Sultai Arisen Precon: Decklist, Value, and Verdict

I’m never all that excited about “the graveyard deck” of the bunch, though I like that the “leaves the graveyard” effects make Sultai Arisen feel just distinct enough from past offerings. There aren’t enough of those cards to flesh out an entire theme yet, and they didn’t even include many of the best cards that work in this space. But if the archetype ever takes off, you’ll want cards from this deck. The commanders both seem solid with strong buildaround potential outside the precon, and the value’s a hit, so altogether this gets one undead nod of approval. Be warned though for in-pod play: Both the other black-aligned decks come equipped with a copy of Bojuka Bog.

Sultai Arisen is a grindy reanimation deck that weaves in tons of self-mill and other graveyard strategies. It plays around in the “leaves your graveyard” space that WotC’s been toying with for recent Limited sets, though that’s more of a “package of cards” or a sub-strategy than anything fully realized here. So yeah, it’s a Sultai graveyard value deck.

The lead commander is Kotis, Sibsig Champion, which lets you cast creatures from your graveyard by exiling a few extra cards, and it also grows over time as creatures enter from the graveyard. It’s kind of the conduit through which a lot of the deck’s action happens, while not being a centerpiece necessarily. Alternatively, there’s Teval, the Balanced Scale, which is more ramp -oriented and builds board presence via 2/2 creature tokens. I like Teval better as a card, and it might be the straight-up best commander in all of Tarkir: Dragonstorm, but a lot of this precon is built assuming you’ll have Kotis as the commander.

I’m going all in on returning creatures from the graveyard to the battlefield. It’s what the commander wants to do, and it provides a nice engine when you don’t have your commander out. If you’ve run into an Insidious Roots deck on the Arena Standard ladder, you kind of know what this does.

Draftsim's upgrade guide makes 19 changes to this deck. The first picks (hover for the card):

• Muldrotha, the Gravetide
• Syr Konrad, the Grim
• Havengul Lich
• The Master, Transcendent
• Araumi of the Dead Tide
• Chalk Outline

• Official Tarkir: Dragonstorm Commander decklists (Wizards of the Coast)
• All 13 Commander Precons Released in 2025, Ranked by A.L. Walser (December 19, 2025)
• All 6 Sultai Commander Precons in Magic Ranked by Trevor Galvin (August 14, 2026)
• The Best and Easy Way to Upgrade Your Preconstructed Commander Magic Deck by A.L. Walser (July 28, 2026)