While there may not seem like an immediate need for G, I think there are a great number of flexible cards to help hedge against a wide array of situations.
What does everyone think? Could Sultai Control or Sultai Midrange be a thing in the upcoming Standard?
I've been thinking about it but there's a lot of stuff missing to glue it together. You can see it's a collection of good stuff, but what goes into it is a mystery since everything I can think I'd want to play are rotating out.
I see a solid midrange deck growing here. Similar to the days of The Rock, you can leverage Llanowar Elves and things like Thought Erasure to set up uneven boards where your opponent needs to figure out how to deal with something like Doom Whisperer or Dream Eater on turns 4 or 5. Additionally M19 gives Sultai access to Exclusion Mage which can prove to be a rather strong turn 2 or 3 play when you are looking to lead into fatty finishers like the Demon or Sphinx. You can even get redundant if you want to work things like Ravenous Chupacabra or Hostage Taker. You can get a late game recursion engine out of Journey to Eternity flips into Atzal, Cave of Eternity.
I feel like a Midrange deck really has everything it needs to come together even without seeing any further spoilers. I would agree that a Control list has a lot of missing pieces to help flesh it out.
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STANDARD|UW Control MODERN| UBG Midrange PAUPER| UG Fog COMMANDER| UBG The Mimeoplasm
After seeing more cards this set looks ridiculous with only half of it being spoiled. I can already see many viable 3 color decks, but sultai mid-range is looking excruciatingly more powerful as more cards are coming out.
T1: Duress or llanowar elves
T2: Essence scatter or Assassin's Trophy or cast down or thought erasure
T3: Ravenous Chupacabra or hostage taker
T4: Vine Mare or Doom whisperer
I imagine there is more here than what I'm thinking of. I would hate playing against it.
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You get a lot of recursion value if you flip Journey to Eternity, allowing you to hit a wide array of ETB creatures. You can SurveilMuldrotha, the Gravetide away and recur it later, or cast it to get back a JtE or ETB creature.
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STANDARD|UW Control MODERN| UBG Midrange PAUPER| UG Fog COMMANDER| UBG The Mimeoplasm
The problem as it stands is that it's missing two and three drops to hold together to the bomb 4CMC+ creatures. The best ones are in green in the explore merfolk since it plays with the graveyard theme. That means you want to be heavier in green, which shouldn't be too bad, but consider the two shocklands overlap in black we actually want to be more black heavy, and black doesn't have the 1-3 drop creatures we want for now.
I suggest everyone to really pay attention to your mana base and not just cram every card into the deck just because it's in the colors.
"To keep things 100, anything I state is an opinion and not intended to be a fact. Any and all suggestions I give are a 100% opinion. If you need further clarification take the conversation to a PM. I am not in the business of assuming things. I'm only interested in 1 business and that business serves 2 things, Cold L's and Hot Dub's."
Yeah! Definitely some interesting cards. I haven't really figured out a list, but I think I start with 4 Stitcher's Supplier, Glowspore Shaman, 1-2 Lazav, District Guide, Vraska's Contempt, 1 Golgari Guildgate, 1 Dimir Guildgate.
Could be worth running Hadana's Climb for a more aggressive version of Sultai and use Jadelight Rangers and Branchwalkers to trigger the flip faster.
I really want to make a Sultai Steel Leaf Stompy and use Hadana's Climb to fly creatures in for beatdowns, but I don't think Steel Leaf Champions will like a 3 colour deck....
Could be worth running Hadana's Climb for a more aggressive version of Sultai and use Jadelight Rangers and Branchwalkers to trigger the flip faster.
I really want to make a Sultai Steel Leaf Stompy and use Hadana's Climb to fly creatures in for beatdowns, but I don't think Steel Leaf Champions will like a 3 colour deck....
"To keep things 100, anything I state is an opinion and not intended to be a fact. Any and all suggestions I give are a 100% opinion. If you need further clarification take the conversation to a PM. I am not in the business of assuming things. I'm only interested in 1 business and that business serves 2 things, Cold L's and Hot Dub's."
Could be worth running Hadana's Climb for a more aggressive version of Sultai and use Jadelight Rangers and Branchwalkers to trigger the flip faster.
I really want to make a Sultai Steel Leaf Stompy and use Hadana's Climb to fly creatures in for beatdowns, but I don't think Steel Leaf Champions will like a 3 colour deck....
