Our wrath is squishy and adorable.
Here we have a commander which is its own payoff (and reward) for assembling our combo lines. Keep accruing value until that value becomes infinite and let our jellies blot out the sun. Make sure to have familiarity with Cloudstone Curio, Valley Floodcaller, and Isochron Scepter interactions as they are the main routes to victory. This deck contains most payoffs you will see from blue lists, except our commander also happens to be a reliable endpoint for a win condition as well, freeing up some tutor. Be prepared to play a control game with this list.
Much like Kairi, the Swirling Sky lists, this list takes advantage of clone synergies. Early game it can be correct to use a clone on Cynette, Jelly Drover to apply pressure and deter attacks from certain opposing aggressive strategies (Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow and Winota, Joiner of Forces to name a few). Because of the quantity of mana this deck is capable of making, choosing to keep the clone and sending Cynette back to the command zone is usually the better call. This is worth pointing out because it is counter-intuitive as many decks opt to keep the commander in mono-. There are a few sources of flash effects because it helps grant our combos pseudo-haste, though the control nature of the shell if really good at protecting them if we use the mass-token line of play as a way to soak interaction from the table. Just make sure not to kill the stax player who is preventing other opponents form winning. Since this is in a control shell, we can use our clones to copy our value draw creatures like Archmage Emeritus, Pollywog Prodigy, and Faerie Mastermind to keep us loaded on gasoline. If Orcish Bowmasters is a problem in the pod, make a copy of it to kill it with the enters trigger. Mockingbird hungers for orc, and our commander gives it an extra point of toughness since it will fly.
Notably, this list does not contain Thassa's Oracle lines. The reason is simple, we aren't in X. Anything we would be doing to set that combo up could easily be taken advantage of by opponents' plays, and without a consultation/pact effect its far more telegraphed than in Dimir base lists. Besides, many of our draw effects are unfortunately self-lethal and difficult to navigate non-bos with Thoracle lines due to forced draw. Also, mass creatures are often more difficult for a table to answer than stack interaction. The best mass removal, Fire Covenant is very poor at killing infinite things and something like Cyclonic Rift cleanly answers the jelly apocalypse at 7cmc, but at a high cost and not present in many lists. Other than that we might see a sorcery speed Toxic Deluge, but we are poised to handle the stack fairly well to fight it off. Maybe we might see a rogue Final Showdown, but the point is that these answers only represent roughly three card slots in most lists, whereas the stack interaction is present in most already. Its also really nice to be somewhat resistant to Deflecting Swat when using some of the Cloudstone Curio lines we have. Redirect of Treachery or Dance of Many? Sure, the triggers still let us continue with what we were doing anyway. This is not to say that this deck is by any means some kind of meta-slaying demon... but its designed to be heartier than it may seem at first glance. Everything we aim to do builds out board position while defending stuff with meaningful interaction backed by draw.
This gets it's own section, since it can easily become a win condition if resolved as it represents a strong clock. While a basic aggro win is probably not what most decks want to be doing, we can still interact meaningfully with combo while we apply pressure. Note that our commander has both an enters and dies clause which generates tokens, meaning that in addition to the first jelly we are making ten more for 22 evasive power. If we can take advantage of ways to keep our copies around the global pump is often immediately lethal to multiple players, so we also include:
-Mirror Box
-Sakashima of a Thousand Faces
Combos
Isochron Scepter
Imprinted with Dramatic Reversal, in artifact sources, plus:
-Candelabra of Tawnos + Riptide Laboratory + Cynette, Jelly Drover = Infinite mana and jelly apocalypse
-Displacer Kitten + Cynette, Jelly Drover = Infinite mana and jelly apocalypse
-Copy Artifact + Swan Song = Infinite mana and classic swan apocalypse (Dramatic Swans)
-The One Ring = Infinite mana and draw the entire deck
-Banishing Knack/Retraction Helix + a creature = goodbye opponents' non-land permanents. (This goes even deeper and also represents a jelly apocalypse, among other wins, and will be discussed further in the Valley Floodcaller lines)
Valley Floodcaller
Standard combo line in . Any time Treachery or Candelabra of Tawnos is used in a line we should be aware that adding a High Tide will either make it easier or simply infinite. Setup requires Banishing Knack or Retraction Helix cast on the floodcaller, plus:
-Mox Opal/Mox Amber + Displacer Kitten + Cynette, Jelly Drover = Infinite mana and jelly apocalypse
-Treachery + Vesuvan Duplimancy + Cynette, Jelly Drover = Jelly apocalypse
-Treachery + Riptide Laboratory + Cynette, Jelly Drover + mana positive lands from Treachery cast, or some other way to make infinite mana = Jelly apocalypse
-Candelabra of Tawnos + Riptide Laboratory + Cynette, Jelly Drover + in mana from lands, or some other way to make infinite mana = Jelly apocalypse
-Dance of Many + Cynette, Jelly Drover + Mox Opal/Mox Amber = Jelly apocalypse
-Dance of Many + Glaring Fleshraker + Mox Opal/Mox Amber = Eldrazi apocalypse
-Dance of Many + ...literally any creature + Mox Opal/Mox Amber = Infinite creatures
Dance of Many is particularly strong here due to the timing of cast triggers from Floodcaller and the enters triggers from Dance. We cover this a bit more in the next section, but just make sure to bounce the Dance before the token creation trigger resolves. Much like Oblivion Ring combos of yore, the leaves battlefiend and enters battlefield are two separate clauses/triggers. This means if the leaves effect occurs before the token for that Dance is made, we simply make a token as there is no longer a sacrifice trigger left to resolve.
