I received Sen as a gift from my GF who wanted me to play commander and figured Sen was my play style. I quickly got into cEDH and have been working on making this deck the best that it can be.
Should You Play This?
Reasons to play this deck:
- You want a powerful deck that is slightly off meta.
- You want a deck that rarely plays the same.
- You want explosive turns and to win out of nowhere.
- You enjoy complex decks.
- You want to play unique and cool cards in a competitive setting
Reasons not to play this deck:
- You want green mana dorks.
- Partners are better / you want to play the most powerful cEDH deck.
- You get bad feels when you are targeted or your play group gets bad feels when you cast their cards.
Strategy
This deck is a fast combo deck with many layered win cons, ample counter spells, and high resilience. The odds of drawing naturally into a combo are higher than with other decks, and there are more pieces that you can assemble into a combo than with many other decks. It can't win at instant speed, it's commander is not an infinite mana outlet, and some of the cards can be dead outside a combo.
Ideal Hands
An ideal hand includes minimal land, mana rocks, tutors, cantrips, and/or Ad Nauseum or Necropotence - the most explosive draw spells. Aggressively mulligan until you get some sort of ramp, tutor, or Mystic Remora. You really want to slam out several ramp artifacts on your first turn.
Sample Hand #1
- Dark Ritual, Urborg Tomb of Yawgmoth, Scrubland, Mystic Remora, Brainstorm, Talisman of Dominance, Swan Song.
- Play Scrubland. Cast Dark Ritual. Play Azorius Signet. Activate Azorius Signet with extra black mana. Play Talisman of Dominance. Play Mystic Remora. Pass.
Sample Hand #2
- Flusterstorm, Marsh Flats, Godless Shrine, Azorius Signet, Mox Opal, Necropotence.
- This is a marginal hand as there is no in-hand way of casting Necropotence as you need another artifact or black source. Pact is a dead card for now. Flusterstorm is good. I'm torn and might decide based on the opponents I'm against. The odds of finding another artifact to activate Mox Opal or a black source in 2-3 turns are good.
Sample Hand #3
- Inventor's Fair, Mental Misstep, Silence, Mana Confluence, Candelabra of Tawnos, Rhystic Study, Spell Pierce. This doesn't have enough ramp or tutors for me despite having good countermagic.
About Sen
Sen is not considered a cEDH general, however, it is very powerful. We tip our hat to Zur as the strongest Esper general, however, Yennett, Sen, Yuriko and others that exist in Zur's shadow are very strong too, plus Esper is among the most powerful 3 color combinations. Sen provides a flavor of command zone card advantage and a silence type effect (for one opponent). Ideally, you will resolve Ad Nauseum on your opponent's end step and proceed to combo on your turn and never cast Sen, however, a resolved Sen that makes it to your next upkeep is amazing. Her big downsides are being 5 CMC, not having an effect until your next upkeep (huge, but without this effect the card would be broken), being a removal/counter magnet, and being an artifact/human/creature/wizard and thus subject to more types of removal than perhaps any other card.
To Sen Or Not To Sen? To Sen is Human
I have found that Sen's status as the #1 MTG EDH removal magnet can be abused to our advantage. I think that all players assume they will be targeted during your next upkeep and you will cast their tutors, lands, ramp. If you have a hunch that blue player with open mana is going to counter necro or ad naus, cast Sen and bait out a counter and go for Naus on your next turn.
Sen Abuse
The rarest of rare bird sightings is a resolved Sen that made it through the first winter of opponents' turns and gets to choose whose hand to see and play. Here's what to do:
- Consider your target carefully. If you have the cards in hand to win, you should target the opponent who is most likely to have counter magic and use Sen's silence type effect. Other considerations include whose cards you are most likely to be able to cast (due mostly to colors), who is likely to have additional combo pieces for you, who has the most cards, if the targeted player will be able to dump their hand as instants that fizzle rather than let you have their tutors, or if there is a player that is likely to win and you want to sabotage their hand. I have hard cast opponent's with sac outlets Protean Hulks and gone on to win the game. That's gold, baby.
- You can play opponent's lands since Sen's wording is "play" and not "cast". Whenever they have lands that work for me, I play them to starve them out. Often, you need the color of mana that is provided by their lands in order to cast their cards.
- Sometimes it makes sense to cast an opponent's spell and counter it with their own counterspell.
- If you cast an opponent's extra turn spell and move to your next turn, even if you target them, they will be able to interact before the Sen ability resolves, however, Sen's ability will still be on the stack.
- Effects like wheels, Chain of Vapor, Cyclonic Rift can give you tons more cards to play with.
- Lion's Eye Diamond will result in you discarding your hand, but not an opponent's hand. Popping it may make sense in some scenarios.
A Note on Lands
This deck is borderline reckless with it's inclusion of non-basics and utility lands. The mana is very tight regarding our ability to produce multiples of a color. Some of the spells that lead directly to winning like Transmute Artifact, transmuted Muddle the Mixture, Power Artifact require double blue. Think through the order before you play lands and pick fetch targets you get.
