opponents to spend turns and resources digging for answers. While they're doing that, you should be setting up your own victory.
Q: What should I be grabbing with Sisay?
This is an extremely important question and also difficult to answer accurately because the answer should be changing with ever game. That said, there are some specific cards that you will want to grab nearly every game. If I have Sisay out early and am dealing with an unknown field, my first grab with her is almost always Yisan, the Wanderer Bard. The second grab with Sisay should be Gaea's Cradle. Cradle fuels almost 100% of the shenanigans you will be pulling with this deck, it just generates a beastly amount of mana. Other good first grabs include Kataki, War's Wage and Hokori, Dust Drinker, both of which can toss a wrench into your opponent's ability to ramp. You really only need Cradle to be untapping, so you can power through Winter Orb effects no problem. Gaddock Teeg is another card that hits the field almost every game for me because he protects us from almost every major wrath in the game. There are some exceptions to that though, we'll talk more on how to deal with those exceptions later.
Late Game (Turns 6+)
Yes anything past Turn 5 is late game. Sometimes it comes even sooner, it really depends on how your ramp has been and how well you've been able to disrupt the board and avoid being disrupted. At this point in the game, vs. tuned decks, it is entirely possible for anyone at the table to win very suddenly, so you should endeavor to be the one doing that. It is entirely possible to have Eidolon of Rhetoric be the only thing preventing someone from comboing off for victory, so it is hugely important you take advantage of the time he's bought you to assemble your victory pieces. Which ones you go for will depend on the boardstate. If I'm generating a lot of mana early, Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre is an excellent decision. It'll nuke anything that's bothering you and Annihilator will take care of the rest. If you have successfully dumped 6 or so hate bears onto the field then grabbing Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite and swinging for victory is a solid, reliable game plan that gets even better once you grab Kamahl, Fist of Krosa or Living Plane. Craterhoof Behemoth can win you games out of nowhere, and honestly most people are not expecting it. If you have Natural Order in hand then you can grab Behemoth very early. Alternatively, if you have Yisan, the Wanderer Bard and Seedborn Muse out on the field at the same time then you can ramp up to 8 charges in roughly one turn cycle, just make sure you wait til your turn for that 8th charge to pull Behemoth. Shaman of Forgotten Ways is a situational grab mostly because you're usually getting him with either Yisan, a tutor, or just the top of your deck. He is rarely something you actively need to search for and mostly serves as an additional win con if you need it.
Card Choices and What They Do
In this section I'm going to go through each section of cards (organized by function) and explain why they deserve a slot and the best way to utilize each piece. Buckle up boyos, this is going to be a long one.
These should be pretty straightforward to understand. They tap for mana and do it cheaply. You run enough elves for Priest of Titania to regularly tap for 2+ mana without issue.
This is your extra special ramping friend with benefits. Just adding Cradle to a deck can often be an instant improvement. More importantly, you can fetch Cradle with Sisay, something you will do almost every single game. I very rarely have a match without Cradle. That said, you need to be very careful about when you're playing Cradle as you need to be able to avoid Strip Mine effects destroying your whole mana base. Cradle is a massive target, and while its hard to hit, it is not impossible for it to be removed. Be prepared to watch it die a few times. If it does, your options for getting it back are limited to Eternal Witness or shuffling it back into your deck with Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre. That said, if Cradle is left unchecked it will be the engine that powers the rest of your deck without issue.
Another fantastic mana generator that can be grabbed by Sisay. Cradle+Nykthos can generate an amazing amount of mana when on the field together. Nytkthos is also an excellent source of W as your hate bears almost all involve a lot of W in the first place.
This is a situational pick and obviously pretty bad if nobody in your meta is playing islands. If your meta is blue heavy, however, then Carpet gets amazing mileage. It is important to note that the card text and the oracle text are NOT the same, and you should be familiar with the oracle text when you use it.
"At the beginning of each of your main phases, if you haven't added mana to your mana pool with this ability this turn, you may add up to X mana of any one color to your mana pool, where X is the number of Islands target opponent controls."
This essentially means that if you cast Carpet during Main Phase 1, it will only generate mana during Main Phase 2 on that turn. Every turn after that you're free to get your mana during your first main phase.
So let us start with the Queen herself, the whole reason this deck even functions this well, Captain Sisay. Wizards is kind enough to put some supremely powerful effects on their various legendary cards, and Sisay gets you access to all of them whenever you want them. Having knowledge of what you can tutor for in each game is extremely important, so here's a list of all the legendaries Sisay can grab out of this list.
That right there is your crack team of Legendary permanents designed to carry you to victory. The vast majority of Sisay lists I see tend to be Legendary Tribal, and they're about as effective as most other Tribal lists you see around. You don't want to run all the Legendaries just because you can, you just want the ones that can push you to victory. I'll talk more about the functions of each of these cards as well as some notable omissions from this list in their appropriate sections. This list is purely to have a quick reference to everything Sisay can pull.
If Sisay is the Queen, then Yisan is her King (which makes Quirion Ranger Yisan's sidepiece). In most games Yisan is going to be what powers out your non-legendary hate bears which makes him a high priority target to tutor up via Sisay or some other means. Provided below is a list of Yisan's priority targets at each verse counter.
So, if Sisay is the Queen and Yisan is her King, then Quirion Ranger is the hot college co-ed they picked up at a bar to spice up their sex life. Your first target with Yisan should be Quirion Ranger roughly 99% of the time, she's just that good in bed. If its not your first target, its because you've already played her, she's in your hand about to be played, she's in your graveyard/exile pile, or you really desperately need another mana dork for some reason. Ranger makes Sisay better, she makes Yisan better, she makes your dorks better, and you can do some fun other fun things like tapping a Forest for G, sending it to your hand with Ranger, then replaying it and tapping it again for more mana.
Love this card. She's an extra body for Cradle and she gets a very solid suite of hate bears plus any dork you want. Here's a list of her non-dork targets.
The rest of these tutors should be pretty self explanatory. They let you search up the pieces you need to either win or stop others from winning. Land tutors should be used to find Gaea's Cradle almost invariably. If the tutor is instant speed, keep the mana open and play it on the end step of the opponent right before you. Green Sun's Zenith can be a fun Turn 1 play where you play something that taps for G and then cast GSZ where x=0, letting you put Dryad Arbor out onto the field. Survival of the Fittest and Fauna Shaman let you cheat fatties out early by pitching say, Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite into your graveyard and finding Loyal Retainers. You then cast and sac Loyal Retainers and bring out Norn on turn 2 or 3.
Aven Mindcensor- Stops your opponents from tutoring for things and it makes fetchlands almost worthless. Having Mindcensor on the field forces your opponents to topdeck their way into answers for your hate pieces and win conditions, vastly increasing your odds of an unimpeded victory. Flashing it onto the board in response to a Demonic Tutor is also very satisfying. It also makes Boonweaver combo almost totally worthless all by itself.
