I think your missing the point of Greater Good. It has way more potential than you gave it credit for from the earlier posts I was reading. First it is a draw engine with a bigger creature. Second when you don't have the bigger creature it is a dig engine that allows you to fill your graveyard with combo pieces. I know it seems daunting at first with the thought of having to basically mill yourself but if you have either Karmic Guide or Reveillark it is a infinite sac combo with Saffi to fill the graveyard and then pull all your creatures out of the graveyard regardless of CMC. This kind of combo works a lot better with other creatures that act as sac outlets because once you get the creature you don't have to risk drawing your entire deck. Although you don't have to worry about that risk if you run a way to beat your opponent before your next turn with Scuttling Doom Engine. This is my go to for sac combo wins outside of combat. I run sac as my favorite mechanic in the game and I have made several sac combo decks including Saffi and she has been a key card for every deck I have ran that runs her colors. My strongest right now being a Karador, Ghost Chieftain deck.

Great deck +1, It hasn't been updated in a long time but there might be some good cards still. self righteous suicide was my saffi deck and hope it helps.

Add in Renegade Rallier.

SwiftDeath: First off, thank you for the comment and for the +1. Now onto the comment about Greater Good. My biggest issue with Greater Good is its fit in THIS deck. The card is super powerful, especially in something like Karador, Ghost Chieftain. However the thing is that while Saffi my be called a reanimator deck, she is not actually a true one. Most reanimator decks are happy to discard big creatures only to bring them back cheaply, however in this deck my reanimation effects are actually some of the most expensive cards in the deck mana wise. The other thing is that while you're potentially generating card advantage, the bulk of creatures that I run create a net loss of CA as you more often than not are drawing 2, discarding 3. While this isn't the end of the world if you're discarding not useful cards to draw more useful ones, it's not ideal.

Now, all that being said, I have actually decided to do some play testing with Greater Good in place of Tooth and Nail. While TaN is super powerful, too many times I have found it just too expensive to cast alongside anything else within the space of a turn. Plus with the release of Renegade Rallier who is a solid combo card and who doesn't net lose you cards within the recursion loop, it has the potential to seem solid.

I'm sure long term it will find its home within the deck though. Because I think that it should work with enough cards (given the current build of the deck).

As for Scuttling Doom Engine however, I think that the card is a bit too narrow in what it does. While it's a nice combo piece once set up, it feels like you have to put in a lot of effort to get there. I used to run Inquisitor Exarch which was eventually cut as it was found to be sub-par.

viperfang4: I will definitely be adding Renegade Rallier to the deck once I have gotten my hands on one. There are a few small changes I am testing out to the deck (including Greater Good) so I will update the list in the next little while.

Rishkar's Expertise will probably be good as well, it is basically greater good, you draw cards, and you can play something like revillark for free off the draw from it.

viperfang4: Sorry I missed your post earlier. Rishkar's Expertise is good, but generally it will only draw me two or three cards. For 6 mana, that's a high cost and while it can cast a free spell, I'd still much rather just play Harmonize as it's cheaper. The other thing is that at six mana, Soul of the Harvest works inside of combo whereas expertise doesn't.

Hey, first let me say I've really enjoyed your decklist and all the discussion here. I've played a similar Saffi list for a long time so I'm very familiar with how a lot of the popular Saffi cards play.

On the topic of Greater Good--personally, I've found it to be an invaluable sac engine option in the deck. One of the biggest problems for most Saffi lists is always that the deck has only a few ways to find its sac outlets to set up the combo. The deck is chock-full of creature tutors, but it's a lot harder to find an artifact without just drawing into it. That's why we have to run 4-5 sac outlets in the first place. That's where Greater Good, and more specifically Academy Rector become key tools for the deck. Rector becomes a way to basically extend all of your creature tutors to enchantments, making a very strong case for adding a small suite of utility enchantments to the deck as well in case you need a fast answer instead (e.g. Parallax Wave, Oblivion Ring), not to mention Pattern of Rebirth.

Aside from that though, Greater Good proved to me that it is one of the best sac outlets available. When you don't have a 2-creature combo in play, GG will often let you loot into your combo pieces, which is generally more helpful than pinging for 1 damage or milling people. And 99% of the time when you do get a combo going with it, you will be able to win on the spot. With almost all of the combos in the deck, it lets you draw, dump cards into the graveyard, and find your actual game-winning sac outlet like Blasting Station or Altar of Dementia. That is often more that I could ever say for one of the infinite mana sac outlets, which aren't always a guaranteed win that turn. If I were making some cuts to fit at least Rector and GG, I'd say try taking out Ashnod's Altar and Deathmantle. Those two were ones I always felt lacking in the deck.

