Buried Alive Sidisi (Commander / EDH MTG Deck)

Buried Alive Sidisi

Commander / EDH Combo Competitive Mono-Black Multiplayer Primer Reanimator Storm

marsthesoos

Artifact (22)

Land (32)

Sorcery (17)

Creature (12)

Commander (1)

Instant (13)

Enchantment (3)

"I have heard terrible tales of black rains, ashen fields, and metal that screams. I have consoled myself that the tales were a myth of some fevered mind. But today I saw Razaketh and now I fear the truth." —Kasib Ibn Naji, Letters

Welcome To the Buried Alive Sidisi Primer

Who Am I?

Hi everyone! I'm MarstheSoos, but everyone knows me as Soos. I'm quite active on Discord, and you can find me there, mostly on PlayEdh, but I frequently stop by r/CompetitiveEdh. Feel free to ask me any questions there, or just ping me to chat.

I've been playing Mtg for a little over a year now, and fell in love with edh soon after. I started off with some pretty casual decks but quickly moved onto more competitive decks 9 months ago. I started off with Yidris but quickly moved to the stronger Thrasios/Smasher deck. I played ANF for around 100 games and then started brewing Rashmi control with the Rashmi server. I started tinkering with the idea of Buried Alive Sidisi if Ad Nauseam ever got banned, but I soon realized it was a potent deck with Ad Naus still around.

Introduction to the Deck

So, you want to play a fast and efficent reanimator deck? Well you came to the right place. Buried Alive Sidisi is fast, potent, and can beat most stax effects. Most of our main combos will be completed with Razaketh, the Foulblooded , but we have a strong Ad Nauseam back-up plan.

You Won't Like the Deck If:

You like lots of interaction
You want to grind out opponents
You want to use the combat step
You dislike fast combo

Gameplan

Strategy

Our deck commonly wants to put together Razaketh, the Foulblooded and enough creatures to tutor our way to victory. Razaketh demands sacrifices, and we must appease him. The easiest way to do that is one of our Buried Alive piles, seeing as some require 0 board presence and need minimal mana post raza reanimation. We utilize our graveyard as a better hand in most cases, but remember to play around gy hate to the best of your abilities. We can beat it but no need to play into it if we can avoid it.

We typically end the game with a storm finisher like Aetherflux Reservoir or a lethal Exsanguinate . Our deck has multiple combos in it that are very potent, but our main lines consist of Razaketh tutor chains that end with lots of mana, high storm count and tutors galore. The multiple lines below explain how to win in ordered detail.

Burying Razaketh Alive

Starting the Combo

All of our Buried Alive wins start off with your casting of Buried Alive to bin Phyrexian Delver , Reassembling Skeleton and Razaketh, the Foulblooded . After you have these 3 in the bin you cast a reanimation spell to bring Phyrexian Delver back which in turn reanimates Razaketh, the Foulblooded . The following write-ups start from there.

Zero Mana Win

1. Cast your reanimation spell on Phyrexian Delver and have it return Razaketh, the Foulblooded to play (2 Storm, counting buried alive as 1, -8 life)

2. Sacrifice Delver to tutor up and cast a Lion's Eye Diamond (3 Storm, -10 life)

3. Crack LED and return Reassembling Skeleton to play, and sacrifice it for a Dark Ritual (3 Storm, floating, -12 life)

4. Cast your Ritual then return the Skeleton to sacrifice it immediately for a Memnite . (4 Storm, floating, -14 life)

5. Cast your current 0 drop and sacrifice it for another. Repeat that until you are out of 0 drops and are on your last tutor, and grab Songs of the Damned , then use your last mana to cast it. (9 Storm, 6 floating, -22 life)

6. Use 2 mana to return the Skeleton to the battlefield and sacrifice it for a Yawgmoth's Will . Cast YawgWin. (10 Storm, floating, -24 life)

7. Cast LED and sac it. (Storm 11, 4 floating). Cast Songs of the Damned (12 Storm, 9 floating, -24 life)

8. Return the skeleton to tutor and cast Aetherflux Reservoir . (13 Storm, 3 floating, -26 life)

9. Cast all of your zero drops (+14, +15, +16, +17) (17 Storm, 3, +32 life)

10. Cast Dark Ritual (+18, + 2) (18 Storm, 5, +50 life)

11. Sac all of your 0 drops (-8) for Cabal Ritual , Entomb , Vampiric Tutor and Rain of Filth . (18 Storm, 5, +42 life)

12. Cast Cabal Ritual , and respond to the Aetherflux Reservoir trigger by casting another instant. Then do this with all of the instant you just tutored. (-5, +86) (22 Storm, 3, 130 life)

