All 26 Sultai Commanders in Magic Ranked

Last updated on July 4, 2024

Muldrotha, the Gravetide | Illustration by Jason Rainville

Choosing what color or color combo you use can be a difficult first step into the sea that is the Commander format. Even once you’ve chosen a color, picking from the vast array of viable and unique legendary creatures to be your commander isn’t exactly an easy step.

So I’ve got another ranking of some of the best tri-color commanders in Magic, this time focusing on the Sultai combination of green, blue, and black. Blue and black are two of the most powerful colors in Commander, so you have a lot to look forward to and expect from these commanders. I also have a sample Sultai EDH decklist for your inspiration and help get your brain turned on.

Let’s get into it!

Why Go with a Sultai Commander?

Tasigur, the Golden Fang | Illustration by Chris Rahn

Sultai offers a lot of diversity in playstyle and theme across all the viable commanders. This color combo can confidently support commander's mill themes, sacrifice decks, any sort of graveyard strategy, pod and Food Chain combo lists, landfall decks, and even mutate creature-based strategies.

This diversity makes the Sultai colors a great place to look if you’re not set on a strategy for your Commander deck yet. Most Sultai commanders support different tactics and open up an expansive variety of different strategies.

#26. Brokkos, Apex of Forever

Brokkos, Apex of Forever gives us a commander that comes back from the graveyard time and time again. It’s a straight-forward commander that wants to hit the bin and mutate out of the graveyard as often as possible to get a bunch of value. This commander is quite hard to remove since the opponents need to exile it or you can just recast it.

For your Brokkos deck, you’ll need non-human creatures to mutate it onto from the graveyard. Slither Blade is a powerful option because it makes your commander unblockable for some Voltron action. You can also use some of the mutate-matters cards from Ikoria like Pollywog Symbiote and Essence Symbiote for extra value.

Secrets of the Dead grants card draw while benefiting from other graveyard synergies. Cards like Prized Amalgam and Nether Traitor give you some creatures with each iteration and provide bodies that Brokkos can mutate onto.

You can’t rely on your opponents to kill Brokkos, so you’ll need a few ways to get it into the yard yourself. Ashnod's Altar and Phyrexian Altar give you some outlets to generate mana, while you can use Altar of Dementia to stock your graveyard for additional value. Greater Good and Disciple of Bolas give you some ways to chuck Brokkos into the graveyard for card draw before bringing it back.

#25. Rayami, First of the Fallen

Rayami, First of the Fallen gives Sultai an aristocrats-Voltron commander that promises lots of fun. This vampire is the definition of keyword soup, and the general gameplan is to stack as many keywords as possible to make this an unbeatable monster in combat.

You need plenty of creatures with keyword abilities. Nabbing a few keywords from your opponents’ creatures is nice, but it’s unreliable. Creatures like Nightveil Predator and Wilson, Refined Grizzly give you tons of keywords on a single card. Stonecoil Serpent is especially strong since you can cast it for 0 and it dies for free.

You need to prioritize specific keywords over others. Protective keywords are especially important. Gladecover Scout and Slippery Bogle are good choices for hexproof while gods like Kefnet the Mindful and Rhonas the Indomitable give you that all important indestructible. Evasion is also super important; thankfully, there are plenty of fliers with additional keywords like Gurmag Swiftwing and Vampire Nighthawk. Glissa Sunslayer also has a nasty combination of keywords.

You also need plenty of ways to kill your creatures. You’ll want to reach for sacrifice outlets to get the job done. Village Rites and Deadly Dispute turn your creatures into more cards. You could also use cards like Neoform and Diabolic Intent to get specific creatures from your deck.

A win condition is also useful, with infect being an easy choice. It isn’t listed among the keywords Rayami steals, but there are plenty of cards like Glistening Oil and Grafted Exoskeleton that give it to your commander. Infect and double strike make for a lethal combination.

#24. Vorosh, the Hunter

Vorosh, the Hunter is another option for a Sultai Voltron commander that comes with the purest form of the strategy: make your evasive commander big. Vorosh can grow itself to lethal power in a couple of attacks thanks to its ability.

