I can see the reasoning behind playing a single Return to the Ranks, I'll probably switch to 1. Maybe an Aven Mindensor can take the place of the second one, Titan Shift feels like a nightmare!
I mostly play online, so the meta i very variable. Storm is always present but there are also a lot of different combos decks, Krark-Clan Ironworks, Elves, Ad Nauseam etc etc. Eidolon of Rhetoric also is usefull Vs any snapcaster deck and Damping Sphere is a house Vs Tron, I find them to be cards with wider range of hate.
maybe instead of return to the ranks it could be replaced with dusk // dawn. It could give you more versatility and gives the option to return the dead later.
I'm trying to fit one extra Soul's Attendant in the main and thinking about Stony Silence in the side, but I'm not sure what to take out... Do you have suggestions?
you could cut a land, 23 I find to be a bit much when I play (21-22 seems like the sweet spot), also considering your Landings flipping.
I am not sold on the selfless spirit, could be a sideboard option depending on meta.
Return to the ranks has not always been good when Ive played it. Either you have targets in your GY or you do not. It makes for bad draws when you need action early, so that could be a 1 of.
Do you have a lot of storm players in your meta? You have 5 SB cards to deal with them.
Can Merfolk Trickster stop our Pridemate from gaining counters from our Soul Sisters' trigger?
Not permanently, just for the turn it comes into play. But if the trigger is on the stack the ability will resolve.
"Flash
When Merfolk Trickster enters the battlefield, tap target creature an opponent controls. It loses all abilities until end of turn. "
So, ETB trigger off of Sister, place on stack (T1), Opponent responds with trickster, ETB of trickster on stack(T2), ETB trigger of sister off of trickster on stack(T3). Pridemate sees life gain when you resolve the triggers, gaining you new triggers (T3a)...
no matter how the trickster taps you will still gain life because they are on the stack, Once you gain life then you get the Trigger off of a Pridemate.
Every thing on the stack before the Trickster ETB that gains you life will trigger the pridemate's Triggers and can be placed on pridemate. Even if The Mate gets tapped later. He will lose abilities but not counters earned. Triggers for life gain after Trickster will not occur.
So your pridemate sees the gain from T3 and creates a trigger gaining you a +1/+1 counter. Trickster turns pridemate dumb, he does not see the T1 trigger resolve.
another way to see it is everything you gain on the stack before the trickster distracts your pridemate will not gain you counters on that pridemate. But all the lifegain after the ETB Triggger is on the stack will still give you counters.
So, your opponnet plays trickster, trickster ETB trigger,sister ETB trigger, in response you play raise the alarm. Raise the alarm is last on stack; resolves, 3 guys 3 life triggers on stack from sister, as resolves the pridemate sees and gets the 3 counters, then the tricksters ETB resolves and the pridemate sees no more until end of turn.
@the_car_a_carn
The deck is fair against the meta. It has very winnable matches and other matches are a real struggle.
you might want to change up more for the burn matches. and fix your storm match up. Just my opinion.
storm is still unwinnable no matter how many cards I devote to it..
I disagree, I have had decent match-ups with storm. They are a hard deck to deal with and the match-up is not in our favor. It can be won if your tempo can get them. Edilon Retoric, GY removal, you need to slow them down and play both a long game and a short interactive game. Force them to find answers for your cards losing tempo.
If you like it try it. I tried many variations before I went back to a typical SS deck w/ B Splash.
I tried Selfless with hope of ghirapur and Athreos, god of passage with Martyr. So my playing of it may be tilted.
The down side I found was it was not an effective creature by itself, and sac'ing it sometimes felt wrong to protect 1/1's.
brave the elements is similar to selfless spirit in regards to the protection, but is more versatile in the application.
I tried selfless but did not like it in the deck.
@GigglePhysics; I think Karlov of the ghost Council would be broken in this deck/format. Which is why WOTC will not allow it. I also made the mistake in 2015 of buying/trying Karlov.
also, if I'm going to black splash, and run Lingering Souls, should I sideboard Spectral Procession in case of the Inquisition/Eidolon occurrences? Is one clearly better than the other?
I can not tell if either card is better than the other. I play a full set of both. Spectral procession counts as a 6 cmc card which works around Inquis- Eidolon, and some counterspell magics. Lingering Souls can be discarded and still be useful and sometimes is easier to cast if off color with mana. LS really shines when your drawing blanks and you can recast from the grave for more action later to recover or protect a board.
