How WotC Made Cycling Bland in EDH
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 1 มิ.ย. 2024
- Written and edited by Alex Hutchinson
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Decklist for Sharuum Slide:
archidekt.com/decks/4221386/s...
Decklist and explainer for 2004 World Champion Astral Slide deck:
www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/694313
• Instant Deck Tech: Ast...
0:00 Cycling
3:22 Gavi
8:12 Sharuum Slide - เกม
I have a Patreon now! www.patreon.com/SalubriousSnail
I'll be posting bonus EDH deckbuilding videos there monthly, plus anything else I feel like. You can see those for $3 a month, and the first one is a guide to cheap ramp in EDH, since I got a lot of comments on my ramp video looking for good alternatives to the most commonly run cards like Cultivate.
I really Wanna see your opinion on stax and Mill.
Okay gavi might be a bit boring, but she makes up for it by making games that normally take 1 hour take 3 hours. That way you can have more quality time with your friends :)
'Quality' 😅
Definitely important to take Decree of Annihilation out of Gavi decks that don't have a good plan for it
💀💀💀💀
There are so many M:tG-themed channels on TH-cam these days, but I consistently find your perspective to be uniquely valuable. I'm a big fan of your videos.
I love the way you explained your thought process when making the deck, this is exactly the type of Magic content I wanna see
I remember the many people who would build cycling edh decks before Ikoria and amonkhet, building around Astral Slide. These decks always felt really unique and ambitious, and they really reflected the preferences and style of each deckbuilder. Since Gavi was printed, i never see those decks anymore. Kudos to you for this quirky and fun sharuum build!
so if the decks were so cool but suddenly stopped being played do you think thats an issue with gavi, or an issue with the format just evolving beyond "pay an obtuse amount of mana, draw a card"
@@professorkhepriWell both, I would say. Power creel for the second and braindeck oleander build arounds for the first.
@@professorkhepri Exactly, this has nothing to do with Gavi unless you are saying that seeing a dedicated cycling commander be absolutely mediocre soured people on the mechanic. I think I could at least see that partially contribute lol
I love your videos to death. Your deck building style is so unique and fresh in a TH-cam environment of “add smothering tithe to most decks that run white.” I love how you explain your deck construction routes and how you end up with these off the wall GENIUS ideas. I’d love to see you touch on Aristocrats as a theme as I feel like it’s not a simple balance of a deck design. Since it involves a lot of balancing outlets/fodder/draw. Keep it up!!
Honestly aristocrats is one of the few archetypes I’ve played very little of, even as a primarily black player. I’m sure I’ll get around to it at some point. I’m glad you enjoy the videos!
@@salubrioussnail i would reccomend endrek sahr. Endrek adds the fun element that you have a ridicolous supply of bodies that you HAVE to murder at a good rate otherwise your engine siezes up. You can add cards that have no right to be there usually and are a slice of blacks more out there stuff. Descent into madness, smoketack (the cooler daniel). Hecatomb. Gate to phyrexia if you can ever get your hands on a copy to name a few. Ive got a decklist if you would like a starting point
My main worry as a 5 mv commander is that i havent built my ramp correctly. I have the spice. But i dont know if ive done enough in the ramp department or built it right
@@llamarama6976 Endrek definitely seems like a fun one, though I'd echo the worry about the 5cmc. If I'm paying more than 4 I prefer it when the commander does their sauce on ETB or has some good protection or isn't central to the deck. I am a sucker for some good black stax though...
I've been playing Meren of Clan Nel Toth since she came out, and I'd be interested to see where she fits into the spectrum of commanders - she's a really powerful value engine, but one that opens up a variety of possibilities and demands a specific way to operate.
Thank you for expanding and improving the way I think about EDH deckbuilding with every video. The Snail never fails.
As a new player who net decks aggressively, I love this kind of video explaining the philosophy behind building decks you want to play. More of this please!
Your views on deckbuilding are so interesting, Ive not seen you talk about a deck I didnt want to try yet! (In fact I made a Glissa deck following your core ideas from that other video)
There's some really neat concepts at play here I hadnt thought about before, I have some decks that need retooling now!
And then there's Vintage staple Lorien Revealed. Islandcycling 1, pitches to Force of Will is actually really powerful, and it's a decent topdeck if the game gets scuffed.
