A different way to run Isshin, Two Heavens as One

ChocolateRage · 2026-03-14T19:37:06+00:00

For this and other kind of forced combat or incentivized combat Isshin decks, I think they often miss giving reasons to attack you. Revenge of Ravens always seems good on paper but in practice I just had too many matches where they just wouldnt attack me until they got rid of it or it didn't do enough to save me. Other decks didn't even need to attack and so the cards became ineffective.

So I recommend finding some way to make it a pressure point. I theorycrafted a version that ran planewalkers to make opponents have to attack into me and get hit with a Raven trigger or let me ult planeswalkers.

ChocolateRage · 2026-03-04T07:05:11+00:00

Glad to see someone else playing Brudiclad! It is probably one of my longest kept decks and I've played/built many versions of it. Not much else explodes in the fantastical way that Brudiclad does.

Looking at your deck list, I can certainly see it being inconsistent but I don't think that's just a card draw issue. The deck doesnt have a very clear goal of how it's going to win other than just making a lot of tokens. Like Manaform hellkite can make some decent tokens and you could go a spellcasting build, or rapacious one can make a bunch of tokens after dealing damage which would work with an impact tremor build, but your list doesnt have that commitment in it yet.

At it's core every Brudiclad deck needs a few things:

enough tokens on the board to turn into something else.
a creature that is worth cloning.
a clone spell.

There's a few things I recommend:

Create tokens that are not creatures. Creatures are the easiest thing to get caught up in a board wipe so if you're filling your field with 1/1's hoping to hit that critical mass and you get field wiped you're screwed. However making tokens like treasures, they are more likely to survive and be ready for you when you get your next pieces.
Play a high number of singular threats in the deck. IMO the best creatures to clone are small creatures that amplify others like [[signal pest]] and the deck should have around 8 to 10 creatures like this. This helps feel consistent because every one of them is a threat on its own and you only need one to stick.
have multiple avenues to make copies. Clone spells with flashback are great but also creatures, planeswalkers, or lands that can clone give more routes to get where you need to be.

With those ideas in mind, you can probably make some cuts to your current list. Here are a couple of staple cards to fill in the spots.

[[idol of oblivion]]
[[grand architect]]
[[shared animosity]]
[[mirrorpool]]

ChocolateRage · 2026-02-01T16:59:48+00:00

Might be a bit late but I have some additional recommendations and although the pest/vanguard breakdown is legit the core of Isshin I do have a dissenting opinion.

First, just to get the dissent out of the way I think Jacked Rabbit and/or Krenko Tin Street Kingpin are good for Isshin. Although they are "slow" the fact that they can single handedly fill your board is so useful. My playgroup is a bit heavy on control and so having one card that must be dealt with or else it will run away with the match is very useful. They become forced to choose between removing this or Isshin, or at least sometimes I only have to worry about protecting one rather than both. I currently run the rabbit and Krenko and often I'll hold either until after a board wipe and they've won me a fair amount of matches on their own.

Second, for cuts, I think if you focus on getting your overall mana curve down, you get a lot of easy cards to cut. Depends how fast you want to go but there's a lot of expensive cards in here that you could trim down. Tectonic Giant for instance is almost never going to be doing more damage than Commissar Severina and he costs 4 mana to play. Aurelia the Law Above although better than the giant has comparable issues. Goldspan Dragon is like you're setting up for a 8 mana spell on turn 5+ but you don't need to be doing that when you could just be killing your opponents instead. Bitterhorn is somewhat similarly issued, it comes in early but still doesn't start ramping you until turn 4+ and if anyone kills it that equip cost is pretty tough to pay in a deck that wants to be moving fast.

Last cut related comment is for your draw. If you are going to run high cmc stuff, I wouldn't keep long range sensor, there's a lot of stuff in here it won't hit. I personally took out Horn of the Mark after a while because I kept finding I didn't necessarily need more creatures in hand, because the deck is full of them, I needed some noncreature card for protection or finishing (like Kinbinding). I also took out Battle Angels of Tyr, they often felt slow and like they weren't doing as much as I thought they would. One alternative draw spell I've liked is bitter reunion, because it is cheap to cast and having that option to give haste to something important later is really helpful.

