"Sidisi, Brood Tyrant EDH: Laboratory Notes"

"Sidisi, Brood Tyrant EDH: Laboratory Notes"

by:

Virgilio F. De leon Jr.

After rummaging through boxes and binders of Magic cards and finally finding my Mesmeric orb I immediately went to work on my long postponed Sidisi Zombies EDH deck. After filtering cards and finally narrowing it down to 100 I began to do some play testing and was excited with the different combos in the deck. I will not be posting the entire deck for today but I will be pointing out certain combinations that have worked for the deck and tips on using it.

Let me begin with the Sidisi + Mesmeric Orb + Basalt Monolith combo. The two artifact cards could be fetched here by Fabricate , Diabolic Tutor and Liliana Vess. Barring any artifact destruction or Bounce cards these two work like a charm and could generate as many tokens as you want. With the inclusion of a Worldspine Wurm and Darksteel Colossus I was able to mill and generate tokens to my hearts content. Since this combo could be done at the end of an opponents turn I suggest that you do so. While normally you could use this combo to end an opponent with one attack always be cautious if they are playing  Black/Red colors. Since Rakdos Charm and Stronghold Discipline could easily turn your deck against you with so many zombie tokens in play under your control. Then again you could use a Gitaxian Probe and check if they have something like these cards in their hands before pulling off your combo.

Another thing is that you could stop the combo in order to cast a spell for its Delve cost to exile non-creature cards. Dig Through time and Treasure Cruise make great use of all the cards in the graveyard here. The great thing about doing this is that when you hit a "Shuffler card" like any of the Eldrazi Brood you are only returning creature cards in your library making the combo more efficient and more deadly when activated a second time.

"Because I am a fair guy...err...Zombie..."

One of the great things that interact with all these zombies is the card Shepherd of Rot that deals 1 damage for each zombie in play to each player. Yup he includes you because he is a fair zombie. So do a little math here , if you are ahead in life points because you have been attacking your opponent early you could just use this guy to take every one out without even attacking or you could probably eliminate an annoying player who keeps on foiling your plan,and then attack anyway. It all depends on the particular situation that you are in.Remember to count your life points before you tap the Shepherd of Rot.

"Yes I am a Zombie and a Spirit...go figure that one out..."

I have also included Graveborn Muse in this deck because she tends to draw tons of cards for me in a jiffy.I once drew 4 cards in one upkeep that led me to various lands and combinations that are in the deck. Be mindful of all your zombies here because life points are important in the deck , Power at any cost I always say but its not fun when you are stonewalled and die because you keep losing life due to Graveborn Muse. 

Vengeful Pharaoh gains a nod of acceptance in this deck because he makes the Sidisi milling much better. He could destroy a creature for you and then go back up to your library so that you would be able to draw him or let him fall to the graveyard once more to create another 2/2 zombie token. He keeps coming back for more to serve you. A true leader and servant. How about a hand for this guy right?

Now I would like to talk about the Graveyard feeders. Sidisi all by herself fills it up very fast and along with Splinterfright fills it up even more. My deck features Bonehoard , Golgari Grave troll and Lhurgoyf.Things that care about all the creatures in the graveyard. Kessig Cage Breakers is another great addition because of the attacking 2/2 wolves that it would produce for each creature card in your graveyard. The cool thing is that those wolves stay with you permanently and if the Kessig Cagebreakers are still alive on the following wave of attack then they could recruit more wolves for you!  I have found that attacking with Sidisi and the Kessig cagebreakers requires that you stack Sidisis ability first since she would like add to the creatures in your graveyard when you mill. Looks like a winning combination right? You produce a 2/2 Zombie token and increase the number of attacking wolves! The draw back is when you get one of the Eldrazi brood dropping into your graveyard , causing you to shuffle everything back into your library. One such play saw my Splinterfright and Lhurgoyf dying since there were no creatures left to give them any power! So a word of caution here if you want to attack with Sidisi along with your main force.I am contemplating on just removing any of the Eldrazi in the deck because of this drawback but I did promise myself that I will not die to something like Hinder+Tunnel Vision ever again.

"Who let wolves out? Woof , Woof, Woof , Woof Woof Woof"

And what truly makes them a laboratory note moment is the presence of the Laboratory maniac, In a way this guy has represented my deck building ways and I am happy to add him here in the Sidisi Zombie EDH deck as an alternate win condition when you already have your "shuffler" cards in your hand. You see , he represents a certain kind of mad victory. Drawing cards when you have no library. The Leveler and this guy could make short but beautiful music together but then again my Leveler still seems to be lost somewhere in that endless pile I call my Card Hoard.

