Sen Triplets Theft Control

Commander Overview

Sen Triplets is one of those commanders who is truly considered the boogeyman. I can’t say I blame our opponents; they certainly don’t love it when we steal all of their stuff and play it for ourselves, and that is pretty much the whole theme of our deck: steal all of our opponents’ stuff and all of their best creatures. Combining all of our theft with a control package that allows us to wipe the board and control what gets resolved or sticks around certainly does not make us the most popular player at the table. That’s alright with us, even if they don’t like it, we are still going to steal as much of their stuff as we can! Sen Triplets is a truly strong and divisive commander. While your opponents may not love you for playing this, you will certainly draw some additional attention. We are equipped to play through it! Sen Triplets is a huge part of our deck and one of the best cards in it, allowing us to play anything from our opponents, including their lands. Stealing land drops, casting their removal on their stuff, is just a small sliver of the crazy stuff we can do.

How to Play the Deck

Playing this deck is actually considerably different than many decks in the format, we don’t operate as a typical deck, because we spend a good majority of the game stealing from our opponents and playing out their stuff, because of this what actually happens during any given game can vary by a lot, but what doesn’t vary is all of our theft, we have a ton of effects to steal our opponents best stuff and all of that’s not including our commanders ability. We typically steal the best from the best of our opponent. This deck is quite difficult to play, especially for a newer player. Because of this, we recommend at least being an intermediate player. This is a very difficult deck with complex decisions that would likely overwhelm a new player.

Synergy’s in the deck

Our whole deck is synergized around theft, whether its mass theft with Breach the Multiverse or targeted theft with Control Magic or Bribery we are very good at stealing our opponents stuff, Sen Triplets helps a lot with this as well since we can use them to steal our opponents lands and cast pretty much everything. Our whole deck is built around stealing, and we do it very well.

Phases of the Game

Early-Game: We don’t do a lot in the early-game, we drop our early-game creatures like Baleful Strix and play out are mana ramp artifacts like Sol Ring or Arcane Signet, its all about setup in the early-game, granted since we have a heavy focus on stealing many opponents dont have stuff worth stealing at this stage of the game. Now, if we do get an early Sol Ring, that doesn’t mean we won’t play an early Sen Triplets, because we absolutely will. Playing our opponents’ lands certainly feels good.

Mid-Game: Things start to happen for us in the mid-game, by this point our opponents typically have stuff that’s worth stealing and we can begin to control the game with cards like Propaganda or Ghostly Prison, since we are often playing with our opponents stuff I tend to be extremely aggressive with our opponents stuff, after all we don’t care much if it dies anyways.

Late-Game: Late-Game is where we start to take over the game, when we can drop insane permanents like Mind’s Dilation, allowing us to continue our rampant theft. By this point, we are typically on a crime spree. The core game plan doesn’t change really at all here; we steal our opponents’ stuff and damage them with it. We do have some theft cards that can help us end the game quickly, like Corrupted Conscience, which is an amazing way to reduce our opponents’ health to 10!

Card Breakdowns

Ramp

We are not great at ramping outside of Sol Ring or Arcane Signet as well as Fellwar Stone. While these are nice options, we still don’t ramp a lot overall. After all, these are only a few cards in our 99-card library. While playing Sen Triplets on turn three is great, and we will certainly never say no, it is not consistent.

Card Draw/Card Advantage

We don’t have many sources of card draw in the deck, but don’t worry, we have Rhystic Study, which does the work of ten card draw spells throughout the game. Additionally, Sen Triplets gives us access to one of our opponents’ hands every one of our turns, and we can take whatever they have if we can cast it, which is greatly helped by cards like Chromatic Lantern and stealing their lands. One of our best sources of card draw is Notion Thief, which allows us to steal our opponents ‘ cards whenever they try to get some card draw! While we don’t have a lot of card draw, we certainly have a lot of card advantage.

Removal

We are extremely good at removal, if the game ever gets out of hand we can easily take it back down with cards like Damnation, Damn, Toxic Deluge and Supreme Verdict, we can truly be a thorn in our opponents sides when they start to get out of hand. Our board wipes are just one part, as we also have cards like Anguished Unmaking and Swords to Plowshares. We are just very good at controlling the board and our opponents’ stuff.