To make it easier to visualize, it goes something like this:
1) Cast Dance of Many. Valley Floodcaller untap triggers. Untap resolves.
2) Dance resolves. Dance enters, place token creation trigger on stack.
3) Tap Floodcaller to bounce Dance. Dance leaves trigger goes to stack. Allow this trigger to resolve.
4) Dance enters trigger resolves creating a token of a creature. It is no longer linked to the Dance which created it.
5) Repeat from 1) for infinite tokens of any or all creatures.
Since the token is what copies the creature and not Dance of Many, it is safe from state-based legend rule shenanigans while we build a huge stack of token generation triggers. There are other permutations of these lines as well, but they all start to bleed together to create the same outcomes.
Cloudstone Curio
These combos mostly focus on ways to continuously clone our commander, and can be utilized as long-term value engines or a more immediate win should we make infinite mana. These require Cloudstone Curio, plus:
-Treachery + Dance of Many + Mirror Box/Sakashima of a Thousand Faces = Infinite (or arbitrarily large amounts of) mana and jelly apocalypse
-Treachery + Mystic Remora (or any enchantment really, but its always good to reset the fish when we can) + Vesuvan Duplimancy = infinite creatures
-Sakashima of a Thousand Faces + Cynette, Jelly Drover + some other infinite mana we have stumbled into = Jelly apocalypse
-Cloud of Faeries + Mockingbird + land that taps for 2+ mana = fairly easy infinite mana for a low startup investment
For lines where we are using Dance of Many, its very important to understand the trick to it. If there is an effect in play giving flash to spells, we don't actually need Mirror Box or Sakashima of a Thousand Faces to combo with Treachery. Make sure that when Dance enters to stack the triggers so that the "enters to create a token trigger" from Dance resolves after the Cloudstone Curio bounce trigger. We can then hold priority, return the Treachery, and recast before the token trigger resolves to demonstrate a loop. This cute interaction does a few things, providing us not only with Cynette triggers once the token triggers from Dance are allowed to resolve, but we still get the normal enters triggers from Cynette. In a world where we are using Glaring Fleshraker rather than our commander as the copy target in this line, we simply kill the table with damage as the outcome instead since we can make as many Fleshraker tokens as we want. This presents varying degrees of silliness with other creatures in the list too, so just have fun with it. Sadly Copy Artifact lines don't work despite being an enchantment because they are also an artifact when they enter as a copy of something.
Spellstutter Sprite
This is more of a soft permission lock than a true combo, as it still requires cards in hand to cast. The only way to truly soft lock spells is to utilize the infinite cast triggers from Dramatic Scepter... but chances are if that is happening the game is probably over. Instead, this combo turns every instant-speed, non-creature spell in our hand into counter magic. With our Spellstutter Sprite on the field, it goes like this:
-Displacer Kitten = Every spell we cast counters something cmc one or less.
-Displacer Kitten + High Fae Trickster = Every spell we cast counters something cmc two or less.
-Displacer Kitten + High Fae Trickster + Cloud of Faeries = Every spell we cast counters something cmc three or less.
-Displacer Kitten + High Fae Trickster + Cloud of Faeries + Faerie Mastermind = Every spell we cast counters something cmc four or less.
-Displacer Kitten + High Fae Trickster + Cloud of Faeries + Faerie Mastermind + Mockingbird (as Faerie Mastermind) = Every spell we cast counters something cmc five or less.
...and from here we can see where this is going. As long as a spell from an opponent falls into the range of the faeries we control, every spell in our hand is stack interaction. There are many synergies within this deck that really want to capitalize on flash timing, which is why we have Leyline of Anticipation, Valley Floodcaller, and High Fae Trickster. An interesting thing this also does is turn our counter spells into mini-Flusterstorms, in that an opponent now has to answer the triggering counter spell we cast as well as the Spellstutter Sprite flicker. These flickers are notably not cast and therefore much more difficult to deal with.
