Let's talk about what is quite possibly my favorite deck: Sidisi, Brood Tyrant. If you like tribal shenanigans, playing arguably the best color combination in EDH, filling up your graveyard and using it as an extension of your hand, spamming the board with tokens and generally being an aggressive player, this deck will be right up your alley.
GENERAL STRATEGY
This deck is built with Sidisi, Brood Tyrant in mind. Things will get out of hand quickly for our opponents if she remains on the field. When Sidisi is out, we want to be milling ourselves as many times per turn as we can so we can dump creatures into the graveyard and get zombie tokens. For that reason, this deck is very creature heavy. Sidisi mills us for 3, so I always make sure at least 1/3 of the deck (33 of the 99 cards) is creatures (34 counting Dryad Arbor). That means that most of the time, we're gonna hit a creature and make a zombie off of Sidisi's ability. Running 33 creatures obviously means we can't run a lot of noncreatures, so for that reason, we want to have a lot of effects stapled onto creatures. A lot of the ramp pieces are mana dorks, a lot of the spot removal is ETB effects, a lot of the graveyard recursion pieces are creatures themselves, etc. This doesn't only serve the purpose of letting us get our zombies from Sidisi more often, it also allows us to recur important pieces more easily.
With all that being said, the deck also functions perfectly well without Sidisi on the field, hence the lack of ways to protect her or double up on her triggers in the deck. Slots that others might use for things like Panharmonicon or Strionic Resonator to double up on her ability, or Lightning Greaves to make sure she doesn't get targeted, or Darksteel Plate to make sure she can attack every turn, we use for making sure the deck functions just as well without her. When playing this deck, we generally don't care if she dies. Sometimes, it even works in our favor when people use up their removal to kill her as we accrue value in other ways. We also may find ourselves attacking into certain death for Sidisi just because we want to mill ourselves or we have a way to return her to the battlefield in hand.
One last thing to say about this deck: It is resilient. It recovers from boardwipes extraordinarily well, it fills up the graveyard extremely quickly after Bojuka Bog effects, and it usually doesn't care about spot removal. I guarantee our opponents will be frustrated trying to keep this explosive piece of work in check.
OK, now that I've talked about the general stuff, let's get into the nitty gritty and talk about some specific cards/card types that really make this deck tick.
SELF MILL
The main gameplan of this deck is to fill up our graveyard. Let's talk about how we do that:
Sidisi, Brood Tyrant herself - As the commander, Sidisi is the main way we're gonna be dumping stuff in the 'yard. She puts the top 3 cards of our library into the graveyard on ETB as well as whenever she attacks, and if one of our many creatures hits, we get a 2/2 zombie. This translates into a lot of cards to work with in the 'yard, and a lot of tokens on the battlefield.
Phenax, God of Deception - Phenax is a great way to mill ourselves multiple times per turn and make tons of zombies. He also can become a really good blocker and a hard to deal with creature with enough devotion. Add to all that the fact that he can very quickly mill our opponents to death, and we've got ourselves an all-star in this deck.
Dredge Cards - If we have a dredge card in our graveyard and Sidisi on the battlefield, we are going to choose to dredge on our draw step almost 100% of the time. It's that powerful. Golgari Thug and Stinkweed Imp are cards we'll love to see hitting the 'yard. We'll talk about how good Life from the Loam and Dakmor Salvage are later when we get to the utility land package and The Gitrog Monster...
RECURSION
Graveyard recursion goes hand-in-hand with self mill. When we're dumping a ton of powerful cards into the graveyard, we're gonna want to get them back. Cards like Reanimate and Animate Dead are cheap and extremely powerful ways to get creatures directly from the graveyard to the battlefield. We can also find this effect stapled onto creatures like Phyrexian Delver and Body Double. Creatures are the majority of the deck, but that doesn't mean we won't want to recur some of our other card types. This is what Eternal Witness, Greenwarden of Murasa and Skullwinder are for. Skullwinder can also be a valuable political tool as both a way to make an ally by giving them a spell back and a deathtouch blocker. Tasigur, the Golden Fang is another great political tool, and I don't think I need to tell you how strong Meren of Clan Nel Toth is. Whip of Erebos also shines as both repeatable reanimation and a way to gain an absurd amount of life very quickly.
