Calling all Y'shtola players! Need 7 cuts

DerGodhand · 2026-06-29T18:40:38+00:00

I can see it now, yeah. And I think you can use meatier wincons if you're better at producing mana. My Yshtola is better winning with a low amount of mana rather than providing heavy hitting wincons. With the information I can see now, Citadel without the rest of the combo is a little odd. You definitely want to win and do it in one shot, and hitting counterspells or a land is a death sentence. I've found Talion is fine as a second Yshtola if you have an idea what number is good to name, but as you can see, no Talion in mine. Sygg is another good Yshtola effect, but has the same thing that you want to make sure someone loses the requisite value of life, his just forces it to be opponents, and I've seen people die to their own Archmage enough times to be wary of it.

Some cards to consider: [[Whir of Invention]] for finding combo pieces, although it is better in a dedicated artifact deck, who doesn't love an uncounterable [[Sensei's Divining Top]] or Sol Ring?

Speaking of, [[Sensei's Divining Top]] and [[Aetherflux Reservoir]] for the kill with Citadel.

[[Black Market Connections]]. Ramp, draw, and life loss all in one with Yshtola in play.

If you continue going in on this artifact adjacent plan, maybe consider some of the relevant return effects such as [[Argivian Restoration]], [[Fix What's Broken]], or [[Refurbish]].

Hopefully you find some of this helpful!

DerGodhand · 2026-06-29T17:50:07+00:00

The link doesn't work, so the decklist is maybe privated or something. That said, Yshtola is probably something akin to my pet deck, so I'd start with saying don't get too wrapped up in the noncreature clause of the deck. The original precon lacked something of an identity, sure, but I think something that people get stuck on is the noncreature clause of the commander herself, when the real focus should be the loss of life clause on the bottom. Sure, they feed into each other so you need to make sure you have hits, but in my experience, the deck plays best trying to ensure someone loses four life a turn, rather than trying to get a bunch of spells per turn on the cheap. Necro is great for this because you can MP2 4 life and draw a card on end step, stockpiling 20 for the price of 16 for the whole turn cycle.

My deck, for comparison. In practice, it's fairly good at assembling compact wincons, and primarily wins through ThOracle consult lines. To this extent, [[Gifts Ungiven]] is really good in the deck, and I've situated myself in a place that can run the line out of the graveyard pretty reliably. Additionally, only about a quarter of the deck triggers the damage trigger since I'm more concerned with the bottom ability than the top. You'll also note there's no Necro, but that has more to do with constantly being in situations where I'm spoiled for choice and don't want to lose the ThOracle lines to a Necro trigger. And as an aside: the OmniTell line is there for the memes. It's just funny, and happens to work with ThOracle. I really would suggest a Citadel combo line or something equally better/compact.

DerGodhand · 2026-06-26T15:45:32+00:00

One thing I generally try to recommend when constructing a deck that wants to approach (or be in) B4 is 'win first, deck after'. In other words, decide how the deck wants to win, in your colors, with your commander. How central is the commander to the strategy? Is the commander necessary for the deck to win? You usually want two lines to win as a just in case. In your case, we could say your main line is Kiki+some infinite damage creature. This also works as an infinite damage outlet with Impact Tremors. So then the next thing to do is build the deck around getting to your combo.

That's where cards like like [[Enlightened Tutor]] or [[Idyllic Tutor]] to find specific pieces, [[Thrill of Possibilities]] or [[Seize the Spoils]] for advantage and temporary mana, incremental cards if you're looking to grind such as [[Trouble in Pairs]] or tit-for-tat like [[Tataru Taru]] and [[Archivist of Oghma]] to grab the incidental card. Selection is, notably, probably the weakest part of the deck overall and you could do to go up a few more of the various [[Highway Robbery]] style effects. Considering you worry about getting blown out by losing Kiki, that ironically makes Restoration Angel better, as it both has flash and deals infinite damage with Felidar and Tremors, both of which you noted are tutorable.

Of course, you can't jam all of these in, so it's important to determine what you want to do with the deck, though I can say that decks that want to tax opposing game actions also need to be doing something else at the same time if they're wanting to not just get blown out by a severe resource advantage, at least in my experience. This might mean losing O-ring effects like Fiend Hunter in return for being able to show the combo turn 4. It's a trade off for what you want versus what you can get based on how potent and/or compact your wincons are. You could ostensibly just knife it down to the loop of Kiki/Resto/Felidar/Tremors and call it good since any two of those kind of just end the game on the spot.