Eidolon of Rhetoric- Rule of Law on a stick. It doesn't get much better than this guy. You can find him with creature tutors AND enchantment tutors and he will happily prevent Storm, Maelstrom Wanderer, and Food Chain decks from doing anything particularly useful until Eidolon is removed. Keep in mind he does NOT stop Boonweaver who will happily loop their way to victory off a single casting of Boonweaver Giant.
Gaddock Teeg- Protects your board from almost every wrath in the game and turns off an entire suite of powerful spells you'd rather not have your opponents cast. It nonbos with your Green Sun's Zenith, Natural Order, and Living Plane, but it's small price to pay given how many spells he shuts down for your opponents. However, Teeg isn't perfect and some stuff can slip through the cracks and ruin your day, which is why we have:
Sanctum Prelate- Honestly she's my favorite thing WOTC has printed all year. She is the glorious guardian angel that will protect you from Cyclonic Rift and Toxic Deluge, the two boardwipes that can sneak past Teeg. Putting her on 2 blocks the vast majority of counterspells and some notable removal, putting her on 1 protects you from the format's best instant speed removal and blocks a lot of excellent tutors, and having her on 3 keeps you safe from Deluge and cockblocks Food Chain. If you are worried about both then you really have to gauge which one is more likely to happen. Sometimes you have to guess, and that's fine, but more often than not this card will make your opponent's lives way harder.
Grand Abolisher- Trying to win but worried about counterspells/removal? Find Grand Abolisher and worry no more! Fun fact, opponents have to respond to Yisan activations BEFORE he selects a target to put onto the battlefield, not after, giving you an easy way to cheat out Abolisher and avoiding the stack almost entirely.
Hushwing Gryff- There are few things more depressing than having Linvala, Keeper of Silence, Gaddock Teeg, and Sanctum Prelate (on 3) on the field at once and then getting blown out by Crater Hellion. Yes this happened to me, no I was not happy about it. Gryff also turns off Boonweaver combo as well as a whole host of other nasty ETB effects you'd rather not have to deal with.
Kataki, War's Wage- The vast majority of decks rely on artifact ramp to power their field. Kataki is a cheap, effective way to tie up their mana, making it more difficult to take any clean lines. Drop it early and watch Arcum and Daretti cry.
Linvala, Keeper of Silence- If a deck is not using artifact ramp then its using a lot of mana dorks. For those games, Linvala will make their lives miserable while turning off some dangerous cards like enemy Yisan's as well as locking opponents out of land mana entirely with the addition of Living Plane.
Spirit of the Labyrinth- You don't really do a lot of card drawing, so spirit is bound to mess with your opponents more than you. It makes Leovold, Emissary of Trest (and his wheels) significantly worse, and it cuts down heavily on the amount of drawing your local monoblue player is going to be doing on any given turn.
Thalia, Heretic Cathar- Makes fetchlands pretty worthless and, if your meta is full of hasty creatures for some reason, deals with those too. Also, 3/2 first strike can make a surprisingly effective blocker.
Root Maze- Makes fetchlands extra worthless while also slowing down artifact ramp. Hands down one of my favorite Turn 1 plays, grinds things down to a very agreeable pace.
Chalice of the Void- See Sanctum Prelate above. Note that the wording on Chalice says "counter that spell", which means anything that can't be countered can still get through Chalice (I'm looking at you, Abrupt Decay.
Null Rod- Yes it turns off your artifacts, but you also aren't running very many in the first place. For decks that tend to overcommit on the artifact mana this is the gold standard in punishing them. The trick is to figure out the best time to drop it so that it hurts your opponents more than it hurts you. Don't drop it if you have no way of playing around it.
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, Sphere of Resistance, Trinisphere, and Thorn of Amethyst- These cards are all grouped together because they all do the same thing: they make spells cost more. If you're fighting storm all you have to do is land one of these pieces and you've their combo lines either impossible to pull off or several magnitudes harder than they used to be. Taxes are great for holding off spells that you know are coming, and given how much mana you can produce you don't need to worry much about the increased cost of your own spells.
Winter Orb and Hokori, Dust Drinker- You really start to see some excellent mileage out of your taxes as soon as you land an orb. Its an excellent way to punish greedy ramp spells and since you really only need to untap Gaea's Cradle each turn you don't need to worry much about its effects. Hokori is an amazing first grab with Sisay. If your opponents are tapped out it is almost never a bad idea to tutor for Hokori and lock them out of the majority of their mana.
As I've mentioned before, Captain Sisay does extremely well in established metas with not much variance. Much of playing Sisay correctly involves predictive gameplay as opposed to reactive gameplay. If you're being forced to react to threats then you've probably lost. Sisay should be preparing for and halting threats before they are even cast. It's difficult, and takes a lot of practice, but once you get a feel for a table or a meta then it will get easier and easier. The above list does very well against non-creature decks but can struggle in really creature heavy environments. Your typical Battlecruiser deck is going to be able to ramp through your stax and drop some fat monstrosity and start swinging, and that's where you're going to run into some problems. Alternatively, you might have some decks in your meta that are really heavy on forced sacrifice effects and graveyard recursion, or maybe you have a guy who likes to play Talrand Counterspells and since you won last game he's done nothing but counter everything you've played. For these situations I have a rather large sideboard prepared full of situationally useful cards better suited to handle specific metas.
I'd love to be able to tell you specifically what you should replace in the main deck, but it's really going to be up to you as an individual to suss out which aspects of your meta require the most attention. I will, however, explain some of the more exotic choices on the list.
Angel of Jubilation- This probably raised some eyebrows, but it is a surprisingly effective piece of tech that I guarantee nobody will see coming. The first time I played it I locked two people out of their draw steps because they couldn't activate their Necropotences. If your meta is very B heavy then you will have no shortage of targets that Angel turns off. Triple white is not great, but she has some amazing situational uses.
Sigarda, Host of Herons- Mainly there to deal with Eldrazi tribal or any preponderance of forced sacrifice effects. She's a decent beater, but she is really only worth mentioning at all for her secondary effect which will only occasionally be relevant.
Mana Tithe- The spiciest tech is the one nobody sees coming. Mana Tithe can be really entertaining and way more effective than one might think at first glance. Treat Mana Tithe like a temporary Tax effect that can often be enough to toss a wrench into someone attempting to combo out to victory.
This section is going to cover (and hopefully preempt) a large portion of the questions I get when people see the list. Formatting might change over time but the function will not. I will do my best to add to this section consistently over time as more questions get tossed my way.
Kozilek is nice, and I've playtested him in Ulamog's slot for several weeks before making the switch. The card draw is great for refilling my hand, but I'm not casting Kozileck to draw more gas, I'm casting Kozilek to win the game with Annihilator. Ultimately an Indestructible body is extremely important in making sure my win condition is prone to as little removal as possible. Given the critical mass of tutors available I very rarely need cards in hand and am perfectly happy to have none in hand at all. You have enough tutor engines that card draw at ten mana is really not a "must have".