The new card, Renegade Rallier, seems super-powerful in the deck, and even worth reconsidering some creature tutors with its inclusion. I think Natural Order becomes a strong contender to earn a slot now because you can now find the rallier and combo off with it. Also, Woodland Bellower is another that can pull rallier directly into play (even Natural Order-->Woodland Bellower-->Rallier if you want ;)). Also, I noticed you don't list Recruiter of the Guard, which is an excellent creature tutor for this deck as well.

capitang: first off, thank you for the kind words and the +1. I was going to reply earlier but gave up because I was trying to do it on my phone and it's not very good at long responses.

As for your card specifics - I am actually testing Greater Good in the deck at the moment. I have also immediately found space for Renegade Rallier who was the tipping point for me to test out GG. For a long time I didn't like the card in the deck but with inclusion like Gaea's Cradle, it makes using it to set up combos much more viable. and RR being 3 power is a huge deal as far as functionality with the card goes.

I'm still on the fence about Academy Rector though. Something about it doesn't mesh with me. I know it's good and all but I'm just not sure. That being said I did have the same vibe with GG. It's a tricky one though. I'll give it some more thought.

Leading off that though, I'm not too interested in filling up the deck with lots of enchantments. I traditionally play control and as such the deck has been built to suit my style, so I prefer having instant speed removal in hand. And I think that if I added rector I wouldn't want to waste it on something not GG.

I also don't like Pattern of Rebirth as much as I think a lot of other Saffi players do. While it's cute with Boonweaver, I don't think that combo is good in Saffi decks as the limiting factor is almost always the sac outlet, not the recursion loop. And at that point I would rather have something like Worldly Tutor. It's also the reason that I don't run Recruiter of the Guard or Natural Order. And I think that Woodland Bellower, while cool, is too expensive to run. I would prefer the flexibility of Worldly Tutor before I ran almost any other creature tutor (that's not already in the deck). My biggest concern for the deck is speed so I'm happy to make the trade-off of losing my draw for only 1 mana.

I think the biggest thing that governs a lot of choices for the deck is that I've built it to be the most blue deck that a non-blue deck can be (short of running things like Mana Tithe). So while there are some really good tutors I've missed out on, I've really tried to make up for it with raw card advantage. That's why I run things like Selvala, Explorer Returned and Mikokoro, Center of the Sea and even cards like Eidolon of Blossoms. I hope that gives a bit more insight.

I think if you try out Academy Rector, you'll like it. It's great as a combo-enabler with GG obviously, but I've frequently used it to find control pieces as well when I'm behind on board. If you have a sac outlet already, it's an instant-speed answer too.

Parallax Wave was another card where I didn't see its power until I tried it out. It's SOOO flexible and way better than Rout IMO. You can run it out there and use the exile triggers as you like, so it can just sit and play defense for a few turns while you put together your combo, or you can use it as a one-sided permanent wrath in combination with a card like Nature's Claim (stacking the triggers properly). One of it's best uses is using the first exile to remove your Eternal Witness, so you can just keep playing the wave over and over.

By the way, is there a reason to run Eidolon of Blossoms over Wall of Blossoms with such a low enchantment count? Reveillark combos with either one, and Sun Titan can return the wall but not eidolon.

I've always wanted an Academy Rector so I will keep an eye out for one.

As for Rout, the plan is to replace it with Wrath of God. It's cheaper to cast and while there are some cute loops you can do with Parallax Wave, WoG deals with decks that go wide. I don't really have any other way of doing that at the moment.

Eidolon of Blossoms is an interesting one. While the enchantment count is low, getting value from playing an enchantment is still good, however the main reason I run it is because you can set up a draw engine with Gift of Immortality. Play gift on Saffi (or any self sac creature) and you will see a lot of cards quickly. While Sun Titan can bring back wall, the gift engine is just obscene.

So you said you were interested in removal. I don't specifically see any glaring omissions but I'll offer up. Song of the Dryads which can staple down a problematic commander.

I've looked at Song of the Dryads on and off in the past. It's a fairly solid removal card in green.

At the moment, I'm considering swapping out Archon of Justice. While Archon is awesome, at 5 mana I'm really starting to notice the cost.

The other cards I've been considering are Angelic Purge, Mercy Killing and even Oust. That being said, I would much prefer having removal on a body.

There's Mogara of Corondor but he only does it once. Maybe you can manipulate the stack somehow?

Mangara of Corondor's ability exiles itself as part of the resolution, not the cost. So you can sac it in response to the ability resolving.

My biggest issue with Mangara has been that he doesn't do anything the turn he comes down. I used to run him but cut him for that very reason. Too much setup involved.

