The 10 Best Soul Sisters
Soul's Attendant by Steve Prescott
The immortal soul, the esoteric essence of all living things, the sense of self within consciousness; all creatures possess these things. Well, except maybe Zombies and Skeletons. Luckily Magic: The Gathering doesn't discriminate for what's soulful and soulless: any creatures will trigger the effects of the soul sisters creatures!
Lifegain is one of the most popular archetypes in Commander. There are tens of thousands of lifegain decks spread across mono-white, Orzhov, Selesnya, and more color identities. Green, black and white all have well-defined ways they gain life, and one of the most common among them is the "Soul Warden ability." What makes these creatures valuable? And which should you run in your Commander decks?
What Are Soul Sisters?
To get in the right state of mind, please give the Numero Group's collection of rare soul tracks Eccentric Soul a listen while you read. I promise it'll improve the experience.
"Soul Sisters" are permanents with an ability reminiscent of Soul Warden, the OG Soul Sister from Exodus. They get their name from their predominantly female art, and the fact that the second instance also used the word "soul" in its name, Soul's Attendant. Since its release, we've seen a number of similar creatures and enchantments with similar effects, each with small adjustments to their mana value or effects to better balance them for their respective environments.
Soul Sister effects can be generic and symmetrical, like on our originals, or be specific to our creatures or our opponents' creatures.
We're getting new Soul Sisters all the time, these days: from Impassioned Orator to Guide of Souls to Lifecreed Duo, this effect is now a hallmark of white creatures. We'll be hard pressed to find a Standard environment without a Soul Sister or two floating around.
Honorable Mentions: Soul Warden / Essence Warden / Soul's Attendant
The original Soul Sister Soul Warden is as basic as this effect gets. Soul Warden shares the spotlight as a one-mana 1/1 soul sister with Soul's Attendant and their planeshifted cousin Essence Warden.
Soul Warden is basic, fragile, and cheap. However, its effect is symmetrical, meaning each creature your opponents play will also trigger our Warden. This makes the Soul Sisters super effective at dealing with armies of Goblin tokens as they hit the field. They also get exponentially better for each opponent you have: more opponents means more creatures means more lifegain!
Since they're the namesake cards, I thought it'd be a little unfair to rate them against the others. Just know that despite their cheap cost and tiny bodies, these three creatures are some of the best rates for this effect available.
#10. Ajani's Welcome
Ajani's Welcome took the traditional Soul Sisters effect, put it on a harder-to-remove permanent, and then took away the symmetrical effect. Ajani's Welcome makes sense for a powered-down version of Soul Warden fit for the Standard environment of 2019, but it plays a little slower in a format with a card pool as large as Commander's.
This Soul Sister enchantment might have an argument for being better than Authority of the Consuls, since you can plan to play into it with your own creatures, but I think the stax effects from the Kaladesh rare might outclass it.
#9. Leyline of Vitality
The only "free" Soul Sisters effect is found on Leyline of Vitality. This green Leyline doesn't often see play as often as the others, especially not in a 100-card singleton format like Commander, but I think it's an underrated inclusion in any lifegain deck that can afford to run it. Opening up the game with a Soul Sisters effect already on the field is the only thing better than playing a Soul Warden on turn one. The little toughness buff it grants is nice, too, but doesn't save our creatures from most of the damage-based removal in the format. It does make it so our Soul Sister creatures can block 1/1 tokens and not die, though, so take that into account.
Leyline of Vitality gets significantly worse when you have to cast it. Four mana for an effect we commonly see on one-mana permanents is close to a joke, except it isn't funny. The +0/+1 just doesn't cut it in terms of making that extra three mana worth it, either. Ultimately, this Leyline is worth it if you feel lucky enough to consistently pull it in your opener, but otherwise it's just a little extra insurance for your Soul Sisters.
#8. Suture Priest
Suture Priest takes the Soul Sisters effect and puts it on the offense. Effectively, whenever we play a creature, we gain a life. Whenever an opponent plays a creature, they lose a life. Simple as.
Suture Priest has been used as the "out" in several infinite combos since EDH's inception. It was the key component to my Phelddagrif Commander deck, using Intruder Alarm to blow opponents out of the water after group-hugging the table to death.
This Phyrexian take on the Soul Sisters effect costs a whopping two mana; that's double what our regular sisters cost! Luckily, that's still dirt-cheap for an effect we want to run out early and stick to the field.
#7. Daxos, Blessed by the Sun
Theros: Beyond Death's version of Daxos gave us a legendary enchantment creature with toughness equal to our devotion to white (at minimum two thanks to his mana value). Daxos, Blessed by the Sun has received the Soul Sisters treatment from Heliod and now gains us life whenever a creature we control enters or dies. Hitting creatures on the way in and out is pretty good for two, and it almost makes up for the asymmetry of his effect. My one gripe with Daxos is his toughness is dependent on how many white mana symbols we have on the field, while his triggered ability implies we should be sacrificing creatures in combat or otherwise to take full advantage of him. This, to me, seems a bit anti-synergistic. It's not like white isn't great at making creature tokens to use as fodder, I just feel like I'd rather commit to one strategy or the other rather than try to strike a balancing act between Daxos's toughness and my life total.
