Readers!

Every once in a while in this series, I will build a deck that is pretty close to not working well as a 75% deck. I'll say something like "If you add x, y and z card, you'll likely end up with a deck that's too consistent to work well as a 75% deck, but that's OK because not all of your decks need to be 75% decks." That's true. I encourage that. I think everyone should have at least 1 75% deck because you never know when you will be in a situation where you don't know how everyone else is built, but not everyone needs to only have decks built that way. I firmly believe that. I also need you to know that I don't tend to keep my non-75% decks together.

I advocate generating infinite mana and Capsizing everyone's permanents, by the way, even still. It's hard to do, it's even harder without Paradox Engine and it ends the game way better than a kicked Cyclonic Rift. You'd think people would be more upset to get Capsized than they would to get Cyc Rifted but you'd be wrong - if you win the game that turn (you should be able to) or the next one, they'll appreciate a creative end to the game versus Cyc Rift just making the game take longer as everyone recasts their cards, annoyed. Capsize wasn't the problem, Paradox Engine was because it turned my 2 commanders plus any amount of card draw into an infinite mana machine that also drew your whole deck. Yes, I ran Lab Maniac in that deck. Yes it bored me. I even swapped it out for Psychosis Crawler the second time I ran the deck and Lab Man wasn't the problem.

I realize this story is meandering a bit but this is all important, because playing not 75% made me realize that it's really hard to get to 75% by shooting in a different direction and trying to double back. It didn't feel like a simple matter of taking out Paradox Engine (either earlier or later when I had to because, of course, it was banned) and adding something else, the problems pervaded the deck. I had Isochron Scepter and could just Dramatic Reversal, do I cut both of those? Do I take out Laboratory Maniac? What am I Fabricating for at this point, Umbral Mantle? Do I just cut Fabricate? I agonized over every card and found it kinder to take the deck behind the woodshed and give it a quick and painless rendering into its constituent parts. Whole chunks of the deck felt too bulky to repurpose so I gave it the slow death of 100 cuts and took pieces from the pile when I built something new that I was more likely to leave together. Every Simic deck I built could use a Coiling Oracle or Yavimaya Coast but cards like Kydele and Thrasios, Sword of the Paruns, and Mystical Tutor felt too ingrained into the parts of that deck I didn't like to repurpose elsewhere.

I'm not telling you how to play Commander. I mean, I kind of am, but my goal for this series was always to think out loud and figure out why I was building the way I built so I could fill in the how for everyone else. If you were picking up what I was putting down, you could have a blueprint for applying these lessons to your own decks. If you like to Lab Maniac people, if you like to Mystical Tutor for a Fabricate for a combo piece, if you like to go off with Isochron Scepter and Dramatic Reversal, you're not wrong. You're not even necessarily wrong to do those things in a 75% deck. It's taken me years of writing this series to try and separate out what I didn't like because I personally found it boring and what violated some part of the 75% ethos - the entire point of trying to figure out rules to go by was to take my own feelings out of it. Now that some time has passed and I think I know what the problems were with Kydele and Thrasios, it may be time to take another look at my box of regrets and see if there is anything we can do with the cards.

My deck was pretty similar to the one from this article and while I tried to use some of those cards for something else when I wrote an article called "Kydele and Thrasios are boring," I haven't touched the cards in actuality. What was the deck like and how do we do something new and interesting with it?

Paradox of Kruphix | Commander | Jason Alt

• Commanders (2)
• 1 Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix
• 1 Thrasios, Triton Hero

• Creatures (15)
• 1 Arbor Elf
• 1 Birchlore Rangers
• 1 Coiling Oracle
• 1 Elvish Archdruid
• 1 Imperious Perfect
• 1 Joraga Treespeaker
• 1 Karametra's Acolyte
• 1 Laboratory Maniac
• 1 Llanowar Elves
• 1 Nullmage Shepherd
• 1 Priest of Titania
• 1 Reclamation Sage
• 1 Wirewood Channeler
• 1 Wirewood Symbiote
• 1 Wood Elves

• Instants (13)
• 1 Beast Within
• 1 Blue Sun's Zenith
• 1 Brainstorm
• 1 Capsize
• 1 Constant Mists
• 1 Cyclonic Rift
• 1 Dramatic Reversal
• 1 Krosan Grip
• 1 Paradoxical Outcome
• 1 Plasm Capture
• 1 Simic Charm
• 1 Sprout Swarm
• 1 Whispers of the Muse