As someone who also has a Gavi deck, the problem you describe is definitely one I also hit upon: I realized that a lot of the cycling cards were almost always never being cast, because if the options are A) Cast a spell for mana or B) Draw a card and get a dino cat for 0 mana, then B) will almost always win out, which meant that for a lot of cases the cycling cards simply had no card text at all. In my case, I moved away from this issue by tuning the deck around a combo of "Draw a second card in a turn" mechanics with an additional go-wide sub-theme.
There's still a few cycling cards, but those that are left are those that I still wanna be casting a good amount of time, and because the deck no longer relies on me free-cycling cards as much that also means that reliance on the commander is reduced. I can draw the second card via Staff of the Storyteller, Shorikai, Currency Converter, Niv-Mizzet the Firemind, Loran, Dream Trawler, etc., and I have a lot of payoffs other than Gavi as well. This change has made the deck a lot more enjoyable to play because as you said Gavi takes away a lot of otherwise interesting decisions.
It's always really refreshing seeing your perspective on deck building, it's certainly influenced how I've made multiple decks
I had an almost opposite brew experience, where I started with the idea "Dungeons seem neat. I wanna go through some dungeons" and started building with Sefris as my commander. After seeing a lot of bland sac/reanimate strategies to make creatures hit my graveyard and progress me through a dungeon, it was a delightful sort of "aha!" moment to realize I could use cycle creatures directly from my hand! After realizing I wanted to build into cycle as my main engine, I stumbled onto Astral Drift/Slide, and even then didn't realize just how powerful and flexible they were until I got a few games with the deck under my belt.
I only started playing the game a couple years ago and had never had a chance to dive into cycling before, and this is definitely one of my favorite decks to play now (even if it IS a grindy value-engine deck at the end of the day). I really feel like I get to engage strategically with the cards in my hand, and it leads to some gnarly stacks as it starts turbo-ing through dungeons. It also lets my utilize Waker of Waves surprisingly well (though sadly not a true cycle effect), which I got in my first-ever Jumpstart pack!
Man this is exactly how i felt when WTC released Ghired for the populate mechanic.
I really appreciate your insight on generic value engine commanders. Jo Grant seems like a really cool include in this deck and you've inspired me to make my own deck!
Thank you for butting into words why Gavi never scratched my itch for a cycling build; still trying to figure out what I want instead, but this is really getting the gears turning!
Really love to see your content as it gets me excited all over again to deckbuild myself. Currently was fascinated by the new Ixalan card Gemcutter Buccaneer and the concept of turning non-equipment artifacts into equipment, and thus wanted to push the boundaries of this concept with running the new Doctor Who Commander Dan Lewis and seeing how to make an equipment deck without using any actual equipment. I hope to test it out soon and apply some of the concepts you bring up. Keep up the great work!
Remember the Tiny Leaders format? I miss it, simply because that's where I built a Slide deck for the first time. (Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest was chosen for color primarily, and served as a finisher when Sphinx's Tutelage failed, often paired with Akroma's Blessing to finish off opponents)
This channel will for sure blow up. These videos are so insightful and intelligent. Not a lot of people talk about magic this way I feel like!
I love these videos so much! i have been playing for around four years and I desperately was looking for content to evolve my way of thinking about this format. Kepp up the good work! ill definitely be using this information to maybe make a jund morph deck at some point!
When you described the boring commanders that are part of the x-y-z cathegory so many examples popped up in my mind 😅
I also happily realised that the most boring decks that I build and abandoned are those that respond exactly to this rule, while the ones I'm keeping are those that have a little spice in them.
Food for thoughts as always, thanks man!
I feel like if you and my other favorite edh deck building channel Aegis Gaming Official ever got put in a room together deck building for commander would be solved forever.
You both just have such deep and well thought out deck building strategy that’s always a marvel to hear.
Absolutely loving the content!!! Keep up the insightful videos!
Man. Well thought out deck building. Loved your approach to it.
Very interesting video. I generally feel the same about these style of commanders, although I wouldn't build them myself. I feel like grouping all of this style of design into one large pile might be a bit of a disservice to the overall point since some of the commanders listed help beginners get into the game and give them a good guiding path to what would otherwise be hard to wrap your head around.
Kadena for example is imo a really neat way to introduce Morph to new players. Its a mechanic that has tons of depth and lots of decision making, while also holding a new players hand who might make mistakes poorly timing morph plays due to how mana intense they are.
