Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis - Ascendency Combo!

Commander / EDH Combo Competitive RGWU

HansonWK

Land (27)

• 1x Arid Mesa
• 1x Breeding Pool
• 1x City of Brass
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Faerie Conclave
• 1x Flooded Strand
• 1x Forest
• 1x Gaea's Cradle
• 1x Hallowed Fountain
• 1x Mana Confluence
• 1x Misty Rainforest
• 1x Plateau
• 1x Polluted Delta
• 1x Reflecting Pool
• 1x Sacred Foundry
• 1x Savannah
• 1x Scalding Tarn
• 1x Steam Vents
• 1x Stomping Ground
• 1x Taiga
• 1x Temple Garden
• 1x Tropical Island
• 1x Tundra
• 1x Verdant Catacombs
• 1x Volcanic Island
• 1x Windswept Heath
• 1x Wooded Foothills

Artifact (9)

• 1x Chrome Mox
• 1x Isochron Scepter
• 1x Lightning Greaves
• 1x Mana Crypt
• 1x Mox Diamond
• 1x Paradox Engine
• 1x Sensei's Divining Top
• 1x Staff of Domination
• 1x Thousand-Year Elixir

Instant (22)

• 1x Ancient Grudge
• 1x Arcane Denial
• 1x Brainstorm
• 1x Capsize
• 1x Cyclonic Rift
• 1x Dig Through Time
• 1x Dramatic Reversal
• 1x Enlightened Tutor
• 1x Fact or Fiction
• 1x Flusterstorm
• 1x Force of Will
• 1x Frantic Search
• 1x Impulse
• 1x Izzet Charm
• 1x Krosan Grip
• 1x Mana Drain
• 1x Manamorphose
• 1x Mystical Tutor
• 1x Rally the Ancestors
• 1x Sprout Swarm
• 1x Stroke of Genius
• 1x Swan Song

Sorcery (16)

• 1x Deep Analysis
• 1x Fabricate
• 1x Faithless Looting
• 1x Gitaxian Probe
• 1x Green Sun's Zenith
• 1x Idyllic Tutor
• 1x Mind's Desire
• 1x Ponder
• 1x Praetor's Counsel
• 1x Preordain
• 1x Time Spiral
• 1x Timetwister
• 1x Vandalblast
• 1x Wargate
• 1x Wheel of Fortune
• 1x Windfall

Commander (1)

Creature (20)

• 1x Anger
• 1x Arbor Elf
• 1x Avacyn's Pilgrim
• 1x Azami, Lady of Scrolls
• 1x Birds of Paradise
• 1x Bloom Tender
• 1x Devoted Druid
• 1x Drift of Phantasms
• 1x Fatestitcher
• 1x Fyndhorn Elves
• 1x Jace, Vryn's Prodigy  ^Flip
• 1x Laboratory Maniac
• 1x Llanowar Elves
• 1x Noble Hierarch
• 1x Rattleclaw Mystic
• 1x Selvala, Explorer Returned
• 1x Selvala, Heart of the Wilds
• 1x Snapcaster Mage
• 1x Sylvan Caryatid
• 1x Voyaging Satyr

Enchantment (5)

• 1x Fires of Yavimaya
• 1x Jeskai Ascendancy
• 1x Mystic Remora
• 1x Sterling Grove
• 1x Sylvan Library

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Maybeboard

Instant (1)

• 1x Unsubstantiate

Sorcery (1)

• 1x Wargate

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Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis - Ascendency Combo!

The Engine

card:Jeskai Ascendency, mana dorks, and spells. Cast a spell, loot, untap your dorks, make more mana, cast another spell and continue until you find a route to victory!

The durdle comes from playing spell and untapping and tapping for mana and keeping track of the mana and how big each creature is, figuring out what to discard, what to play. Turns can easily take 20 minutes and 20 dice before you find way to win.

The Win Condition

Huge Creatures! Ascendency also gives your creatures +1/+1 each time you untap, so you'll often just be able to alfa strike to kill your opponents (or at least some of them)Laboratory Maniac + Looting through your deck, and finishing it with a big Stroke of Genius. You can make a lot of mana quickly with this deck, and Lab Maniac is a great way to finish the game after you've cycled through most of it.Grapeshot + Regrowth/Flashback effects.Infinite Storm/Mana with Isochron Scepter/Dramatic Reversal and win with Stroke or Grapeshot.

The Game Plan

Turns 1-3 you want to be casting your mana dorks and sculpting your hand, trying to find that Ascendcy. Make sure you don't just run the Ascendency out there without ways to protect it, often times you'll want to wait and cast it and win on the same turn. Around turn 4/5, cast Ascendcy and a cheap cantrip to get the ball rolling. Then just keep drawing cards and generating mana until you can find a way to win!We have ways to give the mana dorks haste (Fires of Yavimaya/Anger) or suedo-haste (Lightning Greaves/Thousand-Year Elixir) and a lot of card filtering in the form of looters, and well, any non-creature spell cast after Ascendency!There's some neat tricks involving Sensei's Divining Top which can really help you filter through your deck and up your storm count if you have lots of mana. Sprout Swarm can also go infinite very easily with Convoke to loot through your deck and make huge creatures. You can also go infinite with Capsize if you can make 4UU!I havn't even mentioned Kynaios and Tiro yet! These guys don't actually combo with the rest of the deck, but they do provide a lot of value, and not just the colours. They draw you cards and ramp you up, letting you get to the key turn a lot quicker. Sometimes you won't need them, but I find most game I cast them on turn 3, draw a card and play a land, then try to win turn 4. They also turn Bloom Tender on for 4 mana on their own.This deck does rely quite heavily on Jeskai Ascendency (though it is possible to win without, it's quite hard). Use your card draw and tutors early to try to find it, and use your permission to make sure it resolves and doesn't get destroyed! You'll often want to wait and win the turn you cast Ascendency.