When someone drops a Cursed Totem on Turn 2 you're going to wish you had some more varied artifact or enchantment removal. They effectively cost the same when you need them immediately and RecSage does not force Yisan to choose between Quirion Ranger and artifact removal.
You don't run them for their effects, you run them so you can use Sisay for mana fixing. Occasionally you really need an extra W or G mana, so being able to grab one is very nice. Additionally, sometimes I end up using Living Plane to power Gaea's Cradle and being able to pump the Cradle count a bit more when I need it has won me at least one game.
I have mixed feelings about these cards. They're great cards with some fun effects, but ultimately during testing I found they were win-mores and not the win conditions I wanted them to be. They have strong effects but they don't create the kind of clock I want once they're on the field. Also, WWW is an absolute pain to hit sometimes.
Why aren't you running [INSERT LEGENDARY CARD HERE]?
Because it's trash. Seriously. It's either a bad card or a trap for unsuspecting Sisay players who like to cram anything that says "Legendary" on it. Anything not explicitly mentioned in my decklist, my sideboard, or somewhere else in this section was deliberately and consciously excluded by me. Yes this includes Reki, the History of Kamigawa and the assorted Myojins.
Because the turn you spent tutoring and then casting Reki is an entire turn where you didn't grab Yisan which delays your Cradle by another turn too. And you delayed those major, important pieces to do what, exactly? Draw two extra cards? Why? Yisan and Sisay get you everything you need without requiring you to waste time setting up Reki.
Because Song turns off all permanents, not just non-lands, and if you don't think lands can be an issue then you clearly haven't dealt with a powered Gaea's Cradle yet.
Why are you running so much artifact hate?
Because the competitive meta is notoriously artifact heavy, and landing an early Null Rod can hamstring greedier 3+ color decks.
If you've made it this far through the above walls of text I would like to thank you for taking the time out of your day to read through it. I sincerely hope that this contribution of mine proves a reliable guide to anyone interested in playing Captain Sisay to her fullest potential. I would like to give a huge appreciative shoutout to NarejED, Coinman, Lerker, ShaperSavant, ASM, BigLupu, Phuran, infiniteimoc, iceyzero, Mori, CaptainRiku, tw0handt0uch, and likely several others I am forgetting (and will add as I remember) for being both excellent playtesting opponents and constant sources of excellent advice and suggestions. I am hoping to eventually elevate this guide to Primer status, so I will be monitoring this thread very closely if anyone has any questions at all. Thanks again for reading!
Hey everybody. I'm ShakeAndShimmy, founder and head moderator of the /r/CompetitiveEDH subreddit. To my knowledge, we are the largest and most active group of purely competitive minded EDH players around, or at least on reddit. These forums might have us beat, I'm not familiar enough with them to make an accurate comparisons, but as far as I can tell /r/CompetitiveEDH is the place to be for all things high-level Commander.
I don't normally dip my toes into community boards beyond my own, but given the discussion this has generated I felt compelled to come in and hopefully clear up some misunderstandings about the competitive community. I will not pretend to be the spokesperson for all competitive players, their absolute ruler, or even one of the better players. These are my thoughts and interpretations of the community I've watched grow over the last two years into something very tight knit and active. I'd like to take the time to address two things in particular that have been said about the CEDH community that I disagree with.
Firstly, we do not want the ban list to cater exclusively to competitive players. We don't want to have to build our own banlist and split the community at all. We don't want or need a perfectly balanced ban list centered on competitive play that seeks perfect viability among dozens of decks; we don't want or need that kind of involvement. That is not what we're hoping to see out of the Rules Committee and their ban list. What we want out of the RC is close what we currently have: a central ban list and set of rules that let us go from table to table without having to worry about what "version" of EDH is being played. Since metaphors have been popular in this thread, let me try one of my own here. We want the Official EDH Rules and Ban List to be a simply built, sturdy, modestly furnished home for EDH players to gather. The community's playgroups are free to make as many changes as they want to the simple home given to them to better suit each playgroup's tastes and styles. What we don't want is for the Official EDH Rules and Ban List to be a fully furnished, completely renovated house that's had so many changes made to it in order to suit another crowd of people that we conclude that our only option is to go find another house. Why add features and tell us to remove them or go elsewhere when all we want is somewhere peaceful to play EDH?
Secondly, even if the RC tried its hardest to push out the competitive crowd, they would have no hope of getting rid of us without drastic changes to the format, and even then I'd guess we'd stick around. People seem to be under the impression that we are competitive MTG players who are seeking another avenue of optimized competition, and after enough format changes we'll be persuaded to just go play Vintage or something. This is patently false. We don't want to play another format. We don't want to build our own EDH format. We want to play EDH. Oddsbod did a great job outlining the nebulous spectrum that encompasses all EDH players, competitive and casual alike, but the key point there is that WE ARE ALL EDH PLAYERS. We're not going to other formats. This is the format that we have such unbridled passion for that there is literally 24/7 discussion occurring on our Discord server. We care about this format enough to burn countless hours and dollars playtesting and debating cards and playtesting some more in order to map out the premiere decks in the format while pushing ourselves to pilot these decks to the best of our ability. We are EDH players first and always, we just happen to be the ones who are most focused on winning. You can ban infinite combos, prevent wins before five, and forbid all tutors, and we would still be here, playing some horrific stax monstrosity, looking for the best avenue to win. Even if you did everything possible to mandate that Battlecruiser EDH takes place every single games, we'd still be here because we love this format.
We really do love this game. We love it as much as the Rules Committee must love it, and we love it as much as Sheldon must love it. We don't want to be the problematic portion of the community, and we don't want to be made to go play elsewhere. My subreddit and the rest of CEDH are not meant to live separate lives from the rest of Commander's community, they are meant to coexist under the same roof.
With that bit out of the way, I'd like to take this opportunity to invite any members of the Rules Committee to come learn more about the community that's developed over these last few years. I'd love for the RC to get to know us better, and for my community to get to know the RC better. Maybe someone joins us for a fireside chat of sorts, and maybe cut through the bull***** vitriol that typically gets flung back and forth across threads like this. I'd love to open a real dialogue and hopefully reach a better, mutual understanding between the RC and CEDH. If anyone on the RC is still around reading this, please feel free to get in touch with me personally, either here or on reddit, I'm always around. That goes the same for anyone else reading this, I'm always happy to shed clearer light onto the CEDH community and there's always room to join. I'll stick around in the thread if anyone has any questions about anything.
Additionally, taxes can really only get you so far as most competitive decks tend to have ways of generating enormous amounts of mana. Sure storm decks are easily disrupted, but anything more midrangey just needs to wait for rock or two and they can combo through the taxes no problem. If anything I've found the most valuable hate pieces are invariably Rule of Law effects which actually turn off (most) combos instead of just hindering them.
Teeg and Prelate turn off all the non-permanent sweepers you can think of, in the months I've spent playtesting I've only been hit by a 4+ CMC wrath once. They typically get stopped by Teeg without issue. The sweeper I worry about the most is Toxic Deluge.
