Yisan is a midrange toolbox deck with combo out and a stax backup plan. It is very competitive and can handle any meta. I personally would rate it as a tier 1 general. Its advantages are extremely high consistency. There are faster elfball decks out there, but they are all less consistent. Your main card happens to sit in your command zone, and it plays somewhat similar to Narset or Prosh. Get Yisan online ASAP and start tutoring untap engines and mana generators. Average combo turn is 5, fast hands can easily pull off a turn 4.
Main combo:
Temur Sabertooth + Wirewood Symbiote + any 1-mana elf + anything that can tap for 5+ mana is infinite untap, bounce and mana. Your goldfish turns should look like this:
1) Keep a hand with at least 2 lands and turn 1 mana acceleration such as Fyndhorn Elves.
2) Get turn 2 commander.
3) Fetch Quirion Ranger on T3 with first Yisan activation. If you missed land drops, you can reuse a forest to play more stuff from your hand if you can.
4) Fetch Priest of Titania, untap Yisan and get Selvala, Heart of the Wilds. If you don't have enough mana, you can untap your dork with your ranger on your opponent's turn with another forest.
5) Entering turn 5, you now have lots of mana and lots of untaps. Start with Yisan getting Temur Sabertooth. If you need more mana, bounce ranger - recast ranger - you can use him again to untap Priest of Titania. Get another Yisan activation and dive for 5 fetching Seedborn Muse. Follow up with Woodland Bellower fetching Wirewood Symbiote to go truely stupid with mana (and draws!). Selvala can now spin for the win.
Once you have infinite untap, mana and bounce, get your Elvish Visionary with bellower and draw your deck. You can then Kamahl, Fist of Krosa + Masticore all lands, Beast Within all permanents with Eternal Witness, get infinite life, and proceed to stampede your foes with infinite damage from Craterhoof Behemoth while shuffling everything back with Noxious Revival at instand speeds with Yeva, Nature's Herald.
How to win without Yisan:
Your general comes with a crosshair on his head, and often you will be forced to play without him due to removal, counterspells or hate. Thankfully, you have other engines that can get the job done, although not as fast or as efficient:
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Draw a lot. Wirewood Symbiote + Elvish Visionary is an excellent draw engine - you can generate up to 2 additional cards a turn + an untap effects. Play visionary, bounce him, play again, pass turn, and bounce visionary again at the end of your opponent's turn to enable the trick again after you untap. Alternatively, recycle your dorks with Skullclamp to draw into a wincon. Staff of Domination can usually net a few cards too, and with Seedborn Muse you can do it every turn for the entire turn cycle. Sylvan Library can quickly filter your topdecks and get your raw card advantage + accelerated mana drops.
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Use alternative tutors. Birthing Pod, Green Sun's Zenith, Worldly Tutor, Natural Order and Eldritch Evolution act as search engines that help you get the missing pieces of your combos. If you draw into one of them - you can try to assemble one of the combos w/o the help of Yisan. Even if the set up doesn't go infinite, it often generates stupid amounts of mana, which may be enough.
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Recur your cards. Noxious Revival, Eternal Witness and Greenwarden of Murasa all recycle your dead stuff to live another day, and Temur Sabertooth bounces them back for more triggers.
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But don't stop there, because with Seedborn Muse and Yeva, Nature's Herald you can often untap during each turn of the table, and repeat everything you've done at instant speeds!
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Go infinite! There are a lot of ways to get there, but mostly step #1 is infinite mana. Large generators are Elvish Archdruid, Priest of Titania, Karametra's Acolyte, Gaea's Cradle, Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, Voyaging Satyr and Selvala, Heart of the Wilds. Get an enabler and one of the looping untap effects like Umbral Mantle, Staff of Domination and others. From there, work towards infinite draw or search, or you may get to infinite life or infinite tokens. It really depends on what you have in hand. For example, if you have a bounce engine and lots of mana online, you can loop Eternal Witness and Chord of Calling to put your entire deck into play. Think around your enablers. For example, Kamahl, Fist of Krosa can turn Gaea's Cradle into a creture, which can then be untapped with Staff of Domination. There are many nuanced ways out there.
