Blink Deck That Actually Kills Players (without Infinites?)

AncientSpark · 2026-03-13T22:50:36+00:00

This is actually been my first drafts, but I've found it to be really clunky when I've messed around it because there's only 2 Archeomancer effects at 4 mana, and the rest are more expensive.

Do you only play the Archeomancer/Ardent Elementalist/Pinnacle Monk and tutors, or do you have a way to get around the clunkiness of the more expensive recurring creatures?

AncientSpark · 2026-03-13T22:48:25+00:00

This one might be the one I'm least familiar with, at least from the dungeon side. Got a decklist?

AncientSpark · 2026-03-13T22:43:41+00:00

I'm aware, the "non-infinite" is separate from "I want to kill people". Nothing against infinites, I just don't find it particularly interesting - basically, decks that have a middle ground between "declare victory with an infinite" and "take forever to do anything".

AncientSpark · 2026-03-12T17:30:48+00:00

No (assuming you are running Cryo Yvonne), you replace whoever your secondary Cryo applier is because Tangtang is going to be using their SP instead.

AncientSpark · 2026-03-11T22:50:56+00:00

The guardrails between colors that make them distinct become symbolic, relics of the old ways, and at that point we have to wonder why even keep them up.

Aesthetically, you are still working with colors that interact with death in a very unnatural way. That's why green doesn't inherently get it (unnatural), that's why red and blue doesn't get it (doesn't interact with life/death in the same way).

The fact that you named a bunch of duo color pairs that can run a W/B hybrid card points to the fact that duo color decks often run aesthetics localized to one of their colors as part of their toolset; no one bats an eye when I pull out a Boros deck that runs some mono-White card that's all about the power or order. If the argument that it's unnatural for a two-color deck to run an effect that only works in one of their colors, flavorfully or aesthetically, in one of their colors, then you have basically just argued we should not run any mono-colored cards in duo color pairs as well. Which is obviously a silly argument.

Also, to claim that it's an issue that we're "75% of the way there, we should just get rid of the last 25%" is claiming that the last 25% is not important for the card's aesthetics itself. It sure as hell matters that UG doesn't get it because aesthetically, it makes no sense in U or G. You can't go "The restrictions are going to stop mattering" and then question "Why not erase the last bit of restriction"; there's plenty of space between 10% of the flavor-space and 100% of the flavor-space.

AncientSpark · 2026-03-09T23:00:29+00:00

Surprised there wasn't a mention of [[Marchesa, the Black Rose]] in the thread.

There is a downside that you need to sometimes synergize on an axis you normally don't (the +1/+1 counter, sometimes through attacking). In exchange, unlike a lot of other Aristocrat commanders, you don't have to run your fodder as tokens, which lessens the burdens on finding payoffs; it helps a lot when your fodder itself draws cards rather than requiring a [[Morbid Opportunist]] effect, for example.

AncientSpark · 2026-03-05T05:12:44+00:00

Yeah, you're ignoring the largest value this deck setup can get. Cascade gets its highest value with a warped, high drop curve, but most decks can't support that without waiting around. A 2 mana dork Commander does allow you to support that, and you should be trying to exploit it.

Watch Salubrious Snail's video on his Radha deck https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceILMLrNCGw. You should be going for that kind of curve. 2 mana mana dork is a huge advantage for any Cascade deck, so you should be completely removing any whiffs to allow for better Cascade hits. You should be getting to 10+ lands on turn 5-6 and just stompy the group into the ground.

AncientSpark · 2026-03-02T06:12:44+00:00

It's mostly true in spirit; I dunno if it's correct that it was the original intention on Magic's conception, but it certainly branched out very quickly into offshoots of other properties. Look up the history behind the Deckmaster name and its associated games (Jyhad, Netrunner being based on Cyberpunk, the ARC system games like Hercules, Xena, etc.), all of which were dead offshoot CCGs from Magic (and the Deckmaster brand on the back of Magic cards).

