The Sultai Arisen preconstructed deck from Magic: The Gathering’s Tarkir: Dragonstorm set is a graveyard-lover’s dream. This deck leans heavily into recursion, self-mill, and value generation from cards leaving the graveyard, making it a powerhouse for players who enjoy manipulating their discard pile as an extension of their hand. This graveyard-based play is what led me to pick up this deck, as I did not have a really graveyard-focused deck.
The deck offers two potential leaders: Kotis, Sibsig Champion and Teval, the Balanced Scale. Kotis allows you to cast creatures from your graveyard by exiling three cards, rewarding you with +1/+1 counters when those creatures enter the battlefield. Meanwhile, Teval mills cards when attacking, returns lands from the graveyard, and generates Zombie Druid tokens whenever cards leave your graveyard. While Kotis is solid, Teval feels like the stronger choice, offering consistent value and synergy with the deck’s land-based recursion.
Sultai Arisen thrives on filling the graveyard quickly and extracting maximum value from it. The deck includes several new cards that enhance this strategy, such as Floral Evoker, which has a landfall effect that synergises beautifully with Teval, and Will of the Sultai, which provides additional graveyard interaction. The deck also features powerful reprints like Cephalid Coliseum and Command Beacon, which can be sacrificed and later retrieved for extra utility.
There are a whole bunch of strengths in this deck, along with some cool new cards and excellent reprints. Some of the prominent strengths include:
- Graveyard Synergy: The deck is built around maximising graveyard interactions, making it a strong choice for players who enjoy recursion-based strategies. Even simple cards like Gravecrawler really feed the value engine at the core of this deck, because that single mana creature being cast from your graveyard also triggers Teval, creating a 2/2 Zombie Druid in addition to the cast creature.
- Land Recursion: Teval’s ability to return lands from the graveyard provides excellent ramp and sustainability. It also adds huge value to your fetch lands, letting you reuse them over and over thanks to this recursion.
- Token Generation: The deck creates Zombie Druid tokens consistently, giving it a secondary board presence. Also, they are untapped. That really increases their value.
I also really love the creatures with graveyard affinity, like Lord of Extinction and Consuming Aberration. Not only do they get bigger and bigger as graveyards grow, but they can also be sacrificed by Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord to cause massive damage across the whole table. I won a game the other night by sacrificing a bunch of creatures with Jarad before an opponent could take that final swing to finish me off. Good, close game, that!
Whilst the deck is definitely strong, there are some weaknesses in there. One is pretty obvious and largely unavoidable, whilst the other is more of a minor niggle:
- Graveyard Hate Vulnerability: Like most graveyard-focused decks, it struggles against effects like Bojuka Bog that exile graveyards. In one of my games, a well-timed Bojuka Bog really set me back, even if I did manage to recover and scrape a win.
- Kotis Requires Setup: While Kotis is powerful, he requires a well-stocked graveyard and careful resource management to function optimally.
All in all, Sultai Arisen is a well-designed, fun precon that offers a cool take on graveyard mechanics. While Kotis is a solid commander, Teval steals the show with its ability to generate value turn after turn. I could see myself looking to upgrade this deck in the future, as I really, really enjoy playing it and would love to see how it would play with just a little more refinement.
If you’re looking for MTG singles, please consider using our Big Orbit Cards affiliate link to find your cards whilst also supporting our site.
No Rerolls 
2 Comments