As I've said before about Pod, I'm very rarely ever in a position where saccing part of my boardstate is going to be desirable. Climbing all the way to Seedborn means I've sacced either Linvala or Hokori (my only 4 mana slot creatures), both of which are infinitely more useful to me on the board than in my yard, especially since I'd much rather have Seedborn AND an Orb on the field at once to maximize board advantage. Really the biggest issue is the overall lack of reanimator effects in GW. If I was in Abzan colors Pod would be a lot less detrimental to my gameplan.
I tested Pod and found it worked against me more often than not. I run a lot of artifact hate which already complicates things, but you really, really don't want to be podding the majority of your bears on the field and that's largely all you have to work with for pod chains. Gemstone Caverns might be an addition worth testing, and I go back and forth on Grasp of Fate. Song of the Dryads hits everything which is excellent but might not be explicitly necessary.
Glowrider and Vryn are both great cards but Kamahl and Ulamog win me games; I have plenty of taxes already in the deck. Vryn and Glowrider would be okay in a sideboard in case I ran into a really heavy storm environment, but I do not believe they're necessary additions 100% of the time.
As for why I run Ulamog over Kozilek it really came down to Ulamog's Indestructible body. While card draw is nice, I'm not casting Kozilek to draw gas, I'm casting him so he can extend my advantage in permanents and win the game for me. In this context Indestructibility is relevant enough to warrant a slot over Kozilek as it means my big beat stick isn't going to be foiled by some mana dorks teaming up on the block. The vast majority of exile effects that would otherwise neutralize the Eldrazi threat are contained in white. Additionally most hyper competitive metas tend to be creature-light which means decks can often get away with running either fewer creature removal spells. I don't think I've ever seen a deck splashing green that didn't play Beast Within and a surprising number of deck's splashing white won't go past a single slot dedicated to Swords to Plowshares. The Vindicate on cast is just gravy.
Anyways, for the sake of maintaining discussion I will repeat myself here. I think you are overestimating your deck's abilities as well as the average power of the lists you're running into frequently. You're running an absolute minimum of both ramp and disruption. Feel free to walk me through your "sequencing" if you're so inclined but I fail to see how you could possibly race the defining decks in the competitive meta like Jeleva Storm or Booneweaver Karador.
Your deck might be considered competitive within your own playgroup but is not something I would call truly Competitive. Keep in mind the decks that dominate the high end of this format are capable of extremely early wins (often with protection lined up). Ramping into some beaters is just too slow of a game plan on its own. There are almost no combos in GW that can out speed Storm which means we need to head the opposite route and utilize the brilliant hatebears GW has access to. I'm not saying you can't play Sisay other ways, but if you want to ever take a game off of Food Chain Proshh then Stax is going to be the only way you can realistically achieve that with any kind of consistency.
It's great to see you over here! Like I mentioned before it was your primer that convinced me to play Sisay in the fist place. I've gone back and forth on running Vryn Wingmare and friends over their artifact counterparts and ultimately ended up with the artifacts. The difference in mana cost is noticeable and makes them much easier to get on the field early with things like Mana Crypt. Additionally, I don't like that they take up the 3 mana slot in Yisan chains. That slot is already filled with important hatebears like Eidolon of Rhetoric, Hushwing Gryff, Aven Mindcensor, and Sanctum Prelate. I already run Thalia, Guardian of Thraben which is at the less crowded 2 slot AND is easily tutorable with Sisay. I rarely need more than one tax on the field to stop certain decks, but if my meta was nothing but storm I would probably slot in the creature taxers too just to make sure I had a critical mass of hate pieces.
I would recommend Eidolon of Rhetoric in all but the absolute slowest of metas. Eidolon and other Rule of Law effects just hose way more than just storm. They shut down the vast majority of viable combos in the format. Teferi, Temporal Archmage + The Chain Veil, Tazri Food Chain, High Tide combo (assuming they don't have a way to kill you with infinite mana on the board already) Food Chain Prossh, certain Yisan shenanigans, certain Selvala shenanigans, anything with Cascade, and just about any Animar combo you care to name all fold to Eidolon. Even if the meta isn't very combo heavy it can help keep a leash on decks that otherwise like to dump their hands on the field every turn and even prevents Narset from getting full value from her swings each turn (although that's still a long way from stopping her completely).
Craterhoof tends to win me games outright whereas Kamahl tends to more of an incremental beatdown that's augmented by Elesh Norn. Having them both gives me very reliable paths to victory. Craterhoof, however, is undeniably more explosive which I like very much. The issue with incremental beatdowns is that every turn that goes by is another turn where an opponent might draw an answer, so being able to win suddenly in one turn is a huge upside, plus I can Natural Order him into play. I have not tested other Natural Order lines beyond Craterhoof and Vorinclex. Terastadon seems interesting but I'm not convinced it's worth running just yet. I may test it more thoroughly though just to be sure.
Your comments on Titania and MLD interest me, I do miss having my MLD at times. My issue with MLD is I was struggling to find good times to cast it in a way that didn't hamstring me. There might be some value there though which I'm very interested in testing.
Turn 1 Root Maze will slow faster decks down significantly, especially if they're greedier 3+ color decks that rely heavily on fetchlands. The idea with this list is to force the fastest decks in the format to play at Sisay's speed where she's better equipped to handle threats. New Thalia plays a similar role to Root Maze (while also turning of Kiki/Splinter Twin shenanigans), but if I was going to test something new I'd probably cut her first. Voyaging Satyr untaps Cradle and Nykthos which makes him an auto-include in my book.
I talk about Sanctum Prelate in depth in the primer, but I'll paste what I said up there down here for easy reading:
"Honestly she's my favorite thing WOTC has printed all year. She is the glorious guardian angel that will protect you from Cyclonic Rift and Toxic Deluge, the two boardwipes that can sneak past Teeg. Putting her on 2 blocks the vast majority of counterspells and some notable removal, putting her on 1 protects you from the format's best instant speed removal and blocks a lot of excellent tutors, and having her on 3 keeps you safe from Deluge and cockblocks Food Chain. If you are worried about both then you really have to gauge which one is more likely to happen. Sometimes you have to guess, and that's fine, but more often than not this card will make your opponent's lives way harder."
I. Introduction
Howdy everyone, my name is ShakeAndShimmy, and over the course of this thread I hope to impart upon you everything I know about playing Captain Sisay at the highest level of play the Commander format has to offer. I will go over, in detail, the entirety of my decklist and provide explanations for my card choices as well as some notable omissions. I will break down Sisay's lines of play, card synergies, standard avenues to victory, and provide some insight on dealing with the format's popular archetypes. Finally, I will provide a section on adjusting and tuning this decklist to better fit your local meta. As this thread progresses I will endeavor to answer any questions posted below.
Q: Who are you and why should I listen to anything you say?
Q: What does any of that have to do with Captain Sisay?
Q: Why should I play Captain Sisay?
You should NOT play Captain Sisay if:
Q: Why should I play Sisay over [INSERT OTHER G/W COMMANDER HERE]?