#6. Righteous Valkyrie
Righteous Valkyrie is the only creature-type dependent Soul Sister to make the list. It's also one of the more expensive ones at three mana. Righteous Valkyrie triggers whenever an Angel or Cleric enters under our control, and we gain life equal to its toughness, scaling our life gain as the game progresses.
Best of all, Righteous Valkyrie also has an outlet for that lifegain, and it grants a sizable buff once we have seven more life than our starting total. This is easily achievable in a Commander game. Any self-respecting lifegain deck should have a way to gain 7 life in the first three turns easily. In some instances, Righteous Valkyrie is like a better Glorious Anthem, coming down for three mana and granting a huge anthem-buff to our crowd of creatures.
#5. Trostani, Selesnya's Voice
Trostani, Selesnya's Voice is the most expensive Soul Sister on the list, at a resounding . These triplets are a 2/5 legend that triggers whenever a creature enters under our control. Similar to Righteous Valkyrie, we'll gain life equal to that creature's toughness, so it scales well into the late game. In addition, Trostani has a built-in way to guarantee a creature enters under our control with their populate ability.
Trostani works best at the helm of a tokens deck where you plan to populate big creatures. The Desolation Twin token, for example, becomes a massive 10 life-per-populate when you activate Trostani. In the Standard of her era, I remember populating the massive Armada Wurm token over and over, too.
Don't forget that Trostani checks the toughness of the creature after any static effects have been applied. This means that with a few Glorious Anthems (or even a Righteous Valkyrie!) even our populated 1/1 Saprolings will gain us 2+ life!
#4. Authority of the Consuls
I love the Frozen Aether effect on Authority of the Consuls for what it does to aggro decks. Suddenly, your opponent's Fervor and Anger are useless!
Authority of the Consuls is a bit swingy. You know in EDH that your opponent has at least one creature they plan to play: their commander. However, you can't guarantee they'll play enough creatures to really gain some life off of our one-mana enchantment. Luckily, a single mana investment at the top of the game should see this inconspicuous pseudo-Soul Sister sticking around for a while before our opponents decide that's enough. Not being a creature is a boon to this Soul Sister, since it makes it harder to remove, on average.
#3. Auriok Champion
Auriok Champion is one of the better Soul Sisters in the bucket. Protection from black and red means it's firmly a sideboard card in most formats, but it could be worth the inclusion in your lifegain Commander deck if your local meta calls for it.
Despite its steep casting cost (for a Soul Sister), Auriok Champion's protection from two colors makes it one of the best blockers for your buck in a white lifegain deck. Not only does it shake off removal from the two most removal-heavy colors in the game (okay, maybe I'm exaggerating), but it also stares down that Etali, Primal Storm like it's nothing.
Besides all that, Auriok Champion is one of the only other Soul Sisters with a completely symmetrical effect, triggering the life gain on any creature entering the battlefield, no matter which side it's on.
#2. Elas il-Kor, Sadistic Pilgrim
Elas il-Kor, Sadistic Pilgrim is the only access to a "true" Soul Sister effect in your command zone. Fortunately, it's very, very good, and you don't really need anything else.
As a two-mana commander, Elas should hit the field on turn two. Elas's "in-and-out" effect pings opponents when your creatures die and heals us when they enter. That makes this Kor creature the missing link between aristocrats builds and soul sisters, marrying the two effects in a beautiful pairing.
Elas is basically begging you to fill a deck with tons of cheap and recurrable creatures, like Reassembling Skeleton, and the rest of the best aristocrats, like Blood Artist and Zulaport Cutthroat.
#1. Guide of Souls
Is Guide of Souls the new easiest way to accumulate energy counters? The experts are undecided still. It's definitely not the worst way to generate energy, and certainly not the worst way to generate life.
Two things make Guide of Souls good: first, its cheap mana cost and the additional resource it creates when it triggers make it on-par or better than our Soul Warden; second, it comes with a built-in outlet for those energy counters. I love when a single card is both the gas and the engine to our lifegain-machine.
Guide of Souls only drawback is the asymmetrical trigger for its lifegain. That said, can you imagine how broken this would be if it triggered on any creature? Drop this turn one and by the time the pod passes back around we've already got three energy counters from their mana dorks! That'd be too good.
Soul Sisters Signing Off
What is the soul of EDH? What gets at the heart of Commander? Why is lifegain so ubiquitous to the pods I play in? These are the questions that keep me up at night as I drift off to dream of deck building.
We're almost guaranteed a new Soul Sister in most "premier" sets going forward; they're just too essential to white's identity to exclude. They play well into the well-established "weenies" game as well as broader generic lifegain strategies. They're simple, easy to balance, and will always make great turn one plays.
What are your favorite Soul Sisters? How do you see this archetypal effect changing in the future? Leave a comment!
Thanks for reading!
