Felix Five-Boots | Illustration by Chris Rahn
Hello planeswalkers! MTG can be a wonderful escape into fantasy. A chance to explore different emotions than your day-to-day ones. Today though, I’m feeling merciless. MTG often doesn’t get much more callous than in the most popular format, Commander.
There are over 100 Commander precons, and all of them have unique playstyles, advantages, and color identities. With so many options and combinations, it’s beneficial to understand how certain color identities play. Let’s take a focused look at one color combination, Sultai () Commander precons.
What Are Sultai Commander Precons?
Kadena, Slinking Sorcerer | Illustration by Caio Monteiro
Sultai Commander precons have a color identity of black, blue, and green. They often have flavor associated with the plane of Tarkir and have a strong presence in graveyard and sacrifice strategies.
Commander precons are a non-random set of cards in a deck that are preconstructed and sold as a single product. These decks are formatted for Commander and include a face commander and backup commanders to lead the deck. They’re built around themes, color synergies, and certain color-specific playstyles. Commander precons are considered a Bracket 2 deck and form a baseline for judging other decks.
#6. Devour for Power
No products found.Deck Theme
No products found. is about graveyards, but not necessarily recursion. It uses filling graveyards to trigger effects, strengthen graveyards-matter cards, or to copy massive creature cards. Through removal, discard, and mill, you can fill graveyards and use this additional resource for massive value.
Commanders
The Mimeoplasm gives this deck its Devour for Power name. This Sultai commander lets you take two creature cards from any graveyard to create a large, effective commander. So, cheaply ditch your expensive bomb creatures, or remove your opponents’ biggest threats, and devour them for strength with The Mimeoplasm.
Both of the alternative commanders fit a slightly different theme, but can be deadly in their own right. Damia, Sage of Stone is a quite expensive commander, but the upside of having seven cards in your hand every turn is insane. Vorosh, the Hunter is also a bit expensive, intending to knock players out with commander damage.
Strengths and Weaknesses
Like many black and Sultai () decks, a huge advantage of this precon is that it uses the graveyard as an additional resource. That adds so much value in not worrying about removal, ditching expensive cards to use later, or in graveyard triggers. Where this deck differs from many reanimation decks is that it can benefit from cards in any graveyards. This gives an even bigger resource and advantage.
Notable Cards
Following the strategy of this precon, you want to fill graveyards with cards like Dreamborn Muse, control the board with cards like Avatar of Woe, and reanimate or “devour” cards like Scythe Specter.
Some other notable cards are the two lhurgoyfs (actual Lhurgoyf and Mortivore), Skullbriar, the Walking Grave, and Buried Alive.
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#5. Faceless Menace
No products found.Deck Theme
It’s mighty morphing Kadena! Not quite how it goes, but No products found. focuses on the morph mechanic. The morph and megamorph mechanics give this deck deception and surprise when deciding when and how to flip cards. The effects and interactions of the morph abilities create uncertainty for opponents while providing significant advantages for the player.
Commanders
Kadena, Slinking Sorcerer leads this Sultai precon. The static ability of reducing your first morph cast each turn by 3 gives you a free morph play and frees up mana for casting more cards or laying traps with your morph interactions. On top of this wonderful use of mana, you get a cantrip every time a face-down creature ETBs.
Rayami, First of the Fallen and Volrath, the Shapestealer don’t quite fit the morph theme, but they both provide interesting interactions. Rayami can use the morph ability to cover keywords that it wants to copy from creatures whenever they're killed, creating a sort of keyword Voltron commander. Volrath is more of a “stealing what an opponent has” kind of Commander.
Strengths and Weaknesses
The strengths of this precon come from the static and triggered abilities of Kadena, and the versatility and surprise of morph interactions. You want this commander on the battlefield as soon and as often as possible to accelerate card draw and free up mana. With some morph cards on the battlefield, you can then control the pace of games with tricky interactions.
The weaknesses come from having small morph creatures and the possibility of being overly mana-burdened. You would absolutely hate to see a card like Toxic Deluge just wipe out all your morph creatures you’ve established face down. You also have to set up a good mana base or have casting cost reduction for this deck to stay competitive.
