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Lin Sivvi--Riot Grrrl Rebels

Commander / EDH* Mono-White

Ason42


Maybeboard


“Other people will call me a rebel, but I just feel like I'm living my life and doing what I want to do.
Sometimes people call that rebellion, especially when you're a woman.”
—Joan Jett, on playing monowhite EDH

This Deck in One Sentence

My Lin Sivvi, Defiant Hero Riot Grrrl Rebels deck uses her rebel/changeling tutor toolbox, hatebears, and monowhite goodstuff to grind out wins or steal unexpected victories in a midrange-y fashion.

The Three Common Lin Sivvi Builds

Sadly, most of the blogs and videos out there on Lin Sivvi EDH give bad advice because they aren't familiar with the challenges and downsides of the rebel tribe, so you have to be careful about who you trust. Check out my primer section below for some good places to get you started. In general, there are three different ways of building a Lin Sivvi deck: badly, combo, or monowhite goodstuff.

  1. The most common suggestion I see for Lin Sivvi is to play a ton of rebels, but this is a really bad idea unless flavor is your only priority. Such all-in decks run into one of two problems: either a) they don't have enough mana to activate all the crappy rebels they run, leaving them with an army of useless 1/2's that can't activate their cool abilities or b) they have ludicrous amounts of mana, which enables them to vomit out a large board state quickly, immediately makes the Lin Sivvi player public enemy #1, gets the board wrathed, and leaves the Lin Sivvi player unable to recover. If you want to play this style of deck, just play tokens: you'll get more bang for your buck that way.

  2. Another common kind of Lin Sivvi deck is monowhite combo, which is significantly better than all-rebel decks and probably better than my own style of play. These decks feature the rebel infinite life combo (Task Force + Outrider en-Kor + Animal Boneyard/Miren, the Moaning Well/Worthy Cause/Loxodon Lifechanter) and ways to use that infinite life to win the game, other monowhite combos like bomberman (Auriok Salvagers + Lion's Eye Diamond + infinite mana outlets like Walking Ballista), and additional tutors to enable the deck to "go off" quickly. But I forgo that version of Lin Sivvi because many playgroups don't like infinite combos and because I personally enjoy piloting midrange-style decks more than combo decks.

  3. Finally, you have decks like mine that are creature-based but only include the very best rebels, turning Lin Sivvi into a rebel toolbox instead of the core of an all-rebel deck. However, because Lin Sivvi puts rebels into play instead of casting them, cards like God-Eternal Oketra that trigger when creatures are cast are less helpful, so look out when adapting other creature-based deck ideas for Lin Sivvi. Enter the battlefield effects are great with Lin Sivvi and indeed are on some of our best cards.

This Deck's Strategy

My personal build of Lin Sivvi rebels is slow, grindy, and defensive until it suddenly starts one-shotting opponents. The primary game plan is: 1) Play a ramp cards to speed us up, value engines to gain card advantage, and hatebears to slow the game down to monowhite's level. 2) Use Lin Sivvi to tutor out various rebels to match our offensive and defensive needs. 3) Build a critical mass of creatures via playing them, tutoring rebels into play, and generating tokens. 4) Use Lin Sivvi or one of the other rebel tutors to cheat in Mirror Entity on the end step, untap, and swing for lethal. The backup plan is to buff Zealot il-Vec with equipment like Quietus Spike, Grafted Exoskeleton (+ Mirror Entity to become a one-shot), or the various Swords of X & Y to quickly take over the game. Our backup backup plan is to grind out a win with Lin Sivvi, graveyard recursion, and powerhouses like Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite and Elspeth, Sun's Champion.

Lin Sivvi's rebel toolbox gives this deck resilience and adaptability to complement our hatebears and monowhite goodstuff, and I enjoy Lin Sivvi because she is interactive, stars a lesser-known tribe, surprisingly good for monowhite, and often steals wins out of nowhere.

