Hello everyone! I hope that your Tuesday finds you well! Today I want to brew some decks around new cards from Commander 2020. Card Theory is one thing, but at the end of the day, this game is about brewing and playing. So, let's build some decks!

Ready? Let's do it to it!

Let's begin with recycling fun times!

Herald of the Forgotten is an awesome card but it strikes me as a really fun way to fill up a battlefield in a fat deck of cycling.

It also reminds me of a better Living Death for a certain style of combo deck.

Let's look at a popular deck during the Urza's Block Standard:

This deck began by dropping Fluctuator which was the most powerful card in the brew. You'd get it on turn three with two Cycling lands in your hand, or turn two with just one. Note that all cycling costs in the first set were two colorless mana, so they were all free!

Then you ran a ton of cards like Pendrell Drake that had cycling. The goal was to cycle every card in your hand from lands to dorks and fill up your graveyard with tons of cards. Cycle until you hit a key card that would combo win. What was your combo win?

Living Death! Cast Living Death on turn five and then kill everything in play (since you have no removal it's likely you'll sweep their board and not bringing anything of theirs back) and then bring back your passel of cycling dorks from the graveyard to the battlefield and win the next turn with your swing. This deck would often run Dark Ritual so you could win two turns earlier.

Let's modernize this build and lean into Herald.

The Herald of Cycling | Casual | Abe Sargent

• Creatures (24)
• 2 Herald of the Forgotten
• 2 Primoc Escapee
• 4 Angel of the God-Pharaoh
• 4 Archfiend of Ifnir
• 4 Flourishing Fox
• 4 Hollow One
• 4 Lava Serpent

• Sorceries (2)
• 2 Living Death

• Artifacts (8)
• 4 Fluctuator
• 4 Lion's Eye Diamond

• Lands (26)
• 2 Drifting Meadow
• 4 Canyon Slough
• 4 City of Brass
• 4 Fetid Pools
• 4 Irrigated Farmland
• 4 Scattered Groves
• 4 Sheltered Thicket

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And there we are! As you can see, I replaced Dark Ritual with Lion's Eye Diamond which are much better. I also kept two Living Deaths. The only stoppers in this build are LED, Fluctuator, Living Death, Herald, and City of Brass. Cycle relentlessly until you win.

I added in some addition synergy into this build:

If you have cycled at least three cards (likely) then you can drop a Hollow One for free. That could be enough right there. Especially with an early pre-Fluctuator Flourishing Fox! Drop it collect a bunch of tokens and you can easily win with the counters on it early.

One example:

Turn one - Cycling Land

Turn two - Cycling Land. Cast Fox

Turn three - Cycling Land. Drop Fluctuator. Cycle all cards in your hand over and over and over again. Get at least 10 or so counters, maybe more. Then swing for 11 or so. Do it again next turn and you win.

I really hate this deck's lack of haste, so enter Lava Serpent which can swing for a lot of damage. It's an ideal post-Living Death or Herald.

If you wanna try this deck in Legacy you can swap the Heralds for Living Deaths and see how it works.

What's next?

How about a bunch of cycling triggers? What I am envisioning is a mid-range controlling Mono-Blue deck with a load of cycling triggers. You can copy anything with Crystalline Resonance from a land for mana to the best combo engine for the turn, such as...

Drakes for the win! Drake Haven is a great addition to this brew. You can net a number of flyers that care about winning and get two triggers with a copied Resonance or multiple Havens.

This strikes mas a creature light brew. These eight dorks are it for the main flying force, and both offer valuable real estate for their cost. A cycling scry trigger is great as is the ability to cycle and counter a vital ability.

Actually, why don't I toss in a single Taland, Sky Summoner to add to my Drakes!

I add in a number of non-dorks like counters, card drawing, bounce, and a pair of Lay Claim to steal the goods.

Given how the deck is leaning, Shark Typhoon should also prove powerful. It triggers Talrand and itself, it can cycle for a powerful flyer, and it has an amazing trigger here too. Note that these Sharks fly.

Ready for the deck? Sure thing!

