Tarkir: Dragonstorm releases on April 11th, and with it we are receiving 5 Commander precons – one for each of the plane’s three-color clans. In this article I’ll be discussing the Sultai Arisen deck.
Unsurprisingly, this deck is all about the graveyard. You want to load it up, and turn it into an incredible resource that generates all kinds of value. It includes many cards that pay you off for having cards leave the graveyard in particular. In this article, I’m going to take a look at the deck’s brand-new cards, including its two potential Commanders, and also offer suggestions on how to upgrade it.
THE COMMANDERS
As with the other Commander precons, the deck includes both a prominent member of the clan and the clan’s spirit dragon. In this case, we get Kotis and Teval.
Kotis lets you cast creatures from your graveyard, and when you do, Kotis gets gets bigger. Meanwhile, Teval can return lands from the graveyard and gives you a 2/2 Zombie token any time a card leaves the graveyard.
I’ve been writing Commander precon articles for a few years now, and this is the first time I’ve ever felt more inclined to use the precon’s secondary Commander rather than the face Commander.
Teval is just a one-stop shop value engine. It helps load your graveyard, it helps bring things back from the graveyard, and it has a payoff for any card leaving the graveyard. Its attack trigger effectively ramps your mana, gives you graveyard fuel, and makes a 2/2 token.
That isn’t to say Kotis isn’t good, but I do feel like he takes more work to get going. He doesn’t do any milling on his own, asks you to exile cards from your graveyard to bring things back, and he only pays you off for bringing back creatures. I think he’s better in your 99 than he is in your Command Zone, especially given how the rest of the deck looks.
NEW CARD HIGHLIGHTS
In addition to the deck’s two new legendary creatures, the deck also includes 9 other brand new cards. In this section, I’m going to take a look at the cards from among them that are the most useful alongside Teval.
These cards are largely geared towards loading your graveyard, getting cards back from your graveyard, or both. First, let’s look at the cards that are geared towards getting value out of lands in the graveyard, just like Teval is.
Floral Evoker has a landfall effect that works great with Teval, and will grow rapidly alongside the Spirit Dragon. It also comes with its own ability that lets you return lands from your graveyard to the battlefield.
While giving up a creature for a land isn’t always ideal, the deck does have several reprints of powerful utility lands that sacrifice themselves – like Cephalid Coliseum and Command Beacon. And in the upgrade section of this article, I’ll suggest a few more that are nasty when you can recur them with Teval or the Evoker.
Will of the Sultai helps you load the graveyard and can also bring back every land in your graveyard. If you have Teval in play, it’ll also put an absolutely massive buff on everything you have in play, probably winning you the game when you cast it.
Steward of the Harvest goes in a bit of a different direction than the other cards that get value out of lands in the graveyard. Rather than bring them back, it can give all of your creatures the activated abilities of lands that it exiles. At a minimum, that means they’ll be able to tap for mana – and sometimes you’ll exile something with a really good ability like Crypt of Agadeem.
There are also a couple of cards that are geared towards getting lots of cards in the graveyard more generally.
Welcome the Dead takes a little bit of work, but if you can mill yourself a bunch in a single turn (and Teval helps you get there), it can generate a ton of Zombie tokens. And thanks to Flashback it can potentially do it more than once, or do it when it is one of many cards that gets milled in a turn.
Teval’s Judgment pays you off when any card leaves your graveyard, just like Teval does. It can do the same thing as Teval – make a 2/2 Zombie token – but if you’d rather have a card or some mana, you can do that too! There’s no way you’re not getting tons of value out of this powerful Enchantment.
Lastly, the deck also has a big scary creature who is both great to bring back with reanimation and gives you a massive payoff for milling yourself.
The Grave-Reaver might be expensive, but it’s worth it. It lets you put creatures that get milled into play for free, and it comes with an “enters or attacks” trigger that is likely to make it happen. Even if your opponent takes this big Dragon down right away, you’ve already probably gotten a ton of value. And if they don’t, they game is going to quickly end in your favor.
$50 UPGRADES
This precon is pretty powerful right after the box, but there are some upgrades you can make for it to be even better! You don’t have to break the bank to do it either. These upgrades are all geared towards making the deck even more synergistic, with a focus on generating value with lands in your graveyard.
While the deck does have a few lands that Teval can go wild with, it could use a few more. First, let’s look at some lands that are really great when you can use them multiple times per game.
Both Nurturing Peatland and Waterlogged Grove provide excellent fixing, but what makes them really interesting with Teval is the fact that you can give them up to draw cards. So, if you have ways to get lands back, you can really turn these rather unassuming lands into impressive value engines.
Next, let’s look at a trio of powerful utility lands that give themselves up as part of an activated ability, meaning that you can get them back and do it all over again.
Ghost Quarter lets you disrupt your opponent in a big way, by destroying any powerful nonbasic lands that they might have in play. Blast Zone is a land that can destroy a whole bunch of permanents, and being able to bring it back is going to horrify your opponents.
Tyrite Sanctum can buff your Commander and other legendary creatures, and it can give itself up to put an indestructible counter on one of them. That’s a pretty nice combo with Teval, because it can always bring this back and ultimately gain indestructibility from it.
Next, let’s take a look at three cards that let you rebuy lands in your graveyard, like Teval does. That way you have some redundancy when it comes to doing powerful things with your lands.
Blossoming Tortoise has an almost identical trigger to Teval, except it also triggers when it enters. While it doesn’t spit out Zombie tokens if it’s on it’s own, it does make the activated abilities of your powerful utility lands much cheaper, and that’s definitely an effect this deck wants.
Ramunap Excavator and Walk-In Closet both let you play lands from your graveyard, and the Closet has the added upside of it’s second door – Forgotten Cellar. It can let you cast spells from your graveyard when you accidentally mill something that you want access to.
To make these upgrades, I removed the following cards:
-2 Forest
-1 Island
-2 Swamps
-1 Tear Asunder
You can find the new decklist over on Moxfield.
OTHER UPGRADES
If you’d like to go even harder on upgrading this deck, then I have some suggestions. The biggest thing you get access to when you’re not considering a budget is an even better suite of lands that you can abuse.
You’re definitely going to want Field of the Dead and fetch lands. The Field pays you off for having lots of nonbasic lands (and this deck does, especially after the upgrades I made above), and generating even more 2/2 Zombies when you’re putting lands into play is likely to overwhelm your opponents.
Fetch lands are obviously great in any Commander deck, but in this one you can get them back every turn and search up a new land, making them even better.
Wasteland and Strip Mine aren’t likely to help you make friends, but these powerful lands are even better at destroying other lands than Ghost Quarter. If you’re bringing one of them back multiple times, you can bet your opponents’ mana bases are going to be a complete wreck, allowing you to take over the game.
END STEP
So, that’s my take on the Sultai Arisen deck and how best to upgrade it. What do you think? Would you rather use Kotis as the Commander? If so, let me know on X or YouTube!
Jacob has been playing Magic for the better part of 24 years, and he especially loves playing Magic’s Limited formats. He also holds a PhD in history from the University of Oklahoma. In 2015, he started his YouTube channel, “Nizzahon Magic,” where he combines his interests with many videos covering Magic’s competitive history. When he’s not playing Magic or making Magic content, he can be found teaching college-level history courses or caring for a menagerie of pets with his wife.