Guess Who's Back

Alrighty. So. If you remember me, I made a writeup a while back about Sultai Midrange. It was a lot of fun, and I did decently with it. I still want Abzan midrange to work, but oh well.

Then I looked at some Standard Sultai Midrange lists. That's when I remembered Cavalier of Thorns was a thing. It was a great body, filled the graveyard for Uro and Polyk, and gave back some crucial cards when it died.

Then I remembered one of the best ways to utilize a filled graveyard. So I added Commander the Dreadhorde into the deck, and that's how we're here.

Welcome. To Historic Sultai Dreadhorde.

Back Again

"But IL2L!", you say, "why are we running Command the Dreadhorde?" Good question, dear reader. The answer is simple: We need a top-end and unfortunately, Muldrotha, the Gravetide doesn't cut it. Unlike our 6/6 elemental friend, Command the Dreadhorde is explosive and actually does something when we play it (no offense, Muldrotha).

So yeah. Onto the cards!

The Green Core:

Our green core's all about having solid creatures to curve out early on, letting us drop real threats later. These are all basically auto-includes in any green-based midrange deck, and as such, all of these creatures stayed at 4-ofs from Sultai Midrange. Exploring helps us fix our draws a bit, and it also fuels the graveyard for a later Command or Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath.

Llanowar Elves: Look. I'm base-green. I'm playing creatures. I like to play Magic. What am I supposed to do? Not play the best green 1-drop in Historic? Nah. Llanowar Elves is an easy 4-of. Worried we're gonna top-deck it? Don't worry. We can just explore 'em to the yard and then use 'em as fuel for Uro.

Wildgrowth Walker: Wildgrowth Walker's an absolute deal-breaker for us against any other creature-based deck. Playing Walker into Jadelight Ranger is just so good against any deck that wants to win by punching your face in, it can sometimes just decide the game there and then.

Merfolk Brancher: Merfolk Branchwalker is either a 2/1 that draws you a land or a 3/2 that lets you surveil. This 2-drop is really just a solid package of value. Not really much to say here except that I'm not moving this out anytime soon.

Jadelight Ranger: Merfolk Branchwalker's older cousin. Having a 3-drop that fixes our next draws and leaves a body lets us just slam turns packed of value after turns pack of value. I'm not moving this one out the deck either for the foreseeable future.

The Not-Green:

So basically all of these cards stay very similar to how they were included in my old Sultai midrange deck. Notably, I'm not running Polukranos, Unchained or Midnight Reaper. I felt that Polukranos was a bit too hungry for a graveyard we also wanted to share with Uro and Command the Dreadhorde, so I ultimately cut him for a more resilient gameplan. Midnight Reaper also went because its main role was boardwipe protection, which our new Cavalier of Thorns and Command can now help with. On top of this, our life total can be somewhat strained if we want to maximize our Command, so while I'm sad to see Reaper go, it wasn't necessary to the gameplan.

Thought Erasure: I know that an XY spell in our two splash colors might not seem smart, but come on. The mana-base is just so good in Historic compared to Standard that I can't resist. Getting to disrupt our opponents' gameplans while also making sure ours can run smoothly with surveil? Even sweeter is that this card can effectively serve as two cards in the graveyard for the purpose of Uro, and if we mill over a creature, then now we're helping our Command.

Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath: Oh wow. The best Simic card in Standard is seeing play in Historic? I never would have guessed. Mmmm. Yeah. Not much to say again, honestly. Theros's golden boy is just too good to pass up - Uro's simultaneously ramp to get to the top of our curve and also the payoff for getting to the top of that curve. I've said it before and I'll say it again: this guy was why I wanted to play Sultai and not some other color combination.

Vraska, Golgari Queen: Removal and card advantage in one. Like a lot of other cards in the deck, this one's a no-brainer. Being able to snipe a pesky Teferi, Time Raveler or Ajani's Pridemate feels so much sweeter when it leaves behind a planeswalker that can gain us life, draw us cards, and fill the graveyard for our many shenanigans.

