Sibsig Ceremony is one of the most intriguing build-arounds we’ve seen in a while. It challenges you to build a deck with creatures, but it destroys them when they first enter the battlefield. On its face, this is a blatant contradiction, but with some clever deck building, we can benefit from the creatures dying and have a reanimation backup plan to get our win cons out of the graveyard and into the fight.
The Main Event
The core engine of our deck revolves around The Sibsig Ceremony making our creatures considerably cheaper, so we have to fill our deck with creature cards that can benefit from a 2-generic cost reduction. Our primary army late in the game will be made up of the 2/2 zombie druids The Sibsig Ceremony generates because they can either chip in for combat damage naturally or die to our aristocrat triggers.
Marketback Walker is one of the best as it becomes free for X=1 and draws us a card when it dies. Personally, I think getting a 2/2 zombie druid for free that draws us a card is pretty sweet. Other key cards to fuel this engine include Midnight Reaper, which only costs a single black mana when the Ceremony is live.
The Finisher
Vein Ripper has been a powerhouse game closer since its release in Murders at Karlov Manor and was the card that got Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord banned in Pioneer. Its triggers happening every time a creature dies will fire a whole lot if we're able to get it onto the battlefield at the same time as The Sibsig Ceremony. Notably, the Ceremony will kill it if we run it out for four mana the turn after playing Sibsig, but that's exactly what we'll do often because it gets us one trigger, a zombie blocker, and the Ripper in our graveyard for future reanimation.
Our primary reanimation tool will be Nullpriest of Oblivion. Nullpriest of Oblivion is a serviceable, if uninspiring, two-drop, but if you kick it, it becomes that two - drop but it reanimates a friend for six total. Fortunately for us, the Sibsig Ceremony helps reduce total mana value, which includes kicker costs. Nullpriest's cost is now four and it can pull the Vein Ripper back into the action upon entering.
Plans B
Cheesing out Vein Ripper as fast as we can is our main goal, but we can't rely on a single card for any strategy. Scavenger's Talent is among the bomb talents from Bloomburrow that doesn't see as much play as Stormchaser's or Caretaker's, but it's still crazy valuable in a deck like ours because it gives us plenty more material to work with, a sacrifice engine, and the ability to reanimate our Vein Rippers late in the game. It can also pull enchantment hate away from our Sibsig Ceremony.
Unstoppable Slasher is in this deck to be an early target for removal or a one-drop that reanimates itself. Inevitability is this card's whole deal and our deck needs as much of that as it can get.
Vengeful Bloodwitch is redundancy with Vein Ripper, though it's significantly less powerful. Being able to curve Bloodwitch into a Sibsig plus Marketback Walker, though, gains a little bit of life that can often be the edge in aggro matchups, not to mention it's an additional blocker you can reanimate in a pinch. In a deck like this, non-combat damage is the key to closing out games that would otherwise be stabilized.
The Interaction Suite
You'll notice we don't have much interaction in this deck at all. Believe it or not, that's intentional. Our plan is very assertive, relatively cheap, and we don't draw into many cards before our engine is online. Cards that are pure removal wouldn't work towards our plan and take up precious deck slots we need to establish ourselves.
That said, cards like Temporary Lockdown, Sunfall, or a well-timed Ill-Timed Explosion could ruin our plans right as we're set up. Thought-Stalker Warlock gives us a late-game Thoughtseize if we have Sibsig Ceremony live that can disrupt those kinds of swings before they happen. Given our reanimation suite, it could also strip our opponent of two cards in a turn very easily which should (hopefully) slam the door shut.
Other Considerations
When building this deck, a number of cards caught my eye that didn’t make the final cut, but I want to give them some space here and explain my reasoning. If you’re missing any cards from the main deck, these could be reasonable replacements or could be sideboard considerations for a best-of-three version.
Massacre Wurm being legal in Standard is just cool, and being able to cast it on turn four after a Sibsig Ceremony on three could spell the end for go-wide decks like rabbits, convoke, or elves. In my recent experience, these decks haven't been super common, so this was relegated to the maybe-board.
Friendly Teddy is an unplayable common unless you're running The Sibsig Ceremony. A Grizzly Bears that draws your opponent a card isn't where you want to be, but if it's free, the value is definitely there. I've run this in more combo-oriented Sibsig decks and was pleased with its performance, but this deck will often let the game go two or three more turns after the engine is established, which means the opponent will have opportunities to use the cards Teddy draws them. I thought it best to avoid that.
Much like Friendly Teddy, Gleaming Barrier is a free creature that triggers Sibsig in just the way we like it, except this one produces treasures. Honestly, I'm still on the fence about this one and I ultimately passed because we don't really need to ramp beyond four mana to execute our primary game plan. Other more mana-hungry versions should probably use this.
Conclusion
As of this writing, I’m holding a 56% win rate with this build. It’s not going to set the world on fire, I don’t think, but the engine is fun to get rolling and the gameplay is interesting in the current meta. If your collection can support it and this sounds interesting to you, I would definitely recommend it.
Thank you for reading, and happy brewing!
