Drannith Stinger

Creature — Human Wizard

Whenever you cycle another card, Drannith Stinger deals 1 damage to each opponent.

Cycling {1} ({1}, Discard this card: Draw a card.)

Legality

Format	Legality
1v1 Commander	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
Modern	Legal
Modern Beyond Horizons	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Pauper	Legal
Pauper Duel Commander	Legal
Pauper EDH	Legal
Pioneer	Legal
Planar Constructed	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Tiny Leaders	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (22)

shadowjules on Budget Cycle Storm

1 month 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

Andramalech on The Grift of the Magi

4 months ago

Balaam__ I'm not surprised at all to see that you decided on Magus of the Wheel. Might I recommend the following:

• Magmakin Artillerist, Drannith Stinger (if more cycling focused which you could be, in theory), Marauding Mako, Flameblade Adept, and consider Whirlpool Warrior as a second copy of your beloved Magus?

SufferFromEDHD on Kenrith's Astral Slide

1 year ago

I too have a 5 color cycling deck but it is a gimmicky fragile combo. Yours can interact and react. I like it.

The cycle of Evoke elementals from Modern Horizons 2 are fantastic Astral targets.

Crystalline Resonance very powerful clone effect.

Words of Waste you will always have a full hand. Why not make your opponents have nothingness?

Drannith Stinger is an upgrade but the PB&J to Astral Slide was always Lightning Rift

amarthaler on Pauper Songs of the Darned

1 year ago

Added some new cycling creatures from LOTR as well as Drannith Stinger for extra damage and Serrated Scorpion for a draining blocker.

BruhYouFarted on How does Library of Leng …

3 years ago

Yea, been there. I actually tried to crack a format with Library of Leng + Street Wraith + 2 Drannith Stinger/Drannith Healer + Drannith Stinger and win on turn 3; until I learned about the "No Cycling" cause. still a sweet card tho.

jaymc1130 on How does Library of Leng …

3 years ago

Library of Leng is indeed a wonky card, but it's a pretty nifty combo piece within certain types of discard concept strategies.

When it comes to Madness, what you essentially have is two replacement effects modifying the same instance of the card being discarded, so you have a choice of which you want to apply. You can either discard the card into exile, or you may discard it to the top of your library. If you discard it into exile, then Library of Leng will no longer see an effect to replace and you then have the choice of casting the card for it's Madness cost or putting it into your graveyard. If you discard it to the top of your library then the Madness ability will no longer see an effect to replace, the card will not be in exile, and you will not be able to cast it for it's Madness cost. In practical terms, Madness and Library will not combo together to produce a cool line of play. In real world terms, Anje decks might not mind, they might be very happy to discard the card to the top of the library and repeatedly draw and discard it using Anje's ability. With a card like Glint-Horn Buccaneer in play, for example, this would kill opponents.

A mechanic with better synergy with Library of Leng is Cycling. Cycling cards discard themselves first, then draw a card. This can be used to cycle the same card over and over again, and a similar situation as to the aforementioned Buccaneer line of play can occur with a card like Drannith Stinger in play killing opponents as a result of this process. A combo such as Library of Leng + Tectonic Reformation + Surly Badgersaur + Drannith Stinger + any land would form a self sustaining loop to kill opponents, for example.

Additionally, some Cycling cards have triggered effects when they cycle, and Library of Leng can allow a pilot to loop those effects. Gilded Lotus + Library of Leng + Vizier of Tumbling Sands would produce infinite mana, for example. Add in something like a Lightning Rift and this could become lethal. Bone Miser + Library of Leng + Barren Moor is another infinite mana combo, though it only produces black mana. Add in a Gempalm Polluter, however, and this set up would also become lethal.

keizerbuns on Jurassicycle Park

3 years ago

Thanks ClockworkSwordfish!

I thought about using the Krosan Tusker over Shefet Monitor but I like that Monitor can grab deserts as well as basic lands and that's really handy to grab the Hashep Oasis so I can buff my Yidaro when it comes in. However I am still in the testing stages of this deck so I could swap them out and see which one I like better, and I like your idea of swapping out Beneath the Sands for Krosan Tusker so I will give that a test too.

Somehow I didn't actually see Drannith Healer when I was putting this deck together but you're right, that is a way better card for early-game survivability so I think I'll put Drannith Stinger in the side board and put that in its place.

I did also think about putting in more ETB creatures to combo with the Astral Drift but I would have to remove some cards with cycling to fit them in and I don't wanna lose the cycling synergy the deck has, otherwise I would.

Thanks for all the suggestions, I really appreciate them! :D

BruhYouFarted on Almost Broke The Format, Until …

3 years ago

I have been silently in the Pauper community for a while now. I like building decks around unique cards that not many people talk about. Ive made decks (on Goldfish) centered around Mortis Dogs , Nested Shambler , Bayou Groff , Morselhoarder + Power of Fire + Sinking Feeling , and Ghostly Possession + Palace Guard . Most decks go nowhere, from a lack of flashiness to a lack of supporting cards. I decided to peek inside the MTGO exclusives, the Master's Editions, since those sets could dictate Pauper legality. When I peeked around with Master's Edition 4, I saw a pretty interesting card, Library of Leng . I thought of useful synergies for it regarding its "If an effect causes you to discard a card, discard it, but you may put it on top of your library instead of into your graveyard" effect, and found Drannith Stinger and Drannith Healer . My thought process was that using these cards, i could cycle a 1-mana cycler, (ex: Frostveil Ambush ) and recur it using the libraries affect; creating a ping machine. I than remembered that Street Wraith was a thing, and my mind was blown. You see, you could turn-1 Library of Leng , turn 2 a Drannith Stinger or a Drannith Healer , and than turn 3 either a Drannith Stinger (or a Drannith Healer if you didnt have one) and swing. OP at 18, You at 20, and 2 2/2 Citizens of Drannith on the board (Again, the only combo of the 2 creatures that wouldn't work would be 2 of the Drannith Healer s), and a Street Wraith in hand. Than, cycle Street Wraith over and over. you have either created a machine that domes each player for 1, or a machine that does it for 2. Either way, as long as you had a life advantage, you could win on the spot. Just to make sure that this worked, I went to the rulings on The Gatherer. My heart was broken. On October 4th, 2004, this was alarmed: "You can’t use the Library of Leng ability to place a discarded card on top of your library when you discard a card as a cost, because costs aren’t effects." I was in disbelief. I thought I had broken Pauper, or at least invented a new deck, but no. Soooo, back to the drawing board. The Library still seems like a great card, but I need enough good synergies to make a full list. Any synergies or recommendations would be welcome. Faithless Looting or Merfolk Looter , Anyone?