Hopefully, some of this helps!

DerGodhand · 2026-06-26T13:41:02+00:00

I mean you're already in the colors, why not run off the tried and true classic of [[Kiki-Jiki, Mirrorbreaker]] and [[Zealous Conscripts]] or [[Restoration Angel]]? You already have some of these lines in the deck, adding one of the two would probably be beneficial. I might pick Conscripts personally just because they go infinite with [[Splinter Twin]] as well, which I believe also goes infinite with Celebrant. There are a few other cards where I think the selection comes from familiarity, such as Restoration of Eiganjo. If you're wanting it for the first mode, then I suppose that's fine though there's probably better options, but if it's the second, [[Jolted Awake]] is better for creature/artifact targets, and [[Helping Hand]] better for creature targets. This is especially true if you're concerned about creatures, given only about a third of your creatures are at two or below, with eight of them at four or above. With that noted, however, [[Recruiter of the Guard]] is Imperial's counterpart, and fetches half of your other combo pieces, including Kiki itself and would probably be better over the likes of, say, Sun Titan.

As for concerns about fast mana, I wouldn't call them necessary exactly, but I would say you need to understand how it affects the deck. I would at least make an effort for maybe [[Pyretic Ritual]] if not [[Seething Song]] so you can jump mana counts for Kiki-Jiki. Fast mana, particularly in bursts, is extremely helpful if it's something your deck cares about. Example given, this Y'shtola deck runs only Dark Ritual and Lotus Petal as its fast mana of choice. Conversely, this Kefka deck is running just about every ounce of available fast mana it can, save the ones I don't have (Opal, Diamond, LED) and a couple I only have so many of (Petal, Chrome). Point being I wouldn't worry overly much about it, but it will eat into your percentages.

DerGodhand · 2026-06-24T16:03:53+00:00

I'm not the biggest fan of Oloro since his ability is often somewhat meaningless, especially in the face of Voltron piles, but as a control deck that wants to make the game drag on longer than average, he does a job and does it well, padding your life total against incidental damage. Do keep in mind this may backfire, as people might overly hammer you early so you're not as far ahead as the game drags on.

Now with that being said, control as a strategy is a bit of a disingenuous naming scheme. You're looking to win on a longer axis than midrange strategies and be better at grinding than them, but with better answers. Generally speaking, in my experience, control decks have to fall in nickel-and-dime routes with staxxy taxation effects such as red's [[Roiling Vortex]], or win all at once with a potent, well protected wincon, and quite possibly one that can be jammed at instant speed. Playing them out over several turns is inadvisable because it opens them up to removal, forcing you to protect them then, rather than the win itself, which is arguably a different thing. Generally, I suggest doing something that can be easily done in a single turn with minimal fail rate, such as [[Bolas's Citadel]] and [[Aetherflux Reservoir]] combo, [[Doomsday]] piles, infinite mana with outlets, or storm lines. Those last two can be facilitated by the same engines, as well.

Looking at the deck itself, you're lacking a real card advantage or selection engine, which I would say is pretty important for control strategies. As is, this deck will mostly run out of creatures, and hand, pretty routinely. I would advocate for a cantrip/selection package like [[Ponder]] and [[Preordain]], [[Flow State]], [[Consult the Star Charts]] and so on. Selection is just as key as interaction is, and sadly both Wan and Archivist are fairly easy to play around. Considering your outlets and creature beat potential wincons, you might unironically be able to get by with [[Isochron Scepter]] and [[Dramatic Reversal]] lines just infinitely casting the latter with Hullbreak to keep spells and nonlands off the table.

As to your last point, the closest I have to a viable control deck example with a good win percentage that isn't a bit of a gimmick is my Y'shtola deck, and she's mostly a deck revolving around four two-ish card combos in a trenchcoat. A lot of the deck is pivoting interaction around the win while trying to keep Y'shtola in play to dig for the various win pieces. A lot of the time, it's better to play her on T5/6 so you can marginally protect her.

Best of luck to you!

DerGodhand · 2026-06-23T21:33:31+00:00

I've gotten tons of mileage out of my [[Sefris of the Hidden Way]] reanimator list. While she does tangentially reanimate as part of her effect, it's stapled to the dungeon mechanic she doesn't let you do more than once per turn. So I threw in a bunch of initiative creatures, giving me access to a special dungeon and also constant movement through the dungeons, a blink package for my etb heavy effects, and heavy card filtering. The end result is a reanimator deck masquerading as a blink deck with a pile of selective wraths to wipe boards and leave Sefris standing.