• Sorceries (6)
• 1 Cultivate
• 1 Kodama's Reach
• 1 Recurring Insight
• 1 Treasure Cruise
• 1 Urban Evolution
• 1 Wurmcalling

• Enchantments (11)
• 1 Asceticism
• 1 Cryptolith Rite
• 1 Earthcraft
• 1 Exploration
• 1 Helix Pinnacle
• 1 Intruder Alarm
• 1 Opposition
• 1 Retreat to Coralhelm
• 1 Rhystic Study
• 1 Squirrel Nest
• 1 Sylvan Library

• Artifacts (15)
• 1 Alhammarret's Archive
• 1 Dreamstone Hedron
• 1 Gilded Lotus
• 1 Isochron Scepter
• 1 Mana Vault
• 1 Paradox Engine
• 1 Simic Signet
• 1 Skullclamp
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Staff of Domination
• 1 Sword of the Paruns
• 1 Thought Vessel
• 1 Thousand-Year Elixir
• 1 Thran Dynamo
• 1 Umbral Mantle

• Lands (38)
• 14 Forest
• 14 Island
• 1 Alchemist's Refuge
• 1 Breeding Pool
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Hinterland Harbor
• 1 Misty Rainforest
• 1 Reliquary Tower
• 1 Simic Growth Chamber
• 1 Temple of Mystery
• 1 Temple of the False God
• 1 Yavimaya Coast

Buy This Deck Export text format

This was the version for the article that I told myself was 75% and when I built it, I streamlined it even more, adding tutors, cheap mana rocks to make Paradoxical Outcome even more broken and putting serious dollars into the land base. It's hard to convince people you're playing 75% when you play a Mana Crypt and a Tropical Island turn one so I abandoned the pretense. Looking at the version from the article, it still has some of the problems I had with it initially and reverting to this version wouldn't be the fix I wanted. One of our rules is that you don't build 75% by making a stronger deck worse, you have to build from the ground up toward a goal or you're just making a bad version of one deck rather than the good version of a different one. I want a good version of a deck, but with Kydele and Thrasios generating so much consistency, it was going to be tough. Having access to a commander that turns every Brainstorm or Sylvan Library into Infinite mana with Umbral Mantle or Sword of the Paruns coupled with a second commander that turns infinite mana into a win on the spot with Laboratory Maniac proved too consistent. I didn't hate the idea of those creatures floating around the 99, but having them occupy the command zone felt fraught. Remember, consistency is the enemy here, not power level, that's something I wish I knew when I wrote the first 75% article all those years ago.

I realize we're SUPER deep into the article and I normally bust this out in the first paragraph just about, but the entire reason I gave a TED talk about Kydele and Thrasios is that I think I can salvage a lot of the pieces of the deck and put it somewhere new. It will take more work to go off with the deck than it did with Paradox Engine, but I was thinking that's a good thing.

Kinnan is a really bad Kydele and a really bad Thrasios in one. Kinnan generates some mana with some help and Kinnan draws some cards with a lot of help. Instead of generating a slew of colorless mana and turning that into an empty library, we're going to need colored mana in the mix and we're not going to be able to deck ourselves. Instead, we're going to make all of our cards better and play some of them for free. Umbral Mantle is still good, but all of a sudden Basalt Monolith is better than Mana Crypt. We can run Kydele and Thrasios in the 99 since Kinnan can't even find Kydele and I don't plan to run any tutors and we can run a bunch of elves and we can also run cards that are good with Intruder Alarm, like Sprout Swarm. Suddenly we don't have the target painted on us that Paradox Engine painted but the pressure to go off all in one turn is less because we can use Kinnan to grind out a few free creatures. I won't even put Laboratory Maniac in here - we're not that kind of deck, but almost every other card that was good before is still good now. Suddenly everything I didn't like doesn't even work but I can still Capsize people out, provided I can scrape together the Blue mana to do it. I'm going to have FUN again, and with the parts of the Kydele and Thrasios deck I actually liked.

What would the components of the deck, minus the stuff I hated and plus new stuff, look like?

Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy | Commander | Jason Alt

• Commander (1)
• 1 Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy

• Creatures (23)
• 1 Arbor Elf
• 1 Birchlore Rangers
• 1 Blightsteel Colossus
• 1 Bloom Tender
• 1 Coiling Oracle
• 1 Elvish Archdruid
• 1 Elvish Harbinger
• 1 Imperious Perfect
• 1 It That Betrays
• 1 Joraga Treespeaker
• 1 Karametra's Acolyte
• 1 Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix
• 1 Llanowar Elves
• 1 Memnarch
• 1 Nullmage Shepherd
• 1 Priest of Titania
• 1 Reclamation Sage
• 1 Selvala, Heart of the Wilds
• 1 Thrasios, Triton Hero
• 1 Walking Ballista
• 1 Wirewood Channeler
• 1 Wirewood Symbiote
• 1 Wood Elves

• Instants (8)
• 1 Beast Within
• 1 Capsize
• 1 Constant Mists
• 1 Cyclonic Rift
• 1 Dramatic Reversal
• 1 Krosan Grip
• 1 Plasm Capture
• 1 Sprout Swarm

• Sorceries (4)
• 1 Cultivate
• 1 Kodama's Reach
• 1 Treasure Cruise
• 1 Urban Evolution

• Enchantments (11)
• 1 Cryptolith Rite
• 1 Earthcraft
• 1 Exploration
• 1 Helix Pinnacle
• 1 Intruder Alarm
• 1 Leyline of Abundance
• 1 Opposition
• 1 Retreat to Coralhelm
• 1 Rhystic Study
• 1 Squirrel Nest
• 1 Sylvan Library

• Artifacts (15)
• 1 Basalt Monolith
• 1 Dreamstone Hedron
• 1 Gilded Lotus
• 1 Isochron Scepter
• 1 Mana Vault
• 1 Nyx Lotus
• 1 Simic Signet
• 1 Skullclamp
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Staff of Domination
• 1 Sword of the Paruns
• 1 Thought Vessel
• 1 Thousand-Year Elixir
• 1 Thran Dynamo
• 1 Umbral Mantle

• Lands (38)
• 14 Forest
• 14 Island
• 1 Alchemist's Refuge
• 1 Breeding Pool
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Hinterland Harbor
• 1 Misty Rainforest
• 1 Reliquary Tower
• 1 Simic Growth Chamber
• 1 Temple of Mystery
• 1 Temple of the False God
• 1 Yavimaya Coast

Buy This Deck Export text format

I didn't make THAT many changes, but Kinnan fits the deck the way I want to play it so much better and I couldn't be happier. Let's review what I'm glad I kept, first.

Since you're going to brick if you reveal humans off the top with Kinnan's ability, an elf subtheme is advisable and is pretty popular on EDHREC. I already had the elf subtheme before and now Priest of Titania is even better since Kinnan gives us extra mana. Cards like Selvala and Priest can give you enough mana to go off with an Umbral Mantle or Sword of the Paruns, now, so you don't need to rely on Kydele anymore. That's handy, since we won't have easy access to Kydele without her in the command zone. Instead, we have a pile of elves that can get the party started, and how many cards you drew this turn doesn't even matter.

Without ways to win from decking yourself, Dramatic Reversal on a Scepter is less egregious now, but you can probably cut the Scepter since I cut cards like Brainstorm. There are other ways to generate infinite mana, but I still like Reverscepter as a combo and without tutors, I don't think it will come up that often. You have just as good a chance of stranding part of the combo on the bottom of your deck with a Kinnan activation as you do drawing into it. If you do get infinite mana with this combo, stealing everything with Memnarch is a fun way to win the game and will probably upset people far less than Capsize. A few other combos like Intruder Alarm and Sprout Swarm and Squirrel Nest and Earthcraft can give you a ton of creatures and you can use them for mana with Cryptolith Rite or just win the game when you untap. If you have mana elves, the Intruder Alarm gives you mana without Cryptolith Rite, which is always a plus. A lot of the original combos are intact - I only added one card that only works with the Kinnan version of the deck and that's Basalt Monolith. You'll still need to cough up some Blue and Green Mana to do most things in the deck so that's not even that great a combo piece, but it's nice that it works with no other help apart from Kinnan.

If you want to add some more fatties, there are plenty of Eldrazi to add, and you may consider a game-ender like Craterhoof Behemoth, too. There are cards that just make mana in the deck you could consider trimming for more big creatures or more mana dorks. I personally like the balance where it is, but I think if you wanted to jam a few big beaters, you can do so without disturbing the way the deck plays.

With the removal of Laboratory Maniac and Paradox Engine, the deck is going to be less consistent but just as explosive and that's exactly what I want. We kept most of our original list intact and made it a lot more dynamic and fun and we can even potentially win the game with a mass Memnarch activation frenzy, which makes me incredibly happy.

What do we think? Would you have kept the deck as-is? Do you have a deck you got bored with and tore apart? Can the new version win? Leave it in the comments section or hit me up on twitter@jasonealt). Thanks for reading. Until next time!