Kynaios and Tiro, Defenders of Rainbow Vale

Commander / EDH fifthdawn

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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.

So for this exercise, our opening hand is Elvish Spirit Guide, Mana Crypt, Lotus Cobra, Skullclamp, Veteran Explorer, Phantasmal Image, Lotus Petal. We are playing a multiplayer game, and we are going first. Our draw for the opening turn is Gaea's Cradle.

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.

fifthdawn says... #1

Lord_Khaine, I am a big fan of stax strats, so I may just pass you the Rainbow Vale, lol.

December 24, 2016 9:23 p.m. Edited.

I definitely can relate to your condition

December 25, 2016 8:19 p.m.

Bovine073 says... #3

Obvious clickbait is obvious, isn't it?

December 28, 2016 9:09 a.m.

fifthdawn says... #4

Bovine073, lol

December 28, 2016 10:19 a.m.

KeelHaul10 says... #5

+1 for the beautiful essay in description

December 29, 2016 7:45 a.m.

fifthdawn says... #6

KeelHaul10, thanks, it was so much fun to write. I appreciate your saying that very much!

December 29, 2016 8:27 p.m.

pitch_gold says... #7

You get an upvote for running Alchemist's Refuge.

December 31, 2016 7:29 a.m.

Beautiful description. +1 for that. Wouldn't Abundance fit in here as well?

January 1, 2017 9:04 a.m.

fifthdawn says... #9

seshiro_of_the_orochi, thank you for the love!! Abundance would be perfect in this. Such a fun card. Especially when combined with Sylvan Library!! I usually have a personal preference for cards which enable a mana advantage, followed by cards which provide card advantage, and I feel Abundance tends to get slotted out of my EDH decks because, as good as it is, it doesn't really provide either one; it more provides card quality. In the 4 drop slot, Jace, the Mind Sculptor provides card quality and card advantage, so I value that a little ahead, but Abundance is so much fun, and this is definitely a deck about having fun, so I think it makes perfect sense.

January 1, 2017 11:22 a.m. Edited.

MEAT_TORNADO says... #10

Do you find Intuition to be particularly useful, given your number of other tutors?

January 6, 2017 12:48 p.m.

MEAT_TORNADO says... #11

Also that Mangara/Minamo/Riptide play is awesome.

January 6, 2017 12:50 p.m.

fifthdawn says... #12

MEAT_TORNADO, Intuition is one of the better cards in the deck. It finds any card in the deck by finding Body Double, Eternal Witness and whatever the necessary card is. If one of those has been exiled, you can find Karmic Guide, etc. So in a roundabout way, it is an instant speed blue demonic tutor. But even aside from that, it puts cards in the graveyard which can be a huge advantage. For instance, if I have a Crucible of Worlds, I am liable to search for three utility lands, like Minamo, School at Water's Edge, Deserted Temple and Vesuva. Especially nice since I can keep whatever is put in my hand to trigger off commander. The other thing is that I have ways to tutor with Imperial Recruiter and Captain Sisay but not many ways to find non-creature spells like Cyclonic Rift which are becoming more and more popular with the proliferation* of Atraxa builds that have cropped up.

*mwahahahaha

January 6, 2017 12:59 p.m. Edited.