Dead Men Tell No Tales | Xavier Sal

Commander / EDH* BUG (Sultai) Counters Tokens

Poly_raptor

Token Makers (8)

• 1x Cackling Counterpart
• 1x Endless Evil
• 1x Mirage Mockery
• 1x Quasiduplicate
• 1x Phantom Steed
• 1x Dollhouse of Horrors
• 1x Quantum Misalignment
• 1x Repudiate / Replicate

Interaction (1)

• 1x Sublime Epiphany

Things to put counters on (3)

• 1x Mystic Remora
• 1x Binding the Old Gods
• 1x Genesis of the Daleks

Etb (2)

• 1x Venerated Rotpriest
• 1x Ichor Rats

Lands (37)

• 36x Island
• 1x Mirrorpool

Xavier Sal Untappers (1)

• 1x Mind Over Matter

Commander (1)

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Maybeboard

Other (6)

• 1x Necrosynthesis
• 1x Thousand-Year Elixir
• 1x Leyline of Anticipation
• 1x Sharktocrab
• 1x Vedalken Orrery
• 1x Defiler of Vigor

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Xavier Sal, Infested Captain

When I saw this card spoiled at the end of last month it certainly piqued my interest. I have wanted to build a Sultai deck for quite a long time and this felt like the perfect commander I had been waiting for.

It really reminded me Jan Jansen, Chaos Crafter, which wen I first saw thought "Damn, what a shame it isn't in blue"... enter Xavier Sal, Infested Captain

Primer

In this deck description I will aim to lay out the strategies of this deck and how to play it. There are several avenues to play and various aspects of the deck to run through. I will try to break it down simply and efficiently. Xavier Sal, Infested Captain has a lot of text. It allows us to populate, proliferate, remove counters from permanents and sacrifice creatures. I could make various different decks focussing heavily on any of these abilities. The options I mainly chose to focus on was the removal of counters and some powerful enter the battlefield effects. Lets start off by running through the counters we want to remove.

Sagas.

Sagas are a subtype of enchantment that usually have 3 to 4 different triggers, they will trigger whenever a lore counter is placed on them, as they enter or at the beginning of your upkeep. Once the last counter is placed and the last trigger resolves they are then sacrificed. Xavier Sal allows us to consistently remove these counters after they have been placed, meaning we get repeatable value. I have chosen to include sagas that tend to create tokens, which helps with the populate and sacrifice aspects of the commandcer.

Take a look at Song of Earendil for example. It's first trigger allows us to scry 2 and then draw 2 cards. If you then activate Xavier to remove this counter and populate a copy of a creature token in play, you can then get the first trigger again on the next turn, over time this is a very very powerful draw engine, each turn drawing 3 and scrying 2 (including your first normal card draw)

If you don't have any creature tokens in play to populate Song of Earendil also creates a bird token and a treasure token on it's second trigger.

Genesis of the Daleks can create an army of 3/3s with menace and offers a pseudo win con by wiping each opponents board if we can make enough daleks first, but given the repeatable value offered by Xavier this would be done pretty quickly.

The other sagas in the list are as follows.

• Binding the Old Gods - repeatable removal and ramp.

• The Phasing of Zhalfir - more removal, albeit not permanent in case it gets removed.

• The Cruelty of Gix - is a tutor on a stick to get any combo piece / pieces needed.

• The Eldest Reborn - More removal and hand disruption.

• Kiora Bests the Sea God - repeatable 8/8s with hexproof and consistently tapping down everyones nonland permanents... pretty good stuff.

Date added	5 months
Last updated	2 days
Legality	This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	1 - 0 Mythic Rares 12 - 0 Rares 3 - 0 Uncommons 1 - 0 Commons
Cards	53
Avg. CMC	3.81
Tokens	Copy Clone, Dalek 3/3 B