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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 |
| Freeform | Legal |
| Gladiator | Legal |
| Highlander | Legal |
| Historic | Legal |
| Historic Brawl | Legal |
| Leviathan | Legal |
| Limited | Legal |
| Modern | Legal |
| Oathbreaker | Legal |
| Pauper | Legal |
| Pauper Duel Commander | Legal |
| Pauper EDH | Legal |
| Planar Constructed | Legal |
| Planechase | Legal |
| Quest Magic | Legal |
| Vanguard | Legal |
| Vintage | Legal |
Troll of Khazad-dum
Creature — Troll
Troll of Khazad-dûm can't be blocked except by three or more creatures.
Swampcycling (, Discard this card: Search your library for a Swamp card, reveal it, put it into your hand, then shuffle your library.)
Rhadamanthus on
Tron Reanimator
4 months ago
If you're only going to play 19 lands then I think it'd be safer to lean more on the 1-cost landcyclers, Troll of Khazad-dum and Generous Ent, than the 2-cost ones. It's really important for you to be able to make the step from 1 to 2 so you can start casting Grapple with the Past, Malevolent Rumble etc. and make it to 3 to get your game plan started for real.
I see you have Maul Splicer in your maybeboard, I highly recommend a couple of these as just a good Pauper Tron piece (in my probably outdated opinion, having not played the deck for many years) as well as a good friend to Maelstrom Colossus for the trample.
I think Prophetic Prism was recently unbanned, so you can replace Energy Refractor and find space for a second copy as well.
shadowjules on
Budget Cycle Storm
6 months 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
DemonDragonJ on
Legacy Banlist
7 months ago
With March 31's banned and restricted announcement, I have added Sowing Mycospawn and Troll of Khazad-dum to this list.
Amuneth on
The Dark Lord Rises
1 year ago
Replacements from Precon
Mountain => Minas Morgul, Dark Fortress
Boon of the Wish-Giver => March from the Black Gate
Deep Analysis => Call of the Ring
Goblin Dark-Dwellers => Dimir Signet
Goblin Cratermaker => Izzet Signet
Guttersnipe => Mauhur, Uruk-hai Captain
Inferno Titan => Rakdos Signet
Monstrosity of the Lake => Spiteful Banditry
Siege-Gang Commander => The Balrog, Durin's Bane
Summons of Saruman => Chromatic Lantern
Troll of Khazad-dum => Sauron, the Dark Lord
capwner on turn 1 Iona, sheild of …
1 year ago
since you're using entomb and buried alive to tutor your big creatures, I would run just 1 iona not 4. same with any big creatures, you never really want her in hand, and having 1 of each bomb makes entomb really good because you can find the best creature for your situation. also note that the legacy version of this deck plays Troll of Khazad-dum and Grief, both very strong targets for reanimate.
jonjonhholt on
Dead Metal II: Rage
1 year ago
Oliphaunt or Troll of Khazad-dum could be a nice way to help fix your mana(probably alongside a single copy of the duals such as Geothermal Bog) but also you can go turn one: cycle into turn two:Exhume without needing to find faithless or study. Foil is also funny imo for reanimator strategies as you can pitch your big creature as the 2nd card. Finally, you may be purposefully avoiding him but Ulamog's Crusher is probably the best reanimation target in pauper and with its ability to destroy lands can lock opponents out of the game if you can get it in the first couple turns of the game.
Icbrgr on
Eriette of the Charmed Apple
1 year ago
to make room for more lands id cut Brilliant Restoration; super high mana cost and you are already running Retether. Next id cut Cruel Reality; also a high mana cost... and they will probably just sacrfice things that you have enchanted anyway. Id also cut Eagles of the North/Troll of Khazad-dum... well i guess instead of paying mana for a lans you could probably just play land?