This style of design has its place as a way to be an introduction to complex mechanics to new players. When putting it on easier to understand mechanics like cycling, Scry, or combat in general I wholeheartedly agree with everything said in the video.
Another point I feel was glossed over at 7:43 is that some of the commanders with this design have found players completely breaking a separate mechanic in half. Korvold for example is often shown as the introduction for some players to "cEDH" (Competitive Commander) due to the insane turns the commander can take when using specific treasure generators. Korvold is often shown in alot of other TH-cam videos due to the really high skill ceiling playstyle found in a competitive environment. The flashy-ness of some of those plays doesn't hurt either.
All an all though amazing presentation. Highly underrated channel.
I don't think the skill ceiling is why it is in videos. It's because it's powerful and because people like dragons.
Im so glad i stumbled onto this video. Out of all the MTG content on TH-cam, i feel like i relate to the way you build/play decks the most.
The structure of this video is amazing too. A criticism at the modern commander design, but a solition to it.
Another great video, i love your approach to deckbuilding
Love this approach and deck idea, super interesting
This is an epic deck. Also just a great video, keep doing what you're doing
wow, I'm glad YT recommended this to me! I agree a lot with your philosophy that a commander that's just a value engine can encourage boring play patterns. your writing/storytelling through the video really sold this point well.
my partner also has a Sharuum deck that he's been unsatisfied with, and has been mulling it over for months about what to do with it. I showed him this video and he was almost mad that he didn't think of such an interesting build himself haha.
A thing on "Designer Commanders" is that while they do facilitate and often encourage a linear build path and create simple, straightforward value-engine gameplay, that is potentially a good thing for the very new player who just wants a deck that they can pull off the shelf and grok what it's trying to do quick enough to go toe-to-toe with the more interesting decks crafted by their more enfranchised friends. Equally so for the player who wants something comfortable and familiar to play and still have a good time.
They're the athleisure clothing of Commander; easy to get on and get looking good, but if you want a true expression of what you enjoy, you'll find yourself needing to go deeper. Some people enjoy the simplicity, and that's just as valid as those who like to push the limits of their creativity.
One of my favorite decks I've made in the past is a similar idea, Esper Cycling with Zur to search Slide and Drift. Loved seeing it reflected here, definitely gave me some pointers for if I want to rebuild that list!
Very interesting take on the cycling mechanic and Gavi! I happen to love Gavi myself, she is the first deck I built and I have a lot of fun with it. On one hand, I consider the deck I have very interesting as the shape of its gameplan varies a lot depending on its opening hand, and it carries a ton of interesting synergies and shenanigans, but on the other hand, I can't exactly disagree that it doesn't align with previous cycling decks.
While Gavi still encourages a lot of interesting deckbuilding (how many cycling cards should you run, should you rely on the dino cats or go a different route, which goodstuff cards can you run without getting in the way of your gameplan) and many of the individual decision points of cycling are still there (should I cycle if I only have 1/2 cycling cards in hand?) some key decision points are lost, mainly regarding mana management. On the other hand, this might be necessary since Gavi or her colors don't really allow you to get a lead in mana.
What a great design analysis. I disagree with the "betrayal" rhetoric of course, but the breakdown of how it discourages variety in cycling use is very interesting.
Toluz cycling is one of my favorite decks because astral slide/drift make a lovely stream of cyclings that you can then sac her to get them all back! i hope you enjoy the thought, great video!
I am brewing a Rasputin blink deck built around cycling, and it is the most excited I have been for a new deck ever.
love these videos they feel varied and unique compared to most magic content
I'm working on a Prismatic bridge cycling/blink deck and I'm pretty excited for it. It's whole goal is cycling shenanigans + copies of astral slide effects to control the board while you also occasionally bounce Life of the Party. Then you run some generic cycling payoffs and watch your little rube Goldberg blink cycle machine go off. If you keep it relatively low creature count, it makes it more streamlined, because it is pretty janky as is.It's challenging to run but satisfying to win with because of all the lines and interactions that come with a deck focused on blink and cycling.
Loved this! Thanks for sharing!
