Hello folks!

I hope your day is going well! Today is my last article for 2019. I thought it would be fun to end the year (and decade if you begin counting at zero instead of one) by creating a Commander deck that only uses cards printed in 2019.

I initially was going to allow myself to use cards that had been reprinted, but that's no challenge. Nope!

It must have been newly printed in 2019.

Modern Horizons

Core Set 2020

War of the Spark

Commander 2019

Throne of Eldraine

Ravnica Allegiance

These are the sets it will need to have been printed in!

Let's begin.

The biggest question I need to answer is...

What am I playing?

According to Gatherer, we have around 80 options from those sets.

Here are my ten obvious choices:

• Golos, Tireless Pilgrim
• Kenrith, the Returned King
• Morophon, the Boundless
• Niv-Mizzet Reborn
• Sisay, Weatherlight Captain
• Alela, Artful Provocateur
• Chulane, Teller of Tales
• Kykar, Wind's Fury
• Kaalia, Zenith Seeker
• Marisi, Breaker of the Coil

The first five are five-color options that will let me run pretty much any card from 2019. Just one actually requires all five colors to drop, I could easily do Golos or Sisay instead.

The next five are all three-color options that give me the maximum number of color options without being Five Colors.

Golos is going to be the easiest way to take this challenge. It self-ramps out the land of the color you need and requires nothing else to Cast.

Have I ever stuck you as someone who takes the easiest path in life? Nope? Exactly! I pull the other five color options. Let's reduce my card pool.

Let's do Kykar! I think it'll be the hardest of those five to build around. It needs good non-creatures, and in one year, we're obviously going to have a number of higher creatures. Also note that the Izzet guild was in 2018 so it's jump-start cards like Chemister's Insight aren't available either.

Please remember who Kykar is. Kykar really values casting non-creatures of any sort - sorceries, instants, enchantments and artifacts. Kykar will turn those into 1/1 flying death machines, which you can sacrifice further for Red mana.

Here's my first amazing addition to the deck:

Do you see it? Nope! No problem!

Ugin makes a 2/2 Spirit token with its +1. When that Spirit token leaves the battlefield, you get to draw the card you exiled from your library on arrival. Since Kykar can sacrifice Spirits for mana, you can churn cards very quickly if you need too, and make mana as well!

I also am pushing my planeswalker count where feasible. A planeswalker will trigger Kykar, where creatures won't. See Saheeli, Sublime Artificer as a great example thereof. She also triggers for the same cards Kykar does, and also makes tokens. As a 'walker herself, she's harder to answer, and her -2 isn't bad in the right circumstances. Turning Arcane Signet into another copy of Sword of Truth and Justice or a key beater can provide some value.

Something like Ral, Storm Conduit may only work for my instants and sorceries, but it works really, really well with them. From the bonus scry that'll increase your chance of drawing into gas or his -2 to Fork stuff, he works well in this shell too!

Now let's look at some of the key spells I have to use and reuse.

Take a deep look at Throes of Chaos! The ability to get a free cascade is pretty cool. But the retrace makes this thing awesome! It can linger in your graveyard until you draw an extra land to trade for another Throes. It will cascade into something, and it will also send those cast triggers a-triggerin'. From Kykar to Saheeli to more in the deck, this is a great way to keep the triggers flowing.

We also have a few flashback cards that were printed over the last year in Sevinne's Commander build as well as Modern Horizons. You'll notice some key cards here and there like these two! The Reclamation is a useful enough Sun Titan trigger, and then you can get another later. Two triggers options for one card. The same is true of cards like Scour All Possibilities, Mass Diminish and more.

This is not a token deck. But Kykar makes tokens when you cast stuff. Well guess what! Now you can copy that Spirit flying token each time! Because the tokens can be sacrificed for Red mana, they also have some extra usefulness beyond a mere 1/1 flying Spirit. We have a few other token makers among the lands and planeswalkers here and there that you might want to tap into as well. Note that unlike the other cards in this build, Song of the Worldsoul works for all of your spells, even your creatures.

Shenanigans is another card that can be potentially used over and over again. Cast it once! Destroy an artifact! Great! Now you can dredge just one card later to grab it and recast it for more artifact removal as well as more triggers of your stuff. Good Shenanigans!

Backdraft Hellkite can give your spells flashback in your graveyard as well. Also note that the flashback cost is the mana cost, so you could flashback something that would have a higher flashback cost, such as Sevinne's Reclamation, for its initial three mana.

I did want to give you some powerful board-sweeping options to keep you alive and going. Since a lot of your army's size can be outclassed as the game goes long, a sweeper like Time Wipe could be really needed here. But Winds of Abandon is so much better! With the Overload, suddenly, you are the only one with dorks out, and you can dominate the red zone for a while. Those dorks were exiled too, so no graveyard recursion is available for them.

There aren't too many more, but I do have a few more triggery cards like these. The Channeler loves planeswalkers as well as the Weird itself after it got a counter. If you control both, put the Channeler on the stack first, and then the Weird next, so it'll resolve first, and thus you can give it an extra counter.

