Against the Odds: The Sibsig Ceremony Combo (Standard)
Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Against the Odds! This week, we're heading to Standard to see if we can combo off with one of the spiciest cards from Tarkir: Dragonstorm: The Sibsig Ceremony! The Sibsig Ceremony is a wild card. It makes all of our creatures cost two less, which is absurd, but then it blows them up when they enter the battlefield, replacing them with a 2/2 Zombie Druid token. The goal of our deck today is to combine the enchantment with Spinner of Souls and some sneaky deck building, which should let us play pretty much all the creatures in our deck in a single turn, make a huge hoard of Zombie tokens, and then give everything haste to win the game on the spot. And we can technically do this as early as Turn 2, although Turn 3 or 4 is more likely! What are the odds of going infinite-ish with The Sibsig Ceremony in Standard? Let's get to the video and find out!
Against the Odds: The Sibsig Ceremony Combo
The Deck
The Sibsig Ceremony Combo, as its name suggests, is a combo deck, and it's all about The Sibsig Ceremony. Our deck doesn't do much of anything without our namesake enchantment on the battlefield, which means we'll mulligan aggressively to find it and are even playing two copies of Beseech the Mirror just to find The Sibsig Ceremony. That's how badly we need the enchantment in play.
The Sibsig Ceremony does a couple of things. First and most importantly, it makes our creatures cost two less, which, as you will see, makes most of the creatures in our deck free. Second, it blows up any creatures we cast and replaces them with 2/2 Zombie Druid tokens, which is supposed to be a drawback, but our deck manages to turn this into an upside! Let's say we get The Sibsig Ceremony on the battlefield. How do we actually combo off?
While we can technically just play The Sibsig Ceremony and dump our hand of creatures to make a few Zombie Druids, which might be enough to win some games, that's not nearly spectacular enough for us. The full combo is getting The Sibsig Ceremony on the battlefield alongside Spinner of Souls, a three-drop that makes it so that whenever a nontoken creature dies, we get to add a random creature from our deck to our hand. You can probably see where this is going: if we get Spinner on the battlefield with The Sibsig Ceremony, we can play a creature, have it die, get a Zombie Druid, and then replace it with another creature so we can repeat the process.
Of course, there is one big problem with this plan: we can't play Spinner of Souls after we have The Sibsig Ceremony on the battlefield, or else the enchantment will destroy it. While we can try to play Spinner of Souls first and The Sibsig Ceremony after, this isn't always possible. Thankfully, we have a plan to fix this in Gixian Puppeteer. When Puppeteer dies, it reanimates a creature of mana value three or less, like Spinner of Souls. Since The Sibsig Ceremony only blows up creatures that we cast, after we play The Sibsig Ceremony and find a Spinner of Souls, we can play it for one mana, have it die, and then play Gixian Puppeteer for two mana. It will also get destroyed by The Sibsig Ceremony and use its death trigger to get Spinner of Souls into play.
Let's say we get The Sibsig Ceremony on the battlefield with Spinner of Souls. How do we actually win the game? Well, the rest of our deck is almost exclusively creatures that we can play for free if we have The Sibsig Ceremony on the battlefield. Not only are Marketback Walker, Friendly Teddy, and Scrapwork Mutt free, but they also draw us a card when they enter or die, which makes them super strong with The Sibsig Ceremony. We can play them, draw a card, and get a 2/2 Zombie Druid. If we have a Spinner of Souls, we'll draw another creature too, which should also be free, to keep the chain going.
Gleaming Barrier is one of the most important cards in our deck since it's free with The Sibsig Ceremony and makes a Treasure when it dies. This lets us win the game on the turn we play The Sibsig Ceremony even if we are completely tapped out. Since we have four copies of Gleaming Barrier in our deck, we know that we'll draw into them eventually, which will give us four extra mana that we can use to play our finisher to win the game.
Greedy Freebooter and Charming Scoundrel are our worst creatures for one big reason: they are only free if we have a mana to cast them, which means they aren't helping our combo if we are completely tapped out. The good news is that, since both creatures make a Treasure token and only cost one mana with The Sibsig Ceremony on the battlefield, they end up being free as long as we have at least one mana to start with, costing a mana but refunding it once they enter the battlefield or die.
The last piece of the puzzle is Imodane's Recruiter. Once we play through our entire deck with the combo, we should end up with 10, 20, or more 2/2 Zombie Druids on the battlefield. Eventually, we'll draw into Imodane's Recruiter, which we can play for one mana thanks to The Sibsig Ceremony, give our team haste and +1/+0, and swing in for lethal, hopefully all on Turn 3!
Wrap-Up
Record-wise, The Sibsig Ceremony Combo tells an interesting story. Overall, through five different versions of the deck, I went 17-24 with the deck for a 41% win rate, although I went 6-6 for a 50% win rate with the final version of the deck (the one in the video). But that's not the interesting part. If we dig into the matchups, the numbers are wild. We went 0-13 against red aggro decks, which is laughably bad. On the other hand, if you take red aggro out of the picture, we went 17-11 in other matchups, good for a very solid 65% win rate. Basically, red aggro is a nightmare because we don't really play removal and they are faster than we are. But the deck felt really strong in most other matchups!
If you decide to try the deck, my main advice is twofold. First, treat it like Zombie Hunt, in the sense that you need to mulligan aggressively to find The Sibsig Ceremony. I tried keeping fair hands (hands that don't have The Sibsig Ceremony) a few times, and they basically never work out. Second, don't just run out your random Marketback Walkers, Friendly Teddy, and Gleaming Barriers on Turn 2. We want them in hand for the combo once we play The Sibsig Ceremony. There are exceptions to this second rule, especially if our plan to find The Sibsig Ceremony involves Beseech the Mirror (which needs an artifact on the battlefield to bargain). But in general, we don't want those creatures sitting on the battlefield; we want them in hand for combo purposes.
So, should you play The Sibsig Ceremony Combo in Tarkir: Dragonstorm Standard? I think the answer is yes, but mostly for fun as a secondary deck. The combo is hilarious, and it wins a reasonable amount of the time (except against red aggro), but it is also pretty repetitive—our goal is to do the same exactly thing ever game—which I imagine would get old after a while. But as a backup deck to pull out every once in a while, I think the deck is perfect! It's fast, funny, and unique, and it can do some crazy things super early in the game!
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today. As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