The first thing this deck needs is counter synergies. Cards like Kami of Whispered Hopes and Hardened Scales net you extra counters across all your creatures, but especially Vorosh. You can distribute those counters with cards like Nissa, Voice of Zendikar and Rishkar, Peema Renegade. You want to build out a board that’s threatening even without a lethal Vorosh.

Evasion is another important piece of the puzzle, with equipment like Sword of Feast and Famine and Sword of Fire and Ice being great choices. F&F gets the nod for giving you extra mana to use on Voroth’s ability. Herald of Secret Streams is also a big winner here since it helps your entire team slip through for lots of damage.

#23. Henry Wu, InGen Geneticist

Henry Wu, InGen Geneticist is an interesting commander and a great flavor win, as a human that exploits non-human creatures (dinosaurs). It suffers from a strange problem: Henry gives benefits for humans exploiting other non-human creatures in Sultai colors. This leads to a somewhat powerful but limited engine in scope, and there are better options for the aristocrats archetype.

You have some interesting interactions with cards like Ophiomancer, which is a human and makes disposable snakes that you can exploit for cards later, or with some aristocrats staples that also put humans on board, like Bastion of Remembrance and Zulaport Cutthroat. It’s a weird mix that can draw you a bunch of cards and give you many death triggers, but I’m not sure what the endgame here is. Maybe some blue and green cards that get better when you draw more cards like Lorescale Coatl and Nadir Kraken.

#22. Nashi, Moon's Legacy

Nashi, Moon's Legacy has a lot of great things going on, the biggest granting a second use out of your rats and legendaries. Menace and ward help it attack safely.

It's exciting to copy legendary spells like Isildur's Fateful Strike, Kamahl's Druidic Vow, and Teferi's Ageless Insight, in addition to the vast collection of legendary creature options that are rampant in Commander.

#21. Otrimi, the Ever-Playful

Another mutate commander, Otrimi, the Ever-Playful cares much more about creatures with mutate than Brokkos does. Otrimi is distinct from Brokkos, even if both care about the graveyard. You’re looking to extract all the mutate value you can from this playful monster!

Of course, that starts with a bunch of mutate creatures. You can draw on Pouncing Shoreshark and Sawtusk Demolisher for some board control. Auspicious Starrix and Dreamtail Heron can give you some card advantage while Boneyard Lurker helps get Otrimi back from the graveyard if it eats a removal spell.

Evasive creatures like the ones we saw with Brokkos are even more valuable with Otrimi since it really wants to deal commander damage. Slither Blade is still a great option, as are Gudul Lurker and Silhana Ledgewalker. Blighted Agent gives you evasion and adds some spice to the board.

#20. Indominus Rex, Alpha

Indominus Rex, Alpha is an efficiently costed 6/6 beater and an upgraded rummage card. The fun part will be to pick which creatures and abilities you can include, maybe some with defender since that won't get carried over. Just don’t expect to find many blue, black or green creatures with double strike. Some favorite options are Gurmag Swiftwing, Kefnet the Mindful, and Questing Beast.

With a substantial casting cost, rather than go Voltron with the indominus dino, this Sultai deck could lean into the payoffs for putting creatures into the graveyard. Whichever way you choose, the quality of creatures in this deck will likely be pretty high, so have fun, and remember to double check if the abilities you're looking to include actually show up in this dino's textbox.

#19. Xavier Sal, Infested Captain

Proliferate and build an army of creature tokens. Xavier Sal, Infested Captain has two straightforward activated abilities and either one is feasible to build around. Good old Kiora's Follower and similar untap effects will maximize the value you get out of every +1/+1 counter and creature token. Some of the oozes will give you both counters and tokens if you’re looking to go beyond the birds, saprolings, and zombies.

#18. Volrath, the Shapestealer

Who said you needed to include your own win conditions in Commander? As one of the best shapeshifters in Magic, Volrath, the Shapestealer copies your opponents’ best creatures to beat them at their own game. It’s always going to be bigger since it becomes a 7/5 and shrinks the opposing creature. Volrath gives you lots of options since every game is a little different depending on what you can mimic.

You’re going to want plenty of -1/-1 counter synergies, since those are the only counters you really want to be giving your opponents. You can spread them around easily with cards like Toxrill, the Corrosive and Obelisk Spider. Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons and Blowfly Infestation give you some additional value from distributing these counters.

