I Call Her Vera: Sidisi EDH [PRIMER]

Commander / EDH Budget BUG (Sultai) Dredge Infinite Combo Multiplayer Primer

Daedalus19876

Creature (44)

• 1x Aphetto Alchemist
• 1x Bloom Tender
• 1x Coffin Queen
• 1x Craterhoof Behemoth
• 1x Deadeye Navigator
• 1x Deathrite Shaman
• 1x Disciple of Bolas
• 1x Doom Whisperer
• 1x Dread
• 1x Elves of Deep Shadow
• 1x Eternal Witness
• 1x Extractor Demon
• 1x Fauna Shaman
• 1x Forgotten Creation
• 1x Golgari Grave-Troll
• 1x Greenwarden of Murasa
• 1x Hedron Crab
• 1x Hell's Caretaker
• 1x Hermit Druid
• 1x Izoni, Thousand-Eyed
• 1x Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur
• 1x Kessig Cagebreakers
• 1x Krosan Restorer
• 1x Mirror-Mad Phantasm
• 1x Mogis's Marauder
• 1x Muldrotha, the Gravetide
• 1x Notion ThiefGC
• 1x Nyx Weaver
• 1x Peregrine Drake
• 1x Phenax, God of Deception
• 1x Profaner of the Dead
• 1x Ramunap Excavator
• 1x Razaketh, the Foulblooded
• 1x Sakura-Tribe Elder
• 1x Selhoff Occultist
• 1x Sewer Nemesis
• 1x Shambling Shell
• 1x Sheoldred, Whispering One
• 1x Somberwald Sage
• 1x Stinkweed Imp
• 1x The Gitrog Monster
• 1x Underrealm Lich
• 1x Whisper, Blood Liturgist
• 1x Wonder

Land (34)

• 1x Ash Barrens
• 1x Breeding Pool
• 1x Cephalid Coliseum
• 1x City of Brass
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Dakmor Salvage
• 1x Dimir Aqueduct
• 1x Evolving Wilds
• 1x Exotic Orchard
• 1x Forbidden Orchard
• 2x Forest
• 1x Gemstone Mine
• 1x Golgari Rot Farm
• 1x Grand Coliseum
• 2x Island
• 1x Llanowar Wastes
• 1x Mana Confluence
• 1x Opulent Palace
• 1x Overgrown Tomb
• 1x Reflecting Pool
• 1x Simic Growth Chamber
• 2x Swamp
• 1x Terramorphic Expanse
• 1x Twilight Mire
• 1x Underground River
• 1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
• 1x Vivid Creek
• 1x Vivid Grove
• 1x Vivid Marsh
• 1x Watery Grave
• 1x Yavimaya Coast

Commander (1)

Sorcery (10)

• 1x Buried Alive
• 1x Dread Return
• 1x Exhume
• 1x Final Parting
• 1x Life from the Loam
• 1x Living Death
• 1x Reanimate
• 1x Seasons Past
• 1x Victimize
• 1x Yawgmoth's Will

Enchantment (4)

• 1x Animate Dead
• 1x Dance of the Dead
• 1x Necromancy
• 1x Path of Discovery

Artifact (4)

• 1x Altar of Dementia
• 1x Embalmer's Tools
• 1x Mesmeric Orb
• 1x Sol Ring

Instant (3)

• 1x Entomb
• 1x Songs of the Damned
• 1x Wake the Dead

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Sideboard

Land (5)

• 1x Bloodstained Mire
• 1x Flooded Strand
• 1x Polluted Delta
• 1x Windswept Heath
• 1x Wooded Foothills

Creature (1)

• 1x Gravespawn Sovereign

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Maybeboard

Creature (8)

• 1x Apprentice Necromancer
• 1x Filth
• 1x Geralf's Masterpiece
• 1x Golgari Thug
• 1x Kederekt Leviathan
• 1x Meren of Clan Nel Toth
• 1x Palinchron
• 1x Sire of Stagnation

Land (2)

• 1x Academy Ruins
• 1x Buried Ruin

Instant (1)

• 1x Gnaw to the Bone

Sorcery (1)

• 1x Bitter Ordeal

Enchantment (2)

• 1x Oversold Cemetery
• 1x Survival of the FittestGC

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Cheap, powerful, fun, and unique graveyard EDH deck. Check it out! :) But don't just listen to me...

Biffy12: "Fearsome EDH deck to play against."

malincar: "Your Sidisi Deck is pure genius, and budget to boot."

