Building Around Kykar, Wind's Fury as your Commander
Hello and welcome back to commanding respect! Core Set 2020 releases in just one week, and with it come a multitude of new and exciting commanders to build. In celebration of the new set, today we’re going to build a deck around Kykar, Wind’s Fury.
Whenever you approach a new commander, it is important to take a careful look at all of their abilities. In addition to being a 3/3 with flying, Kykar makes spirit tokens every time we cast a non-creature spell, something that Jeskai decks can excel at. Additionally, Kykar can immediately sacrifice those tokens (or any other spirit) for 1 red mana, enabling the casting of multiple spells if you choose. In this article, we’re going to construct a spellslinger deck that builds a very wide board state thanks to Kykar’s and similar abilities. While today’s deck is going to focus on Kykar’s token generation capabilities, we’re also going to pay attention to Kykar’s sacrifice ability and include some cards that help us get the most out of sacrificing our tokens when we need to.
Creating tokens whenever a non-creature spell has been cast is not a new ability, however Kykar represents the first time this ability has been present on a legendary creature. A similar, but more restrictive version of this ability—one that rewards you for casting instant and sorcery spells—has appeared on Talrand, the Sky Summoner, but Kykar’s two extra colors in addition to counting planeswalkers, artifacts, and enchantments make him a far superior commander. Nevertheless, Talrand and his friends Young Pyromancer, Murmuring Mystic, and Docent of Perfection/Final Iteration all have a space in this deck. The latter is of particular interest to us because Final Iteration gives a buff to Kykar and the other three token producers.
In addition to these four creatures, we’ll also include Saheeli, Sublime Artificer. Like many of the planeswalkers from War of the Spark, Saheeli is good for us even if we never use her loyalty ability, but there are situations where we may want to use her -2 to copy one of our token producers at the start of a turn where we plan to cast several spells. While these 5 spells can be sufficient support, players with a slightly higher deckbuilding budget may want to also include Monastery Mentor in their list, as he is a source of even more tokens which all have the highly synergistic prowess ability.
As mentioned above, Sheeli’s -2 ability is a great way to double up on our token production for a turn, but ideally we’d like to be able to increase our production more permanently. Helm of the Host is a great card for this purpose, allowing us to copy one of our token producers every turn, leading to exponential returns from casting instants and sorceries. Cackling Counterpart, Followed Footsteps, Soul Foundry, and others can also fill a similar role, granting us additional copies of our most useful creatures. With all of these tokens and token copies, it benefits us to include a few effects that copy tokens themselves, chief among them being Anointed Procession. While we are attempting to keep to a budget on this deck, the ~$10 Anointed Procession is too incredible for us not to include, netting us double tokens from each of our on cast producers as well as getting us twice the benefit from our token copies. We’ll round it out with a few populate spells like Rootborn Defenses and Wake the Reflections. Between our permanents that generate tokens on cast and these sources which amplify our token production abilities, we should be able to quickly establish an overwhelming board presence.
Once we have a large board, spells that pump our entire team will be how we close games. Several cheap mass pump spells can pump our board while also giving us more creatures to swing with in later turns. Some, like Banners Raised and Charge, offer a simple buff to our team, while more complex spells like Azorius Charm or Heroic Reinforcements can give our creatures abilities and/or perform additional effects.
Spells with overload like Dynacharge, Weapon Surge, Dragonshift, and Teleportal can serve double duty, either pumping a single creature in a pinch or the whole team to finish an opponent off. Teleported in particular is a great way to quickly finish a game; assuming no other spells and that our opponent is at full life, it would only take 20 1/1 Teleportaled tokens to kill a player, and it is very likely that conditions will allow us to defeat an opponent with far less. One way to dramatically reduce how many creature we need for a lethal swing is with spell that grant double strike like Savage Beating, Flying Crane Technique, and Cleaver Riot. Finally, Jeskai Ascendency is a great way to effectively give our board prowess, making our creatures bigger while our board gets wider.
