Proxy competitive Yisan Deck
Collaborative Primer:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UT7cMmAJvff01-Jb1BZuGBwuR_3N7Q1MEzgSPw2b6Hc/edit#
Options for Flex Slots, Card Discussion, Experimental Options, and Tech Cards
Creatures
Kraul Harpooner - 2 Mana creature that kills an Aven Mindcensor while also quickly getting in range to kill Linvala and Zur, among other cards. Great removal option that is stapled to a creature, making it tutorable.
Elvish Visionary - 2 mana elf that draws a card. Helps your elf count for Priest of Titania and can be nice advantage when bounced with Wirewood Symbiote / Temur Sabertooth. Gives some decent grind power. Generally though, is more or less air. It’s a card slot which doesn’t really do anything.
Wood Elves - Adds to elf count, increases the number of lands you have in play, and refunds a mana making some lines to verse 4 possible.
Ravenous Slime - Nice hate card against hulk decks. Makes creatures go to exile instead of dying so Hulk won’t trigger with this in play. Not particularly useful against non-hulk decks.
Tendershoot Dryad - a cool addition that makes a huge amount of board power on its own, turning on its own ascend. Another 5 drop to get when you don’t actually want or can’t get seedborn muse. Winning with raw beats may sound silly but this card will quickly put lethal amounts of power on your board.
Shaman of the Forgotten Ways - ramp that serves as an alternative win condition. Comes down rather late, doesn’t produce more mana than Fyndhorn elder which is an elf, and doesn’t contribute to activating Yisan.
Elvish Archdruid - nice if you find that you can’t afford tutor Priest of Titania on 2 very often and need to hit disruption on verse 4 rather than karametra’s. Only counting elves you control does make this produce a noticeably lower amount of mana, and thus can be harder to turn on for sabertooth combo.
Elvish Spirit Guide - for increased turn 2 Yisan draws. I’m generally not a fan of ESG or lotus petal in the deck, particularly because Yisan relies on having continuous mana sources in play in order to use Yisan multiple times. A hand that has turn 1 Forest, Turn 2 Forest > ESG > Yisan but no 3rd forest can’t even activate Yisan
Oracle of Mul Daya: A fat, but powerful engine for games that go long
Unlike other mana engines, Oracle is great at creating a lasting mana advantage after a board wipe. Oracle is additionally an elf. Oracle is perhaps a card that is better when drawn and played, rather than Yisan’ed for, as it often helps pay for itself immediately through land drops.
Tireless Tracker - for grindy card advantage in conjunction with land drop effects. Can help you dig towards an answer when you’re stuck under a hate piece.
Ramunap Excavator - if you want to assemble strip mine “locks”, also to re-use fetchlands, sac and replay cradle/nykthos with safekeeper as a functional untap
Hornet Queen - Makes your Craterhoof almost assuredly lethal when chaining up Yisan. Also creates flying deathtouch blockers / attackers which may be useful in certain metas.
Avenger of Zendikar - Generally worse than hornet queen, due to being all ground creatures and not having a consistent guaranteed number of tokens. However, in really grindy metas the landfall beats can be relevant.
Whisperwood Elemental - Anti-board wipe tech that doesn’t actually save your board and is specifically bad against Anger of the Gods, or cyclonic rift. It’s rather unnecessary but in more casual metas, it’s a possible choice, especially on a budget
Marwyn, the Nurturer - Gives a fast-ish line to a turn 5 win that doesn’t rely on opponents having elves, but does rely on turn 1 dork and hitting land drops on the first four turns. The line is T1 dork t2 Yisan T3 verse 1 for Wirewood t4 Verse 2 for Wall of Roots, untap bouncing dork, Verse 3 for Marwyn, t5 untap, play dork, yisan for temur sabertooth, and use sabertooth + marwyn + dork to get to infinite mana and infinite untaps for the win. Comparable to selvala or elvish archdruid
Selvala/GOG line - The inclusion of the Selvala and Great Oak Guardian is somewhat controversial. They are considered unnecessary towards winning and as cards are somewhat weaker than surrounding cards, but both Selvala and Great Oak Guardian can be useful on their own. It also gives you a faster line for winning with Selvala on 3, Sabertooth on 4, then Great Oak Guardian on 6. Having the option of a mana producer on Verse 3 in addition to verse 4 can be useful too. Great Oak Guardian on its own can also serve as a smaller overrun or protection from a pyroclasm. With enough resources, you can instant speed play / bounce / replay GoG several times and have your board be immune to damage based board wipes / toxic deluge. People will often not play around Great Oak Guardian when Deluging, unless they have already seen you play Selvala.
Runic Armasaur - A card draw engine, notably drawing you cards off of fetches and even digging you towards a nature’s claim or beast within when someone tries to go off with Iso-Rev or bomberman. Aside from combos though, there aren’t many non-mana-abilities that are used on artifacts, aside from Sensei’s Divining Top On average though, it’s not clear how many cards this dinosaur will draw, but it’s worth trying.
