Sigarda, Font of Blessings Angels

Commander Overview

Sigarda, Font of Blessings is a very cool commander that is a blast to play. As someone who’s always loved Angels as a creature type, this is a very fun deck. Sigarda addresses one of the biggest problems: all our best angels being targeted. Since Sigarda protects all of our permanents we can even keep our amazing support cards like Urza’s Incubator or even Cryptic Gateway., while Sigarda herself doesn’t have hexproof only having to protect one of our creatures is great, its also excellent to be able to cast our angels from top of our library, luckily we are in Selesnya and have a decent amount of card draw but having that option can be very strong. Sigarda is a strong commander who works perfectly with angels!

How to Play the Deck

Playing the deck is extremely straightforward; we pretty much ramp as much as we can to play the biggest and baddest angels we can! There isn’t a ton of experience necessary to pilot this deck successfully, as long as you have a basic understanding of the game and can turn your angels sideways, this is a pretty easy deck to pilot. As far as the game plan goes, it’s extremely straightforward.

Synergy’s in the deck

Our whole deck is one giant synergy. Sigarda is one of the biggest. Whether it’s casting Angels or from the top or Champion of Lambholt, being able to play off the top of the deck allows us to keep the casting going on and avoids a situation where we sit there and don’t do anything if we don’t get any card draw. Since we are a creature type-focused deck, we have a ton of strong synergistic cards like Urza’s Incubator and Herald’s Horn. Angels are not a cheap mana cost creature type, so these reductions can be absolutely huge!

Phases of the Game

Early-Game: Our early-game isn’t exciting at all. This is our establishing phase, it’s all about ramping, getting out cost reducers like Urza’s Incubator or Starnheim Aspirant, and firstly get Sigarda out and then we move onto bigger and better angels like the amazing Avacyn, Angel of Hope or Akroma, Angel of Wrath. Our early game isn’t super exciting, but it’s extremely important because it sets up all the fun we have later.

Mid-Game: This is where things start to get a lot better for us. By this point, we can stick Sigarda on the field, and her hexproof for all of our permanents except her allows us to only really have to protect Sigarda from single-target removal, which is great because our creatures get targeted a lot by our opponents. We are much more formidable in combat at this stage of the game as well. A lot of our angels have strong abilities that can mess with our opponents like Linvala, Keeper of Silence or Archangel of Tithes, and not only are their abilities strong, they are great attackers/blockers as well. We start outputting a lot of damage in the mid-game with a deck full of evasive flying creatures.

Late-Game: We become pretty hard to beat in the late-game, we typically have a board packed with Flyers and Akroma’s Will can allow us to one-shot an opponent extremely easily, Flying creatures are present throughout EDH but unless you are playing an angel mirror match you would be hard-pressed to find a deck that has many flyers as we do, this mismatch works to our advantage allowing us to whittle down our opponents evasively. We can be very tough to stop in the late-game.

Card Breakdowns

Ramp

Ramp is a huge part of our deck; without it, our game plan can be extremely slow. Using our ramp to get out big angels quickly is a key part of our game plan and something we spend a large portion of the early game doing.

Being in Selesnya greatly assists with this since we have access to cards like Avacyn’s Pilgrim and Cultivate/Kodama’s Reach, which are all cheap and easy ways to get our colors out and get more lands out and just accelerate the game plan overall. While our ramp package isn’t super interesting, it’s a huge part of our deck and sets us up for victory!

Card Draw/Card Advantage

Card draw isn’t amazing in Selesnya. Still, we have some strong sources like Harmonize and Shamanic Revelation that allow us to draw a ton of cards and keep our hand full, while we aren’t typically casting a ton of things in a turn, being able to draw into support cards is always good. We will certainly never say no to any additional card draw. Beast Whisperer is an additional source of card draw that can be great at pretty much any stage of the game, especially if we combine it with our cost reducers like Urza’s Incubator and Starnheim Aspirant, While we certainly aren’t drawing five cards every turn we have a sufficient card draw package that allows us to keep our hand full!