This card is so much fun! Many of my guys have flying. That includes the Spirits from Kykar. Getting Sephara to drop cheaply by tapping a few 1/1 flyers is great, and at seven mana for a 7/7 flyer with lifelink, she's not bad on curve either. What makes her awesome is that indestructible for your flyers. Now all of those 1/1 Spirits can block and hold the fort with impunity. Taking out your stuff is much harder, and you can swing with your bigger dorks with confidence that your little tykes can hold the line.

Where possible, I tossed in some useful Adventuring. You can adventure them like normal and trigger stuff, and then cast them as dorks later and get that value. Giant Killer is fine as Chop Down to kill something, and then turn into a tapper. Brazen Borrower's Petty Theft can slow down a key opponent, as well as flash out and fly over foes on the ground.

I also suspect that we'll be getting enough card flow going that these "Second Card Drawn" triggers will happen pretty reliably. The Alliance is great because it makes more flyers as well as being useful to net extra draws from your mana. But the Pyromancer's free Lightning Bolt is where it's at causing some damage to people's collective faces.

Joining our team are many a fun planeswalker, as well as the Kenrith Twins, Rowan and Will. I really like the card flow, bouncing, flashing, and more. Don't sleep in the Scions' second+1 for Kykar either. A 5/3 flying, first strike, trample that can swing on turn after deployment is pretty good, and hard to deal with early. You could collect some quality Commander damage.

I had mentioned earlier we had a few ways to make some bigger tokens tucked in here. Both of these can make a 4/4 flying with vigilance. I love Serra here! Her +2 is amazing in this build as a way to increase your flying team's size. Her Serra Angel making is fun, and she can get to the ultimate very quickly, after just one turn of her +2.

And then? That's it.

Here let's take a look at the deck.

2019 Kykar | Commander | Abe Sargent

• Commander (1)
• 1 Kykar, Wind's Fury

• Creatures (16)
• 1 Backdraft Hellkite
• 1 Brazen Borrower
• 1 Cavalier of Dawn
• 1 Dockside Extortionist
• 1 Elsha of the Infinite
• 1 Flux Channeler
• 1 Giant Killer
• 1 God-Eternal Kefnet
• 1 Irencrag Pyromancer
• 1 Robber of the Rich
• 1 Sephara, Sky's Blade
• 1 Soulherder
• 1 Spark Double
• 1 Spellgorger Weird
• 1 Sphinx of Foresight
• 1 Wildfire Devils

• Planeswalkers (9)
• 1 Chandra, Awakened Inferno
• 1 Narset, Parter of Veils
• 1 Ral, Storm Conduit
• 1 Saheeli, Sublime Artificer
• 1 Serra the Benevolent
• 1 Teferi, Time Raveler
• 1 The Royal Scions
• 1 The Wanderer
• 1 Ugin, the Ineffable

• Instants (14)
• 1 Commence the Endgame
• 1 Depose // Deploy
• 1 Dovin's Veto
• 1 Electrodominance
• 1 Ephemerate
• 1 Everdream
• 1 Generous Gift
• 1 Ignite the Beacon
• 1 Precognitive Perception
• 1 Spell Snuff
• 1 Sphinx's Insight
• 1 Thought Collapse
• 1 True Love's Kiss
• 1 Warrant // Warden

• Sorceries (15)
• 1 Bond of Insight
• 1 Drawn from Dreams
• 1 Finale of Promise
• 1 Light up the Stage
• 1 Mass Diminish
• 1 Scour All Possibilities
• 1 Sevinne's Reclamation
• 1 Shenanigans
• 1 Splicer's Skill
• 1 Stolen by the Fae
• 1 Tamiyo's Epiphany
• 1 Throes of Chaos
• 1 Time Wipe
• 1 Winds of Abandon
• 1 Winged Words

• Enchantments (4)
• 1 Dovin's Acuity
• 1 Improbable Alliance
• 1 Smothering Tithe
• 1 Song of the Worldsoul

• Artifacts (8)
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Fountain of Ichor
• 1 Golden Egg
• 1 Spinning Wheel
• 1 Sword of Sinew and Steel
• 1 Sword of Truth and Justice
• 1 Talisman of Conviction
• 1 Talisman of Creativity

• Lands (33)
• 6 Island
• 8 Mountain
• 6 Plains
• 1 Blast Zone
• 1 Castle Ardenvale
• 1 Castle Embereth
• 1 Castle Vantress
• 1 Dwarven Mine
• 1 Fabled Passage
• 1 Fiery Islet
• 1 Idyllic Grange
• 1 Karn's Bastion
• 1 Lotus Field
• 1 Mystic Sanctuary
• 1 Prismatic Vista
• 1 Sunbaked Canyon

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My goal with this deck was to keep the card flow going. We have a number of effects that will trigger Kykar's token-making while also drawing sweet cards, such as Golden Egg or Dovin's Acuity. I tried to lean on non-creatures for various effects such as removal like True Love's Kiss or Generous Gift. We have ways to make more token creatures such as Castle Ardenvale that can also use any extra mana you may have sitting around.

And there we have it! I hope you enjoyed this 2019 version of a Commander deck. Anything in here you liked, or disagreed with? Just me know, and have a great new year!