Sultai Clue Control

Standard* BUG (Sultai) Control

Borachon

Creature (12)

• 4x Contraband Kingpin
• 2x Marionette Master
• 4x Tireless Tracker
• 2x Torrential Gearhulk

Planeswalker (2)

• 2x Nissa, Vital Force

Land (22)

• 4x Aether Hub
• 4x Blooming Marsh
• 3x Botanical Sanctum
• 3x Choked Estuary
• 1x Forest
• 2x Hissing Quagmire
• 3x Island
• 2x Swamp

Enchantment (3)

• 3x Trail of Evidence

Artifact (2)

• 2x Tamiyo's Journal

Instant (12)

• 2x Essence Extraction
• 3x Grasp of Darkness
• 3x Murder
• 2x Negate
• 2x Void Shatter

Sorcery (7)

• 4x Attune with Aether
• 3x Harsh Scrutiny

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Sideboard

Instant (6)

• 2x Appetite for the Unnatural
• 2x Ceremonious Rejection
• 2x Horribly Awry

Sorcery (9)

• 2x Flaying Tendrils
• 3x Lost Legacy
• 2x Ruinous Path
• 2x Transgress the Mind

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This is a control deck that leverages aggressive clue generation and scrying to both dig for answers faster than other normal control decks, and power wins. It has a few key features:

• A smooth mana curve for a three-color deck, leveraging the green fastlands, Aether Hub, and Attune with Aether to be able to fix mana and get the right lands out for the cards you have available.
• Early-game smoothing and interaction through Harsh Scrutiny and two-mana counter/discards that are customized based on the meta and matchup.
• Aggressive scrying along with the clues to better select exactly which card you get from a draw or cracking a clue.
• A blue/black control package that can also power clue generation to keep card advantage or power a sudden win. This package is thinner in terms of card counts than in some other control decks because of the aggressive scrying, drawing, and tutoring in the deck.
• Multiple win conditions leverage that clues and cracking them cheaply.

How it plays

1. Early plays are mostly Contraband Kingpins, Attune with Aether, and Harsh Scrutiny to provide initial defense, card selection, mana smoothing, and disruption of your opponent's plans.
2. In the midgame, you try to get down a Tireless Tracker or Trail of Evidence and switch to a draw-go style of play to either beat down the opponent while defending it with removal or generate clues for powering a longer-game win. These clues are frequently tapped on the opponent's endstep when spare mana is available.
3. If the game goes long, then Tamiyo's Journal can be used either as a sacrifice outlet for Mariontte Master or to tutor for another win condition or answer. Torrential Gearhulk and Nissa, Vital Force provide these alternate win conditions and swing the game back if things get out of hand.

This deck has with lots of interactions and triggers that have to be watched and kept track of. It's easy to mis-order plays on the stack if you're not careful, but in my initial testing, it rewards good play aggressively. I also like it simply because it's very different from what some other decks are doing.

Key Combos

• Contraband Kingpin + any clue source: Get a clue, scry to see if you want to crack it.
• Trail of Evidence + Harsh Scrutiny: See your opponent's hand, pick a creature spell for them to discard, get a clue, and scry
• Tireless Tracker + Contraband Kingpin: Play a land, get a clue, get a counter on the Tracker, scry 1 to tune your next draw (usually cracking a clue on your opponent's end step). Nissa's Emblem gives you the draw immediately!
• Marionette Master + Tamiyo's Journal: Sacrifice three clue, deal 12 damage to an opponent, and tutor for an answer or another win condition. Can be activated at instant speed.
• Marionette Master + Verdurous Gearhulk + crack a clue: Deal 8 damage and draw a card

Sideboarding

• Graveyard strategies are a tough matchup; you really want to use Lost Legacy to exile Prized Amalgam first to reduce the recursion, and then other graveyard targets if you get a second.
• Against Emerge decks, Lost Legacy and Transgress the Mind come in get rid of the creatures they want to emerge.
• We deal with Marvel combo decks similar to emerge decks, Lost Legacy targets the Eldrazi they want to draw out, and Appetite for the Unnatural and Transgress the Mind targeting the Marvel.
• Against vehicle decks, use regular instant-speed removal against Copters and crew, and bring in Appetite for the Unnatural to use against Fleetwheel Cruiser and Skysovereign, Consul Flagship.
• Negate is the maindeck cheap removal to deal with Smuggler's Copter and the various Eldrazi cards in the meta; in the second game, they can be changed out for a different cheap counter, either Horribly Awry or Ceremonious Rejection depending on what the other deck is.
• Against decks that use multiple planeswalkers, board in Ruinous Path in place of Murder.

Deck Tuning/Customization

The control package and alternate win conditions (Nissa and gearhulks) are all tunable to your meta and taste. Finally, Nissa, Vital Force can provide mid-game protection through manlands and rescue win conditions from the graveyard as well. I'm still working to figure out the right number of these cards. I run one-of because of the deck's ability to tutor for which you want, but choosing which you want is a matter of taste.

A more creature/tempo-focused alternative

• Syndicate Trafficker is a decent option in the deck as another way to crack clues for Tracker and Master. It's main problem is that it has anti-synergy with Flaying Tendrils (Invulnerability won't save it from having 0 toughness). It can be used instead to make the deck significantly faster, transforming it into more of a mid-range clue deck.
• A more creature-centric version could also use Verdurous Gearhulk instead to push through a board stall or power up a Marionette Master for a surprise win. In that form, other cards like Weirding Wood and Confront the Unknown would also make sense.
• I'm not sure if trying ot include those as a transforamtive sideboard would make sense.

Date added	8 years
Last updated	8 years
Exclude colors	WR
Legality	This deck is not Standard legal.
Rarity (main - side)	2 - 0 Mythic Rares 22 - 5 Rares 24 - 8 Uncommons 6 - 2 Commons
Cards	60
Avg. CMC	2.92
Tokens	Clue, Emblem Nissa, Vital Force, Energy Reserve, Servo 1/1 C
Folders	great ideas