“A rebel! How glorious the name sounds when applied to a woman. Oh, rebellious woman, to you the world looks in hope.
Upon you has fallen the glorious task of bringing liberty to the earth and all the inhabitants thereof.”
—Matilda Joslyn Gage, 1800s suffragist and famed Lin Sivvi EDH player

Lin Sivvi's Hidden Power

Lin Sivvi, Defiant Hero is a repeatable tutor who can find any rebel or changeling permanent and can also move such permanents from the graveyard to our library so we can tutor for them again. Because of that—for most of our rebel-based wincons—once you draw the non-rebel part of it, Lin Sivvi easily gets you the remaining cards. Defiant Falcon and Defiant Vanguard work similarly to Lin Sivvi but with more restrictions, at greater cost, and with no ability to shuffle things back into your library. They do allow you to put twice the number of rebels into play to explosively take over the board, but this requires a lot of mana, so that's more of a late game move once you can afford it. Finally, because changelings are all creature types, this deck runs two: one as a wincon and one as a surprise anti-boardwipe tool.

However, Lin Sivvi's second ability is what truly takes her from good to great: she becomes a recursion engine that lets you repeatedly cycle utility rebels into play. When fighting decks, Lin Sivvi lets you use Lightbringer to exile a creature on your last opponent's end step, return it to your library with Lin Sivvi's second ability, and then cheat them back into play with Lin Sivvi so that you're able to exile yet another creature when you untap, which gives you a repeat exile effect for only .While that's not the most mana efficient play, but that gave you an exile effect at the cost of 0 cards, which is powerful. This is true for many of the rebels, and being able to play out the card we need from our toolbox over and over is what makes Lin Sivvi a stronger commander than most monowhite legendaries. Further, this recursion ability works better as games drag on and our mana pool increases, which is what our gameplan is built around.

Despite our ability to tutor any rebel or changeling permanent into play, however, the sad reality is that most permanents of those types suck and should be avoided. The good Lin Sivvi decks—whether combo or more like mine—instead run a select few rebels to provide a suite of threats, answers, and defenses for Lin Sivvi to put into play on a moment's notice. With most of the cards Lin Sivvi can grab, I hate drawing them to hand, yet I love being able to put them into play right when I need them, as it solves a problem without costing me a card. Most Lin Sivvi decks include similar cores of utility rebels, and my deck supplements this core with hatebears and other cards that help us grind out wins in ways that complement Lin Sivvi's strategy.

Here are the following cards that are relevant to the Lin Sivvi portion of our plan, sorted by usage.

Bound in Silence

This card is why Lin Sivvi loves decks that rely on commander damage to win. Due to the specific wording of Lin Sivvi, Defiant Hero, she can tutor any rebel permanent into play, including this rebel enchantment. If she puts Bound in Silence into play this way, it never has a chance to "target" a creature: instead, it simply enters the battlefield attached to the creature of your choice. This allows you to bypass hexproof and shroud abilities (but sadly not protection from white), and with Lin Sivvi's graveyard-to-library ability, you can do it again and again if your opponent manages to remove it. Much like the exiling rebels below, the mere threat of this card does wonders once your opponents are aware of it: it's a great tool for discouraging attacks, establishing alliances, and shutting down voltron commanders.

Lawbringer/Lightbringer + Distorting Lens

Lawbringer and Lightbringer are great removal tools on their own versus red or black decks respectively. However, Distorting Lens allows you to play with permanents' colors, turning your exiling rebels online even against decks that don't run red or black. When paired with the graveyard effect on Lin Sivvi, Defiant Hero, you're able to repeatedly exile creatures over the course of the game, and even without Distorting Lens, the exile rebels are good ways to blackmail players into good behavior.

Defiant Vanguard

Defiant Vanguard acts as a combat trick removal if you cheat him into play after attackers have been declared but before blockers are assigned, as he has a quasi-deathtouch ability. Note that Defiant Vanguard does not need to damage the creature it blocks in order to kill it: the card states that when it blocks, both it and the creature(s) it blocked are destroyed during the end of combat phase, so it can deal with first strike creatures just fine. This is also just a great creature to put into play and leave on the battlefield, as it will deter attacks while helping Lin Sivvi tutor out rebels.

