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Legality
| Format | Legality |
| 1v1 Commander | Legal |
| Alchemy | Legal |
| Archenemy | Legal |
| Arena | Legal |
| Block Constructed | Legal |
| Canadian Highlander | Legal |
| Casual | Legal |
| Commander / EDH | Legal |
| Commander: Rule 0 | Legal |
| Custom | Legal |
| Duel Commander | Legal |
| Gladiator | Legal |
| Highlander | Legal |
| Historic | Legal |
| Historic Brawl | Legal |
| Legacy | Legal |
| Leviathan | Legal |
| Limited | Legal |
| Oathbreaker | Legal |
| Pauper | Legal |
| Pauper Duel Commander | Legal |
| Pauper EDH | Legal |
| Planar Constructed | Legal |
| Planechase | Legal |
| Quest Magic | Legal |
| Tiny Leaders | Legal |
| Vanguard | Legal |
| Vintage | Legal |
Rules Q&A
Ash Barrens
Land
: Add .
Basic landcycling (, Discard this card: Search your library for a basic land card, reveal it, put it into your hand, then shuffle your library.)
shadowjules on
Budget Cycle Storm
4 weeks ago
Hey QuantumGeckoGuy! Very cool deck man, I tinkered with something like this for a while as well.
I tinkered with a similar concept for ages. Instead of looking to scale with Drannith Stinger and Marauding Mako, mine had a combo win with Lotleth Giant, and a secondary beatdown plan with Hollow One and Chitin Gravestalker. The deck DESPERATELY needs to cut down as much as humanly possible on any card without cycling. I think running Dark Ritual is a mistake, as you can get similar results with 4 copies of Lotus Petal - when churning through your deck, you can combo off so much earlier with you effectively know you can consistently find free bursts of 1 mana to cast Songs of the Damned. The difference between your bursts of mana costing (1) and costing (0) is huge. Running Lotus Petal is extra good when accompanied by a suite of (1) cost cyclers. Drannith Stinger is a good start, but I would run every creature with a (1) mana cycling ability ever printed - it just adds a crazy amount of consistency. I've found that 38 to 40 creatures with cycling in the deck is ideal for a 1 turn combo kill.
Finding lands is extra easy with cards like Troll of Khazad-dum and Oliphaunt. With the amount of cards that cycling lets you see, you really don't want to mulligan. These landcycling cards are huge because they often allow you a turn 1 tutor of a land in the early game (Troll of Khazad-dum gets you Fetid Pools and Oliphaunt gets you Canyon Slough). You can tutor for a land turn one either with an untapped Ash Barrens or the strict upgrade in Capital City that also filters your mana, or again with a turn 1 Lotus Petal. Later in the game, the land cyclers are never dead draws, because they tutor for a dual land, that also ends up cycling away, letting you see more cards and remove more lands from your deck as you combo off.
Crucially for the combo win, Lotleth Giant only cares about creatures in your graveyard, so do keep that in mind when comboing off. I tend to split my graveyard into two piles - 1 with creatures and 1 with noncreature spells (cycled lands, lotus petals, and so on). The combo turn needs to resolve a Songs of the Damned to cast Lotleth Giant usually, but thats not always super hard. A sideboard tech of Miscalculation really helps protect this here. Also 2 Shadow of the Grave is usually enough to stop your deck from running out of steam, especially since you run out of steam after seeing like around 30-40 cards in your deck. Again, Lotus Petal is so useful here.
Finally, I've found that you CAN run 3 fluctuators and not 4 if you're able to have a split of cycling cards with a low enough curve. This deck really wants to minimize the turns it spends not spending mana, so again, Ash Barrens and Capital City not entering tapped is really important, same for your Lotus Petal. These untapped mana sources, along with 1 mana landcyclers and 1 mana cycling creatures gets this deck to be much more consistent and much faster.
Built like this, the Hollow Ones / Chitin Gravestalker Beatdown plan is more of a trick to trip up your opponent rather than a primary win condition. When your opponent plans to counter your big combo turn, dumping 2 4/4s and a 5/4 onto the battlefield really early can be backbreaking. THese are the matchups where something like Drannith Stinger is just a lot less useful as a pinger, and I would think of Marauding Mako and Drannith Stinger as plank cards with cycling rather than win conditions.
This deck has trouble against certain kinds of graveyard hate. It never targets anything in the graveyard, and never looks to play things directly out of your graveyard, so cards like Grafdigger's Cage and Soulless Jailer don't do anything. But cards that exile our whole graveyard or stop cards from getting to the graveyard (Rest in Piece / Leyline of the Void / Soul-Guide Lantern) make the Lolteth gameplan obsolete. Sideboarding in Ominous Seas still turns out cycling card draw into massive beaters, and this can still let us combo into two or three 8/8s to threaten a short clock.
