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Grindfest 2k18 (Muldrotha Brawl Primer)

Standard Brawl* BUG (Sultai) Control Primer

NoContest

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Land (23)

Creature (13)

Sorcery (5)

Enchantment (7)

Artifact (5)

Instant (4)

Planeswalker (3)

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Enchantment (1)

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How's it going today? I'm NoContest here with my Primer for playing Muldrotha, the Gravetide in Brawl. I plan on covering things like odd card choices, explaining the primary plan of the deck, and covering examples of good and bad matchups.

Who am I?

I go by NoContest, I'm a Magic: the Gathering player of 5+ years, and the Midwest's resident grinder for the past two years. Most of my success comes from playing grindy decks similar to this one (These being your Abzans and Junds) in the modern format, but I'm definitely a jack of all trades.

Why bother making a primer?

I'll elaborate. The Brawl format as a whole is pretty popular in my area, having it's own dedicated day for events and sometimes (not very often) even beating out Standard and Modern in terms of FNM size. As someone who seeks to play competitively and with the best deck I can, I put together this one and routinely do well with it at these Brawl events. I figured I would share it just in case anyone else is looking for a fun, yet powerful way to contest the other Brawl decks in their area.

This really depends upon a few key factors that we should go over:

Are you willing to play grindy games of Magic?

This Muldrotha deck does not usually win the game quickly. Most of your major ways of winning the game (which we will go over later) are slow but inevitable, and almost every game is one in this fashion. Does that mean you can't just slam a Vraska, Relic Seeker and close out the game by making 2/2s with Menace? No, but it does mean that this is outside the norm and will not happen often.

Do you want to play a Control deck?

My build, and most Muldrotha lists play a tapout control style of game. You aren't super focused on keeping up countermagic or kill spells, rather you dominate the game with powerful sorcery-speed cards like Phyrexian Scriptures. Perhaps you would prefer to beat the opponent down with a more creature-oritented, midrange Muldrotha list. While those decks certainly do exist this is not one of them.

Do you want to play with countermagic?

Muldrotha control is a control deck that wants to play powerful permanents from the graveyard. This means that you won't often be able to hold back mana to cast the denial spells that come from playing a control deck chock full of countermagic. If this is something you'd prefer to do, I would suggest looking into playing either The Scarab God or Teferi, Hero of Dominaria as your general.

There are more than a few cards that are irreplaceable for this deck and a few oddities that you may want to change out.

Irreplaceable Cards

A removal spell, a massive endgame threat, and an artifact walk into a bar. After a night of drinking and NSFW acts Walking Ballista was born. Walking Ballista is probably the best card in the Brawl format. It scales with any point in the game, and is one of the best ways this deck can win the game. Utterly irreplaceable.

This card goes by many names at my LGS. Big Neck Bessie, THE BODY, and my personal favorite ThraBron James. Regardless of what you call it one thing remains the same, it is and should always be a staple in your Muldrotha Brawl lists. A 3 cmc spell with 3/4 statline is very powerful by itself. Take into account that it is a recurrable version of Naturalize as long as Muldrotha is in play, and we have ourselves one of the best cards in the deck.

The Scarab God is one of the most powerful cards you can play in the format. It cannot be killed via conventional means and the ability to return cards from any graveyard makes this a great option in any U/B/x deck.

In true Phyrexian fashion, this enchantment is backbreaking. Provided you can land a Muldrotha on board Scriptures will keep coming back to clear out everything your opponent does (using the first part of the saga to protect Muldrotha of course!).

The only non-permanent on this list, this powerful removal spell pulls weight despite not coming back from the yard. Contempt is a catchall for any threat that seeps through the cracks and should be respected in every and all black Brawl deck.

At surface level a sac outlet seems fairly weak in a deck with 13 creatures total. Whichever you choose will be the secret sleeper card in your deck. Playing with a sac outlet allows you to put your own creatures into the graveyard to recur them with Muldrotha. Razaketh, the Foulblooded, Thallid Soothsayer and Yahenni, Undying Partisan are all good choices, but I prefer to play with Bontu the Glorified. Bontu is indestructible regardless of what you do with it, and will be hard to answer even if you have no other creature on board.