As someone who absolutely loved all the Alara block Esper cards I feel like you made this video for me
My cycling commander is Toluz, clever conductor. And all the cycler are usually worse than just playing cantrips, but its kinda cool
Good assessment of a card, good job keep up the hard work
My favorite cycling commander is Toluz, Clever Conductor. It's a great timebomb commander - the longer she's on the field, the more advantage the player accrues. It's really funny when people don't want to kill a commander, because doing so means that the player using her gets back 5-10 cards. My favorite instance of this was having someone Force of Will my Village Rites targeting Toluz for a rough +13 in card advantage.
On top of that, she's esper, so I get to play Ominous Seas, one of my favorite magic cards ever.
I can see why somone might lump Ranar in with the "boring" commanders, but in my opinion he is far from a boring commander in the same way Gavi is. He might look like "welcome to foretell, I am foretell", but in reality it is much more fun to just build around exile effects. In this regard he is quite open. You can exile anything from the field or your hand, and it will trigger him. You can do blink, you can do combat tricks, rest in peace gives you a token when stuff dies, you get value from suspend cards. Honestly my Ranar deck is one of my favorite decks
Okay, Ive spent the last 12 hours mulling over this deck idea and theres 2 cards I feel fit incredibly well you dont have in your list. Jo Grant (from the doctor who decks) and Mirrormade. Jo can make it a whole lot easier getting some of the big bombs in the yard for reanimation while also fueling the Slides, and Mirrormade can be a third Slide or a big bomb with potential to switch it up if necessary!
God you really got my brain going with this one, thank you!
I love the way you verbalise your thoughts on deck building without coming across as condescending towards players with a different deckbuilding approach as you do. I personally really enjoy a lot of the "designer commanders" as you called them, because they sometimes allow cards to find a home and shine in a deck just because they have a certain keyword or ability. An example of that would be something like Vesuvan Shapeshifter for Kadena decks. I just really don't like it when the supposed payoff is always just a generic piece of value like draw a card. Ironically just like Kadena.
That being said, I definetly will try to build a deck from the ground up again after watching this video. It really gave me a little kick of inspiration. Thanks for that.
Excellent points and a solid deck build too. I'm struggling with a lot of "self building commander" fatigue as of late, it feels like so many legends these days are laser focused for the archetype they want (or are just another panharmonicon-esque effect) so seeing this was a breath of fresh air. (I also had a gavi deck online and everything you said rang true, its why I never built it in paper) Keep up the good work!
I actually felt this way about the shrine Commander. I don't know why people were demanding one when they could make a Shrine deck with a variety of different Commanders
@@NecromancyForKids Because the best shrine commander prior to the shrine commander was one which could tutor sanctum of all basically making the deck plthe shrines
I find it fascinating to see how different players approach the deckbuilding process. My process, interestingly, is almost the inverse of the one explained here: I usually start with a commander that I want to play, and then try to come up with a focused strategy that utilizes that commander well.
For instance, my most recent project was Jan Jansen, Chaos Crafter. I knew I wanted to build a deck for him, so I started brainstorming and came up with a strategy that specifically cares about casting artifact spells and running payoffs like Digsite Engineer and a pet card of mine, Golem Foundry. From there, the deck got more focused as I refined it to the point that almost every spell in the deck is an artifact.
I like this approach because it tends to help me steer away from decks that just build themselves, like the Gavi deck in this video. That said, I always love hearing about other people’s deck building processes and seeing what works for other people!
Overall, I think your core arguments are all really good. I appreciate that your videos aren't just a list of complaints & that that go through how you as a player deal with the design issue you're trying to tackle. That deck tech was great & I love seeing people use powerful commanders like Sharuum & Zur to enable less obvious strategies.
All that being said, I do think that the real strength in the design in "designer commanders" like Gavi is their sheer simplicity for new players who want to pick up a precon and make some straightforward upgrades, not to be the commander of a deck that you put together from whole cloth. I have a Kadena deck that I got when I was still pretty new to Magic, and did just that with. I learned a lot about how to tune a deck by playing around with her. It made the decks that I have built for myself much better as a result.
Yeah, I definitely agree with all of this, and I think if you handed a new player one of those commanders plus scryfall or a big pile of cards, it’d lead to a really useful deckbuilding exercise. And that’s definitely part of the point of precons as well: to offer a starting point. I just wish more of them had interesting final destinations.
@salubrioussnail I'm with you. I've started to actively choose not to use the cards from the pre-cons when builing most of my decks because it feels like I've done it all before.