If you look at my Deck list above you see I only run 2 Black mana sources and I do not have trouble with flashing back LS.
I have also run more black in other versions and because of the low casting cost of our spells it rarely becomes an issue.
Crested Sunmare was talked about heavily when it was spoiled. It seems the consensus is that Archangel of Thune is just better.
I can testify that the deck works well without either of these cards; I played it for 6 months without them and still had great results.
B/W Tokens does not feel good in the current meta. I played a budget version for 2 months, it felt slow and under developed. I incorporated what I thought to be the best elements from tokens into my current build (listed above).
So... Giggles are you becoming a Soul Sister Player?
Thanks for posting and welcome to the forum.
Match 1, 5c Humans 2-1 -edit-
Game 1 I have mana troubles and he just beats me down for a slow win.
Game 2 Sisters on board, he deals early damage develops a quick board and bounces, disrupts my defenses. He over commits on an attack for leathal. I cast settle the wreckage leaving him with 1 dude and no cards in hand My deck recovers and wins.
Game 3 win He has mana troubles at 2 mana, I develop a slow board and run over him.
Match 2 Jund Bloodbraid 2-1
Game 1 Back and forth with his Bob hurting him more than helping, I get larger and fly over him for the win.
Game 2 He shuts down my lifegain and takes out my pridemate. I suffer thru a few more rounds till death, lost.
Game 3 I just explode creatures (2 serra Acsendant, 2 sisters, 2 Spectral Procession) and should have gotten ascended Serra's but Missed a trigger with Bloodbraid ETB which allows him to kill a "weak" Serra. He dies a few turns later than sooner.
Match 3 Jund Bloodbraid 2-1
Game 1 win, he fumbles with his deck learning to play it. I hit my things and just win with honor of the pure on Lingering souls. Elspeth enters and adds to the damage.
Game 2 I have mana problems and he resolves spells faster. loss
Game 3 I develop quick, he has mana problems keeping a high CMC hand. I path my guys in response to his Bolts giving me free land drops and flipping Ardante. He has to develop from behind. I win
Match 4 Bant Spirits 2-1
My opponent had no answers going into the game and wished to quit before playing, my response was No I want your soul.
Game 1 Win we both mulligan1, close game but my lifegain saved damage until I could get answers for a win, everything came into play this game. went long.
Game 2 He mulligans1 I mulligan2 to a fast hand, I keep a hand with no sisters, He wins quick.
Game 3 we both Mulligan1 (2.50 minutes on game clock). I keep hand of worship, ardanta, Fetchland, windbrisk, 2 plains scry plains top.. I Hideaway a soulsister, We go back and forth I land an early T4 Worship followed by Ardante, He can not answer it, and hideaway spectral procession. I Ranger up 2 sisters. I hold back an archangel trying to draw out a counterspell he does not have in the deck. Our board states are close but his guys are a little larger. We go to Turns I cast my Thune, 4 triggers on stack, 4 counters for everyone, Attack with 3 spirits (4/4) trigger 2 windbrisk heights, play warden, play procession triggers gain 12 life 12 triggers (I missed triggers with the warden ETB and forgot to count the 5th Warden when adding the procession triggers- details at this point) So Im now swinging with 3 spirits (17/17) He blocks, next turn he casts EE to wipe out my spirit army. He looses next turn to everything else. boardstate 5 sisters (20/20) pridemate (big/big) archangel (23/24) serra ascendant (20/20). Win
@GreenSkyDragon
Yes, it is forcing it a bit. The elf shell plays all these cards naturally so the added combo is just another win condition. But you are right, Jank is still Jank.
In your Monument sisters deck have you ever considered/played rhonas's monument?
I could not improve the math. I only play the Flux in commander, Cloudstone curio has too many restrictions on it to combo off efficiently (no artifacts, other permanent). The lion and skyfisher are built in better bouncers.
My soul sister deck rarely gets over 40 life. I looked at Flux heavily when it was spoiled, and determined it was not for this deck type.
Soul Elfs where you could potentially get a lot more mana to bounce cast.
The card it self is fine but not for us. Draft it, play it in sealed, maybe find a standard deck that fits it nice.
maybe instead of return to the ranks it could be replaced with dusk // dawn. It could give you more versatility and gives the option to return the dead later.
eidoln and damping sphere seem solid.
you could cut a land, 23 I find to be a bit much when I play (21-22 seems like the sweet spot), also considering your Landings flipping.
I am not sold on the selfless spirit, could be a sideboard option depending on meta.