Maringam: "Ferocious - I tried this against my Wrexial and... Got wrexed?"

Casey4321: "I had to keep a notebook on hand for all the graveyard interactions, but man this deck is vicious!"

HalfLife4Mac: "Sheer brilliance... Seriously fun deck! This may be a deck I want to foil out because I love it so much!"

It's also the highest-rated Sidisi, Brood Tyrant deck on TappedOut, so I'm happy with its success!

This is the very first EDH deck I built, and I've spent years tuning it. Unusual, whimsical, perhaps-unique graveyard strategy. Possible to kill all opponents on Turn 3. Breaks many junk rares absolutely in half. Quite adaptable, and can be built on a very tight budget. Essentially immune to board wipes. Competitive in multiplayer, but it can hold its own quite well in 1v1. Often overpowering unless the opponent is playing heavy graveyard hate...

If this interests you, check out detailed information below to learn more! ;)

History

This is the very first deck I ever built, and I've been tinkering with it for years now - it has a very special place in my heart. This deck was also initially built under an extremely tight budget (originally less than $40 in total), but I've slowly acquired the expensive pieces and upgraded it. The only area that I still need to improve is the landbase.

I was sick of seeing unusable cards in my graveyard, so I built this deck to recycle as many cards as possible in my graveyard. It often feels like the graveyard is my hand (as a large proportion of cards can be returned or reanimated with their own effects), so any self-mill is equivalent to drawing a card. Since my GY is my main source of value here, I am intentionally not playing any Eldrazi Titans.

This reliance on a full graveyard has positive and negative effects:

Negative: My deck is VERY vulnerable to Bojuka Bog and Rest in Peace . There is a reason its old name was 'Sidisi Suicide Combo'.

Positive: There are usually between ten and twenty cards that can be played directly from the graveyard, making the deck essentially impervious to boardwipes - the more creatures are in graveyards, the more powerful it becomes. It also tends to gain massive board state in a single turn once the graveyard is established.

This deck is powerful because of its adaptability. Depending on your draws and what you mill, it shifts seamlessly between aggro, combo, and reanimator (each of which relies on self-mill). Each path requires in-depth knowledge of the deck, which is why the deck can be tricky to pilot:

The Combo Plan

This deck has at least 5 major combos, two of which can be achieved as early as Turn 3:

The T3 Combo-Kill(s)

Option 1:

T1: Island, Sol Ring , Mesmeric Orb

T2: Forest, Basalt Monolith

T3: Swamp, Sidisi, Brood Tyrant , MILL MYSELF (now with infinite zombies), Dread Return targeting Eternal Witness , returning/playing Altar of Dementia , milling everyone without an Eldrazi Titan to death.

Option 2:

T1: Swamp, Sol Ring

T2: Island, Buried Alive (fetching Peregrine Drake and Deadeye Navigator into the GY), and Hedron Crab

T3: Forest, Victimize , achieve infinite mana of all three colors, cast Sidisi, Brood Tyrant , blink Sidisi, Brood Tyrant repeatedly for infinite Zombies, and win in any one of several ways (or just swing for lethal).

The five main combos are as follow:

Deadeye Navigator + Peregrine Drake (infinite mana; recasting Sidisi, Brood Tyrant infinitely yields infinite self-mill and creatures)

Altar of Dementia + Extractor Demon + Sidisi, Brood Tyrant (infinite mill, since I have Dread in my library)

Dakmor Salvage + The Gitrog Monster (infinite self-mill and card draw, if I have 8 cards in hand in my cleanup step)

Basalt Monolith + Mesmeric Orb (infinite self-mill; yields infinite creatures with Sidisi, Brood Tyrant out)

Mirror-Mad Phantasm + Necrotic Ooze (mill my entire deck automatically; temporarily removed from deck until I can find slots)

Of course, there are also many non-infinite combos in the deck:

Hell's Caretaker + Laboratory Maniac / Deep Analysis + Laboratory Maniac : This wins as soon as you have an empty library - one of the simplest win conditions.

There are many strong pairs to reanimate with Victimize (or Wake the Dead ): Deadeye Navigator + Peregrine Drake for infinite mana, Disciple of Bolas + Sewer Nemesis for obscene card draw, Profaner of the Dead + Terastodon to nuke noncreature permanents with no downside, et cetera. And of course, reanimating Archaeomancer or Greenwarden of Murasa or Eternal Witness can retrieve Victimize for another use.