The problem as it stands is that it's missing two and three drops to hold together to the bomb 4CMC+ creatures. The best ones are in green in the explore merfolk since it plays with the graveyard theme. That means you want to be heavier in green, which shouldn't be too bad, but consider the two shocklands overlap in black we actually want to be more black heavy, and black doesn't have the 1-3 drop creatures we want for now.
I suggest everyone to really pay attention to your mana base and not just cram every card into the deck just because it's in the colors.
I assume you are talking about creatures in these slots, not necessarily spells? I think it really depends on how you want to flesh out your endgame, because I see plenty of options available in 3 mana. I don't see much of anything wrong with your 2 drops being primarily efficient disruption spells like Assassin's Tropy, Cast Down, Thought Erasure. Additionally you get cards that are really not that bad, such as Omenspeaker, Kitesail Freebooter or even Lazav, the Multifarious that can flesh out a solid late game if drawn later.
I guess my overall point is that the upper curve is powerful enough to allow for some real flexibility in what your 2 and 3 drops are doing.
Additionally, today we see Ritual of Soot which can simply sidestep the early game creature plan well enough if you want to play a more controlling midrange list. Even Connive // Concoct can let you do this while scaling well later in the game.
I suspect Exclusion Mage is just a slam dunk regardless of what you are focusing your early game players on.. You could even start branching into ideas like Treasures and Karn for some grindy value subgame.
I think your overall scope is maybe just a bit narrow? I am not saying I disagree that these spots are not as in your face-obvious as our 4 and 5 drops, but I do think there are a lot of solid interactions in the available card pool to work with.
"To keep things 100, anything I state is an opinion and not intended to be a fact. Any and all suggestions I give are a 100% opinion. If you need further clarification take the conversation to a PM. I am not in the business of assuming things. I'm only interested in 1 business and that business serves 2 things, Cold L's and Hot Dub's."
I was thinking going Golgari mid range with hard removal and Underrealm Lich beats. Sultai might just be what we need. the Shock lands help a lot. I think field of ruin and glowspore shaman are a great combo. There's still more of the set left to see. It could go zombie, elf or etc.
i mean very ruff draft of the deck. not even sure if it will play out the way i want it to. and without knowing how the meta will play out. it might end up being crap. but i think you guys can get the idea of what im thinking. would be nice if we get something else in guilds that might be cheaper then muldrotha.
For Surveil I prefer Bone Dragon over a lot of other choices. I kind of want to be able to pitch stuff to the GY that has some way to come back, especially in those situations where I don't want to necessarily have a top deck finisher and need to go for something like a board wipe or counter spell. If I was going more for undergrowth I'd be using World Shaper, Stitcher's Supplier, and that new two drop that does the same thing more than try to cram surveil into the deck.
Before going Sultai, I'd try to figure out what exactly the core strategy is first:
1) Am I going for a creature to yard strategy to grind the game out until the board is in my favor? (GPG, Eternalize, etc)
2) Am I going for a spell related strategy aiming to control the board and land a powerful finisher? (Azcanta Control)
I'm going to make a guess that sultai would be a creature to yard grinder like the old Sultai was aiming for. I think the main thing I'd use green for in a spell strategy is to make sure I don't deck myself against some opponents.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
For Surveil I prefer Bone Dragon over a lot of other choices. I kind of want to be able to pitch stuff to the GY that has some way to come back, especially in those situations where I don't want to necessarily have a top deck finisher and need to go for something like a board wipe or counter spell. If I was going more for undergrowth I'd be using World Shaper, Stitcher's Supplier, and that new two drop that does the same thing more than try to cram surveil into the deck.
Before going Sultai, I'd try to figure out what exactly the core strategy is first:
1) Am I going for a creature to yard strategy to grind the game out until the board is in my favor? (GPG, Eternalize, etc)
2) Am I going for a spell related strategy aiming to control the board and land a powerful finisher? (Azcanta Control)
I'm going to make a guess that sultai would be a creature to yard grinder like the old Sultai was aiming for. I think the main thing I'd use green for in a spell strategy is to make sure I don't deck myself against some opponents.
i actually agree with you, we need to focus on a strategy first, i think that will be hard to do till we have the whole spoiler which im hoping we will within the next week.
i do like your idea of surveil into bone dragon. i forgot about that guy.
my intial idea was to use surveil and stitchers to fill the graveyard to use with muldrotha. but i think waiting till turn 6 is too long, so we would need to ramp. and i think with out a birds or something similiar it wont be reliable. and even then would it be worth ramping into muldrotha when we probably have better big creatures to ramp into to just win the game.
so i think in the end we need the rest of the spoiler list before we can proceed and figure out what our strategy is.
