Sisay

Add one extra mana to every land's output, from the first turn, with no permanent to destroy and no creature to kill: this avatar simply rewrites a fundamental resource interaction as a rule that fires every time you tap. That was the design provocation of the 1997 Vanguard experiment, a supplemental format where an oversized persona sat outside your deck and altered hand size, starting life, and granted a passive game-long ability. This one adds an extra mana each time you tap a land with nothing on the table for an opponent to interact with, because the effect lives on the avatar rather than inside the deck. The mechanic is a triggered mana ability (it keys off the act of tapping a land for mana), and that shape is precisely what makes it so hard to answer: there is no permanent on the stack or in play to remove, only a durable presence overseeing the whole match. That makes these cards more compelling as design artifacts than as playables, a glimpse of how Wizards tested persistent game-altering rules before planeswalkers, companions, and commanders gave such effects stable places to live. The name belongs to the captain who would anchor the Weatherlight saga and later lend it to the legend-tutoring commander Captain Sisay; here she is a ramp engine rendered as a person, a curiosity from a format mainstream play left behind almost as fast as it arrived.