Introduction
Rainbow Depths, also known as Sultai Depths, is a fast combo deck that wins through combat damage with a Marit Lage token. It’s a Lands-based deck with a suite of disruption, a combo and a way to get and protect that combo. There’s some fast mana to get there even faster and some interactive elements to slow down your opponent and prevent them from being able to interact with your combo.
Budget
Price: ~ 750-850 EUR/USD
Playable from 700 EUR/USD
Most recent deck lists: here.
How does Rainbow Depths work?
Rainbow Depths wins through combat damage, and does so by making a copy of Dark Depths with Thespian’s Stage, or remove the counters of an original one with Vampire Hexmage. There are some fast mana cards in the deck to get there faster:
- Lotus Petal
- Elvish Spirit Guide
Before combo’ing off, you can check if your opponent can interact with your combo. You have 8 discard spells to do so with Duress, Inquisition of Kozilek and Thoughtseize.
Protecting your combo from enemy Wastelands (either with a Thespian’s Stage ability or Vampire Hexmage’s) is also possible though your own Wasteland or Ghost Quarter. You activate yours, targeting theirs. This forces the action on their side. If they target your Dark Depths in response, you can respond to that by making the copy or removing the counters. Dark Depths sacrifices itself to its ability, so you can safely make a token this way. Alternatively, you can simply Stifle your opponent’s Wasteland activation if you have Stifle in hand.
Finding the land you need (whether that’s one of the combo pieces or something else) is easy in this deck with Elvish Reclaimer, Sylvan Scrying and Crop Rotation.
Protecting your combo after you made the token is also possible. If they remove or bounce it with an ability, like Karakas, there’s Stifle or Not of this World. If they target it with a spell, Not of this World also works, but you can also Crop Rotation or activate Elvish Reclaimer for Sejiri Steppe to give your Marit Lage protection from the color of whatever they’re targeting your token with. After boarding there’s also Veil of Summer (vs Brazen Borrower) or Flusterstorm.
Acquiring Rainbow Depths
If you want to buy Rainbow Depths, there’s a few expensive cards in the deck:
- Thoughtseize
- Sylvan Safekeeper
- Lotus Petal
- Mana Confluence
- Urborg, tomb of Yawgmoth
- Boseiju, Who Endures
- Karakas
- Force of Vigor
- Flusterstorm
Once you have these, the rest of the deck is quite cheap. You could replace Mana Confluence with City of Brass and change the numbers around to save some money. Mana Confluence is slightly better though, since City of Brass places a trigger on the stack in response to tapping for mana, and Mana Confluence doesn’t. This doesn’t often matter, but when it does, it may count.
Upgrade paths
Starting from a complete Rainbow Depths list, there are some obvious upgrade paths. You could stay within the Dark Depths archetype and expand to either GWx Depths, GB (Turbo) Depths or Mono Black Depths. Of these options, Mono Black is probably the cheapest option, and it’s a super cool hybrid between aggro and combo.
If you want to build Mono Black Depths, here’s an example list. The most significant upgrades you need are:
- Maralen of the Mornsong (combo with Opposition Agent) – this card is optional but I think it’s pretty spicy
- Agadeem’s Awakanening
- 3 Chrome Mox
- 1 Shadowspear
- 4 Urza’s Saga
- This list plays the Leyline/Helm combo in the sideboard, this is also optional but I think it’s pretty good as well.
GWx Depths on the other hand is probably the best deck you can build into. The disadvantage of GWx Depths is that it’s pretty expensive. Of course there are steps or phases you can build into this deck, but if you want to use the deck to its full potential, you’re going to need 4 dual lands at least: 2 Savannah, 1 Plateau and 1 Taiga. Additionally, you’re going to need some fetch lands: Windswept Heath and some more green fetches. By default, the deck also plays 3 Mox Diamond, but they can be budget-replaced by 4 Once Upon A Time. This adds consistency, but at the cost of losing some speed. Lists for GWx Depths can be found here.
Alternatively, this deck has some overlap in the expensive cards that also go into Oops! All Spells: Thoughtseize, Force of Vigor and Lotus Petal.