Ah yeah that makes sense. It's hard in GW to find such an effect. That's more the Orzhov wheelhouse.

Wholly comment reset batman. So I assume that since you are a creature based combo list your best card draw would involve a way to get all your combo pieces to hand cheaply. For that it does not get much better than Weird Harvest. I also love Caustic Caterpillar which has tons of synergy with Renegade Rallier. What do you think of Aven Mindcensor. It is a great form of control which coincidentally makes wierd harvest somewhat one sided

The deck looks really good. I only have a few suggestions to make, and a few are nit-picks:

1) Since your combos frequently require 3 pieces, some of which are creatures, Congregation at Dawn can give you a lot of advantage. Here, I feel like it's usually better than Worldly Tutor (though of course I'd play both).

2) With all of the ETB cards (reused with Saffi) have you considered Panharmonicon?

3) Starved Rusalka and Mortarpod seem bad without some way to generate infinite mana. Why are they in this deck? Sorry of I'm missing a combo.

4) I'd give my strong recommendation of Song of the Dryads. It locks down many commander-reliant decks surprisingly hard.

5) Of your maybe board, they all seem like good suggestions when you get the chance to acquire them.

And finally, the comments need to be cleared on this page, lol.

Happy deckbuilding! Hope this was helpful :)

Hey guys, sorry for the delayed reply - I've had two super busy weeks at work but that's all over now (it's never over...)

Lilbrudder: Weird Harvest seems... interesting. I do like how cheap and scalable it is, however I can see the downside biting me quite badly in the form of an opponent's Hushwing Gryff or similar. The other thing is that I usually only need to tutor one creature to win (as I usually will have Saffi ready) and so I want my tutoring to be as cheap as possible if I have to do it combo turn, as deploying combos is quite expensive. That's why I've been considering cards like Fauna Shaman which tutor much more cheaply. And if I'm playing it outside of combo turn, I would much rather not feed my opponents creatures.

Caustic Caterpillar is cool and I have been considering it for a while on and off. My only reservation is that while it's cheaper to play than Qasali Pridemage, it costs more to activate. That being said, it's an awesome Yisan 1 drop. I'll add it to the maybeboard. What would you cut for it?

Aven Mindcensor is solid. I've ummed and ahhed about running it in the past but it might be a good replacement for Archon of Justice. I'll maybeboard it too.

Daedalus19876: Congregation at Dawn is interesting. I've seen in in the past and it's good however the mana cost is so saturated T_T. I don't think I would run it over Worldly Tutor but I would consider running it in addition to. Maybeboarded.

Panharmonicon is funny in more casual and more creature heavy decks, however here it feels win more.

Starved Rusalka is actually pretty solid. It's one of the best creature based sac outlets in white/green (there aren't that many to begin with and most of them are rubbish). It's not primarily in the deck as a combo piece, but more to generate value with my commander if needs be. That being said, there is a goofy infinite combo with Titania, Protector of Argoth, Nim Deathmantle, Strip Mine and Gaea's Cradle.

Mortarpod is in there as an additional sac outlet which can be tutored by Stoneforge Mystic which can be in turn tutored via the creature tutors. It also provides a win condition given infinite mana. That being said, you're right in that it's not the strongest card in the deck. It'll most likely get subbed out with cards from the maybeboard.

Cheers for the responses, it's given me a few new ideas as well as helped lock in stuff I was on the fence about.

Why don't you run Loyal Retainers? That's an infinite combo with Saffi too, right?Although you can't combine it with blasting station, it is a 2-card (one being your commander) combo that results in infinite ETB/dies triggers

Ooh sorry, I just realised you don't use ANY cards that abuse etb/dies, only "on sacrifice", nothing like altar of the brood or the like. I guess I expected your combodeck to look more like my marchesa, but there are hardly any River Kelpies or Grave Pact effects in GW, and you run 0 of them :')

joriiiii12345: Yeah, it's a bit of a bummer it doesn't work with either of the two win conditions. I think though even if I did run a few etb trigger cards (like Altar of the Brood) my concern would be that Retainers is a bit too narrow scope.

I did used to run a few persist combos in the deck, however I did ultimately cut them in favour of recursion only combo. While the added effects were ok, none of the big three (Woodfall Primus, Kitchen Finks and Twilight Shepherd) either did either did enough (Primus/finks) or were cheap enough (Shepherd) to warrant staying in the deck. especially when the combo ran no redundancy and didn't integrate with the primary combo package of the deck.

I'm not really a big fan of "addon" combos in the deck. Part of the reason I don't run Altar of the Brood. While it's nice, you already need a sac combo up and running and at that point, You should be a position where you're winning the game and don't need it. I would much rather a tutor or raw card advantage to help me dig for my combo. And as you said, there are barely any of those effects in GW and they're not worth running.