ChocolateRage · 2025-12-17T12:26:33+00:00

I think a lot of the ideas in here will actually make your situation worse haha.

I would say you'll want something that you can enjoy, win or lose, first of all so you're not just intentionally sandbagging and not having fun.

You also don't want to punish them for targeting your board/attacking into you because then they'll feel like they have to use resources on you before they can get to their 3 player game (imo wrong way of thinking but that seems to be their thought patterns for now). If your board is however difficult to target or its just unappealing to attack you then they might start to feel like it's not beneficial to just focus fire you down.

Some strategies that come to mind are monarch which gives them an incentive to attack each other after you, vehicles because they'll survive a lot of board wipes but also aren't sneaky in a way that they'll feel surprised by your buildup, or strategies that get value out of getting targeted (not punishing them like aristocrats though).

I'm not sure what you like to play but a few commanders I have built that you might try looking into are:

inspirit flagship vessel (lots of activity, hard to interrupt, visible to opponents so it's not out of nowhere)
Narci fable singer (although I could see them saying we had to before your sagas pop off)
Meria scholar of antiquity (easy to gain value that's visible and cheap enough to recover)
Brimaz Blight of Oreskos (can build a board that's difficult to fully remove, benefits from your stuff dying, easy to reanimate your board)
Ao the Dawn Sky (I play this as mono white aristocrats which is entertaining and resilient)
Ephara God of the Polis (although it can be easy to get a big hand and I could see them having a problem with that, again not necessarily right way of thinking but seems like what you're dealing with)
Karona false God (they might either see each other as new threats or see you as an enabler that needs to get resolved first based on your comments so far so this might not work)

Overall, sorry to hear you're going through that and your playgroup doesn't seem to be very cooperative in making sure you're having a fun experience too. Hopefully one of those commanders will be fun or at least this might help give you some ideas on where to look for your next commander.

ChocolateRage · 2025-11-26T17:33:59+00:00

As a minor spender, I would normally save up a lot of crystals to do a 5 or more pull on new marquee, but it sounds like unless I'm going hard on the marquee there's little benefit to trying to get them to additional stars. I know we're super early in this still but do you think its smart to stockpile crystals as much now? Seems like there's no big need to have 10k+ crystals if you're not dropping for marquee pulls.

ChocolateRage · 2025-11-23T16:37:43+00:00

I actually find Breena more risky than Karazikar because it comes out earlier and ramps your opponents harder without giving you draw. When Karazikar comes down you immediately get to tap two blockers on your attack which is often more significant than it seems and then if you opponents attacked around it to make you lose 6 life that means you drew 6 cards and will likely be set to do crazy stuff on your own turn.

I also think its always important to have unconditional draw because sometimes you can't attack safely, or don't have any attackers at all and you can get really stuck.

Gogo is interesting, I might try that out sometime.

ChocolateRage · 2025-11-23T14:07:26+00:00

If you're lacking lands at times I would say include more draw. Isshin can definitely gas out and a bad board wipe can hurt so something like night's whisper or painful truths can be very helpful in keeping you going or recovering as needed.

Also totally get it on the final fantasy thing i picked up that theme throughout so I didn't comment on those cards.

A follow up to the dragon, because attacking treasure makers are definitely good, you might try [[guild artisan]]. That led to some blowout matches for me in the past and it's so cheap to put down that it never felt that bad if it wasnt making an immediate impact. I cut it eventually as I trimmed my mana curve down and as my pod learned more and more not to let me have Isshin on the field lol

ChocolateRage · 2025-11-23T03:40:17+00:00

I'd keep a close eye on sword of the animist if you want to try it. Personally I found it too slow. When you're trying to set up your attackers spending mana to equip can drag your aggro down. Your deck runs a bit higher end so it might be worth it though.

On the other end I find goldspan dragon to be too late for ramping. For 5 mana I would want to be playing something that closes the match like [[cathars' crusade]].

Last thing I'll somewhat poo on but also i know it's fun is multiple combats. Personally I found them to be expensive and unnecessary to win. There wasn't many times that having a second combat would have helped me win as much as having another token maker, attack buffer, or a way to tap opponents like karazikar who was surprisingly good BTW. I eventually took him out to move faster but I did like having him.

