The modern deck Soul Sisters gets its name from three of the essential cards needed for the deck to work. The first two are Soul Warden and Soul’s Attendant. Both creatures are 1/1 Human Clerics that cost 1 white mana and they give you 1 life whenever another creature enters the battlefield, and that includes your opponent’s creatures. Auriok Champion is the third “soul sister.” The only difference between this card and the other two “sisters” is this one costs 2 white mana and comes with protection from black and red, two colors that are heavy on removal spells. Manawise, it does cost a little more, but it has a better chance to stick against decks like mono-red burn that just want to kill your creatures.
You can stay in the game easier with all these cards that gain life, but now the question becomes how you win. In this deck you can go wide and big.
For going big, Ajani’s Pridemate and Archangel of Thune are great. The Pridemate gets a +1/+1 counter whenever you gain life and each “sister” counts as its own separate trigger. If you have three “sisters” on the battlefield and you play a Pridemate, you now have three triggers gaining you a total of 3 life, which triggers the Pridemate three times and makes it a 5/5. Archangel of Thune works the same way except it puts counters on all of your creatures, so even the 1/1 “sisters” have a chance to get huge.
For going wide, Promise of Bunrei and Spectral Procession are commonly used. If you want to splash a little black in the mana base, you could probably run Lingering Souls. These cards will give you a lot of life with a few “sisters” on the board since they give you life when creatures enter the battlefield, not when a creature is cast.
Other cards that often see play in this deck are Mirran Crusader, Ranger of Eos, and Path to Exile. Mirran Crusader is a 2/2 with double strike and protection from black and green that costs 1 generic and 2 white. Even if you don’t have the archangel on the board, this creature has the potential to deal 4 damage which will kill a lot of things on turn 3. Since it has protection from green it can block Tarmogoyf all day. Ranger of Eos can help get more “sisters” out of the deck for more life gain. Path to Exile is possibly the best white removal spell ever printed. Since it exiles the creature, it gets around creatures with indestructible. It can’t do anything about hexproof, but that’s why you want bigger creatures like the Pridemate.
Side Board: Leyline of Sanctity is a great card against decks that like to target you, the player. It protects against Lightning Bolt, Inquisition of Kozilek, Blightning, … the list goes on and on.Tormod’s Crypt or Relic of Progenitus can shut down a deck that relies on the graveyard like Dredge and Storm. Thalia, Heretic Cathar can slow down a deck that plays a lot of fast creatures like Goblins. Stony Silence can throw a wrench into decks that like to run artifacts. Nyx-Fleece Ram is great against burn and aggro decks. At 5 toughness, it makes a pretty good wall and forces them to use two burn spells if they really want to get rid of it.
Other cards: A few copies of Honor of the Pure can help boost your creatures even further. Serra Ascendant can be a nice card once you reach 30 life. Sundering Growth can help take out artifacts or enchantments as well as populate any spirit tokens you may have. If you do want to try splashing black for Lingering Souls, you can replace the archangel with Sanguine Bond for a nasty combo. However I would not suggest using the infinite combo it makes with Exquisite Blood. Both enchantments cost 5 mana and 6-8 cards with that high of a mana cost are not going to help. 4-5 cards is okay, but then we have to run at least 2 copies of each and the odds of getting both of them at the right time is too slim for consistency.
The main shell of a Soul Sisters deck should look something like the following:
4x Soul Warden
4x Soul’s Attendant
4x Auriok Champion
4x Ajani’s Pridemate
2-3x Archangel of Thune
2-3x Ranger of Eos
2-3x Mirran Crusader
4x Path to Exile
3-4x Promise of Bunrei
3-4x Spectral Procession
20-24x Plains
This is not meant to be a complete deck list. These are just key cards that you should think about running if you want to build a Soul Sisters deck. If you don’t have any of them, feel free to experiment with different cards. There are lots of cards that could go in this deck, but I don’t think I would have the time to talk about all of them. Each local meta is going to be different, so you can and should adjust your deck and sideboard accordingly. Which deck would you like to see next? Let me know in the comments.
Roger Schenewerk
22 Oct 2021Suture Priest is also a good consideration as well as running Survival Cache….