Draw Cycle
- bonzaientertainmen
- 5 hours ago
- 9 min read
Welcome to the last of my 4 color EDH decks. I've learned a lot with this project. The first thing is that 4 color identity doesn't really exist. I've tried to layer my themes and explore a variety of strategies to make 4 color decks cohesive. Everything from snow to vehicles to leylines. Don't be disheartened, though. I had a revelation with this deck.
This last deck would be free of blue cards, so I was expecting to lose a lot of cheap, simple card draw and maybe some counter spells. I started with energy since there's been a lot of support and it fell flat. I tried to port my personal 5 color Ally deck since blue isn't a standout there, but there wasn't any cohesion. Through all my rough ideas, I noticed the decks weren't playing smoothly. When your strategy is already lacking, it's really noticeable when you don't draw the right cards. I went about improving my draw options. Instead of a couple of mass draw spells, I looked for multiple small draw spells to keep me going through the game. I slowly added more and more cycling cards to my drafts. Cycling works wonders for me, especially on lands, and this was no exception.
I started including cycling cards that performed other main functions for any deck; ramp and removal. Migration Path is great early on since it grabs 2 lands. Usually, ramp spells don't have much utility in the late game, but I can trade this away for 2 mana. It just stinks when you draw a land from cycling it. It's happened way more than once. Land ramp isn't the only kind of ramp that causes groans later on in a game. A late mana rock is something people tend to hold onto rather than invest in. Indatha Crystal and Savai Crystal are often overlooked, but they provide good fixing and can be cycled away when mana isn't a concern.
Removal has just as many great options as ramp does. Most problem creatures have 4 or more power, so Radiant's Judgement is a great way to deal with them. I used to include Forsake the Worldly in a lot of decks. It's a shame I've left it out of more recent builds. Exile is the best form of removal, but sometimes that enchantment or artifact isn't the real problem, so I cycle this card away looking for a better option. Starstorm is a great way to dial up the right amount of damage to clear the board and hopefully leave me with a key creature or two. I opened Spectacular Pileup during the Aetherdrift prerelease and never looked back. It circumvents Indestructible, and with the increased number of vehicles out there, it can knock those out too. It hasn't been relevant to me yet, but I'm hopeful.
Cycling slowly started to take up more and more of my brainstorming. It wasn't a far leap to say the deck should be a cycling deck. The archetype is well established with good all around support. It gives me a reason to dust off my copy of Fluctuator. There isn't a lot out there to sabotage the strategy. I've never seen someone play Stabilizer before, and I can comfortably say you haven't either. Even Rest in Peace doesn't stop me. I just cast the cards and don't cycle them.
After I settled on Cycling I had a revelation: what if the identity for 4 color decks is the missing color? The color pie yearns to be complete, so the 4 present colors do their best to imitate the missing color. My deck without blue should play more like a blue deck. I have tons of draw available to me, and that was practically enough. I played around with another piece of blue identity, counterspells, as a form of protection. Lapse of Certainty and Tibalt's Trickery are fine cards in their own right. I stopped before I diluted the strategy too much. Blue is a master of drawing cards, this non blue deck will draw me a lot of cards.
There's only 1 Legendary Creature that could have been my commander. Saskia the Unyielding can be quite powerful since it doubles the damage my creatures do, but to another opponent. I describe it as a tangential doublestike. But no, she's not my commander. Partners have been key to this 4 color project, and this is not different. The first half was easy to settle on. None of the available partners rewarded discard or draw directly. Ravos, Soultender is a familiar face for this 4 color project. He acts as a lord, but more importantly, he returns a creature from my graveyard to my hand each turn. A lot of my cycling cards are creatures, so this allows for redundancy and recursion of key cards. Choosing Ravos made picking a partner very easy. The only other Legendary Creature that could make the deck work is Tana, the Bloodsower. The Saporlings don't really add much to the strategy, but do work as a shield against attackers. Luckily, Ravos, Soultender pumps up Tana's power so I can already get an additional saporling.
Let's get back to cycling. I mentioned Fluctuator already. It's a great way to cycle for free, or close to it. Those triggers can really add up when I get to my payoffs. Abandoned Sarcophagus gives me access to the spells I've cycled by letting me cast them from my graveyard. It's a little risky since it exiles my cycling cards when they transition from the battlefield to the graveyard, but it's a great way to have an explosive turn late game after you cycled away a lot of cards. Timing is key with this card. If I ever get into a pinch, Shadow of the Grave is a better way to re-access those cards I cycled away.
Cycling brings with it as many payoffs as it does set ups. Drannith Stinger is simple, but so effective. I can cycle 3 or 4 cards a turn cycle easily. That kind of damage around the table adds up. Valiant Rescuer, instead of doing damage, fills up my board with creatures. I can just let those soldiers accrue over time and then swarm an opponent or block an opponent's attack. There's a ton you can do with those tokens. Spellpyre Phoenix is recurrable for the low investment of cycling cards. The stat line on it isn't terribly impressive, but the consistency and the ability to recur another card with cycling each time I do is too much value over time.
Cycling offers even more payoffs worth talking about. Astral Slide and Astral Drift are great ways to get creatures off the battlefield. Astral Drift is more flexible since I can cycle it to get the effect once, but I much prefer to cast it and accrue more value over time. Decree of Pain is a fine boardwipe on its own, but brings with it greater flexibility. Even if I cycle it, I can give the board -2/-2 and wipe out small token armies or swing combat in my favor. Luckily, there are several creatures like Marauding Mako that grow over time and quickly overcome that -2/-2 if I cycle.