13. Cast literally any spell in your graveyard to gain the last bit of life to kill the table with Aetherflux Reservoir

Costs 26 life to start comboing, no mana needed

Sacrifice Line

1. Cast your reanimation spell on Phyrexian Delver and have it return Razaketh, the Foulblooded to play (2 Storm, counting buried alive as 1, -8 life)

2. Sacrifice Delver to tutor up and cast a Lion's Eye Diamond (3 Storm, -10 life)

3. Crack LED and return Reassembling Skeleton to play, and sacrifice it for a Dark Ritual (3 Storm, floating, -12 life)

4. Cast your Ritual then return the Skeleton to sacrifice it immediately for a Memnite . (4 Storm, floating, -14 life)

5. Cast your current 0 drop and sacrifice it for another. Repeat that until you are out of 0 drops and are on your last tutor, and grab Songs of the Damned , then use your last mana to cast it. (9 Storm, 6 floating, -22 life)

6. Reanimate and sacrifice Skeleton to tutor up a Yawgmoth's Will (9 Storm, 4, -24 life)

7. Reanimate and sacrifice Skeleton to tutor up a Sacrifice , then cast it sacrificing Razaketh.(10 Storm, 9, -26 life)

8. Cast Yawgmoth's Will and the original reanimation spell to bring Razaketh back. (12 Storm, 4, -26 life)

9. Use your mana floating, your rituals, and your mass amount of tutors to storm off

Costs 26 life to start comboing, no mana needed

The Blood Ritual

1. Cast Buried Alive for Razaketh, Skeleton and Bloodghast .

2. Reanimate Razaketh and play your land for turn

3. Sacrifice Bloodghast for LED, and cast + crack it (3 Storm, 3, -2 life)

4. Spend to bring Skeleton back, and sacrifice him for a Dark Ritual. Cast it.(4 Storm, 3, -4 life)

5. Return the Skeleton again (- ) and chain all your 0 drops together. With the last tutor grab Songs of the Damned . (8 Storm, , -12 life)

6. Cast Songs (+6), and return + sac Skeleton to get YawgWin. (9 Storm, 4, -14 life)

7. Cast YawgWin and storm your opponents out.

Costs 16 life and a land drop

Entomb-esque Lines

Starting Us Off

All of the following scenarios assume you have a Razaketh, the Foulblooded in the yard and some number of creatures in play.

Their Sacrifice

1. Reanimate Razaketh with 2 creatures in play. (1 Storm)
2. Sacrifice the first dude for LED and cast it(2 Storm, -2 life)
3. Sacrifice the other creature for Skeleton and crack LED to ditch skeleton.(2 Storm, 3, -4 life)
4. Reanimate the Skeleton (-2) and sac it to tutor up a 0 mana dude. Cast and sacrifice it for all the other 0 drops in your deck. With the last tutor we grab Songs of the Damned and cast it. (6 Storm, 6, -12 life)
5. Reanimate and sac the Skeleton for Yawgmoth's Will . (6 Storm, 4, -14 life)
6. Cast YawgWin and storm off

Costs 16 life and requires 2 creatures in play

The Hours

Razaketh, the Engine

So, this is the line that assembles Paradox Engine , mana rocks and our payoff Exsanguinate . With Razaketh, the Foulblooded and Engine we can make lots of mana by tutoring a bunch of cheap rituals, 0 mana creatures and Yawgmoth's Will to keep chaining spells into a lethal Exsanguinate

Ad Nauseam Storm

Due to our high density of fast mana, low curve, and having access to the color black we get to play, no not play, but abuse Ad Nauseam . With Ad Naus we can put a good chunk of our deck into our hands and from there we can combo off however we choose.

Corpse Dance Shenanigans

So, let's assume we have a Paradox Engine and 6 mana in rocks (2 black rocks needed). We can cast our commander (Paradox Engine trigger) and sacrifice her to tutor (let her go to the gy). We then search our library for Corpse Dance . We then tap all of our rocks (4,:b:,:b: floating) and use 5 mana to cast Corpse Dance (with buyback) on our commander. This firstly triggers paradox engine, untapping all of our mana rocks to net us :b:. We then sacrifice sidisi to her exploit ability to find a card. We can either grab more mana rocks or just random cards, it doesn't matter. We now can use Corpse Dance with our board state to make enough mana for a lethal Exsanguinate or enough storm to kill everyone with Aetherflux Reservoir .

Artifact Combos

Basalt Monolith + Rings of Brighthearth

As an easier Razaketh line we picked up Basalt Monolith and Rings of Brighthearth . Not great, but it's being tested to some success.

