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Sythis, the Staxtress

Commander / EDH Enchantment GW (Selesnya) Pillow Fort Protection Stax Value Engine

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Enchantment (32)

Creature (22)

Instant (13)

Commander (1)

Commander: foil Sythis, Harvest's Hand

Land (29)

Sorcery (3)

Maybeboard

Enchantment (4)

Land (2)

Instant (3)

Sorcery (2)

Creature (2)

cEDH Sythis Combo

Sythis has been revamped to be a much faster stax routed deck from the pillow fort that it was in previous versions. Currently the packages in this deck are meant to contain our opponents until we can hit the Heliod/Ball or a Luminarch each turn to get angels. Other wincons in our package include Elesh Norn and Nature's Revolt. And Linvala, Nature's Revolt.

This particular build is capable of keeping up with most tier 2 cEDH decks and some tier 1 cEDH decks. (Kess, First Sliver to name some)

A typical opening hand we want holds roughly 3 land. (Preferably 1 of each color) one or two enchantments and possibly one mana dork and enchantress.

Optimal hand is 3 lands, mana dork, 2 enchantment and one or two hate pieces. So we can get acceleration. Sol Ring in this hand will be beneficial but not optimal like most decks want.

Our plan is to be able to stax our opponent out before they can get an early game advantage over us. Cards like Kataki, War's Wage is a great card to have in our opening hand if we are able to drop it safely on turn 2 or 3 to hinder our opponents mana ramp.

Another piece we would consider having in that slot is Collector Ouphe or Stony Silence to confidently shut down artifacts as we continue to progress further into the early/mid game and pick up value on the way there with our commander and many other important pieces to us.

Moving more into the mid-late game we want to start assembling our pieces with Enlightened Tutor or Eladamri's Call to grab things like our Elesh Norn or Linvala or even Heliod, depending on the route we want to go. And hit Nature's Revolt or Walking Ballista to be able to start bringing the game to a close.

Having a card draw engine on our commander will make this much faster as we can accelerate and push beyond many of our opponents into that advantage that we want.

Right now one of the big things this build has is the ability to get around Rule of Law effects with Sigarda's Aid. Being able to flash in our Flickering Ward or Whip Silk during an opponents turn to draw additional cards is super valuable to us and get that card draw every turn to fuel our Solitary Confinement engine as well.

Where Sythis gains steam in the nearly/mid game with her card draw and life gain, she lacks in removal due to her colors. While we have Beast Within Generous Gift Swords to Plowshare Path to Exile we don't have the explosiveness that red or black do with mass board wipes without going into Winds of Rath or Wrath of God territory. However, we make up for that in the usage of other premiere board wipes in the deck. Cleansing Meditation Settle the Wreckage being the named cards in this deck
As explained above, there are faults to her as a commander. Her removal package and the lack of blue makes her slightly weaker than Tuvasa. So why should we play her as our Enchantress Commander?

Simply put, how we're text is worded. "Whenever you cast an enchantment, you gain 1 life and draw a card." Tuvasa will only let us draw a card for the FIRST enchantment that we cast. While Sythis allows us to draw a card everytime we cast an enchantment. This means that cards like Flickering Ward and Whip Silk can be abused by Sythis to make her more effective on the battlefield at giving us more card advantage than our opponents and get us closer to closing the game out. If we really wanted to rely on this advantage, cards like Conviction and Sun Clasp can be played in the deck to help increase this reliability, although as 2 mana spells for casting and 1 mana to bounce to our hand. This is where Sythis gets all of her advantages over Tuvasa and other enchantress commanders from.

As we go through the decklist there are cards on my maybe list that SHOULD be in this deck. I'll go through why they are just in a maybe pile right now.

Finale of Devastation: Currently this card requires me to have a good amount of creatures on the board to do anything with it. Which right now that will require Monastery Mentor for me to use in succession to follow up with the army. In future builds this card may replace Settle the Wreckage.

Worldly Tutor Worldly SHOULD and deserves a slot in this deck. However, at the time being this deck has no specific slot to cut for Worldly Tutor outside of Eladamri's Call which is very important to the decks function as a tutor in the deck. However, as we expand upon the idea of finding cards like Collector Ouphe this card may see play in the deck very soon to finish optimalization.

Green Sun's Zenith: Yet another card that 100% deserves a slot in this deck since I play Dryad Arbor. This is a card that I have wanted to add to this deck for awhile however, currently it finds me mana dorks and a few important creatures that are not really stax pieces that I need. It can't find me my Drannith Magistrate or Hushbringer or even Honor Guard. So it really is hindered by the fact it only grabs a green creature to play. This is a card that if anything would be a maybe on this list for a long time. And instead Worldly Tutor will take the slot that I would run it at. Being a sorcery does not benefit this deck in the slightest.

Endurance / Geier Reach Sanitarium: Currently, Sythis decks are running the Endurance/Sanitarium loop to mill out our opponents. While this is a route that one day I will be following as well, this is not a route that I will follow until I understand it a bit more as the loop requires some hoops to jump through to be able to establish the loop as a solid infinite mill loop. Something that at this moment, I am trying to figure out the proper loop and cycle of doing.