@@salubrioussnail normally the secondary commander is the one that offers exploration possibilities: Inalla vs Mairsil, Gavi vs Akimi, Esper Urza vs Tawnos etc Although sometimes it ends up the other way round (Kamiz vs Tivit).
So I'll say this about wanting to recreate "astral slide cycling.deck" from 60 card, 4xcopies, tournament formats:
It's always going to be an uphill challenge to recreate a deck in EDH based around an idea of mechanic, or way of using a mechanic, that isn't stapled to a legendary creature you can make your commander. Or alternatively, there are enough functional reprints of it that you can run six copies in your EDH deck. Otherwise you just are going to have a hard time replicating the experience of a 60 card deck playing for copies of a card that was critical to its game plan. Which you obviously are aware of , because you bent over backwards to include a half dozen ways to tutor up the non-commander card that makes you deck tick.
Sometimes there are just mechanics, tribes, themes, etc, that worked in decks with 60 cards and 4x copies of cards just don't work very well in a Singleton deck with 100 cards. Sometimes it literally can't work at all, or else it's technically possible, but it would be unplayably bad. I say this as someone who has 60 casual decks I haven't been able to play in *years* because they don't work in EDH (Kavu tribal, B/W Grandeur, a combo engine that requires create a loop casting minds desire with another copy of minds desire, etc) and EDH is the only casual 99% of people play now.
Which, honestly, I feel like is the detriment of casual play; we've forced one format to have to encompass all play and therefore be all things to all people on the back of only one kind of deck building that wasn't even the standard way to build decks. Most circles also seem to have dropped any inclination to even include different game variants (e.g. star, secret ally, emperor, etc) and so it's also only 4 player free for all, always, all the time.
Instead of engaging in multiple play modalities and using each for what it's best at, we've created a stale, same-same casual play experience where we only have one way to play. But that results in forcing in the ideas we like but don't fit, like square pegs in round holes. Ultimately most of us have taken a format design with variance in mind and often designed decks with the goal of seeing the same cards every game as consistently as possible.
It just seems like players in casual spaces created an unnecessary problem by discarding all non-EDH play, and now we have to find ways to replicate all our favorite 60 card decks in EDH, when we could have just kept playing 60 casual and EDH at the same time.
Idk, /rant
man thank you for putting into words how i felt about gavi when she was spoiled, and how new commanders are designed, im taking your list if you dont mind, i´ve been looking for an esper commander to play for a while and i couldnt decide which one.
My absolute favorite slide commander is Toluz. It's much more of a combo cycling deck, so admittedly you want to cycle your cards something like 80 to 90% of the time, but it feels so freaking good to get one of the astral enchantments down, cycling a ton of cards with toluz out getting a ton of ETB value off of random creatures you have on board, then at the end of the chain blink Toluz and just totally restock your hand with the cycling cards. Probably the closest you can get to pauper cycle storm in an EDH setting, and wildly entertaining if a bit goldfish-y.
Very well put together, I'd definitely love your ideas on other commanders, but also other mechanics as well, like food or targeted removal, or just straight up "favorite character showcase The Deck." I've been trying to build one around all the Narset cards, but I'm having trouble making it viable without leaning on commanders, but your methods seem very different than mine, and something I definitely want to learn more of.
I’m an Ashiok fan at heart, but unfortunately most of the ashiok planeswalkers are kinda boring in commander, so I’ll probably never make an ashiok deck.
@@salubrioussnail very tragic, but understandable. I'll be subbed anyways, but I'll be hyped if you change your mind :)
Really well said! I never thought about it like that but it actually makes a lot of sense, although I personally have and enjoy a Ranar deck and want to try Kadeena (she's pretty bland though, it's just my first thought when it comes to face-down commanders), so I kind of like these commander designs, but I appreciate your approach to deck-building. And it's great that we can get both in this format!
i was just about to type in a comment and wanted to ask you about the commander 2019 precons. but then came 7:21 this slide lol
you have inspired me to try and rebuild my C19 Kadena morphs deck with a different commander
The thought process on making this deck is incredibly intriguing and definitely not how to build but Id love to have my brain work that way
Man, I feel the fatigue from "do the thing, get value" design choices. I don't feel many commanders incentivize choice anymore at all. Just "I'm going to do the thing that my commander makes good, so buckle up".