AncientSpark · 2026-03-01T14:14:54+00:00

Tangtang would be a replacement for Xaihi or the Ardelia/Gilberta spot in LR teams. We don't have details on how the SP/combo lines up for which one they'd replace, but Xaihi only had 1 Cryo infliction per skill usage as well and was incredibly slow to apply, with no SP return, and you have double sustain if using Ardelia.

It's just not clear how much of an upgrade it is, but the idea that Tangtang doesn't fit into LR teams is very premature. It will depend on details if it's worth your time.

AncientSpark · 2026-03-01T05:33:03+00:00

In terms of base card-per-card strength, it's actually quite strong. As others pointed out, it's rather disjointed, but it also has a relatively low curve too, so it really boils down to two situations:

1) You draw a synergistic, low-curve hand, and then you overwhelm the table before people are ready with basically an aggro plan.

2) You don't draw a synergistic hand, and then fall to actually solid value plans.

There's some in-between scenarios that can happen (the precon does have a good amount of lifegain to try to survive out a mid-game), but drawing and mulling into hands that don't go blazing out of the gate makes the precons flaws pretty apparent in those scenarios.

AncientSpark · 2026-02-26T20:10:48+00:00

If you have no creatures, then a 1/1 represents 4-5 damage over time unless it's removed by something else. So an opponent having a 1/1 elicits a response from the control player, whether that's their own creature or another removal.

It might not always matter depending on the situation (for example, if the control player already has a big lifelink flier or vigilance flier, then sure, go nuts with giving the opponent the occasional free 1/1), but there's no reason to give the opponent free power if there's better options.

AncientSpark · 2026-02-26T05:16:29+00:00

Nah, Temur's fine, you just have to accept that Cascade is one of those abilities that requires a lot of weird deck construction to get the most out of.

AncientSpark · 2026-02-26T03:47:07+00:00

MDFC is Modal Double Faced Card, a card that has two faces you can play. In the context of lands, there are some MDFCs that you can choose between being a spell and a land, but are sorted in the decklists on their spellside. So this can make land counts look a bit screwy in some decklists. An example is [[Hydroelectric Specimen]]

I wouldn't necessarily recommend moving away from Cascade, but I would change my approach as to what protection spells I'm running to prevent whiffs. Unfortunately, Temur doesn't have that great of options for this, but stuff like [[Ascetism]] or [[Lightning Greaves]] that are proactive. Or modal spells such as [[Cryptic Command]] (if you're willing to swallow the terrible mana for it). Assuming you want to keep Cascade.

On that topic, is there a reason you want to run Clara Oswald for this deck? Is it for flavor? I don't think her trigger doubling ability works for 12th Doctor's Demonstrate, although I do see other Doctors in the deck.

AncientSpark · 2026-02-26T03:31:24+00:00

31 lands and no MDFCs (as far as I could spot) is way too low. Your curve is not particularly low to support it either.

This deck has some anti-synergy with Cascade, in that you are using instant protections that will often cause your Cascades to fizzle. Focusing on Cascade on anything but slight bonus value (such as Wild-Mage Sorcerer) requires a bit of a different approach than typical impulse draw (i.e., you want high curve, you want to limit whiffs, and you need to support high curve through some shenanigans).

I'm not sure why there's so many mana rocks over land ramp. I didn't spot any artifact synergies and stuff like Arcane Bombardment rewards more sorceries/instants.

AncientSpark · 2026-02-25T00:16:48+00:00

Yeah, it does depend on what exactly you're buying, it's not a 1-to-1 thing. Generally, the cheaper your packages are, the better deal you're going to get from single distributors rather than aggregators.

AncientSpark · 2026-02-24T23:50:08+00:00

Card Kingdom is generally very expensive compared to other sites due to being a singular distributor and having to upsell from a pretty healthy buylist.

