Life is Cyclical: Muldrotha Midrange

Commander / EDH BUG (Sultai) Combo Midrange Multiplayer Ramp

ICSM

Lands (37)

• 1x Blighted Woodland
• 1x Bojuka Bog
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Dakmor Salvage
• 1x Dismal Backwater
• 1x Evolving Wilds
• 1x Exotic Orchard
• 10x Forest
• 6x Island
• 1x Jungle Hollow
• 1x Jwar Isle Refuge
• 1x Nephalia Drownyard
• 1x Opulent Palace
• 8x Swamp
• 1x Terramorphic Expanse
• 1x Thornwood Falls

Other (8)

• 1x Beast Within
• 1x Fauna Shaman
• 1x Krosan Grip
• 1x Lim-Dul's Vault
• 1x Monastery Siege
• 1x Putrefy
• 1x Runic Armasaur
• 1x Sultai Charm

Protection (5)

• 1x Curator's Ward
• 1x Demonic Vigor
• 1x Lightning Greaves
• 1x Siren Stormtamer
• 1x Swiftfoot Boots

Sac Outlet (2)

• 1x Ashnod's Altar
• 1x Viscera Seer

Permanent-based Nonsense (14)

• 1x Aether Spellbomb
• 1x Caustic Caterpillar
• 1x Elephant Grass
• 1x Executioner's Capsule
• 1x Fleshbag Marauder
• 1x Glen Elendra Archmage
• 1x Merciless Executioner
• 1x Mystic Remora
• 1x Night Incarnate
• 1x Nissa, Steward of Elements
• 1x Oblivion Stone
• 1x Plaguecrafter
• 1x Seal of Primordium
• 1x Shriekmaw

Filling the Yard (9)

• 1x Fact or Fiction
• 1x Golgari Grave-Troll
• 1x Notion Rain
• 1x Perpetual Timepiece
• 1x Splinterfright
• 1x Sultai Ascendancy
• 1x Taigam, Sidisi's Hand
• 1x Underrealm Lich
• 1x Windfall

The combo (5)

• 1x Flash
• 1x Mikaeus, the Unhallowed
• 1x Phyrexian Delver
• 1x Protean Hulk
• 1x Walking Ballista

Commander (1)

Ramp (10)

• 1x Elves of Deep Shadow
• 1x Everflowing Chalice
• 1x Expedition Map
• 1x Fellwar Stone
• 1x Font of Fertility
• 1x Llanowar Elves
• 1x Sakura-Tribe Elder
• 1x Simic Signet
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Wayfarer's Bauble

Secondary Recursion (6)

• 1x Animate Dead
• 1x Eternal Witness
• 1x Glissa, the Traitor *oversized*
• 1x Ramunap Excavator
• 1x Tasigur, the Golden Fang
• 1x World Shaper

Overlap (3)

• 1x Liliana, Death's Majesty
• 1x The Gitrog Monster
• 1x The Scarab God

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Maybeboard

Other (15)

• 1x Beast Whisperer
• 1x Guardian Project
• 1x Havengul Lich
• 1x Nevinyrral's Disk
• 1x Nihil Spellbomb
• 1x Reclamation Sage
• 1x Seal of Doom
• 1x Seal of Removal
• 1x Sidisi, Brood Tyrant
• 1x Splendid Reclamation
• 1x Stasis
• 1x Tatyova, Benthic Druid
• 1x The Eldest Reborn
• 2x The Mending of Dominaria

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TL; DR, The gameplan is:

1. Ramp;
2. Disrupt enemies;
3. Self Mill;
4. Cast Muldrotha and try to protect it;
5. Repeat steps 1~4 until you can untap with Mulddy in play;
6. Become the Archenemy of the table;
7. Win anyway.

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Every Muldrotha deck that isn't combo-centered wins by exhausting everyone elses resources, grinding enemies with permanent-based effects recurred ad nauseam from the graveyard. To do that, we have five main goals: Ramp, Build a healthy Graveyard, play Muldrotha, protect Muldrotha, and then produce silly amounts of card advantage by never running out of cards to play.

Ramp

Ramping is deceptively important. We have a 6 CMC commander, so it is a no-brainer that we want to ramp. Also, that commander is MUldrotha, it WILL be targeted time and again. Get used to the idea of casting Mulddy 2 to 4 times before it sticks. Furthermore, since we want to cast one spell of each permanent type each turn, we want to have ungodly amounts of mana.

I opted to use mainly permanent-based land fetching ramp. It may be not as efficient as Cultivate or the signets, but it is both more resilient and can be easily played again after Muldrotha sticks for even more ramp. It's important to point out that fetches like Evolving Wilds are essentially free ramp with Muldrotha on board. If our commander sticks, we will never miss a land drop.

Future upgrades: Carpet of Flowers over Burgeoning; Myriad Landscape ; Bad River ; Deathrite Shaman over Elvish Mystic.

Building a healthy Graveyard

Casting our commander and having a empty graveyard is completely pointless, so we have to include a bunch of cards to grow our GY a bit. I generally frown upon cards such as Mirror-Mad Phantasm and Traumatize because they mill us too much. We are already vulnerable enough to graveyard hate as is. For the same reason, I usually also chose to use cards that do something other than just self- milling. Splinterfright can become a threat pretty quickly and so does Golgari Grave-Troll . Perpetual Timepiece doubles as GY protection.