Wayward Swordtooth - A 3 mana explore stapled to a creature. Significantly worse than Azusa due to the single land play restriction, which is much weaker than the double land play. Being a 5 dollar rare makes it less enticing for budget builds too.
Generous Patron - Essentially a divination stapled to a green creature, even abusable with Temur Sabertooth and adds to your elf count. Solid option if looking for more card draw.
Meteor Golem - Catch-all removal at 7 cmc. HItting the 7 mana slot to get removal is noticeably more inaccessible than the 5 and 6 cmc slots, however.
Loaming Shaman - Usually used as mass grave hate, or returning cards to your deck as a form of recursion, though that effect is generally not that necessary and is covered by Eternal Witness. Not exiling the cards from the graveyard makes it notable weaker as grave hate
Deathgorge Scavenger - Slow and targeted grave hate. Can be useful against decks that use their graveyard for incremental utility, such as Meren. Very easy to play around though.
Treefolk Harbinger - Tutors Great Oak Guardian if you play it, or Lignify. The deck actually doesn’t have many ways of drawing the top card of the deck, however.
Ulvenwald Tracker - if you really need creature removal for smaller creatures. Potential inclusion in a Tymna meta, or another meta relying on its smaller commanders sitting in play. Another example of a commander it can fight is Edric (can fight Eladamri if they tutor it as protection). Notably doesn’t deal with Linvala due to being an activated ability.
Skyshroud Ranger - An elf, that is also a sorcery speed sakura-tribe scout. Being sorcery speed makes it way worse as you can’t use it with quirion/scryb ranger. However, a fine budget option to ramp you to t2 Yisan.
Budoka Gardener - A 2 mana sakura tribe scout. Not really necessary since you rarely need a second sakura-tribe scout, and it doesn’t ramp you to t2 Yisan.
Viridian Zealot - A 2 mana caustic caterpillar and an elf. Usually not worth a card slot, partly due to the density of good 2 drops and partly due to the density of various naturalize effects.
Ohran Viper - neat option for card advantage in a grindy meta. Essentially a phyrexian arena on a stick.
Scorned Villager - a mana dork that can tap for two. Doesn’t synergize with t2 Yisan unfortunately
Enchantments
Titania’s Song - essentially a 4 mana null rod that also disincentivizes creature wipes
Concordant Crossroads - While haste can do some powerful things in Yisan, being a global effect is very dangerous, your opponents can abuse it too. If you’re in a meta with nothing but Kess and Teferi this is mitigated but aside from that it’s an unnecessary risk, especially because you won’t be able to stop your opponents from abusing the haste as removing creatures isn’t Yisan’s strong suit. Playing your things at instant speed with Yisan verses helps mitigate issues of summoning sickness, anyways.
Ground Seal - cantripping light grave hate doesn’t shut off a lot of important cards, unfortunately.
Choke - For very heavy blue metas. However, this can lock blue decks out of their ability to interact. As Yisan often relies on blue decks interacting with the things that he cannot answer easily, this can prove fatal.
Hall of Gemstone - Shuts off your own lands on opposing turns, though you may be able to use dorks. The greater problem is similar to choke - locking out other people of interaction. You play Hall and then the storm player names black, casts doomsday / ad nauseum, and other players are locked out of casting counterspells
Quest for Renewal - according to Shaper, useful in a “mana-denial-stax meta”
Curse of Bounty - a difficult card to assess given its political nature. Against tymna players, you can enchant another player and due to the way tymna works, they’ll inevitably attack them for the sake of drawing their own cards. However, can be counterproductive with your own stax pieces. Additionally, they can kill / revoker / etc your Yisan, then abuse the untaps for themselves while you’re locked out of using Yisan.
Instants and Sorceries
Eldritch Evolution - can turn an early Reclamation Sage into a Seedborn Muse. Fairly flexible to-board tutor, though sometimes you’re stuck without a big enough sac target - turning a 1 into a 3 is often not great.
Autumn’s Veil - Protection from Bounce Spells, Reality Shift, Pongify, Abrupt Decay, and occasionally black removal spells out of Gitrog or perhaps some less common options. I like this because it can help you force a Chord, Natural Order, or even a normal hardcast Seedborn Muse, with a relatively low cost to hold up.
Regrowth - more or less efficient recursion that can help buyback tutors, dead combo pieces, even a strip mine’d cradle. A fine versatile piece but can often be lacking in overall usefulness, especially as you look to draw an answer to a hate piece in your hand.
Noxious Revival - Instant speed recursion that can be used as disruption. Is card advantage which sometimes isn’t too big a deal anyways. Being able to noxious revival somebody’s Protean Hulk can be nice.
