Kynaios and Tiro, Defenders of Rainbow Vale
Commander / EDH
SCORE: 132 | 63 COMMENTS | 23185 VIEWS | IN 41 FOLDERS
The Ever-Elusive Turn One Godhand (and the kill) —Jan. 11, 2017
The Ever-Elusive Turn One Godhand (and the kill) with a special assist from Daedalus19876
One of the nice parts about Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis is using the trigger to gas back up with a higher frequency. The case for including fast colored mana sources becomes much more viable when the card you expend to do so, i.e. Gemstone Caverns/Mox Diamond or else Lotus Petal/Simian Spirit Guide is replaced immediately via their end step trigger.
As a fun exercise, I decided to imagine my Godhand, and eventually I came up with this. If anyone has suggestions for additional means of casting Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis on turns one or two, I will be grateful.
We play Mana Crypt to make . We cast Skullclamp, going down to . We exile Elvish Spirit Guide making a and cast Lotus Cobra. We play Lotus Petal and cast Veteran Explorer. We play a land for our turn, and it is Gaea's Cradle, triggering Lotus Cobra for mana.
Now we tap Gaea's Cradle and add to our pool. We use one of the and our floating to cast Phantasmal Image becoming a copy of Veteran Explorer. One remains in the pool.
We use the to equip the Veteran Explorer with Skullclamp and it dies, triggering its ability as well as triggering Skullclamp. We resolve the ability of Veteran Explorer first and find an untapped Forest and Island. We have zero mana floating.
When the lands enter, the Lotus Cobra triggers twice, adding two mana to our pool.
We resolve the trigger from Skullclamp and draw Earthcraft and Heartbeat of Spring. We tap the island for mana and cast Heartbeat of Spring.
We can tap our Forest so our pool has .
We can use to cast Earthcraft. If you have played with Earthcraft before, you may want to stop reading at this point, but in case you are curious, the following outlines a common kill method using the insane amounts of free mana that Earthcraft can generate with Rhys the Redeemed.
We start by tapping the Phantasmal Image to make . Because we have access to all colors, for ease of reading, I will keep track of our mana numerically. We tap Lotus Cobra and make 2 more. We now have 4 in our pool.
Going down to 3 mana, we spend 1 to equip the Skullclamp to the Phantasmal Image, but it is sacrificed once becoming the target of an ability, so we trigger its ability as the Veteran Explorer to find two untapped basics.
We search for a Mountain and a Plains and tap them in addition to triggering Lotus Cobra for 6 additional mana. We now have 9 mana and no cards in our hand.
We spend a mana, going to 8, to equip the Skullclamp to the Lotus Cobra and draw two cards.
We draw Siege-Gang Commander and Phyrexian Metamorph. We spend 5 mana, going to 3 mana floating to cast Siege-Gang Commander. We spend our remaining mana to cast Phyrexian Metamorph by paying . It enters as a copy of Siege-Gang Commander. We again have zero mana, and no cards in our hand.
We tap our two copies of Siege-Gang Commander and the 6 goblin tokens to add 16 colored mana to our mana pool. We go down to 15 mana and equip the Skullclamp to a goblin token.
We draw Reveillark and Oracle of Mul Daya.
We go to 11 mana and cast Oracle of Mul Daya. We reveal Hanweir Battlements  Meld on the top of our library. We play it as our additional land drop for the turn. After we play it, the card on top of our library is Minamo, School at Water's Edge.
We tap Oracle of Mul Daya for mana, going to 13, we spend 6 to evoke Reveillark, going to 7. The trigger from Reveillark returns Phantasmal Image and Veteran Explorer.
Phantasmal Image enters as a copy of Oracle of Mul Daya. We tap it and Veteran Explorer for 4 more mana, and we play Minamo, School at Water's Edge from the top of our library as our third land for the turn. After playing Minamo, School at Water's Edge, the top card revealed is Rhys the Redeemed.
With 11 mana now in our pool, we use one and go to 10 mana to re-equip the Veteran Explorer with Skullclamp. We resolve the trigger from Skullclamp, drawing Rhys the Redeemed and Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker. We then find two basics with Veteran Explorer and tap them for mana. So we now have 14 floating.
Going to 9, we play Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker and activate it to make a copy of Siege-Gang Commander. We tap the Siege-Gang Commander token and the additional 3 goblin tokens to go back up to 17 mana.
We go to 16 and play Rhys the Redeemed. We spend , going to 15 to activate the Hanweir Battlements  Meld, in order to give our Rhys the Redeemed haste. We spend 6 mana to activate the second ability of Rhys the Redeemed. We now have 9 mana in our mana pool.
Rhys doubles the 8 goblin tokens in play going up to 16 goblins, and also makes an additional token copy of Siege-Gang Commander that had originally entered via Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker which provides an additional 3 for a total of one Siege-Gang Commander, one artifact version of Siege-Gang Commander two token copies of Siege-Gang Commander and then 19 1/1 goblin tokens.
We activate the ability of Minamo, School at Water's Edge, going down to 8 mana, and untap Rhys the Redeemed. We go down to 2 mana and activate Rhys the Redeemed an additional time.
We get 2 additional token copies of Siege-Gang Commander, which confuses the shit out of the goblin army because now they have literally no idea who to take orders from, plus the incoming tokens make an additional 6 goblins to go with the 19 that were just doubled, so we now have (19x2)+6 or 44 goblin tokens, 4 token copies of Siege-Gang Commander an original copy and also an artifact copy for a grand total of 50 goblins all together.
