Soul Sisters

My wife has been slowly learning Magic, and tonight she wanted to play a game against me. I set up her laptop to run Magic Workstation, and showed her how to build a deck in there, and then helped her put together a Soul Sisters deck.

We opted to go with the no-equipment version of the list that isn't using Stoneforge Mystic.

Deck
Creatures (31) 4 Ajani's Pridemate 4 Leonin Relic-Warder 4 Phyrexian Metamorph 4 Serra Ascendant 4 Soul's Attendant 4 Suture Priest 4 Squadron Hawk 1 Glimmerpoint Stag 2 Mirran Crusader	Spells (7) 4 Dismember 3 Shrine of Loyal Legions Land (22) 4 Glimmerpost 2 Kabira Crossroads 16 Plains	Sideboard: 2 Divine Offering 4 Kor Firewalker 4 Brave the Elements 2 Refraction Trap 3 Celestial Purge

Essentially this deck wins by your opponent conceding the match once you're at 1000 life. Or it can beat in with some very huge Ajani's Pridemates. If you have a Soul's Attendant or a Suture Priest out you can play a Leonin Relic-Warder. Once the Relic-Warder is out, you play a Phyrexian Metamorph and copy the Relic-Warder. This gives you a chance to exile an artifact, and you exile the Metamorph. That of course allows the Metamorph to immediately return to the battlefield, and it copies the Relic-Warder again, starting all over. Doing this with a Pridemate out allows you to create a 1000/1000 creature also.

The nice thing about this deck is that it plays very strong cards. Meaning that even if you never see the full combo, you can win on the strength of the cards alone.

There are dozens of variations of this deck, generally broken into 4 categories. Mono-white, White/Green, White/Blue, and White/Black.

Another benefit is that White has access to excellent "hate" cards to fill in the Sideboard.

My wife has some experience with Magic already. She knows to play land, and how to determine casting cost, and to draw each turn and those things, so we weren't starting from scratch.

We played a few games online in MWS. I sat next to her and helped her along, explaining rulings and phases and things like that, and she was picking things up by herself near the end.

One notable match of the evening was against a Darkblade deck. The game lasted for something like 60 turns. I didn't keep the logs for the game, but I'll give you the basic idea of what happened.

Turn 1, Plains, Soul's Attendant. Him, Land, Preordain. Turn 2, Kabira Crossroads, another Soul's Attendant, gain a life, and attack for 1. He plays a second land and Inquisition of Kozilek, removing her Mirran Crusader from her hand. She plays another Plains and a Suture Priest, gaining 2 life, and attacking for 2. He plays a third land and a Stoneforge Mystic, getting Batterskull. She draws and passes. Opponent plays a land, and passes back. My wife plays a Serra Ascendant and passes back, end of turn the Batterskull gets flashed in. He untaps, and swings with the Batterskull, it goes through unchallenged and he gains 4 life. She plays a Relic-Warder and removes the Batterskull, and then swings with the now 6/6 Serra Ascendant, it gets Doom Bladed. Opponent plays a Jace and draws 3. Wife draws another Ascendant and plays it. For the next 20 or so turns the two of them poke at each other, my wife barely keeping Jace away from going ultimate on her. Meanwhile she hasn't seen a single Pridemate, and has been holding on with only 2 Ascendants. Finally, she draws 2 Brave the Elements in a row, and is able to do lethal damage. Her final life total was in the triple digits, and the Darkblade's Jace was at 11 counters again.

I think it's great that she's able to get some enjoyment out of a hobby that I enjoy so much, and I'm hoping she continues playing to the point that she's comfortable playing without me by her side. Eventually, maybe, she'll even start coming to FNM with me, it would be great to have someone else piloting one of my deck ideas so that I can get even more data on how they do.