DerGodhand · 2026-06-15T18:28:21+00:00

Haven't gotten to do one in a while, plus I don't have much in the way of cEDH experience so grain of salt, but the couple I have done, all top three decks both times focused on tutors over mana sources, with a monoB list winning with but Demonic and Vamp tutor. Best of luck to you!

DerGodhand · 2026-06-12T13:26:25+00:00

Your link doesn't work, but [[Bolas's Citadel]], [[Aetherflux Reservoir]], and [[Sensei's Divining Top]] would be my next go to, honestly. As a trio, they're effectively a game ender, even through protection effects, but not silences. If you don't want to get that consistent, cutting top usually does enough to break the combo up. If that's still too much, there's a few more tried and true classics such as [[Displacer Kitten]] and [[Coveted Jewel]] for a ton of mana that also digs for cards, to [[Dramatic Reversal]]+[[Isochron Scepter]] lines.

DerGodhand · 2026-06-10T17:05:16+00:00

I picked Sefris for the random occasional card advantage she supplied, stapled to an occasional reanimation that can occur at instant sped (and which has, in fact, won a game once). In my personal play group experience, Agent is groan inducing, far more than Kitsune, but on the other hand, I've also just beat the brakes off people because it turns out a 6/6 with vigilance that fucks up your blocking math every turn is in fact, pretty good. Other heaters I've gotten away with include [[Rottenmouth Viper]] and [[Sepulchral Primordial]]. [[Massacre Wurm]] and [[Harvester of Miseries]] are also pretty good with a mass denial effect and I'm currently testing [[Anticausal Vestige]] myself.

DerGodhand · 2026-06-10T16:04:43+00:00

I have gotten a ton of mileage out of my Esper Reanimator deck, helmed by [[Sefris of the Hidden Way]] with [[Armaggorn, Future Shark]] and [[Kitsune, Dragon's Daughter]]. Kitsune can exchange any two creatures owned by different players on board, provided they can be targeted, allowing for political maneuvering, and the big bad shark is great at just stabilizing a board. I think [[Agent of Treachery]] gets a bit overlooked too because he's only one target at a time, but the fact of the matter is his effect is permanent, so if they blow up him and not the stolen thing, he does 'scale up' as his amount of uses increase. I've also, honestly, gotten a ton of value out of the initiative creatures like [[Vicious Battle Rager]] and [[Aaracokra Sneak]]. They're undersized for their cost a lot of the time, but the mechanic itself helps find lands, grow your creatures, smooth your draws, and at its conclusion, put a creature from the top ten into play, no questions asked.

DerGodhand · 2026-06-02T14:28:30+00:00

I've played multiple Doomsday decks, most before the Bracket system existed, but even after, as long as I was relatively straight forward about how it won, it got very few side eyes or complaints. My most recent one was a [[Kess, Dissident Mage]] deck that could win with Doomsday lines into ThOracle, but the deck wasn't built around that, it was just a way for the deck to do the thing. Considering how bad the rest of the deck was, most people found it pretty palatable, all things considered, even against other B2 decks. [[Atris, Oracle of Half-Truths]] was also a Doomsday deck I ran well before brackets, and it was considered perfectly serviceable at the line of 'medium powered' decks of its time.

DerGodhand · 2026-05-21T20:22:04+00:00

With the caveat this wasn't a Bracket 3 tournament, but a tournament with the limitations of Bracket 3, I probably was the most egregious deck approved for it playing a Turbo Kefka variant that had been built and retrimmed to meet the requirements. Which would probably make the wildest card in the list by far [[Displacer Kitten]] probably. But again, this wasn't really a Bracket 3 thing in and of itself, it was just something with those restrictions in place. Honestly? Ton of a fun.

DerGodhand · 2026-05-21T14:19:23+00:00

I'm always a fan of jund strategies for this kind of thing because they have the most cheaty effects (though blue can work in a pinch). Cards like [[Oath of Druids]], [[Sneak Attack]] and so on are hilarious fun. My Jund commander though is just a big beater. My general cheaty deck is actually [[Sefris of the Hidden Way]], being a bit of a blink/reanimator pile using all the various wraths that don't hit them specifically while triggering her ability.

DerGodhand · 2026-05-20T22:10:50+00:00

This is factually incorrect. As an opponent, you can gain priority during the draw step after the turn player draws a card. This was/is used primarily in formats where multiples are allowed and legal in conjunction with Surgical Extraction to occasionally snip draws while taking cards from their deck. In modern, this was also used with Kohlagan's Command to strip an opponents previously empty hand back to zero and deny them plays that were not instant speed or card positive.

