Sisay has now taken her rightful place as the Weatherlight captain! We've optimized her Paradox Engine lines to use
Skyship Weatherlight
to provide a deterministic outlet that doesn't require as many moving pieces and suboptimal slots as Saffi/Seton/Rishkar/Kamahl or Elixir/Selvala/Azusa/Dosan.
The long awaited update to Biopower's Paradox Sisay is finally here! Please refer to this primer for everything EXCEPT the wincons! It is amazing and we couldn't have gotten as far as we did without him! Thanks biopouvoir!! PRIMER HERE
Extra combo slots (We did not include this. Reasoning at the bottom)
Seton, Krosan Protector
(allows for the 0-mana line. AKA the "I probably shouldn't be going for this right now" line)
Main win-line:
1) With Sisay, Engine and a single mana dork or rock that produces 1 mana (mana dork can be replaced with instead just having a few extra mana when you start, or having some hatebears to use with Rishkar)
2) We need to get to 10 mana; 4 to play Skyship, 4 to activate, and up to 2 to cast the spell under it. Keep in mind that when we play it, we untap our in-play mana.
3) Fetch and play Amber (2 mana, 1 from dork 1 from Amber), Opal (5 mana)
4) There are a few ways to net the last few mana. Simple one is to go get and play Rishkar and use him to convert a hatebear into a dork (5-3+4=6 mana) -> Kataki (6-2+4= 8) -> Skyship and cast it (8-4+4 = 8).
5) With Skyship and 7+ mana available, look through your deck for all 0 and 1 cost mana rocks that you have as well as Qasali Pridemage (or Caterpillar if you want to reduce that down to 6+ mana). Activate Skyship to get a random one into hand; play it and you will be back up to 5+ mana no matter which rock it is or even if it's the removal. Continue doing this until your Skyship is empty; you will start netting mana very quickly as well. Each rock you cast also lets you activate Sisay; use one to get Bow of Nylea here.
Using one activation to get Urza's Ruinous Blast can be very helpful here as well; finding where you can layer it exactly is sometimes hard but there is almost always a line. Keep in mind that once you're infinite you can use any removal to destroy your hatebears before URB so you can use bow to put them back on the bottom and a boat to bring them all back.
6) From here you can start looping the boat. Use Qasali to blow up the boat, use Bow of Nylea to put them both back on the bottom, Sisay to get the boat back into your hand and then the boat goes and grabs Qasali. Each cast will net you quite a bit of mana and you will go infinite. If you run Sensei's Divining Top you can start putting that on the boat, drawing a card with it, and then it's back in your library already when the next boat comes down.
[NO DIV TOP?] If you decide not to run Div Top, you can simply get infinite mana and then use the boat to get every artifact and every creature in your deck into play. This should generally still be enough of a lock that your Norn'ed up creatures can beat them down.
[ONCE INFINITE] At this point we can infinitely cast any instant or sorcery in our deck and then put it on bottom with bow and redraw it, so we Beast Within all our opponents lands and permanents and then cast an URB again, put all our creatures and artifacts back into play via Boat, and shuffle everything else back into our deck so we don't deck out. This should be enough of a lock that no opponent can ever make another move all game and you win with your creatures swinging. If you need to cast URB early remember that you can grab priest of titania and lightning greaves on the boat and then URB with enough mana floating to empty them out of the boat and get back up to where you need to be to go infinite.
"Naked Line"
1) If instead we only have Sisay and Paradox engine...
2-4) Amber (1) -> Opal (3) -> Seton -> Rishkar -> Kataki -> Skyship -> GO TO STEP 5 ABOVE
ALTERNATE LINES WE FOUND WHILE BREWING
Azusa, Steel, Fair, (div top)
4b) Alternatively, fetch Azusa (5-3+3=5 mana) -> Skyship and cast it (5-4+3 = 4) -> use Sisay to get any land (Cradle), and you're now above 5 with Skyship in play
6b) [Azusa, Steel, Fair] From here you can do a multitude of things; you can chain through most legendaries netting up mana, then use Inventor's fair to search for Sculpting Steel to copy your Boat. With a copy of the Boat in play, sacrifice the real Boat, put it on the bottom of your library with Bow, and then fetch it back into your hand with Sisay. You can keep casting this Boat and repeating this process, as long as your rocks in play can make 7+ total mana, to gain infinite mana. Once you've done this is a great time to play your Urza's Ruinous Blast. Cast your real Boat and sacrifice your copy and in response to the trigger for your real Boat use Bow to bottom the Sculpting Steel.
7a) [Sensei's Divining Top lines] On this Boat we can grab all that artifact mana we just put on the bottom of our deck and Sensei's Diving Top. Put all of those into play. If you didn't already have infinite mana, you can make it with Top and Sculpting Steel by repeatedly drawing into each of them with both tops and replaying them over and over again.
With infinite mana we can make a loop with Top, Sculpting Steel and Skyship to draw the whole deck (draw with Top, Sculpting Steel to copy Boat and put Top under the steel Boat, Bow to put real Boat on bottom and sisay to get real Boat back to hand, play div top draw a card with it, play real Boat and sac steel Boat and use Bow to put steel Boat on the bottom of your deck so that you can put steel under the real Boat, cast steel and copy real Boat and put div top under the steel Boat etc...).
7b) The Top lines aren't needed if you're on fair and azusa and steel, and only add a guarenteed infinite that is deterministic. If you instead do not run it, then you simply follow most of the same steps but your second Boat gets you all of your rocks and then your 3rd Boat gets you everything else in your deck into play. This will very likely be a win even if you aren't able to actually destroy all their permanents.
Cut the "0 mana and no dorks or rocks" line that included either a 1-drop like Hope of Ghirapur or
Seton, Krosan Protector; these lines don't honestly come up all that often and overall it's a little nicer to just go for the plan A rather than run a multitude of cards for a backup plan. In addition it is generally more accurate to just go for some stax first; you can always use Rishkar on 2 hatebears for the naked line as well.
Cut stony silence because of the extra reliance on artifacts; without Seton and Kamahl you can occasionally find it harder to get up to URB and continue chaining mana afterwards. It can still be run, I just think it will be smoother as Aura of Silence.
Magic the Gathering, FNM is TM and copyright Wizards of the Coast, Inc, a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc. All rights reserved. This site is unaffiliated. Articles and comments are user-submitted and do not represent official endorsements of this site.
