In the current Standard environment, it’s natural to expect the vast majority of top performing decks in a tournament to be either Izzet Cauldron or mono-red aggro. If you’re playing another strategy, you need a strong gameplan against these two decks in order to compete.
Well, in a recent Standard Challenge, a brew not only made an appearance, but it made it all the way to the semifinals! This deck is fully capable of winning games by Milling out the opponent in exciting fashion, so if you’re looking for something unique to play at your next FNM or on the MTG Arena ladder, look no further.
Maximizing Icetill Explorer
Despite its interesting way of closing games, this deck’s engine mostly revolves around the power of Icetill Explorer. Even without any broken lands like Strip Mine to return over and over, Icetill Explorer is an incredible value generator.
Simply playing lands fuels your graveyard, which in turn will give you more lands to play. Find a copy of Fabled Passage, and you’ll have a huge mana advantage in no time. As a four-toughness creature, Icetill Explorer dodges a lot of top tier removal spells like Torch the Tower or Abrade.
To help accelerate towards Icetill Explorer, Llanowar Elves and Molt Tender both show up as four-ofs. Molt Tender doubles as a way to Mill yourself to further maximize Icetill Explorer.
From there, Quag Feast and Esper Origins also serve as mini Mill effects with upside. Of course, any copies of Esper Origins you Mill over with Icetill Explorer are fair game to Flashback and add to your board presence.
Closing Games
In the past, we’ve seen Sultai Icetill Explorer decks be much more creature heavy. That way, they could make use of Season of Loss as a win condition in the late game after using Icetill Explorer as a self-Mill tool.
This version of Sultai lands has a different way to close games. This becomes apparent when you notice a full playset of Singularity Rupture among the spells. Singularity Rupture is a bit of an inefficient board wipe, but the board wipe comes attached to Traumatize.
It’s not every day that you see a deck utilizing both Llanowar Elves and board wipes, but this shell is an exception. Once you gain a big mana advantage with Icetill Explorer, Llanowar Elves becomes much less important. If Icetill Explorer dies or your opponent creates an overwhelming board presence, Singularity Rupture threatens to reset everything and Mill a ton of cards from your opponent (and/or yourself, when necessary).
In multiples, Singularity Rupture becomes a real problem. Then, you can start activating Restless Reef as an additional way to Mill your opponent. Future copies of Icetill Explorer get to resurrect any copies of Restless Reef that die or get Milled over.
You won’t always need to rely on Singularity Rupture. Sometimes, beating down with Restless Reef and transformed copies of Esper Origins and using Quag Feast and Shoot the Sheriff to clear a path will get the job done. Nonetheless, it’s nice to have a unique avenue to victory when applicable.
A Fantastic Result
Overall, it’s promising to see such an off-the-wall strategy have major success in Standard. Izzet Cauldron and mono-red are elite archetypes that make brewing frustrating.
It really goes to show that Sultai presents a reasonable gameplan for these matchups. Versus Izzet Cauldron, your combination of removal and answers to Agatha’s Soul Cauldron, such as Disruptive Stormbrood and Insidious Fungus, goes a long way. We mentioned that Icetill Explorer dodges most damage-based removal. Well, the same is true for Restless Reef and a transformed Esper Origins, which makes it easier to close games.
Against mono-red, landing a quick Icetill Explorer and backing it up with removal is a great way to go about things. The life buffer from Esper Origins comes in handy, and Singularity Rupture is a great finisher.
Your array of removal and board wipes does not line up well against decks like Azorius control. Mistrise Village and Outrageous Robbery out of the sideboard do give a new angle of attack, at least, though battling against decks with lots of counter magic is still difficult.
With Standard’s metagame so condensed, though, playing a deck like this that focuses its attention heavily towards Izzet Cauldron and mono-red has its merits. We can’t deny the deck’s success, and we look forward to seeing if it picks up steam.
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