II. The Decklist
1 Captain Sisay
Creatures (33)
1 Avacyn's Pilgrim
1 Aven Mindcensor
1 Birds of Paradise
1 Craterhoof Behemoth
1 Eidolon of Rhetoric
1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
1 Elvish Mystic
1 Eternal Witness
1 Fauna Shaman
1 Fyndhorn Elves
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Grand Abolisher
1 Hokori, Dust Drinker
1 Hushwing Gryff
1 Kamahl, Fist of Krosa
1 Kataki, War's Wage
1 Linvala, Keeper of Silence
1 Llanowar Elves
1 Loyal Retainers
1 Priest of Titania
1 Quirion Ranger
1 Reclamation Sage
1 Recruiter of the Guard
1 Sanctum Prelate
1 Seedborn Muse
1 Shaman of Forgotten Ways
1 Spirit of the Labyrinth
1 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
1 Thalia, Heretic Cathar
1 Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre
1 Voyaging Satyr
1 Weathered Wayfarer
1 Yisan, the Wanderer Bard
1 Beast Within
1 Chord of Calling
1 Crop Rotation
1 Eladamri's Call
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Nature's Claim
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Worldly Tutor
Enchantments (11)
1 Aura of Silence
1 Aura Shards
1 Carpet of Flowers
1 Living Plane
1 Root Maze
1 Rule of Law
1 Song of the Dryads
1 Sterling Grove
1 Stony Silence
1 Survival of the Fittest
1 Sylvan Library
Sorceries (4)
1 Eldritch Evolution
1 Green Sun's Zenith
1 Idyllic Tutor
1 Natural Order
Artifacts (11)
1 Chalice of the Void
1 Chrome Mox
1 Lightning Greaves
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mox Diamond
1 Null Rod
1 Sol Ring
1 Sphere of Resistance
1 Thorn of Amethyst
1 Trinisphere
1 Winter Orb
1 Ancient Tomb
1 Arid Mesa
1 Brushland
1 Cavern of Souls
1 City of Brass
1 Command Tower
1 Dryad Arbor
1 Eiganjo Castle
1 Flooded Strand
6 Forest
1 Gaea's Cradle
1 Homeward Path
1 Horizon Canopy
1 Mana Confluence
1 Marsh Flats
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
1 Okina, Temple to the Grandfathers
3 Plains
1 Savannah
1 Strip Mine
1 Sunpetal Grove
1 Temple Garden
1 Windswept Heath
1 Wooded Bastion
1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
1 Living Plane
1 Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre
1 Kamahl, Fist of Krosa
1 Shaman of Forgotten Ways
1 Craterhoof Behemoth
Ramp
1 Avacyn's Pilgrim
1 Birds of Paradise
1 Elvish Mystic
1 Fyndhorn Elves
1 Llanowar Elves
1 Priest of Titania
1 Voyaging Satyr
1 Carpet of Flowers
1 Chrome Mox
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mox Diamond
1 Sol Ring
1 Ancient Tomb
1 Gaea's Cradle
1 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
Tutors
1 Captain Sisay
1 Fauna Shaman
1 Recruiter of the Guard
1 Weathered Wayfarer
1 Yisan, the Wanderer Bard
1 Sterling Grove
1 Chord of Calling
1 Crop Rotation
1 Eladamri's Call
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Worldly Tutor
1 Survival of the Fittest
1 Eldritch Evolution
1 Idyllic Tutor
1 Natural Order
1 Green Sun's Zenith
1 Aven Mindcensor
1 Eidolon of Rhetoric
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Grand Abolisher
1 Hushwing Gryff
1 Kataki, War's Wage
1 Linvala, Keeper of Silence
1 Sanctum Prelate
1 Spirit of the Labyrinth
1 Thalia, Heretic Cathar
1 Root Maze
1 Rule of Law
1 Chalice of the Void
1 Null Rod
Taxes and Orbs
1 Hokori, Dust Drinker
1 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
1 Aura of Silence
1 Sphere of Resistance
1 Thorn of Amethyst
1 Trinisphere
1 Winter Orb
Removal
1 Reclamation Sage
1 Beast Within
1 Nature's Claim
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Aura Shards
1 Song of the Dryads
Utility
1 Eternal Witness
1 Loyal Retainers
1 Quirion Ranger
1 Seedborn Muse
1 Lightning Greaves
1 Sylvan Library
1 Cavern of Souls
1 Arid Mesa
1 Brushland
1 City of Brass
1 Command Tower
1 Dryad Arbor
1 Eiganjo Castle
1 Flooded Strand
6 Forest
1 Homeward Path
1 Horizon Canopy
1 Mana Confluence
1 Marsh Flats
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Okina, Temple to the Grandfathers
3 Plains
1 Savannah
1 Strip Mine
1 Sunpetal Grove
1 Temple Garden
1 Windswept Heath
1 Wooded Bastion
For those who are so inclined, I have included a tappedout.net link to the list here here as well as a deckstats.net link to the list here.
III. Playing the Deck
Your Win Conditions
This right here is your go-to winning combo. It's simple, it's effective, and it almost always closes out the game in your favor. Linvala, Keeper of Silence and Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite are both easily tutorable with Captain Sisay AND have amazing utility when on the field regardless of whether or not Living Plane is on the field as well. That said, there are some notable downsides worth mentioning. First, once people are aware of the combo they can see it coming from a mile away. Now, if you've been playing correctly then your opponents should be unable to respond to either hitting the field, that said, nobody plays perfectly 100% of the time. If an acceptable lock has not been achieved then cards like Force of Will or Pact of Negation can still ruin your day. Once you've landed both pieces you need to keep an eye out for opponents with Artifact mana who may still be able to function without their lands. Landing Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite will be preferable to Linvala, Keeper of Silence almost every time because if Linvala gets removed then gameplay tends to continue as normal. If Norn gets removed after he's landed, you've still managed to inflict a one sided Armageddon onto the board, so you should still be in excellent position to advance to either another wincon or to go find Linvala and reestablish the lock. This combo's second major weakness is that you will struggle to consistently find Living Plane. The list runs as many enchantment tutors it can reasonably rely on, and drawing into those are really your only way of getting Living Plane onto the field. So, in the cases when Living Plane might remain elusive, its best to advance to one of your other win conditions like:
This card combo is going to function with Kamahl, Fist of Krosa playing the part of a less efficient Living Plane. With one G mana per enemy land, you can effectively ping your opponent's lands to death to your heart's content. The downsides to this combo is that players can still play lands on their turn and tap them for mana before you can ping them, and the combo as a whole requires a consistent expenditure of mana. Both pieces can be grabbed by Sisay, but the two of them represent an enormous mana investment that practically mandates Gaea's Cradle already be out on the field to pay for both cards plus Kamahl's ability. It is worth noting that getting either Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite or Kamahl, Fist of Krosa onto the field can often be enough to win on its own. A typical game with this deck involves getting a critical mass of 2/2 hatebears and 1/1 mana dorks onto the field, and boosting them with Norn or Kamahl can often be more than enough to beat down your opponents.