At last, we reach the final step of this exercise. How to kill was never the point of doing this, it was more about how fast could we open up, since the kill is more or less a matter of routine, but that being said, we can use Skullclamp one final time to draw... what else? (It is a Godhand afterall) the Wargate and we cast our Wargate where equals to find the plain, old, boring Deserted Temple... you know, the kind of land you could introduce to your mother. We activate Deserted Temple to untap Minamo, School at Water's Edge a final time. We use Minamo, School at Water's Edge to untap Rhys the Redeemed who is exhausted at this point from siring all these goblin children. We activate Rhys the Redeemed, and boom, 88 goblins, plus 12 more from the 4 additional Siege-Gang Commander copies for a grand total of 100, and there you have it. Each goblin can tap itself thanks to Earthcraft to sacrifice itself and deal two damage to your opponent thanks to Siege-Gang Commander, and voila, you win on the spot. Congratulations.
TheRedGoat says... #3
Soooo, Idk what you're build is doing, but I'll admit its doing something.
The initial wall of text is honestly a little hard to read through at first, but I think I get that you're trying to build up the theme behind playing the deck as a "cycle of life" type deal. Normal turns start with drawing a card and most likely playing a land before proceeding to play more spells. With the new couple commander though that gets mirrored at the end of the turn, mechanically doubling up on your game presence, while thematically being life having gone through its cycle to begin anew on the next turn.
Something I feel you might have missed about this mentality though is that Ink-Treader Nephalim also exemplifies this idea. Only it runs more with an "all life is connected" theme that several other creatures now utilize as well (your commander including). Mechanically and thematically Ink treader fits this theme because, if it is out, a single Path to Exile is a board wipe, but also Traitorous Blood is an Insurrection, which anyone can play. And beyond this even, you gain access to Enchanted Evening cards along side Opalescence and also Living Lands (and about 5 other spells saying the exact same thing) that alter the meaning of "what is alive". Even just running Mycosynth Lattice and March of the Machines carries the reference to machines becoming sentient (and also tokens + Ink Treader are awesome).
But the point of this is that Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis are meant to follow the same theme of "turn opponent advantage into your advantage". As in, cards like Lifegift, or Consecrated Sphinx or even Dragonlair Spider.
ahem*
Sorry for my ranting. I beat around the bush a bit and, to be more direct, feel that your deck is too much goodstuff versus the potential themes you could be playing. This is merely some of my thoughts on it, and I have on of my own I will be building in the manner directed above so I have at least some bias as to how I feel the couple should be played out.
November 19, 2016 1:42 a.m.
Great feedback! Thanks for taking the time to add your thoughts. These comments are perfect. Indeed, there are a lot of my pet strategy and synergy cards in here. Because it is my primary EDH build, the one mostly foiled, etc I have filled the deck with many pet cards and pet synergies, like Rhys the Redeemed being able to make permanent copies of the tokens created by Feldon of the Third Path, etc. I dislike non-creature spells unfortunately because Earthcraft wants as many cheap creatures as possible. Thanks for contributing!
November 19, 2016 6:17 p.m.
Daedalus19876 says... #5
I like the deck, and you get a +1 from me, but you really need accordion spoilers on that description.
November 20, 2016 6:34 p.m.
I love it. These commanders are amazing and this one is my favorite. I built super hug on mine and I am having a blast.
November 20, 2016 7:20 p.m.
Daedalus19876, thanks for that recommendation. I tried to do accordion text on Turkey Day but couldn't grok it. Apologies!!
maddoxmtg, I agree. So much fun. Forbidden Orchard and the recently added Rainbow Vale are my favorites. Very cool to be able to play the Vale and almost forgot I could!
dranglupus Thanks so much. I got really stoned and silly and wrote it all. Luckily I edited it for clarity afterwards, LOL.
hamiam Appreciate you! Love you! +1, thanks for the love!!
November 27, 2016 2:19 p.m.
Why no Chromatic Lantern, Sol Ring, Mana Vault, Mana Crypt, or signets?
December 2, 2016 3:52 p.m.
CthulhusNo1FavCultist, all good options, of course. I have a preference for creature mana over artifact mana, hence going with Earthcraft as opposed to those options. My commander requires colored mana, so preference towards the signets and Lantern, but I think Sol Ring is also perfectly reasonable. Also if Sol Ring gets added to the deck then I think some consideration for Trinket Mage could be made. Lantern doesn't ramp me towards my commander, since I can't play it before turn 3 unless I've ramped already, but it's still a fine choice. I play Prismatic Omen instead to couple with Emeria, The Sky Ruin and also to benefit from Gauntlet of Power effects. My curve basically ends at 5 though, so the fast colorless mana is a little less valuable, although still a fine option. Being that I have a lot of group hug in the deck, in a longer game, I like the consistency of ramping lands into play over the early advantage of fast colorless mana. That being said, I played with Chromatic Lantern extensively, and I found that although helpful, it wasn't vital, so I opted against it. Thanks!!
December 2, 2016 4:06 p.m.
Infinimage007 says... #14
+1 just for the exhaustive description. That was well-written.
December 3, 2016 9:21 p.m.
VraskaTheCursed I love the upvotes for the name just as much as that upvote for description, Infinimage007. <3 you guys for the support, thanks!! m(._.)m
December 21, 2016 12:10 a.m. Edited.
VraskaTheCursed says... #21
Wait this is the deck that used to be called rainbow loam omen right
December 21, 2016 7:44 a.m.
VraskaTheCursed indeed.
GreenFuzzyNinja my guess is that other users can relate to my condition. ;)
December 22, 2016 12:19 p.m.
VraskaTheCursed says... #24
Well I shoulda upvoted this deck before name change anyway I thought I did in fact
terribleplayer says... #1
I like it, despite my bias against four colours (tried it years back and it was awkward - I hope that changes with the new commanders). I would like to see this deck called "Night at the Roxbury", but that's just my sense of humour.
November 8, 2016 8:43 p.m.