COUNT COLOURS, NOT CARDS

Everything routes through one number, and it is not Sisay's. Her power is 2 plus the count of distinct colours among your OTHER legendary permanents, and her gate is mana value strictly less than that power. Counted against the 99, the ladder runs 3 legal targets at power 2, 10 at power 3, 23 at power 4, 28 at power 5, and 33 at power 6 - every legendary permanent in the deck. The 2-to-3 step is the largest single jump in the deck, plus thirteen targets from one card, and it is the moment the deck stops being a pile of undersized legends and becomes a toolbox. The ceiling arrives one rung later than you would expect: nothing in this list exceeds mana value 5, so four distinct colours already unlocks everything. The fifth colour buys combat stats and Jodah's anthem and precisely zero new access.

Two facts about her cost shape every turn you play. First, there is no tap symbol anywhere in the ability - summoning sickness never gates her, there is no once-per-turn clause, and the only cap on activations is how many times you can produce {W}{U}{B}{R}{G}. Second, that cost is five coloured pips with zero generic, which means most of what looks like acceleration here cannot pay it: Sol Ring makes {C}{C}, Delighted Halfling's coloured mana is restricted to legendary spells and an activated ability is not a spell, and Unclaimed Territory is creature-spells-only. What does pay are Command Tower, Arcane Signet, Plaza of Heroes' third mode, Secluded Courtyard named on Human, and the six-card pip battery - Bloom Tender, Faeburrow Elder, Jegantha, Esika, Relic of Legends and Selvala. The seeded goldfish (10,000 iterations, seed 42) says Sisay herself is never the problem: mean cast turn 2.96, 99% by turn six. Assembling her alongside a five-colour source is the real curve, and that lands 55.8% of the time by turn six.

What you do with access is buy answers you never have to hold. The deck carries exactly one unconditional creature removal spell and one sweeper; instead it fetches taxes. Kutzil, Malamet Exemplar and Teferi, Time Raveler decide when your opponents are allowed to act at all; Thalia, Heretic Cathar makes their creatures and nonbasic lands arrive tapped; Kambal and Sheoldred convert their own spells and draws into losses. Every one of those is legendary and mana value 2 to 4, so all of them sit inside the pool once the ladder reaches two or three colours. The same is true of the insurance - Shalai, Voice of Plenty, Flowering of the White Tree, and Plaza of Heroes in the mana base - which the goldfish has available 80% of the time by turn six. Ioreth, Samut, Emiel and Seedborn Muse then turn one activation per turn into several by untapping the battery.

The kill is Najeela, the Blade-Blossom, and the manual is only willing to promise you one version of it. The Najeela plus Derevi combat loop is the single line in this deck that has been resolved against the Comprehensive Rules and passed an adversarial check - it is a genuine, deterministic, unbounded combat loop that kills the table, though it is not the self-contained two-card infinite the combo data advertises. Nine other lines the combo data flags for this deck - Najeela with Faeburrow Elder, with Esika, with Selvala, the Emiel blink loops, the Ioreth-Samut-Selvala mana line, the five-card Jegantha line - are unverified here. Play them as board states you may stumble into, not as plans. Note also where the fourth colour usually comes from: among the 33 other legendary permanents, white appears on 19 and green on 14, but blue on only 8, red on 6 and black on 5, and the only red source at mana value 3 or less is Najeela herself. The colour that finishes your ladder and the card that makes you the archenemy are frequently the same card.

The honest weakness is structural and the artifacts make it unmistakable. Twenty-six of the 99 are not legendary and are therefore permanently outside the tutor's reach: three of the six cards that can pay her activation (Bloom Tender, Faeburrow Elder, Relic of Legends), all six counterspells, both free protection instants, and all four Game Changers. Sisay finds payoffs. She does not find her own fuel or her own protection. That is why the bracket floor holds at 4 no matter what happens to the combo lines - the Game Changer count of four is already over bracket 3's cap of three - and it is why the mulligan section below is about enablers rather than about her.