Return to the ranks has not always been good when Ive played it. Either you have targets in your GY or you do not. It makes for bad draws when you need action early, so that could be a 1 of.
Do you have a lot of storm players in your meta? You have 5 SB cards to deal with them.
Not permanently, just for the turn it comes into play. But if the trigger is on the stack the ability will resolve.
"Flash
When Merfolk Trickster enters the battlefield, tap target creature an opponent controls. It loses all abilities until end of turn. "
So, ETB trigger off of Sister, place on stack (T1), Opponent responds with trickster, ETB of trickster on stack(T2), ETB trigger of sister off of trickster on stack(T3). Pridemate sees life gain when you resolve the triggers, gaining you new triggers (T3a)...
no matter how the trickster taps you will still gain life because they are on the stack, Once you gain life then you get the Trigger off of a Pridemate.
Every thing on the stack before the Trickster ETB that gains you life will trigger the pridemate's Triggers and can be placed on pridemate. Even if The Mate gets tapped later. He will lose abilities but not counters earned. Triggers for life gain after Trickster will not occur.
So your pridemate sees the gain from T3 and creates a trigger gaining you a +1/+1 counter. Trickster turns pridemate dumb, he does not see the T1 trigger resolve.
another way to see it is everything you gain on the stack before the trickster distracts your pridemate will not gain you counters on that pridemate. But all the lifegain after the ETB Triggger is on the stack will still give you counters.
So, your opponnet plays trickster, trickster ETB trigger,sister ETB trigger, in response you play raise the alarm. Raise the alarm is last on stack; resolves, 3 guys 3 life triggers on stack from sister, as resolves the pridemate sees and gets the 3 counters, then the tricksters ETB resolves and the pridemate sees no more until end of turn.
I hope this helps a bit.
It can slow us down but not much.
The deck is fair against the meta. It has very winnable matches and other matches are a real struggle.
you might want to change up more for the burn matches. and fix your storm match up. Just my opinion.
Why do you want to run him?
What does this guy do for your deck that is better than other PW or other cards.
Ajani could in theory give you another ajani's pridemate a large creature that stomps. the +2 life is not needed, the -1 counters is fair but not OP.
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar, {c]Elspeth, knight-errant[/c] are both very useful when the come into play and give you similar effects.
I disagree, I have had decent match-ups with storm. They are a hard deck to deal with and the match-up is not in our favor. It can be won if your tempo can get them. Edilon Retoric, GY removal, you need to slow them down and play both a long game and a short interactive game. Force them to find answers for your cards losing tempo.
I tried Selfless with hope of ghirapur and Athreos, god of passage with Martyr. So my playing of it may be tilted.
The down side I found was it was not an effective creature by itself, and sac'ing it sometimes felt wrong to protect 1/1's.
I tried selfless but did not like it in the deck.
I can not tell if either card is better than the other. I play a full set of both. Spectral procession counts as a 6 cmc card which works around Inquis- Eidolon, and some counterspell magics. Lingering Souls can be discarded and still be useful and sometimes is easier to cast if off color with mana. LS really shines when your drawing blanks and you can recast from the grave for more action later to recover or protect a board.
If you look at my Deck list above you see I only run 2 Black mana sources and I do not have trouble with flashing back LS.
I have also run more black in other versions and because of the low casting cost of our spells it rarely becomes an issue.
Crested Sunmare was talked about heavily when it was spoiled. It seems the consensus is that Archangel of Thune is just better.
I can testify that the deck works well without either of these cards; I played it for 6 months without them and still had great results.
B/W Tokens does not feel good in the current meta. I played a budget version for 2 months, it felt slow and under developed. I incorporated what I thought to be the best elements from tokens into my current build (listed above).
So... Giggles are you becoming a Soul Sister Player?
Thanks for posting and welcome to the forum.
Went 4-0
Match 1, 5c Humans 2-1 -edit-
Game 1 I have mana troubles and he just beats me down for a slow win.
Game 2 Sisters on board, he deals early damage develops a quick board and bounces, disrupts my defenses. He over commits on an attack for leathal. I cast settle the wreckage leaving him with 1 dude and no cards in hand My deck recovers and wins.
Game 3 win He has mana troubles at 2 mana, I develop a slow board and run over him.
Match 2 Jund Bloodbraid 2-1
Game 1 Back and forth with his Bob hurting him more than helping, I get larger and fly over him for the win.
Game 2 He shuts down my lifegain and takes out my pridemate. I suffer thru a few more rounds till death, lost.