You’re also happy to spread some +1/+1 counters across your team so you can copy those creatures. Getting to hit your opponent with two Cold-Eyed Selkies (one of which deals commander damage) lets you see plenty of cards. You can also copy evasive creatures if you feel like going for another Voltron strategy.

The final piece to this puzzle is proliferate cards. These work great with the +1/+1 counters you put on your creatures and the -1/-1 counters you give your opponents. All Will Be One gave us some excellent options like Experimental Augury and Unnatural Restoration, but you can also use some of the classics like Contagion Engine and Inexorable Tide.

#17. Felix Five-Boots

Felix Five-Boots is the ultimate saboteur commander (creatures with abilities that trigger when they deal combat damage to a player), doubling that type of trigger. It’s in the right colors for this mission since saboteur creatures are usually in Dimir (). Ninjas thrive on damaging other players – Ninja of the Deep Hours, Mist-Syndicate Naga, Okiba-Gang Shinobi, the list goes on.

We’ve got great cards for this archetype printed recently in Psychic Frog, The Key to the Vault, and Trash the Town, and you can play any sword equipment too, like Sword of Fire and Ice or Sword of Forge and Frontier.

Among cards that give the saboteur ability to every creature you have Edric, Spymaster of Trest and Coastal Piracy. Necropolis Regent is a good card to have by these saboteurs since your army can get big quickly. Other interesting cards to add to this deck are ways to grant mass evasion like Sleep or Open into Wonder. 

#16. Kadena, Slinking Sorcerer

Kadena, Slinking Sorcerer lets creatures morph for less (which is usually the entirety of the cost) while generating card advantage whenever a creature enters face down.

Morph is balanced around having to pay so being able to skip out on this makes reaping the benefits of morphing creatures incredibly efficient. The Cyclonic Rift effect from Thousand Winds suddenly doesn’t cost a total of ten mana to sink but it still holds the hidden knowledge aspect of a morphed creature.

Cards with morph costs that don’t need mana, like Gift of Doom, become free aside from the creature you sacrificed. Now that is some serious value that opponents won’t be able to contest if they can’t kill your commander or wipe your board before you pull ahead of them.

#15. Nine-Fingers Keene

Most of the Sultai commanders so far care about the graveyard to some degree, but Nine-Fingers Keene gives you a completely new, niche theme: Sultai gates! It wants to get as many cards with the gate type into play as possible for a bit of ramp and card draw later in the game.

Naturally, you need to look at gate synergies. There are more than 10 legal in a Sultai Commander deck, although Gateway Plaza is weak enough it probably doesn’t make the cut, even in a gates deck. Baldur's Gate and Basilisk Gate are the standouts as gates that provide you value beyond mana fixing. There are also powerful gate synergies from Ravnica to draw on; Guild Summit and Gatebreaker Ram are easy includes. And you’d be remiss to not add a Maze's End!

You also need some ways to get gates into play other than Keene’s ability. The best tools are cards that pull lands from your deck into play. Explore the Underdark and Circuitous Route dump gates right into play, while Hour of Promise and Reshape the Earth find whatever lands you want.

Round the deck out with other cards that enjoy tons of lands being played. Tireless Provisioner and Tireless Tracker generate tons of Clues and Treasures as you make land drops. Aesi, Tyrant of Gyre Strait and Tatyova, Benthic Druid draw you endless cards while Zendikar's Roil can sprout an army. Since gates enter tapped and lots of the ramp spells find tapped lands, a sneaky Amulet of Vigor can also do lots of work for this deck.

#14. Jorn, God of Winter / Kaldring, the Rimestaff

Jorn, God of Winter is the perfect legend for anybody looking to cool down the Commander table with its snow synergies. The front side gives you a powerful creature that can basically double your mana by untapping a bunch of snow lands. It can also be played as an artifact that gives you lots of power in a grindy game that makes it hard for your opponents to interact with you.

Snow synergies are the key to this deck. Snow lands are especially good because Jorn nets you so much mana. Into the North fetches snow lands, including Kaldheim’s duals. Rime Tender and Sculptor of Winter keep the snow ramp flowing.

With the ramp out of the way, you want to start accumulating value from your snow cards. Cards like Priest of the Haunted Edge and Dead of Winter give you lots of removal while you can get some powerful threats that get better with more snow permanents like Icebreaker Kraken and Marit Lage's Slumber. Once you’re in the mid-game with more permanents, you’ll get some really strong options.

Ice-Fang Coatl replaces itself and trades with anything, and your opponent’s won’t see it coming. You can get some board control with Rimewind Taskmage and Heidar, Rimewind Master. Rimewind Cryomancer provides some surprising utility, especially if your opponents draw fetches in the later turns.

#13. Sidisi, Brood Tyrant

Sidisi, Brood Tyrant is best fit as a self-mill or creature-death commander where you get extra benefits to sacrificing or killing off your own creatures. It also helps mitigate the negative effects of milling creatures or sacrificing them to some other outlet on top of extracting value from Sakura-Tribe Elder or Altar of Dementia. These sacrifice and mill themes are balanced as a double-edged sword, so using those downsides to your advantage pulls you ahead of the table.

But while you’re focusing on your sacrifice and mill-themed interactions, do your best not to look over some zombie-typal pieces. You’ll end up making more than a handful of zombies through your commander, and you may as well take advantage of that. Death Baron is a great inclusion that’s a 3-mana 2/2 that gets put into the meat grinder at worst. Cryptbreaker is also a must-have since your commander won’t generate any card advantage for you by itself, so secondary pieces are required.

Your 2/2 fodder from Sidisi can also be sacrificed. Something like Sidisi, Undead Vizier or Whisper, Blood Liturgist can make good use of those bodies.

#12. Archelos, Lagoon Mystic

Here’s a choice landfall commander: Archelos, Lagoon Mystic. This card slows the game down for your opponents because all their mana rocks, Treasures, and lands hit the battlefield tapped. It’s also great at enabling attacks since their creatures come into play tapped, leaving them defenseless.

Archelos stands out as a landfall commander because its ability is very strong when paired with ramp spells like Rampant Growth and Explosive Vegetation, which are balanced around their lands entering the battlefield tapped. It becomes far easier to cast numerous spells per turn when they cost half as much.

You want to draw on some of the same synergies we looked at with Keene. The card draw from Aesi, Tyrant of Gyre Strait and Tatyova, Benthic Druid manage to do even more work here since you produce so much mana. You also get tons of value from lands like Lotus Field and the bouncelands like Golgari Rot Farm that come into play untapped with your commander.

You also want to make sure you can keep Archelos tapped when it’s not your turn to slow your opponents down. You don’t want them reaping these rewards. Attacking won’t always be a solution, so look to other effects. Convoke spells like Pile On and Chord of Calling will help, as will ways to get Archelos to tap for mana like Cryptolith Rite and Song of Freyalise.

#11. Damia, Sage of Stone

Commanders that provide a source of cards advantage are always powerful, and Damia, Sage of Stone can draw you tons of cards. It’s a bit pricy for a commander but can helm a strong midrange strategy focused on efficient spells and interaction.

Focus on a solid ramp package for Damia. You’re drawing on green here, so there’s plenty to choose from. Biasing towards land-based ramp like Three Visits and Sakura-Tribe Elder is a great choice since it’s much harder to interact with lands, whereas an abundance of mana rocks can fall prey to a Vandalblast or Collector Ouphe.

The next thing you need is a robust interaction suite. Thankfully, this is the best possible combination you can have for removal without white. Cards like Abrupt Decay and Assassin's Trophy let you answer any threat your opponents could dream of resolving. That is, if it can get past a collection of counterspells like that classic Counterspell, Mana Drain, Disallow, and anything else you deem appropriate. Forbid is a delightful option since Damia refills your hand after discarding.

Round the deck out with some great ways to end the game. Teferi, Temporal Pilgrim is a solid option that greatly benefits from Damia’s endless card advantage. Sire of Stagnation and Consecrated Sphinx are big beaters that also help keep the cards flowing, even if Damia is gone.

And you can’t go wrong with Hullbreaker Horror as your top end. This deck is a little more general than the other options, but Damia as a commander wants you to lean into what makes Sultai such a potent color combination: having the best ramp, removal, countermagic, and card draw in the game.

#10. Gonti, Canny Acquisitor

Gonti, Canny Acquisitor supports one of my favorite archetypes: theft. You'll start by paying 1 less mana to cast spells you don't own. So, cards like Xanathar, Guild Kingpin and Siphon Insight get a lot better. Plus, you have an incentive to play saboteur creatures since you want to deal damage to a player anyway and get more spells from their library.

Shadow creatures and unblockable creatures can be a good addition, and Dimir tends to have a lot of these. Green adds beef and trample to the archetype. Since you’re casting cards from exile, Doc Aurlock, Grizzled Genius and Savvy Trader will make spells even cheaper. All of these pieces add up to a nice engine that lets you play your opponents' spells while dealing them damage.

#9. The Master, Transcendent

The The Master, Transcendent from Fallout only asks one thing from you: mill your opponents. Giving them rad counters is good since the counters will do some of the lifting. Its special ability is to reanimate a creature that was milled in a given turn, but there are some considerations: First, the creature will always be a 3/3 green mutant, so it’s better to get creatures with good abilities than a big size. A card like Screeching Scorchbeast is a nice fit, even as a 3/3, as is Toxrill, the Corrosive. Second, you have some control over the creatures you’ll put into your graveyard. This deck can run cards like Consecrated Sphinx and reanimate them via spells, or get them as 3/3 mutants.

We want to mill our opponents often to get the most out of our commander, and graveyard interaction is a nice payoff. Filling graveyards leads to graveyard-heavy strategies being viable, so cards like Baloth Null, Eternal Witness, and Dread Return are interesting as well. Raul, Trouble Shooter is a role player here, as we can mill cards and then cast those cards. It gives you a way to start your engine and card advantage later in the game. Glowing One can stack up extra rad counters when it hits a player, and Mesmeric Orb is a mill staple, getting all players at once.

#8. Tatsunari, Toad Rider

Tatsunari, Toad Rider is a not-so-subtle Naruto reference and a brilliant enchantress commander. Sultai has access to some choice enchantments to accrue value with, but it lacked a solid enchantress commander before Neon Dynasty brought us a boy and his frog. Tatsunari and Keimi give you some steady pressure as you accumulate your enchantments for value.

No enchantress deck is complete without the enchantresses. Verduran Enchantress, Enchantress's Presence, and Argothian Enchantress are the classics, but there’s also Eidolon of Blossoms and Setessan Champion to keep the card draw flowing.

Enchantments also offer some top-tier removal. Imprisoned in the Moon and Song of the Dryads are powerful just for their ability to remove a commander without making it change zones. Cards like Electrostatic Field and Witness Protection make other relevant threats into irrelevant creatures on the battlefield. You can also shore up your defenses with cards like Propaganda and Elephant Grass to stave off additional attacks.

There’s also plenty of ramp to go around for this style of deck. Sanctum Weaver taps for tons of mana and gives you an easy infinite with Freed from the Real. Spells like Wild Growth and Fertile Ground are basically mana dorks, but with synergy. This deck is all about building a synergistic board state to extract as much value from your various pieces as possible.

#7. Zaxara, the Exemplary

Next up is the X spell commander, Zaxara, the Exemplary! If your incredible X spells don’t decimate your opponents, the huge creatures they leave behind thanks to your commander’s ability certainly will. Just imagine dropping an X=7 Torment of Hailfire where your opponents are also greeted with a 7/7 to deal with after losing half their hands and all their mana rocks. Beautiful, isn’t it?

Zaxara empowers a very niche strategy, and it isn’t one that I or most of the players at my LGS have ever played before. Of course, everyone enjoys spells with X spells since they get better the more ramp and mana you have, and Commander typically allows you to easily reach 7+ mana pretty quickly. Playing spells with high X counts is also incredibly fun and very rewarding, even when you don’t wipe your enemies off the face of the earth.

There are a lot of spells with in their casting cost, but there are definitely five or six that are leagues ahead of their competitors. The previously mentioned Torment of Hailfire is certainly one of these since it often means death for most players who don’t have a board full of cannon fodder to sacrifice. Blue Sun's Zenith is a personal favorite of mine and helps you refresh your hand with more resources to spend your growing mana base on. Stonecoil Serpent is good on nearly any X amount over 3, and the protection from multicolored hits hard in Commander.

