Also, if I have learned nothing else from MTGArena, I have learned that Day9 is a mountain of a man compared to Danny Trejo.. who knew.

Here's my current sultai. I've 7 winned Bo1s twice since nexus was banned. I'd run a 4th krasis if I had it and 1-2 more Vivians.

wanted to try this out, i put together what you showed though and it only comes to 53 cards looking at the image. Whats the total land count and types? I only counted 17 but cant' see the overgrown tomb qty

Breeding Pools and Hinterland Harbors

I'm running 23 lands and I don't think more are needed for Bo1 due to the way the first hand it gives you works. My land mix is less than optimal and if I had 4 breeding pool/hinterland harbor, I would run those over the UB duals.

The main choice in the sultai list is whether or not you are going to run wild growth walker. If you don't, you can run a few more pieces of removal and probably a playset of chupacabra can come into the deck. Certainly branchwalker goes to 3 of or gets completely removed without wildgrowth. Also I don't think that midnight reaper will be great without wild growth. After gaining 15 health with wildgrowth against red and monoblue, I can count the times I've lost on one hand. Unfortunately, the blue tempo decks tend to make about 2-3 power of creatures and counter all your explore dudes, so its not great against them. WGW buys a lot of time against monowhite, which has few removal options, and this helps to setup your superior removal and lategame. Pros: destroys red, strong against monowhite. Cons, average or subpar against monoblue or drakes.

Hard to say what to replace all of this if you go walkerless, but basically it turns into a removal heavy control list. If you cut it, I think you may as well cut the branchwalkers which are the weakest card in the WGW trilogy, and replace with cast down, and replace the WGW/reapers with contempts and ravenous chupacabras. Another strong option is thrashing brontodon since your early game is going to suck bad against WGW and a phatbooty is surely welcome.

I am really liking assassin's trophy right now, because 4 mana is just too much to pay for removal against monoblue tempo for example. There are also a lot of problem permanents in the control matchups, and being able to kill their enchantment/planeswalker at end step was cruicial while nexus was in the format (Reclamation triggers and you nuke their Reclamation). I guess one could argue vraskas is better, but I find the two cards about the same. The only time I would really really rather have a vraska is against pheonix, and really WGW sultai has so much game against monored I don't find them problematic.

Hostage taker versus chupacbra is an interesting one, but basically chupacbra is both better against aggro generally (assuming you can cast it) and harder to cast. Hostage taker lights outs so many decks if you can resolve it and cast whatever is stolen. Like if you steal someone's krasis and then blast off the next turn thats pretty much impossible for the opponent to comeback from. That said, this deck is already somewhat bloated with midgame value cards and a dead turn 4 hostage taker is too much tempo to come back from most of the time.

Other cards of note:
Vivian is strong but I don't think I would play 3 of her. She is better on board in the aggro version where she equals a creature drawn a turn, but also she is slow so she doesn't exactly fit with the gameplan.
Vraska Golgari Queen is the disappointment of the block. Her + ability sux pretty bad even in a jadelight deck. She would be pretty amazing in an ooze or saproling deck, but neither really exists in my opinion. Most of the time she seals up a game thats pretty much won and stabalized, or kills a creature then takes one for the team against aggro.
Find/Finality - makes this deck go and it would not work without this card. Definitely need 3, 4 is too many. Blows out other midrange decks, gets back your chumpblocked JLR and gains you 12 life against aggro. The spine and best card of the deck.
Krasis, why we are playing blue. This card is really dumb and I expect every deck for the next 2 years to run 4 of these if they can. Passable at 4 mana, excellent at 6 or above. UNCOUNTERABLE draw card, gains life versus aggo, blocks flying dudes, soars over to kill planeswalkers. Whoever tested this on the balance team should be summary executed.
JLR - don't cut this card.
Carnage Tyrant - just not as good as krasis. It was a good run CT, but the retirement ceremony has come. Not sure if there is room for 1 CT in a final tuned version of the deck or not.

Matchups, all the matchups are average or good, except the gates deck. Man this list blows against gates. Oh ya, the drakes matchup is terrible too.

Been having fun in the singleton event this weekend. Had 5 5-x's now.

It kind of feels like Draft, but on steroids where you have access to all the top tier cards. Can play the same deck over and over and the situations are unique every time.

My goal as still kind of a noob to the game was to come up with at least 1 of my own decks and go 5-x with it. After a couple of meh 3 or 4 win decks, finally came up with this and on back to back 5-1's so far:

https://mtgarena.pro/decks/orzhov-control-singleton/

Also did OK with a few lists from reddit, mono-white, rakdos midrange.

Nice getting to put some of these random strong and fun, but otherwise useless in standard cards to use.

Yeah, the traditional draft on mtg arena is pretty much a ripoff. You're forced to draft some kinda gates deck (which you can always do), which I don't like. As a consequence, I'm lucky to go 1-2, and it's usually 0-2. And I'm a world-class player who has played mtg semi-professionally.

Wizards just posted the new pro / competitive MTG structure and where all that $10m is going.

https://magic.wizards.com/en/article...hicchamp_email

I'm sure the fan base is going to find some reason to be upset and threaten to quit the game over the details, but on a skim things look pretty fair. For Arena the big take away is that top 1000 Mythic is the monthly target to hit and gets you into qualifiers.