The Problems

It goldfishes very well, winning turn 4-5 very easily. It does have it's drawbacks though. First, there are a few cards that stop your mana dorks from working like Linvala, which are really brutal against the deck. It also is heavily reliant on one card - if that gets exiled it may be hard to win. You can still just play this like any other storm deck, chaining draw 7's together until you piece together enough to combo out or kill people with grapeshot (often times after getting it back with regrowth then flashing it back a third time). The other problem is while you get more value out of your commander than your opponents, in competitive games, giving your opponent cards isn't always a great idea. Luckily though, with so many mana dorks, this deck doesn't fold to cards like MLD or Winter Orb like a lot of other combo decks do.

Tuning It

It would be nice to be able to find more room in this deck for permission and removal. There are a few cards we lose to, or that slow us down considerably, so we need answers for those cards. We need to find out what the correct number of dorks to play is to be consistently able to win, while not having too many slots taken up by them. There's also plenty of other mana dorks that we could use, we might not have the most optimal ones right now! Another obvious thing to test are the cantrips we are using. Maybe more card advantage and not just filtering is needed, by using things like Fact or Fiction, or stronger filtering like Impulse. I'm also testing changing one of Three Visits/Nature's Lore to Explore as it's better on the combo turn, and can be great if you drop a Cradle.

Cards of Interest

Rally the Ancestors: If you run your mana dorks out too early and get hit by a wrath, or just discard them to Ascendency/Wheel of Fortune/Looters, Rally the Ancestors can be a huge help to get them all back, but make sure you are going to try to win that turn.Sprout Swarm: This can go infinite with Ascendency really easily, which you can then use to loot through your whole deck to find kill spell.card:Isocron Scepter: This goes infinite with Dramatic Reversal, which is a fantastic card in the deck anyway. With so much looting and draw 7's, even if it's dead sometimes without Reversal, it's not too much of a hinderence. Plus putting a tutor or counter under here can help you out.card:Azami, Lady of the Scrolls: She's expensive, but drawing a card every time you cast a non-creature spell is worth the cost, and there's a few other wizards making it more than worth it if you are drawing 2.Skullclamp: a complete nonbo with Ascendency, but this can be used on your manadork in the early game to draw into Ascendency or a tutor. With so many 1 toughness creatures, and with card advantage being so important in this deck, skullclamp fits in even if it's a dead draw the turn you combo.card:Fatesticher: deserves a special mention because most people don't realise he can also tap permanents, meaning you can alphastrike through blockers. You are also happy to loot him away and unearth him for cheap, making him one of the better mana dorks.

Weakest cards

Benefactor's Draught: double untaps and a cantrip, but we often have enough mana already. It is, however, a good way to fuel card draw BEFORE you find ascendancy, which is why it is still there.

Noticeable Missing/Cards to Consider

This deck has heavy colour requirements, and enough mana dorks that Sol Ring and Mana Crypt aren't even very good here!card:Mizzux Mastery - another card I tested, but ultimately swapped for Praetors Concil. Maybe we can find room in the deck for both.Earthcraft - Basically every creature already has a tap ability, and most of those are for mana. I tried a version with more tokens through Young Pyromancer, card:Monestry Mentor, and Talrand, but found that it was slower, and you still need all the mana dorks to make sure you can combo out turn 4/5 so they were taking space of spells and permision. You also then become reliant on two enchantments to combo off, but it does still give you a win condition through token swarm if Ascendency gets exiled.card:Monestry Mentor - This is the only token maker that I wanted to keep in, as it provides a decent win condition without Ascendcy, especially if you can give your creatures haste. You'll sometimes cast a draw 7 mid combo giving your opponent enchantment removal stopping you mid turn, but with a Mentor out, you might already have enough power to get there.Viridian Joiner - Similar role to Selvala, but worse when played mid-combo, and worse without Ascendancy. I would like to fit this mana dork in, and my cut Rattleclaw Mystic for it, though Rattleclaw's fixing is fantastic. Gyre Sage is similar, but often even wrose then Joiner.Splinter Twin - And possibly even Village Bell-Ringer. Splinter Twin on any dork will pay itself off after 4 untaps, and on any that tap for 2+ even quicker than that. It goes infinite with Bell-ringer and Bell-ringer is just a mass-untap without it.

Recent Changes

Impulse - Great card filtering.Deep Analysis - Flashback cards trigger Ascendency twice, but you are also happy to loot it away in favour of other cards, then flash it back.Staff of Domination - Mana sync, and infinite mana with Selvala/Voyaging Satyr.

Top Ranked	Achieved #18 position overall 8 years ago
Date added	8 years
Last updated	4 years
Legality	This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	11 - 0 Mythic Rares 53 - 0 Rares 15 - 0 Uncommons 20 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.44
Tokens	Bird 2/2 U, Emblem Jace, Vryn's Prodigy, Morph 2/2 C, Saproling 1/1 G
Folders	tuned fun with combo, EDH, EDH, Stuff I like, EDH Inspiration, EDH Decks (Others), EDH, EDH Decks To Play Against, Commander, Good/useful decks by other ppl