An Ultimatum to the Meta

Ikoria gave us companions, cycling payoffs, the terror of , and other assorted power plays, but it was also curiously filled with janky rares and mythics. Among the most disregarded cards from the set stand the Ultimatums, a callback to and completion of a popular cycle from Shards of Alara. The originals don't see much play anymore these days outside of Commander — except for , which doesn't work in a singleton format — and even there, just in conjunction with commanders that make the Ultimatums easier to cast, like or .

Let's face it: as appealing as their effects often are, the Ultimatums were purposely designed as 7-mana cards requiring strictly colored mana of three different types; not exactly something you can randomly include in your deck without giving it much thought. Speaking of their power level, while always somewhat impactful, they don't necessarily guarantee an endgame will commence on their heel.

Let's take the five that are currently legal in Standard. is straightforward and versatile, but at the end of the day it's mostly an that caps at five, only works as sorcery-speed, and calls for double white. can at times be a worse . involves a lot of setup to do something that do more efficiently. really wanted to be an instant to try and be a wider more than a narrower ; too bad one of the mandates of the Ultimatums is that they have to be sorceries. And then there's the fifth one.

If all these Ultimatums use some previously printed spell as a blueprint, then has to take its cue from , with a bit of thrown into the mix. "Mind game" effects are inherently intriguing, because they bring into their resolution the opponent's skills as well as their controller's. But you don't just want to play the Emergent Ultimatum mini-game, you want to win it; and you can.

Let's compare for a moment the green-based Emergent Ultimatum to the blue-based Genesis Ultimatum. Both attempt to engineer card and board advantage by using the library as a source of free gas. Emergent is limited to two spells, no more and no less, whereas Genesis's upper limit is theoretically five. But will Genesis realistically ever hit five relevant permanents this way? Basic statistical inference — from the usual "24 out of 60 cards" ratio — would suggest that two of the five cards on top of your library are probably lands. Any deck that aims to cast this kind of Ultimatum is certainly featuring a robust amount of ramp cards, which also don't make for exciting hits. Let's split the difference and say both Emergent Ultimatum and Genesis Ultimatum give you two good cards, although the first case is a given, the second, not so much; we still must factor in the off-chance of ending up with five — plus, all the nonpermanent cards you hit go into your hand, so you may actually run across another Ultimatum and have another go.

The real problem with Genesis Ultimatum is that you don't know what you'll get, unless you work extra hard to manipulate the top of your library via some deep scry. Assuming a good density of high-profile threats in the deck to begin with, you're going to gain maybe a couple permanents, but you'll never know which ones. And they can't all be copies of the same very desirable one, or the density will be too low. That's in fact another consideration: Genesis Ultimatum requires a decent number of additional slots even just to be able to do its thing; Emergent Ultimatum can technically work with just three. Last but not least, Genesis only puts permanents onto the battlefield; Emergent outright casts spells, which means any casting trigger is part of the deal, too. Well, not 's, since it's multicolored, and not 's, since colorless is not a color, but you know, cascade would work.

The game we have to play with Emergent Ultimatum is not so much a game of chance as it is a riddle we pose to the opponent in the form of a choice of doom: three cards, two are those that they'll have to deal with; which ones will they choose? Actually, we had to face the root of this choice while building our deck: the selection of the most effective trio of cards to fetch, or a combination of similarly effective ones, to adapt our big play to various game states. The cards must be monocolored — clearly to avoid fetching more Ultimatums, à la wishing for more wishes — and we expect they need to be powerful enough to warrant such an expensive and color-intensive tutor. After all, by the time we're ready to cast Emergent Ultimatum, we likely would have been able to hardcast any one of those spells. But two at once, that's the trick we're after. Time to make our choice, then.

They Emerge from the Sea

There are many valid Emergent targets, even just in Standard, even if we limit ourselves, as we should, to the Sultai colors to avoid overcomplicating a mana base that's already quite taxing. Bafflingly, in best-of-one Arena there's even Ixalan's still available, since it's part of the current New Player Experience . If you believe that building a deck may be an outlet for self-expression, then building an Emergent Ultimatum deck is going to be right up your alley.

Of all the content creators I've seen try their hand at this particular endeavor, the choices I most agree with are those made by Luca "LegenVD" Van Deun. Where others immediately thought of , , and , LVD moved in a completely different direction, resulting in a list that feels simultaneously more fair and more inescapable. Of the triplet above, in fact, one card is clearly the linchpin, namely . The opponent will identify it as such and will be able to exercise a lot of control over the emerging duo. This trifecta pursues a creature-based victory, often not backed up by enough creatures. But what if you take the opposite route instead? Maybe with a touch of oceanic flavor?

This is a build that does all its ramping without relying on any mana dork, which is safer against sweepers and at the same time allows us to be more control-oriented ourselves. It's also a list that's affected neither by the bans, since it doesn't employ Agent of Treachery, nor by the companion nerf. Although it could technically use in that role, given that is the only creature in the deck.

Between Grazer and the eight turn-two accelerators, it'll be common to find ourselves casting a double-ramp spell — either or — on turn three. This leads to a potential turn-four Ultimatum. Then it's time to draft that riddle, which you can see LegenVD himself do a few times here. The list doesn't have one single triad of cards to default to, which is one of its strengths. is a pivotal piece, since it combos with both , by enabling her game-ending ultimate right away, and , allowing all the chapters to fire off at once. Additionally, the non-proliferate modes on Celebration can always come in handy, especially the recursion of a previously spent payoff, most notably .

This is indeed the rare deck that would prefer to actually cast Typhoon than to cycle it, but the latter is always an option pre-Ultimatum. The shark-making enchantment represents perhaps our finisher of choice, with so many noncreature cards to enable it, thus regaining purpose in the late game. It's however important to point out that when cast for free alongside a fellow Ultimatum target, the Typhoon won't trigger right away, because the two spells are put on the stack concurrently: you only determine the order in which they'll resolve, but Typhoon triggers on casting, not on resolution. Still, from that moment on, any following Kiora Bests the Sea God will create a 7/7 flying Shark and a 8/8 hexproof Kraken – quite the deep-sea buffet.

The mentioned Liliana introduces the rich mass-removal section, with her edict effect matched by . Together, the two enable us to clear, or at least severely cripple, any board that's not gone too wide, no matter which spell the opponent decides to reshuffle into our library. was originally conceived as a means to beat decks. But it's still a way to perform some major sweeping that gives us a chance of not endangering our marine tokens, as inevitably would. And for when there's only one specific target that needs removing, is a reasonable solution that the Ultimatum can fetch. Plus, it continues on the flavor of tasting "seafood" — LVD apparently likes his sushi rolls to be large and dangerous.

It's worth noting that, unlike traditional combo decks where drawing into the high-end payoff pieces is often a hindrance, an Emergent Ultimatum deck is fully equipped to handle its namesake spell without much fuss. Meaning: it can equally easily cast all the other components as well, whenever they wind up in hand. The Ultimatum just tutors them up, two at a time. All in all, Emergent Ultimatum lends itself to a kind of Timmy/Tammy build that's very, very entertaining to play, as every resolved Ultimatum makes for a new challenge, both for us and our opponent. Having fun playing Standard is still possible, then? I'll let you draw your own conclusions — pun intended — but if that was indeed true, it'd definitely be cause for celebration.

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