"To keep things 100, anything I state is an opinion and not intended to be a fact. Any and all suggestions I give are a 100% opinion. If you need further clarification take the conversation to a PM. I am not in the business of assuming things. I'm only interested in 1 business and that business serves 2 things, Cold L's and Hot Dub's."
Hey guys this is my control list. Still trying to figure out the side board and main deck, idk whether to keep the elves in or change for more removal or controlling elements.
Hey guys this is my control list. Still trying to figure out the side board and main deck, idk whether to keep the elves in or change for more removal or controlling elements.
first thing off the top of my head is i think the llanowar elves are pointless since its control not some sort of ramp or creature deck. if anything run a 4 of some creature as a win con. or 4 mission briefing to replay one of your control cards in the graveyard.
The problem as it stands is that it's missing two and three drops to hold together to the bomb 4CMC+ creatures. The best ones are in green in the explore merfolk since it plays with the graveyard theme. That means you want to be heavier in green, which shouldn't be too bad, but consider the two shocklands overlap in black we actually want to be more black heavy, and black doesn't have the 1-3 drop creatures we want for now.
I suggest everyone to really pay attention to your mana base and not just cram every card into the deck just because it's in the colors.
Pretend you can play infinite rainbow lands, what creature curve would you play? The Merfolk Branchwalker + Jadelight Ranger + bombs core worked well before. I'm actually having the opposite problem you are -- Sultai has a ton of excellent spells and if you don't mind being heavier on green, can shore up the early game with those two + Brontodon, but I don't know what all of this is building up to. I'm a big buyer of Doom Whisperer, but if the next best card in the 4+ cc category is Nightveil Predator, I don't think I'm in.
Maybe it's planeswalkers? I've been dying to use Karn, Tezzeret and Treasure Map together, and it wouldn't be hard to slot in something like Chromatic Lantern to get Karn enough artifacts to play with.
Whatever it is, I think it needs to be something:
(a) threatening
(b) sidesteps removal or trades positively with it
Whisperer lets you convert life into filtering at a nice rate so you're not completely down on cards, and beats the hell out of the enemy if it isn't removed immediately, so I like that. The planeswalkers get some value in the face of removal. Once we're in the realm of Thief of Sanity (dangerous if unchecked, but has to connect before it does anything) or the Predator (just not threatening enough for its mana cost; nice set of keywords, good rate overall, but the rate is tied up in things that don't generate value or put a real clock on the enemy), I'm not liking it so much...
We have the mana in Overgrown Tomb, Watery Grave, Woodland Cemetery, Drowned Catacomb.
While there may not seem like an immediate need for G, I think there are a great number of flexible cards to help hedge against a wide array of situations.
What does everyone think? Could Sultai Control or Sultai Midrange be a thing in the upcoming Standard?
STANDARD|UW Control MODERN| UBG Midrange PAUPER| UG Fog COMMANDER| UBG The Mimeoplasm
Standard: BG Golgari Midrange
Modern: U Merfolk GWUBR 5 Color Humans UBW Esper Gifts GW Bogles
The removal is all there - Assassin's Trophy, Vraska's Contempt, Cast Down etc.
I feel like a Midrange deck really has everything it needs to come together even without seeing any further spoilers. I would agree that a Control list has a lot of missing pieces to help flesh it out.
STANDARD|UW Control MODERN| UBG Midrange PAUPER| UG Fog COMMANDER| UBG The Mimeoplasm
T1: Duress or llanowar elves
T2: Essence scatter or Assassin's Trophy or cast down or thought erasure
T3: Ravenous Chupacabra or hostage taker
T4: Vine Mare or Doom whisperer
I imagine there is more here than what I'm thinking of. I would hate playing against it.
-Stay Frosty
4 Llanowar Elves
2 Lazav, the Multifarious
3 Exclusion Mage
2 Ravenous Chupacabra
1 Hostage Taker
3 Doom Whisperer
2 Dream Eater
1 Muldrotha, the Gravetide
2 Vraska, Golgari Queen
Instant / Sorcery
3 Assassin's Trophy
4 Thought Erasure
2 Cast Down
2 Find // Finality
1 Macabre Hatchery
3 Journey to Eternity
You get a lot of recursion value if you flip Journey to Eternity, allowing you to hit a wide array of ETB creatures. You can Surveil Muldrotha, the Gravetide away and recur it later, or cast it to get back a JtE or ETB creature.
