“This is not the worst deck I’ve ever played at a Pro Tour.” – Lucas Siow

Sometimes you just have to go deep. Very deep. This Pro Tour meant a lot for a few people in my hotel room. One needed any finish to make Silver. Another needed a strong but not exceptional record to make Platinum, and make a dream come true. For another, anything other than top 8 was useless. I set my own goal at x-5, qualifying for Milwaukee and getting Silver. We all wanted something different, but ended up playing this monstrosity of a Siow deck.

Dan Lanthier, Constructed master, 3-0’d the draft then promptly 0-5’d. Lucas lost a nailbiter full of judge calls against Dezani to miss Day 2 as well. Pascal Maynard fared slightly better, beating Canadian Hall of Famer Gary Wise to sneak in at 4-4, but dropped halfway through the second day. That left myself, scraping through Day 1 with a 5-2-1 record, yelling at myself for drawing a match I should have won. I drafted first and second picked Whirler Rogue, one of the set’s resident mythic uncommons, and promptly lost to Jackson Cunningham, wrecking me with the Tragic Arrogance I passed him. That felt pretty bad. Fortunately the deck performed better in the next two, leading me to an overall 4-2 in Limited. Now at 7-3-1, I needed to 5-0 for top 8, 4-1 for Silver, or 3-2 for money. And I had a hell of a deck to do it with.

Sultai Pact – Daniel Fournier

[deck]
[Lands]
2 Forest
1 Island
3 Llanowar Wastes
4 Opulent Palace
3 Polluted Delta
2 Swamp
1 Temple of Deceit
2 Temple of Malady
3 Temple of Mystery
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
2 Yavimaya Coast
[/Lands]
[Spells]
4 Demonic Pact
1 Dig Through Time
3 Disperse
3 Hero’s Downfall
3 Languish
1 Murderous Cut
2 Silumgar’s Command
2 Sultai Charm
3 Thoughtseize
1 Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
[/Spells]
[Creatures]
3 Den Protector
4 Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy
1 Nissa, Vastwood Seer
3 Satyr Wayfinder
2 Tasigur, the Golden Fang
[/Creatures]
[Sideboard]
2 Ultimate Price
1 Sultai Charm
2 Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver
2 Treasure Cruise
1 Negate
1 Disdainful Stroke
3 Feed the Clan
2 Drown in Sorrow
1 Duress
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

So… Why would we do this to ourselves, with so much on the line? Lucas, Dan and myself all had plenty of experience with Abzan, and Pascal had spent the past week testing other archetypes. The answer is fairly straightforward: the deck is surprisingly powerful, and nobody has any idea how to play against it. Demonic Pact is a hell of a card, a Cruel Ultimatum-lite, and the Jace/Den Protector package ensures that you can’t lose to the fourth ability over the course of a long game. The rest of the deck is a fairly typical Sultai tap-out control deck. I was fortunate enough to be offered a deck tech late in the tournament, so go watch that if you want some breakdowns on individual cards:

Sultai Pact crushes RG Devotion, has a serviceable Abzan Control matchup, and has all the tools to beat Jeskai, Thopters, Heroic and red decks. It’s also extremely hard. So many cards in the deck have so many options, and slight mishaps can make you literally lose the game on the spot to one of your cards if you’re not careful. Someone in the group suggested we call the deck Scheherazade, because not dying to Demonic Pact was a subgame in and of itself.

A couple notes on sideboarding before we move on: it’s frequently correct to trim on Pacts in matchups where your opponent can interact with them. Against decks like Devotion, which try to ignore it, we can shave some of the cards that bounce it, as they won’t disrupt that plan. If your opponent applies pressure and can kill Pact – [card]Dromoka’s Command[/card] – board them all out. Become a traditional Sultai deck. For what it’s worth, this deck is very bad if [card]Dromoka’s Command[/card] is popular. Languish is typically very strong against GWx creature decks, but it’s rough to rely on a single card in a matchup that pressures you in a significant way.

Day 2 starts with another draft. I sat down at a mostly unremarkable pod, first and second picked Whirler Rogues, and saw exactly a pair of two drops in the entire draft. Somehow a double Whirler Rogue deck turned out mediocre. I lost round 9 to Pro Tour finalist Jackson Cunningham, wrecking me each game with the Tragic Arrogance I passed him. I guess justice was served. Fortunately, I drew very well the rest of the way and was able to beat Seth Manfield, the best player in my pod, in the third round to salvage a 2-1.

Moving on back to Standard, I was not surprised to be paired against Wafo-Tapa in the draw bracket. Also unsurprisingly, he was playing control – a matchup I honestly had not tested at all. I punted game 1 by forgetting who I was playing against, and not playing around multiple counterspells at every point of the game. Pact did its job in game 2, supplementing [card]Thoughtseize[/card]s and [card]Den Protector[/card]s to generate savage card advantage, but I was destroyed in the decider by a full set of Ojutais rearing their heads. He was able to cast new ones each turn to give them virtual vigilance, stopping my Jace from killing them with flashbacked Downfalls. The top 8 dream was dead, but I could still 4-0 to make my stated goal.

The next three rounds were kind of a blur. Things went well, my opponents mulliganed more than me, and I was able to take down Marcelino Freeman, Jesse Hampton, and Thomas Hendricks, on Devotion, Thopters, and Sultai Control respectively, to bring it to a crucial round 16. Wizards was kind enough to give me a deck tech, hyping me up considerably, before getting thoroughly shut down by Andrew Cuneo with a ridiculous UR mill deck in the final round. Despite having [card]Sultai Charm[/card]s to destroy Sphinx’s Tutelages, the matchup was simply impossible to win. In the past few months, I had lost my win-and-in to top 8 at GP Charlotte in an unwinnable Burn matchup and lost two won games at the RPTQ top 8 to topdecked burn spells, so this loss, missing a PT invite and Silver, was really rough on me. Normally I just bounce back and want to try again, playing more Magic, but this time, I felt like I was going to cry.

So here we are, back to square one. Milwaukee is a done deal, but on the bright side, the next RPTQ is Modern, and Modern in Toronto is my jam, so hopefully I can make it back on the train as soon as possible.

Daniel Fournier
@tirentu