Hello and welcome to Commander Bites!

Today we are going to be taking a look at Sisay, Weatherlight Captain!

Sisay is a three mana 2/2 that gets +1/+1 for each color among other legendary permanents you control and for all five colors you can search your library for a legendary permanent card with mana value less than Sisay’s power, put it onto the battlefield, then shuffle your library.

Game Plan

Sisay, in keeping with her previous version, cares about legendary creatures, so much so that this Sisay is five colors so that you have a lot of options in which legendary permanents you can choose from and play.

This leads to Sisay being an incredibly versatile toolbox Commander, as well as a very powerful combo Commander in the right hands, though for today we are going to be exploring as many options as we can.

Support

Ideally with Sisay we have access to the breadth of all legendary permanents available in the game, so we have a wide variety of options to choose from, but we also need to look at the nonlegendary tools we have access to help facilitate our game plan.

Since we are looking to get as many colors online as possible, Bloom Tender makes for a great way to get a good bit of mana because they can tap to add one mana of a color for each color among other permanents we control, meaning if we have all five colors then we can tap it for all five colors to help activate Sisay’s ability.

We can also get all five colors up for Sisay by using Leyline of the Guildpact, which has the Leyline ability to go onto the battlefield if it was in our opening hand and it makes each nonland permanent we control all five colors and gives our lands every basic land type in addition to their other types.

To get into the potential options for legendary permanents, we have to figure out what sort of general strategy we are going for. For example, if we want a more aggressive deck, then Jodah, the Unifier can work really well because he gives legendary creatures we control +X/+X where X is the number of legendary creatures we control and essentially has legendary nonland card Cascade.

This can help us fuel an aggro win, or can help Sisay get bigger and bigger legendary permanents because of the inherent buff to power that Jodah gives, which can be leveraged for expensive to cast legendary cards like Elspeth, Sun’s Champion, Avacyn’s Memorial, or even Kenrith, the Returned King.

There is a control way to build Sisay, leveraging cards like The Queen of Dale to let us recruit whenever an opponent casts their first noncreature spell each turn, Narset, Parter of Veils to prevent our opponents from drawing a ton of cards, or Ashiok, Dream Render to prevent our opponents from searching their library.

We can also go into a combo build for Sisay, which errs on a much stronger deck that has ways to generate near infinite mana in a bunch of different ways, with one way involving Teferi, Time Raveler to bounce a Sol Ring while you have a Displacer Kitten in play to flicker Teferi to bounce Sol Ring, etc.

Using this infinite mana filtered through Chromatic Orrery you can use it in a number of ways. You can use the mana to find a Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy to tutor up an Orcish Bowmasters and flicker that to deal basically infinite damage. You can do that by using Emiel the Blessed, which acts as a mana sink for the infinite mana to use three of it to flicker a creature you control.

Or if you have Derevi, Empyrial Tactician in play while you also have Emiel the Blessed or Displacer Kitten, you can tap or untap target permanent when Derevi enters or a creature we control deals combat damage to a player. We can use this and the infinite mana we generate to untap Mount Doom, which for three mana and tap can deal 1 damage to each opponent to win us the game.

Setbacks

While there are plenty of ways to play Sisay, the main issue of the deck is that Sisay needs to stay in play in order to make the most use out of her abilities.

The fact that she can tutor practically any legendary permanent is amazing, however that is also facilitated by the fact that she needs to have the power to do so. While there are legendary ways we can boost her power without having other creatures like Flowering of the White Tree, that only does so much.

What’s more, Sisay’s ability needs all five colors in order to work, meaning that if you didn’t get a Bloom Tender and/or Leyline of the Guildpact in play, it may be a bit slow going in terms of getting her ability online.

An issue that toolbox Commanders have is that while it is amazing that there are a variety of playstyles for the deck, decision paralysis can definitely make the deck much more difficult to pilot.

If you lean towards an aggro, control, or combo strategy then you have a clear game plan ahead of you, but if you play more into the toolbox aspect you are much more reactive than proactive which can lead to stalling if you are trying to find a perfect answer to a problem.

Not to say that the strongest version of Sisay leans more into the combo potential she brings, which requires you to have all the pieces you need in order for the combo to work and if any of those pieces get removed and you don’t have a way to retrieve them or an alternate way to win, odds are the deck just halts to a crawl.

The deck is very much susceptible to interaction, especially against ways to clear the board, prevent activated abilities, prevent searching your library, or even prevent you from casting a bunch of spells at once.

Bracket Rating: 5

Sisay is very well known as a cEDH Commander, and while she has plenty of ways to scale down in power, she is still a powerhouse Commander that can win the game pretty effectively.

Sisay is interesting to me as a potential cEDH Commander as I get a bit more interested in the format because while there are plenty of established combos for the deck, there does seem to be some space where you can play some off kilter cards to help make your version of Sisay unique to you.

However that doesn’t mean that Sisay is locked into being only a cEDH Commander. She has the potential to just be a solid deck of legendary good stuff for lower brackets, removing the combo lines in order to still have a fun, interactive game where you get some random legendary cards into play and do some neat things.

Thank you all for reading, see you all tomorrow!

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual