Considering that two broken Izzet MTG decks were consecutively banned out of Standard, Izzet Lessons’ recent dominance was understandably scary. A staggering five players in the World Championships top eight were on Izzet decks, and the color combination ultimately won the tournament. This, in turn, had a huge impact on the secondary market, as players rushed to use the deck.
That said, from recent events, it appears that another deck from the MTG World Championships is the real problem lurking in the shadows. It’s still early days, but Sultai Reanimator shows signs of pulling ahead of the other Standard decks, and by the numbers, it makes a lot of sense.
The Real Broken MTG Standard Deck
Sultai Reanimator, played by Team Moriyama at the World Championships, is not a newcomer to Standard, but was outshone by Vivi Cauldron until Vivi Ornitier was forced to leave the premises. The deck revolves around the unintuitive combo of Superior Spider-Man and Bringer of the Last Gift. Essentially, these two cards allow you to cast a Living End for four mana. Reanimating a combination of Ardyn, The Usurper, Terror of the Peaks, and a wide variety of creatures that fill your graveyard is usually enough to end the game on the spot.
This deck, notably, attacks on an angle that all of the Izzet decks cannot really fight against. Because of the way that Izzet Lessons is built, the deck excels at keeping the game under control in a tempo-esque way. Reanimating a massive board of gigantic beaters in a single turn will generally give Izzet too many complex problems to solve, running the strategy over.
For this reason, it was made very clear during the World Championships that Sultai Reanimator was the worst matchup for the Monument to Endurance-powered Izzet Lessons decks. The only way that Izzet wins that matchup is if the Reanimator strategy has trouble functioning, which is ultimately what happened in the top eight.
Recent results, however, have made clear that this is not a very common occurrence for the Sultai Reanimator deck.
Signs of Dominance
We haven’t had a lot of tournaments since the World Championships concluded this past weekend, but there have been some clear metagame movements in that time. Firstly, Mono-Red temporarily rose up as a way to get under Izzet decks consistently, showing strong results earlier this week. As time passed, however, Sultai Reanimator began to become a noticeable outlier.
In the last two Standard Challenges on Magic Online, Sultai Reanimator decks have taken both first and second place. They weren’t just beating Izzet, either. The decks have bested a whole bunch of different strategies, including a Mono-White Control deck with four copies of Rest in Peace in the sideboard. Throw in an extremely dominant top 16 performance in the last Challenge, with the deck finishing 1st, 2nd, 8th, 10th, 11th, and 13th, and it certainly feels like Sultai is beginning to run away in the format.
That said, at the time of writing, the Standard format isn’t anywhere close to being solved. All kinds of different decks, including but not limited to the World Championship ones, are seeing lots of experimentation. Combo decks like Sultai Reanimator tend to perform very well in metas like this since you need a very specific suite of hate tools to fight it.
Sample Size is Extremely Small
While Sultai Reanimator being the frontrunner in post-Worlds Standard makes a lot of sense, it’s hardly a sure thing. The deck is only beginning to appear as an outlier as far as tournaments go, which means that there’s plenty of time for players to adjust.
Sadly, the angles of attack against Sultai Reanimator are incredibly slim, which means the deck will almost always have a massive advantage in game one. Traditional removal doesn’t do anything against this deck, and trying to get under it is a fool’s errand. Counterspells don’t even work out too well against Reanimator thanks to the presence of Cavern of Souls, searchable via Analyze the Pollen. Board wipes won’t buy time, either, since Sultai Reanimator can spend more time setting up a board that instantly wins the game.
The only ways to stop this deck are by attacking the graveyard or by attacking the soft spot that the combo offers. Soul-Guide Lantern can occasionally buy decks enough time to take out Sultai Reanimator before they fight through it. Alternatively, casing a card like Ancient Vendetta, naming Superior Spider-Man, is very difficult for the deck to come back from.
All of that said, Sultai Reanimator is already showing signs of being able to fight through targeted hate. If it ends up being a little too good at this, the deck could become a problem. Alternatively, there is a very real chance that Sultai Reanimator can switch into a midrange plan post-board, which would also make fighting against it very difficult.
At least it doesn’t appear that we’re going into another Izzet-dominated metagame, but if Sultai is really as strong as early results suggest, this might not be a great alternative.
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