Tamiyo, Collector of Tales: A recurrable Regrowth is no joke in grindy games, and Tamiyo lets us dig even farther into our library and fill our graveyard. Her +1 doesn't whiff nearly as much as I thought it would, and even when it does, hey. We still got Uro to escape. Her passive can become quite useful too against a deck that may want to get rid of any threats in our hand before we can play them. Particular fun with Command the Dreadhorde, as we can just replenish our board in the wake of any sweeper.

Maelstrom Pulse: I like Assassin's Trophy. But that ramp for our opponent does hurt us a bit when a lot of our opponents are happy to get another land into play. Maelstrom Pulse lets us get rid of any bothersome nonland permanent cleanly, and given the number of 4-ofs in many decks, it's not uncommon to be a 2-for-1 or better. Not to mention the zombie-wiping capability in our games against Field of the Dead decks.

The Top-End:

The two new cards to our pile of value. With these additions, we lean much harder on our graveyard, letting the deck become more resilient against control but also weaker to graveyard hate. Personally, given the lack of many other graveyard-centric decks out there, I'm fine with that tradeoff.

Cavalier of Thorns: Ooooh boy. Where do I start. When this was spoiled, people thought it was just a big dumb beater that milled you and just ramped you unnecessarily. Well, as it turns out, this was probably tied for the best Cavalier of the cycle. A 5/6 can still stonewall a pretty big part of the metagame, and the reach can help keep us safe from our opponent otherwise dominating the air, but it's the mill and recursion of the Cavalier that really helps us. Mill 4 lets us get both Uro and Command online, and the guaranteed 6th land makes sure we can cast Command on curve - a true sight to behold.

Command the Dreadhorde: The namesake of the deck, Command has replaced Muldrotha as our big flash winner. Running Wildgrowth Walkers lets us reanimate a bunch of creatures and then refill our life or push it even higher. Not to mention the fact that we can reanimate our opponent's stuff that we killed or discarded before. After playing with both versions of the deck, I can safely say that while Muldrotha will always be my favorite Sultai elemental, Command is better at abusing the graveyard.

The Lands:

Yeah. That was our maindeck. Now lets get to the other stuff.

We're running the full set of Overgrown Tomb and Woodland Cemetary since we're really a Golgari deck at heart, and we have another full playset of Breeding Pool for color balance.

I like our 3 copies of Watery Grave and Hinterland Harbor, since we want to make sure we have enough lands to make our checks come in untapped, but we also don't want a manabase that hurts us more than our opponent does.

I'm running 3 Temples in total because while the scries are useful, we also want to play on curve and Temples can make that somewhat awkward.

We have 3 basics so we don't get caught in the collateral of the Field of the Dead hate running around - that is, Assassin's Trophy, Field of Ruin, and Ghost Quarters.

I'm running a single Mobilized District because it can really help to have an extra 3/3 that doesn't die to sweepers sometimes, but I also don't want to stretch the colors too thin.

Notably, I'm not running any Fabled Passages because we only have 3 basics to fetch, even if it's great fuel for Uro.

The Sideboard:

So this being midrange, our sideboard is focused at either helping us to disrupt our slower opponents and kill them before they can stabilize or ward off our faster opponents so that we can stabilize.

I'll be looking through some matchups I expect to see, and explain why my sideboard is the way it is.

- Unmoored Ego, Mystical Dispute, Negate, Duress

Starting off with one of the boogiemen of the format, Nexus decks are a pretty annoying matchup for us. A lot of the time, it just boils down to "can we resolve Unmoored Ego before they resolve their Nexus of Fate". If we do, they're just a pretty bad Simic ramp deck. If we can't, we're in a pretty rough spot. I'm only running 2 Egos right now because I only see the decks it's good against every once in a while.

Against us, Nexus decks will tend to board in creatures like Lovestruck Beast to try and wall us. If we can take away their main gameplan of looping Nexus, then we'll just eventually overwhelm them with Uros and planeswalkers.