Primordial Hydra quickly becomes a one-shot attacker after a turn or two and even acts as two creatures if you manage to have your commander out as an extra threat. Altered Ego is another important piece to any X spell deck. You’ll usually use this to copy an already-massive creature for 4 mana and enjoy the beneficial abilities that creature has.

#6. The Mimeoplasm

An absolute Commander classic, The Mimeoplasm is one of the most popular and powerful Sultai commanders at your disposal. The most common way to build Mimeoplasm is (surprisingly) ooze typal, which I think is wicked cool and something we should all try out.

In case you’re as unaware as I was, there are actually lots of powerful oozes you can include in your list. Acidic Slime is a classic green creature with a wide targeting scope to make sure it always generates value in your exchange. Ochre Jelly is a powerful threat that demands quick and complete removal when it resolves.

Ooze decks also typically have great Birthing Pod/Food Chain potential, so including those along with Prime Speaker Vannifar will take you where you want to go: victory!

#5. Zimone and Dina

Another lands-matters commander, Zimone and Dina differentiates itself from the others by looking to combo off with land synergies. While Archelos and Keene could combo, Zimone and Dina functions as a combo piece right out of the command zone to go infinite as quickly as possible.

An easy combo to assemble with this card is a bounce land (ex: Simic Growth Chamber) with Intruder Alarm and Field of the Dead.  Once Field is online, play the Growth Chamber and stack the triggers so that the Growth Chamber trigger resolves first. Return the Growth Chamber to your hand. Field of the Dead makes a Zombie token, putting an Intruder Alarm trigger on the stack. Sacrifice the Zombie to Zimone and Dina, which allows you to put the Growth Chamber back into play. Bounce Growth Chamber again, make another Zombie, then get another Alarm trigger that untaps your commander and allows you to do it again.

The combo above lets you do a ton of things. It’s not truly infinite; you can only execute the loop until you’ve drawn your entire library, but you can still do a lot. You can draw your entire deck so you win with something like Thassa's Oracle or Jace, Wielder of Mysteries. You’ll also get tons of death triggers to go with something like Blood Artist, which often does enough damage to win in the later stages of the game.

This combo is also incredibly flexible because you can swap out lots of the pieces. Field of the Dead could just as easily be a Scute Swarm or Zendikar's Roil, you can use any bounce land, and even Zimone and Dina could become a Sakura-Tribe Scout or Walking Atlas. Sultai also has a bunch of tutors, from Vampiric Tutor to Worldly Tutor and even Crop Rotation to find the perfect land you need.

#4. The Wise Mothman

Rad counters are one of the main mechanics in the Fallout set, and for each rad counter, a player will mill a card and possibly lose life in the process. The Wise Mothman is an enabler and payoff to this strategy. It's a rad counter spreader in the command zone, and Sultai is the best color identity to take advantage of players milling.

The Wise Mothman deals with rad counters and +1/+1 counters, so proliferate is a nice way to get the most out of these mechanics. If you throw in a way for them to get poison counters like Infectious Inquiry or Prologue to Phyresis, there’s another angle of attack right there.

This commander will put +1/+1 counters on creatures, so besides many creatures, you’ll want cards like Hardened Scales, and Modern Horizons 3 cards like Cursed Wombat and Expanding Ooze can help boost your forces on air and ground.

Finally, there’s going to be some milling due to all the rad counters and other effects. You can take advantage of that, be it with specific mill cards like Syr Konrad, the Grim, Nightkin Ambusher, and Mirelurk Queen, or with cards that take advantage of filled graveyards like the multiple Lhurgoyfs out there or The Scarab God. There are many ways to mill all players like Invasion of Amonkhet, Folio of Fancies, and Ruin Crab, so you should be on the lookout for these.

#3. Tasigur, the Golden Fang

Tasigur, the Golden Fang is a personal favorite in my play group, and for good reason. In a format where you have access to tons of fetch lands and early spells, Tasigur can easily be an infinite mana outlet in the command zone that costs only to play. This heavily influences how the deck is built since the goal is often to resolve something that flips your deck, like Doomsday, or that generates infinite mana and combos off using Tasigur’s ability.