ZOMBIE TRIBAL
We're playing a lot of zombies and making a lot of zombie tokens, so ways to make our horde of the undead stronger are really powerful. Zombie lords like Diregraf Captain and Undead Warchief really shine here. Cemetery Reaper is a lord with the added bonus of being able to snipe problem creatures out of our opponents' graveyards. Along with the zombie lords, we also have some cards that make even more tokens like Ghoulcaller Gisa and Army of the Damned.
SAC OUTLETS
Any deck that makes a lot of tokens is gonna want some ways to sacrifice creatures for value, and this one is no exception. Our altars (Ashnod's Altar and Altar of Dementia) are two of the best sac outlets in the deck. Ashnod's Altar nets us tons of mana and Altar of Dementia lets us turn zombies that are gonna die anyway into more zombies and more value in our graveyard. Birthing Pod lets us turn creatures into better creatures, and Evolutionary Leap lets us turn tokens into more creatures in hand. Attrition can kill off as many creatures as we have black mana and zombie tokens (a lot), and Greater Good will replenish your hand and let you dump more creatures to reanimate into the graveyard. All of the sac outlets are also great for killing our own dredge creatures so we can dredge every turn if we want to.
RAMP
Any EDH deck needs to be able to ramp, even low curve decks like this one. As I mentioned before, most of our ramp pieces are mana dorks like Birds of Paradise and Deathcap Cultivator that help us get zombies when they're milled. Of course, we also have Sol Ring. One thing to keep in mind is that basically every piece of ramp in the deck costs 2 or less, and therefore allows us to cast Sidisi on turn 3 instead of turn 4 for earlier beats. Another ramp card that must be mentioned is Cryptolith Rite, which gives us an insane amount of mana with the number of tokens we're flooding the board with.
DISRUPTION
Another must in EDH is interaction. It doesn't matter how powerful our deck is, sometimes we are going to need to stop or opponents from doing something if we want to win. We have a some ways to deal with problem permanents stapled onto creatures like Reclamation Sageand Acidic Slime. Grimgrin, Corpse-Born is a huge threat, a sac outlet, and repeatable creature removal on a stick. Putrefy is a versatile instant speed answer. Agent of Erebos is a zombie that can stop opposing graveyard decks in their tracks. And people always seem to underestimate the value of cards like Fleshbag Marauder and Voldaren Pariah
/Abolisher of Bloodlines that can make opponents sacrifice their hexproof or indestructible creatures.
LANDS
Now I want to talk about the value of lands in this deck:
Cycling Lands - This deck runs 4 of them: (Ash Barrens, Tranquil Thicket, Lonely Sandbar and Barren Moor. These lands are great with Life from the Loam, as we can use them as cantrips and then return them to our hand. They're also great with The Gitrog Monster, letting us draw 2 cards for one mana.
Dakmor Salvage - We've touched on how powerful dredge is in this deck, and having it stapled onto a land is fantastic.
Drownyard Temple - When we mill this, we can bring it back for an extra land drop.
Bojuka Bog - Another way to exile opponents' graveyards.
Dryad Arbor - A creature, so it gives us zombies if it's milled and can be reanimated for extra ramp. Searching for this with Green Sun's Zenith for 0 is also one of the most powerful ways to ramp in the game. Can also be sacrificed for value in a pinch.
Westvale Abbey
- Getting 5 creatures on the field in this deck is downright trivial, and Ormendahl, Profane Prince is a game winning threat.
Of course, we run 5 fetchlands because they're great in general and even better with Life from the Loam and The Gitrog Monster. We also have 4 fetchable duals for color fixing. We run both Evolving Wilds and Terramorphic Expanse for color fixing as well as the same Life from the Loam/The Gitrog Monster reasons. Then we run tricolor lands in Opulent Palace and Command Tower as well as the on color checklands and pain lands. It's very rare that we're going to be color screwed with this manabase.
