Quote:
Originally Posted by markbris1
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
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.
Last edited by Regret$; 02-16-2019 at 06:12 PM.