Notable Cards
Megamorph cards like Stratus Dancer and Silumgar Assassin are the kinds of interactions you will love springing on opponents. Deathmist Raptor has wonderful recursion with your morph abilities, and Ixidron is a stellar card for getting more value from your morph cards again.
Vraska the Unseen is a wild planeswalker if you can get to its final loyalty ability. Sudden Substitution and Chromeshell Crab are fantastic ways to trade out used morph creatures that don’t carry much future value. The enchantments Gift of Doom, Secret Plans, and Trail of Mystery all provide wonderful support for this morph deck.
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#4. Grand Larceny
Deck Theme
Grand Larceny cares about dealing combat damage to opponents. Now, this may sound obvious, but the combat damage leads to a ton of advantages. This deck focuses on stealing cards from opponents to use against them. There are a ton of card-exiling effects and strategies for cheapening the cost of cards from exile. The more creatures you deal combat damage with, the greater your advantages become.
Commanders
Gonti, Canny Acquisitor is this precon’s intended commander. Gonti has a great combat damage trigger to exile cards from the top of opponents’ decks. It then cheapens the cost of playing these and any other cards you don’t own. You don’t even have to put Gonti into combat to achieve this stealing effect.
There are a ton of alternative commanders in this deck, including a partner pair. We’ll start with the backup commander I think fits the theme the best. Felix Five-Boots is a combat trigger doubling engine. As your commander, this card greatly increases all the card-drawing and card-stealing effects you trigger from combat damage.
Ukkima, Stalking Shadow and Cazur, Ruthless Stalker work as Sultai partner commanders. Together, they focus on the unblockable and elusive creatures successfully dealing combat damage to opponents. And finally, The Mimeoplasm focuses on mimicking large creatures from any graveyard, which is good but doesn’t quite fit the theme of the deck.
Strengths and Weaknesses
Overall, this is a well-designed deck whose strengths come from its curve and using alternative resources. This precon has a nice pace with small, elusive creatures at the beginning to help trigger the combat damage synergies later. These triggers open up your play style as you steal some of your opponents’ cards. Playing even one decent card exiled from another player’s library gives you superb resources and card advantage.
One major weakness of this deck is its reliance on stealing cards from opponents. While this is often a fun and effective strategy, you may fall behind if you don’t steal powerful cards. There are many cards to reduce casting costs, but a taxing card like Ghostly Prison could also greatly hamper the strategy of this deck.
Notable Cards
The key to this precon is to use elusive creatures like Slither Blade and benefit from player combat damage with Gonti or cards like Ohran Frostfang. To add to this combat damage strategy, big theft cards like Brainstealer Dragon add huge upsides.
Creatures aren’t the only notable cards in this deck. Heartless Conscription and Mind's Dilation are massive spells that steal many cards.
- WHAT’S THEIRS IS YOURS—Steal cards from your friends, then defeat them with all the shiny spells you’ve stolen with this Black-Green-Blue deck that’s ready-to-play right out of the box
- EPIC MULTIPLAYER BATTLES—Commander is a multiplayer way to play Magic, an epic, free-for-all battle full of strategic plays and social intrigue
- INTRODUCES 10 COMMANDER CARDS—This deck introduces 10 never-before-seen Commander cards to Magic: The Gathering, including 2 foil Legendary Creature cards (one of which is Borderless.)
- COLLECT SPECIAL TREATMENT CARDS—Each deck also comes with a 2-card Collector Booster Sample Pack containing 2 alt-border cards from the Outlaws of Thunder Junction set, including 1 Rare or Mythic Rare and at least 1 Traditional Foil card
- CONTENTS—1 ready-to-play Grand Larceny Outlaws of Thunder Junction Commander Deck, a 2-card Collector Booster Sample Pack, 10 double-sided tokens, 1 life tracker, and 1 deck box
#3. Sultai Arisen
Deck Theme
Sultai Arisen cares about the recursion and reanimation from your graveyard. Fill up your graveyard, get cards out of your graveyard, and profit, as the kids say. Built around the self-mill and graveyard-leaving triggers of the commander, Teval, the Balanced Scale, you can create many strategies and synergies that don’t require much interaction with other players.
