Teval, the Balanced ScaleTeval, the Balanced Scale | art by Alexander Ostrowski

It's time to Sultai one on with the next preconstructed Commander deck from Tarkir: Dragonstorm, aptly titled "Sultai Arisen." Will our morbid friends from the clan of blue, black and green bring the excitement this time around? Let's find out.

Package Contents

Contained within the Sultai Arisen Commander deck are the usual for Tarkir: Dragonstorm:

• 1 Ready-to-play 100-card Commander deck with:
• 1 Traditional foil face commander with borderless art
• 1 Traditional foil featured commander with borderless art
• 10 Double-sided tokens
• 1 Collector Booster Sample Pack
• 1 Deck box

Unique to this particular deck is its assortment of tokens, which are as follows:

• 2x Plant // Insect tokens
• 2x Plant // Goat tokens
• 2x Zombie Druid // Insect tokens
• 1x Zombie Druid // Salamander Warrior token
• 1x Zombie Druid // Treasure token
• 1x Goat // Timeless Witness token
• 1x Experience (helper) // Treasure token

The Commander

The Alternate Commander

The Decklist

New Cards

Diviner of Mist

Our first new card from Sultai Arisen is, of course, a Dragon. Specifically, a 4/5 flying, mono-blue Dragon for five mana. Diviner of Mist follows Teval's lead, providing you with some self-mill on each attack.

Instead of digging a land out of your garbage can, however, this Dragon lets you double up on all your instants or sorceries under four mana value.

Needless to say, that's incredibly powerful, and in practice this means you'll be getting twice as much value out of removal, ramp or draw spells. Oh, and it would also trigger Teval's Zombie Druid factory, as well.

Floral Evoker

A 2/3 Snake Druid for three mana, Floral Evoker is a scaly Silverglade PathfinderSilverglade Pathfinder that requires the pitched card to be a creature. That restriction might be annoying, or it might be a benefit.

It all depends on how you've constructed your deck and what your goals are. Unlike Sliverglade Pathfinder, though, this snake gets bigger every time you activate its ability, so eventually you'll be turning it sideways to do some damage.

Steward of the Harvest

Here's the new creature that's got Magic Discourse in a whirlwind. The sky's the limit when it comes to what you can do when you mix the activated abilities of a land with an army of creatures at your disposal.

There's fetchlands, of course, or generating huge amounts of mana with Lotus ValeLotus Vale. Or annoying your opponents when all of your creatures have the ability of Maze of IthMaze of Ith.

But maybe you just want to exile a Ghost TownGhost Town to combo off with AlurenAluren? If anything, Steward of the Harvest will have people brewing, and don't be shocked to see its price rise steadily in the coming months.

It's not quite as powerful as the internet might have you believe, as it inherently requires a lot of set-up in having the right lands in your graveyard as well as enough creatures in play to make it worthwhile, but when has that ever deterred Commander players?

Colossal Grave-Reaver

We're seeing a theme with these new creatures in that they love to mill you, and for that, many players will love them right back. This time, we've got a massive 7/6 flying Dragon for eight mana, which is no small investment. However, this one's probably not getting cast from the hand too much.

And speaking of reanimation, that's what Colossal Grave-Reaver wants to help out with, as well. For every creature card you mill, you get one free detour to the battlefield. It's like if everything decided to be a NarcomoebaNarcomoeba.

Afterlife from the Loam

Outside the clever wordplay of the card's name harkening back to Life from the LoamLife from the Loam (also in this deck, by the way), Afterlife from the Loam doesn't have a ton in common with that particular all-time-classic card.

Still, we love to see Delve on new cards, and in a dream scenario we're playing only three black mana for a noncreature Sepulchral PrimordialSepulchral Primordial.

That's good value, if you can get it. And if you're sad that you're not getting the 5/4 with Intimidate that inherently comes with a Sepulchral Primordial, consider being able to reanimate one of your own creatures alongside your opponents' to be a sweet consolation prize.

Welcome the Dead

We're trying to cast this in a situation where we're not just making one 2/2 Zombie Druid. That might be a tough task, since four mana might be a lot to ask for on top of whatever costs you incur to increase Welcome the Dead's X-value.

Still, it's never a bad idea to draw some cards, even if you might be tempted to hold onto this too long in the hope you can get that added value in the future.

Will of the Sultai

It's time to see what the Sultai have for us with its version of the new modal spell cycle.

Will of the Sultai asks for five mana, and in return gives us two land-centric abilities. Either we're mimicing an Aftermath AnalystAftermath Analyst, or we're stealing the third ability from Jiang YangguJiang Yanggu, a card you probably did not expect to see referenced here.

Preferably, we're doing both at the same time, and the usefulness of Will of the Sultai will be dependent on how important one massive creature is to the current gamestate.

Teval's Judgment

Our only new enchantment is a pretty good one, recalling the trio of options on cards like Monument to EnduranceMonument to Endurance, Gala GreetersGala Greeters or Breeches, Eager PillagerBreeches, Eager Pillager.

Except, as you might have expected, the options on Teval's Judgment are contingent on doing exactly what Sultai Arisen wants you to do, which is to take things out of the graveyard for a little dust-off.

Good general Magic advice: value anything that says "draw a card" for doing what you already were going to do.

How The Deck Plays

We want to do two things, and we want to do them as quickly and as reliably as possible: get things into the graveyard, and get them out again.

We've got a ton of cheap options for doing that first part, with early-game instants, sorceries and even a few creatures helping fill our 'yard while we dig for beefier things to keep the ball rolling:

Once our graveyard is nice and fully stocked, it's time to make use of all that effort. It doesn't matter if you're playing Kotis or Teval at the helm, the general goal is the same, in that we want to build a framework that squeezes as much value as possible from cards coming and going from the graveyard:

The biggest problem we're bound to face, other than Bojuka BogBojuka Bog, is that Sultai Arisen might fall victim to trying to do too many things at once.