Force of Vigor: A card that should be in here as well however, with the use of 0 mana destroy 2 artifacts/enchantments being great, I can't think of a slot that I would slide this into without disrupting the integrity of that 4 cmc slot.

Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth this is a card that WILL be incorporated very soon to this list to help start integrating the Endurance loop at some point and help reduce the number of basics we are running.

Wheel of Sun and Moon this is a VERY odd card. I think that this can actually benefit the deck more than hurt it in the Endurance loop. Everyone draws a card, everyone pitches a card. I put the discarded card on the bottom of my deck and continue to mill my opponents to death. Sounds simple enough right? I think this card actually replaces an Eldrazi in my deck to ensure that I dont just mill myself out messing up the Endurance loop.

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Quaratine of Light and our thoughts. — Nov. 15, 2021
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So we are focusing on the next level of the deck running a 3 card combo for the future. Quarantine Field + Gauntlet of Light + Sanctum Weaver in the late game, this should be exiling everything our opponents have in play that isn't a land. Running pieces to slow our opponents down, while speeding ourselves up to achieve this has been something that I have been working on.

For the future, we are looking at dropping Sigil of the Empty Throne to make this happen, along with a most likely Yasharn, Implacable Earth As the current struggle in cEDH or higher tier is that they dont need to pay life or sacrifice. The potential for cards that stop ETB effects is going to come into play in this deck very shortly. Tocatli Honor Guard will be subbed into the deck to keep a lock on things like Thassa's Oracle as we near the end game.

I've seen a lot of the Sythis decks starting to go control/stax in order to push the game into a state where the game ends in a lock out. While I find this to be probably the most effective way to play and may start leaning the deck over it stax/prison (More so than it already is) I'm currently not looking at turning this into the Lockout dot deck that Sythis Enchantress is currently doing. However, as the brew continues to develop and grow and I trim the fat off of the deck, we may see cards slide in and out of the deck. I've considered adding more fetchlands recently, along with cutting some of the mediocre cards. Initially Mirari's Wake was not in the list until I placed it back in tonight. With these developments, there are new cards coming out that we can add in. I have to check to see if they finished the Innistrad check land cycle. If so, I can incorporate that G/W land into the deck. Many of the lands in this deck may start cycling out for lands that can be used in both colors as we evolve and progress through the era of Sythis Enchantress in this deck.

This deck initially had all of the enchantresses that it could minus Eidolon of Blossoms. I felt that the need for ETB was so null and void that we did not need it. However, we are still looking at the potential for Femeref Enchantress in this deck.

Recently, the lock out of Out of Time + Starfield of Nyx was cut from the deck as much fun as it would've been to play with it, I found that it hindered me more than I would've liked. And it is not every time that I will have cards like Teferi's Protection in my hand to stop myself from being locked. (However, if that did happen, the synergy between the two would not work as Starfield and Out of Time have to exist together.)

The decision to add in Sigarda, Host of Herons was an easy one as she had been in the early development list of this deck and stayed through it all. With the dominance of decks like Meren of Clan Nel Toth in my pods, I've leaned more on the inability to sacrifice moderately high. The same goes for Yasharn, as the Aetherflux decks came up and then started to fade out from my playgroups. The problem that I have currently with Yasharn is he is a nonbo with multiple cards in my deck to include Aetherflux Reservoir Where I have to cut him.

Some cards that will be future implements into the deck are Elvish Mystic Sakura-Tribe Elder Fyndhorn Elves. For those of you that have stuck with the deck for awhile, the Fyndhorn Elves was initially in the original design. However, I removed it so I can add in the promo Llanowar Elves from Dominaria. Same type of dork, different name and one was prettier than the other. Easy choice. Grasp of Fate is another card being considered for the deck as removal on every opponents side that they can get rid of and I can bring back off of Hall of Heliod seems like something we may want to consider.

Experimental cards currently: Hallowed Haunting and Dawnhart Geist

I feel that both of these cards may actually accelerate things that we want to do. While having Sigil of the Empty Throne in the deck is currently helping, Hallowed Haunting may actually accelerate the run to Flying and giving us bodies. Monastery Mentor can help us to get to the 7 creatures, if we don't already have 7 enchantments on the field. To reflect back, this is not a token deck, nor do I think this should evolve into a tokens deck. In the future I may be removing Sigil and Haunting as they may represent the deck as being too slow for it. While Mentor does nothing but accelerate us.

Dawnhart Geist I feel can do a lot of work for the deck for what we want to do moving forward. Being a much faster Nyx-Fleece Ram with every enchantment that I cast. It pairs well with Sythis, Harvest's Hand and Herald of the Pantheon as gaining 4 life per enchantment (in a perfect world, but most likely 3 life per enchantment) seems to work extraordinarily well)

Thank you for taking some time to read these further developments and the synergies that will be tested moving forwards. I look forward to writing more on this and my results upon testing.

My own records — Nov. 15, 2021
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Revision 18 See all

(3 years ago)

+1 Elvish Spirit Guide main
-1 Paradise Druid main