With Innistrad: Crimson Vow just around the corner, the MTG community are all abuzz with what the latest set has to offer our favourite collectable card game. So far, we have seen some interesting cards for a variety of decks and formats (with way more great Green cards than I thought we would see in this set) and this has got us all doing our favourite past time. Brewing up decks long before we can officially test them out. Well, I’m no different.
I have a few decks I’ve been working on, from tribal brews to janky combos. But today I wanted to revisit one of my personal favourite archetypes, one that has just been given some new toys thanks to both Crimson Vow and Midnight Hunt, for my current most played format thanks to Arena. So, lets dive into Historic and have a look at the new and improved Soul Sisters.
Now as anyone that has followed my content for a while will know, I have previously covered this deck on the site about a year ago, and you may be asking yourselves why I am going over it again. First off, thanks for continuing to support the site and my content, I really apricate it. Secondly, while that version of the deck was a lot of fun to play, it did have one glaring issue. Redundancy.
As competitive players out there will tell you, for a deck to be reliable it should have at least some redundant components. This is to make sure that when you draw your opening seven cards, you have a higher than normal chance of having the pieces you need to execute your game plan. For an example of this consider Modern Burn, that has up to four different spells that all can deal 3 damage to an opponent’s face, or most versions of Elves that have multiple one drop creatures that can produce mana and accelerate you to playing three drops on turn two.
When a deck has multiple cards with a similar cost and effect, the chances of having a reliably strong start to your game increase tremendously. In Modern versions of Soul Sisters, the cards in question are the “sisters” Soul Warden and Soul Attendant. These two cards trigger off us playing a bunch of low cost creatures (and even our opponents) and helps us pump up one of our two major threats, Serra Ascendant and Ajani’s Pridemate, which we then use to smash our opponents life total.
Now in the last version of the deck we had access to Soul Warden, but sadly not Soul Attendant. This meant that in order to have that consistency we are looking for, we were forced to take more expensive alternatives like Impassioned Orator. This slowed the deck down considerably, making it less explosive than we would ideally want. Sure, we could have taken Ajani’s Welcome to solve this, but since it isn’t a creature, it doesn’t tigger our other effects. Nor does it have the ability to attack or defend in combat. Enter Lunarch Veteran.
Having the same effect on Ajani’s Welcome, this 1/1 fits right next to Soul Warden as an honorary sister. What’s more, since it has disturb we can also get it back as a 1/1 flyer for some addition support, which is a little bit of icing on the cake for us. In all seriousness, I did some playtesting with the old deck and just swapped out Impassioned Orator for the Veteran, and the effectiveness of the deck shot up considerably. But there is one other card that I am excited to try out in the deck. One that I fell makes the archetype a real contender for progressing up the ladder, and its name is Voice of the Blessed.
If we are taking about having redundant pieces, then what could be better than adding a playset of a card that is in all regards a better version of both Serra Ascendant and Ajani’s Pridemate. As anyone that has seen a Pridemate on the field will tell you, it can get really big, really fast. So, a Pridemate that gets added benefits for getting bigger is just the cherry on top of an already great cake. You could easily have the Voice of the Blessed swinging in as a 6/6 flying and vigilante threat as early as turn three, and within a few more turns it could become a 12/12 indestructible monster to boot. And yes, while it doesn’t have life link like Serra Ascendant, that is not as much of an issue since there are multiple ways to dish that effect out (like Heliod, Sun-Crowned for example).
While I haven’t been able to test the card out directly, I have been able to test a ruff facsimilia of it out with the Arena exclusive Hallowed Priest. And yes, while this card is in no way as good as the upcoming Voice of the Blessed, it has still proved to be a useful tool in the deck arsenal. One can only imagine what the deck will be like once it is able to replace the Priest for the Voice, but this is the build I’m going to be running.
| Creatures (36) 3 Soulmender 4 Serra Ascendant 4 Soul Warden 4 Lunarch Veteran 4 Speaker of the Heavens 4 Voice of the Blessed 4 Ajani’s Pridemate 3 Daxos, Blessed by the Sun 3 Heliod, Sun-Crowned 3 Linden, the Steadfast Queen Planeswalkers (2) 2 Ajani, Strength of the Pride | Lands (22) 21 Plains 1 Castle Ardenvale Sideboard (15) 2 Deafening Silence 2 Sanctify 4 Fateful Absence 3 Teferi's Protection 2 Leyline of Sanctity 2 Settle the Wreckage |
For a sideboard we have a few pieces of removal for a variety of threats. Sanctify can be brought in for enchantment or artifact removal, while Fateful Absence deals with creatures and planeswalkers. If we need to sweep the board against other decks, we can pull in two copies of Settle the Wreckage to fit alongside the main decks Ajani, Strength of the Pride ultimate, and we can add Teferi’s Protection to protect our own side from mass removal. Deafening Silence helps shutdown combo decks which can out pace us, and finally Leyline of Sanctity to take care of any graveyard heavy brews.
And that about does it for Historic Sisters. What do you think about today’s deck? Is this what you want to play, or have you a different brew you want to try out for Crimson Vow? Please let me know in the comments below, and while you’re there you could like and subscribe to keep up to date with all we do here at Master of Magics.
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