Life Cycle of a Better-than-Average Magic Player

Commander / EDH Aggro Combo Discard Tokens WUBR

Magic_Faqs

Creature (30)

• 1x Archfiend of Ifnir
• 1x Architects of Will
• 1x Bone Miser
• 1x Brallin, Skyshark Rider  ^Flip
• 1x Burnished Hart
• 1x Cloud of Faeries
• 1x Curator of Mysteries
• 1x Desert Cerodon
• 1x Dockside Extortionist
• 1x Drannith Stinger
• 1x Dream Trawler
• 1x Dreamscape Artist
• 1x Flourishing Fox
• 1x Gavi, Nest Warden
• 1x Glint-Horn Buccaneer
• 1x Lurching Rotbeast
• 1x Monstrous Carabid
• 1x Nimble Obstructionist
• 1x Psychosis Crawler
• 1x Ruthless Sniper
• 1x Shabraz, the Skyshark  ^Flip
• 1x Shadowmage Infiltrator
• 1x Shadowstorm Vizier
• 1x Street Wraith
• 1x Striped Riverwinder
• 1x The Locust God
• 1x Twisted Abomination
• 1x Wharf Infiltrator
• 1x Yore-Tiller Nephilim
• 1x Zirda, the Dawnwaker

Artifact (7)

• 1x Arcane Signet
• 1x Chromatic Lantern
• 1x Chrome Mox
• 1x Darksteel Ingot
• 1x Fellwar Stone
• 1x Fluctuator
• 1x Wayfarer's Bauble

Land (35)

• 1x Ancient Tomb
• 1x Ash Barrens
• 1x Bloodstained Mire
• 1x Canyon Slough
• 1x City of Brass
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Fabled Passage
• 1x Fetid Pools
• 1x Flooded Strand
• 1x Forgotten Cave
• 1x Godless Shrine
• 1x Hallowed Fountain
• 1x Irrigated Farmland
• 5x Island
• 1x Marsh Flats
• 3x Mountain
• 2x Plains
• 1x Polluted Delta
• 1x Prismatic Vista
• 1x Raugrin Triome
• 1x Reliquary Tower
• 1x Rogue's Passage
• 1x Sacred Foundry
• 1x Savai Triome
• 3x Swamp
• 1x Watery Grave

Sorcery (8)

• 1x Austere Command
• 1x Baral's Expertise
• 1x Bitter Ordeal
• 1x Demonic Tutor
• 1x Echo of Eons
• 1x Grim Tutor
• 1x Sweltering Suns
• 1x Yahenni's Expertise

Commanders (2)

Instant (12)

• 1x Ancient Excavation
• 1x Counterspell
• 1x Deflecting Swat
• 1x Disallow
• 1x Dovin's Veto
• 1x Electrodominance
• 1x Generous Gift
• 1x Imp's Mischief
• 1x Mystical Tutor
• 1x Path to Exile
• 1x Rebuild
• 1x Swan Song

Enchantment (6)

• 1x Astral Drift
• 1x Astral Slide
• 1x Crystalline Resonance
• 1x Lightning Rift
• 1x Ominous Seas
• 1x Tectonic Reformation

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This deck is a 4-color value engine that revolves around cycling out unnecessary spells for value in the form of card advantage and board control. Even without access to green mana, we are still capable of leaving skid marks all over our opponents' faces.

Ludevic, Necro-Alchemist and Tymna the Weaver are perfect for a couple reasons. Ludevic gives our opponents an incentive to attack each other in the early to midgame, plus we can benefit from this as well. Since we are capable of transitioning from combo to aggro pretty easily, Tymna will become invaluable in granting card advantage at any point in the game.

Draw/Discard

Rather than listing off every card that will be dumped into the graveyard, I'll highlight some of the big pay off cards. Glint-Horn Buccaneer, Brallin, Skyshark Rider   and Drannith Stinger synergize with our theme, plus they will both trigger Ludevic, Necro-Alchemist and refill our hands. Archfiend of Ifnir is especially nasty in this deck, as it triggers off of discard and cycling. This also applies to Curator of Mysteries, however Archfiend will wipe our opponents' boards while the Curator helps us dig into our deck for our finishers. And no card draw deck would be complete without The Locust God. Once we hit the mid to late game, Archfiend of Ifnir and The Locust God let us switch from combo to aggro and start beating down our opponents, granting triggers off of Tymna the Weaver. Ominous Seas is underrated in this deck. With how many cards we are drawing, it will be very easy to create multiple 8/8 Krakens from this cheap enchantment. The last card to highlight in this section is Ancient Excavation. This card does everything we want, drawing and discarding cards. This will trigger so many cards in our deck, and in the worst case scenario we can cycle it away for lands. Even if we have to resort to doing this, it will still synergize with a good portion of the deck.

Slightly More than Passive Aggression

So the cards I'm mentioning here are meant to work with our commanders and get damage in so we can draw our finishers. Some creatures mentioned in Draw/Discard fall into this category, however the following don't need us to cycle cards to get in damage. Shadowmage Infiltrator, Shadowstorm Vizier and Wharf Infiltrator have some form of built-in evasion to get damage in. All 3 have the potential of wreaking significant havoc. Shadowmage Infiltrator lets us draw a card just off the combat damage trigger, but also will trigger one or both of our commanders. Shadowstorm Vizier only does minimal damage on it's own, but that's more than enough to satisfy our commanders. Plus, even in the midgame we can always pump her up by cycling away our hand. Wharf Infiltrator is unique in that not only does he get damage through, but acts as a potential discard outlet and can help build a board presence if we discard creatures. This may seem like a poor trade, but we have quite a few creatures with cycling that won't be seeing the board as is, so the pay off is significant.

Whacky Interactions

The last thing I will go into depth about are the whacky interactions in this deck. Astral Drift and Astral Slide let us blink away creatures, which will help us get damage through. But they are also great political cards. If our opponents have creatures with enter the battlefield triggers, we can always offer to blink those creatures away in return for not being targeted with attacks or spells. Dockside Extortionist is especially nasty, because we can always blink him away on our opponent's turns to make a trove of treasure tokens. Plus, cycling tends to be fairly cheap so we can come back to our turn with quite a few of these tokens. Zirda, the Dawnwaker is great for two reasons. One, the ability does in fact reduce the cost for cycling effects. They won't be free, but paying rather than to cycle a card can be huge. And the last but dirtiest card to highlight is Bitter Ordeal. A lot of the cards being cycled away are either lands or creatures, meaning if we cycle away 4 lands and 2 creatures, that is 6 copies of Bitter Ordeal being generated. Imagine if we have a board of tokens made by Dockside Extortionist and we sacrifice them for mana. They are still hitting the graveyard, meaning that we can effectively neuter all of our opponent's decks of combo pieces and board removal. And since the copies are stacked, we don't need to declare the targets all at once. We can methodically go through each opponent's decks to remove all potential threats to us. Now this requires some set-up, but with the tutors in the deck plus all of the card draw we can pull this off.

Let me know what you think of the deck, be warned I don't have all the cards needed for this deck. There are fetches to invest in plus the Chrome Mox as well as other cards, but I'd love to know what everyone thinks before I invest into a deck like this. Thanks!

Date added	4 years
Last updated	2 years
Legality	This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	8 - 0 Mythic Rares 46 - 0 Rares 21 - 0 Uncommons 12 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.20
Tokens	Bird 2/2 U, Dinosaur Cat 2/2 RW, Eldrazi Horror 3/2 C, Elephant 3-3 G, Insect 1/1 UR, Kraken 8/8 U, Treasure, Zombie 2/2 B