At its heart, cycling is a way to discard cards. Faith of the Devoted is a good illustration of this point. When a card is cycled or discarded, I can pay 1 and drain for 2. That life adds up over the course of a game. I wanted to capitalize on this fact. I added in a key couple of discard payoffs that just made sense. Glint-Horn Bucaneer is a classic at this point. I added Brallin, Skyshark Rider for the same reason. I felt a little weird including it since I can't play Shabraz, but the effect was too good not include redundancy. It turns my cycling into damage dealt. Archfiend of Ifnir is a great way to eliminate token creatures or just slowly shrink opponents' board states.
Something interesting happened with this deck. I normally build a mana base to cast the cards, but those same lands don't directly support my strategy. That's not the case here. There are so many lands with cycling. It's not uncommon for me to add Secluded Steppe or Barren Moor to a deck. I quickly noticed several cycling lands happen to be Deserts. There was space here to do something interesting. I already added Scavenger Grounds to the decklist, by adding more Deserts, I can get more activations of Scavenger Grounds and clear out more graveyards when it matters.
Deserts like to go to the graveyard. I have other lands that cycle and go to the graveyard too, so I knew there was a thread here worth exploring. Most people are familiar with Hour of Promise. The card ramps me and has greater upside if I control other deserts. It may be a little pricey at 5 mana, but its a good payoff in the mid game too. Map the Frontier and Outcaster Greenblade fill the role for land tutors. It just so happens that the Greenblade puts the land into my hand, so I like to tutor up a Cycling Desert to guarantee I have access to cycling throughout the course of the game. I can turn all this desert mana into profit. Like with Desert's Due, it scales very well as targeted removal, the more deserts I have in play. Cataclysmic Prospecting is another great removal option. Paying a lot into a spell can be a downside, but the more desert mana I put into the board wipe, the more Treasure I get back to rebuild my board.
There's one more category of cards I want to highlight before I move to the decklist. I played into the Blue identity a little bit. Blue is known for another type of card that many other colors don't get access to: Counterspells. Blue has pure and simple counterspells that just do the thing. Other colors have some options that come with some strings or restrictions. Lapse of Certainty, for example, takes the countered spell and puts it on top of that player's library. I save this for those game ending spells or the ones that need ample set up for full effect. This tempo shift puts the spotlight on that player in a very negative way. Tibalt's Trickery counters a problem spell but then gives that opponent another spell for free. I've always wanted to use it against an opponent I hit with Lapse of Certainty since it forces an opponent to mill, but it hasn't happened yet. Aven Interrupter puts the problematic spell into exile and adds a 2 mana tax to everything cast from exile, just for my opponents though, not for me. I have one problem with this category worth mentioning, and it's self inflicted. I'm not playing Reprieve. It soft counters a spell by returning it back to the player's hand, and rewards you with a card. So, what's the problem? It came from the Lord of the Rings set. I don't play with Universes Beyond cards. I'm hoping this card gets reprinted into a traditional Magic set soon. It has a very generic name, so it could be printed in any set.
So, this no blue deck that acts like a blue deck. What does it look like? Here's the list.
Faith of the Devoted | ||
Abandoned Sarcophagus | Fluctuator | Monument of Endurance |
Indatha Crystal | ||
Savai Crystal | Lapse of Certainty | |
Beneath the Sands | Tibalt's Trickery | |
Cast Out | Aven Interuptor | |
Unpredictable Cyclone | ||
Dismantling Wave | Zenith Flare | |
Yidaro, Wandering Monster | Hour of Promise | |
Footfall Crater | Wilt | Desert Warfare |
Forsake the Worldly | ||
Lull | Pest Control | Cataclysmic Prospecting |
Suffocating Fumes | Akroma's Blessing | |
Radiant's judgement | Starstorm | Dirge of the Dead |
Migration Path | Spectacular Pileup | Herald of the Forgotten |
Expunge | Shefet Monitor | Marshaling Cry |
Flourishing Fox | Invigorating Boon | Repopulate |
Gallant Strike | Skycrash | Magmakin Artillerist |
Krosan Tusker | Akroma's Vengeance | Ruin Grinder |
Triumphant Reckoning | Living Death | Psychosis Crawler |
Tectonic Reformation | Diviner's Wand | Unearth |
Blast Zone | Ash Barrens | Tyrite Sanctum |
Desert of the Fervent | Desert of the True | |
Twisted Landscape | Desert of the Indomitable | Desert of the Glorified |
Sheltering Landscape | Forgotten Cave | |
Bojuka Bog | Tranquil Thicket | Secluded Steppe |
Ghost Quarter | Demolition Field | Plains x5 |
Swamp x5 | Mountain x4 | Forrest x4 |
The deck plays greater than the sum of its parts. I always feel like I have options with the deck. Even cycling a card away looking for a better option brings with it rewards. It's value all the way around. There's room for the deck to grow as well. The desert stuff is cute and interesting, but could be cut to make way for more powerful cycling options.
I think this is my most successful 4 color deck, not just for the deck itself, but for the philosophy. I've been looking for the identity of 4 color decks all along and I think I found it by tying the available colors to the strengths of the missing color. When I eventually revisit these colors, that's the direction I'll lead into.
What do you think, am I crazy, or is this plan very exciting? Is this the most viable of my 4 color decks, or do you have another favorite?
Thanks for reading and all the support to date. I have affiliate links with Mana Pool and TCG Player to help fund these off the wall strategies. It's what makes all this possible.
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