This part is also where we find the real backbone of the deck. Since we run a whooping 8 non-permanent cards, Muldrotha turns milling engines into drawing engines. Taigam, Sidisi's Hand , Underrealm Lich and Sultai Ascendancy are arguably stronger versions of Sylvan Library. Fact or Fiction , Notion Rain and Windfall are normally very good cards, but here they work double duty and are way stronger.

Future Upgrades: Jace's Archivist over Vessel of Nascency

Permanent-based nonsense

What do we want to recur from the GY? Interaction. Removal. Disruption. Value. Crush their doods, smash their baubles, hear the lamentation or their women. MTG has lots of cards that were never designed to be played again and again and the silliest of them are removal cards that hit the whole board and just keep coming. The idea is that since we never run out of cards, we should use cards that deprieve everyone else or theirs. Creatures like Plaguecrafter and Fleshbag Marauder should easily get 3-for-1s, Caustic Caterpillar and Reclamation Sage will easily run everyone else out of artifact and enchantments, and Night Incarnate is our hedge against token decks, while also being an awesome blocker. In case everything else fails, we can Oblivion Stone every other turn, until people get a clue.

We also have some value permanents with downsides that are circumventable by Muldrotha. We can let Elephant Grass and Mystic Remora die and then recast them from graveyard every other turn to ignore the cumulative upkeep. Cards like the Seals and Spellbombs are usually too low-impact to be worth a slot. Well, if they are recastable every turn, they are not low-impact anymore.

Future upgrades: Wasteland ; Strip Mine ; Glacial Chasm ; Pernicious Deed ; Cephalid Coliseum ; Timestream Navigator .

Protecting Muldrotha

If your playgroup doesn't have a "kill on sight" policy on Muldrotha yet, they have not played against it before. And since the elemental has a pricey mana cost, we have to take measures to keep it on the board after it finally resolves.

Siren Stormtamer is an often overlooked card that also can be used to counter graveyard hate that target the player. Aether Spellbomb , Seal of Removal and Demonic Vigor are repeatable bounce effects that we can use to dodge wrath effects. Curator's Ward , Lightning Greaves , and Swiftfoot Boots are used to dodge spot removal. Ironically, in this deck the boots are superior to the greaves, because the latter prevent Muldrotha from being saved by Aether Spellbomb.

Future Upgrades: Sylvan Safekeeper ; Robe of Mirrors ; Steely Resolve ; Alexi's Cloak ; Diplomatic Immunity

Secondary Recursion

Of course, we also need some way to play cards from the GY if muldrotha isn't in play.

Ramunap Excavator and World Shaper allow me to play lands from the yard. The latter two are also the strongest form of ramp in this deck and also double as GY builders. Glissa, the Traitor recurs artifacts and is the most annoying blocker I have ever seen in MTG. Animate Dead allow us to play more than one creature from the GY per turn using Muldrotha. Tasigur, the Golden Fang and Eternal Witness allow us to recur anything.

Overlaping

Entire books have been written about single points of failure and we are having none of that. We are running a bunch of cards that can make the deck work even if we can't ever resolve a Muldrotha. These cards synergize strongly with the cards that we alrealdy run and tend to take over the game by themselves if left alone. It also helps that these cards attract removal themselves.

The Scarab God is a strong recursion and card filtering engine that works even if our Gy was exiled and is hard to deal with permanently. Tatyova, Benthic Druid produces silly amounts of card advantage due to all our land ramp. Liliana, Death's Majesty does it all: She builds a graveyard, produces blockers, reanimates creatures and sweeps the board. The Gitrog Monster is a phyrexian arena on steroids and does silly things with dredge.

Future Upgrades: Meren of Clan Nel Toth ; Sheoldred, Whispering One ; Prime Speaker Vannifar

Finishers

As far as I am concerned, every EDH deck requires an explosive finish that can steal the game on a moment's notice. Some decks run Craterhoof, some run Aetherflux Reservoir and some run Insurrection.

We run a Hulk package. Almost all pieces slot very well into the deck even if we aren't comboing, and Muldrotha tends to draw all removal regardless. The Full combo works as follows:

1. Cast Flash , and put Protean Hulk into play;
2. Refuse to play Hulk's cost, thereby sacrificing it;
3. Hulk death trigger: Fetch Phyrexian Delver and Viscera Seer and put them on the battlefield;
4. Phyrexian Delver trigger: Bring hulk back from the battlefield;
5. Sacrifice Hulk to Viscera Seer. Hulk death trigger: Fetch Mikaeus, the Unhallowed and Walking Ballista ;
6. Sac Ballista to Viscera Seer;
7. Due to Mikaeus' abilities, the Ballista will ETB as a 1/1 with a +1/+1 counter on it. Remove the +1/+1 counter to deal 1 damage to a enemy;
8. Repeat steps 6 and seven until every enemy is dead.

You can combo from turn 2 if you start with Flash and Hulk in hand. It is also perfectly possible to assemble the combo manually from the GY using Mudroltha. The possible lines are casting Viscera Seer as the creature of the turn, Animate Dead targeting Mikaeus as the enchantment of the turn, and finally, Walking Ballista as the creature of the turn. Alternatively, play Ashnod's Altar as the artifact, Animate Dead targeting Mikaeus as the enchant, and Ballista as the creature.

Date added	6 years
Last updated	5 years
Legality	This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	8 - 0 Mythic Rares 18 - 0 Rares 28 - 0 Uncommons 19 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.81
Tokens	Beast 3/3 G, Copy Clone, Zombie 2/2 B
Folders	Muldrotha