This is where I have landed with creating a Shrine deck using Sisay. There are a few directions it can go from here, and it probably needs to adapt to whatever your meta involves.
General Strategy
People don't tend to enjoy looking at a Sphere of Resistance after a
Jokulhaups
type of effect, so you may not get to play this deck very often against the same people. Some will like it for its uniqueness, others will be upset you didn't partake in the expected battle cruiser face smash. It really depends on your playgroup.
-
Get Sanctum of All online, preferably with protection.
-
Pillowfort.
-
Blow up non-enchantment permanents to reset everyone else's board.
Basically, you have a bunch of tutors (including your commander) and a toolbox of tutor targets. Getting Sanctum of All online means you will win if you can protect it. There are 4
Ghostly Prison
type enchantments which can stop most creature decks or at least keep you alive until you can wipe the board. There are 3
Greater Auramancy
type enchantments to protect your enchantments, though
Sterling Grove
is the all star, with the ability to tutor for more protection if someone nukes it. Finally, there is Teferi's Protection, though I have actually never used it in a game (yet).
This deck can be a little tricky to play. Often you have to make a risky decision like "going for it" with
Obliterate
without enchantment protection, or deciding on tutoring and playing some protection versus advancing your game plan. If you know the decks and players that you're up against, that helps, but I've found you only really get away playing this deck a handful of times against a playgroup.
Best opening hands
Honestly, casting your commander is almost just plan B. You don't need to cast her to win, at all. And in many cases, it will be too slow.
-
Your opening hand should have lands and ramp. Never take a 1 lander, 2 lands is suspect unless you have some filtering (
Ponder
,
Preordain
,
Brainstorm
). I would mulligan to 5 easily just to have 2+ lands and ramp. The deck might need some more ramp.
-
The best possible opening hand has
Captain Sisay
, lands and ramp. If you can put her down on turn 2 or 3, you can move a lot faster than using
Sisay, Weatherlight Captain
, and you can also grab
Urza's Ruinous Blast
with her. In addition, you should probably cast
Sisay, Weatherlight Captain
shortly after, which will let you tutor twice per cycle with enough mana.
-
Any hand that has
Jegantha, the Wellspring
with a path to casting it is good. If it has that, and an enchantment tutor or Sanctum of All, that's really good. If not, you can still cast
Sisay, Weatherlight Captain
and probably activate twice per turn anyways.
-
Time of Need
or
Demonic Tutor
in an otherwise strong looking opening hand can turn the hand into one of the above.
Which shrines, in what order?
Obviously, get
Sanctum of All
on the board ASAP. It depends on the legendaries on the board, but the first shrine you should try to get is
Sanctum of Fruitful Harvest
. It will quickly get out of hand, and even though the mana is all one color, it will push you closer to a win fast by letting you cast everything in your hand. The "natural" order, if you were just tutoring a shrine with her ability (but you can typically go quite a bit faster) is
Sanctum of Tranquil Light
->
Sanctum of Stone Fangs
->
Sanctum of Fruitful Harvest
.
Sanctum of Stone Fangs
tends to attract attention, and I often prefer to grab
Fblthp, the Lost
to get the draw 2, and a 1/1 on board (more on this later).
You can take a detour anywhere along these options to grab toolbox legendaries (of which there are few right now, more later) e.g.
Oko, Thief of Crowns
. Just be sure to think about the colors you are grabbing, and a few turns ahead.
Particularly problematic commanders can be dealt with by grabbing
Honden of Infinite Rage
and hating it off the table.
Honden of Seeing Winds
will just lose you the game. I might even just take it out, except it's kind of useful to pitch to discard (worst use of a card ever). It's totally possible to add a
Jace, Wielder of Mysteries
if you think somehow you can put it on the battlefield and keep it there.
Also remember that
Sanctum of All
can put Shrines into play from the graveyard.
Pillowfort
There are 4 enchantments that make attacking a nightmare. There are also 3 enchantments that protect your enchantments. For more competitive non-combat decks, you would definitely need to make some adjustments, such as adding a
Leyline of Sanctity
(which fits just fine into the deck). I would consider
Lazotep Plating
and maybe a few more counterspells as well for that kind of format. But I don't see this ever going to a cedh table with a straight face. The pillow enchantments do fall hard on their face against a serious voltron deck (rare, but they exist). For that reason, I have considered
Ensnaring Bridge
, but there are limited ways of going and getting it as-is.
Board Wipes
Doomskar
is in there now, but possible other options are of course
Wrath of God
,
Day of Judgment
,
Damnation
or the new
Damn
. But the best one in the deck, since it is a legendary permanent, is
Massacre Girl
.
Massacre Girl
has prolonged the game for me so many times over, and is tutorable with either Sisay. She also gets around indestructible. And this is one of those reasons that
Fblthp, the Lost
is in the deck, to get her started off.
Jokulhaups
and
Obliterate
wipe the entire board except for enchantments and planeswalkers. If you land either of these (and note
Obliterate
is not counterable), the game is over and you have won. This is a source of some salt, but most of the time people will agree that they can't recover before you are doing 20+ life drain to each opponent and 40 targeted damage per turn (or twice that with
Paradox Haze
or
Strionic Resonator
). A person might give you kudos, and the rest of the table will look at you sideways because they read that spells like this aren't supposed to be in EDH. But these spells do belong in exactly this deck. If you cast one of these, you should probably be holding some protection or be confident your important shrines will live through response.