Protection

We have a bit of a weird protection package; it’s certainly effective. Still, we do have a bit of a mix of offensive and defensive cards in the deck, whether we use our counterspells like Swan Song and Dovin’s Veto offensively or defensively, they are very strong and great assets for the deck to have, allowing us to control the game and the board.

Utility / Support

Paradox Haze is by far my favorite card in the deck, being able to Sen Triplets two opponents and have access to both of their hands is truly great and just an amazing card for only three mana. Highlighting our theft package reveals some amazing options like Control Magic, Confiscate and In Bolas’s Clutches allow us to steal the best of the best our opponents have to offer, combining this with Sen Triplets is crazy since we can steal from their hand and if they do manage to resolve a good creature we can take it! Mornsong Aria is a very strong card from Lorywn Eclipsed that is very good in the deck, opponents searching for their cards, and then on our turn, we steal them, which is truly beautiful and can grind our opponents’ game to a halt while only helping us! One of the biggest support cards for our theft package is Telepathy, which allows us to see what we are stealing before it hits our turn. It’s always nice to survey our opponents before we rob them.

Mana Base

Academy Ruins is by far the best land we have in the deck, not only because we use it with the Mindslaver combo, but it can be a great way to get back some of our utility artifacts that typically get targeted, like Chromatic Lantern. Other than that, we have a our typical manabase of triomes, shocks, fetches, and bond lands, allowing us to always to have access to our colors and play things on curve.

Win Conditions

We have quite a few win conditions in the deck that can vary wildly. Since we have a heavy focus on theft, we often kill our opponents with their creatures, so what we win with can vary quite a bit. Beyond that, we have Approach of the Second Sun, which is a consistent win condition for us, and with Narset’s Reversal, it can be an instant win. If we only have one opponent left, we can win with a Mindslaver lock on that opponent. While the direction we go varies a lot, we have many ways to close out games.

Strengths of the Deck

Sen Triplets is a true powerhouse, and stealing our opponents’ stuff helps our game plan immensely and disrupts our opponents a lot.

Even if our opponents manage to resolve their best creatures, we can usually steal them quite quickly.

Weaknesses of the Deck

Against control decks or decks that run next to no creatures, we can have a tougher game since we can’t attack with their stuff.

Many players will instantly target us when we play Sen Triplets. I understand why this is the case, and we do have ways to protect against it, but we can have tough games because of it.

Combos Explained:

Deck Testing/Matchups

I tested this deck against three different decks

Game 1: Vs Kozilek, Butcher of Truth. Matchup Record: 4-1

The only thing that’s scary to an Eldrazi deck is if we steal their Eldrazi, and this is a great matchup for us to do that. I had very little trouble in this matchup. Wait till they play out their big stuff, and then we steal it. Using some of their crazy spells can be great for us as well.

Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Desertion, Counterspell and Control Magic.

Game 2: Vs Y’shtola, Night’s Blessed. Matchup Record: 1-4

This was a very tough matchup for our deck. The Y’shtola I tested against played very few creatures, and it was quite tough for us to deal any meaningful damage. Since they have no board, they don’t care much about our control package. Killing their commander is very important in this matchup, but it can still be tough to win.

Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Anguished Unmaking, Dovin’s Veto and Notion Thief.

Game 3: Vs Tannuk, Steadfast Second. Matchup Record: 3-0

While Tannuk can get some crazy damage in the early game, once we stabilize and begin to steal the creatures they have after they cast them, they can struggle against us. They also do very little without their commander, so killing them can destroy their game plan a lot.

Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Control Magic, Propaganda and Rhystic Study.

Conclusion

Thanks so much for reading to the end! This deck was a blast to play. I will say my opponents certainly hated me, but it was worth it. This deck is crazy strong. I don’t think there was ever a doubt that Sen Triplets is a great commander, and after running a ton of games, they truly are an amazing commander. While your opponents may hate you, I had a lot of fun piloting this deck.