Zealot il-Vec

As a shadow creature, Zealot il-Vec is unlikely to ever be blocked in a game of EDH, and its second ability enables you to remove any pesky x/1's your opponents may have. Another option is to give Zealot il-Vec deathtouch via Quietus Spike so that its "deal 1 damage to target creature" ability lets you snipe any creature you want. However, Quietus Spike is probably better used to halve your opponent's health instead, unless you really need to get rid of one particular problem creature. This deck includes several pieces of equipment that can make Zealot il-Vec into a one-man wincon or value engine, but given this deck expects to lose and recycle rebels and the speed at which this guy tends to draw hate, auras are less helpful on him.

Defiant Falcon

Defiant Falcon is one of the first cards I typically tutor out with Lin Sivvi, as it's a cheap backup tutor whose flying keyword lets it serve double duty as a chump blocker or evasive way to poke at other players to trigger our equipment abilities or steal the monarch title.

Defiant Vanguard

Defiant Vanguard is the only other tutoring rebel this deck includes, as it both tutors and has a weird quasi-deathtouch ability to discourage others from attacking us. Note that Defiant Vanguard does not need to damage the creature it blocks in order to kill it: the card states that when it blocks, both it and the creature(s) it blocked are destroyed during the end of combat phase, so it can deal with first strike creatures just fine.

Not Included Cards

Many of the other rebels in existence also allow you to tutor other rebels into play, but this deck does not include them for several reasons. First, how much mana do you reasonably expect to have so that you can pay for multiple tutoring costs simultaneously? A monowhite deck isn't likely to be able to afford to pay for multiple rebel tutors each round, so why include cards whose abilities you won't be able to utilize that often? Second, most non-Lin Sivvi rebel tutor creatures have no other abilities, which means if you're not using their tutoring abilities then all you have is a tiny creature, and at that point you're better off building a token deck. However, honorable mention goes to Ramosian Revivalist for uniquely being able to cheat rebels into play from the graveyard instead of from our library, which can speed up our deck's graveyard recursion, especially with the sacrifice-to-gain-effect rebels. I go back and forth on whether to include it, but I just found its activation cost too expense for me to regularly use.

Cho-Manno, Revolutionary + Pariah's Shield/Pariah

Cho-Manno combined with either Pariah effect prevents all damage to you until it is dealt with. This combo doesn't win you the game but is still helpful. Most opponents will see it, say "Oh... okay", and simply attack one player over instead. Because the combo is annoying to deal with but not threatening, it tends to just make you ignored, which is fine for this deck's purposes.

Changeling Hero

Changeling Hero is included as board wipe protection: Lin Sivvi can respond by cheating him in, letting him die instead, and returning to an empty board ready to start rebuilding your rebel horde. If your Lin Sivvi untaps with one of the hexproof equipments and five untapped mana, she becomes effectively immune to both targeted removal and board wipes, which gives you immense resiliency.

Children of Korlis

Children of Korlis is an unassuming card that can do surprisingly heavy lifting by negating most near-kill shots. A fun scenario with this little guy is where an opponent does massive but survivable damage to you so that you can sacrifice Children of Korlis to regain the life, recycle them into your deck via Lin Sivvi's second ability, and then tutor them out again to sacrifice them again, which ultimately gains you more life than you lost. Finally, being a one-drop creature is relevant on turns when you need to spend most of your mana on other things, as it gives Lin Sivvi something to do and signals to opponents that Lin Sivvi always has something up her sleeve.

Rappelling Scouts

If you're going to cut any rebel from this list, this is probably the one. I have kept it in so far because sometimes the flying is relevant and sometimes the protection-from-color-of-choice is relevant. I'm currently debating swapping one of these cards out for Ramosian Revivalist, Aven Riftwatcher, or another hatebear or source of card draw.

Mirror Entity

Assuming we don't just out-grind our opponents with our various value engines, Mirror Entity is our usual win condition. As a changeling, it can be tutored into play by Lin Sivvi, and so typically we cheat it onto the battlefield on the end step before the turn on which we win. This little beast can surprise opponents by turning an end-step instant speed army of 1/1 tokens into an army of 10/10 tokens, our smallish hatebears and utility rebels into a horde of giant bruisers, or a geared-up Zealot il-Vec into a one-hit killer (see below). Having Mirror Entity exiled is backbreaking for our deck, however, so wait to tutor in this card until you feel the coast is clear, then ambush your opponents by sneaking it it on the end step before your turn or after your opponents have declared no blockers.