Love your deck building explanation though. Absolutely awesome explanations for choice picks and truly a unique deck.
Glad you showed Hapatra. She's my cycling deck 😄
Dude. I've never seen your content before. And this shit is great!
The way you describe deck building is exactly how i tend to brew with partner commanders! Typically one is synergistic and the other is there for the colors you need. Ghost of Ramirez de pietro snd ravos soultender also could serve as a suitable commander pairing for this deck!
I made mardu cycling & sagas deck with Ghen Arcanum Weaver. A lot of it is cycling control style with light enchantment based reanimation sprinkled on top. Ive gone back and forth with decree of annihilation and fall of the thran, which make for some sick winstates after reanimating a fatty or two. Great writeup on cycling, im a huge fan of the mechanic
you put into words a feeling ive tried to explain to people a lot
I've built a few cycling decks in my day. My favorite being mono black with Gorex, who plays really nice with people at casual tables and against precons. Very fun deck that allows you to gradually accrue value from Gorex attacking and dying over and over while filling your hand with cycling, transmute, and channel creatures. Another more memey build was Okaun cycle-ops tribal, which combined the raw power of mono red cyclops, with the best cycling cards mono red has to offer.
I just found this channel/video on recommended, and already it's one of if not the most thought provoking mtg videos I've seen. It puts into words that irksome feeling I've gotten from so many modern commander designs.
As someone who designs custom cards for a hobby, definitely going to take notes to avoid similar pitfalls in my mentality.
This reminds me of my thoughts when I saw Anje Falkenrath. The card theoretically enables madness, but Anje really only cares about the discard part, so her decks just devolve into Worldgorger Dragon combo decks that just cycle through the whole deck.
the commander that makes your first cycle a free 3/3 cat that can activate other cards that rely on cycling is a "bad midrange commander" apparently, okay friend
Really sweet! Love the vid
I went through this exact line of thought when i wanted a cycle deck but i settled on a cycle "storm" style list with Toluz in the command zone to let me reuse my cycling cards by repeatedly killing her with things like phyrexian tower in the middle of big cycle turns. Its genuinely one of my favorite decks ive ever made and its so much fun when it gets going.
I run Toluz, Clever Conductor with lots of cycling and some sac outlets. I draw then discard my whole deck then get it back.
you just inspired my next commander deck, Atraxa grand unifier has such a great etb that I can attempt to use it with cycling cards and astral slide/drift and abuse etb's
I went into this preparing to be skeptical from the title. Loved it though, really great deck building and analysis. It's the same reason i like demo on EDHdeckbuidling.
I love all of the points you're making here, my only personal issue in construction of commander decks is making the deck too samey, and I feel by including all of these consistent ways to do X (in your case, tutor for and play slide) the game becomes the same steps repeated each time you play.
Frankly thats better and worse in a lot of cases. Most people aren't interested in sitting there and durdling for god knows how long, if you want to do that play solitaire. Even in a multiplayer game like edh we come together understanding our game might take an hour to 2, no one wants to sit there for 4 hours until someone finally does something after everyone has essentially heart of the cards top decked after a board wipe. That's even more dull than watching a guy sol ring, into swamp, into vampiric tutor turn 1. At least I know the guy playing Sol Ring is going to advance the gamestate in a meaningful way, hopefully.
Would you rather every deck contain the same pushed Commander staples Wizards prints to sell product?
7:51 I feel like Ranar is a bit misplaced here, and I'm not saying that just cause he's a commander of mine. He might read like just _the_ foretell commander, but in reality a bit of foretelling is just the cherry on top of the extremely unique exile-token-blink theme he has going on.
i don’t know if you have it in the full deck, but one of the new doctor who cards gives all historics cycling for 2 and a white. helps to get artifacts in grave to reanimate while giving extra synergy and draw
The biggest problem with commander is inherent to its deck building rules, 100 cards with singleton restriction is that thousands of cards that were fun and/or challenging to play were rendered completely useless since it's pretty much impossible to count on them unless you pile a bunch of tutors in the deck.
On the deck and its sub-theme of ETB triggers, I assume you already tested Sun Titan and Teleportation Circle in your list, Titan can help recover Slides from the 'yard while Circle blinks to reuse triggers.
