Yisan, the Wanderer Bard.

I made this guide because i think Yisan, the Wanderer Bard can contribute a great budget cedh list, that can challenge even powerfull non-budget T1 cEDH decks (Commanders by Power Level [EDH Tier List]). We don't need a fancy landbase and most of the hatebears and corepieces we play are cheap. I reviewed Yisan, the Wanderer Bard since it got some new cards in Collector Ouphe , Finale of Devastation , Force of Vigor and Veil of Summer . I hope you enjoy this Primer :).

I will always use Karametra's Acolyte for the specific explanation of the combo, if there are more outlets for this combo.

Temur Sabertooth + Great Oak Guardian

  1. Tap your manapeople for at least 8x
  2. Use 6x to play Great Oak Guardian to untap all of your manaproducing dudes.
  3. Use 2x to activate Temur Sabertooth and bounce Great Oak Guardian

In case your Opponents are having blockers or you dont have enough attackers, you need your people tap for at least 9x . Given you can make infinte mana while continue the loop and then Verse 8 Yisan into Craterhoof Behemoth to get trample and an additional attacker.

Temur Sabertooth + Wirewood Symbiote + Elvish Visionary + Karametra's Acolyte or Priest of Titania or Marwyn, the Nurturer or Elvish Archdruid

You can swap in this combo Elvish Visionary with Elvish Mystic but this will produce just infinite mana. Your manaproducer needs to tap for at least for 5. Can be handy if you have something like Green Sun's Zenith or Finale of Devastation in hand.

  1. Tap Karametra's Acolyte for at least 5
  2. Use Wirewood Symbiote to untap Karametra's Acolyte bouncing Elvish Visionary .
  3. Use 2x Temur Sabertooth return Wirewood Symbiote to your hand.
  4. Have at least 3x floating.
  5. Use the 3x to replay Wirewood Symbiote and Elvish Visionary . Draw a card.
  6. Loop this to draw your deck and make infinite mana

Staff of Domination + Karametra's Acolyte or Priest of Titania or Marwyn, the Nurturer or Elvish Archdruid

  1. Tap Karametra's Acolyte for at least 5
  2. Use 3x to ",: untap target creature" to untap Karametra's Acolyte
  3. Use 1x to ": Untap Staff of Domination "
  4. Have at least 1x floating
  5. Loop this to make infinite mana
  6. Use ",: Draw a card" and ": Untap Staff of Domination " to draw your deck

You can gain infinite life with this cycle. Can be good against some finite Curiosity +niv-mizzet lines.

Umbral Mantle (+ Yisan, Wanderer Bard) + Karametra's Acolyte or Priest of Titania or Marwyn, the Nurturer or Elvish Archdruid

  1. Tap Karametra's Acolyte for at least 4x
  2. Equip Karametra's Acolyte with Umbral Mantle and use 3x to ",:: This creature gets +2/+2 until end of turn." to untap Karametra's Acolyte .
  3. Have at least 1x floating
  4. Loop this to make infinite mana
  5. Equip Yisan, Wanderer Bard with Umbral Mantle . Use it's ability to verse up to Temur Sabertooth and Craterhoof Behemoth . Loop Craterhoof Behemoth
  6. If you DON'T have Yisan, Wanderer Bard online sometimes you can kill the table with manadorks and hatebears since Umbral Mantle give stats too.

It is very noteworthy that Marwyn, the Nurturer taps for her power, so she and Umbral Mantle can go off very fast.

What do we do if we have infinite mana and can draw our deck?

Most of the time your playgroup will resign and start reshuffling their decks after this happened, but it is necessary that we can contribute a theoretical win here. It is indeed noteworthy that ,because some of our combos only work over activated and triggered abilities, our opponents could have some counterspells left at this point. We can simply avoid them simply through Veil of Summer (be carefull it draws a card!) and Autumn's Veil . Permanent-removal like Swords to Plowshares or Abrupt Decay will certainly be used on us by this now.

  1. The simpliest attempt to win is playing at least 3 creatures (we could play all tho ¯_(ツ)_/¯) then go for Finale of Devastation with at least =40, the alternative is looping Craterhoof Behemoth with Temur Sabertooth . Use Eterneal Witness and Autumn's Veil , Veil of Summer to protect yourself or recover pieces.

  2. The second method if you can't attack this turn somehow is drawing until you hit the veils, Eternal Witness , Somberwald Stag , Beast Within and Temur Sabertooth . Use Beast Within to destroy all enemy permanents recover it by looping Eternal Witness with Temur Sabertooth . Then kill the remaining beast token with Somberwald Stag looping with Eternal Witness and Temur Sabertooth or with Ulvenwald Tracker , Lightning Greaves some untap shenanigans and again looping some big ass dude who can fight those beasts with Eternal Witness and Temur Sabertooth . Then play all of your cards in hand and threaten to win next turn while your opponents have just their cards in hand. Dangerous because we give our opponents an edge but most of the time lethal. This line will be most of the time unnecessary.

First I want to say that this decklist is running hatepieces, I chosed because of the current situations in my enviroment. It is one of biggest strenght's of Yisan, the Wanderer Bard to fetch out hatebears against the table. It is very important for the deckbuilder to choose the right hatepieces and the amount of them against his playgroup. Needless to say that hatepieces are never contributing us an active approach to win the game, they are just buying time. Imagine playing with three friends new to Mtg with precon decks. If to choose, you would disboard all of the hatepieces to board more active cards. So the motto must be: as much hatebears/stax pieces as we need, the least we can afford to play. As much tempo as possible. This is the reason i decided against staxpieces by the way.