Paradox Engine + Voltaic Key + Sensei's Divining Top

With these artifacts in play (assuming we have decent mana rocks) we can draw our whole deck while executing the following process: Tap Sensei's Divining Top to draw a card, holding priority you tap Voltaic Key to untap Sensei's Divining Top to tap it again to draw a card. You then draw a card and put top on top of your deck. Then you draw top since you tapped to draw twice. Then we cast top, which triggers our Paradox Engine and that untaps all of our mana rocks and voltaic key allowing us to do this as much as we'd like.

Matchups

Stax

This matchup in particular will be one of the harder ones. Beating a resolved Rest in Peace or Root Maze might seem impossible, but that's far from true. This is how I go about beating certain effects:

Etb Tapped Effects

These cards alone do not interact with our combo at all. We use 0 tap abilities during the combo. However, on the turns leading up to the win these effects can be quite frustrating for us. Your mana rocks will enter tapped (or god forbid Sigi has a turn one root maze our whole land suite will be entering tapped). We usually just have to slowly build up mana to win or utilize Paradox Engine to untap all of our artifacts.

Graveyard Hate

When someone drops a Rest in Peace and assumes they have beat you, they are wrong. We have a stellar back-up plan that doesn't need the gy at all. Typically, we then start tutoring for an Ad Nauseam to begin storming off.

Rule of Law

Something will beat us eventually. Non Eidolon of Rhetoric rule of laws will bring us to a halt. Typically we will try to slowly assemble Basalt Monolith + Rings of Brighthearth + Exsanguinate to kill the table. However! I have beat a few Rule of Law s without even needing to combo at all. Turns out an 8/8 flier with multiple stax effects in play is quite strong....

Limited Untaps

Cards like Winter Orb and Static Orb are cards that only slow us down. They don't interfere with the combo turn at all, more so annoying effects than backbreaking ones.

Taxes

Cards like Thalia, Guardian of Thraben and Sphere of Resistance slow us down and make razaketh lines more difficult. In order to beat these our best cards include Jet Medallion or Paradox Engine and a mass amount of rocks.

Trinisphere

This card is hard to beat, plain and simple. No decks really have an easy time comboing under one of these bad boys. The easiest ways to beat 3ball include Basalt Monolith + Rings of Brighthearth + Exsanguinate or Paradox Engine and lots of rocks.

Cursed Totem Effects

These shut off Razaketh lines completely, so we tend to look towards Ad Nauseam here. However, if it's a Linvala we can remove her and proceed to combo off with Razaketh.

Null Rod and Stony Silence

These cards shut off our mana rocks and Aetherflux Reservoir which doesn't hurt the Razaketh chain but is a pretty big blow to the finisher. However, we can chain together all of our rituals and can deal 32 damage to each player (Add more for each land you have after 3) with a large exsanguinate. This is our one concession to ANF.

Tutor Hate

Cards like Aven Mindcensor or Stranglehold admittedly are hard to defeat with Razaketh. We usually need to lean towards finding a removal spell for the bird or an Ad Nauseam to win. Finding these cards is harder, but you can't really get around that. Heart of the cards I guess...

Combo Decks with Blue

Combo decks with blue can be harder matchups, but we aren't favorites to lose. They can apply pressure with their fast win, but they also are packing disruption suites that decks like ours lack. When playing against them I usually go about it like this:

I have Buried Alive , a reanimation spell in hand, and plenty of life to combo. However, Jeleva didn't play anything last turn and went pretty deep into the tank on their main phase. This could mean they are packing some small disruption that slows them down but stops us from winning. In this scenario I might take a turn off and cast Sidisi, Undead Vizier to tutor up something like Hope of Ghirapur or Defense Grid . Now this doesn't mean it's always correct to go slow and tutor protection at every step. If you think you can afford it by all means do so, but if it makes you multiple turns slower or puts you at great risk to lose just jam the combo. We can recover from a counterspell, but not from a loss.

Blueless Fast Combo

Against a pod that has no blue and is all fast combo we are a heavy favorite. Due to our high density of fast mana, cheap and efficient combos and the fact that we have multiple game winning spells alongside an excellent suite of tutors we should have no trouble racing.

There are some troublesome cards in non-blue decks though, so I wouldn't just jam your combos. If you notice an opponent playing strangely or slower than there deck is known for it might be them playing defensively against us. There is only so much we can do about this but checking with discard is always the safer option.

Control

When sitting across from Rashmi control you might be concerned that all your win cons will just get countered into oblivion. There are two ways to play against control in my opinion, and they both have their pros and cons.