Zealot il-Vec + Equipment

Most EDH decks do not include shadow creatures, which makes Zealot il-Vec uniquely dangerous if we ever draw the right equipment. My current deck runs Sword of Feast and Famine, Sword of Fire and Ice, Quietus Spike, and Grafted Exoskeleton, but in the past I've tried other cards in the Sword cycle and other cards that read "Whenever equipped creature deals combat damage to a player...". When I find one of these equipments in hand or via Stonehewer Giant, I quickly tutor in Zealot il-Vec to start triggering those powerful effects. Quietus Spike's deathtouch also pairs really nicely with Zealot il-Vec's second ability. Grafted Exoskeleton is especially important here, as it lets us deal with opponents who have infinite life and can be a one-turn clock when buffed by cards like Mirror Entity or Cathars' Crusade.

Maskwood Nexus

Maskwood Nexus makes all creatures in our deck into rebel creatures, which enables Lin Sivvi to put any creature in our deck directly onto the battlefield. Enjoy your Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite and Sun Titan!

Illusionist's Bracers

Illusionist's Bracers doubles the abilities of Lin Sivvi, which speeds up our ability to develop a board state and recycle cards from our graveyard. Many Lin Sivvi decks include Rings of Brighthearth or Lithoform Engine for similar reasons, but I found their per activation costs to prohibitively slow the deck down, especially with monowhite's restricted ramping ability.

“If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion,
and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.”
—Abigail Adams, on Lin Sivvi stealing wins after being underestimated

Ramp

Monowhite has never been great at ramping. We've always had Knight of the White Orchid, Weathered Wayfarer and Land Tax, which help us ramp and turn on Emeria, The Sky Ruin. But in recent years we've picked up value engines like Smothering Tithe, Verge Rangers, Boreas Charger, Keeper of the Accord, and Archaeomancer's Map. Verge Rangers is a special tool for our deck, given our ability to easily shuffle the library to put a new card on top. Because monowhite ramp typically requires opponents to have more lands in play than us, Karoo,Guildless Commons, and to a lesser extent Lotus Field ramp us twice over by reducing our land count to enable white's ramp requirements. In addition to these cards, this deck includes Sol Ring and also Sword of Feast and Famine, which we can reliably trigger with our shadow and flying rebels. Lastly, we run several dual-faced cards that can function as either spells or lands: while they aren't the best spells in the game, they give us flexibility to decide whether we need the extra mana or the extra spells. This deck really wants to hit its land drops to facilitate its various rebel tutoring creatures and ultimately to pump up Mirror Entity for the final lethal swing.

Card Advantage

Monowhite is also a weak color in terms of card draw: one of the underestimated strengths of Lin Sivvi is that she functions as a card advantage engine if left unchecked. Esper Sentinel and Alms Collector let us catch up slightly, and our hatebear package is designed to slow opponents down to our level. Palace Jailer acts as removal, and even if we lose the monarch title, evasive rebels like Zealot il-Vec let us quickly steal it back while our defensive rebels discourage attackers from stealing it in the first place. I also play Stonehewer Giant as a poor man's Stoneforge Mystic but with the benefit of a larger body and being a repeatable equipment tutor. Finally, if you can resolve Elspeth, Sun's Champion, every ability on that card is relevant to our deck's plan, and our defensive rebel package can keep her alive a long time. While my current decklist does not include it, Teferi's Puzzle Box can help us cycle through our deck (since Lin Sivvi tutors rebels into play instead of casting them and shuffles our deck regularly) to find our powerful non-rebel cards, while forcing our opponents to play out their combos and powerful creatures before they're fully ready. It works really well with cards like Land Tax to draw extra plains which then get swapped for actual cards or Alms Collector to lock down opponents while drawing us still more cards. However, the downside is the box cycles opponents through their decks quickly too unless you have a relevant hatebear in play, and since they probably have better spells than our monowhite deck, I've dropped this card to avoid unwittingly helping out my opponents.