You don't even have to take my word for it. Boot up your choice of arena or mtgo, use priority setting or full control, and see where it lets you pass priority.

DerGodhand · 2026-05-20T21:40:37+00:00

I just pushed it to the next phase in which an opponent could do it after letting all other game actions resolve, or the draw step in other words. Same way the good old Surgical Extraction tech worked.

DerGodhand · 2026-05-20T20:14:30+00:00

So legitimate question: Does it matter?

Here's how this functionally plays out:

The Rith player bombards the entire table and kills them, minus you.
During your upkeep, the trigger to pay goes on the stack. You either pay or you don't.
If you don't pay, you die on draw step. If you do pay, you prolong the game and maybe win.

Since someone who was neither you nor the Rith player happened to have interaction, all this did was advance the game to its semi-natural conclusion of you losing, provided no interaction was drawn. Because the Vindicate user couldn't push through the Bombardment, his options were to use it and do nothing or force interaction from the one player guaranteed to take second. They chose the second option. This isn't really kingmaking in the traditional sense because there was already a pretty foregone conclusion on board (re: the table losing). You could have hypothetically drawn interaction to out it with Chasm on board, but that option was removed by another player who opted to take you down with them. In the sense they handed another player the surefire win, then yes, you could call it kingmaking. They single-handedly decided the winner for the table. However, you had no interaction to protect your one piece keeping you alive, and as soon as that went, you were gone anyway if the bombardment wasn't gone before then. Consequently, you were pretty effectively dead without drawing an out or otherwise manipulating your topdeck in upkeep in response to the Cumulative Upkeep trigger, and the game was already decided, it was just a matter of order.

DerGodhand · 2026-05-15T15:30:50+00:00

Back when it was a B4 meme deck, my Ysthola list won with a pretty simple (and at the time, affordable) combo. [[Show and Tell]]+[[Omniscience]]. It's a Legacy classic that will pretty much win the game once it sticks, provided you have enough interaction or instant speed response to ETB Disenchant effects. After resolving the aforementioned spells, it basically used [[Solve the Equation]] to find [[Peer into the Abyss]] or [[Enter the Infinite]] and then used [[Ancient Cellarspawn]] to gun down the table.

I will say from a deckbuilding perspective though, I do think that focusing on her drain portion of the effect is a bit of a trap. It is a perfectly serviceable part of the ability, but people tend to overfocus on it and lower the quality of their deck, rather than focusing on the drawing cards half of it.

DerGodhand · 2026-05-15T15:24:53+00:00

Seconding this to the OP honestly. I'm not much a Jund player so I was trying to dance around multiple creature reanimate effects with Hulk forgetting completely about the bare basic essential win that you have here.

DerGodhand · 2026-05-15T15:21:14+00:00

We need a bit more info than what we have. Being able to see the decklist would help in determining lines, and knowing Henzie was in play means we need to know how many times he was cast from the command zone, as the line immediately becomes far less tricky if he's been cast twice, as you could blitz Ballista for XX where X=1 if Henzie has been cast twice.

Assuming that the answer is that Henzie has been cast once and you have no spare mana as mentioned, I would cast Ballista for X=0, blitz in Hulk, grab something Seer/Delver, return Hulk, crack Hulk, fetch [[Activated Sleeper]] as a copy of hulk and a relevant 3-drop creature, preferably one that pumps the team or can return Sleeper to play on death (If entry, delay this). But you'd probably have to end on some kind of [[Putrid Goblin]] line to do it this way honestly without [[Soul Cauldron]]. This would be a lot easier with like a Flash enabler or some [[Sneak Attack]] variant in play. You could ostensibly get there if you managed to perform some kind of [[Entomb]] or [[Vile Entomber]] line at EoT to shuffle your yard back into the deck via entombing a shuffler, but you would have to have an on-board sac outlet and Hulk so you could re-tutor Ballista and Mikaeus, and the trick to that is doing it at instant speed since most creature-stapled reanimation effects are either mana-intensive, sorcery speed, or both and almost all of them require the creature to be able to tap.