I wanted to build an Astral Slide cycling deck because I pulled Zirda from an Ikoria pack and was excited to find out that he can reduce my cycling costs. I built the deck and noticed that the deck would really benefit from having blue, so I shopped around for a Jeskai commander. I settled on Pramikon, Sky Rampart. It turned out to be a much more powerful deck because my strategy wasn't related to my commander, it's just a protection piece to make sure I get to my win conditions. Building a deck like this was a lot more enjoyable and it turned out to be much more resilient than my other decks I've built where the commander was the first idea. Not relying on your commander for your game plan, but having it be a way to get to your win conditions is a great way to build the deck.
An Esper deck that isn't pure stax? That takes dedication. Hats off to you.
I love Oversold Cemetery! I put that in a lot of graveyard focused decks.
Iv seen videos which have zur the enchanter as commander for the cycle deck. It was an attempt to make zur not solitary and as boring by basically just using him to tutor for cards like astral slide and other cyle payoff enchatments .edit: ah interesting you covered this
Zur definitely works as a commander for an Astral Slide deck and I respect the people who go for it, but I could just tell that it wouldn’t end up being quite the deck I wanted. Zur as a commander is just so polarizing. When he’s the commander it’s hard to talk people down from being spooked by him, whereas when he’s in the 99 with easy tutors, people (correctly) go “oh my opponent is probably gonna tutor out a couple above average enchantments, I guess I might stop that if there’s nowhere better to put my removal”. Still eats a removal sometimes, but it’s nowhere near as frequently as I’ve seen Zur commanders eat it.
@@salubrioussnail yeah zur all too often is getting protection. Then lock pieces. Then misery.
I'm building a hapatra deck but instead of going for a deck focused on -1/-1 counters, it's gong to be a deathtouche themed deck. I'm pretty excited with the idea of finding different ways of using commanders with straightfoward abilities.
I built a super budget Hargilde/Wernog artifact deck for a fun league recently, and remembered your esper cycling deck... Maybe I should try incorporating cycling as well. Shifting Wernog seems fun.
Just wanted to post an update: I did build it and I did play it for the first time today. It's a really cool deck IMO, and I wanted to thank you for the inspiration and a great starting point!
My cycling deck is helmed by Shabraz, Brallin, and Zirda. To add even more decisions to cycling, I have 3 different commanders that synergize with it in different ways. I submitted my 100$ version to an archidekt contest and it came in second!
So its a zur astral slide deck with extra steps. Cool. I have a sythis astral slide deck cuz i thought it’s better to get something out of the cast, and having wilderness reclamation and other such effects mitigate my choices between casting permanents on my turn and cycling on opponents’ turns.
I have upgraded my gavi precon, and I find that it's extremely valuable to sculpt my hand not just deploy threats like a midrange deck. Mine is definitely more on the control side. I try to stop my opponents first, then try to win on turn 10+.
i got the gavi precon f̶o̶r̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶f̶i̶e̶r̶c̶e̶ because i like the colors, and the way im building her that i find really fun is by dropping any and all token synergies and treating the dinosaur cats more as life total protection, because it's very hard to swing a 10/10 trampler into 5 2/2 cats. instead, i use her cost reduction in the early game to race through my library until i can find one of many hyperspecific combos that all equate to using cycling synergies like escape protocol with cloud of fairies or surly badgersaur with tectonic reformation to race even FASTER through my through my library, while going positive on mana in the process. then, once i have ~10 cards left and 30 mana i slam down lab man and jace and proceed to draw myself out
I have a friend who almost always builds their decks like this, and I've also progressively moved toward this type of deck design. Overall its so much more fun. (For us at least)
Okay but can we agree that Eligeth gives cards that say "Scry X, then draw X/2 cards" kind of a "Five whoppers, and five more whoppers" vibe? Cause I think it's hilarious.
I use your concept in my Breya deck, I just like Breya's options more than Sharuum, but her and most of those cards and strats are in the deck.
My favorite deck for cycle cards though especially cycle-lands is Muldrotha, very much a generic value engine but it just feels super cool! xD
I recently built this Riku turbo fog deck where the idea is to play big idiots and then use asymmetrical fogs to use in my combat phase if opponents try to trade. If I dont get blocked I can protect myself from crackback with fogs. I found that despite there being a lot of idiots of all sizes in temur the best seem to be random landcycling creatures because I can slot them into my manabase and have more reactive spells in the "main" deck. I played one game and won and I was very impressed with the cycling creatures. I intend to put in Genesis to make a bad oversold cemetery impression.
