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Sidisi, Brood Tyrant: A cEDH Primer

A very warm welcome to all! The following is a detailed primer for our legendary naga commander. This primer has taken quite some time to prepare, and it is my understanding that with the printing of new cards, coupled with bans/unbans this deck and primer will never truly be finished. With that said it will be updated as quickly as possible if changes in the commander environment change.

Who I Am

I’m Snax_n_staX (you can also call me Kam)! I’m relatively new to EDH, as I’ve only been playing for a little over a year. I started off collecting green cards that I liked based off the artwork (loved the idea of Mother Nature calling upon the biggest and fiercest monsters to pummel her enemies into submission). Then I started playing 60 card decks with no synergy; they were really just a collection of cards I was given or had bought and made something out of them. I quickly became bored of this and that’s when I was introduced to Commander. I became attached to the idea of a powerful legendary creature leading an army into battle. However, as with my 60 card decks I saw that my decks were slow and weren’t really all that effective. I started using resources like EDHrec to improve my lists. Going through the lists I saw myself being drawn to the more powerful (and usually more expensive) cards. Slowly but surely my decks became more competitive, killing the table much more quickly and consistently. I was later able to find groups on Reddit and Discord that were of great help to me. They included many players, some of which have made the best decks in the format. As a final word, I’d like to thank Lilbrudder for their insight in making the deck, as well as helping me to look at different strategies and angles to victory. It was very much appreciated ❤️.

Justifying Tyranny

Sidisi, Brood Tyrant is a powerful commander without question. Here’s why:

  1. Being in Sultai colours (, a.k.a. BUG) gives us access to the best colours in EDH and arguably the best colours in Magic overall.

  2. She allows us to mill ourselves. Essentially this gives us the ability to Entomb when she enters the battlefield or attacks. This will become important in a later section, so don’t go away.

  3. Creature tokens are created whenever a creature is put into our graveyard from our library. With the creature count in this deck we can generate an army. However this is merely flavourful. As with the previous point, the use of these tokens will be explained in a later section.

”The Sultai emulate the ruthlessness of the dragon; the fang is their symbol, showing their enemies that they are always ready to strike and spread their venomous plans. The clan values ruthlessness and spares no thought for the safety of troops, who are easily replaceable zombies themselves—or fuel for new zombies.”

As khan, our commander is the pure embodiment of the Sultai. She dealt with her enemies through force and trickery. With her at the helm of our deck, we will aim to do the same.

Plan Of Attack

This deck aims to win quickly through various means. Depending on the opening hand, even turn one! Alas, EDH is a multiplayer format, so expect to face resistance when trying to go off. If our initial attempt at victory is thwarted, you can always try again using Regrowth effects like Eternal Witness to get key cards back. If that second attempt fails, look to control our opponents. Unlike Derevi, Empyrial Tactician which utilizes stax, prison or hatebear cards like Winter Orb or Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite to slow the game down and achieve victory through locking opponents out, we have a full suite of permission magic and removal cards to deal with our opponents. The beauty of our commander is how quickly she can switch between being a lightning fast combo deck and controlling the game, even bringing it to a standstill. With our selection of artifact and creature ramp, we can play card advantage spells like Dark Confidant , or even Sidisi can come into play relatively early. Using her ETB and attack triggers to mill ourselves we can put value creatures like Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur into our graveyard, a great target for reanimation to ultimately win the game. However, we will need to use her attack trigger carefully as to not mill too many cards into our grave, or to ensure that we draw lands and counter magic if we are in need of them. Assess threats and be ready to deal with them.

A few strategies exist in this deck to win the game the first one is also the fastest, and is a strategy that has changed the cEDH landscape. It is known as Flash Hulk (Flash + Protean Hulk ).

Steps:

  1. Cast Flash , putting Protean Hulk into play.
  2. Do not pay the difference in mana that is mentioned on Flash .
  3. Hulk will die, allowing us to get 6 CMC worth of creatures directly into play.
  4. Get Phyrexian Delver and Viscera Seer and put them into play.
  5. Delver will return the Hulk to play from your graveyard.
  6. Sacrifice Hulk to the Seer’s ability, allowing you to get another 6 CMC worth of creatures.
  7. Get Walking Ballista and Mikaeus, the Unhallowed and put them directly into play. The ballista will be a 1/1 due to Mikaeus’ buffing ability.
  8. Sacrifice ballista to the Seer. It will return to play due to Mikaeus granting ‘Undying’ to other creatures you control, with a +1/+1 counter. It is now a 2/2.
  9. Remove a +1/+1 counter from ballista to ping an opponent in the face. We are now back at Step 8.
  10. Rinse and repeat until each of your opponents is dead.