Commanders
Teval, the Balanced Scale is the main commander and provides a solid self-mill and ramp mix, as well as a way to make an army of Zombie Druid tokens. With so many recursion effects in this deck, you don’t have to attack with Teval for it to be effective, but if it can attack freely, that just adds to its value. With a reasonable mana value, triggered creature-token creation, and land ramp, this Sultai commander is a prime choice to lead a graveyard recursion deck.
The other commanders are Kotis, Sibsig Champion and Tasigur, the Golden Fang. Kotis fits as the commander of this graveyard-recursion theme perfectly as it provides a way to recur creatures and becomes a large threat itself. Tasigur provides an interesting wrinkle in a graveyard deck. An opponent gets to choose what you recur, which leads to a lot of politicking.
Strengths and Weaknesses
The strengths of this precon are around the graveyard. Using the graveyard as another resource and being able to recur lands and creatures is a huge resource advantage. Another advantage of this strategy is that it requires minimal interaction with opponents. Dodge graveyard hate, and you'll be set to do your own thing at your own leisure.
The obvious weakness would be the graveyard hate I mentioned above. A stax card like Endurance can greatly lessen the strength of this deck. This precon might also struggle against quick noncreature strategies, such as spellslinger decks. You have to build a mana base and fill your graveyard, and aggro decks can take advantage of that.
Notable Cards
Once you’ve ramped a bit, large and powerful creatures are the aim. For killer creature recursion, you have Colossal Grave-Reaver, and, with full graveyards, Lord of Extinction becomes a massive problem for opponents.
This deck mostly focuses on creatures and their recursion, especially with cards like Meren of Clan Nel Toth. But don’t sleep on wonderful noncreature cards in this deck like Conduit of Worlds and Life from the Loam.
- FIGHT DRAGONS WITH DRAGONS—Return to Tarkir for an epic battle between dragons and clans; discover which clan fits your playstyle with distinct three-color gameplay, and add draconic power to your collection
- GROW BACK FROM BEYOND—Ally with the Sultai to fill your graveyard and return with zombie druids with this Black-Green-Blue Commander deck
- 2 FOIL BORDERLESS COMMANDERS—Command your army with the Mythic Spirit Dragon, Teval, or Kotis, leader of the Sultai clan; every Tarkir: Dragonstorm Commander Deck includes 2 Traditional Foil Legendary Creature cards featuring gorgeous Borderless art
- BATTLE ALONGSIDE YOUR CLAN—Adept at transforming challenge into opportunity, the Sultai cultivate sprawling land into farms and cities. Not even death can stop them, as their powerful necromancers raise the honored dead to continue leading and serving.
- INTRODUCES 10 COMMANDER CARDS—Each deck introduces 10 never-before-seen Commander cards to Magic: The Gathering
#2. Mutant Menace
Deck Theme
Mutant Menace is a slightly new take on a proliferation deck. It, of course, has an aim of proliferating +1/+1 counters to greatly grow your creatures, but this Fallout deck also has rad counters. This adds a two-dimensional ticking clock on your opponents. They take damage for each nonland card milled with the rad counters.
Commanders
Our main commander for this deck is The Wise Mothman. This commander focuses on adding rad counters to your opponents and converting the nonland milled cards into +1/+1 counters for your creatures. With an achievable casting cost and a chance to grant counters to your creatures on each of your opponent’s turns, The Wise Mothman is a great leader for this strategy.
This precon only has one alternate commander: The Master, Transcendent. It focuses on what enters the graveyard from mill effects instead of counters. If the right cards get milled by opponents, you may steal them for some crazy mutant shenanigans.
Strengths and Weaknesses
The strength of this deck comes from the separate but effective battlefield and deck strategies. Proliferation of +1/+1 counters apply pressure on opponents by making even your small creatures turn into threats. On top of this threat, you can mill and ping your opponents with rad counters, and gain great advantages from interactions from the milling effects.