OTHER POWERFUL PIECES
This is the part where I highlight specific cards that are extremely powerful in the deck:
Corpse Connoisseur - This card does everything. It tutors up a creature and puts it in our graveyard, which many times is better than putting it in our hand. It nets us a zombie with Sidisi on the field. And if it gets milled, we can still get its effect without burning a reanimation spell by Unearthing it. Oh, and it's a zombie.
Dictate of Erebos - We make a lot of tokens, and we make use of a lot of sac outlets. This card normally spells death for our opponents, keeping their boards clear until they find a way to destroy it.
Green Sun's Zenith - Like I mentioned before, this can be early game ramp with Dryad Arbor or Birds of Paradise. It can also be used to put our most powerful creatures (Grave Titan, anyone?) from our library directly onto the battlefield in the late game.
Jarad's Orders - Tutors up two creatures for 4 mana, while also triggering Sidisi's ability. This card is nuts.
Liliana, the Last Hope - A cheap planeswalker who can snipe utility creatures or create more favorable blocks with her plus, fill our graveyard and recur creatures with her minus, and will win us the game with her ultimate.
Liliana Vess - Another powerful Liliana. Her plus can shred an opponent's hand, her minus is a repeatable tutor, and her ultimate is another copy of Rise of the Dark Realms.
Profane Command - This card is the very definition of versatility. I mean it when I say it does everything. Let's look at the modes, shall we? 1) Drain an opponent for X. This has killed more than a few people, especially with Ashnod's Altar and/or Cryptolith Rite out. 2) Return a creature from our graveyard to the battlefield. This is exactly what we want to be doing. 3) Kill something, even if it's indestructible. 4) Make a bunch of our zombies unblockable and kill someone. And we get to pick 2 modes. This card should be in every black deck in my opinion.
Rise of the Dark Realms - Admittedly a huge mana investment, but it's a huge effect, and it's too much fun not to play. I can count the number of times on one hand that I've resolved this and not won the game. It's one. Protip: If you suspect someone is holding a boardwipe, do not play this card.
Sidisi, Undead Vizier - We can't not play the other Sidisi, especially since she's a tutor effect stapled onto a creature that we can recur again and again.
Skullclamp - I do not need to tell you how good this card is in a deck full of tokens and sac outlets. I love sacrificing a 'clamped zombie to Greater Good to draw 5 and discard 3.
The Gitrog Monster - Man, oh man, this guy is a beast. A five cost 6/6 deathtouch, first of all. Then he lets you play an additional land every turn, which is great. But oh, no, you have to sacrifice a land to keep him alive. That's ok, because every time a land hits your graveyard, you get to draw a card. This is why we're playing so many fetches and cycling lands. And we are constantly milling ourselves as well. This guy will drown our opponents in value, just watch. You will have to try really hard to lose if you get this guy and Life from the Loam going.
Traverse the Ulvenwald - Ok, what? Worldly Tutor with upside? And it goes to your hand, not the top of your library? Getting Delirium is laughably easy in this deck, and even if you somehow don't have it, the fail case is decent mana fixing. This card is an all-star.
Villainous Wealth - One of the most fun cards in Magic, period. Like Profane Command, it gets filthy with Ashnod's Altar, Cryptolith Rite, or both.
Wonder - Quite possibly the best card in the deck. This should almost always be the #1 target for things like Corpse Connoisseur and Jarad's Orders.
Woodland Bellower - Let me just list every creature this guy can bring with him on ETB: Birds of Paradise, Deathcap Cultivator, Eternal Witness, Kiora's Follower, Reclamation Sage, Sakura-Tribe Elder, Skullwinder, Voyaging Satyr. Can you say value?
OUTRO
Wow, OK, if you made it this far, congratulations and thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed the write-up and the deck. If you liked this, you might also want to check out my other favorite deck (with a similar write-up/primer thingy): Alesha, Who Smiles at Value.