While some of our spells are cheap, many of the above mass pump spells are expansive and could ordinarily be hard to cast. Fortunately, Kykar can sacrifice his spirit tokens to generate mana, letting us trade in our tokens for a rebate to cast future spells. The downside of this is that these tokens only create red mana, so if we want to pay colored costs it is important that we find some tools to filter this mana into other colors. Fortunately, EDH abounds with tools that help us out here.
The Ravnica Signets are great mana rocks that come out early and can turn any color of mana into two of our colors. Another great source of mana filtration is the Shadowmoor/Eventide filter lands. Relatively affordable for duals, Cascade Bluffs and Rugged Prairie are both great lands that can turn our red mana into other colors (For decks with an even tighter budget Shimmering Grotto, Unknown Shores, and Painted Bluffs can do a less efficient impression of these lands). Finally, Amonkhet’s Cascading Cataracts can quickly filter a lot of mana into exactly what you need it to be, and is almost immune to land destruction for those times when an opponent wants to destroy all your lands.
Sacrificing spirits and filtering the red mana they create is a useful strategy for casting out spells, but while we hope to have many spirits, their numbers won’t be unlimited and we’d like to keep some around to swing with. For this reason, it would be good to have some cards that directly reduce the cost of our instant and sorcery spells. Several creatures exist that help us in this way, notably Goblin Electromancer and Curious Homunculus/Voracious Reader. These creatures are particularly great because if we create copies of them our instants and sorceries become cheaper with every one we cast, until eventually we only have to pay the colored requirements for out spells. Jace’s Sanctum also gives us cost reduction, and while we can’t create token copies of it we do get a Kykar trigger off casting it as well as a scry tacked on to each other spell we cast. Finally, Primal Amulet helps us cast a few spells cheaper, and then transforms into a land that we can use to copy our best spell each turn, allowing us to do things like double up on a particularly good pump spell or create a second token copy of something.
While most EDH decks have a few particular themes they strive for and attempt to play cards that work together within those themes, there are a few cards that just work well with a commander and warrant inclusion in their own right. A prime example of this for Kykar is Angelic Exaltation. With Angelic Exaltation out on the field, Kykar can quickly become monstrously large by swinging alone; with just 17 creature tokens on the field, Kykar can take someone else out with commander damage in a single swing, and much like the scenario described above with Teleportal, Kykar will sometimes need less than that thanks to the pump spells we are running. Another enchantment that could be useful for Kykar is Arcane Adaptation, which can turn all of your creatures into spirits to be eligible for a Kykar sacrifice, or turn them into Wizards to get pumped by one or more Docent of Perfections.
One final group of cards worth highlighting is Pongify, Rapid Hybridization, and the recently printed Generous Gift. All of these cards are great removal options, but when paired with the token engine described above they can be used in conjunction with several other spells to quickly convert one of our tokens into one or more 3/3 Apes/Elephants/Frog Lizards with several friends.
With all these pieces, we add in a few more instant and sorcery spells to fill out of list, and we’re left with the decklist below
End of Turn Brainstorm
EDH is wonderful because even two players playing the exact same commander can have wildly different decks that they have made their own. While this article proposes a simple Kykar deck that casts spells and creates a wide army of tokens to swing out and win with, there are several other possible solution. Kykar could easily go in a lifegain route, using cards like Soul Warden and Soul’s Attendant to gain life whenever a token is created, spells like Azorius Charm that grant your entire team lifelink to gain more in combat, and finishers like Aetherflux Reservoir to finish off your opponents. You could also build a deck that ignores combat entirely and instead goes for a direct damage approach, using Purphoros, God of the Forge to take advantage of your token ETBs and Guttersnipe to give you damage whenever you cast instant and sorcery spells. Finally, you could focus specifically on Kykar’s spirit tokens and his sacrifice effects, building a tribal deck with cards like Drogskol Captain to pump your team, and cards like Faith’s Reward, Angel of Flight Alabaster, or things with Soulshift to return non-token spirits you’ve sacrificed or lost from other effects.
And there you have it! I hope you have a great time at the M20 prerelease, and that you enjoy painting with all the fury of the wind with Kykar in an upcoming EDH game. As always, if you have any comments, questions, or ideas for future articles let me know in the comments below. Until next time!
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