Kykar Bird Man, Attorney at Law

Commander / EDH Combo Competitive Control RUW (Jeskai, America)

PookandPie

Instant (28)

• 1x Angel's Grace
• 1x Brain Freeze
• 1x Brainstorm
• 1x Counterspell
• 1x Cyclonic Rift
• 1x Deflecting Swat
• 1x Divergent Transformations
• 1x Dovin's Veto
• 1x Dramatic Reversal
• 1x Enlightened Tutor
• 1x Fierce Guardianship
• 1x Flusterstorm
• 1x Force of Negation
• 1x Force of Will
• 1x Intuition
• 1x Mana Drain
• 1x Mental Misstep
• 1x Miscast
• 1x Muddle the Mixture
• 1x Mystical Tutor
• 1x Pact of Negation
• 1x Pyroblast
• 1x Silence
• 1x Spell Pierce
• 1x Swan Song
• 1x Swords to Plowshares
• 1x Synthetic Destiny
• 1x Wear / Tear

Enchantment (5)

• 1x Mystic Remora
• 1x Rhystic Study
• 1x Smothering Tithe
• 1x Underworld Breach
• 1x Whirlwind of Thought

Land (30)

• 1x Arid Mesa
• 1x Bloodstained Mire
• 1x City of Brass
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Exotic Orchard
• 1x Flooded Strand
• 1x Glacial Fortress
• 1x Mana Confluence
• 1x Marsh Flats
• 1x Misty Rainforest
• 1x Mystic Sanctuary
• 1x Plateau
• 1x Polluted Delta
• 1x Scalding Tarn
• 8x Snow-Covered Island
• 1x Snow-Covered Mountain
• 1x Snow-Covered Plains
• 1x Steam Vents
• 1x Sulfur Falls
• 1x Tundra
• 1x Volcanic Island
• 1x Windswept Heath
• 1x Wooded Foothills

Sorcery (14)

• 1x Echo of Eons
• 1x Gamble
• 1x Gitaxian Probe
• 1x Jeska's Will
• 1x Merchant Scroll
• 1x Ponder
• 1x Preordain
• 1x Rite of Flame
• 1x Rough / Tumble
• 1x Sevinne's Reclamation
• 1x Solve the Equation
• 1x Wheel of Fortune
• 1x Wheel of Misfortune
• 1x Windfall

Commander (1)

Artifact (17)

• 1x Arcane Signet
• 1x Azorius Signet
• 1x Chrome Mox
• 1x Fellwar Stone
• 1x Grim Monolith
• 1x Isochron Scepter
• 1x Izzet Signet
• 1x Lion's Eye Diamond
• 1x Lotus Petal
• 1x Mana Crypt
• 1x Mana Vault
• 1x Mox Diamond
• 1x Mox Opal
• 1x Skullclamp
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Talisman of Creativity
• 1x Talisman of Progress

Planeswalker (3)

• 1x Dovin, Hand of Control
• 1x Narset, Parter of Veils
• 1x Teferi, Master of Time

Creature (2)

• 1x Leveler
• 1x Thassa's Oracle

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"Hold it!"

Why Kykar?

Kykar, Wind's Fury is the head of his own legal firm, which just so happens to be a control deck. This isn't bird law: The Phoenix Wright of Magic: The Gathering, Kykar himself, slings spells like evidence and shouts in the courtroom in ways you've never seen, and perhaps will even channel the spirit of his dead mentor which you will then be able to sacrifice for mana. Thanks, Mia!

Kykar's purpose is to flip the script against faster decks by playing a large amount of interaction, and then turn the tables by casting Divergent Transformation, Synthetic Destiny , or Underworld Breach combos.

The Grand Turnabout

• Divergent Transformations and Synthetic Destiny , when you control Kykar and at least 1 spirit, will allow you to put both Leveler and Thassa's Oracle onto the battlefield at the same time. As the controller of both triggers, you can order them how you like, so put Oracle's trigger on the stack first, and Leveler's second, so that the latter's resolves first. The ideal board state is to have more than one spirit (sorry, Mia!) so that you can maintain Kykar on board for Divergent Transformations, but while that is optimal, it's not always possible.

• Underworld Breach is a Build-a-Bear of combos. Let's go over a few ways in which you can utilize Breach to win the game.

  • Method 1: Brain Freeze with Breach lines is insanely powerful. The first cast of Brain Freeze during your Breach turn will put 6 cards into your graveyard at minimum (assuming itself and Breach were the only spells cast). It also allows the generation of additional mana generation via Lion's Eye Diamond and Lotus Petal so as to allow you to cast other spells easier during the Breach turns. Effectively, you mill yourself with Brain Freeze, cast a large number of spells from your graveyard, and kill by casting Thassa's Oracle from your graveyard.