Keep in mind that we have yet another Hulk Pile that should be of note:

  1. Cast Flash , putting Protean Hulk into play.
  2. Do not pay the difference in mana that is mentioned on Flash .
  3. Hulk will die, allowing us to get 6 CMC worth of creatures directly into play.
  4. We search our library for Laboratory Maniac and Spellseeker , putting them into play.
  5. With the ETB effect from the latter we search our library again for Tainted Pact .
  6. We can then cast it, allowing us to exile our entire library and winning the next time we draw a card.

Particular attention should be paid to the following facts: - The previous Hulk pile allows us to dodge graveyard hate and, with Flash Hulk allowing us to win at instant speed, win on our draw step

Another strategy to victory is through the use of Food Chain .

Steps:

  1. Ensure that Food Chain is in play and that you have a cast-from-exile (CFE) creature in your hand or, better yet, in play.
  2. Cast the CFE creature if it is in your hand. If it is already on the battlefield, remove it from the game with Food Chain. In this deck, Eternal Scourge is our card of choice. This will add 4 mana of any colour to your mana pool.
  3. Cast the CFE creature from exile. You will have 1 mana floating in your mana pool.
  4. Repeat Steps 2 and 3 infinitely. This will give you infinite mana of all 3 colours. With this mana, you can cast a Walking Ballista , making it a 10000/10000 (or an arbitrarily large number) and kill the table using its activated ability. Note that if the ballista is in play, you can use the Food Chain mana to pump it up and kill the table as well.
  5. If we don’t have a ballista in our hand to cast we can infinitely cast our commander and exile her to the command zone using Food Chain. This will mill our entire library (remember what I said earlier?) and give us a certain number of zombie creature tokens (remember what I said earlier?).
  6. Dread Return will be put into our graveyard. We can then cast it for its flashback cost (sacrificing the zombie tokens) to return any creature we wish from our graveyard to play. We can cast ballista and kill the table. Or we can use our other win condition of Laboratory Maniac .
  7. We can then cast a card draw spell like Ponder or activate an ability like Cephalid Coliseum to draw a card from an empty library and win.

It may occur that our deck doesn't cooperate with us. We aren't drawing the cards we need, or we're short on land. Being as resilient as we are, we have an easy fix to this problem and his name is Razaketh, the Foulblooded . This creature is an instant speed tutor at the cost of another creature and 2 life points. Recall the tokens that our lovely commander made from milling ourselves? Well we can use these tokens as fodder to Razaketh's ability. It may happen that we don't get any tokens from our commander. This is where Life comes into play. Turning our lands into creatures essentially feeds our Razaketh, allowing us to tutor and ultimately win the game. Death is also really good if we have a juicy graveyard target, such as a Consecrated Sphinx . Razaketh is an excellent card that not only grabs the missing combo pieces that we need, but can get ourselves protection or removal as well.

The mentioned combos are easily assembled with little mana and leaves us with resources to deal with any opponent that would try to disrupt us.

If things aren’t going our way, we aren’t drawing the right cards for the situation, or we keep getting disrupted, we can move to our final win condition of combat damage. It’s definitely not ideal and should only be used as a final resort. However it can be highly effective. We have large creatures that can crush our opponents to dust, as well as creature token generation that can be used to keep up blockers, or swing in for an alpha strike.

With Laboratory Maniac as a win condition in this deck, we must beg the question: should we use the ‘forbidden tutors’? The answer is a resounding yes.

Tainted Pact , Demonic Consultation and Plunge into Darkness truly reflect the idea of black magic: achieving a goal, no matter the price. These cards allow us to find the answers we need when we need them. In doing so, we end up exiling cards from our deck. This is a huge advantage because in, say, searching for Food Chain we can exile a CFE creature, doubling up as a tutor and readying is for a win.

Nonetheless, especially when using Demonic Consultation we risk exiling our LabMan or our Food Chain, or any other card that may be useful to us potentially later on in the game. It is for this reason that we run a mainboard Tainted Pact with a sideboard Demonic Consultation in case we are in a situation where a LabMan win is the best option we should opt for more opportunities to secure our victory.

Plunge Into Darkness is tantalizing, paying a huge sum of life to get a very specific card in our deck. However, through many hours of play testing it has proven not as effective as the previously mentioned tutors. For this reason we have chosen to omit it.