Pounce - instant speed removal for creatures. Can be difficult to get a 4 power creature to eat a Linvala, though.
Natural State - solid removal that misses Chain Veil, Paradox Engine, Aetherflux Reservoir
Naturalize - traditionally you’ve seen people run deglamer/unravel over naturalize when they can. However, naturalize might be better in some contexts. Putting something in the graveyard leaves it to be permanently exiled with something like scavenging ooze, too. For example, Food Chain Tazri has an easier time tutoring out its food chain again than returning it from the graveyard. Godo is way better with its helm of the host shuffled into the deck. Teferi would probably rather re-tutor out chain veil than try to get it back from the graveyard. On the other hand, storm decks will be able to yawg will back their naturalized paradox engine.
Krosan Grip - 3 cmc removal for only enchantments and artifacts, but split second can be quite useful. The biggest reason to run it is that it is uncounterable removal for a cursed totem. There aren’t too many cursed totem decks running around but Baral is on the rise, and uncounterability is great against that deck. You don’t particularly need it against other things because of the tutorability of reclamation sage / caterpillar.
Unravel the Aether - another naturalize. Shuffling into deck is usually better than destroying due to presence of cards like yawgmoth’s will, but notably worse than exiling
Take Down - some of the most efficient removal for Linvala as well as Zur and Kess, and can actually kill multiple Aven Mindcensors, with Birds of Paradise or Scryb Ranger dying as collateral damage.
Plummet - Also removal for Linvala, Zur, Mindcensors, Kess
Seeds of Innocence - mass artifact removal. Can be backbreaking when played early, and unlike null rod will keep the artifacts off the table. Great against metas that rely heavily on mana artifacts and not on creatures. However, unlike something such as null rod or manglehorn, this does not stop, for example, a player from casting Ad Nauseum, drawing into several fast mana rocks and using them to combo off that turn. Yisan also already has good tools for dealing with artifacts, between manglehorn and bane of progress.
Heroic Intervention, Wrap in Vigor, Warping Wail, etc. - These can counter some board wipes, in particular - anger of the gods / pyroclasm / rolling earthquake. None of these are catch-all, but Heroic Intervention is the best of them with the upside of beating targeted spells. The most common wipe in the format is Deluge, and heroic intervention doesn’t deal with that, either, nor does wrap in vigor. Warping Wail has some utility and can counter deluge but is often uncastable. In general I would only play heroic intervention if red board wipes, or perhaps even wrath of god / supreme verdict, are com
mon in your meta. The rest are too weak although in more casual metas that play more wraths they may be justifiable.
Crushing Vines - Some players include cards like Crushing Vines against decks with strong creature tutoring. Destroying flying creatures is very narrow, but given that two of the three biggest creature-specific answers (Linvala, Mindcensor, CPriest) are dead to them, these inclusions are not meritless.
Artifacts
Jeweled Amulet - gets you a turn 2 Yisan but after that needs to be recharged every so often. Not bad but in a budgetless build you can do without it. Recharging can be awkward as it might not produce mana when you need it to, and mana can be very tight in early turns when you need to stretch to get to versing more than once, or playing spells alongside versing.
Lotus Petal - for faster Yisan, see the Elvish Spirit Guide discussion
Mana Vault - Enables t2 Yisan, perhaps even with mana leftover to play a two-drop. Somewhat Christmas landy, but you can do stuff like T1 vault T2 Yisan + Sphere.
Lightning Greaves - haste enabler for your dorks on your turn, as well as Yisan, and can protect Yisan.
Tormod’s Crypt - Grave hate on demand, it can be low impact especially targeting one person and even hulk decks can win through this
Damping Sphere - While this shuts down many opposing combos, it also shuts down your own Cradle and Nykthos as well as stopping you from doing Sabertooth Loops
Lands
Don’t forget that, while utility lands are nice, Yisan does want to run as many forests as possible for consistency and for Quirion/Scryb Ranger
Ghost Quarter, Wasteland - if you really need targeted land removal, want to abuse hard with ramunap + azusa
Gemstone Caverns - Helps turbo out a t2 Yisan but is a sad colorless land if drawn outside of opening hand. The cost isn’t too high of running it, since Yisan can usually afford to exile a card from hand, and the additional turn 1 null rod / sphere / priest / etc value is really good.
Homeward Path - As more people are playing Gilded Drake, this is a nice little tutorable answer
Command Beacon - if your games go long and yisan is killed frequently
Yavimaya Hollow - To protect from damage or destruction effects. Protection access through crop rotation can be useful in certain metas
Wirewood Lodge - in an elf heavy meta where you priest of titania generates a lot of mana, this could be worth including. Unfortunately she’s basically the only elf you want to untap with this land, unless you’re also running selvala.
Scavenger Grounds - grave hate that can be tutored with crop rotation. Decent utility land to have in a graveyard meta.
