(Sidisi, Regent of the MireSidisi, Regent of the Mire| Art by Diana Franco

Close Enough, Welcome Back Birthing Pod

Welcome back intrepid single color Commander players to The Monolith, my weekly series in which we talk all things monocolored. Today we're looking at another monocolored legend from Magic: The Gathering's brand new standard legal set, Tarkir: Dragonstorm.

On a previous outing, I attempted to create a mono-green Aristocrats deck by building a hybrid mana commander as though they were only one color.

That commander was Hogaak, Arisen NecropolisHogaak, Arisen Necropolis and in the deck I theorized the fun idea of continuously sacking Hogaak to Birthing PodBirthing Pod to tutor out disgusting 8-drops from our deck.

But you can't always draw one of the 99 cards in your deck. If you really want to play with an effect it should really exist in your command zone. Well what if we could have Birthing Pod in our command zone? ...sort of.

Birthing Pod on Legs. Legs?

Introducing Sidisi, Regent of the MireSidisi, Regent of the Mire, a brand new commander from Tarkir: Dragonstorm with a lovely and low mana cost of that gives us a 1/3 Zombie Snake Warlock. Now of course it's Sidisi's activated ability that we care about the most:

By tapping Sidisi and sacrificing another creature we can reanimate a creature card from our graveyard. However the creature card we reanimate has to have a mana value equal to one plus the mana value of the sacrificed creature. So if we sack a one drop, we get a two drop. Sound familiar?

Yep, it's basically Birthing PodBirthing Pod but without the cost to activate. In exchange though, we now need to search our graveyard for the card we want to tutor onto the battlefield rather than our library.

So is it basically Birthing Pod with extra steps? Yes. But is it also a Birthing Pod we can run as a commander? You betcha. And that's exactly what we'll be doing today.

The Plan

So here's the plan. With Sidisi on board, which won't be too hard given her tiny mana cost, we'll be able to start performing mischief by as early as turn three.

All we really need is a three cost creature, perhaps one with a nice ability when it dies, and then we can start to trade up. Provided we can put the right creatures in our graveyard, we can keep activating Sidisi's ability in a chain.

You sack the three drop and get a four drop. Sack the four drop get a five drop. Sack the five drop get a six. And so on and so forth until... we maybe win the game? Most likely we get a giant threat on the board super early and try to establish a dominant position with it.

To do that we need to establish a line of creatures in increasing value that we can reliably tutor or mill into our graveyard. Each one then in turn being sacrificed to bring in the next.

And whilst we're missing out on the functionality of simply tutoring these creatures from our library, black does have access to a powerful ability that will help us bridge the gap. And that's EntombEntomb effects.

Abilities that search our library for a creature card and put it into our graveyard. In fact, by casting the titular card, we can have our first reanimate target sitting in our graveyard waiting by the end of our first turn.

But for an additional cost there's plenty of other options that'll get the job done. Like one of my budget favorites reprinted in Modern Horizons 3:

Tutoring Out a Perfect Line

There's a very easy way for us to ensure a target for our next reanimate effect, and that's by reanimating a creature that can entomb when it enters play.

By sacrificing a three mana creature we can return Vile EntomberVile Entomber from our graveyard to the battlefield. When it enters we can then use the ETB effect to tutor another creature from our library into the graveyard.

And that creature can have its own tutor effect. In fact once we've got Vile Entomber onto the field we've got a perfect line from four mana all the way up to seven mana using the following creatures:

Corpse ConnoisseurCorpse Connoisseur works as a really nice piece of tech as its Unearth ability allows us to get two uses out of the ETB effect. It works as a nice bit of backup for Burning-Rune DemonBurning-Rune Demon as we do technically have to give the choice of our seven drop to an opponent.

But at least we can go searching for another option if they pick our least favorite of the two. Alternatively you could even use CC's ability to look for your eight drop instead and keep the train going.

Seven Mana Creatures

So what good creatures can we grab for the big seven mana that we've elaborately set up for all this time? Well there's a few spicy options. One big target for someone that's filling their own graveyard with nasty creatures is of course the Pauper all-star, Lotleth GiantLotleth Giant.

