$25 Yisan: Reaching Heaven Through Violence
Let There Be No Genesis...
Why play this deck? This is a horrifyingly degenerate monstrosity of a deck whose price fluctuates between $20 and $30. It is also a deeply skill-testing deck where the pilot has a ton of decisions.Uninterrupted, it is incapable of failing to find a kill by turn 8 with any hand that has 3 or more Forests. Realistically, it is never slower than turn 7. Given you draw almost any useful cards it will kill on turn 6, and turn 5 kills are not uncommon. Winning before that is possible, but only with fairly specific combinations of cards.Winning as fast as possible is not normally your best path to victory. Where this deck really excels is in its ability to consistently answer other degenerate combos without disrupting much its own game plan, and its ability to play around certain kinds of disruption, particularly counterspells.
It has weaknesses. Your ability to answer spot removal such as Swords to Plowshares and Lightning Bolt is limited, and your ability to react to creature sweepers such as Wrath of God is bad. If you're expecting these cards, it is good to try and win as fast as possible.
Deck Philosophy
It is temping to try and make Yisan's combo package as slim as possible so you can run a lot of other things. It turns out that it is better to run a large amount of combo pieces because this gives you redundancy in the face of removal, and drawing half a combo can speed you up considerably.
Mulligan Guide
There is almost no situation in which I would mulligan a hand which can cast Yisan on turn 2. Hands with 5 or less cards that can cast Yisan on turn 3 are also keeps. The only other hands which are keepable without being able to cast Yisan on turn 2 are those which win the game quickly without him.
Combo Guide
Ok just bear with me here. This is going to seem complex at first, but it really isn't all that bad.
The first combo, in the top left corner, uses Seeker of Skybreak to untap itself any amount of times to make an arbitrarily large Crackdown Construct, which can then be given flying, trample or haste by Golem Artisan.
The second combo is to use Karametra's Acolyte or Priest of Titania to make 4 or more mana per tap, and then use Sword of the Paruns to untap them for infinite mana. Then use the sword with Yisan to fetch Golem Artisan, Cogwork Assembler, or Temur Sabertooth. The assembler makes infinite tokens. The artisan grows himself and any artifact creatures you have to infinite size and gives them haste, flying and trample. The sabertooth can be used with infinite mana to infinitely recast Acidic Slime, Somberwald Stag and Great Oak Guardian.
The third combo is the same as the second, but the sword is untapping an Arbor Elf or Voyaging Sayr that untaps a land which can generate 4 or more mana.
The fourth combo is to use Runed Stalactite to transform Wirewood Symbiote into an Elf, allowing it to bounce itself to untap anything and re-equip for 3 mana. This in combination with anything that taps for 4 or more mana goes infinite, untaps Yisan, and finds Golem Artisan or Temur Sabertooth.
The fifth combo is to use Temur Sabertooth, Wirewood Symbiote, an elf, and a creature that taps for 3 plus the cost of the elf to make infinite mana and untap Yisan.
The sixth combo is like the fifth, but you use Great Oak Guardian instead of Wirewood Symbiote, and you need all your creatures combined to tap for 8.
The seventh combo is using Voltaic Construct in combination with any of the cards that turn your creatures into artifacts. Unless the card turning your creatures into artifacts is Transmogrifying Licid, you need another card to untap Yisan.
Cogwork Assembler in combination with any of the cards that turn your creatures into artifacts goes infinite with a Karametra's Acolyte or Priest of Titania that taps for enough mana. This combo is less mana intensive than it looks.
Most of these combos would be utterly insane in any other deck, but you only need to draw half of any of them, and the other half you can find with Yisan.
Surviving Disruption
If you haven't tried to combo yet and disruption is being cast, the best thing to do is activate Yisan in response to find a bounce creature such as Invasive Species to protect whatever is being targetted. The best of these against a board wipe is Changeling Titan, but be careful not to get in a position where something you need is under the Titan and you can't bust it out.
It's possible to combo off in such a way that once Yisan is on the board, nothing else can be countered. Remember that bouncing stuff and recasting it can open you up to counterspells.
Yisan can get to have enough counters that you don't have anything good to find with him. If you were using Voltaic Construct and your mana source was removed, you can get Elvish Abberation. If you were using Temur Sabertooth and your Wirewood Symbiote was countered, you can get Great Oak Guardian. You can also use Deadwood Treefolk to return a dead combo piece to your hand or Brutalizer Exarch to put a combo piece on top of your library. You can also bounce Yisan to reset his counters, but this is slow.
Disrupting Other Players
The disruption package should vary to fight the kinds of threats that are in your metagame. In general, you are really good at killing artifacts and enchantments, great at affecting the graveyard, pretty bad at killing creatures, and terrible at fighting instants and sorceries.You have a lot of instants like Crumble or Nature's Claim to punish people for using mana artifacts and combo pieces they rely on, as well as creatures you can fetch with Yisan that do the same thing. Later you get Acidic Slime, Somberwald Stag and Brutalizer Exarch to destroy different types of permanents.
The strongest pieces of disruption you have available are Lignify, which is good against commanders, and Phyrexian Revoker, which is a lot stronger when it comes in at instant speed from your deck. If you're not sure what it can and can't target, look for a colon (:) in the text box; if a colon is there, it's an activated ability.
I like to run some cheap mill rocks to mess with people's top deck manipulation like Brainstorm. The best of these is Codex Shredder.
Parting Thoughts
If you're too late to the party and everything in this deck suddenly shot up in price, don't worry. If you are a kid and you are committed to finding a competitive deck you can afford, it exists, and you just have to discover it. It will be a lot of work- probably more work than anything you've ever done in your life- but it can be done. I did it, and so can you.