- Cast Down, Epic Downfall, Ritual of Soot

Gruul Aggro is a pretty interesting one. They can have some really explosive starts with Burning-Tree Emissary, and it can be hard for us to catch up with that. What I've noticed is that recently, Gruul has become very low to the ground - all of their creatures except 4 Questing Beasts are CMC 3 or lower. As such, we're playing Ritual of Soot because many a time, it will just wipe their entire board and our recursion will win in the long run. Given the fact that Gruul is reliant on creatures (duh), we're just boarding in spot removal to get rid of their particularly troublesome creatures.

Against us, Gruul boards in a bunch of removal in the form of Domri's Ambush and Lava Coil.

- Unmoored Ego, Virulent Plague

This is honestly a pretty good matchup for us. Field decks aren't particularly fast, so we can usually get our silver bullets by the time they start to go online. Once their Fields are neutered, they're just a subpar ramp deck, which is pretty easy to beat.

Postboard, Field brings in more removal for our creatures and, if they're running blue, some counterspells for the Ego. Lucky for us, Thought Erasure gives us a lot of info on their hand, and Tamiyo lets us recur our Egos to slowly rip their deck apart.

- Ritual of Soot, Cast Down

Soul Siblins is similar to Gruul. A god-curve of Soul Warden - Ajani's Pridemate -> more lifegain is going to be super hard for us to beat without a Ritual on 4. However, almost all of their creatures are of CMC 3 or lower, so we're just hoping to sweep them when they're empty-handed and topdecking.

I have no idea what Soul Siblings boards against us, but it's probably Glass Casket for our Wildgrowth Walkers.

- Duress, Negate. Mystical Dispute

Hard control is our worst matchup. Post-board, they bring in a bunch of board wipes and removal, and we just don't have the critical mass of counterspells that we would like for both their Teferis and their wipes. Our gameplan is just to try to disrupt them and slam some creatures early.

The Maybeboard:

Alright. So that's our actual deck. Now it's time to talk about hypotheticals! These are either cards I've considered, whether in the sideboard or mainboard. However, I've decided against them for one reason or another.

Hostage Taker: During RNA Sultai Midrange, Hostage Taker was a great inclusion. When a lot of the meta was composed of efficient creatures, Hostage Taker was effectively a Mind Control with a body. I don't like it anymore because Field of the Dead doesn't care about losing a single zombie and we don't ever have the need to cast more creatures, with Uro and Tamiyo letting us utilize our graveyard. Effectively, I just think that Hostage Taker might be a bit too slow for the current meta. Testing this guy in Bo1, however, I have to say that it's really useful against Gruul and MonoW, since it can take out their god and also provide a decent body against a large portion of their deck.

Hydroid Krasis: Yeah, yeah. I know that Krasis is Krasis is Krasis. But since we're not running Nissa, we're not playing any extremely large Krasis, and it's sort of a nonbo with Command the Dreadhorde. Krasis is good, but we're not going to take full advantage of the card without being ramp.

Shifting Ceratops: I had this in the sideboard of my old Sultai Midrange. What I found was that mono U was inexistent and that control doesn't care about protection from blue when they can just board wipe a dozen times. Ceratops was just a big beater, and it wasn't enough.

Yarok, the Desecrated: My main problem with Yarok is that he's a 5 mana do nothing. We want to play Command turn 6, and the Cavalier really helps Command get some extra value.

Casualties of War: The big reason this sees play in Standard is that it's really good against Nissa. I'm not seeing Nissa in Historic. Plus, I'd rather just build a huge board with Command.

Tyrant's Scorn: Debating between this and Cast Down in the sideboard. Honestly, thinking of this right now, given the current metagame, I might just switch the Cast Downs for Tyrant's Scorn.

Garruk, Cursed Huntsman: I tried playing with Garruk. I just couldn't figure out what to cut for him. He just seems like a solid card, but he's not necesssarily synergistic in the deck.

Wrapping Up:

Well, guys. Thanks for reading about Sultai Dreadhorde. I'm currently approaching 15k characters, so I'm going to wrap it up. Remember this list isn't 100% refined, so don't treat it like an end all be all.

Hope you enjoy the list.