Cycling for Drakes | Casual | Abe Sargent

• Creatures (9)
• 1 Talrand, Sky Summoner
• 4 Curator of Mysteries
• 4 Nimble Obstructionist

• Instants (10)
• 2 Rescind
• 4 Countervailing Winds
• 4 Neutralize

• Sorceries (4)
• 2 Boon of the Wish-Giver
• 2 Sacred Excavation

• Enchantments (12)
• 2 Lay Claim
• 2 Shark Typhoon
• 4 Crystalline Resonance
• 4 Drake Haven

• Lands (25)
• 13 Island
• 4 Desert of the Mindful
• 4 Lonely Sandbar
• 4 Remote Isle

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What's next?

Consider the power of Boneyard Mycodrax. It's a great 3-drop, as 4-drops are where this effect hits normally for Black. It can also scavenge from the graveyard. What sort of deck would this card fit in. Many dorks? Ways to fill up the graveyeard with goodies?

...

....which is exactly what Mortal Combat would want to win the game! These two are ideal tag team partners. One can win by being huge or scavenging a ton of counters on a dork and winning while the other gives you an alternate path for winning. Now let's fill up the deck.

These are the two places I turn two next. One has a high dredge number, wants to block to trade with dorks, and will fill up the graveyard quickly. The other is a powerful early drop that fills up the graveyard on arrival and on death!

These are also cool additions to the build. Sewer Nemesis joins Mortal Combat as my sole 4-drops, and it'll self-target you and grow over time as you mill cards as you cast things! Then Gorging Vulture is another in the Supplier theme of milling yourself on arrival. I really enjoy the life boost too to help keep you alive while you assemble enough dorks to matter. Everything in here is cheap, and has a pretty solid curve.

Ready?

Mortal Mycodrax | Casual | Abe Sargent

• Creatures (32)
• 4 Boneyard Mycodrax
• 4 Crow of Dark Tidings
• 4 Golgari Thug
• 4 Gorging Vulture
• 4 Mire Triton
• 4 Sewer Nemesis
• 4 Stinkweed Imp
• 4 Stitcher's Supplier

• Enchantments (4)
• 4 Mortal Combat

• Lands (24)
• 24 Swamp

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All right now let's finish this thang off with our fourth and final deck!

I was inspired by my alternate winning condition in my first deck, the Flourishing Fox. My goal here is to discard enough dorks that I can have a two-turn clock with a 10/10 or a 15/15 Badger Dinosaur. There are two ways that would make sense for this to happen in mono-Red.

The first are draw sevens. Discard and draw. If you have a bunch of dorks, this will give you multiple counters in mass. In my deck below I'll be running 30 dorks, so half of the ones you discard from a Draw 7 should count. The other way to play into this space Granitic Tian and other cycling dorks. Let's look!

After I added in lands and my Draw 7s, this was the first cycling dork I added to my deck. Yidaro is perfect here! He'll reload himself after you cycle him, and you'll be more and more likely to draw him the more your deck is thinned by cycling and draw 7s. You should be very likely to begin to upcycle him into plays.

Drannith Stinger is another powerful entry to this team. I have 26 dorks and 4 lands with cycling, so that means half of my cards cycle, thus increasing this trigger potential to ping folks for damage here and there while you are doing your thing. It also has a cheap cycling cost too!

I also dipped into Modern Horizons for this pair. The Viashino Sandsprinter is an ideal card here. You can drop it for four damage, and then recur it and cycle it right there, or later when it cannot be used. It's also a powerful and cheap cycling cost. Once you have a fat Surly Badgersaur when you go to swing, your foe may want to block. Enter Quakefoot Cyclops. You can drop it to keep up to two from blocking you, or cycle to keep one if that's all you need.

And that's a deck. Here's my list!

Discarding Creatures | Casual | Abe Sargent

• Creatures (30)
• 2 Sanctuary Smasher
• 4 Drannith Slinger
• 4 Granitic Titan
• 4 Lava Serpent
• 4 Quakefoot Cyclops
• 4 Surly Badgersaur
• 4 Viashino Sandsprinter
• 4 Yidaro, Wandering Monster

• Sorceries (5)
• 1 Wheel of Fortune
• 4 Reforge the Soul

• Artifacts (1)
• 1 Memory Jar

• Lands (24)
• 20 Mountain
• 4 Forgotten Cave

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And there we have it! I hope you enjoyed this quartet of deck fun times. Anything in there you liked? Any inspirations for your own deck-building fun times? Let me know what you thought of my article!

P.S. - Have you ever wondered what it is like to work with a condition like Huntington's Disease. Watch this video of mine to find out!