The 21 Best Sultai Creatures in Magic Ranked

Muldrotha, the Gravetide | Illustration by Kera

Three-color creatures boast unique and powerful abilities that come from the confluence of their three colors. These abilities often make them excellent commanders, but even nonlegendary creatures can be made more powerful with unique abilities.

The Sultai () wedge encompasses black, green, and blue for a cunning combination that often cares about the graveyard, especially when creatures are involved. You could think of them as opportunistic recyclers.

Which Sultai creatures are the best? Let’s find out together!

What Are Sultai Creatures in MTG?

Yarok, the Desecrated | Illustration by Cacho Rubione

Sultai () creatures have a black, green, and blue color identity, often because all three colors are present in their mana cost, but they can get the color identity from their rules text as well. These creatures typically care about the graveyard and/or creatures in some fashion: Maybe they cast spells from the graveyard or reward you for filling the graveyard, maybe they recur cards. However it works, creatures and the graveyard are fundamental to making these cards tick.

Many Sultai creatures are legendary creatures designed as commanders, but our visits to Tarkir have provided excellent, nonlegendary creatures worth examining.

#21. Sultai Soothsayer

Though Sultai Soothsayer costs too much for all but the most casual Cubes and Commander decks, it has exceptional potential. With the right graveyard synergies, drawing one card and milling three is practically drawing four cards. It isn’t a bad two-for-one when you get a decently statted creature and the best card out of four, either.

#20. Kadena, Slinking Sorcerer

Kadena, Slinking Sorcerer has made its name as a powerful morph commander because it just… breaks the mechanic? Wizards tends to reward minor mechanics with commanders that just make it free or generically doubles the output. Though not stellar, you can’t argue that Kadena isn’t the best morph commander because you get a free morph plus a card every turn. The only reason this creature isn’t cracked is because there are approximately three playable morph creatures.

#19. Zaxara, the Exemplary

Zaxara, the Exemplary puts an emphasis on the green aspect of Sultai as a mana dork that produces giant tokens. This serves as a generic battlecruiser commander that focuses on X-spells rather than large creatures or a hydra commander if you really want to lean into green. Putting ramp in the command zone lends the deck excellent consistency, which makes Zaxara a great starter commander.

#18. Zimone and Dina

Zimone and Dina really wants you to play around landfall. Landfall rewards you for activating the tap ability and tokens are a common outcome of the mechanic (see: Scute Swarm, Springheart Nantuko), which fuel the sacrifice ability. It’s a great card to enable sacrifice strategies in Cube, too; as much as Sultai loves the graveyard, surprisingly few of these creatures directly enable or reward aristocrat strategies.

#17. Teval, Arbiter of Virtue

Cost reduction is broken, hands down. Cards are given their mana costs for a reason, and circumventing that throws the game off-balance. That said, Teval, Arbiter of Virtue does a reasonable job to balance giving your spells delve by making you lose life. The more you exploit delve, the easier it becomes for your opponents to race you. It’s an intriguing build around in Cube especially, where you don’t have endless life to toy with.

#16. Sidisi, Brood Tyrant

Sidisi, Brood Tyrant is a classic Sultai commander that floods the board with Zombie tokens as you mill yourself. These are the perfect colors to exploit token synergies and zombie typal support, like Lost Monarch of Ifnir. It’s quite easy to mill yourself; you can even take a combo-oriented approach with cards like Altar of the Brood and Snarling Gorehound to convert a few tokens into many tokens.

#15. Felix Five-Boots

Felix Five-Boots offers a very simple yet compelling ability to midrange decks. It takes already-powerful cards like Toski, Bearer of Secrets and Fallen Shinobi to new heights, but it’s annoying to remove because so much of your power is wrapped up in those other permanents. Fun fact: Magic has exactly five Sultai-approved equipment with “Boots” in the name to make this commander’s name a reality:

• Lavaspur Boots
• Swiftfoot Boots
• Trailblazer's Boots
• Winged Boots
• Zephyr Boots

#14. Fangkeeper’s Familiar

Who doesn’t love a charm stapled to a body? Fangkeeper's Familiar is Mystic Snake with a glow-up: more abilities, more power, more options. The surveil 3 option is particularly enticing; it fuels graveyard synergies and gives you a useful mode when this acts as an Ambush Viper.

#13. Kotis, the Fangkeeper

Kotis, the Fangkeeper is one of the strongest theft commanders because it isn’t all-in on theft. Voltron pieces like equipment and auras are necessary, and they get around the great weakness of theft strategies: When a player leaves the game, all cards they own go with them. Killing players removes resources from the theft deck, but Kotis sidesteps this. Even when players leave, you can ride your massive, indestructible zombie to victory.