Hatebears

Monowhite decks often include hatebears to drag opponents down to monowhite's level, but since Lin Sivvi is a card advantage engine that doesn't care about drawing cards or casting spells, she greatly benefits from hatebears that target those two means of acceleration in particular. Rule of Law, Eidolon of Rhetoric, and Archon of Emeria restrict everyone to casting only one card per turn, but since we typically will only cast one card per turn and spend the rest of our mana on Lin Sivvi activations anyways, this restriction hurts our opponents while not impacting us much. Similarly, Spirit of the Labyrinth and Alms Collector restrict card draw engines without hindering our card advantage engine at all. To combat graveyard decks without shutting off our own recursion abilities, we play Angel of Finality and Mimic Vat. Reidane, God of the Worthy  /Valkmira, Protector's Shield deserves special mention, as she's an spellslinger hatebear on one side while her flipped side protects us and our permanents: both sides of this card have done heavy lifting for this deck. Aura of Silence functions as a hatebear but is also included for targeted removal. Finally, Drannith Magistrate is a great card for shutting down opponents' commanders and cast-from-graveyard cards, and Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite does double duty as an anti-token hatebear and makes our own creatures more lethal. While there are more hatebears this deck could run, the purpose of these cards are to slow the game down to our level, not to lock people out entirely. I used to run Aven Mindcensor and Linvala, Keeper of Silence but dropped them because, while they may hinder opponents, they are backbreaking to Lin Sivvi if an opponent to steals them from us.

Token Producers

Our most common win condition of Mirror Entity can come out of nowhere on the previous opponent's end step, so this deck loves cards that can produce tokens at instant speed. Secure the Wastes and White Sun's Zenith are the best token producers we have, but Decree of Justice does a mediocre imitation when it's cycled. We can also generate tokens at sorcery speed via Entreat the Angels, Elspeth, Sun's Champion, and the first ability for Decree of Justice, but this requires us to wait an extra turn before winning. Luminarch Ascension is a wincon on its own as well, and while it is slightly "win more", we can easily flip Hanweir Militia Captain  /Westvale Cult Leader which if unchecked puts us in a dominant position. However, we don't run Anointed Procession, as we aren't focused on tokens and can just as easily win via ordinary rebels and value creatures without the target Anointed Procession puts on us. Also, because our primary way of pumping our tokens up for lethal involves changing their base power/toughness via Mirror Entity, the 4/4 bodies of angel tokens are less relevant for us, which makes both the first ability of Decree of Justice less relevant for us and is another reason why this deck does not include cards like Divine Visitation.

Graveyard Recursion

Sun Titan, Emeria, The Sky Ruin, Luminous Broodmoth, Mistveil Plains, Mimic Vat, and the second ability on Lin Sivvi, Defiant Hero all help you grind out long-term advantage by playing around with the cards in your graveyard. This deck used to include Ramosian Revivalist in order to more quickly and cheaply bring rebels back into play from the graveyard, but given the cost of its ability, I found Lin Sivvi's ability roughly equivalent as-is and mostly sufficient on its own and so no longer include that card.

Board Wipes

As a monowhite deck filled with fairly weak creatures, we benefit from a lot of one-sided board wipes. Citywide Bust, Council's Judgment, Dusk / Dawn, Elspeth, Sun's Champion, and Ravnica at War will generally kill our opponents' creatures while leaving our alone. Our other sorcery-speed spells are either board wipes or dual-sided land cards that were included to give us extra choices at a low cost.

“I have placed information vital to the survival of the Rebellion into the memory systems of this R2 unit...
This is our most desperate hour. Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope.”
—Princess Leia Organa, praying to Obi-Wan to topdeck a wincon

Rebels, Tokens and Mirror Entity

The primary win condition for this deck is slowly putting lots of rebels on the board (or quickly spewing out tokens via one of our mass token-producers), using Lin Sivvi to put Mirror Entity into play (changelings count as rebels), and then dumping all our mana into Mirror Entity to make a giant horde. You can do this either on your preceding opponent's end step for extra mana and an extra body on your turn, or you can do this after your opponents have declared no blockers for the surprise win. Cathars' Crusade and Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite are alternate ways to quickly buff all our creatures, but unfortunately given our sneak-attack win gameplan, most other +1/+1 buff cards are not fast or large enough for our purposes.