Another take away ... MTGO gets the shaft, as far as I can tell? I guess not too unexpected.

that all seems good to me

All the gold and silver got ****ed so hard. Either you are top 32 or you are nothing.

They didn't announce who qualifies for the top 32 next year, but if it's just top32 in Mythic Points, it is VERY hard to drop out of the current the top32, because you get to play all 7 events. Would be surprised if there are more than a handful of new players.

I don't think the gold and silver pros got ****ed very hard. What they got in previous years rounded down to nothing but was enough to convince some people to make the very bad decision to dedicate their life to being a "magic pro".

Now there is a legitimate middle class living available for some people. That's nice. It's probably a good thing for audience that it's set up so that there won't be 90% turnover year after year.

Yeah, it's obviously a wonderful change that allows people to actually play magic for a living. It wasn't possible before. Hell, hall of famers like ben s had magic as a secondary income because it wasnt enough. Now Ben S is full time magic.

Never underestimate the ability of the magic community to find a tiny thing that sucks for a small amount of people in a giant wave of goodness and rant and rave about how awful it is. "silver pros got ****ed!" despite people making an actual living + increased prizes in the tournament scene. Flipping out about a prerelease GP with actual stakes because like 5 LGSs in the world might have lower turnout for their prelease was another recent one that made me roll my eyes.

r/magictcg doesnt realize that it isnt like wizards is paying these people because there is some inherent value in being really good at magic. They are marketing tools who help sell the game either by being in a position players can aspire to be in themselves, or by having fans rooting for and watching them play. A bunch of random silver "pros" offer absolutely no value over replacement grinder in big tournaments

They offer no marketing value, but they do offer sales. I, for example, have 0 interest to buy or own paper cards anymore when there is no "dream" to chase.

Mono blue tempo is the most skill intensive deck I can remember in standard. These pro tour matches are so stressful.

So I started playing a deck with 8+ life gain spells and I immediately went from bronze to gold in bo1.

Moment of Craving >>> Cast Down

Heres my current Bo1 which is finally tuned enough for me to feel comfortable playing the events with. Started as a troll/meme sultai amulet deck which quickly discovered that there is basically nothing good to combine mastermind and reclamation with. The control matchup seems like it would be bad, but that is the main reason we are running so many negates and chemisters, which win the matchup single handedly.

I don't think there is really a 'balanced' vanilla esper control deck which is favored versus this in bo1. Expect to still lose some games versus mono red/monowhite which will still be too fast sometimes, espesh when the mana throws up on you. Some matchups like UR drakes are hilariously good who I have won a lot of matches against them doublecasting mass manipulation x=1 and then ulti-ing their Ral in the same turn.

The bad matchups are gw and gr, which both have too many beefy threats and can string out the removal too easily. I don't see much of either of these since I think they are kind of bad right now.

Feels like you really want Search for Azcantas. I'd also tweak the manabase towards 4-4-4-4-4-4.

I've played with search in the deck and basically it doesn't work with amulets. I've even tried without Opts and it makes the early game too weak against aggro-red. I think maybe cutting an Anticipate for a search in the maindeck is an option, just as a Mastermind target might be ok. I'd definitely change the mana a little with all of the duals, but 4 islands is not an option, since we need to be able to cast kaya reliably every game when we are deciding mull or no.

probably means 4 of each dual. guessing you are limited by wildcards. only 23 lands seems light for a control deck but youre the one whos been playing it so would know better

Correct. Standard Esper lists run 4-4-4-4-4-4 +2 basics which lets you have fairly consistent mana. The 2 basics are by far the worst lands in the deck, so I'd only play them after the 24 duals. This list runs opts and more cantrips, so it can get away with fewer lands, but I'd probably still rather run 24 than 23.

New bot algorithm or whatever it is seems to be heavily underpicking gruul and green, I'm getting like 11th pick sauroform hybrids

Yeah, I'm out of rare wildcards for sure. I've been trying to split by wild cards between new dual lands and rares for decks but ya, I don't have a playset of each. Not sure if I will finish the checklands at this point. Anyone have any ideas if they will stop 'selling' Ixalan on Arena when it rotates out of standard? I'm presuming there will be an eternal format on Arena at some point (and quite enjoyed playing Amonkhet in the beta, I hope they bring that back since it is already 'developed'), so unclear whether I should be finishing up the cards I want on those now or ignoring them. Either way not planning to finish every set ever so it is what it is.

23 lands is fine for this deck. I only play bo1 so I always get the most average of 2 hands and thats approximately an extra mulligan all on its own. T2 I often end up anticipating for whatever I need to cast Kaya's.

4 cards that wobble around slightly and at least 2 of them are somewhat playable? And it's only £20? What a deal!

Ya like $100 in gems cant even buy all 10 guild cosmetics lol. Aint no money like Ha$$$$bro money!!! In their defense the cards are all like tripping balls so save a few days LSD maybe.

I gave in for the $15 deal that got more than that worth of gems plus some cool looking cards I actually use but can't imagine spending thousands of gems just for a couple different looking cards