#12. The Mimeoplasm

The Mimeoplasm is a very generic commander, but that works in its favor. As power creep pushes creatures further and further, this has more potential, more insane text boxes to steal. Five mana is a lot these days, but green ramps harder than ever, so it balances out. Don’t expect this card to compete in your next cEDH tournament, but it’s great in casual play.

#11. Kheru Goldkeeper

Wizards has greatly deepened an archetype that revolves around cards that leave your graveyard, and Kheru Goldkeeper is one of its strongest payoffs. Getting Treasure for taking random game actions like playing fetch lands off Crucible of Worlds or casting spells with flashback adds up over the course of a game. It also enables an infinite loop: This, Tortured Existence, and a few creatures cycle infinitely for cards like Syr Konrad, the Grim and Teval, the Balanced Scale.

#10. Tasigur, the Golden Fang

One of my absolute favorite Cube cards of all time, Tasigur, the Golden Fang is the poster child for delve. It’s often a 1- or 2-mana 4/5, which are incredible stats, and it draws more cards! The activated ability is a fun little subgame: Delve provides slight control over what’s left in the graveyard and your opponents can’t give you lands, so you always get something. It feels like casting Fact or Fiction over and over.

#9. Lotuslight Dancers

Sultai decks love to put cards in the graveyard, often randomly, via self-mill. Lotuslight Dancers is much stronger because it tutors your cards straight to the bin. This is a combo piece and enabler, and it’s really easy to get multiple triggers off since it’s just an enters ability. It’s a pretty pricey card, but a deck built around it can turn casting it into a win.

#8. Sin, Spira’s Punishment

Since Sin, Spira's Punishment makes token copies of permanents rather than just reanimating them, you can exploit token doublers like Doubling Season to further your board. Entomb effects are your best friend here, either to set up Spira or to get it in the bin to reanimate: Any creature that immediately nets at least one card can be worth reanimating.

#7. Yarok, the Desecrated

Yarok, the Desecrated decks go in one of two directions, landfall or flicker, because it’s a generic support piece for both archetypes. Panharmonicon on a stick isn’t the most interesting commander, but it puts in good work and could be a great blank canvas to just play your favorite Limited uncommons.

#6. The Master, Transcendent

The Master, Transcendent can reanimate your threats for 0 mana, but they’re small and they must have been milled that turn. The mill requirement means you can’t just Entomb your Archon of Cruelty; there’s a game of chance afoot. These colors are great at untapping creatures with cards like Intruder Alarm and Aphetto Alchemist, so you can often get multiple threats out in a single turn cycle—provided you mill enough cards.

#5. Glarb, Calamity’s Augur

Glarb, Calamity's Augur is powerful because it asks virtually nothing of you. It’s a card advantage engine whose only requirement is that you play lands and moderately expensive spells, in colors that excel at ramping. It’s very hard to whiff on Glarb since the surveil ability clears chaff from your deck while it enables graveyard synergies! Glarb is a deceptively powerful commander.

#4. The Wise Mothman

The Wise Mothman has fast become a top Sultai commander, which I attribute to its flexibility. You can build around self-mill or regular mill or +1/+1 counters or some amalgam of all the above. It’s infinitely customizable, which makes it a great, flexible commander that distributes lots of power for very little investment. It’s even a great support piece or Cube build around; cards with little direction go in many places.

#3. Muldrotha, the Gravetide

Muldrotha, the Gravetide long reigned as the most popular Sultai commander, though it was dethroned. Still, it’s a perfectly respectable commander and perhaps the best embodiment of what Sultai does: It cares about the graveyard, and it uses that zone as a resource to slug it out in grindy midrange games. Muldrotha isn’t the most popular or the strongest Sultai creature, but it might be the perfect one.

#2. Teval, the Balanced Scale

Teval, the Balanced Scale is the commander for Sultai or the archetype that cares about cards that leave your graveyard. It’s just busted. It ramps, produces bodies, and fills your graveyard. The only thing that holds it back from being totally busted is an enters ability. If you want to build a graveyard value pile with a relatively cheap commander, Teval’s your card.

#1. Leovold, Emissary of Trest

Drawing cards is one of the best game actions in Magic, so stopping your opponents from drawing is equally potent. Leovold, Emissary of Trest inhibits card draw, and often gets played as a combo with wheels like Timetwister: You draw seven cards and your opponents are reduced to one card in hand, which often feels like Mind Twist. If all that weren’t enough, you’ll draw a card when your opponent kills Leovold because… balance, right?

Wrap Up

Sultai Soothsayer | Illustration by Cynthia Sheppard

Sultai () creatures and the graveyard are deeply intertwined, though a few Sultai creatures embrace the stack or combat. Whether you want to raise a zombie army or turn the graveyard into your hand, there’s a Sultai creature to support that.

What’s your favorite Sultai creature? Is this your favorite wedge, or do you prefer another one? Let me know in the comments below or on the Draftsim Discord!

Stay safe, and thanks for reading!