Combos
Most win cons in this deck involve some combination of drawing the deck, producing infinite mana, and Walking Ballista, but there are more options.
Infinite Mana
Here is how we produce infinite mana:
- Grim Monolith and Power Artifact
- Basalt Monolith and Power Artifact
- Basalt Monolith and Rings of Brighthearth
- Grim Monolith and Rings of Brighthearth nets 0 mana, however, if you Copy Artifact on Rings you can double it twice, which makes the untap 8 mana (4+2+2) and the Taps 9 (3+3+3) netting 1.
- Dramatic Scepter AKA Isochron Scepter combined with dramatic reversal and mana rocks that produce >2 CMC
- Dramatic Candle AKA Dramatic Scepter plus Candelabra. This fixes your colors. Note that you can also produce infinite mana for your opponents if.
Drawing the Deck
Here is how we draw enough cards to win (whether it's the whole deck or just enough)
- Ad Nauseum, or Ad Naus + Angel's Grace. I have won on main phase Ad Naus as well as end step.
- Necropotence
- Infinite Mana + Staff of Domination
- Dramatic Scepter + Mana Rocks + Jace, Vryn's Prodigy. You keep activating Jace and untapping him before his ability resolves. Let the ability resolve and leave what you need in hand such as Yawgmoth's will. Cast Yawgwill to get access to the graveyard which contains the rest of your cards
- Infinite Mana, Rings of Brighthearth, Sensei's Divining Top. Double top's ability which will cause you to draw a card plus top, recast top, rinse and repeat.
- Dramatic Scepter and Sensei's Top. Use Top's ability, activate reversal before it resolves, use top's ability again. This results in drawing two cards, one of which is top.
- Dramatic Scepter, Copy Artifact on scepter with Tainted Pact imprinted on 2nd scepter. Use pact to continually draw the top card of your library. Also works with Brainstorm in the place of tainted pact.
Winning
Once you have assembled the pieces and have enough mana, here is how we win:
- Walking Ballista for X = 1,000,000. Note that if Ballista made it to the GY you can get it back with Yawgmoth's Will, Timetwister, Academy Ruins
- Dramatic Scepter, Copy Artifact on Scepter, Imprint Swan Song. Infinite Swans and Infinite artifact/enchantment/instant/sorcery counters. Win on next turn by attacking with bird army.
- After drawing your entire deck to hand, cast Silence, cast Angel's Grace, cast Windfall, holding priority and casting brainstorm. Put Yawgwill on top of library. Let Windfall resolve. This will probably cause everyone to mill out (including you, but hopefully you remembered to cast Angel's Grace). If anyone is still in the game, cast Yawgwill and Windfall again, milling everyone out for sure.
Tutors
This deck runs a high amount of tutors as it can take advantage of artifact tutors, enchantment tutors, as well as vanilla tutors. The tutor package includes:
- Vampiric Tutor
- Demonic Tutor
- Imperial Seal
- Mystical Tutor
- Fabricate
- Enlightened Tutor
- Transmuted Muddle the Mixture. Good targets include Isochron, Dramatic Reversal, Grim Monolith, Power Artifact, demonic tutor
- Tainted Pact. I think this tutor is very good in this deck as there are frequent situations where you need 1 specific card to win such as Walking Ballista or Power Artifact. It's also useful as a way to grab Angel's Grace or a counterspell in a situation where you are about to lose. It can also be used to draw something that a top of deck tutor put there.
- Inventor's Fair. Note that so many of our win cons are artifacts.
- Transmute Artifact. You may generate infinite mana with something then transmute that artifact into a win con. If you do this, transmute into Staff of Domination and proceed to draw the deck. Do not Transmute into Ballista as it comes in 0/0 and dies.
- Lim Dul's Vault. Just a very good tutor in Dimir colors.
Politics
Politics is an unexplored frontier of cEDH. At first thought it is easy to dismiss politics as the pastime of filthy casuals (just joking) as everyone is trying to win at cEDH and is expected to act in their best interest at any given moment. We might say that no deal is really made in cEDH and thus no offer is worth extending. I think there is ample room for politics in the competitive environment and Sen benefits more from it than just about anything else.
- Your first priority is to get a resolved Sen to survive until your next turn. Opponents may blow Sen up based only on a (sometimes) faulty assumption that you will target them. Sometimes announcing your intention or that you don't intend to target player X may help.
Countermagic & Protection
I have prioritized 1 CMC counterspells wherever possible as well as the must haves. I am notably not running counterspell as I find that the UU cost can be taxing on my mana base and leaving 1 mana up is much easier when slamming 2 CMC artifacts.
Removal
- Swords to Plowshares.
- Gilded Drake.
- Toxic Deluge.
- Chain of Vapor. Removes problem permanents, can put them to opponent's hand where you may cast them with Sen, bounce your own mana positive rocks.
- Cyclonic Rift. Modal nature makes it very strong. Can bring things to opponents' hands where you can cast them.