Chimp Speed

If we have that turn 2 win and Rashmi tapped out you best believe I'm gonna make her have that force of will. This style of play is supposed to catch greedier control players who tap out of interaction to cast some sort of sorcery speed ramp. This is usually a very risky line and I can't recommend it very often. It'll get the job done every now and again though.

Playing It Safe

In this instance we might slow our turn 3 combo into a turn 4 combo but we will have some form of protection like a Defense Grid or Hope of Ghirapur to shut off some players countermagic. Discard spells can also help attack the resources of the control player trying to shut us down. Fire these off before you win if your mana permits it.

Single Card Discussion

The Commander

Our commander, Sidisi, Undead Vizier is a diabolic intent in the command zone. Granted, she costs 5 mana but she is always available to us, and that is a strong asset to have.

The Creatures

The Combo Creatures - Razaketh, the Foulblooded and Reassembling Skeleton . Razaketh enables any win con we'd like and Skeletor can be an un-counterable, re-usable Diabolic Intent

The "Free" Bodies - Phyrexian Delver and Bloodghast can enable different Buried Alive piles by starting off tutor chains without spending any mana at all.

The Literal Free Bodies - Memnite , Ornithopter , Phyrexian Walker and Shield Sphere are all creatures that enable Razaketh chains and can make Culling the Weak , Diabolic Intent and Phyrexian Tower much better.

The Dorks - Since we are in Mono-Black we are limited on our dork selection but we still choose to play Blood Pet and Leaden Myr to store mana for our combo turn and because they can always be sacrificed to Razaketh or a multitude of other cards.

Utility Creatures - Hope of Ghirapur can stop one player's interaction on the combo turn. Apprentice Necromancer is a reanimation effect that can save us a mana on our combo turn.

The Mana-Base

Basics - pretty obvious that we play these but our high number of them fuels Lake of the Dead and Bubbling Muck

Sol Lands - Our deck can be mana hungry at times, and lands like these can provide: Ancient Tomb , City of Traitors , Crystal Vein , Ebon Stronghold , Peat Bog and Phyrexian Tower , assuming we have a creature

Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth - Urborg is a land that smooths out Bubbling Muck turns, improves Lake of the Dead and can fix our mana if we are dense on colorless lands.

Lake of the Dead - In my opinion, this is the strongest land in the deck. By itself it can cast Buried Alive and Reanimate , allowing us to win. The sacrifice is well wroth the payout.

Protection Lands - Cavern of Souls and Boseiju, Who Shelters All . Cavern can force through a tutor via our general or a reanimation spell via Apprentice Necromancer . Boseiju, Who Shelters All protects the most important spells in our deck: Buried Alive , Ad Nauseam and our reanimation spells.

The Artifacts

Net Positive Rocks - Sol Ring , Mana Crypt , Mana Vault , Mox Diamond , Chrome Mox , Mox Opal , Lotus Petal and Grim Monolith are all cards that are pretty much staples in storm decks across cedh.

Basalt Monolith and Rings of Brighthearth are artifacts that combo to make infinite mana, letting us win with Exsanguinate

Fellwar Stone , Prismatic Lens and Mind Stone , since we are in mono-black we only have so much ramp on 2, it isn't as essential in this deck as it is in ANF due to us being less Ad Nauseam based so we don't run the other 2 rocks.

Jet Medallion - This card can smooth out Razaketh lines by letting us grab some 2cmc rituals to get more mana while it can also make Buried Alive + 2cmc reanimation spell lines cost 3 mana for the whole combo.

Lion's Eye Diamond - a very powerful artifact, but can be hard to utilize properly. Remember to hold priority and crack it when casting a tutor or YawgWin. It's also very essential to our 0 mana Razaketh line.

Defense Grid - This card gives us protection in most scenarios, assuming our opponents don't just have lots of mana and nothing to do with cheap interaction in hand. We can actively tutor for it if we suspect a player is holding up interaction for us.

Voltaic Key - Key is a card that can gain us mana when combined with a rock like Grim Monolith and it combos with Sensei's Divining Top and Paradox Engine

Sensei's Divining Top - Top notch card selection and can combo with Voltaic Key and Paradox Engine .

Everflowing Chalice - a cheap mana rock early game, or a huge one on the Paradox Engine turns.

Springleaf Drum - Turns one of our cheap creatures into a mana dork for the following turns

Paradox Engine - Engine is an insanely strong card, it generates mass amounts of mana and combined with Ad Nauseam or Razaketh, the Foulblooded it will win games.

Aetherflux Reservoir - The main win-con for most storm based decks, our pile is no exception. It can gain us life and if you combine it with some cheap creatures, we'll never lose with Razaketh.