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Play stompy! Keep your board state and its power in mind at all times. Little dorks and elves pile up very quickly, and you'd be surprised how many times you can just swing for 20+++ and knock somebody out, especially if you can ult Garruk Wildspeaker. Kamahl, Fist of Krosa is the all-star here, several severak ounoed dorks is not a joke.
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Your stax pieces. Root Maze, Winter Orb, Null Rod, Tangle Wire, Static Orb and artifact removal can help you slow down the game to turtle speeds. Most cards in your deck are creatures that generate mana, so normally you should be ahead in resources and re-casting your commander till it sticks.
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Kill their lands. Kamahl, Fist of Krosa + Masticore can cut down significant chunk of opponent mana even w/o infinites.
Toolbox cards:
- Duplicant is tutorable removal. Song of the Dryads, Beast Within, Mouth of Ronom and Lignify also help you fight through hate.
- Scavenging Ooze and Noxious Revival is your gravehate of choice
- Caustic Caterpillar and Reclamation Sage get rid of artifacts and enchantments
- Phyrexian Revoker is a great 2-verse fetch target to shut down some mana rocks, walkers or combo pieces.
Sideboard notes:
You can easily run any toolbox cards to accomodate for your meta. I usually pack some additional artifact hate like Acidic Slime to help fight fast artifact-based combos. GWb bears usually warrant additional removal like Ulvenwald Tracker. Whisperwood Elemental is a great anti-wrath card. Dosan the Falling Leaf and Summoning Trap are decent additions for counterspell-heavy meta. Titania, Protector of Argoth is a great addition for a fair meta, where board presence is vital, and Armageddon effects are abundant.
Matchup notes:
1) Enchantment-based combo. Usually it's a Doomsday Zur, but sometimes it can be Oloro. Their main engines are necropotence and omniscience, usually with backup from Humility and Academy Rector. Watch out for sweepers like Toxic Deluge and get at least one instant speed enchantment or graveyard removal. Yisan is slower by a turn, but if you can get both your commander and a stax piece into play, you can easily compete in speed.
2) U(gw) stax. We are talking Stasis decks like Derevi or Teferi (and recently printed Atraxa). Your #1 goal here is to get Seedborn Muse in play. Even if it doesn't stick, one untap is enough to break the lock. Yisan is happy to play with stax, because dorks are least affected by most stax pieces.
3) Uxx Spellsinger/storm/turns/high tide. I group these together because Yisan has a similar game plan against them. These decks focus on getting some permanents and fast mana into play that allow for chaining extra turns or resolve an Ad Nauseaum. Baby Jace, Mizzix, Sidisi, Azami, Edric - these all work alike from our perspective. Yisan is normally faster, so your game plan is to race them and combo out ASAP, but try to knock out their artifact support cards if you can (candelabra, mana rocks). Your #1 card here is Carpet of Flowers, because untapping with it often reads "dump your entire hand on the board" or "re-cast Yisan 3 times through counters and removal". Aim at getting stax pieces into play to slow them down, like Null Rod, Thorn Amethyst and others. Use your commander to draw out bounce and counterspells, and go for the kill if you untap with Yisan or a large mana generator.
4) Commander-based engine decks. I'm talking Prosh, Narset, Karador, Meren, Zegana, Rashmi. These decks usually play goodstuff, and get ridiculous value if they happen to resolve and stick their commander. Yisan doesn't interact well with them, but instead just goes for the win. Try to keep faster hands with solid mana like Mana Crypt, and a backup tutor, because you are very likely to be facing multiple board wipes, pingers, bounces and hatebears. Against these decks, I try to build board presence, and instead of going infinite, just Natural Order a Craterhoof Behemoth and snipe that one thretening opponent.
5) Hulk decks. Usually its 4c partners, but can be bant or junk decks too. They use graveyard trigger loops, and can be as fast as turn 2 with flash. Get Scavenging Ooze or Masticore online and sit on mana, or target their sac outlets (can be any permanent type). Overall, its a hard opponent due to speed, and most hulk hate cards also happen to shut down Yisan.
