Want cards to always do something? Like the feeling of your cards being used at instant speed? Laugh at a counterspell threat? You want to trigger your friends to death but not trigger them?
Then the cycling mechanic might be your thing. In the land of the walking the one that cycles is king.
With the release of Ikoria and Gavi, Nest Warden in the Timeless Wisdom preconstructed commander deck, the cycling theme has become a more popular EDH theme. This article is to inspire and help you find your cycling theme. Consider this a general guide on how to get started on deckbuilding . The focus will be on decks that use the cycling mechanic as the main theme of the deck. There are some decks that make use of cycling cards but not as their main way of winning, these will not be included.
Note: My cycling deck is my absolute favorite deck to play, it's so diverse, interesting and interactive that I just had to make an article so others can get to enjoy it as much as I do. This article is based on my old Reddit post and is a collection of information and posts on this subject together with my own experience.
Contents:
Ride that bike
Mechanics
Themes
Commanders
Strategy
Framework
Build
Cards
Ride that bike
Mechanics
In recent times the cycling ability has gotten more and more support, but the original card that gave the cycling mechanic a real kick-off was Astral Slide, it was the centerpiece of the deck that won the World Championship in 2004.
The cycling mechanic is an additional ability added to cards, it allows you to rummage for a new card if the card is not useful at the time. It reads: Cycling [cost] (Discard this card: Draw a card.)
Being an ability gives it some upsides. It can be used at instant speed and circumvents most counterspells or stax pieces because you are not casting the cards. That being said it does have some downsides as some cards can really punish you for using abilities, drawing or discarding.
There are quite some cards that will trigger when you either cycle, draw or discard. These cards, that can be found in 'framework', allow the cycling deck to function and win games.
Speaking of winning games, a cycling theme can be very strong but really has no place in real competitive gameplay. It just is not efficient enough...yet.
Themes
One of the best reasons to build a cycling themed commander deck is that there are different themes within the main cycling theme which will all play out very differently. Combining the different themes is easy because it all uses the same mechanic and gives you great amounts of freedom on creating a style of deck you like.
The four main themes in the cycling mechanic are:
Blinking and re-triggering enter-the-battlefield effects. (Astral Slide)
Dealing damage with cycling, draw-and-discard effects. (Drannith Stinger)
Generating lots of small creature tokens by cycling. (Valiant Rescuer)
Reanimating big creatures with cycling. (Titanoth Rex)
All colours of magic have great cards to cycle with. However some colours do give you better tools for the job than others. Also some colours can be seen as main colours and others as support colours. You will probably need at least one main colour and one support colour to get started. Going for three colours or more has the advantage of getting enough decent cards with cycling.
The two main colours are white and blue. These colours have the best cards to set yourself up into a good position.
The three other colours have the best means to win games and give an additional pool of good cycling cards.
Commanders
There are a couple of commonly used commanders for cycling:
Zur can fetch the key pieces of a blinking style deck. Astral slide for control or Escape Protocol to assemble a cycling infinite combo.
Gavi cheats on cycling mana and allows you to get away with expensive cycling costs. She also leans into the token strategy as a bonus.
Kydele and Ravos both have ‘soft’ synergy with cycling but this also makes them very flexible.
Omnath, Locus of All
Five colours give the best cycling cards available and allow for almost any kind of cycling build. Omnath will act like a Phyrexian Arena in the command zone.
There are many, many more possible commanders that will work well with cycling. As soon as you know what kind of cycling deck you want, find a commander that fits the decks needs.
Strategy
Playing with a cycling deck does have a steep learning curve. Now most of your cards in hand give the option to cycle. It raises some more questions about the cards. ‘Is my card good now or do I need it later?’ ‘Can I cycle to dig deeper into my deck or do I wait to get value out of this cycling effect.’
The short answer is that if you can get away with it, cycle as much and as fast as you can to set-up and get the cards you need to win. The short version of the long answer is to play the deck and don't give up if you fail the first couple of times. The deck might not be bad, it might require some more experience in making these choices.
Cycling leans toward a value style of game. it's weak against early pressure and can be shut down by certain hate cards. Losing life in the early game is fine, trade life for keeping and getting resources. Mid- and late games is where this theme really shines.
Interactive cards should only be used in the early and midgame if a player would win the game directly or on cards that directly hamper cycling. In the late game you get more freedom to remove cards that hamper your strategy. First, we need to get there.
Framework
Build
This a very general build guide as there is so much diversity.
First pick a theme
Add colours that you would like to add to the theme
Choose a commander
The commander supports the theme and not the other way. This is because cycling cards are almost all worse versions of existing cards. If your commander is countered or destroyed it will leave you with a deck of cards that are just not as good as your opponents are playing.
Enablers:
The most important cards will find your enabler cards for the themes you have chosen. The two that will fit practically any deck are Fluctuator and Alhammareth's Archive. More specific pieces can be found in the last part of this article.
There are some cards that look like great value pieces but put your deck at risk by exiling cards making them very dangerous to include for example Bag of Holding. Some cards look like great cards for cycling like Unpredictable Cyclone but really work against the strategy it's trying to execute.
Manabase:
Counter intuitive as it might first appear cycling decks even with the high amount of rummaging should be running more lands than average. This is because of the lands with cycling. Nearly all of them enter the battlefield tapped and you will want to run ALL of them in up to 4 colour decks. Either having a way to increase your mana or cycling is one of the best things to do. This does leave you with a lower amount of regular lands lands that enter untapped.
Be very careful with adding in more entering tapped lands as you are already running a lot of them. Playing a tapped land every turn will slow down the deck significantly.
There are great cards for mana fixing and its built into the cycling itself, land type cycling like Lorien Revealed. These are good as they help you smooth out your mana and in late game can get lands with cycling, to give you an additional cycling card to get more cycling triggers.
Ramp that is good for cycling decks is hard to come by. This is because if a ramp card cannot convert itself into something that can draw or add to the strategy the deck can grind to a halt because you are lacking cards that cycle. If a manarock has a way to turn itself into cards, pick it even if it's not super efficient. (however Sol Ring and the likes are so efficient they overcome the drawbacks)
Before going further it's worth noting to try and avoid cards with coloured mana in their cycling cost or cards that are three or more mana to cycle. It can lead to cards stuck in hand that otherwise could be cycled. Gavi is to some extent an exception to this rule.
Finishing:
After mana sources, cards that interact with the game are the most valuable cards with
cycling to have.
Instant speed removal or yet another way do draw and/or trigger. Fill in the rest with cycling cards you think that adds to your deck. Cards that either draw some cards or cycle are trap cards. It sounds counterintuitive but these cards give you no options but dig into your deck to find your enablers, all your other cards already give you this option. Lorien Revealed is an exception as it does more than just drawing the top card. A very general guideline is having at least 40 cycling cards, the more the better. Reanimation style decks can get away with less, cycling themes with just cycling triggers that cause damage can’t will probably need over 50.
If you include a card without cycling that is not an enabler, check if there is a similar version with cycling and consider the option.
Cards
Below you can find links to search results for all kinds of cards with this theme.
Enablers
Mana sources
Interaction
Cards you need for reanimation, token support, ETB creatures and the like are up to you and should be your creativity.
A little help finding enter the battlefield creatures: https://scryfall.com/advanced Then fill in the commander colours, card type: creature, text: enters the battlefield (then type whatever you want it to do. Try it out different keywords to find what you want)
Remember your ABC: always be cycling.
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