We are all familiar with soul sisters, right? You've got the lovely
Soul Warden
,
Soul's Attendant
, and
Auriok Champion
that start off the core of the deck. You want things entering the battlefield frequently to build up a buffer between you and your opponent, and wait out the game until you're ready to end it. Typically the sisters are in a mono-white lifegain shell (with
Serra Ascendant
s and
Archangel of Thune
) or red and white agro (with
Norin the Wary
and
Champion of the Parish
) and supposedly Soul Sisters used to be a black/white deck as well. In my opinion neither option is suitable for the modern metagame so we have to ask ourselves: What does a competitive deck need?
Card advantage?
Recursion?
Interaction?
creature and noncreature threats?
sustainability?
Well, if you combine the best of Soul Sisters Past, you get a deck that has all of the above! Mardu Soul Sisters gives you a versatile deck. we're talking a midrange deck inside of a token deck inside of a lifegain deck. Everything serves a purpose and I'm going to explain why each color matters.
White:
White is the core of soul sisters. It gives you your set up cards such as Soul Warden + Soul's Attendant
, your pay off cards such as
Ajani's Pridemate
, and your long game cards such as
Path to Exile
,
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
and
Ranger of Eos
to help you stay in the game after your early turns. Finally, once your opponent has thought that they handled all your pesky little 1/1s, you get to hit them with a
Return to the Ranks
and watch any hope they have disappear before your eyes.
Sideboard options are limitless but some of the essentials that white gives are
Leyline of Sanctity
to combat discard and storm, kataki, war's mage for affinity, and
Wear / Tear
for all types of threats.
Red:
Red gives you arguably the least but the most. It opens up your sideboard options so you can be flexible when you need to, but mainboard it's primary contribution is the combo of
Norin the Wary
+
Purphoros, God of the Forge
to eventually kill your opponent. Of course it features in the mana cost of another all-star kolaghon's command but we'll cover that in the next section
Sideboard highlights include artifact hate options and lightning bolt if you need flexible removal for your local meta. My current meta doesn't call for me to use the red splash all too much, but for a while
Huatli, Warrior Poet
had a SB slot.
Black:
First of all you can just read the text on
Thoughtseize
. This is the color i hadn't tried with Soul Sisters before and oh my goodness is it worth it. Black brings some MAJOR threats that with burry your opponent quickly in the form of
Bitterblossom
and
Dark Confidant
, opens your removal suite up to include
Fatal Push
and an unsuspecting key player: Kolaghon's Command. This card warrants it's price tag without a question. The ability to shock your opponent/creature AND/OR bring a creature back to your hand AND/OR make your opponent discard AND/OR kill an artifact is insane. Especially when
Ensnaring Bridge
just shuts your down, this card is incredibly helpful in almost any situation. Lastly black gives you access to one of the most pesky cards to deal with in modern:
Lingering Souls
. Being able to dump these guys out then keeping them in your graveyard until after a board wipe is one of the strongest parts of this deck. It bounces back from losing everything very quickly.
Sideboard highlights for black that I use are
Surgical Extraction
to fight storm,
Leyline of the Void
to stop dredge and control decks that use their graveyard.
This deck has the removal to keep aggressive decks like death shadow and Affinity at bay, grindy and flexible enough to work out wins against control and lanturn, and wide enough to take down most anything your opponent want's to throw your way. In my experience, the hardest match up is Tron variants because the manabase doesnt really let room in for
Ghost Quarter
but that's remediable with
Crumble to Dust
which is more expensive but more effective at neutering tron.
I hope you see what this deck is capable of! It's already putting up results online for me and while this is an EXPENSIVE paper soul sister deck it's competing so well i am very tempted to give it a shot. Thanks for reading! Hope you thumb me ;)
