In the opening weeks of Aether Revolt Standard, everyone was looking for find edges in the Saheeli Rai combo mirror. One approach was to go bigger with the likes of Torrential Gearhulk and other control elements. Another was to add more colors and play a more robust midrange game with Planeswalkers and value elements for Felidar Guardian. Let’s take a look at four-color Saheeli Rai:

Four-Color Saheeli - Aether Revolt Standard | Sheeps42, 5-0 Standard League

• Creatures (14)
• 1 Cloudblazer
• 1 Greenwarden of Murasa
• 4 Felidar Guardian
• 4 Rogue Refiner
• 4 Servant of the Conduit

• Planeswalkers (7)
• 3 Chandra, Torch of Defiance
• 4 Saheeli Rai

• Instants (4)
• 4 Harnessed Lightning

• Sorceries (6)
• 2 Eldritch Evolution
• 4 Attune with Aether

• Enchantments (6)
• 3 Oath of Chandra
• 3 Oath of Nissa

• Artifacts (2)
• 2 Aetherworks Marvel

• Lands (21)
• 1 Island
• 1 Mountain
• 1 Plains
• 5 Forest
• 1 Game Trail
• 4 Aether Hub
• 4 Botanical Sanctum
• 4 Spirebluff Canal

• Sideboard (15)
• 1 Cataclysmic Gearhulk
• 1 Fairgrounds Warden
• 1 Release the Gremlins
• 1 Somberwald Stag
• 2 Baral's Expertise
• 2 Dispel
• 2 Negate
• 2 Tireless Tracker
• 3 Natural State

Buy This Deck

Cards like Oath of Chandra, Rogue Refiner, and Chandra, Torch of Defiance make Felidar Guardian a much better option to help you pull ahead on cards in the midgame and keep the board under control. The big upgrade is the addition of Oath of Nissa. This card helps find both pieces of the combo, fixes your mana for other Planeswalkers, and is an incredible target for Felidar Guardian to flicker. The addition of Oath of Nissa makes it much easier to piece together a combo early in the game, and consequently forces your opponents to respect the combo more than they might have otherwise.

The other exciting piece of this deck is the addition of Eldritch Evolution. This card does all kinds of exciting work in this deck, allowing you to turn extra Servant of the Conduits and Rogue Refiners into haymakers like Felidar Guardian and Cloudblazer. Eldritch Evolutions give you the flexibility to pursue the combo plan more aggressively by finding Felidar Guardians or to go more midrangey by finding Cloudblazer or Greenwarden of Murasa.

If you’re looking for a greedier, more flexible version of the Saheeli combo, this seems like a fantastic place to start. There are some builds that try to hybridize the Saheeli combo with pieces of Aetherworks Marvel. That’s a reasonable option since Servant of the Conduit and Aether Hub stitch together the mana, which gives you incidental access to Marvel activations to value your opponent out of the game. This is a resilient take that is more than capable of winning fair midrange mirrors, and can incidentally win with the combo when your opponents aren’t careful enough.