Strengths

This deck is incredibly quick and versatile, able to deal with most matchups quite easily. Access to green gives us ramp in the form of mana dorks like Arbor Elf and Birds of Paradise . Access to blue gives us counter magic and cantrips like Force of Will and Preordain . Access to black gives us tutoring and card advantage like Demonic Tutor and Dark Confidant . As well as this, a reasonably costed commander means that Sidisi can come out quickly and, if removed, can be played again without too much mana being spent.

Weaknesses

Only 1 basic land is run in this deck. If an opponent is known to run a Blood Moon do everything in your power to counter it or remove it. It will drastically hinder you and your chances of winning. Our deck is also quite reliant on our graveyard so cards like Rest in Peace or Scavenging Ooze will end you. We run a high number of noncreature spells so be weary of Ruric Thar, the Unbowed or Thalia, Guardian of Thraben . The new Collector Ouphe and cards like it stop the ballista from being activated. Watch out for that too! Of course many other forms of hate can be used against this deck. The previously mentioned cards are ones that I have personally encountered frequently.

The Golden Fang

The only other Sultai commander that can compete with Sidisi is Tasigur, the Golden Fang . With an activated ability that allows for the reuse of counter magic and removal, as well as a source of political leverage, Tasigur is a powerful commander that is able to rival Sidisi. With an infinite mana combo Tasigur is able to loop spells and kill an entire table. His ability to delve away unnecessary cards in his grave makes him cheaper to cast, even if he’s been removed. Not to mention, he is also a bigger creature than Sidisi. However, Tasigur is traditionally built as a control list primarily, playing a game of attrition with its opponents until he can combo out and his opponents have exhausted all possible options of winning. Control is a very difficult game style, as EDH is a multiplayer format and controlling 3 other players is definitely a challenge. Having Tasigur out helps to ensure the consistency of the deck, while having him in the command zone makes the deck weaker as the Tasigur player will have a harder time digging up answers. Sidisi is poised to kill quickly, while Tasigur looks to the long game for victory. In my opinion I believe that both commanders are equally powerful and piloting either of them really depends on how one likes to play. The choice is yours.

Templates

This build of Sidisi is my own build based on my experience playing and with my particular meta in mind. It is important to note that it is subject to change as different things come up in my meta, or in EDH as a format. I encourage different builds that are unique to each player. With that being said there are a number of lists that I’d like to point others to that might be more for them:


All Nightmare Long (SBT Primer)

Commander / EDH* Lilbrudder

SCORE: 149 | 140 COMMENTS | 57160 VIEWS | IN 97 FOLDERS



Demon Tyrant

Commander / EDH* Lilbrudder

SCORE: 45 | 35 COMMENTS | 10808 VIEWS | IN 20 FOLDERS



SBT Combo

Commander / EDH* Voidia

SCORE: 109 | 70 COMMENTS | 59337 VIEWS | IN 76 FOLDERS



Second Draft

Commander / EDH* Lilbrudder

SCORE: 2 | 201 VIEWS | IN 1 FOLDER


Each of these decks has its own strengths and weaknesses, but I highly recommend speaking to their creators as they are very knowledgeable able their own decks and the format as a whole.

Included here are a Derevi deck and a Tasigur deck as they were mentioned in this primer. It is best to ask any questions about these decks to their creators as they know their decks better than anyone else. They are different builds and very interesting. As said before, their creators are very knowledgeable on the format as a whole and can answer your questions better than I ever could.


b i r d w i z a r d [2.0] (cEDH Derevi Primer)

Commander / EDH* Pongo_Pygmaeu5

SCORE: 127 | 87 COMMENTS | 53328 VIEWS | IN 83 FOLDERS



Scepter Control

Commander / EDH ShaperSavant

SCORE: 49 | 3 COMMENTS | 25593 VIEWS | IN 28 FOLDERS


I enjoyed making this primer and I hope everyone enjoys reading it. Feel free to share it, upvote it, and write any comments or questions. I would be more than happy to answer them. If I said something incorrectly please let me know and I will fix it right away. Enjoy!

Suggestions

Updates Add

Current sideboard cards are cards that might find their way into the deck. They are being tested and a new update will be made in time.

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Casual

92% Competitive

Date added 4 years
Last updated 4 years
Exclude colors R
Splash colors W
Key combos
Legality

This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.

Rarity (main - side)

12 - 2 Mythic Rares

57 - 6 Rares

15 - 5 Uncommons

15 - 2 Commons

Cards 100
Avg. CMC 2.20
Tokens Beast 3/3 G, Bird 2/2 U, Emblem Jace, Vryn's Prodigy, Zombie 2/2 B
Folders Excellent Primer, cEDH Templates, SBT, edh, Sidisi, Decks, EDH, SBT References, Primer, Sulti BUG
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