I would definitely cut a land for caustic catipillar

Lilbrudder: I don't think I want to cut lands, at least for non ramp pieces. I have the last two fetches on the way and then after that I'm going to look at getting Mana Crypt, Mox Diamond and potentially Mana Vault. I would potentially go down to 35 lands but anything below that feels a bit low.

I've been contemplating swapping out Qasali Pridemage for it but I'm unsure. I mean adding it would be nice but so you think it's worth running that much artifact/enchantment hate?

Any reason why you don't run Boonweaver Giant and Pattern of Rebirth combo?

EDHTest: I don't think it adds enough to the deck to warrant running it.

The biggest issue with the deck is getting a sac outlet. Because I'm in white/green, my options are quite limited. I have 5 main ones: Blasting Station, Altar of Dementia, Greater Good, Phyrexian Altar and Ashnod's Altar. Of these, Blasting Station and Altar of Dementia are win conditions - I only need a recursion loop with these and it's game and Greater Good draws me into the rest of my deck already with a recursion loop. This only leaves the two mana altars. And since I run enough raw card advantage, it makes up for these two cases.

On the side of recursion loops, my commander already forms half of the loop, so really I only need one of 4 other creatures to combo (Sun Titan, Karmic Guide, Reveillark and Renegade Rallier). On top of that, there is a bunch of redundancy between these and other cards as well. And I already run a bunch of creature tutors to help me find any of the other "other half of the loop" creatures.

So while Boonweaver package is nice, ultimately Boonweaver Giant himself is too expensive as I'm trying to deploy the combo cheaply (seven mana is a lot for one card) and while Pattern of Rebirth is cheaper to play, I have only one card in the deck which can tutor for it (Enlightened Tutor) and chances are I'm going ot be using this card to find a sac outlet rather than pattern (which still needs a sac outlet anyway). So I have to draw into it.

Not to mention, once I have the sac outlet out, 60% of the time Boonweaver Giant could just tutor up Gift of Immortality rather than needing to get Pattern anyway.

Couple all this with the fact that outside of combo, Boonweaver Giant doesn't really do anything and while Pattern of Rebirth is an ok creature tutor, a) you have to sac the creature it's attached to and b) you can remove the creature in response to it being enchanted. So while you're ahead it's find but trying to come from behind, it's just not as powerful as something like Eladamri's Call.

I get that's the boonweaver package is very nice and could work here, but overall I think it actual detracts from the deck in this instance. If this was a Karador, Ghost Chieftain deck I would probably be running it as I would have access to things like Viscera Seer and Demonic Tutor.

It's worth noting that Altar of Dementia isn't completely dead if your opponents have any shuffle cards in their libraries. If you use it to mill yourself you can (usually) still build up to the full kill:

Saffi + Reveillark: Mill to Karmic Guide and Sun Titan, get Blasting Station with Sun Titan's trigger.

Saffi + Karmic Guide: Same as above, but you reanimate Reveillark with Karmic Guide.

Saffi + Sun Titan: This one is a little trickier and board-dependent. If you have the mana you can just let Saffi go to the command zone and use Sun Titan to return Blasting Station, then recast Saffi. If you need extra mana and you have the board state for it, you can bring back Phyrexian Altar first, then sac extra creatures to get the mana to recast Saffi. You then can loop Sun Titan for enough mana to send Saffi to the command zone one last time and bring back Blasting Station. This one is much more boardstate-dependent, unfortunately.

Separately, Boonweaver Giant is a little more nuanced than you give it credit for. Most of the time it's just grabbing Gift of Immortality over Pattern, sure, but the key is that it can grab it from anywhere. If both of them have been binned, Boonweaver Giant gives you another direction of resilience. Even if one of them is still in your hand, it means you only need to cast one of them, since Boonweaver Giant will find it there, too, unlike Sun Titan. Still, overall I agree with most of your points on Boonweaver Giant - I go back and forth on it fairly regularly.

I do strongly disagree with you on your points RE: Pattern, however. I think it's far better than Eladamri's Call, just because it puts the creature directly into play. I can't count the number of times I've put Pattern on Saffi, sac'ed Saffi, and tutored up something to bring her back. It also cranks Academy Rector up to 11, since Rector dying (or better yet, being sac'ed) often means you just win the game.

Finally, thoughts on Sylvan Tutor? It's slow, for sure, and it's a huge advertisement, but sometimes the extra consistency offers so much value. I go back and forth on it personally.

I'd be interested in swapping notes on our builds. I've been playing mine for 3+ years and I think I moved in a fairly different direction. It would be interesting to go over card choices and testing experiences: Saffi's Weenie Hut Jr.