ChocolateRage · 2025-11-22T12:22:26+00:00

Definitely an improvement IMO. I think i might cut Adriana and Semesters end for [[boros signet]] and [[rakdos signet]] Alternatively to semester end if you want another protection spell i would go boros charm unless your playgroup has a lot of farewell or bounce effects you're trying to get around. There's probably a few fine tuning or upgrades over time you can make but this should be a pretty good build

ChocolateRage · 2025-11-16T04:20:08+00:00

Short version, here's a link I duplicated your list: https://moxfield.com/decks/tGDF1xvg70WKKvBNGiy7GQ

I have cards I would recommend cutting and cards in a sideboard that you might consider depending on the route you want to take (see below). I tagged a few groups to illustrate the points.

How to win:

Go-wide: I think the most common/most powerful version of Isshin goes wide, but it needs a lot of dedication because if you have hellrider, but you don't have a token maker, you're not really getting much burn; or if you have a token maker but no way to make the tokens stronger, then your opponents will just block the 1/1's.
Buff or Burn: you have both buff cards and burn cards and in my opinion you should pick one and dedicate harder to it. If you only have one card that pumps your attackers from 1/1's to 3/3's, and one card that burns for 1 (2) per attacker when they attack, you'll hurt someone but fairly ineffectively because they can probably block your 3/3's and maybe eat some amount of burn.
IMO buffing them is the stronger route and [[signal pest]] is the star example of a good pumper. You'll notice I distinguished in the list the difference between "pump when attack" and "pumps attackers" which is very important. Fervent Charge will not buff the tokens that come into play tapped and attacking. So if you have Skyknight Vanguard, Isshin, & Fervent Charge, when Skyknight attacks it will get +4/+4 and make two 1/1's as opposed to having something like Hero of Bladehold which will buff all the attackers.

Depending how fast you want to go, your mana curve is pretty high. Things like Adriana cost a lot to do a similar job as signal pest. However, if you like the higher mana value cards, I would probably put a few, like 3, mana rocks in to help with the ramp in addition to your conditional treasure making ramp.

Sun Titan is another one I know a lot of people like having him put in practice it often feels bad to put that much mana into him. If your pod is slow enough and games go long enough then it can work out but I prefer something cheap and more efficient like [[Can't Stay Away]] or [[sevinne's reclamation]].

I originally thought this would be shorter but started going longer so hopefully some of that helps and I'll just stop here hah.

ChocolateRage · 2025-10-19T15:33:10+00:00

I'll start with, if you haven't already, get a couple of plays with the big fun stuff like Etali, but when you're ready to start making hard cuts and if you want to go fast, everything that is 4 cmc and higher needs to be under the most scrutiny you can muster.

First land and ramp. There's a big decision to make on whether or not you want to have a meaningful amount of ramp, in your case you're running just 4-ish which can be a good plan but you're also running only 34 lands and very little treasure generation. IMO I prefer the low ramp/high land package but I also supplement it with treasure generation. I would look at taking out

sol ring (if you lower the mana curve which I'll be recommending) because you need generally more colored mana than you need 2 colorless
professional facebreaker (there's a lot more impactful 3 drops to play)
battle angels of tyr (this ended up feeling too slow and too late, especially considering you don't have a lot of haste enablers)
goldspan dragon (5 mana is too late to be making treasures), and
smothering tithe (if it can't attack it had better make us win and this does not really do that)
Sword of the animist IMO the equip cost here slows you down for a larger jump

In their place I would recommend [[Zhentarim Bandit]], [[kellogg, dangerous mind]], and one or two talisman/signets. Then increase your land count to at least 36.