The deck has some potential and honestly is a ton of fun to tinker with. I've been iterating on it for ages myself. Here's my list if you're at all curious (Ignore the silly name and out-of-date descriptions, its a little messy and I started it 5 years ago in high school). Deck: deck-large:cycling-coombo-deck
SufferFromEDHD on
2 months ago
Fair enough. I was thinking about grabbing value like Accursed Duneyard, Bojuka Bog, Crypt of Agadeem and Geier Reach Sanitarium
I see the Canyon Slough and the Fluctuator. How do you feel about Ash Barrens, Polluted Mire and Smoldering Crater?
legendofa on
First Pauper Try
6 months ago
First thing I see is that there aren't any one-mana options. Akoum Hellhound can get some early pressure, or Jaddi Offshoot gives you time to develop. And Lightning Bolt is an option, too.
This is more of a personal preference, but I would use Ash Barrens or Evolving Wilds/Terramorphic Expanse over Promising Vein.
Still, this is going in a good direction. I can't call myself a Pauper expert yet, but this looks very solid.
_Kane_ on
Valgavoth, Harrower of souls (HF-1)
7 months ago
Hey, welcome to TappedOut.net! I would recommend listing you basic lands under one art image so the counts are more accurate. We can chat about the mana base another time.
Here are a few quick suggestions;
Sulfurous Springs - Replace Ash Barrens
Basilisk Collar - Lifelink to keep your HP at a healthy amount and deathtouch for a decent chump-blocker.
Razorkin Needlehead - Ping dmg on opp turns.
Blasphemous Edict - Board wipes are needed along with targeted removal.
Stormfist Crusader - Card draw
Roiling Vortex - This reads, "Yes, yes, and more please."
Scrawling Crawler - Yes, you have your opps drawing more cards, but they will pay for it with their life. You will also draw more cards. Taking advantage of the "symmetric" card draw by making it weighted in your favor.
Florian, Voldaren Scion - Card selection and Card draw.
Underworld Dreams - Ping dmg on opp turns.
Withering Torment - Enchantment removal is extremely rare in Rakdos Colors.
Ankh of Mishra - Ping dmg on opp turns.
Rug of Smothering - Ping dmg on opp turns.
Nightshade Harvester - Ping dmg on opp turns.
Magebane Lizard - Ping dmg on opp turns and keeps spell decks in check.
Cemetery Gatekeeper - Exile someone's fetch land from a GY. Then, whenever a player play a land you ping for 2 dmg.
Malakir Rebirth Flip - A tapped land with a great spell on the backside.
Reanimate - Any graveyard...
I believe you opened a Bloodthirsty Conqueror!!
Expensive:
Zo-Zu the Punisher - I may have one of these for trade. I'll check.
As far a cuts:
Vile Entomber - Easy cut.
Olivia, Crimson Bride I would lose the graveyard reanimator subtheme.
Valgavoth's Lair - With your deck only being in two colors and with no add value for the land being an enchantment (the extra card type becomes more of a risk than reward), I would cut this land.
Enchanter's Bane - Just not strong enough and the damage isn't on your opponents turns.
Mask of Griselbrand - Too expensive to cast/equip and requires the creature to die for the card draw to trigger.
Temple of the False God - Easy cut. The pay off isn't there and the number of times you won't be able to tap this land for mana isn't worth the upside.
Light Up the Stage - There is better card draw.
Braids, Arisen Nightmare - The group slug effect is nice, but a potential cut due to being non-targeted removal/group sacrifice.
Massacre Girl - Black has better board wipes that can't miss.
Ash Barrens - Easy cut for a land more suited to your deck build.
Bloodfell Caves - Easy cut for a land more suited to your deck build.
SteelSentry on Pattern Recognition #301 - Pauper
1 year ago
Love some Pauper love. I'd like to shout out Ash Barrens as well for pairing nicely with Brainstorm in much the same way fetch lands do in Legacy
P0GONiP on
How to Lose Friends and Alienate People
1 year ago
Love the cards you have pieced together.
Cards wondering if you have considered: Ash Barrens, Street Wraith, Lotus Petal
your combos with exhume are amazing! and might be good to include 1 or 2 Bojuka Bog? have you considered Nihil Spellbomb? or Relic of Progenitus?
overall this is a solid deck imo
legendofa on
The Spiteful Professor and the Penitent Dinosaur
1 year ago
psionictemplar Frilled Deathspitter is interchangeable with Spiteful Shadows on an opponent's creature as the damage loop with Guilty Conscience, so there's a little more redundancy. I'll give Deathspitter #4 a try, though. I missed that Gut Shot is Pauper legal, so that's definitely going in. I think the mana fixing part of Ash Barrens is more valuable than the minor deck fixing, but that's worth considering. I'll slot a couple in.
psionictemplar on
The Spiteful Professor and the Penitent Dinosaur
1 year ago
I would like to see a 4th copy of frilled myself since it is one of your combo pieces and I would probably replace either a tapland or a faithless looting. Leaning looting since you arent a graveyard deck at all although I am sure its more for finding combo pieces. Only other things I might suggest are Ash Barrens instead of taplands since its deck thinning and mana fixing and a consideration for Gut Shot as a free combo enabler.
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| Want (1) | beesaurs |