Thanks to the wonderful thing that is green mana ramp, you will be producing an obscene amount of mana very quickly. When this happens, its nice to dump it into something fat, and Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre and Craterhoof Behemoth are exactly what we want. Ulamog will extend your advantage in permanents every time he swings. The fact that he shuffles your graveyard into your library AND Vindicate's something on CAST (not on Entering the Battlefield) is just gravy on the cake. Craterhoof Behemoth requires some setup and is really only effective if you have a board state built up. If you don't, then odds are good you were not going to win that game anyways. Keep in mind you don't need to have lethal ready for the whole board when you drop Craterhoof, you just need lethal for your biggest threat, and when his pump wears off you're left with an excellent 5/5 Trample beater for whoever is left.
Man this is such a great card. Now, my meta is very creature-light, so having a Biorythym on a stick is absolutely invaluable. He's low cost and easy to grab with Yisan, the Wanderer Bard and, in a pinch, can generate some extra mana if you need to power out something fat. Again, with the critical mass of hate bears you should have on the field hitting his activation requirements should almost never be an issue. Even in creature heavy metas suddenly dropping someone's life to 4-8 can be devastating, if done at the right time.
Overview of an Average Game
Sisay is extremely flexible and thus rewards good piloting and thorough game knowledge. A poor, largely uninformed deck pilot is going to struggle to be effective at all with this list. While this is true of almost all good decks, stax decks in particular are going to play differently than something like Hermit Druid combo, which has a more linear game plan. Captain Sisay specifically thrives in established metas where the list can evolve to accommodate your local threats. The lists provided above are about as close to a "one-size fits all" kind of list as I could reasonably make it without compromising it's ability to compete with the Tier 1 format boogeymen decks. EDH at the tippy top of competitiveness favors artifact ramp and non-creature spells so my list is skewed to handle those lines of attack more effectively. Playing Sisay effectively relies heavily on a thorough knowledge of the meta you will be playing in. You have a silver bullet for every situation, so the game is really about figuring out which ones need to be brought to bear and when. From here I will do my best to break down the different phases of the game and what you should be doing during each.
Opening Hands and Mulligans (Turn 0)
Ideally you want to be staring at a way to get four mana on the field by turn 2 or 3. Typically this involves two lands and a pair of dorks or possibly a mana rock. The faster you get that four mana on the field, the better. If your hand is predominantly lands with no Turn 1 dorks, go for the mulligan. If you've got two mana only, you might want to consider mulliganing. Don't focus so much on how much mana you have, focus on what you can be doing with that mana. A hand with Survival of the Fittest in it can function on very small amounts of mana if necessary. Similarly, Sylvan Library will let you sculpt your hand over the next few turns giving you some wiggle room on what you can keep. Finally, you should be looking for ways to assemble your hate pieces against the decks you're fighting. If you know in advance you have to deal with an extremely fast storm deck, it very well might be worth keeping a subpar hand if it has Eidolon of Rhetoric in it. This deck is very hard to mana screw, so you can occasionally gamble with one-land hands and come out on top. That said, this is no advisable to do often unless the rest of your hand is absolute gold. Having Gaea's Cradle in your opener can be a bit of a double edged sword. You always want to find Cradle, but she doesn't work if you have nothing on the field so you can't use her to cast any of your dorks. If its your only source of green mana early then you may be forced to mulligan. You almost always want an early green source as the first two turns or so are going to involve dropping a lot of one G costing dorks. Ideally you want to have an avenue of getting WW on the field as soon as you can because the amount of W you can produce is almost always going to be a limiting factor. Your ramp is green, but your hate is white, so be mindful of how much mana you need to generate and what colors you'll need.
Early Game (Turns 1-3)
Threat assessment, threat assessment, and more threat assessment. Before any lands hit the board, take a look at the commanders and start thinking about what you need to be doing to shut them down. So far you see Karador, Ghost Chieftain, Scion of the Ur-Dragon, and Maelstrom Wanderer. Right away you should be brainstorming their possible victory conditions and then figuring out what you need to grab to stop them. Karador is practically synonymous with Boonweaver Combo which means you want to be digging for Hushwing Gryff, Aven Mindcensor, or Aura of Silence. Linvala, Keeper of Silence would turn off any Hermit Druid shenanigans while keeping anyone from relying on mana dorks for ramp, and Eidolon of Rhetoric or Rule of Law turn Maelstrom Wanderer into a really expensive beatstick.
Beyond threat assessment, turns 1-3 are going to focus on two specific things when it comes to setting up your boardstate: ramp and deceleration. Ramp is straightforward, you want to land your dorks and rocks as soon as possible and hopefully get Sisay onto the field by turn 3 at the latest. Alternatively, you may have some excellent options for deceleration. What I mean by deceleration are things like Root Maze and Thalia, Heretic Cathar. Sisay does not win on Turn 4, but lots of other decks can, so its important to level the playing field quickly to prevent the early wins. By slowing down the field you force your opponents to play at your Sisay's speed, and that's where Sisay begins to build her advantage.
Q: When should I cast Sisay?
Middle Game (Turns 4-5)
This part of the game is going to be devoted almost exclusively to disruption. This list runs a few dozen hate pieces, and by this point in the game anywhere from 2-4 of them should be on the field by now. By this point in the game you should have an idea of what your opponents are actually playing. Plus, the board state should now be developed enough for you to make more accurate threat assessments. For example, you've noticed that its Turn 4 and the Maelstrom player is on 3 lands and has yet to cast anything. He's probably pretty mana screwed, so you can delay getting Eidolon of Rhetoric and instead use Sisay to grab Yisan and begin working towards Hushwing Gryff instead to foil the impending Boonweaver combo.
This is a very delicate part of the game and where you are at your most vulnerable. Much of what you will be doing here effectively amounts to educated guesswork and playing the odds. Your board presence will be robust, which means you are prone to wipes. I find Gaddock Teeg almost every game specifically to avoid getting blown out by Wrath of God and its ilk. Linvala, Keeper of Silence and Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite can basically force scoops just by being out on the field. Norn in particular absolutely ruins most Edric, Spymaster of Trest and Derevi, Empyrial Tactician decks because they lose all their little dorks and evasive 1/1s.
During this portion of the game, depending on how hard you've been ramping, you should be angling to set up your own victory. It is entirely possible that you've managed to power out your hate pieces a turn or two earlier and you've forced your opponents to spend turns and resources digging for answers. While they're doing that, you should be setting up your own victory.
Q: What should I be grabbing with Sisay?