The Sorceries

Discard Spells - Cards like Thoughtseize , Duress , Cabal Therapy , Collective Brutality and Inquisition of Kozilek allow us to protect our combo or let us disrupt our opponents long enough so we can win while they reassemble their win. They also can get Razaketh out of our hand if we need them to.

Deathmark and Toxic Deluge - Hersey punishable by death

Tutors - Every deck needs these, we play the good ones. Demonic Tutor , Imperial Seal and Diabolic Intent

Reanimation - Death, never lasts Reanimate and Exhume all ensure Razaketh's return.

Buried Alive - the bread and butter of our deck. It assembles the easiest win-cons we have.

Exsanguinate - A win con with infinite mana or Paradox Engine shennanigans. It can also gain us life to keep tutoring with Razaketh.

Bubbling Muck - The black High Tide . It can help us with any of our lines and can generate lots of mana.

Yawgmoth's Will - One of the strongest cards in the history of Mtg. It allows us to re-buy rituals, up our storm count and enables some strong Razaketh lines.

The Instants

Rituals - Razaketh Demands an Offering. Dark Ritual , Cabal Ritual , Culling the Weak , Songs of the Damned , Rain of Filth and Sacrifice

Ad Nauseam - An insane draw spell, despite some of our "fat" cards we still can abuse ad naus enough to storm off with ease.

Tutors - We, again need the good tutors. We play the following: Vampiric Tutor and Entomb tutors a reanimation target to the yard.

Reanimation - Death, never lasts. Goryo's Vengeance , Corpse Dance and Shallow Grave all ensure Razaketh's return.

Slaughter Pact - Hersey punishable by death

The Enchantments

Reanimation - Death, never lasts Necromancy , Animate Dead and Dance of the Dead

Chains - No chains can hold Razaketh down. Chains of Mephistopheles is some disruption that doesn't hurt us due to our lack of draw spells.

The Lack Thereof

Grim Tutor - Was originally cut for Infernal Tutor which did great. I recently cut Infernal for another discard effect. This might be too greedy, testing will tell.

Walking Ballista - a fine win condition, not sure it's needed here. It would be fine to slot in if you'd like.

Information

What If...?

I draw Razaketh? - The best solution to this is casting an Exhume holding priority to crack an on board Lion's Eye Diamond to reanimate Raza. We also can use some of our discard spells to dump Razaketh or just go for an Ad Nauseam win.

I lose Reassembling Skeleton? - If we lose Skeleton all of our Razaketh lines just got a lot harder, and rightfully so, he was a good combo card. In order to win with Razaketh now you'd have to have a few creatures on board in addition to the Phyrexian Delver + Razaketh buried alive pile.

I lose Songs of the Damned? - Songs is the best ritual in our deck, losing it hurts us but doesn't actually interrupt Razaketh lines that much. Our main way out of it is to just use Sacrifice as our payoff ritual. We would need two mana going into this line, but it's still quite doable.

Razaketh pieces are disrupted? - If we do lose skeleton or songs our creature combo lines are worse, but still doable. Just don't be afraid to go for an Ad Nauseam win.

Records

My personal records, this includes games and goldfishing. Games

Cards Being Tested

As of recent we got some new toys, so I'd like to try them out. Final Parting and Mausoleum Secrets both seem like strong new options for mono black. I might try and incorporate more creatures, we'll see. Testing new things on trice ranked pods.

Watch List

As of right now, the biggest card on my watch list is Chains of Mephistopheles . I wouldn't recommend buying this card if you are going to pick up the deck. I'm currently testing things in it's place.

Credits!

I'd like to thank Leptys for his insight, Shaper for suggestions/primer talk, Reversemermaid for his memes, Sug for getting me to try Buried Alive Sidisi, Lilbrudder for being amazing, and the sanctum for keeping my winrate in check.

Razaketh on Discord

If you are interested in Razaketh and my list isn't your thing, feel free to check out discord and look at all the lists, primers and get in on some new spice!

If You Play!

If you decide to pick up this deck, feel free to ask any and all questions! And remember,

Suggestions

Updates Add

Primer Tweaks — Aug. 15, 2017

Edit

Hi everyone! I just added 2 sections describing the loops possible with Corpse Dance and a watch list.

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Top Ranked	Achieved #5 position overall 7 years ago
Date added	7 years
Last updated	3 years
Legality	This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	10 - 0 Mythic Rares 29 - 0 Rares 27 - 0 Uncommons 13 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	1.72
Folders	EDH, cEDH, Mono Black, Sidisi, deck ideas, Competitive edh, edh, cEDH, not mine edh, Actually cEDH
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