We've got cards that care about creatures in the graveyard, and we've got cards that care about lands. We've got big beaters like Consuming AberrationConsuming Aberration or Lord of ExtinctionLord of Extinction, but no way other than Will of the SultaiWill of the Sultai or WonderWonder to give them any help connecting for meaningful damage.

It's likely that Sultai Arisen will suffer from that lack of focus. However, that doesn't mean the deck won't be fun to play right out of the box.

Combos & Synergy

Commander Spellbook's Combo Finder reveals that we have no official combos in Sultai Arisen.

What we do have is plenty of synergy, however sporadic it might be. We've already touched on how nicely Kotis plays with easily recurrable creatures like GravecrawlerGravecrawler, especially since Kotis conveniently happens to be a Zombie in its own right.

That means with the low, low cost of an added Phyrexian AltarPhyrexian Altar you can make an infinitely large Kotis, a note that should probably be saved for the upgrade portion of this article.

You'll get plenty of synergistic value from casting spells and filling/emptying the graveyard, though, and that'll feel pretty good to see the machine start to build up steam.

Lands & Mana Rocks

We've got a fascinating assortment of lands in Sultai Arisen. There's a lot of pressure on a deck like this to come through with a functional manabase not only to cast our spells, but also to take advantage of all the cards that care about lands coming and going into the graveyard. Did we get what we hoped for?

We have to temper our expectations by reminding ourselves that this is a preconstructed deck, so we're not going to get Strip Mine and fetchlands. What we do get, though, are a couple pretty interesting reprints to go along with our usual B-tier utility lands.

Cephalid Coliseum was last seen in Modern Horizons 3, but before that it was hardly printed outside of its original Odyssey. It's a great land, and one that older players are likely happy to see here. We've also got Crypt of Agadeem, a card that hasn't been reprinted in over a decade.

Neither are at their best in this deck, suffering from that scattered approach we've touched on previously. But they're still welcome sights, nonetheless.

In terms of mana production, Sultai Arisen is a Golgari deck masquerading as a Sultai three-color deck. Consider this: across all the nonland cards in Sultai Arisen, there are 96 colored mana pips.

Of those 96 pips, only 13 are blue. However, in terms of mana production, things are much more balanced, with 22 black pips, 18 green pips and 15 blue able to be created via lands and Arcane SignetArcane Signet, our single, lonely mana rock capable of making colored mana.

Upgrading The Deck

We've got five bucks leftover from buying Sultai Arisen; what are the first cards to go?

Out

We've only got a couple artifacts total, so getting rid of one means our resistance to artifact removal is even more stout. As for the rest, we want to hone in on a specific gameplan, that being lands going in and out of the graveyard, and those don't really help as much as other cards in their place could.

In

We want to get stuff into the graveyard, and we want to get it back out again. We sound like a broken record at this point, but it's the name of the game.

And Deadly Allure, when you've got a board of disposable Zombie tokens, is a sneaky way to kill off some problematic creatures while also triggering Teval.

As for cards you could add that are a bit pricier, there are some very interesting options, starting with one that has seen its price explode because of its synergy with Teval:

Since Teval's Zombie tokens are also Druids, people are snapping up every copy of Gilt-Leaf Archdruid they can find. Keep in mind, though, that that is technically mass land denial, and really belongs in Bracket 4 even if the rest of your deck isn't as optimized.

The rest of these options are here to beef up the impact of our strategy. Greenwarden doubles Teval's triggers, Ripples of Undeath guarantees one extra Zombie Druid each turn for the cost of one colorless mana and three life, and Craterhoof is exactly what you know it is.

If you'r bumping up your bracket, you've got your usual assortment of tutors and powerful interaction on the Game Changers list, but there are also a few other options as well.

All of these cards are powerful in a vacuum. That's why they're Game Changers. But since we're utilizing Steward of the Harvest in our list, why not go big? What if all our Zombie Druid tokens were Gaea's Cradles? Do we have stuff in the 99 to make use of all that mana? No, not really. But it's something you can add pretty easilypretty easily.

Archetype Change

Sultai Arisen is pretty much all-in when it comes to graveyard shenanigans, so any change in that archetype will result in pretty wholesale swaps in and out. But there are a few cards in the 99 that might push us in a particular direction.

Our man Kotis loves to cast creatures out of graveyards. Do you know what is really good at putting creatures into graveyards? Birthing PodBirthing Pod!

What if we decided to go ham with Kotis and his addiction to pod, and excised all the cards relevant to Teval?

This example is expressly in the Bracket 3 range, as we're foregoing any of your typical Birthing Pod combos as well as some really heavy hitters in that style of deck, like Palinchron. You're more than welcome to power up, though, if you so choose.

Monetary Value vs. MSRP

As of this writing, the monetary value of Sultai Arisen is hovering at around $177. That's a very respectable number, though much of that is wrapped up in the 10 new cards.

There's still plenty of value in the reprints, though. Here are the top five:

Not too shabby. Whether those prices hold remain to be seen, but any reprints that see their prices fall might be offset by new cards that can only be found here in Sultai Arisen.

Overall Rating

Sultai Arisen is a tough one to give an arbitrary rating to. It's packed full of excellent cards, but more reps are needed to see if the deck as a whole really gels together, or if there's too much going on at once. Either way, though, you'll have fun figuring it out. I'll give it a B+.

Will you be digging up a copy of Sultai Arisen?