  • Method 2: You control Kykar, Wind's Fury , Wheel of Fortune , Underworld Breach , and Lotus Petal in hand, with at least 4 other cards in your hand/graveyard. The ease in which you can move into this line increases the more cards you have in your hand or graveyard, or by having more mana available on board, as you can even recover Wheel or Lotus Petal from the graveyard if they were spent earlier in the game should you have enough cards available to exile, etc.. With the above setup, casting Lotus Petal, Breach, and Wheel of Fortune generates spirit tokens. You'll discard your hand and draw a fresh 7, and hopefully have a few cards in your graveyard you can use to re-cast Wheel of Fortune by utilizing the spirits you've just created. You should now be able to maintain looping Wheel of Fortune and Lotus Petal through Breach, because casting the aforementioned will create 2 spirits that generate red mana, and Lotus Petal will make up the third. If you already have extra mana, you can cast Lotus Petal fewer times, which means more cards in your graveyard you can utilize. Wheeling 3 times will leave 3 additional cards to escape an extra time, or you can cast LED, Mana Crypt , Rite of Flame etc., over Petal to create an additional mana so as to enable the casting of Smothering Tithe during these actions to generate all the extra mana you would need, and Narset, Parter of Veils to limit your opponent's opportunities to interact with you. Your primary goal will be to avoid exiling countermagic and Thassa's Oracle, the latter of which you will cast via Breach to win.

  • Method 3: No Kykar? No problem. If you can manage to cast Silence , assembling Lion's Eye Diamond , Wheel of Fortune , and Underworld Breach will allow you to combo much in the same way as the above. This is dangerous without Silence, because LED forces you to discard your hand to pay for the Wheel, which means you can be left with no hand and no Breach if you try to do this without protection.

• Intuition is a quick path to Breach combos, assuming you have a Wheel or Freeze in your graveyard. You tutor LED, Breach, and Sevinne's Reclamation. If they give you SevRec, you get Breach, which then gets you then LED. If they give you LED, you can crack it to pay for SevRec's flashback cost which returns both Breach and LED. If they give you Breach, you can skip SevRec entirely and go off, kings. If you have mana but no relevant card in hand/graveyard, you can tutor Brain Freeze or a Wheel in LED's place, as SevRec will still get Breach into play for you, even if you have to pay a little more. Note that the cards used here are just an example- Intuition is a highly adaptable card.

It's important to note that, during Breach lines, if you are forced to exile Thassa's Oracle early or it is otherwise removed from the game, Brain Freeze forms a backup win condition for Breach lines, as does Angel's Grace . You can just deck everyone out with Wheel of Fortune and Brain Freeze , though if your opponents resolved something that gave them shroud/hexproof, you can use Angel's Grace plus Wheel of Fortune to deck that player, as well. As always, Silence is golden.

The Forgotten Turnabout

While this deck is high in interaction, it does also run a few hate pieces for select, powerful decks in the format. Rest in Peace aids Kykar's Court Record against decks like Gitrog, or Grixis Breach decks. Dovin, Hand of Control messes with your opponent's ability to make a case, by causing artifacts, instants, and sorceries they cast to cost more. Blood Moon and Back to Basics causes substantial trouble for decks running Tainted Pact, who often can't afford to run many basic lands. If you see a Najeela deck, aggressively tutor for these cards and countermagic. Narset, Parter of Veils is just an ideal card to run when playing with or against Wheel spells.

Other hate pieces that could be valuable on a per meta basis are: Aura of Silence , Blind Obedience , Tormod's Crypt , Soul-Guide Lantern . There are obviously others, just don't run creatures like Lavinia, Azorius Renegade unless you want to shift away from Divergent Transformations and into another Kykar list.

Don't forget to attack with your spirit tokens to pressure life totals. Decks like Shimmer Zur (though less in favor nowadays) rely on a critical mass of life to "get there" via Necropotence or Ad Nauseam , and attacking any deck featuring Ad Naus is effectively reducing the number of cards they will eventually put into their hands.

Turnabout Goodbyes

Effectively having 3 1-card combos makes Kykar a very modular deck: If an opponent plays and protects a Rest in Peace or Sphere of Resistance , you can shift to a Divergent/Synthetic Destiny line to win that way, or should your opponents control Containment Priest , Torpor Orb , and the like, you know to move toward Intuition and Underworld Breach lines, instead. Knowing when to shift gears and doing so effectively is key to piloting Kykar, as there are a plethora of faster decks in the format.

But a well timed objection is sometimes all it takes to secure victory.

Date added	2 years
Last updated	2 years
Exclude colors	BG
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	10 - 0 Mythic Rares 46 - 0 Rares 18 - 0 Uncommons 16 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.04
Tokens	Bird 2/2 U, Spirit 1/1 W, Treasure
Folders	Owned Commander Decks