STANDARD|UW Control MODERN| UBG Midrange PAUPER| UG Fog COMMANDER| UBG The Mimeoplasm
4 Narcomoeba
2 Dream Eater
Spells (24)
3 Mission Briefing
4 Assassin's Trophy
4 Thought Erasure
4 Sinister Sabotage
4 Notion Rain
2 Chemister's Insight
2 Vraska's Contempt
4 Search for Azcanta
Planeswalkers (2)
2 Vraska, Relic Seeker
Lands (25)
4 Watery Grave
4 Drowned Catacomb
4 Hinterland Harbor
4 Overgrown Tomb
4 Woodland Cemetery
3 Island
2 Swamp
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Jadelight Ranger
4 Ravenous Chupacabra
3 Hostage Taker
4 Underrealm Lich
3 Dream Eater
4 Assassin's Trophy
4 Thought Erasure
2 Mausoleum Secrets
2 Vraska's Contempt
Planeswalkers (2)
2 Vraska, Relic Seeker
Lands (24)
4 Watery Grave
4 Drowned Catacomb
4 Hinterland Harbor
4 Overgrown Tomb
4 Woodland Cemetery
3 Forest
1 Island
CUBE: http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/73964;jsessionid=2DE1F5FF41A24820A137448A2FD5CF8F
I LIKE DRAGONS!
I suggest everyone to really pay attention to your mana base and not just cram every card into the deck just because it's in the colors.
Standard: BG Golgari Midrange
Modern: U Merfolk GWUBR 5 Color Humans UBW Esper Gifts GW Bogles
1st deck
is 18 black sources
and 12 green sources
and 15 blue sources
You can probably add more blue on the first deck. You have more double blue there and mainly single black with exception of Vraska's contempt
2nd deck
and 16 black sources
and 15 green sources / 17 if you count llanowar elves
and 13 blue sources
So this 2nd deck I don't think is much of an issue.
-Stay Frosty
RNA Standard: Grixis Midrange, Jund Deathwhirler, Sultai Vannifar
GRN Standard: Red Midrange, Mono-Blue Tempo, Wr Aggro, Gruul Experimental Dinosaurs, Sultai Midrange, Jeskai Midrange
Modern: Bant Spirits
Forcing a single archetype in all formats: too many colors, bad mana.
I really want to make a Sultai Steel Leaf Stompy and use Hadana's Climb to fly creatures in for beatdowns, but I don't think Steel Leaf Champions will like a 3 colour deck....
There probably is.
Need roughly 22 green sources to get Steel Leaf Champion out by T3.
-Stay Frosty
I just love Hadana's Climb hehe, such a sick card, but I have a feeling the deck will need Breeding Pool before it could be a thing though.
I assume you are talking about creatures in these slots, not necessarily spells? I think it really depends on how you want to flesh out your endgame, because I see plenty of options available in 3 mana. I don't see much of anything wrong with your 2 drops being primarily efficient disruption spells like Assassin's Tropy, Cast Down, Thought Erasure. Additionally you get cards that are really not that bad, such as Omenspeaker, Kitesail Freebooter or even Lazav, the Multifarious that can flesh out a solid late game if drawn later.
I guess my overall point is that the upper curve is powerful enough to allow for some real flexibility in what your 2 and 3 drops are doing.
Additionally, today we see Ritual of Soot which can simply sidestep the early game creature plan well enough if you want to play a more controlling midrange list. Even Connive // Concoct can let you do this while scaling well later in the game.
Creature oriented interactions in cards like Slimefoot, the Stowaway and Yavimaya Sapherd are decent 3 drop options if you are looking to slide into more Vraska, Golgari Queen value.
You can focus on a recursion game with Isareth the Awakener and Journey to Eternity at 3 mana.
I suspect Exclusion Mage is just a slam dunk regardless of what you are focusing your early game players on.. You could even start branching into ideas like Treasures and Karn for some grindy value subgame.
I think your overall scope is maybe just a bit narrow? I am not saying I disagree that these spots are not as in your face-obvious as our 4 and 5 drops, but I do think there are a lot of solid interactions in the available card pool to work with.