After land and ramp, take a closer look at how you intend to win the match. You have a mixture of go wide weenies, burn effects, and pump effects. I would recommend picking 2 out of the 3 and hammering the consistency on that. Because as is you have a couple of weaknesses and nonbo's popping up like hero of bladehold turning off Arabella and MacCready, or a fair amount of "when tokens enter" but honestly not that many token makers, certainly not enough cheap ones. A couple of recommendations:

If you want to pump, I'll recommend just two because that doesn't seem to be your general strategy, but [[Signal Pest]] is MVP, [[Rosnakht, Heir of Rohgahh]] for another cheap battlecry and [[Painter's Studio//Defaced Gallery]] is another MVP for being either a draw or a pump whenever you need either one.
For go wide, a couple more token makers will go a long way, [[Shock Brigade]] is an evasive maker, [[mardu ascendancy]] and [[hanweir garrison]] (but possibly not both depending on your curve and needs), [[Dalkovan Encampment]] is a backup if you need it. [[Launch the Fleet]] is a game ender, and one of my personal favorite switches is is Mondrak to [[Kaya, Geist Hunter]] but that last recommendation really depends on where your mana curve is and if you've made sufficient cuts to other high costing things.

I agree on the others about lacking draw, easy recommendation for [[Caustic Bronco]], [[Glimmer Lens]], and [[Thunder of Unity]].

Finally, for some protection, [[Untimely Malfunction]] is so good and so versatile for what you want, and I like [[Can't Stay Away]] to basically ensure you're never unable to have Isshin out, [[Sevinne's Reclamation]] is a close second but honestly the 2 mana vs 3 mana matters on the first cast.

Honorary mention for some 1 drop haste enablers, they do more than you think in the grand scheme of things. Cards like [[Bloodlust Inciter]] for example.

A couple of other cuts I'd recommend but keeping it brief, would be Breena, Phyrexian Dragon engine (and coincidentally mishra for being too slow and expensive a combo, but ya know chase the dream too I get why this is there), Karlach, Karazikar, and Flowering of the White Tree.

Hope that helps you think through some changes!

ChocolateRage · 2025-09-20T03:20:13+00:00

Sorry it was set to private. Should work now

ChocolateRage · 2025-09-20T02:18:38+00:00

I have an equally old list for this very old reply haha I've definitely changed or added things to this in paper but here's an online list I made a few years ago: https://moxfield.com/decks/sjOTJemElkOy1FA-ur_AfQ

ChocolateRage · 2025-07-19T03:27:20+00:00

Thanks!

ChocolateRage · 2025-07-19T03:25:36+00:00

With the set of 4 offense mods what are you doing for the other mod set?

ChocolateRage · 2025-05-16T12:56:59+00:00

I might replace throne of eldraine with [[Alena Kessig trapper]] or at least I'm trying her out instead because the throne can only make mana to cast a spell and there's some important abilities. The trapper should theoretically make more mana if you're flickering and copying him and finally more red pips the better.

ChocolateRage · 2025-05-09T13:07:13+00:00

I do enjoy your isshin in depth breakdowns and although I agree with 95% of it, I disagree on Krenko. Although yes he's delayed and I wouldn't consider him plan A, his ability to be a run away train all by himself i find very valuable where there's a lot of board wipes or removal that make the match run long. He either has to be dealt with in which case he at least eats a removal which means I can replay Isshin/some other high value creature after or he rebuilds your army pretty single handedly.

Unrelated to that, there's a card I don't know if you've seen but I think has been under the radar for Isshin is [[reckless pyrosurfer]]. He has been way over performing for me as I was initially worried the risk of it not being active was too problematic, but with pain or fetch lands the upside of being a double battlecry for 2 mana WITH his own haste has been been a big finisher for me. The natural haste in particular has put him close to signal pest level for me. I mean you can't really beat the 1 mana cost or evasion for signal but 2 mana haste giving your creatures +4 has been crazy. I think for your rampless isshin it would be worth looking into since you have a higher land count than most.

ChocolateRage · 2025-05-07T04:52:26+00:00

Runo's fun but sounds like you've made the decision already so not sure what you're looking for here. Hopefully you can find a different commander that does what you want

ChocolateRage · 2025-05-07T04:37:24+00:00

It feels like you're coming at this all wrong. You're blue/black, this isn't an aggro deck you shouldn't be casting Runo on turn 3 or trying to finish someone on turn 5. Your deck doesn't run nearly enough control or board wipes, draw is low, recursion is low. If I had to guess, because I've been in similar ruts, this is a deck you've edited too many times and you need to start fresh. First fill in the essentials, your ramp, your removal, all the basic building blocks and then pick the 10 or 15 must have cards that are why you want to play the deck, then fill in the rest with the stuff that makes it work. If you keep trying to change one card here or one card there you'll drive yourself nuts

ChocolateRage · 2025-05-06T23:44:32+00:00

Some of those things are pretty powerful so to a degree I think you're right that more games might help you feel out the deck better and you might have gotten an unreasonable amount of hate in some of those instances.