Whilst we can only take down a single target with the giant, a full graveyard can be absolutely lethal to one of our opponents. And I'm sure it won't be too difficult to reanimate him for a second hit should we need to.

If our yard is looking full but not quite full enough to kill a player we could instead search for something generically nasty and reanimatey like Sheoldred or the Brass Dragon:

These will allow us to continually reanimate all the nasty creatures we've been slotting into our graveyard over the course of the game whilst also providing a huge threat to our opponents.

There's also a very funny interaction you can have with your opponents when you reanimate your Burning-Rune Demon.

Hand them a Giant and Sheoldred or the Dragon and say if they don't put the dragon in the bin you'll target them with the Giant. Tehe.

When this inevitably makes you the arch enemy of the table you could always grab your Platinum AngelPlatinum Angel from the grave for some protection as well.

Three Mana Creatures

To get our combo chain going nice and early we'll need to start with a three drop. That way, in our best case scenario where we've entombed a four mana creature into the bin on the first turn, we're good to go from turn three.

We can play the three mana creature and then immediately sacrifice it to Sidisi, reanimating our four mana creature and setting off the chain.

So what's a good first creature to use? One thing that can help with our game plan is to fill up our graveyard with powerful mill effects.

Whilst we'll have the ability to tutor out creatures in a row, if we've already found one of the cards in our chain through self milling, it gives us a chance to reanimate something more spicy halfway through the plan.

These dredging three drops should provide a perfect way to continuously fill up our graveyard from turn to turn. We'll likely want some permanents that allow us to discard cards from our hand in case we end up with something needed for our combo gathering dust in there. Something like Putrid ImpPutrid Imp.

By utilizing this repeatable discard effect we can continuously fill up our graveyard instead of drawing cards.

Untapping Sidisi

Now this is all well and good but you may have noticed that this is all a bit... well, slow. Reanimating one creature per turn and ending up with a 7 drop one turn earlier than we would have it if we'd just made a land drop every turn isn't exactly super impressive. If we want this deck to look scary we need to be activating our commander's ability more than once per turn.

To do that we need to go out of our color pie, as I am want to do, and do some mono black untapping!

Now there's a few tools we can use to untap our commander with colorless cards. Thousand-Year Elixir is an absolute no-brainer for this deck.

It not only gives us a second charge of Sidisi for just one mana, but also allows us to activate her as though she had haste. If she gets taken out on a previous turn it won't be too hard to get rolling again with our tasty beverage.

If we've got a fair bit of mana to work with then let's equip Sidisi with Sword of the ParunsSword of the Paruns. That'll allow her to pop off multiple activations in a single turn. But Puppet StringsPuppet Strings can also help us out, even if it's just once per turn.

There's also a few card options that will provide some untapping every combat. Mobile GarrisonMobile Garrison is a classic but it'll require us to crew and attack with it to get the effect.

We can likely just shove in the soon-to-be corpse of our next sacrificial victim for this one. But for one of my favorite untappers, you can't go wrong with Sting, the Glinting DaggerSting, the Glinting Dagger for a guaranteed two sacs per turn.

Get Birthing

It's certainly a little more tricky to pull off than just casting Birthing Pod, but Sidisi could get up to some real shenanigans as a commander.

And it's about time I theory crafted an Aristocrats deck that actually plays black! So the only question that remains is, does this deck have legs? Technically no, she's a Snake. But mechanically, I think we could have something fun here!

You can of course fill this deck with all your standard reanimator tech. ReanimateReanimate and ExhumeExhume to your heart's content, of course.

But with the chain of tutors, this deck will at least do something fun and flashy. Even if it's not going to be joining any CEDH pods any time soon.

Let me know if this list idea tickled your fancy and give me some recommendations for more cards to add in the comments below!

I'll see you on the next edition of The Monolith - your home for almost good, monocolored deck ideas. And until then, have a wonderful time playing EDH and get building some monocolored decks!