Protect and Recovery
People will spend all of their enchantment removal on you. All of it. Every time. For that reason, the deck has a ton of ways to deal with this.
Replenish
is probably the best. Also there is
Dance of the Manse
(though having them come back as creatures is actually very NOT good),
Open the Vaults
,
Primevals' Glorious Rebirth
,
Hall of Heliod's Generosity
(this can be tutored for by
Sisay, Weatherlight Captain
!),
Mistveil Plains
and Hannah, Ship's Navigator. Don't forget that
Sanctum of All
also tutors from the graveyard.
For enchantment hex-proof or shroud, you have
Privileged Position
,
Sterling Grove
and
Greater Auramancy
. In addition, these can be targets for
Mirrormade
and
Estrid's Invocation
.
Possible additions are things like
Lazotep Plating
or maybe even
Veil of Summer
.
For protection,
Teferi's Protection
is obvious, but there is also
Negate
,
Fierce Guardianship
and
Deflecting Swat
.
Utility
Obviously the tutors can grab a lot of utility, and a lot of it is also legendary stuff.
Hanna, Ship's Navigator
is another
Hall of Heliod's Generosity
but contributes to
Sisay, Weatherlight Captain
's buff.
Oko, Thief of Crowns
is great for pretty much everything creature or artifact based, can be tutored with either Sisay, and is probably a one-shot elking (people don't love Oko), but really gets the job done.
Swords to Plowshares
,
Crush Contraband
and
Utter End
are light interaction with permanents. Might need more here, and note that exiling is just far superior to anything else.
For graveyard decks,
Bojuka Bog
can be picked up by
Sylvan Scrying
. But
Agent of Erebos
can be grabbed by
Idyllic Tutor
and
Enlightened Tutor
. It also gets the same protection as your other enchantments. My meta has entirely too many graveyard shenanigans going on, which is why this deck runs so many sorceries to bring back enchantments (they like to mill everyone, sometimes by accident, giving me a free win) and two ways to flush graveyards, as well as exile or Oko "removal".
Current thoughts around improvement
Well, I hate when my stuff gets exiled, and
Karn, the Great Creator
not only gets it back for me, but it also turns off everyone's artifacts, which is hilarious but will earn me even fewer friends. Oh yeah, and it can be tutored with either Sisay.
Some of the cards really feel dead:
-
Hannah, Ship's Navigator has never been useful.
-
Oko, Thief of Crowns
is a one-shot deal to be honest (except if
Sphere of Safety
is active and burly. But it saved my butt once. Once.
-
Opal Palace
has always been the worst possible land draw, even if it can buff my commander.
-
Shadowspear
seems a little stupid, and there is a 1 mana hybrid legendary creature that could pull this deck easily into a nice secondary win-con:
Rhys the Redeemed
, which is going to add +2/+2 to Sisay and open up a path in addition to
Honden of Life's Web
, and imagine elking some of those tokens...
-
Honden of Seeing Winds
is an "I lose" button. Maybe this can be fixed with putting Jace or
Laboratory Maniac
in play, but it feels too risky and hard. You basically never want this in play. The theme is Shrines, but the goal is still to win.
-
Estrid's Invocation
and
Mirrormade
can double up any
Ghostly Prison
type of enchantment, or double up on hexproof/shroud protection such as
Sterling Grove
, but they are still underwhelming. Only really good for giving go-wide players an aneurysm. Note that Estrid's can legendary rule your
Honden of Seeing Winds
and then blink to nothing the next cycle. I guess that's a plan.
General Notes
Once Upon a Time
always feels good in an opening hand. Digging five deep is really good. Drawing it in the next few turns doesn't feel bad either.
Jegantha, the Wellspring
is the hero of this deck, and it's so good I have considered more than once to try to eliminate everything with more than a single pip of a color.
Ponder
,
Preordain
and
Brainstorm
really feel good, especially with the amount of shuffling.
This deck can accidentally go from least-threatening on the table to win. I have had turns where
Sanctum of Fruitful Harvest
and a
Sanctum of All
have allowed me to generate enough mana to (upkeep) tutor
Obliterate
and cast with
Sanctum of Fruitful Harvest
mana. It's game at that point, though some people hate admitting it.
Every turn is going to present you with a bunch of decisions. I have gotten much better at piloting it, but you really need to know when to make the call between getting more protection, and "going for it".
If you want it cheaper
Look, this deck is stuffed with some goodies. It has all 10 shock lands. It has
Teferi's Protection
, half of the tutors. It's not a good winning strategy though, and it needed some serious help to make a bad idea playable. But if you want to make it cheaper:
-
You really don't need the shock lands, especially with the new snow dual lands having basic land types. That also opens up the ramp card
Into the North
. So that seems like a legit way to replace the shock lands. You could also maybe throw in a handful of gates. I think the manabase could get a lot more basic with the right approach. In fact, I think the current land base might not be optimal despite the price, though I have NEVER run into a situation where I didn't have WUBRG on turn 5.
-
You don't need all of the expensive tutors. They make the deck consistent, but they aren't cheap. Your commander is a tutor though, that can tutor another tutor. It will be less consistent in early turns, but you would be just fine.
-
Resurgent Belief
can replace
Replenish
.
-
Deflecting Swat
and
Fierce Guardianship
are crazy expensive. You could easily swap these out for an easy-to-cast counterspell.
-
There are some other alternate win cons that could trim down some of the cards to replace consistency with alternate win cons, such as going token-based wide, or going legendary voltron. I think these are well explored elsewhere.
