"Standard Pauper: Sultai Burn"

"Say Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.....all the way down..."

"Standard Pauper: Sultai Burn"

by:

Virgilio F. De leon Jr. 

Most of the time when people associate Fire with the Sultai it is often with the image of a zombie being burned and a graveyard being purified by the same fire. However Fire is a fickle thing and like a lot of things in the world of magic could be used by more than one master. Sultai Burn for Standard Pauper is something that I have not seen just yet. Until now. The Sultai are masters of exploiting any known resource why not hold the one thing that gives them fear? Fire. 

"Oh not today Mr. Fire , Not today."

The deck revolves around the idea of getting a lot of burn spells and then delving for the sultai biggies that would have a bigger impact in the mid to late games.

4 x Bloodfell Caves

4 x Evolving Wilds

7 x Mountains

7 x Swamps

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22 lands

4 x Lightning Strike

4 x Collateral Damage

4 x Bolt of Keranos

2 x Bathe in Dragon Fire

4 x Tormenting Voice

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18 Spells

4 x Typhoid rats

4 x Necromancers Assistant

4 x Gurmag Angler

4 x Sultai Emissary

4 x Shambling Attendants

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20 Creatures

The trick is to usually have a lot cards in the graveyard to easily cast out the power houses of the deck Gurmag Angler and Shambling Attendants. At 7 and 8 to cast respectively they may seem a bit hefty but then again no one sees them that way and only look at both as 1 black mana , much like they would look at Tasigur. 

"Let me give you a hug"

Now in this Black/Red deck how do you start getting your cards to the graveyard for abuse? Well since you do not have Taiga's Scheming you need to rely on the same thing that ends a lot of zombies lives. Burn. Yup all you need to do is build up your mana base with Evolving Wilds serving as the poor mans Land Fetch. 

The Burn suite of this deck includes Lightning Strike , Collateral Damage , Bolt of Keranos and a pair of Bathe in Dragon Fire. The concept here is that with this amount of burn readily available any worthy target that hits the board will not survive for very long.So what do you do when there are no worthy creature targets? Well you burn someone of course.

Tormenting Voice has been a favorite of mine since I played in the Khans Pre release and it feels quite at home here discarding a card for 2 more. When it comes to thinning out your deck and filling your graveyard this is the only thing in Red. With Burn decks it is always important to have a refilled hand. Tormenting Voice will do just the trick and in the process put more fuel for your delve creatures.

Now comes the interesting part , with your opponent losing all of his or her creatures this leaves you with a field that is open for domination from the 5/5 Gurmag Angler and the 3/5 Shambling Attendants. The latter even has deathtouch in case there are still some remnants of opposition left on the other side of the board.

Of course there would be a couple of times when you would be overwhelmed by the odd token deck or even a pauper heroic deck. Typhoid rats and Sultai Emissary are there to hold the fort. They are even willing to die for the Sultai cause. More fuel to consume as I always say. Typhoid rats is an early deterrent because of death touch. Nobody wants their 4/4 monster to die to a 1/1 rat.  Sultai Emissary , well this is a guy that just keeps on giving. When he dies you get to Manifest the top of your card giving you a 2/2 blocker or if it happens to be another creature you could actually flip it over by paying its morph cost. Not bad for a 2 to cast creature right?

Sultai burn might win by burning someone to death but it is really more satisfying to get an Angler or Attendant just oozing their way into someones gut. Let Fire serve the Sultai. Let all Serve the Sultai.