Sultai Saga

Hello everyone,

The Mythic Championship is among us and I’m sure you’re rooting for some of the players and like to see your favorite decks perform well. I for one would like to see more interesting technology despite not having the new set out in time for the MC.

What’s good about brewing is that as a brewer, I don’t have to be fixated with the newer cards. As the meta shifts towards the direction of the recent large tournament, most of the followers gravitate towards it and for good reason: People like to win. Don’t get me wrong I do too, but I guess in a different way.

Sagas are one of the most memorable and remarkable card types Wizards has ever printed. A permanent that has incremental value if it survives for 2 more turns, with each chapter building up the game towards the ultimate, is extremely flavorful. It’s also makes for a very good build-around card, which got me from Gold 2 to Platinum 4. No kidding.

I’m not going to talk about the uncommon Sagas and get right down to business. First up, The Mirari Conjecture.

Playing this Saga means your deck has to have a high amount of sorceries and instants to benefit the recursion and duplication Mirari provides. I once built a deck that had this card as its centerpiece and combining Black to recur as much removal, card draw, and utility spells. Unfortunately the deck was too slow to compete against the Hazorets and too slow for the Scarab Gods. Thankfully that era has come to pass and we’re on a different plane now.

With Ravnica out, we not have access to superior hand disruption, permanent sweepers and splitcards with multiple card-types and functionalities to take advantage of.

We also got a mini-Conjecture in the form of Mission Briefing which is the only instant I included in the build that got me to Platinum. I did mention that this deck was Sultai so here’s what green was for.

With Mirari Conjecture, Nature’s Spiral can retrieve it back once it goes on its last chapter for another round of recursion. It has happened many times in ranked that waiting to cast this when Mirari pops gets us back the Mirari, The Eldest Reborn, or my honorary green Saga.

Like Sagas, Hydroid Krasis also does 3 things but all at the same time. It gains us life. It draws us cards. It beats face. Voila, Saga-like characteristics! Although I might be pulling your leg already but that’s exactly how this deck wins, through incremental value, non-stop attrition, and threat longevity (if there was such a word). Here’s what the deck looks like.

The deck retains its toolbox characteristics from my deck in GP Singapore, but instead of fetching Torment of Hailfire to win, the win conditions are already in the deck. The entire sideboard is a list of silver bullets to help deal with whatever opponent you face in game 1.

We have a dinosaur suite in the side which serves very distinct purposes against 2 different archetype. Against Control, we call Nezahal and Carnage Tyrant to make sure our threat sticks. Nezahal is preferred against removal heavy decks. Against aggro decks, we have Verdant Sun’s Avatar as a stand-in for Pelakka Wurm. We can’t afford triple so we’ll settle for this. Together with Hydroid Krasis, we should be able to gain a lot of life back.

Against Nexus decks, we side in Unmoored Ego to snipe their Nexus out, or Wilderness Reclamation. With Mirari, we attempt to strip them of any possible win condition. Duress and Negates are back to up disrupt their initial plays. They both also help us win the hard control match-ups in games 2 and 3.

Planeswalkers are something we can’t deal with outside Vraska’s Contempt so we have 2 more cards in the sideboard that help address them. Sorcerous Spyglass also stops a lot of other things like Azcanta, Legion’s Landing, Treasure Maps and the likes.

Murmuring Mystic is an odd-one in the sideboard but it has its purpose especially against Drakes deck. I like siding it in and spam our spells as much as we can to clutter the skies with a bunch of 1/1 birds. Thank goodness their drakes don’t trample through them.

Against decks that don’t seem to have a win condition but prefers the long game of milling us out, or has ways to reset the game, we can play the same game with them. I’ve one exactly one game by fetching Lich’s Mastery against a deck that won with Psychic Erosion and Patient Rebuilding.

In case the board gets too cluttered beyond our control, we can fetch River’s Rebuke to try and restart the game and try to manage things more slowly. This works well with Treasure and Token decks.

The last permanent we can’t deal with is Enchantments so I have just one copy for Crushing Canopy which we can recur anyway with Mirari.

The deck is surprisingly good in today’s field. It’s not very slow thanks to early interactions while still having the best late game synergies to beat the conventional control or midrange decks of today. I am very happy that brews like this can still go toe-to-toe with the meta and I hope you do too if you decide to build and run the deck!

I’ll continue testing this in Ranked and see if it can bring me to Diamond Tier, without me going for another brew.

Ciao!
Vanson