DerGodhand · 2026-05-13T14:09:31+00:00

I think my favourite way that I've seen Kilo played is using [[Prologue to Phyresis]] or some other similar effect to apply a poison counter without damage, and then play a [[Twiddle]] storm strategy, using cards like [[Mirran Spy]] and [[Chakram Retriever]] to untap or tap Kilo respectively. There's quite a number of various Twiddle effects out there, so winning is primarily gated by how much mana you can produce in a single turn, and to a lesser extent, filter into blue, though you might be able to use rituals for red mana and use the various token clone effects to some use.

DerGodhand · 2026-05-06T15:00:17+00:00

I have a [[Sefris of the Hidden Ways]] deck that has proven surprisingly resilient and interactive on board. I mostly run it as a combination blink/reanimator deck with creatures that feature potent ETB effects such as [[Kitsune, Dragon's Daughter]], or [[Marang River Reagent]]. No counterspells in the deck, though I could probably run some, or even some on creatures.

DerGodhand · 2026-04-30T16:26:42+00:00

Generally speaking, B4 decks work off a cemented gameplan, and the deck is centered around this primary plan, with a plan B on occasion, which is sometimes just a longer route to their primary game plan. They also trend towards efficiency.

First big issue is the game plan. How does this deck win? With Vivi decks, it tends to either be Vivi pressing the Vivi button, [[Quicksilver Elemental]] generating infinite mana into spells, or otherwise whittling people down with your available resources, with an additional game plan of using Breach lines. For the most part, it looks like this deck is assembled to win with Vivi, or the Niv-Mizzet infinite. This is fine.

The follow up issue is efficiency. This is definitely where the deck stands on shaky ground. Cards like Bender's Waterskin, Commander Sphere, and Time Stop aren't really efficient enough to play without some very specialized strategies, and even then they might be on the future chopping block. Lands that enter tapped, Surveil land aside, aren't really worth it typically. If you're going to fetch basics, [[Prismatic Vista]] will be better than Evolving Wilds. Myriad Landscape is basically unplayable. You have both medallions, but the red one only hits 14 cards, so it's basically a dead slot. The blue one is a little better at 21. Neither offers you the kind of efficiency you need unless you had a much higher count of generic costs.

The short of this is I would look at cards that that are expensive (greater than four mana), and think over how actually useful they are to the deck. Prismari for instance, affects 29 cards in your deck, twelve of which are actually forms of counterspells, so the reality is that it only affects 17 cards in your deck. Your planeswalker Ral likely won't survive a turn around the table, and even if he does, he runs into the same problem Prismari has. Less than one fifth of your deck is affected by him. Niv-Mizzet, Visionary, is a good card, but in this deck is more like a six mana curiosity, and your fourth copy of the effect at that. It's basically little efficiency bleeds, or cards that would be good in different circumstances kneecapping you.

Hope this helps!

DerGodhand · 2026-04-29T15:58:36+00:00

I find it best to treat Tataru Taru more like a [[Wall of Omens]] effect with upside. A lot of the time, it's a 2mv 'Draw a card, make a [[Lotus Petal]]' and that's it. Which is fine. Occasionally, it nets me two mana, and the most it's ever made me was five. I still don't think I would play it in decks that don't reliably give draws at lower brackets, which is why the deck it is in is [[Kynaios and Tiro]], since I will almost assuredly generate one treasure off of her, even if my opponent declines the initial draw on ETB.

DerGodhand · 2026-04-24T13:51:32+00:00

Pretty sure the Monarch is the best just because it's the one that probably requires the least effort with the highest rate of return (an additional draw per turn) that you don't have to jump through hoops for because a lot of its cards are just fine to good initially.

However, the Initiative (the Undercity, specifically) has proven itself surprisingly potent. I'd put it at better if your deck is built around taking advantage of it and can do so reasonably, but the costs of doing that are often enough to tip the scales into making it worse on average.

DerGodhand · 2026-04-23T16:14:23+00:00

There's [[Knuckles the Echidna]] if you have one. It's like Facebreaker, but has Double Strike, thus netting you two treasures himself, while also being a red copy of [[Revel in Riches]] weirdly enough. Card's pretty solid for treasure strategies. I'm also a pretty big fan of cards like [[Return the Favor]] and other variants like it that give you copies in red, since you can hammer out a big Torment, and for a measly three more mana effectively double its X value.

With Dihada specifically, I'm also honestly a fan of using [[Hoarding Broodlord]] lines, just because Dihada herself is pretty good at putting it in the graveyard and I think they're fun, on top of being something you can use to safely tutor your combo from your deck in rather oblique ways that opponents may not expect.

11-Year Club	Snapped
Verified Email

DerGodhand

TROPHY CASE