Lessons from Sygg

I consider Sygg, River Cutthroat to be my defining EDH deck. It’s certainly the one I’ve put the most effort into, and a general I have yet to see anyone else in my playgroups use. I am also proud to say I haven’t seen any decklists online that take the same approach as mine.

Which brings me to one of my “principals of deckbuilding”:

Be Creative.

One of the great things about EDH being a casual, multiplayer format is that you can run sub-optimal cards without feeling like you’re committing to failure. I like to minimize the number of obvious cards I put in my deck (insurrection, demonic tutor, duplicant) and try to squeeze in interesting stuff that doesn’t see as much play (aftershock, mirrorweave, adarkar valkyrie).

In the case of Sygg, an obvious use for him would be to run black and blue cards that ping opponents during their turns to increase your card draw. This could be an interesting deck using macaroni cards like psychic venom, errant minion, and seizures, and might also want some nuisance cards like underworld dreams, forgotten wastes, and polluted bonds. Personally, I wanted something more aggressive than enchantment-based-pinging.

I first took Sygg down the route of mono-black aggro, using him as a personal howling mine that might sometimes draw even more cards if my opponents hit each other. I kept the CMC of cards in the deck around 1-3 so that I could play those extra cards and not just end up discarding them. I focused on doing 3 damage on turn 3, hunting down all kinds of two drops that could deal 3 damage - Oona’s prowler, lurking nightstalker, blind creeper - and a couple of tech equipments like bonesplitter, empyrial plate, and grafted wargear. I supplemented this with all the best 2 and 3 CMC removal spells that black had to offer (chainer’s edict, terror, rend flesh, etc).

Which brings me to one of my “principals of play”:

Keep the game moving.

Multiplayer games can go stale very easily. The “strategic” play is almost always to not attack, since an attacker damages 1 player, while an untapped creature can block the attacks of many. Of course if everyone does this the game becomes an absolute snore-a-thon, so its important to build a deck that does things. Turn those dudes sideways, and kill the things that  prevent you from doing so.

The MBA version of Sygg was great at meeting this philosophy - the problem was its success was overwhelming in star formats and abysmal in free-for-all (the case for most EDH aggro decks). Since I play a pretty even mix of both I knew the deck needed some significant modifications if it was to stand the test of time.

I set about overhauling the deck while trying to stay true to the low-CMC approach and the general idea of playing things out while keeping a full hand. The key modifications that helped bridge the gap between star and FFA games were:

1. Unblockable. The biggest move for the deck was getting off the “3 damage by turn 3” kick and moving instead towards “cheap unblockable guys”. This ranges from inkfathom infiltrator to tough-to-block guys like ogre marauder and nihilith.

2. Counterspells. Not a lot of them and nothing expensive - just enough to get some mileage out of Syggs blue side and give the deck some outs to painful wrath and fog effects.

3. Equipment. Specifically living weapons. The addition of bonehoard, lashwrithe and batterskull has given me 3 reasonably cheap but large creatures that synergize with my unblockables and turn Sygg into a voltron general in the late game if needed.

4. Bounce. Another way to deal with cards that monoblack can’t usually handle - I used to run 3-4 bounce spells but these days I think I’m down to only using wash out.

These changes have turned the deck into a respectable threat in both free-for-all and star formats, and even viable in 1v1. The biggest weakness of the deck is other black decks - as they devalue creatures with fear and cards like terror.

Macaroni or Cheese?

I feel my Sygg deck is at least cheese-free, if not exactly rich in macaroni.

There’s something kind of funny about playing a 1/1 flyer on turn 1 in a 40-life format, and most people have never seen ghastlord of fugue or wake thrasher; but generally the cards in the deck are  not that lulzworthy.

I’d say the best thing about the deck is that it gets the job done without playing many nuisance cards. There are no steal-your-card cards (except 1 animate dead), limited countermagic, no recursion (except 1 nether traitor), no tutors, no combos, and no 1-turn-kill punches. The creatures can usually attack thanks to their evasion and hit hard thanks to equipment. Between that and the spot removal and counters the deck is always “in the game” and “doing things”, which makes it a blast to play.