#brood tyrant

For today’s blog post in the spirit of Halloween I’m going to do a deck break down on one of my favorite Commanders of all time and the matron of this blog: Sidisi, Brood Tyrant. So open your crypts and unhallow your graves, we’re digging deep hunny!

The Commander

Sidisi Brood Tyrant is a Naga who loves her some zombies. When she EtB or attacks you mill the top 3 cards of your library into your graveyard. In addition to this effect, whenever one or more creatures are put into your graveyard from your library, you get a 2/2 black zombie token. Now the keep part of that is “whenever one or more creature cards” are put into the yard from your library, not whenever “a” creature is put there. You can mill one creature card one turn and 4 the next, you’ll still only get one zombie per each milling. Not the best on the surface but the Sultai are wise in the ways of necromancy. What we put in the graveyard shall not linger there long! 

“For my enemies, one death. For my allies, many.” -Liliana Vess

The Lords of Undeath

No tribal deck is ever set without its lords and this one is chalked full of them! I had a hard time actually deciding which zombies to include and cut but I narrowed it down to this elite few: Death Baron, Undead Warchief, Paragon of Open Graves, Lord of the Undead, Risen Execustioner, Cemetery Reaper and Diregraf Captain.  I had a hard time deciding between Lord of Accursed and Risen Executioner and I ultimately chose to keep Executioner due to his recursion ability in the early game. I may give the Accursed a shot after seeing how well the mono-black decks did in standard with him. Recursion is nice but granting evasion with Menace to my whole team is just fabulous. 

The other lords are fairly self explanatory. Baron grants my team deathtouch, making combat tricky. Warchief gives me an amazing zombie cost reduction and buff to creature stats. Lord of the Undead lets me recur my fallen or milled zombies. Diregraf Captain makes killing my zombies painful for my opponents. I will get my damage in one way or another! 

For backup “lords” I run Glen Elendra Liege and Creakwood Liege. The +1/+1 to creatures that share colors with them (blue/black and green/black respectively) makes them nice buffers to my non-zombie creatures and my commander. Having a Creakwood Liege out with Sidisi on the field makes her a 5/5 and her zombies 3/3 creatures. Very nice. 

Allies of Unlife

Some of my creatures don’t directly buff my zombies like my lords do but interact with them and utilize them for the macroplay of the game. Cards like:

Gravespawn Sovereign, Venegeful Dead, Corpse Harvester, Overseer of the Damned, Ghoulcaller Gisa, Cryptbreaker, Diregraf Colossus, Grave Titan, and Gisa and Geralf. 

Gravespawn Sovereign is my secret sleeper in this deck. For 4BB (6 mana), you get a 3/3 creature that lets you bring back any creature in any graveyard by tapping 5 untapped zombies. Amazing! Our deck spews out Zombie tokens left and right, we have no short supply of zombies to tap at instant speed for fast recursion.

Overseer of the Damned, Ghoulcaller Gisa, Diregraf Colossus and Grave Titan enable more zombie token production. Cryptbreaker gives us a bit of creature advantage by allowing us to chuck dead cards in hand to make zombie tokens and by tapping 3 zombies and losing a life we can draw a card. Corpse Harvester lets us sacrifice tokens to search our library for a zombie card and a swamp and add them to our hand, nice re-curable tutoring. Gisa and Geralf mill us for 4 cards on EtB which feeds into Sidisi’s ability to make tokens and then once per turn we get to cast a zombie creature card from our graveyard. Those two sure love their zombies! 

For more token production I run Endless Ranks of the Dead, Curse of Disturbance and Dark Salvation. Im debating keeping Curse of Disturbance but test play has proven it useful in multiplayer games to keep my meat shields up. Dark Salvation is a good spot removal spell that scales with our zombie count. With enough undead on our side, we could easily pay one black mana for -10/-10 or more to a creature.

Three key cards that fit in with our zombie support category are Rooftop Storm, Zombie Apocalypse and Kindred Dominance. Cast our zombies for free can enable some crazy zombos (zombie combos) which I will cover later down in my wincons section. You can never go wrong with one sided board wipes and with Apocalypse and Dominance that will happen more often than not. Zombie Apocalypse also acts as a nice reanimator spell in a pinch bringing back all your zombie creatures from you graveyard to play.

The Beat Sticks and Punishers

In a reanimator deck, you have to run some good finishers and toolbox cards. I run Dragonlord Silumgar because he is great for nabbing problem Commanders and planeswalkers on the field. Ulamog the Ceaseless Hunger is a ten mana 10/10 with indestructible that exiles the top 20 cards of defending players library when it attacks. Dread is a decent 5/5 with Fear that encourages our opponents to not attack us unless they want to lose them. Dread is also incredibly hard to get rid of when it dies or gets milled into the yard.

I recently discovered a love for Apocalypse Demon from Hour of Devastation. It flew under my radar for so long but a 4BB demon with Flying and “Apocalypse Demon’s power and toughness are each equal to the number of cards in your graveyard” is a huge monster to deal with in the air and can often be a 30/30 or more, one shotting enemies who can’t deal with it. The sacrificing a creature every turn or else you tap it is also a tiny irrelevant downside. We pump out zombie tokens and creatures that die don’t stay dead long.  

Throw It in the ‘Yard!

Milling creature cards from our library into our graveyard is one of the key engines of this dead, so how do we maintain it? Underreealm Lich and Sultai Ascendancy allow us to filter our draws and throw creatures or cards we don’t want off the top of our deck into the grave. Stitcher’s Supplier is... well, Stitcher’s Supplier. World Shaper lets us suicide it into our enemies, self milling 3 cards on attack and then if it dies, we get to return all land cards from our graveyard to play tapped.

The true power engine of this deck is Our Lord and Savior himself, Phenax, God of Deception. When combat becomes too dangerous for Sidisi to attack for her mill trigger, we can simply tap her to mill cards off the top equal to her toughness, keeping her safe and tucked away. Also, our zombie tokens can produce more zombie tokens of their own by tapping them at the end of our opponents endstep.

Little known fact, directly tutoring cards from our deck into the yard also triggers Sidisi’s zombie token effect. I run Buried Alive and Jarad’s Orders to get my creatures I need in my graveyard into the yard and a guaranteed 2/2 token out of it.

Recursion and Tutors

Nercomancers need their necromancy. I run a good sweep of recursion because redundancy is key in a deck that can often throw its win cons into the bin willy nilly. Dread Return, Havengul Lich, Soul of Innistrad, Ever After, Body Double, Sheoldred Whispering One, Whisper, Blood Liturgist, Possessed Skaab, and Phyrexian Delver. Dread Return is absolutely broken in this deck. I love Soul of Innistrad and often use it as an emergency insurance policy should I accidentally throw too many good creature cards into the bin. Sheoldred draws a lot of hate, so only play her when you’re sure you can keep her and yourself alive. Possessed Skaab is a new addition to the deck and has proven to be very useful in all situations. An EtB that lets me bring back any instant, sorcery or creature card to my hand is very strong. Most of my recursion is creature based, so being able to hit instants and sorceries with a creature in my tribe is just pure valuetown.

For a full decklist, you can check out my link below to my Tapped Out. I will continue this post in a part two (Tumblr won’t let me keep going without restricting my posting abilities so I’m going to have to split it up.) So look for my Zombos (Zombie Combos! duh) and alternate deck builds and ideas in my next post. I hope you found this guide helpful and Happy Halloween my sweets! 

https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/28-03-18-sidisi-zombie-tyrant/?cb=1541033940