An Update to Sultai, Post GP Toronto, Part 1

It's been quite some time since I've written about Sultai in Modern but have been wanting to again. It's still by far my favourite to play and still a great deck in my opinion. Since I last wrote about Sultai I won a Face to Face Modern Open with the deck, but since then have had less than stellar results. After the open I didn't play the deck for almost two months and I think my play has suffered as a result of me "being rusty". I even took the deck to an underwhelming 2-3 drop at GP Toronto. Honestly though I feel like all three of my losses were due to my own misplays and being on the bad side of variance as in several of the games my deck refused to function. This made me realize that my success had caused me to be overconfident and that I'd started just playing the deck on autopilot. I needed to slow down again; be patient and think things through. After this realization, I took the deck to a 4-1 finish at FNM, which is more what I was used to before. My only loss was to Jund, after a close first game and a second game where I got stuck on two lands. My card choices have remained fairly consistent over the last several months but there are some changes with the unbanning of Jace, the Mind Sculptor. I wanted to write this article to talk about my current main deck card choices (sideboarding in part 2).

The Deck

Creatures

Tarmogoyf and Scavenging Ooze are the staples of any GBx midrange deck and Sultai is no different. Tarmogoyf is the most efficient creature ever printed and is an automatic four-of in this deck. Ooze is great because it's a threat that can quickly grow even larger than a Tarmogoyf and it doubles as a hate-card for graveyard strategies. Ooze gets worse in multiples as you only need one out to activate its ability, so you don't want to play four. Some people play two copies of Ooze but I've always been happy with three. I pretty much always want to have one, but want to avoid drawing a second one if possible.

Snapcaster Mage is one of the reasons I want to be playing blue. Snapcaster of kind of taking the place of Dark Confidant in this deck. Confidant is better if it sticks around, drawing you an extra card each turn, but Snapcaster will pretty much always get you the one card of value, and you have your entire graveyard to choose from, so it often gets the specific card you need in the moment, opposed to Confidant which draws you a random card. I could see moving away from Snapcaster if I also moved away from Serum Visions, as it's nice to have a card that you can just always cast.

These are my creature flex spots, but I continue to always be impressed with Grim Flayer. The 4/4 body is often the biggest thing on the board and the trample is frequently relevant. It's damage trigger isn't technically card advantage but it might as well be. When you're digging for a specific card, looking at three extra cards per turn is huge.

Potential Includes

There's no argument that Dark Confidant is a great card. I've seen several successful Sultai lists online that are running Confidants and zero Snapcaster Mages, with Jace, the Mind Sculptor as the only main deck blue card. I would love to try out Confidant at some point but I don't yet own any and their recent price spike has made buying them slightly more painful.

Tireless Tracker is a card that I love, and has gone in and out of my deck. I think it's a reasonable choice in any BGx deck, and the only reason I'm not playing it is that I prefer my threats to cost two mana, and Grim Flayer is taking that slot currently.

Planeswalkers

Liliana of the Veil has been a long time staple of GBx decks. The printing of Liliana, the Last Hope has given us another great option though, and the updated Legendary rule has made playing both even better. I'm currently playing a 3-1 main deck split of Veil to Last Hope, but would like to get a fourth copy of Liliana of the Veil sometime soon. She's one of the best cards in the deck and will often take over the game. I think I'd cut of my "big things" removal spells for the fourth Lily, either Murderous Cut or Go for the Throat, as her edict effect often serves a similar purpose. On the other hand, Liliana, the Last Hope shines in either matchups with small creatures, or grindy matchups where rebuying your creatures overtaxes your opponent's removal. Her ultimate is also good against pretty much everyone that doesn't have Ensnaring Bridge.

Freshly unbanned Jace, the Mind Sculptor is a big draw to the Sultai colours and a boost to the deck. Four mana is still a lot and since I like playing this deck lower to the ground I'm only playing two copies. Jace is great on an empty board or when you're already ahead, but pretty terrible when you're behind or your opponent has a decent board presence. "Brainstorm" mode is often best when you need to dig for specific answers for something, while "Fateseal" mode is often best when you know that your opponent doesn't have much going on, and want to keep it that way. I've found that on the boards where I resolve Jace I'm using the +2 ability more often than the 0 ability.

