Best Sephiroth Fabled Soldier Deck in MTGA – Standard Deck
No Masamunes here.
Sephiroth is one of the most popular cards in Magic: The Gathering’s Final Fantasy collaboration. The Sephiroth, Fabled Soldier card brings a new twist to the Orzhov sacrifice archetype, and the deck builds on this Sephiroth card rather than Planet’s Heir, because this is mostly for commander or EDH.
There are several ways to insert Sephiroth into the Orzhov sacrifice, and here’s a rough breakdown of a typical Sephiroth, Fabled Soldier deck that will capitalize on using that sacrifice to good use.
Sephiroth Fabled Soldier Standard Decklist for MTGA
| Lands (22 cards) | Creatures (30 cards) |
| 3x Dalkovan Encampment | 4x Infestation Sage |
| 1x Plains | 2x Felidar Cub |
| 1x Swamp | 4x Resolute Reinforcements |
| 3x Concealed Courtyard | 4x Voice of Victory |
| 2x Restless Fortress | 2x Sidisi, Regent of the Mire |
| 2x Caves of Koilos | 3x Bartolome del Presidio |
| 4x Shadowy Backstreet | 2x Elas Il-Kor, Sadistic Pilgrim |
| 4x Temple of Silence | 3x Zahur’s, Glory’s Past |
| 2x Amonkhet Raceway | 4x Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER |
| Sorcery and Instant (4 cards) | 1x Ruthless Lawbringer |
| 3x Raise the Past | 2x Nezumi Linkbreaker |
| Artifacts and Enchantments (4 cards) | |
| 4x Dark Rose Reliquary |
- Greedy Freebooter – when this creature dies, scry 1 and create a creature token.
- Dusk Legion Zealot – when this creature enters, you draw a card and lose 1 life.
- Hecteyes – when this creature enters, each opponent discards a card.
- Vengeful Bloodwitch – whenever this creature or another creature you control dies, target opponent loses 1 life and you gain 1 life.
- Nesting Bot – When this creature dies, create a 1/1 colorless Servo artifact creature token.
While there are more cards you can plug and play into the deck, you’ll want to focus on these cards to keep the early game pressure while also being low-cost enough for Raise the Past.
You can replace Felidar Cub since it is mostly niche and played mostly against rising enchantment decks in standard, possibly with Vivi and Cloud, Midgar Mercenary decks.
Sidisi, Regent of the Mire is also a card you might think of replacing first. This card is more for keeping Sephiroth back from the graveyard after being blasted by those annoying mono-red aggro decks.
Sephiroth Fabled Soldier Standard Deck Playstyle and Keypoints
The way to play the Orzhov Sephiroth, Fabled Soldier deck is by keeping constant pressure on the enemy by keeping minions that stick relentlessly on the board. Creatures like Infestation Sage, Nesting Bots, and Nezumi Linkbreaker are hard to wipe with shock cards and are often common sacrifice targets for Sephiroth, Bartolome, and Zahur.
Voice of Victory is there to mobilize more attacking creatures that summon and sacrifice themselves and synergize perfectly with Sephiroth, Elas il-Kor, and Bartolome.
When you can’t keep your creatures on the board, you don’t have to worry since you’ll rely on recovering with Raise the Past to bring almost every creature in your graveyard back to the battlefield. This synergizes well with Elas il-Kor or even Resolute Reinforcements since it activates the abilities.
Your main goal is to swarm the board with creatures, drop Sephiroth to farm cards, and hopefully transform Sephiroth immediately.
In the best-case scenario, you’ll want to drop Infestation Sage, Voice of Victory, and Sephiroth in the first three turns. When Sephiroth gets played, you’ll sacrifice a creature and then attack with Voice of Victory no matter what. This spawns two new attacking creatures that die at the end phase, transforming Sephiroth to the Winged Angel on turn 3.
Once you get Sephiroth’s emblem activated, you’ll most likely breeze through this match.
To summarize the playstyle:
- Keep attacking the enemy if the battlefield has equal power and toughness.
- Use your life as an asset. Your deck is built around stealing life, so you should play a little more aggressively than usual.
- Chip as much damage as you can by using your flying creature token (from Infestation Sage) or surprising with a Resolute Reinforcements play (played after the enemy’s attack phase, so they can tap their blockers).
- You don’t always have to activate Sephiroth’s transformation to win the game. You can easily chip through the enemy with consistent sacrifices.
- Surveil as many creatures to the graveyard as possible. Apart from any crucial cards needed in the current predicament, you’ll always want to fill your graveyard with creatures and mill until you get Raise the Past.
Other Synergies & Tactics:
- Elas Il-Kor, Sadistic Pilgrim + Voice of Victory or Raise the Past – brings massive damage to the enemy while healing you.
- Bartolome del Presidio’s block and sacrifice tactic to prevent damage – when attackers and blockers are declared, some of your creatures will lose their battles, so you can sacrifice them instead to start scaling your Bartolome, and he’ll eventually become a massive threat.
- Zahur’s Glory’s Past + sacrifice and surveilling – You can use the blocking and sacrificing tactic here, but you want to surveil so you can mill for a crucial Raise the Past or a Sephiroth card. You can also put more creatures in the graveyard through surveilling. Once you reach max speed, Zahur will start filling your board with tokens.
- Dark Rose Reliquary + any token-spawning creature sacrifices – Dark Rose Reliquary requires you to sacrifice a creature to exile another target, but since some of your creatures create a token on death, you’ll get the tempo advantage by using this. However, Dark Rose Reliquary is only good on this deck because it can handle some of those mouse creatures or a Screaming Nemesis when fighting a mono-aggro red deck.
Overall, the Sephiroth, Fabled Soldier standard deck is a versatile aggro deck that excels in keeping the pressure non-stop while having some potential midgame to endgame comeback potential with Raise the Past. It is fairly easy to play and learn, and crafting the deck wouldn’t cost as much, apart from all the Sephiroth, Fabled Soldier cards.
