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Main » Articles » Soul Food

Soul Food

Harrison Greenberg
Posted on July 19, 2011
 Reddit

A new format has arisen, and there are many changes in store for Standard. There are thousands of people out there trying to find the new “best deck” in the format, and for the first time in quite some time, we are seeing a huge variety of decks at the top of a major tournament—and no structured metagame. Of the Top 16 decks of this week’s Star City Open tournament, there were ten unique deck types, which is quite different than in months past, in which there would usually be ten Caw-Blade decks and six other decks—which goes to show us that a new deck can come out at any point and win a tournament.

This week, my approach to attack this format is by going back to a deck that was posted months back when New Phyrexia first came out and there were two combos found in the set. One went on to be known as a Standard staple and has been crammed into every deck out there trying to find the best way to go infinite in a game (Splinter Twin + Deceiver Exarch); the other combo was a cute deck that was quickly thrown out the window based on the alternate win conditions in the format in which your opponent didn’t have to win the game by bringing you to 0 life. The deck called “Soul Sisters” was a deck that was based around an infinite life combo that needed only three cards and could also give you an infinitely large creature at the same time. The problem with the deck at this time was that having infinite life against a deck like Caw-Blade meant nothing, as your opponent would either mill you with Jace or kill you with poison with Inkmoth Nexus; this made the concept of having infinite life nearly irrelevant.

With this new format, we have a bunch of new things to look at in terms of what we want this deck to do, but I think first we need to look at the old deck list and see where this deck started:

"Soul Sisters (by Neil Michalares)"

How it works:

The goal of the combo is to get out a either a Soul's Attendant or a Suture Priest and then create infinite enters-the-battlefield abilities by having a Leonin Relic-Warder in play as you cast a Phyrexian Metamorph. The Phyrexian Metamorph copies the Relic-Warder, removing itself; when it’s removed, the Relic-Warder’s ability brings back the Metamorph. This chain can occur any number of times and gains you a life each time that it does, and therefore can bring you to any amount of life that you want.

Where this deck has to go:

The first thing that we have to do with this deck is to take out the illegal Stoneforge Mystics and their Swords. While I’m not too sure that these were even needed in this deck, I feel that if you were playing White while there were Stoneforges in the format, you played them. The next question that we want to ask ourselves is what we want this deck to be; we can make this a controlling version of the deck, an aggressive version of the deck, or just a hardcore combo version of the deck. Each has its ups, and downs and we will go through each of them and what they have to offer.

Combo

This version of the deck is going to make sure that you get out your combo as often as possible, using cards such as Fauna Shaman and Birthing Pod to get the cards that you need to ensure that you get off the combo. A rough list for a deck like this would look something like this:

"Soul Sisters Combo"

This deck is going to consistently get the combo out more often as well as find its instant win condition in the form of Felidar Sovereign much faster. This deck’s weakness is going to be decks with heavy removal, which are going to prevent the combo from happening and render the deck nearly useless.

Aggro

This version of the deck is going to look much more like the version that was around when Ranger of Eos was in the format. The deck’s goal will be to win as rapidly as possible and have the infinite-life combo a secondary measure. The deck is going to use cards like Serra Ascendant as well as Ajani's Pridemate to make your life gain also kill your opponent.

"Soul Sisters Aggro"

This deck is going to allow for faster games where creating your combo isn’t as important because you can kill your opponent fairly quickly given the right hand. Playing a deck of this style can be quite confusing, as it is trying to do multiple things at the same time, but there will be games in which the deck will play itself and allow you to win fairly easy.

Control

The last way to look at this deck is from a control standpoint, where it will try to, in the long run, assemble the combo while making sure your opponent doesn’t do anything to kill or disrupt you in the meantime. This deck will likely win most games by using Venser’s ultimate ability and will kill very slowly until it eventually draws the Felidar Sovereign.

"Soul Sisters Control"

This deck is going to be the most consistent of all of them and will be much more of a grind to play. The play of this deck is going to be closer to a Caw-Blade style of deck, where you are going to be having nearly the same series of plays every turn of every game, and is going to run out very much the same way game after game.



The concept of Soul Sisters is a deck that revolves around just sixteen cards and can be put in any number of shells. I encourage all of my readers to take this concept and try to make your own brew using this base and see what you can come up with. If you come up with a sweet idea of your own, post it in the forums and see what other readers think.

TAGS articles, standard, constructed, decklists, harrison greenberg

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