I also have an Extus turbo fog list that runs bunch of cycling creatures. They basically add "kicker draw card" to my fogs and I run both slides there for value. I think I'm going to upgrade the mana base with landcyclers after my experience with Riku.
Love the use of Currency Converter with cycling for even more value, especially with the LOTR landcycling cards
I love cycling too! I turned Niv Mizzet the Reborn into a cycling payoff with Astral Slide and a bunch of land cycling two color cards so I get where you’re coming from.
First time viewing the channel, and I really enjoyed how cleanly organized and well explained the whole video is! But the whole characterization of the cycling mechanic and the "betrayal" it suffered felt very off to me.
Every time Alex mentioned "cycling strategies/decks", it felt like they actually meant was "Astral Slide build arounds". And the two were almost entire conflated, despite cycling as a mechanic being much broader than Astral Slide. I'd guess the most played competitive cycling strategy isn't even Astral Slide, but Living End. Yes, its built around suspend cheese & reanimation, but cycling creatures have always been the backbone, and removing them would mean reinventing the deck. Hollow One in Amonkhet Standard was another major archetype that heavily featured cycling.
Astral Slide isn't the only way to use cycling. And as Alex showed with their neat brew at the end, Gavi isn't the only way to build cycling either. Gavi offers a very streamlined ("boring") style of play: which makes sense because she was designed to helm a deck in a intro level product line. It's designed to be accessible to newer players, and Alex was 100% not the target demographic. Astral Slide doesn't even appear in Gavi's precon.
The whole thing felt more than a little hypicritical to me, as well. Particularly deriding "do a thjng, get value" in the command zone, while praising Astral Slide. Which is "do cycling, blink a creature"... the definition of the thing being complained about. All he does by building around Astral Slide is switch one payoff for another.
two converging tangents regarding cycling and designer commanders
I always liked that that the cycling payoffs in Amonkhet triggered off discarding a card rather than cycling a card specifically. It gives them a use outside of dedicated cycling decks and beyond the limited environment.
Which made me sad when Hallar was printed and only cared about cards being kicked. I think they would have been a really interesting Commander if they triggered off spells that had paid any additional cost(s). It would have fulfilled the same role for limited while opening Hallar to a wider variety of play patterns in EDH.
I play a lot of cycling in my Toluz, Clever Conductor deck! It is indeed a cool mechanic
I liked the idea.. but have you thought about Sefris of the Hidden Ways? It seens it could fit the initial idea as well ;)
I like your take on this cycling artifact deck. Any thought on how you would build Silas Renn partnered with Rebbec. Im stuggling to find a direction to go in that isnt outright combo.
These types of toolbox decks are always what I say I want to build and what I want to have in my head, but I can never make happen once I put a list together.
I pulled Kenrith from a booster, and later got plenty of Ikoria cards (including 4 triomes). I already had a lot of Amonkhet cards, too. And I didn’t have any five colour decks.
Thus I built Kenrith/Zirda cycling deck. It’s fun to play and quite resilient.
One of the reasons I chose cycling was, that I used to dislike it as a mechanic. I’m really hesitant to discard cards. ”:D This deck however incentives cycling but doesn’t make it free.
Even with Zirda the cycling cost can’t be reduced to zero mana. Kenrith’s ability to reanimate creatures is very useful, but even with Zirda it costs 3 mana. Zirda paired with f.g. Biomancer’s Familiar makes reanimation really cheap but it still costs 1 black mana. Unused cycling abilities go ”to waste” because I didn’t include ways to bounce cards back to hand.
It’s been a learning experience. Just as I wanted. : D
Escape protocol is a third astral slide! I built a Gavi deck and didn't like it. Then I modified it to be a polymorph deck with 2 creatures that are always there (ephara and rielle) plus 8 creatures that we draft for each game with me knowing only the 2 cards I drafted. I like it way more since I changed it!
Interesting take. Never thought of Gavi as being even especially worthwhile. She's not centralizing in other than being the only commander that explicitly cares about cycling and has a decent number of colors. Compared to say Kadena, who is genuinely very strong and hard to compete with if you were to make another morph-commander, Gavi is just a commander of convenience. A two or three-colored Astral Slide in the command zone would immediately replace her for most cycling enthusiasts I think.