Late Game (Turns 6+)
Yes anything past Turn 5 is late game. Sometimes it comes even sooner, it really depends on how your ramp has been and how well you've been able to disrupt the board and avoid being disrupted. At this point in the game, vs. tuned decks, it is entirely possible for anyone at the table to win very suddenly, so you should endeavor to be the one doing that. It is entirely possible to have Eidolon of Rhetoric be the only thing preventing someone from comboing off for victory, so it is hugely important you take advantage of the time he's bought you to assemble your victory pieces. Which ones you go for will depend on the boardstate. If I'm generating a lot of mana early, Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre is an excellent decision. It'll nuke anything that's bothering you and Annihilator will take care of the rest. If you have successfully dumped 6 or so hate bears onto the field then grabbing Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite and swinging for victory is a solid, reliable game plan that gets even better once you grab Kamahl, Fist of Krosa or Living Plane. Craterhoof Behemoth can win you games out of nowhere, and honestly most people are not expecting it. If you have Natural Order in hand then you can grab Behemoth very early. Alternatively, if you have Yisan, the Wanderer Bard and Seedborn Muse out on the field at the same time then you can ramp up to 8 charges in roughly one turn cycle, just make sure you wait til your turn for that 8th charge to pull Behemoth. Shaman of Forgotten Ways is a situational grab mostly because you're usually getting him with either Yisan, a tutor, or just the top of your deck. He is rarely something you actively need to search for and mostly serves as an additional win con if you need it.
Card Choices and What They Do
In this section I'm going to go through each section of cards (organized by function) and explain why they deserve a slot and the best way to utilize each piece. Buckle up boyos, this is going to be a long one.
Ramp
1 Birds of Paradise
1 Elvish Mystic
1 Fyndhorn Elves
1 Llanowar Elves
1 Priest of Titania
1 Voyaging Satyr
1 Chrome Mox
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mox Diamond
1 Sol Ring
1 Ancient Tomb
These should be pretty straightforward to understand. They tap for mana and do it cheaply. You run enough elves for Priest of Titania to regularly tap for 2+ mana without issue.
This is your extra special ramping friend with benefits. Just adding Cradle to a deck can often be an instant improvement. More importantly, you can fetch Cradle with Sisay, something you will do almost every single game. I very rarely have a match without Cradle. That said, you need to be very careful about when you're playing Cradle as you need to be able to avoid Strip Mine effects destroying your whole mana base. Cradle is a massive target, and while its hard to hit, it is not impossible for it to be removed. Be prepared to watch it die a few times. If it does, your options for getting it back are limited to Eternal Witness or shuffling it back into your deck with Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre. That said, if Cradle is left unchecked it will be the engine that powers the rest of your deck without issue.
Another fantastic mana generator that can be grabbed by Sisay. Cradle+Nykthos can generate an amazing amount of mana when on the field together. Nytkthos is also an excellent source of W as your hate bears almost all involve a lot of W in the first place.
This is a situational pick and obviously pretty bad if nobody in your meta is playing islands. If your meta is blue heavy, however, then Carpet gets amazing mileage. It is important to note that the card text and the oracle text are NOT the same, and you should be familiar with the oracle text when you use it.
This essentially means that if you cast Carpet during Main Phase 1, it will only generate mana during Main Phase 2 on that turn. Every turn after that you're free to get your mana during your first main phase.
Tutor Package
1 Captain Sisay
1 Fauna Shaman
1 Recruiter of the Guard
1 Weathered Wayfarer
1 Yisan, the Wanderer Bard
1 Sterling Grove
1 Chord of Calling
1 Crop Rotation
1 Eladamri's Call
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Worldly Tutor
1 Survival of the Fittest
1 Eldritch Evolution
1 Idyllic Tutor
1 Natural Order
1 Green Sun's Zenith
So let us start with the Queen herself, the whole reason this deck even functions this well, Captain Sisay. Wizards is kind enough to put some supremely powerful effects on their various legendary cards, and Sisay gets you access to all of them whenever you want them. Having knowledge of what you can tutor for in each game is extremely important, so here's a list of all the legendaries Sisay can grab out of this list.
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Hokori, Dust Drinker
1 Kamahl, Fist of Krosa
1 Kataki, War's Wage
1 Linvala, Keeper of Silence
1 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
1 Thalia, Heretic Cathar
1 Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre
1 Yisan, the Wanderer Bard
1 Eiganjo Castle
1 Gaea's Cradle
1 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
1 Okina, Temple to the Grandfathers
That right there is your crack team of Legendary permanents designed to carry you to victory. The vast majority of Sisay lists I see tend to be Legendary Tribal, and they're about as effective as most other Tribal lists you see around. You don't want to run all the Legendaries just because you can, you just want the ones that can push you to victory. I'll talk more about the functions of each of these cards as well as some notable omissions from this list in their appropriate sections. This list is purely to have a quick reference to everything Sisay can pull.
If Sisay is the Queen, then Yisan is her King (which makes Quirion Ranger Yisan's sidepiece). In most games Yisan is going to be what powers out your non-legendary hate bears which makes him a high priority target to tutor up via Sisay or some other means. Provided below is a list of Yisan's priority targets at each verse counter.
1 Quirion Ranger
Two Mana Targets
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Grand Abolisher
1 Kataki, War's Wage
1 Spirit of the Labyrinth
1 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
1 Aven Mindcensor
1 Eidolon of Rhetoric
1 Hushwing Gryff
1 Loyal Retainers
1 Reclamation Sage
1 Sanctum Prelate
1 Shaman of Forgotten Ways
1 Thalia, Heretic Cathar
1 Linvala, Keeper of Silence
1 Hokori, Dust Drinker
Five Mana Targets
1 Seedborn Muse
Six Mana Targets
1 Kamahl, Fist of Krosa
Seven Mana Targets
1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
Eight Mana Targets
1 Craterhoof Behemoth
So, if Sisay is the Queen and Yisan is her King, then Quirion Ranger is the hot college co-ed they picked up at a bar to spice up their sex life. Your first target with Yisan should be Quirion Ranger roughly 99% of the time, she's just that good in bed. If its not your first target, its because you've already played her, she's in your hand about to be played, she's in your graveyard/exile pile, or you really desperately need another mana dork for some reason. Ranger makes Sisay better, she makes Yisan better, she makes your dorks better, and you can do some fun other fun things like tapping a Forest for G, sending it to your hand with Ranger, then replaying it and tapping it again for more mana.
Love this card. She's an extra body for Cradle and she gets a very solid suite of hate bears plus any dork you want. Here's a list of her non-dork targets.
1 Eternal Witness
1 Fauna Shaman
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Grand Abolisher
1 Hokori, Dust Drinker
1 Hushwing Gryff
1 Kataki, War's Wage
1 Loyal Retainers
1 Quirion Ranger
1 Reclamation Sage
1 Sanctum Prelate
1 Spirit of the Labyrinth
1 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
1 Thalia, Heretic Cathar
1 Weathered Wayfarer
The rest of these tutors should be pretty self explanatory. They let you search up the pieces you need to either win or stop others from winning. Land tutors should be used to find Gaea's Cradle almost invariably. If the tutor is instant speed, keep the mana open and play it on the end step of the opponent right before you. Green Sun's Zenith can be a fun Turn 1 play where you play something that taps for G and then cast GSZ where x=0, letting you put Dryad Arbor out onto the field. Survival of the Fittest and Fauna Shaman let you cheat fatties out early by pitching say, Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite into your graveyard and finding Loyal Retainers. You then cast and sac Loyal Retainers and bring out Norn on turn 2 or 3.