Well by far , I have been writing about Sidisi more and more these past weeks. Time for more experiments with this particular deck. With Sidisi producing all of these servants , only one thing is sure , the Sultai are worthy indeed. 

"Sidisi , Brood Tyrant EDH:Mill Me Baby, Mill Me Good"

"Sidisi , Brood Tyrant EDH:Mill Me Baby, Mill Me Good"

by: 

Virgilio F.De leon Jr.

I must admit that after reading the infinite zombie combo that is Sidisi + Mesmeric Orb + Basalt Monolith. I have been wanting to try it on for quite some time and I have not been able to because my Mesmeric Orb seems to be lost in the binders and boxes that are my card pile.

Well , there will be time to buy that but this combo has gotten me pretty excited to put it in an EDH deck with Sidisi leading the way. With Sidisi and Mesmeric orb in play , Basalt Monolith would tap to release 3 colorless mana , this mana would be used to untap the Monolith itself , triggering the Mesmeric orb because a permanent was untapped , you mill one card and (hopefully it is a creature) triggers Sidisi. Producing One 2/2 Black Zombie token. Repeat until you have a Herd of rotting undead corpses clogging up the battlefield.

Of course in EDH chances are you might not be able to pull off this particular combo so you need other cards that could trigger Sidisi and None can do this better than the Dredge Mechanic of the Golgari from the Original Ravnica Block. Creatures and Spells of the Golgari have a Dredge cost from 1 to 6. The highest one belonging to the Golgari gravetroll at Dredge 6. This allows you to return the troll from your graveyard to your hand instead of at the cost of milling 6 cards to your graveyard drawing a card. Now assuming that you milled 6 creatures with Sidisi in play , you would now have 6 2/2 Zombies! And the fun doesn't have to end there because with this Dredge milling there is a high probability you might put other Dredge cards into your graveyard. There are even cards in the golgari like the golgari thug who has a weak 1/1 frame that is just begging to die and go to the graveyard. You get a Dredge 4 in return.

Another type of card that is great with Sidisi would be cards with Flashback. One in particular fits the theme ,The Innistrad card Army of the Damned , which could be cast from the graveyard to give 13 2/2 zombies as well.

Speaking of Zombies Vengeful Pharaoh is surely something that you would want in your graveyard again and again. If an opponents creature deals damage to you or a planeswalker you control , you could destroy that attacking creature and put the Vengeful Pharaoh on top of your library and get to mill him again with Dredge or with the next two cards that I will tell you about...

What about cards that Mill on your upkeep then? Those are great with Sidisi as well. The Sultai Ascendancy and Splinter Fright basically do the same job. Mill 2 cards from your library at the beginning of your upkeep. These two even work well with each other. So you stack their two triggers on the beginning of your upkeep. You let the Sultai Ascendancy trigger resolve first so you could check the top two cards of your library , depending on what you see you could outright throw it into the graveyard if they are creatures to trigger sidisi or get them out of the way to let the Splinter fright trigger mill 2 more cards. The Splinter Fright loves a full graveyard too so he would fit right in with this Sidisi deck.

I am almost done here. I just could not help myself with all these ideas for Sidisi. I started with a combo, Let me end with another combo that could give not only infinite tokens but infinite mana as well. This combo is the Dimir Aqueduct + Tidewater Minion + Freed from the Real combo.

So the combo works with all three already in play , tap the Dimir Aqueduct to get 2 mana(1 black and 1 blue) , with the Tidewater Minion already enchanted by the Freed from the Real , tap the Minion to untap the Dimir Aqueduct. Tap the Dimir Aqueduct again to net 2 mana , use the blue mana to pay the cost of the Freed from the real and untap the Tidewater Minion , tap the Minion to untap the Dimir Aqueduct.

Now add Mesmeric Orb and Sidisi into this mix and you have infinite tokens and infinite mana as well.

So what happens when you mill yourself out? Well you need to make sure that you don't by adding creatures into your library that make you shuffle it the moment they touch it. Creatures like BlightSteel and Darksteel Colossus ,Emrakul , Kozilek and Ulamog as well WorldSpine Wurm will do the trick. I put in multiple cards like this because you never know when someone will pull out some graveyard hate and try to wipe you out.

So there, Just had to write about this Khan once again because I felt that there was so much I left out the first time. I hope that these deck ideas help you out in your own deck building. Have fun creating your zombie horde. I know I will.