Commander Deck Tech: Sygg, Wanderwine Wisdom (Sygg, Wanderbrine Shield)

We're back in Lorwyn, where Merfolk are Azorius creatures!

To celebrate our return to this incredibly nostalgic plane, we built two Commander lists for Sygg, Wanderwine Wisdom, an old friend to many players.

Our first list is full of creatures that can't be blocked so that you can deal combat damage to opponents and trigger several abilities on your permanents, like your commander's card draw ability.

The second list is a classic Merfolk deck that plays many of Sygg's friends, as well as a few friends from other planes.

Let's meet our commander!

Sygg is known for guiding characters like Ashling and Rhys through the most dangerous parts of the Lorwyn rivers. In Shadowmoor, this Merfolk is a Pirate, and Brigid is part of his crew.

In Lorwyn Eclipsed, Sygg is a legendary creature with two sides. The main side is a 2/2 that can't be blocked and has an ability that triggers when it comes into play or when you turn him to this side. This ability grants a target creature another ability: "whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player or Planeswalker, draw a card". It lasts until the end of the turn. At the beginning of your main phase, you may pay one white mana and turn him to his other side.

Sygg, Wanderbrine Shield is also a 2/2 and has the same "can't be blocked" ability. The only difference is that, when you turn him to this side or when this side comes into play, he gives one of your creatures protection from all colors until the next turn.

At the beginning of your upkeep, you may pay one blue mana and change him to his other side again.

As you must have realized, Sygg is not necessarily a "Merfolk that only works with other Merfolks", like Hakbal of the Surging Soul.

Sygg's abilities are generically good and gave us some freedom to create this list centered around evasive creatures that can't be blocked. These creatures might be small, but they're still relevant, and this list ended up quite friendly for casual pods.

Let's start with evasion and the creatures we'll use to deal damage to our opponents.

Evasion

There are many small blue creatures that "can't be blocked" or even have Islandwalk. To this deck, we added:

They might not be the main focus in this list, but some are Merfolks and thus fit the main theme, like Triton Shorestalker, Mist-Cloaked Herald, and Sygg, River Guide.

Besides these creatures, this list also plays a few permanents that allow you to ignore your opponent's blockers.

Delney, Streetwise Lookout deserves a shoutout. Firstly, it makes all your creatures with 2 power or less unblockable by creatures with 3 power or greater. Secondly, it is a sort of Roaming Throne, as it doubles Sygg's triggers and the triggers on other low-power creatures.

No one likes facing Quietus Spike. Imagine this card on a creature that can't be blocked!

When the creature equipped with this card deals damage to a player, it forces them to lose half their life, rounded down.

Another important equipment we can attach to these creatures is Sword of Feast and Famine, which some consider the strongest sword in its cycle. Once it is attached to a creature, that creature gains +2/+2 and protection from black and green.

So, when the creature equipped with this card deals combat damage, the player that took the damage discards a card and you'll untap all your lands.

Card Draw

By himself, Sygg, Wanderwine Wisdom already draws cards. However, this deck is indeed blue, and we couldn't help but add to it a few of the most popular blue card draw tools.

If you'd like to see a few other blue options to draw cards, check out this article.

Most of the card draw in this list works in the combat phase, that is, when the creature attacks or when it deals damage to a player. As this list leans heavily on evasion, you will have no trouble doing this.

Cards like Teferi's Ageless Insight, Consecrated Sphinx, and Robe of the Archmagi will also create an advantage for us, as they'll put more cards in our hand, even on the opponent's turn.

A deck that plays lots of card draw is the perfect home for Psychosis Crawler, which deals damage to each opponent whenever you draw a card. Furthermore, this Phyrexian Horror grows according to the number of cards in our hand.

Removals

In this deck, creatures don't have a lot of power, so they might struggle against big creatures.

We added a few spells so that we can get rid of any possible threats during our matches:

This list also plays a few classic creature removals, like Swords to Plowshares, as well as a few permanent removals, like Stroke of Midnight and Generous Gift.

As we mentioned before, our alternative list centers around Merfolk and plays several of them that were released in other Lorwyn sets. It also plays some Merfolk from other planes and sets, like Dominaria and Ixalan.

Luckily for us, there are many Merfolk lords with incredibly useful effects in the game, like +1/+1 buffs and even Islandwalk.

We also added a few spells centered around creature types, such as:

Finally, to protect our Merfolk and remove any problematic enemy spells, we added:

The most fun part of exploring Magic: The Gathering planes is seeing some creature types in different colors. Merfolk are blue, but they're white in Lorwyn and green in Ixalan. This broadens our view of them and inspires us to create new decks.

That's exactly what happened with Sygg, Wanderwine Wisdom. Unlike other famous Merfolk commanders, he works pretty well even if you don't add lots of Merfolk to his list. You can build him as an Azorius commander that doesn't stand out a lot to your opponents.

He is also pretty straightforward: Sygg gives you cards and, whenever necessary, spot protection to keep your threats afloat.

What do you think? Tell us your thoughts in our comment section below.

Thank you for reading, and see you next time!