Oddities

This is quite possibly the strangest card in the decklist. What our "movie titled" friend brings to the table is card advantage in the best kind of way. Card advantage that induces card disadvantage in your opponent. When you get down to it, most matchups in which you want a ton of cards will be heavily affected when this card accrues value.

I play in a metagame that is packed with midrange decks. These decks fail to swarm the board and focus more on playing sizable threats that hit harder than most. Time of Ice allows you to mitigate damage, and set your opponent back a couple of turns on damaging you.

See above.

The wristwatch serves two functions in this deck. With an active Muldrotha you can effectively "draw two cards" a turn by churning them into the graveyard, and in the endgame you can shuffle up what you want and keep going. It serves as a source of card advantage and as a preventative for decking out.

The siren does something unique for the deck. Having your opponent remove your big threats is an issue, but this card allows you to protect you and your cards once a turn.

Call me maybe?

Every card in the maybeboard are cards that I have played and may consider playing in the future. These cards are more for tuning your deck to a specific metagame, but you can play any number of them as you desire.

Like I said earlier, there are a few ways to win the game. Most of them are slow, but a few can put a clock on your opponent.

At the very least this is one damage a turn for two mana. At the most you can max out at thirteen damage with all your mana sources in play. With this the opponent is unable to interact without just countering the Ballista itself.

Another consistent way to win the game is to deck the opponent out with the Rivulet's activated ability. Whether you do this by playing it from the graveyard every turn or just sacrificing the other deserts in your deck doesn't matter. 4 cards a turn adds up quickly, especially if your opponent has already been drawing cards on their own.

As per course, this is another big hitter that uses Muldrotha's powerful ability. Playing Nissa on 6 and using her ultimate will close out the game incredibly and effectively. Even if the opponent manages to kill your 5/5 flying lands, you can replay them with Muldrotha. It's unbelievable what kind of cards the opponent will waste to stay alive!

Scarab Dad can reanimate anything into a 4/4 beater and combined with his triggered ability during your upkeep can create a quick clock that snowballs quickly. Likewise you should constantly be aware of your opponent having the capability to do the same thing.

Mind Control effects are very strong regardless of the format. However, when combined with Muldrotha you can steal your opponent's threats and make them get rid of it. Repetition of this pattern will cause your opponent to lose value very quickly and eventually fall under the crushing duress you apply.

These are the best ways to win the game as they combine inevitability with efficiency. Beware cards like Sentinel Totem, Deathgorge Scavenger and Scavenger Grounds. If you put all your eggs into one basket and one of these enters play it can make the game a real nightmare.

Muldrotha is a tried and true deck that obeys the "Rock, Paper, Scissors" rule down to a T. It beats up on midrange decks, is even against the other control decks, and easily loses to aggressive decks. Popular decks in my metagame consist of 5c Jodah, Archmage Eternal, Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh control, Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons midrange, and Huatli, Radiant Champion midrange, among other one-of and off the wall decks. Because of this I have chosen to edge towards cards that help in the control matchups without going completely overboard, (Like Dead Man's Chest, Gonti, Lord of Luxury, and Champion of Wits) and shy away from some of the tools that would be useful in a more aggressive metagame.

I would not suggest putting this deck together if your local meta is full of Depala, Pilot Exemplar or Admiral Beckett Brass aggressive decks. If you still insist upon it, I suggest packing plenty of cards to edge your match percentages. Look to Yahenni's Expertise, Bontu's Last Reckoning, Golden Demise and Vona's Hunger to keep your deck at parity with your opponent.

Thanks for taking the time to check out my Muldrotha, the Gravetide Brawl list. I plan on keeping this list updated as I change it, so feel free to check back every now and then in order to taste a new flavor of green sludge. I plan on uploading my other two Brawl decks to this website as well, so be on the lookout for those over the coming weeks. Again, thank you so much for reading and stay tuned for more powerful brawl decks.

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Date added 6 years
Last updated 6 years
Legality

This deck is not Standard Brawl legal.
Rarity (main - side)

8 - 0 Mythic Rares

18 - 0 Rares

19 - 0 Uncommons

9 - 0 Commons
Cards 60
Avg. CMC 3.81
Tokens Champion of Wits 4/4 B, City's Blessing, Copy Clone, Pirate 2/2 B, Treasure, Zombie 2/2 B
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