Songs of the Damned + Yawgmoth's Will should be game if it resolves. Same goes of the new Magus of the Will + Songs of the Damned . If I need nonblack colors for the combo I choose, I can cast Amulet of Vigor + Splendid Reclamation to get all of the lands from my GY to battlefield untapped (often generating 20 mana or more). You can set up any of the infinite combos easily by this method - just be aware that you have to actually execute the combo on the next opponent's upkeep, because Yawgmoth's Will turns off your self-mill for the turn.

Although this is not the main plan, Strip Mine plus Life from the Loam or Crucible of Worlds easily shut down land shenanigans, and can be a strong draw engine when paired with The Gitrog Monster .

Ashnod's Altar is one of the most important combo enablers in this list, and it's doubly good with Living Death (since you can “keep” all of your nontoken creatures, and re-trigger their ETB effects).

The Aggro Plan

It's very easy to drop Sidisi, Brood Tyrant and quickly generate between ten and fifteen Zombies. Even without using any reanimation, it's easy to swing for massive damage to take out a player or two.

For this path, large beaters such as Sewer Nemesis and Golgari Grave-Troll are invaluable. Wonder used to be in the deck, and might rejoin the 99 to facilitate combat damage. It's also relatively easy to reanimate large threats such as Terastodon to gain early power via reanimation.

In the mid-game, once you have a somewhat full graveyard, Living Death often allows easy aggro victories. It acts as a Wrath of God stapled to a Twilight's Call : you end up with a massive board, while your opponents frequently lose everything.

The Reanimator Plan

The combos can be somewhat vulnerable to counterspells and disruption - particularly, if Dread Return is countered.

However, the deck still can win via a reanimator strategy, or can directly head in that direction in the early game.

The good reanimator hands permit you to cheat Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur , Sheoldred, Whispering One , or Terastodon into play on T3 or earlier.

This is easily achieved with Entomb , Buried Alive , or simple end-of-turn discard, as long as you have cheap reanimation in hand (such as Reanimate or Animate Dead or Victimize ).

In the late game, mass reanimation is often a path to a strong aggro finish - particularly by resolving Living Death to wipe your opponents' fields and bolster yours.

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Also, check out my $25 hyper-budget build of this deck!

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$25 Extreme Budget $idisi EDH

Commander / EDH Daedalus19876

SCORE: 94 | 55 COMMENTS | 17547 VIEWS | IN 75 FOLDERS

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REQUESTED CONTRIBUTIONS

This deck is simply a blast to pilot. So many options at any time, once your graveyard is full. I know that I could make it more competitive by going off-theme, but it was always intended to just be fun to play and to tickle my Johnny sensibilities. There are also many cards I would like to add, but it is very hard to find cards to cut.

What are other cards that would help with the strategy outlined above?

Are there other good graveyard-based combos or interactions that I have forgotten?

What are some other powerful reanimation threats in color?

How would you thwart graveyard hate?

How would you upgrade the land-base?

How would you do all of the above without lowering the creature count below 1/3?

If possible, please include suggestions of cards to cut as well. Thank you all, and happy deckbuilding!

Top Ranked	Achieved #8 position overall 10 years ago Achieved #7 position in Commander / EDH Primer 6 years ago
Date added	10 years
Last updated	6 years
Key combos	Deadeye Navigator + Peregrine Drake Basalt Monolith + Mesmeric Orb Mirror-Mad Phantasm + Necrotic Ooze Hell's Caretaker + Laboratory Maniac Altar of Dementia + Extractor Demon + Sidisi, Brood Tyrant Songs of the Damned + Yawgmoth's Will Magus of the Will + Songs of the Damned Dakmor Salvage + The Gitrog Monster Deep Analysis + Laboratory Maniac Disciple of Bolas + Sewer Nemesis Profaner of the Dead + Terastodon Amulet of Vigor + Splendid Reclamation
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	18 - 0 Mythic Rares 38 - 6 Rares 27 - 0 Uncommons 10 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.68
Tokens	Insect 1/1 BG, Morph 2/2 C, Spirit 1/1 C, Wolf 2/2 G, Zombie 2/2 B
Folders	Blackish Archetypes I'm Interested In (EDH), Cool EDH Decks, Commander Folder, Sedisi , Interesting Decks, Good Decks to buy, Reference Decks, EDH (ELITE), Agenda, Decks i may want to build