STANDARD|UW Control MODERN| UBG Midrange PAUPER| UG Fog COMMANDER| UBG The Mimeoplasm
-Stay Frosty
2 lazav, the multifarious
4 dimir spybug
4 glowspore shaman
4 stitcher's supplier
3 dream eater
2 vraska's contempt
4 assassin's trophy
4 notion rain
4 thought erasure
2 connive // concoct
i mean very ruff draft of the deck. not even sure if it will play out the way i want it to. and without knowing how the meta will play out. it might end up being crap. but i think you guys can get the idea of what im thinking. would be nice if we get something else in guilds that might be cheaper then muldrotha.
4 Jadelight Ranger
4 Hostage Taker
4 Doom Whisperer
2 Carnage Tyrant
4 Assassim's Trophy
2 Vraska's Contempt
2 Cast Down
1 Rain of Notion
2 Chart a Course
2 Search For Azcanta
2 Vraska, relic seeker
1 Karn, Urza's Scion
4 Watery Grave
4 Overgrown Tomb
3 woodland Cemetary
4 Drowned Catacomb
2 Hinterland Harbor
1 Swamp
4 Forest
2 Island
4 Drowned Catacomb
2 Forest
4 Hinterland Harbor
2 Island
4 Overgrown Tomb
2 Swamp
4 Watery Grave
4 Woodland Cemetery
// Creatures
4 Carnage Tyrant
4 Assassin's Trophy
4 Cast Down
2 Mission Briefing
3 Ritual of Soot
3 Search for Azcanta
4 Sinister Sabotage
4 Thought Erasure
4 Vraska's Contempt
2 Vraska, Relic Seeker
4 Deathgorge Scavenger
3 Duress
4 Moment of Craving
4 Negate
This is my starting point for a Sultai control list. Still trying figure how best to splash the white for Teferi, Hero of Dominaria lol
Before going Sultai, I'd try to figure out what exactly the core strategy is first:
1) Am I going for a creature to yard strategy to grind the game out until the board is in my favor? (GPG, Eternalize, etc)
2) Am I going for a spell related strategy aiming to control the board and land a powerful finisher? (Azcanta Control)
I'm going to make a guess that sultai would be a creature to yard grinder like the old Sultai was aiming for. I think the main thing I'd use green for in a spell strategy is to make sure I don't deck myself against some opponents.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
i actually agree with you, we need to focus on a strategy first, i think that will be hard to do till we have the whole spoiler which im hoping we will within the next week.
i do like your idea of surveil into bone dragon. i forgot about that guy.
my intial idea was to use surveil and stitchers to fill the graveyard to use with muldrotha. but i think waiting till turn 6 is too long, so we would need to ramp. and i think with out a birds or something similiar it wont be reliable. and even then would it be worth ramping into muldrotha when we probably have better big creatures to ramp into to just win the game.
so i think in the end we need the rest of the spoiler list before we can proceed and figure out what our strategy is.
Use Unclaimed Territory or Temple Garden. Also you may want to cut down on the double blue mana
-Stay Frosty
first thing off the top of my head is i think the llanowar elves are pointless since its control not some sort of ramp or creature deck. if anything run a 4 of some creature as a win con. or 4 mission briefing to replay one of your control cards in the graveyard.
Pretend you can play infinite rainbow lands, what creature curve would you play? The Merfolk Branchwalker + Jadelight Ranger + bombs core worked well before. I'm actually having the opposite problem you are -- Sultai has a ton of excellent spells and if you don't mind being heavier on green, can shore up the early game with those two + Brontodon, but I don't know what all of this is building up to. I'm a big buyer of Doom Whisperer, but if the next best card in the 4+ cc category is Nightveil Predator, I don't think I'm in.
Maybe it's planeswalkers? I've been dying to use Karn, Tezzeret and Treasure Map together, and it wouldn't be hard to slot in something like Chromatic Lantern to get Karn enough artifacts to play with.
Whatever it is, I think it needs to be something:
(a) threatening
(b) sidesteps removal or trades positively with it
Whisperer lets you convert life into filtering at a nice rate so you're not completely down on cards, and beats the hell out of the enemy if it isn't removed immediately, so I like that. The planeswalkers get some value in the face of removal. Once we're in the realm of Thief of Sanity (dangerous if unchecked, but has to connect before it does anything) or the Predator (just not threatening enough for its mana cost; nice set of keywords, good rate overall, but the rate is tied up in things that don't generate value or put a real clock on the enemy), I'm not liking it so much...
Wrong colors obviously but Rekindling Phoenix and Nicol Bolas, the Ravager look like great 4cc creatures to play right now. Is there anything comparable in Sultai?