You’ll usually see Tasigur lists heavily relying on Birthing Pod or cards with similar effects like Food Chain. The strategy offers rapid acceleration plus ample graveyard resources that can be used to cast a discounted commander or eventually be brought back with that commander’s ability.

#2. Yarok, the Desecrated

In second place is Yarok, the Desecrated, who doubles the triggered abilities from permanents entering the battlefield. This ability is incredibly busted and you want to use it until you’ve lost all our friends.

In case you don’t realize how busted being able to double dip on ETB effects is, let me give you some examples of cards you’d run that would hit twice:

• Baleful Strix draws two cards.
• Acidic Slime destroys two permanents.
• Agent of Treachery steals two permanents and helps you draw three cards at the end of your turn faster.
• Springbloom Druid nets you two lands on the battlefield.
• Scute Swarm creates two 1/1s per land and later creates two copies of itself per landfall trigger.

While none of these effects are outright game-winning, they create incredible tempo and resource advantages that generate a constantly expanding gap between your opponents’ capabilities and your own. This gives you more answers, more and higher-level threats, and the ability to direct the pacing and flow of the game to suit your strategy.

I recommend almost always including Solemn Simulacrum, Deadeye Navigator, Peregrine Drake, Eternal Witness, Reclamation Sage, and Conjurer's Closet in your Yarok EDH builds as they’ll always provide value in your games.

#1. Muldrotha, the Gravetide

Coming in at #1 is Muldrotha, the Gravetide. This commander heavily emphasizes a sacrifice- and aristocrats-themed deck through its recursion ability. Muldrotha is the most popular and (arguably) the most powerful Sultai commander with over 5,700 decks featured on EDHREC, 2,500 of which specifically work with sacrifice strategies.

Being able to not just reanimate creatures but actually play any kind of permanent from your graveyard each turn lessens the cost of sacrifice mechanics while bolstering your threats from single-instance removal. Your mana rocks basically never get destroyed since it’s wasted removal, your commander comes back from the command zone, and your other artifacts and enchantments are safe thanks to the lack of widespread removal. Most decks run Abrade or Abrupt Decay and call it a day.

Cards that have abilities on death and when they enter the battlefield are extremely good in a Muldrotha, the Gravetide list since you get twice the value from them. Think along the lines of Solemn Simulacrum, River Kelpie, and Stitcher's Supplier. These kinds of cards help you out-value your opponents and generate resource advantages they won’t be able to keep up with.

Decklist: Yarok, the Desecrated in Commander

Yarok, the Desecrated | Illustration by Daarken

I see Yarok, the Desecrated as the most fun and interactive Sultai commander. This exact build won’t be the rules for your deck. I’m not your dad, this is just a primer to get your brain moving and help you see what might be worth including in your own brews.

This decklist is obviously lands-focused since you usually always hit land drops that work twice as hard for you. This lets you have a strategy that’s much more consistent and effective. The deck has 36 lands so you have plenty of ammunition for your landfall permanents.

Your early goal is to get something like Lotus Cobra or Scute Swarm out to get your engine turning with land drops. Ramunap Excavator plus any of the fetch lands in the deck lets you grab a lot of lands early. You also don’t have to worry about your life total here since losing 10 to 20 life this early is nothing compared to having five times more mana than everyone else.

The win conditions in this deck are very much related to lands, so we have a lot of cards that can benefit from multiple landfall triggers and cards that allow us to play multiple lands in a turn. Splendid Reclamation and Scapeshift are cards that can make multiple land drops in a single turn. Villainous Wealth and Torment of Hailfire are good wincons once you have enough lands in play. The many permanents that have landfall on them should carry you to victory, and Yarok, the Desecrated will double all those triggers.

Commanding Conclusion

The Mimeoplasm | Illustration by Svetlin Velinov

There you have it, a complete rundown of every Sultai commander out there. While I may be biased toward Esper, I think Sultai is a great color combination both thematically and in how it plays. The card draw and tempo of blue is what really takes the typically rotten Golgari () playstyle from good to great.

But what do you think? Do you like my rankings, or is something off in your opinion? Let me know in the comments or on our official Draftsim Discord.

Sultai not your preferred color trio? Check these out: Abzan, Bant, Esper, Grixis, Jeskai, Jund, Mardu, Naya, and Temur.

Until next time, stay safe and stay healthy!