Game 3 I just explode creatures (2 serra Acsendant, 2 sisters, 2 Spectral Procession) and should have gotten ascended Serra's but Missed a trigger with Bloodbraid ETB which allows him to kill a "weak" Serra. He dies a few turns later than sooner.
Match 3 Jund Bloodbraid 2-1
Game 1 win, he fumbles with his deck learning to play it. I hit my things and just win with honor of the pure on Lingering souls. Elspeth enters and adds to the damage.
Game 2 I have mana problems and he resolves spells faster. loss
Game 3 I develop quick, he has mana problems keeping a high CMC hand. I path my guys in response to his Bolts giving me free land drops and flipping Ardante. He has to develop from behind. I win
Match 4 Bant Spirits 2-1
My opponent had no answers going into the game and wished to quit before playing, my response was No I want your soul.
Game 1 Win we both mulligan1, close game but my lifegain saved damage until I could get answers for a win, everything came into play this game. went long.
Game 2 He mulligans1 I mulligan2 to a fast hand, I keep a hand with no sisters, He wins quick.
Game 3 we both Mulligan1 (2.50 minutes on game clock). I keep hand of worship, ardanta, Fetchland, windbrisk, 2 plains scry plains top.. I Hideaway a soulsister, We go back and forth I land an early T4 Worship followed by Ardante, He can not answer it, and hideaway spectral procession. I Ranger up 2 sisters. I hold back an archangel trying to draw out a counterspell he does not have in the deck. Our board states are close but his guys are a little larger. We go to Turns I cast my Thune, 4 triggers on stack, 4 counters for everyone, Attack with 3 spirits (4/4) trigger 2 windbrisk heights, play warden, play procession triggers gain 12 life 12 triggers (I missed triggers with the warden ETB and forgot to count the 5th Warden when adding the procession triggers- details at this point) So Im now swinging with 3 spirits (17/17) He blocks, next turn he casts EE to wipe out my spirit army. He looses next turn to everything else. boardstate 5 sisters (20/20) pridemate (big/big) archangel (23/24) serra ascendant (20/20). Win
4 Soul Attendant
3 Soul Warden
2 Auriok Champion
4 Ajani Pridemate
2 Ranger of Eos
2 Archangel Of Thune
4 Path to Exile
1 Legion's Landing
4 Honor the Pure
4 Lingering Souls
1 Worship
1 Elspeth-knight Errant
1 Sorin, solemn Visitor
4 Spectral Procession
1 swamp
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Godless shrine
1 vault of the Archangel
2 windbrisk Heights
4 Flooded strand
2 rest in Piece
2 eiddolon of Rhetoric
3 stoney silence
1 sundering growth
2 ghost quarter
2 blessed alliance
1 celestial purge
1 mirrian crusader
1 settle the wreckage
Yes, it is forcing it a bit. The elf shell plays all these cards naturally so the added combo is just another win condition. But you are right, Jank is still Jank.
In your Monument sisters deck have you ever considered/played rhonas's monument?
I could not improve the math. I only play the Flux in commander, Cloudstone curio has too many restrictions on it to combo off efficiently (no artifacts, other permanent). The lion and skyfisher are built in better bouncers.
My soul sister deck rarely gets over 40 life. I looked at Flux heavily when it was spoiled, and determined it was not for this deck type.
Soul Elfs where you could potentially get a lot more mana to bounce cast.
4 Soul Wardens
4 Elvish Mystic
4 Heritage Druid
4 Llanowar Elves
3 Nettle Sentinel
4 Devoted Druid
4 Dwynen's Elite
1 Selfless Spirit
1 Vizier of Remedies
4 Elvish Archdruid
1 Fauna Shaman
T1 land,Heritage Druid
T2 land, Dwynen's Elite, Cloudstone curio
T3 land tap 3 elves cast Aetherflux Reservoir, cast Essence Warden(+1 life Flux)
T4 I think this goes infinite. Tap 3 elfs for mana, Cast elf (+1 sister +1 Flux =2 life)bounce Heritage Druid, cast Heritage Druid (+1 sister +2 flux= 3 Life ) bounce Dwynen's Elite recast Dwynen's Elite ( +2 sister +3 flux= 5 life) tap 3 elves cast bounce Heritage elf; replay Heritage Druid bounce.
You get infinite life and Token Elves.
I'm sure that there are other ways to trick into this.
You could skip The Flux and just infinite elves turn 3.