Removal

We have next to no removal in the deck. We do have Beast Within and Generous Gift as our single target removal, and these are both strong, but removal certainly isn’t a big focus in our deck. We are a lot more focused on our game plan than our opponents. Our flying creatures assist with this since we are naturally evasive. We can be tough to stop in combat. While we don’t have a lot of removal, I didn’t have much trouble with it; our core game plan is strong enough.

Protection

Keeping our board protected is very important for us. At the same time, Sigarda helps protect us from single-target removal, board wipes can still be problematic for us, because of this, we have both Heroic Intervention and Dawn’s Truce, which are cheap and strong ways for us to keep our board on the field. Our protection package is small,, but I had no trouble with it in my testing games. I found it good for our deck.

Utility / Support

Let’s go over some of the coolest angels in our deck! Linvala, Keeper of Silences is a angel that can devastate certain archetypes and, since it only affects our opponents, can allow us to continue our game plan freely. Combining that amazing ability with a 3/4 flying body is perfect for us. Giada, Font of Hope is one of my favorite mana dorks in the deck and is just a perfect support card for our angel-packed deck. Being able to get some extra mana and an additional power buff is pretty crazy for only two mana. If the game goes on very long and our opponents begin to get out of hand, dropping either Platinum Angel or Herald of Eternal Dawn can allow us to hold the game hostage until we find a way to stop our opponents! Lastly, I want to highlight Sephara, Sky’s Blade, a card that is quite easy for us to cast cheaply, and giving our other flyers indestructible is very strong. Just a great creature for our deck.

Mana Base

We have a great mana base with a lot of support lands like Seraph Sanctuary, which can passively gain us a lot of life throughout the game and is just a great piece of support for something we already do a lot. We also have Three Tree City, which can be a big mana producer, especially if we drop some of our cheaper angels like Angelic Field Marshal or Battle Angels of Tyr. We also have Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth as a piece of free mana fixing for the deck. While we don’t have the most exciting landbase in the world, it works with our deck very well.

Win Conditions

Our only win condition is combat, which is made a lot easier since almost all of our creatures are evasive, since they have flying, but the only way we close out games is by attacking.

Strengths of the Deck

We are naturally evasive, and decks that also run flying don’t scare us; we are easily able to deal with them.

Sigarda makes us very strong against single-target removal

Weaknesses of the Deck

We can have a very rough matchup against control decks, specifically ones that target a lot of creatures like Toxrill, The Corrosive.

Even with our ramp, we can be slower than a lot of other decks, because of this, we can get beat up on in the early game.

Deck Testing/Matchups

I tested this deck against three different decks

Game 1: Vs Toxrill, The Corrosive. Matchup Record: 0-4

Toxrill is simply a terrible matchup for us; our board protection, like Heroic Intervention, doesn’t stop them, and we are often too slow to compete with them. Your best bet is probably just waiting till they play Toxrill and kill it with a removal spell as soon as we can (immediately is certainly preferred).

Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Beast Within, Generous Gift and Cryptic Gateway.

Game 2: Vs General Ferrous Rokiric. Matchup Record: 3-1

This is a good matchup for our deck; they have almost no ways to deal with flying, as a lot of their creatures are on the ground. The only “tough” thing about this matchup is getting to the mid-late game; they can dish out a ton of damage, and we can get beat up in the early game. Ramping hard, taking our early lumps, and then controlling the game is the best way to do it here.

Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Cultivate, Delighted Halfling and Ohran Frostfang.

Game 3: Vs Urabrask the Hidden. Matchup Record: 4-2

This was a good matchup for our deck. Urabrask can beat us, so don’t treat them as a pushover, and our creatures entering tapped can be quite annoying for us since we can’t have a blocker the turn we play them. This is another matchup where we get beat up early but can stabilize in the mid-to-late game.

Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Avacyn, Angel of Hope, Starnheim Aspirant and Authority of the Consuls.

Conclusion

Thanks so much for reading to the end! I hope you all enjoyed this one. While this is a more casual deck, as it is much more thematic than functional, not that this deck isn’t good at bracket 2, but it will certainly struggle against bracket 3 decks. Despite its weaknesses, this deck is a blast to play, and having an army of flying creatures is truly an amazing time!