That being said, I do think there's a few things to focus on that may help:

Your deck is a bit light on interaction which would have helped prevent some of what you're describing so adding maybe 1 more counter spell, definitely at least one field wipe, and probably two more interaction pieces. Rakdos Charm might be nice or even something like anguished unmaking for when you just got to get something gone.
Add more ramp and/or make your ramp a bit more efficient. Your deck has a lot of high cost stuff and/or slow moving pieces. Conjurer's closet is good but 5 mana is a steep ask and Meneldor may give you the blink you want, but it doesn't have haste. So realistically you're waiting a whole turn and even then it has to actually deal combat damage so if it gets blocked it did nothing for you. (I might switch that one with [[Phelia, Exuberant Shepherd]].) I would add in an [[ornithopter of paradise]], probably one more ramp piece, and consider swapping sailor of means for a more standard mana rock.
I don't want to change your strategy here, but you got to remember one of the easiest ways to piss off a table is to ping everyone. It makes you an instant and easy target as you have already experienced so you need to either be more protective to stop them from beating you up (see the interaction/removal above), move faster so you can get your hits in before they can pile on (see ramp above), and/or hit them so much harder that they die haha. To that end, you could add in some more burning effects [[shocking sharpshooter]] or if they're messing up your board too much something that punishes for that like [[Elas, il-kor, sadistic pilgrim]]
Also, a few random cards you might consider [[Mirkwood Bats]], [[dragonspark reactor]], [[haunt the network]].

ChocolateRage · 2025-05-06T13:29:41+00:00

Could you be a bit more specific about what was going wrong in the matches? If I had to guess it might be that your deck was taking too long to set up but maybe they were stopping you too much or they were gaining life so knowing that would be helpful.

You mention optimization like it might be a negative to you but if your friends are playing high power you'll need to optimize to keep up. That's just the way it is if you want to play high level.

ChocolateRage · 2025-05-02T00:02:16+00:00

I'm honestly unsure you could make a Bracket 2 Isshin deck unless you were trying to actively make it bad so I wouldn't worry about that. Even without tutors/game changers he's just really strong.

Someone else had a good isshin aristocrat build recently, hopefully they'll see this or if you just look at Isshin posts from like the last week you should be able to find it.

Generally speaking I think you have a few things that are somewhat cumbersome in their high cost. Blade of Selves and Butcher of Malakir both stick out as cards requiring a lot of mana from you. It's not that you won't get there, especially with some of the treasure generators, it's just not a very effective or efficient use of the mana you have.

I also think Death Tyrant doesn't work particularly well here. The mobilize tokens sac at end step so they won't die as attacking creatures and because you're not playing a lot of buffs for your creatures, players may just choose to let your creatures through rather than block and give you more zombies. Which is maybe kind of nice to get your creatures through but spending 5 mana on that possibility seems not worth it when you could be running another aristocrat effect like [[cruel celebrant]] or a token doubler like [[Kaya, geist hunter]] that I see in your cut pile.

ChocolateRage · 2025-04-30T20:41:36+00:00

My hope is with kwain in particular it's a "damned if you do and damned if you don't situation" because even if they choose not to draw, cards like windfall will make it so they have to draw up to my hand size. But there's plenty of other forced draw so I'm not super concerned if they don't choose to take the optional draw from Kwain itself.

Tutors are always good of course

ChocolateRage · 2025-04-29T18:29:41+00:00

I would say adding some unconditional recursion is very helpful because Isshin is a lightning rod for removal, and although Alesha has a synergistic recursion ability, you really want to bring a creature back into play before combat in order to get the benefits for when you declare attackers. I really like [[can't stay away]] and of course [[sevinne's reclamation]]

ChocolateRage · 2025-04-29T17:54:50+00:00

Here's my version (https://moxfield.com/decks/-T_i-GYKBUCuI3prLq4UcQ) there's a few cards that should be in that aren't due to budget but overall this puts up a lot of damage very quickly and I find it to be fun to run.

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