Deckcore Generally spoken all cards you can combo with (look at the chapter 'combo') or contributing T2 Yisan, the Wanderer Bard are core. As well as Quirion Ranger , Scryb Ranger and Seedborn Muse once you played her you will se her potential even if she is 5 mana.

General thoughts on cards can be incomplete, here i talk off-budget. Maybe you get some ideas for your own build.

Creature Removal Show

Draw engines/spells and card selection Show

Gravehate Show

Stax Show

Artifact and enchantment removal Show

Miscelanious Cards Show

Mana Show

Tutor spells Show

Every Yisan, the Wanderer Bard deck is heavily build around Yisan, the Wanderer Bard himself. This must be clear and is not changeable. While getting out threads and interaction through an activated ability on the board on wich our opponents often can't react, relying on our commander is our bigget weakness. Further Yisan, the Wanderer Bard tends to be a little bit slow compared to other decklist. Even if we get 20+ mana we can find ourselves in the position where we can't win with it. The pilot of Yisan, the Wanderer Bard must recognize his standing at the table and have to evaluate wich versing lines he have to chose to get the highest winning chances. For matchups look down below.

I will start going through some verse lines and explain my opinions on them.

Verse 1 Show

Verse 2 Show

Verse 3 Show

Verse 4 Show

Verse 5 Show

Verse 6 Show

Verse 7 Show

Verse 8 Show

I decided to make a chapter about noteworthy inteactions in this deck since we have a lot of triggers that harmonize with each other and can excellerate our boardstate.

Quirion Ranger or Scryb Ranger + Sakura-Tribe Scout or Llanowar Scout

aquires 3 Forest in play. By turns i mean our enemies turns.

  1. turn: Tap 3 Forest and activate Yisan, the Wanderer Bard . Untap Yisan, the Wanderer Bard with Quirion Ranger and bounce tapped Forest . Tap sakura-triber scout to return Forest to the battlefield.
  2. turn: Use Quirion Ranger to untap Sakura-Tribe Scout and bounce tapped Forest . Tap Sakura-Tribe Scout to bring Forest into play.
  3. turn: Repeat above. Now you have 3 open and Yisan, the Wanderer Bard is untapped. Use him on endstep and go in your turn. We got one free Yisan activation.

Burgeoning + Quirion Ranger or Scryb Ranger

Remember that Burgeoning creates a trigger on wich we can activate Quirion Ranger to untap one of our dudes to instantly return the bounced Forest . Remember that u can activate Yisan in respond to a Burgeoning trigger

Quirion Ranger or Scryb Ranger or Wirewood Symbiote + Yisan, the Wanderer Bard

This is the so called double versing. Needless to say it requires 6 open mana.

  1. Activate Yisan, the wander Bard, add a verse counter it's part of the cost. Keep priority.
  2. Activate Quirion Ranger to untap yisan. Pass priority
  3. Now the 1. activiation of yisan is laying on the stack. Tap yisan, the wandere bard again and add a verse counter.Pass priority. Now you have instead of one 2 and one 3 verse for example two 3 verses resolving. Most commonly this is used to get both Temur Sabertooth and Karametra's Acolyte .

Yisan, the Wanderer Bard has the easiest and mulligan decisions in the whole format. Since we rely heavily on our commander in our gameplan we need to get him out ASAP. Almost every Yisan List is build to get him out at least T2 in a regular basis. The odds drawing at least 2 lands and T1 ramp is round abut 45%. This makes it a 70% probability to have a Yisan T2 hand with your free mulligan. The probability to have Yisan T2 when you go down to 6 (considered playing with london mulligan) is even 83%. Going further down to 5 Handcards we have already 90% chance to already have seen a T2 line of play. This math doesn't involve our topdeck (!).

Our main goal is getting Yisan out T2 can change a little if you play stax and faster mana, so you may sometimes decide to play the staxpieces first. I give the advise to mulligan very agressivly until you get a hand wich contains at least 2 lands and some 1 cmc-ramp. Hands we see get better if we see some interaction or tutors. Tutoring for a Seedborn Muse can close the game game very fast because she gives us 4 Yisan activations per turncycle. Having a cheap piece that we normally want to search with Yisan, the Wanderer Bard for like Quirion Ranger , Priest of Titania or Sakura-Tribe Scout can be wery handy too because it gives us more room and freedom for Yisan. In general Yisan can shine if you have a tempo piece on your starthand like Burgeoning , Carpet of Flowers or instant artifact removal with wich you can heavily annoy your opponents gameplan. Often those interactions are good to buy some time by destroying a Manacrypt or Mana Vault .

At the end for further Deatils about this deck I would consider reading following Primer. It's fantastic and very accurat:

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Date added 4 years
Last updated 4 years
Legality

This deck is Commander / EDH legal.

Rarity (main - side)

4 - 0 Mythic Rares

25 - 0 Rares

25 - 0 Uncommons

16 - 0 Commons

Cards 100
Avg. CMC 2.44
Tokens Beast 3/3 G
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