Hate Pieces
1 Eidolon of Rhetoric
1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Grand Abolisher
1 Hushwing Gryff
1 Kataki, War's Wage
1 Linvala, Keeper of Silence
1 Sanctum Prelate
1 Spirit of the Labyrinth
1 Thalia, Heretic Cathar
1 Root Maze
1 Rule of Law
1 Chalice of the Void
1 Null Rod
Taxes and Orbs
1 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
1 Aura of Silence
1 Sphere of Resistance
1 Thorn of Amethyst
1 Trinisphere
1 Winter Orb
IV. Sideboarding and You: Adjusting for Your Meta
As I've mentioned before, Captain Sisay does extremely well in established metas with not much variance. Much of playing Sisay correctly involves predictive gameplay as opposed to reactive gameplay. If you're being forced to react to threats then you've probably lost. Sisay should be preparing for and halting threats before they are even cast. It's difficult, and takes a lot of practice, but once you get a feel for a table or a meta then it will get easier and easier. The above list does very well against non-creature decks but can struggle in really creature heavy environments. Your typical Battlecruiser deck is going to be able to ramp through your stax and drop some fat monstrosity and start swinging, and that's where you're going to run into some problems. Alternatively, you might have some decks in your meta that are really heavy on forced sacrifice effects and graveyard recursion, or maybe you have a guy who likes to play Talrand Counterspells and since you won last game he's done nothing but counter everything you've played. For these situations I have a rather large sideboard prepared full of situationally useful cards better suited to handle specific metas.
1 Bane of Progress
1 Blind Obedience
1 Dosan the Falling Leaf
1 Dragonlord Dromoka
1 Dryad Militant
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Fiend Hunter
1 Gaea's Herald
1 Glowrider
1 Imposing Sovereign
1 Intrepid Hero
1 Mana Tithe
1 Mangara of Corondor
1 Peacekeeper
1 Rest in Peace
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Iona, Shield of Emeria
1 Sigarda, Host of Herons
1 Torpor Orb
1 Vryn Wingmare
I'd love to be able to tell you specifically what you should replace in the main deck, but it's really going to be up to you as an individual to suss out which aspects of your meta require the most attention. I will, however, explain some of the more exotic choices on the list.
V. Why Aren't You Running [X]?
This section is going to cover (and hopefully preempt) a large portion of the questions I get when people see the list. Formatting might change over time but the function will not. I will do my best to add to this section consistently over time as more questions get tossed my way.
VI. Acknowledgements and Changelog
If you've made it this far through the above walls of text I would like to thank you for taking the time out of your day to read through it. I sincerely hope that this contribution of mine proves a reliable guide to anyone interested in playing Captain Sisay to her fullest potential. I would like to give a huge appreciative shoutout to NarejED, Coinman, Lerker, ShaperSavant, ASM, BigLupu, Phuran, infiniteimoc, iceyzero, Mori, CaptainRiku, tw0handt0uch, and likely several others I am forgetting (and will add as I remember) for being both excellent playtesting opponents and constant sources of excellent advice and suggestions. I am hoping to eventually elevate this guide to Primer status, so I will be monitoring this thread very closely if anyone has any questions at all. Thanks again for reading!
Changelog
I don't normally dip my toes into community boards beyond my own, but given the discussion this has generated I felt compelled to come in and hopefully clear up some misunderstandings about the competitive community. I will not pretend to be the spokesperson for all competitive players, their absolute ruler, or even one of the better players. These are my thoughts and interpretations of the community I've watched grow over the last two years into something very tight knit and active. I'd like to take the time to address two things in particular that have been said about the CEDH community that I disagree with.
Firstly, we do not want the ban list to cater exclusively to competitive players. We don't want to have to build our own banlist and split the community at all. We don't want or need a perfectly balanced ban list centered on competitive play that seeks perfect viability among dozens of decks; we don't want or need that kind of involvement. That is not what we're hoping to see out of the Rules Committee and their ban list. What we want out of the RC is close what we currently have: a central ban list and set of rules that let us go from table to table without having to worry about what "version" of EDH is being played. Since metaphors have been popular in this thread, let me try one of my own here. We want the Official EDH Rules and Ban List to be a simply built, sturdy, modestly furnished home for EDH players to gather. The community's playgroups are free to make as many changes as they want to the simple home given to them to better suit each playgroup's tastes and styles. What we don't want is for the Official EDH Rules and Ban List to be a fully furnished, completely renovated house that's had so many changes made to it in order to suit another crowd of people that we conclude that our only option is to go find another house. Why add features and tell us to remove them or go elsewhere when all we want is somewhere peaceful to play EDH?
Secondly, even if the RC tried its hardest to push out the competitive crowd, they would have no hope of getting rid of us without drastic changes to the format, and even then I'd guess we'd stick around. People seem to be under the impression that we are competitive MTG players who are seeking another avenue of optimized competition, and after enough format changes we'll be persuaded to just go play Vintage or something. This is patently false. We don't want to play another format. We don't want to build our own EDH format. We want to play EDH. Oddsbod did a great job outlining the nebulous spectrum that encompasses all EDH players, competitive and casual alike, but the key point there is that WE ARE ALL EDH PLAYERS. We're not going to other formats. This is the format that we have such unbridled passion for that there is literally 24/7 discussion occurring on our Discord server. We care about this format enough to burn countless hours and dollars playtesting and debating cards and playtesting some more in order to map out the premiere decks in the format while pushing ourselves to pilot these decks to the best of our ability. We are EDH players first and always, we just happen to be the ones who are most focused on winning. You can ban infinite combos, prevent wins before five, and forbid all tutors, and we would still be here, playing some horrific stax monstrosity, looking for the best avenue to win. Even if you did everything possible to mandate that Battlecruiser EDH takes place every single games, we'd still be here because we love this format.
We really do love this game. We love it as much as the Rules Committee must love it, and we love it as much as Sheldon must love it. We don't want to be the problematic portion of the community, and we don't want to be made to go play elsewhere. My subreddit and the rest of CEDH are not meant to live separate lives from the rest of Commander's community, they are meant to coexist under the same roof.
With that bit out of the way, I'd like to take this opportunity to invite any members of the Rules Committee to come learn more about the community that's developed over these last few years. I'd love for the RC to get to know us better, and for my community to get to know the RC better. Maybe someone joins us for a fireside chat of sorts, and maybe cut through the bull***** vitriol that typically gets flung back and forth across threads like this. I'd love to open a real dialogue and hopefully reach a better, mutual understanding between the RC and CEDH. If anyone on the RC is still around reading this, please feel free to get in touch with me personally, either here or on reddit, I'm always around. That goes the same for anyone else reading this, I'm always happy to shed clearer light onto the CEDH community and there's always room to join. I'll stick around in the thread if anyone has any questions about anything.