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Sidisi, Brood Tyrant

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Sidisi, Brood Tyrant

At a glance

  • Commander: Sidisi, Brood Tyrant
  • Colors: Sultai
  • Archetype: Dimir-Golgari mill/attrition control
  • Power tier: mid-high

Cards

The commander’s real ability (quoted)

“Whenever Sidisi enters or attacks, mill three cards. Whenever one or more creature cards are put into your graveyard from your library, create a 2/2 black Zombie creature token.”

Two clauses, and the second is the important one: it is not limited to Sidisi’s own mill. Any creature card that hits my graveyard from my library (any self-mill effect, any surveil-to-yard, any “mill N” green dig spell) makes a 2/2 Zombie. The scout’s paraphrase was accurate here — building around the real card means loading up on self-mill so every mill trigger snowballs the zombie army, not just Sidisi’s attacks.

Gameplan

Sultai attrition control that wins by inevitability, not draw-go. I durdle behind deathtouch blockers and a self-replenishing wall of 2/2 Zombies, grind the board flat with a deep repeatable-edict package (which my own zombie tokens happily feed as sac fodder), and recur my best creatures with Tortured Existence / Gravedigger / Raise Dead until the opponents run out of resources. Two redundant inevitability clocks close it:

  1. Shepherd of Rot — : Each player loses 1 life for each Zombie on the battlefield.` With a snowballing token army this is a repeatable, untargeted life-drain that ends the table.
  2. Mill-out — Persistent Petitioners + a stack of opponent-mill spells (Compelling Argument, Stream of Thought, Dampen Thought, Memory Sluice, Cathartic Adept) deck a player as the backup plan when life-loss stalls.

Key synergy lines

  • Self-mill → zombies → edict fuel. Ainok Wayfarer, Blanchwood Prowler, Circle of the Land Druid, Corpse Churn, Cache Grab, Mire Triton and the surveil lands all dump creature cards from library to yard, each minting a 2/2 off Sidisi. Those tokens are then sacrificed to Bone Splinters / Spark Harvest / Abyssal Gatekeeper / Demon’s Disciple-style edicts — I’m trading nothing for their best creatures.
  • Tortured Existence engine. , discard a creature: return a creature from yard.` Self-mill fills the yard; this loops value creatures (Fleshbag Marauder, Slum Reaper, Gravedigger) and turns dead-card creatures into edicts on demand. Gravedigger + Rot-Tide Gargantua (exploit) + recursion spells make every removal creature re-buyable.
  • Sidisi attacks for value. Even a 3/3 Sidisi swinging mills 3 each turn — more zombies, more yard fuel, while deathtouch blockers (Pharika’s Chosen, Moss Viper, Hired Poisoner, Ruthless Ripper) keep me alive.

Role breakdown (with counts)

  • Lands — 36 (20 nonbasic fixers + 16 basics). High end for three colors.
  • Ramp / fixing — 10: Cultivate, Kodama’s Reach, Grow from the Ashes, Diligent Farmhand, Greenseeker, Armillary Sphere, Manalith, Commander’s Sphere, Arcane Signet, Mana Cylix.
  • Card advantage / draw — 10: Sign in Blood, Read the Bones, Night’s Whisper, Deadly Dispute, Roots of Wisdom, Corpse Churn, Cache Grab, Bellowing Crier, Gravedigger (recursion-as-card), Tortured Existence (recurring engine).
  • Spot removal / interaction — 11: Innocent Blood, Bone Splinters, Spark Harvest, Annihilating Glare, Disembowel, Snuff Out, Disfigure, Wretched Banquet, Vraska’s Fall, Tyrant’s Choice, Pick Your Poison.
  • Mass / pseudo-wipe (edict-style sweepers) — 4: Fleshbag Marauder, Slum Reaper, Demon’s Disciple, Abyssal Gatekeeper (each-player-sacrifices; repeatable via recursion, my tokens shrug them off).
  • Win conditions / payoffs: Shepherd of Rot (zombie-army life drain), Persistent Petitioners + opponent-mill suite (Compelling Argument, Stream of Thought, Dampen Thought, Memory Sluice, Cathartic Adept, Merrow Witsniper, Merfolk Secretkeeper), plus the ever-growing 2/2 Zombie board as a chump-and-swarm backbone.
  • Enablers / blockers: self-mill creatures, deathtouch wall, Portcullis Vine, recursion (Raise Dead, Disentomb, Ghoulcaller’s Chant, Crawl from the Cellar).

Manabase / fixing note

36 lands: any-color (Command Tower, Path of Ancestry, Conduit Pylons/Hidden Grotto/Crystal Grotto — the surveil/scry ones double as self-mill/dig), all three guild duals (Dimir/Golgari guildgates, Foul Orchard, Haunted Mire, Contaminated Aquifer, Woodland Stream, Thornwood Falls, Jungle Hollow, Dismal Backwater), fetch-fixers (Evolving Wilds, Terramorphic Expanse, Ash Barrens), Foreboding Landscape + Bog Wreckage + Bojuka Bog, and 16 basics — with 10 ramp/rock pieces (many tapping for any-of-three) that puts ~25+ sources of color fixing across the deck.

Pilot notes

  • Keep an edict or two in hand for their commander/key threat; you have zombie tokens as sac fodder so casting cost is trivial.
  • Don’t over-mill yourself early if you’re light on lands — Ainok Wayfarer/Blanchwood Prowler let you grab a land out of the mill.
  • Tortured Existence is the engine: hold it, then chain it with Gravedigger/Rot-Tide once the yard is stocked.
  • Shepherd of Rot is your “go off” button — fire it once the board has 6+ zombies and you’re killing the table on a clock they can’t race.

Weaknesses

  • Graveyard hate (exile effects) blunts both the recursion grind and the zombie engine’s fuel — though the zombies already on board persist.
  • Slow starts: three colors + tapland-heavy base means clunky early turns; you’re relying on deathtouch + tokens to survive to the midgame.
  • Go-wide token sweepers (board wipes that hit tokens) reset your Shepherd clock — but recursion and continued self-mill rebuild it fast.

Decklist

⬇ Download as .txt — paste into Moxfield, Archidekt, or MTG Arena.

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