To keep up with the strategies above, you always need some creatures with counters and opponents with rad counters. This makes the deck highly susceptible to removal and strategies that limit interaction. While this deck has many ways to give rad counters, the unfortunate thing is rad counters eliminate themselves if not replenished or proliferated.
Notable Cards
To focus on the +1/+1 and rad counter strategies, you will need great cards like Lily Bowen, Raging Grandma, and Screeching Scorchbeast. To facilitate these strategies or change a negative effect into positive, you need cards like Winding Constrictor and Strong, the Brutish Thespian respectively.
Noncreature cards like Radstorm and Inexorable Tide will greatly help your proliferation strategy and anchor this precon deck.
- THE VAULTS ARE OPEN—Journey through the wastes with a 100-card deck introducing 41 never-before-seen Magic cards featuring fan-favorite characters, thematic game mechanics, and art that explores the post-nuclear world of the Fallout series
- BATTLE YOUR FELLOW WASTELANDERS—Battle your friends in epic 3–5 player MTG games full of strategic plays and social intrigue; ready-to-play right out of the box, these preconstructed decks let you jump straight into the action
- MUTANT MENACE—Choose the Mutant Menace deck to place your belief in The Wise Mothman and prove that humanity’s time at the top of the food chain is over
- COLLECT SPECIAL FALLOUT CARD TREATMENTS—Each deck comes with a Collector Booster Sample pack containing 2 special alt-frame cards, including 1 Rare or Mythic Rare card
- EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO PLAY AND MORE—Each deck also comes with 10 double-sided tokens, 1 life tracker, 1 strategy guide, and 1 deck box (can hold 100 sleeved cards)
#1. Enhanced Evolution
No products found.Deck Theme
The theme of No products found. is mutate, and the massive benefits that come from the large number of triggers the mechanic offers. From hydras to superb elusive creatures, the aim is to mutate great creatures into even better ones. Place the mutated creatures on top or below, but just fill the board with non-human creatures to mutate and extract all the value from.
Commanders
Otrimi, the Ever-Playful Is this precon’s main commander for its focus on recurring creatures with mutate. Whenever Otrimi mutates, you can recur another creature with mutate. This works as protection against mass and targeted removal of your valuable mutate creatures. With so many mutate triggers and the ability to bring these creatures back, you should get so much value out of all of your cards.
Zaxara, the Exemplary can be used as a backup commander that focuses on the half dozen cards with X in their cost. This card provides decent non-human creature token generation for you to often have a mutate target available.
Similarly to Grand Larceny above, Ukkima, Stalking Shadow and Cazur, Ruthless Stalker can be your partner commanders. Their focus on evasion shines once Ukkima is mutated a few times.
Strengths and Weaknesses
This precon’s strengths and weaknesses are quite straightforward. If you can mutate a creature a few times, you’ll be rolling in so many triggers and advantages. With plenty of elusive and large creature potential, mutated creatures provide tremendous effects and pose combat threats to opponents.
The greatest weakness here has to be the large investment in a single “card”. To get some of the monstrous cascading effects of mutate, you need to put a lot of mana and cards into one target. Navigating removal and interactions is crucial for success.
Notable Cards
There are many mutate cards and effects to love here, but one that takes this deck over the top comes from Auspicious Starrix.
For some base creatures to mutate, it’s hard to go wrong with creatures like Hungering Hydra and Predator Ooze. And to limit combat to just your monstrous mutated creature, there's a card like Silent Arbiter.
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Commanding Conclusion
The Mimeoplasm | Illustration by Svetlin Velinov
I hope you enjoyed the breakdown of Sultai Commander precons! If this isn’t your color combination of choice, you can compare it to other color combination precon breakdowns on Draftsim.com. If it is your color, feel free to leave a comment, telling me what I got right or wrong (always be kind). Precons are a great way for new and old players to dip their toes into different color combinations or get ideas for their next builds.
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