#sab-sunen

[hyralc]

my localization of mtgjp's comic

relevant cards under the cut

[googlyeyesonmagiccards]

All glory to the thicc-no-toad

[amberferret]

i hope no ones already done this

[farsight-the-char]

Planeswalker's Guide to Aetherdrift, Part 2

Meet the host planes of the Ghirapur Grand Prix and prepare for the race of a lifetime in Aetherdrift!

Frog Mom.

Sab-Sunen evidenced her presence before she revealed herself to the people of Amonkhet. The Luxa surged after the end of the Phyrexian invasion, flooding through Naktamun and washing away the blood, oil, and machine corpses. The city was cleansed. In the wake of the floods, came more rain, then frogs, and then the sun. Green life sprang up. Naktamun seemed refreshed, the river Luxa once more flowing steady, high, and clear, and the long-dry irrigation canals in the surrounding farmland once more carried water. The people celebrated, and at the height of their celebration and thanks, Sab-Sunen finally appeared. She takes the form of a human woman with a golden frog's head, carrying an icon of renewal.

[almostlookedhuman]

[niuttuc]

thoughts on Sab-Sunen as a commander? I really want to do some fun counter manipulation but I have not been able to figure this deck out.

Mmmh, so, first thing about Sab-Sunen is that you likely want to avoid the usual counter increasers like Hardened Scales, Kami of Whispered Hopes or Doubling Season. You WANT to hit both odd and even number of counters, and those tend to lock you into one or the other. To that end...

These will be your bread and butter, your primary enablers for Sab-Sunen. They all do the same basic thing: allowing you to have your cake and eat it too. Once you've set your parity with her, you can get into the same cycle every turn: on your first main, she triggers and gains a counter to an odd number, letting you draw two cards. Then at the beginning of combat, these will add another counter to her (or three, or five, if you have a lot of them, as long as it is odd. Removing a counter with Power Conduit is also acceptable) bringing her counter total to an even number. Then you get to attack and/or block with your giant trampling indestructible god every turn AND draw two extra cards every turn, doubling what you get from each end.

That's the most you'll get out of your commander. 2 cards a turn cycle and a giant indestructible trampling god is certainly good but synergy-based commanders can pump out much more than that once they're set up... But your set up is VERY simple, basically a single permanent on board. From there, you can let the rest of your deck shine, confident your commander is doing its thing with little effort.

This does mean as long as your commander is on the battlefield, you'll want to keep in mind her counter parity. Ideally, you want her to have an even number of counters at all times, except during the resolution of her first main phase trigger where she'll go up to an odd number of counters to draw you cards. That means when you're putting counters around, you want to be able to keep her even with counters.

Proliferate is a key piece of many counter decks. While it might do work here too, both to adjust parity and to buff other counter cards, you will have to do a modicum of thinking and planning ahead to know whether to proliferate Sab-Sunen herself, whether or not it'll throw off your parity or if you have another proliferate or counter effect lined up in time to set her back up on the proper track.

Cards like these can be used to ensure your parity is correct. Court of Garenbrig and Forgotten Ancient both can distribute their counters freely, allowing you to set parity to whatever you want it to be on your upkeep right before Sab-Sunen's main phase trigger, or simply increase her counters without changing her parity by giving an even number of counters.

A notable thing that many of the cards so far can do: Doubling counters on a permanent always leaves it with an even number of counters (as long as you double all counters, some only double +1/+1 counters and Sab-Sunen checks parity of all counters. Like I said, keep an eye on it.) An even number of counters is good and what we want, so that's a nice thing to have, and will quickly spiral Sab-Sunen up to lethal commander damage ranges. Sadly, Court of Garenbrig and Bristly Bill here cost an unreasonable amount of $$$.

Speaking of lethal commander damage: If you want, a theme the rest of your deck can help support is Voltroning up Sab-Sunen. She already has evasion in trample, protection in indestructible, and you're giving her counters. Frankly there isn't much more to do here, but if you want that strategy to work, you probably want some protection from exile removal available. Note that while all of these work with counters, they will also throw off your Sab-Sunen parity if she gets the counter. Bogbonder can fix it immediately by moving a counter from elsewhere, but will throw off some of the counter doubling math with +1/+1 counter. The others will likely want some parity fixers around and ready, be they more proliferating, the ones mentioned earlier or just instant speed counters.

Whether you go Voltron or not, some of the classics of counters decks will do great here too, taking advantage of the enablers for your commander to generate value.

Another theme I like and you could go in the direction of is effects that scale to a creature's power. Sab-Sunen is a relatively reliable effect to key off of power with indestructible, but even effects that key off of their own power will appreciate the same kind of enablers Sab-Sunen does.

... And/or go all-in on the counter synergies, that's always an option.

... Or remember when I said 2 cards a turn and a giant attacker was the most you'd realistically get out of your commander? Well, that's mostly only true if you have ONE commander! I could see a clone deck that aims to get one non-legendary Sab-Sunen via one of these (or a couple more of the options) and then just keeps cloning her, possibly using just regular clones. These strategies are usually pretty fragile, but the target being indestructible does make it much more reliable. Each copy does need extra enablers if you want them to draw AND attack, but honestly, if you have enough Sab-Sunen to overwhelm enablers, I don't think you care if some of them are staggered.

You're also in Simic. At any point during deckbuilding, you can also finish the deck by filling it with generically good cards. That's valid too!