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Zur the Cycler

Commander / EDH Cycling WUB (Esper)

comradeclemency

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Land (35)

Artifact (13)

Instant (17)

Enchantment (15)

Commander (1)

Commander: Zur the Enchanter

Creature (15)

Sorcery (4)

Maybeboard

Enchantment (2)

Zur the Cycler 38 cycling cards

Zur the Enchanter was my first commander I opened in a pack. At the time in 2016/2017 I was not aware of the commander format but loved the art and flavor of this card so I search online to learn more about the card. I came to find that Zur was the commander of a popular competitive combo deck at the time. I soon built a non-combo Zur deck but quickly explored other commanders and archetypes. Years later, I still wanted to have a Zur deck to pay homage to my introduction to the format, but did not want to play stax/combo which suits his ability. When I found out about Cycling, this seemed to be my avenue to play Zur with a more casual non-deterministic strategy.

The main strategy is to cast Zur as soon as possible and attack with him to get the pieces of the puzzle. I usually get Rhystic Study for card draw from Zur’s attack trigger. Then depending on if I have any value creatures on the board or in my hand, or if there are scary creatures on our opponent’s board, I will then tutor for Astral Drift or Astral Slide. If there are no value creatures to make use of and no opponent’s creatures seem too threatening, I tutor for whatever the situation calls for.

From there, we sit back and hold our cycling cards, casting them at the last moment and using what control pieces we have to keep everything in our favor.

Possibly the best card in the deck for card advantage is Scroll Rack when combined with Zur’s tutor ability. We activate Scroll Rack to put the cards we don’t need aside and then draw that many cards and moving the set aside cards on top of the library, then attack with Zur which will allow us to tutor then shuffle our deck so we don’t have to draw the same cards we put back on top.

A reliable win condition of the deck is repeatedly bouncing Gray Merchant of Asphodel to drain our opponents or Magister Sphinx to put everyone at 10 life.

This deck is resilient and I have sweated out a few wins with the whole table trying to kill me.

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