Zealot il-Vec + Grafted Exoskeleton/Quietus Spike/Swords of X & Y

Monowhite infect is a win condition very few people expect, which makes Grafted Exoskeleton hilarious. In conjunction with with other equipment or Mirror Entity, I've found it usually functions as a one-shot kill. Quietus Spike + Zealot il-Vec can halve an opponent's health to set them up for a later kill, while the Swords are all good in their own ways.

Luminarch Ascension

If you can stick this on turn 2 and it isn't dealt with right away, you will win the game. If you resolve this in the late game, Lin Sivvi's suite of defensive rebels can probably get it online fairly quickly.

Hanweir Militia Captain  

If you can untap with this guy, you're probably able to generate enough rebels to cause him to flip into Westvale Cult Leader which, if left unchecked, can take over the game. This is the weakest of our wincons, but he does quickly set up wins via Mirror Entity or simply as a large solo monster himself. I should probably be trade him out for a value card like Cataclysmic Gearhulk, more card advantage, or a more immediate/standalone threat, but I'm not sure what I'd replace him with.

Monowhite Goodstuff

Sometimes this deck doesn't win from any one thing but from a combination of everything, as our hatebears drag opponents down while cards like Sun Titan, Cathars' Crusade and Emeria, The Sky Ruin slowly carry us to victory.

“When, in the course of human development, existing institutions prove inadequate to the needs of man, when they serve merely
to enslave, rob, and oppress mankind, the people have the eternal right to rebel against, and overthrow, these institutions.”
—Emma Goldman, on changing her Lin Sivvi EDH playstyle

The Original Lin Sivvi EDH Primer

Kudos to ISBPathfinder for creating the premier primer on Lin Sivvi EDH (http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/commander-edh/multiplayer-commander-decklists/217186-lin-sivvi-the-rebel-scum) over on MtGSalvation. Obviously my build goes in a different direction than theirs, and ISBPathfinder stopped updating a few years ago, but even so, that thread is the best place to start thinking about rebels in EDH. This primer also features some awesome Star Wars alters of various rebel cards.

Lin Sivvi Combo

If you're interested in building Lin Sivvi into a combo deck, michaelvlevine here on TappedOut has a great decklist and primer (https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/white-rebel-motorcycle-club/), though I think they've since migrated over to Heliod, Sun-Crowned as their commander instead. If I get bored with my current setup of Lin Sivvi, theirs would be the combo list which I would model my own after.

Budget Lin Sivvi

I want to shoutout Abe Sergant for his budget EDH guide on Lin Sivvi (http://www.gatheringmagic.com/abesargent-100614-budget-commander-12-rebel-yell). While it's several years out of date now and while I think his list has too many rebels that don't do much (how often will you be able to play cards on your turn, spit out rebels and activate Sword Dancer?), for $35 you can't ask for much better. Plus, he does a great job exploring the deck's combos, tricks and upgrade paths.

Suggestions

Updates Add

I fell away from Magic for a few years, as the town I moved to didn't have a nearby LGS, but I've gotten into it again now that I've moved again to a place with a better gaming scene. In the interim period, it looks like monowhite received a boatload of ramp, card draw, and hatebear effects that this deck sorely needed, so I've given it a massive update. The overall strategy is largely the same, though I've taken out the infinite life combo now, but it's a much sleeker and deadlier deck with these new upgrades.

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Date added 7 years
Last updated 2 years
Exclude colors UBRG
Legality

This deck is Commander / EDH legal.

Rarity (main - side)

9 - 0 Mythic Rares

47 - 0 Rares

18 - 0 Uncommons

6 - 0 Commons

Cards 100
Avg. CMC 3.20
Tokens Angel 4/4 W, Angel Warrior 4/4 W, Cat 2/2 W, City's Blessing, Emblem Elspeth, Sun's Champion, Human 1/1 W, Human Cleric 1/1 BW, Phyrexian Germ 0/0 B, Shapeshifter 2/2 U, Soldier 1/1 W, The Monarch, Treasure, Warrior 1/1 W
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