Villainous Wealth: Standard Sultai Kotis

Note: This article was translated from Chinese by AI and may contain errors. Read the original Chinese version.

Before We Start

Sultai was also a powerful color combination in the old Tarkir Standard. The Sidisi Whip deck, built around the self-milling, Zombie-making khan Sidisi, Brood Tyrant paired with Whip of Erebos, could build a board, dig up big creatures, and gain life all at once, and was very hard to deal with. In this timeline’s Tarkir, a new face, Kotis, the Fangkeeper, has become khan. His nature is completely different from the khan Sidisi, so what kind of Sultai deck can he be built into?

Card Analysis

Kotis, the Fangkeeper
Legendary Creature | Zombie Warrior
Indestructible
Whenever Kotis deals combat damage to a player, exile that many cards from the top of their library. You may cast any number of spells with mana value X or less from among them without paying their mana costs, where X is the amount of damage dealt.

Unlike Sidisi, Brood Tyrant, who mills herself to send out a Zombie army, Kotis, the Fangkeeper is a formidable crusader. He has built-in indestructible, and connecting with the opponent can net a big pile of resources. The only problem is that his body is too small: he is easily blocked by the opponent’s creatures, and the resources he can win when he does connect are limited. In this set’s limited, Kotis is positioned as a target for Sultai’s renew ability, pumping up his size and granting useful abilities. Can we just do the same in Standard?

Let’s look at the high-rarity renew cards. The mythic Rot-Curse Rakshasa doesn’t go the strengthening route, and its renew effect of disrupting the opponent is subtle, so let’s set it aside. Qarsi Revenant’s renew doesn’t add size, but the abilities are all quite useful, with lifelink, evasion, and deathtouch, and the creature itself is no slouch. Lasyd Prowler has a decent body and mills itself, and its renew that pumps by the number of lands in the graveyard looks like it could grow things a lot, but in actual testing it’s very unstable, and the creature itself has no particular advantage over other monsters at the same cost, so the verdict is pass. Naga Fleshcrafter is a Clone whose performance depends heavily on the board, with a lower floor than Lasyd Prowler. Looking it all over, only Qarsi Revenant is usable. The decklist is below:

Decklist

Among self-mill-based archetypes in Standard, the best fit for Kotis is probably still delirium. Other self-mill decks lean somewhat toward combo and don’t need a midrange creature like Kotis, while ordinary midrange lacks ways to grow him, so putting Kotis in there has no advantage to speak of beyond indestructible, which is pretty lame.

However, pumping size is exactly the strength of delirium’s Omnivorous Flytrap. Casually pump Kotis with it and a single punch creates a huge advantage. Osseous Sticktwister comes with lifelink and has a chance to hit directly once delirium is on, giving strong late-game recovery against aggro, and it is likewise a good target for Omnivorous Flytrap. Patchwork Beastie is everyone’s favorite one-mana self-mill friend, so I won’t belabor it here. Next is Qarsi Revenant mentioned earlier: the creature itself is a high-spec Vampire Nighthawk, and once in the graveyard, its renew ability can give Kotis and Omnivorous Flytrap flying, deathtouch, and lifelink, so the opponent can’t stall with ground creatures. Also, as extra firepower and a supplement to the types, I added two Kaito, Bane of Nightmares. Since he is an attacker with built-in hexproof, he too is a fine target for Omnivorous Flytrap and Qarsi Revenant.

Filling the graveyard is also Sultai’s bread and butter. By adding black, we get Awaken the Honored Dead and Quag Feast, two strong spells that are both removal and graveyard fillers, and together with green’s Seed of Hope and Dredger’s Insight, both the removal and the graveyard-filling efficiency beat those of a Gruul-based delirium deck.

As for the other spells, we use Bushwhack, which finds lands and doubles as removal, the delirium cost-reducing catch-all Drag to the Roots, plus one exile-based answer, Tear Asunder, as a supplement.

Gameplay Demo

The first two games in this video show the synergy of Kotis with Omnivorous Flytrap and Qarsi Revenant. In the first game, against Jeskai control, Kotis’s indestructible made the opponent’s removal useless. After Omnivorous Flytrap pumped it up, Kotis stole two Marang River Regent, one Rediscover the Way, one Stock Up, and one Three Steps Ahead in a single hit, and the opponent conceded on the spot. In the second game, although I didn’t draw Omnivorous Flytrap, Qarsi Revenant gave Kotis flying and lifelink, gaining life while stealing the opponent’s resources, and after two steals the opponent conceded. The last game was against red aggro while stuck on lands, but two Osseous Sticktwister gained plenty of life, and I still had 20-some life at the end.

Conclusion

Although the new set’s Sultai looks quite different in design from the old generation, both benefit from filling the graveyard and both rely on lifelink to turn the late game around, so in a sense it does carry on the spirit of the old Sultai. I also tried building around the renew theme, which was quite fun to play, but its power level doesn’t match delirium. The decklist is here for interested readers to try modifying on their own.