Potential Includes

Some people may remember Nissa being in my deck when I won the Open. I still think she's a great card, especially when alongside Grim Flayer, but now with Jace, the Mind Sculptor being legal, there just isn't room for her anymore.

Discard Spells

I play the traditional BGx amount of six discard spells. Unlike a lot of people, I prefer a 3-3 split of Inquisition of Kozilek and Thoughtseize, opposed to a 4-2 split. The life loss can matter against aggressive decks, but the edge that the extra Thoughtseize gives you against so many other decks is worth it in my opinion. There are just so many cards with CMC higher than 3 that you would prefer your opponents not get to play. Cryptic Command, Collected Company, tons of stuff out of Tron or Eldrazi Tron, Primeval Titan, Scapeshift, Tasigur, the Golden Fang, Gurmag Angler, and now Bloodbraid Elf and opposing Jace, the Mind Sculptors are just a few of the things that come to mind.

Some of the Sultai decks I've been seeing posted online doing well have had the full eight discard spells in them. I like the idea of this as you pretty much always want to see at least one in your opening hand, and more is often great. In my current build I just don't think I have room though. I think if you're going to play eight discard spells then you don't have room for things like Serum Visions, and if you cut Serum Visions then Snapcaster Mage also loses some value. I still want to be playing Serum Visions, but not as a four-of. I recently moved to three copies as I found that I usually wanted cards in my opening hand to be more interactive, but casting one a few turns in to dig for things you need is great.

Removal

My removal suite hasn't really changed for a long time. I like having six cheaper spells that deal with cheap/small creatures, and four spells that can deal with larger/more expensive creatures. The suite is 4 Fatal Push, 2 Abrupt Decay, 2 Maelstrom Pulse, 1 Murderous Cut, and 1 Go for the Throat. In my suite I always like to have four ways of dealing with problematic non-creature permanents, which the Abrupt Decays and Maelstrom Pulses handle nicely. I used to have a hard time dealing with creature-lands playing this deck but since the printing of Fatal Push it hasn't been nearly as difficult.

Lands

In more recent versions of my deck, I've gone up to 23 lands from the previous 22, and this is for a few reasons.

• Even though 22 lands worked well for me for a long time, I lost several games to getting mana-screwed at GP Toronto (results oriented thinking I know).
• Adding Jace, the Mind Sculptor to the deck. I didn't have any four-drops in the deck before.
• Wanting to add another creature-land, but still wanting a critical mass of lands that can come into play untapped.

Currently I'm running four creature-lands; 2 Creeping Tar Pit and 2 Treetop Village. Treetop is a card that I've played before and have always been impressed by. The only issue is that it's harder on your mana, as it only produces one colour. Its power comes from the cheap activation cost. I feel like I don't need to say much about Creeping Tar Pit, as unblockable is obviously powerful. In my open-winning list I played 2 Lumbering Falls, and I still think it's great, but I just wanted to try out lands that were cheaper to activate. Falls has also gone down in value as the decks that it was strongest against (control decks) are now all running Field of Ruin and/or Spreading Seas, and can actually deal with it.

Other than that the mana-base is a pretty normal mix of fast lands, fetch lands, shock lands, and basics. Due to the growing popularity of Field of Ruin I wanted to go up to four basic lands in the deck. I'm still not sure if four is necessary, or if the fourth should even be an Island. The basic Island is sometimes helpful but is other times miserable, often when your hand involves Abrupt Decay or Grim Flayer.

I would like to have one or two Field of Ruins or Ghost Quarters of my own in the deck, but haven't been quite sure how to fit them in and still have the mana be as consistent as I would like.

Until Next Time...

I hope you enjoyed my most recent take on Sultai in Modern. Stay posted because in the near future I will be posting part 2 of this article, where I talk about my sideboard choices.