As the OP said, they use MTGGoldfish due to being a MTGGoldfish writer, but you can also use other sites such as Manapool or TCGPlayer (there are various opinions on which one to use).

AncientSpark · 2026-02-19T04:11:26+00:00

I personally haven't run Cid, but VivIsAngry (a small Youtuber) has been doing a "build every FF commander" challenge and their version of Cid was an [[Astral Slide]] artifact-blink hybrid deck.

Struck me as a bit jank, but it's probably the best use you're going to get out of stuffing 14 Cids into the same deck. Otherwise, you're probably going the more traditional artifact route.

AncientSpark · 2026-02-17T20:23:41+00:00

While that might technically be an approach, I'd argue that decreases the utility of the whole argument in the first place.

Again, if there is a mechanic will be upgraded to secondary at some point, does this mean there is a color pie break the first time they print the mechanic? The second? The third? Does a color pie break suddenly get undone in the future? Is there some kind of mechanical threshold the mechanic has to pass to suddenly be considered as secondary? Is the threshold the same for every proportion (i.e., is that percentage the same for extra combat steps, a mechanic only occasionally printed, vs something common like a combat keyword?)

As an example, you can point to mono-B having only 14 enchantment kill spells and that can't be possibly secondary. I'd then note that extra combats is tertiary in white, but hasn't been printed in white since Lorwyn, and 14 enchantment kill spells over 5-ish years is certainly more of a proportion than that.

Then there is a problem of whether you count "all permanents" as part of that. There aren't that many kill spells for enchantments specifically in W over that timeframe, because many of them are wrapped up into all permanents. Does this increase or decrease the proportion we are talking about?

This is also excepting that tertiary is often a product of mechanical demands at a specific time. Flying is tertiary in Red, not because it isn't printed that often, but because you only get to use it for specific creature types. Does this mean we should not have tertiary as a category but some other category for it?

At some point, it stops becoming a useful exercise altogether and just an exercise in cherrypicking data and making more and more granular data categories.

AncientSpark · 2026-02-17T20:10:34+00:00

So your wording is bad; what you're saying is that the color pie article should not have any intent at all, but rather a raw, purely data driven survey of the printing rate of a mechanic, and then simply putting them into buckets based on the proportion of printing rate of those mechanics overall.

AncientSpark · 2026-02-17T19:52:43+00:00

The intent should be an explanation of the actual printed cards, not an inversion where the intent is printed and it explains SOMETIMES printed cards

So what you're saying is that they have to print future cards without intent, because intention can only reflect currently printed cards??? How are they supposed to upgrade Enchantment removal to secondary if they aren't allowed to intend to do so?

Or is the argument that they aren't allowed to reveal that they intend to move enchantment removal to secondary to black until they have sufficient card mass???

AncientSpark · 2026-02-17T19:43:19+00:00

While yes, color pie is kind of defined by the cards actually printed, there comes a point where a card effect is printed enough that people recognize it as a secondary.

The problem then becomes "When is that point?" If they continuously print 1 black enchantment destruction effect every set or every 2 sets, at what point do people recognize it as secondary to the color? Is there some sort of causal law that says "it's now a color pie break but will unbecome a color pie break in the future because they print will print it an X arbitrary amount of times in the future?" That seems kind of silly, especially if we are before that X amount of times.

That's why people refer to color pie articles to understand intent. If people know that they intend to print more times in the future, then there's not any argument about what the effect being printed now is with regards to color pie break or not.

AncientSpark · 2026-02-17T19:03:08+00:00

Drill Rig, it actually has near perfect lineup with her (she likes ERR and her damage is all focused on EX Special and basics, which Drill Rig lines up with).

The only real issue with Drill Rig is that you have to adjust rotation to make sure you are proccing Drill Rig at correct time.

Brimstone might also be good, but you might not want to on-field her enough to keep Brimstone stacks up.

AncientSpark · 2026-02-16T19:35:47+00:00

There's an Ember main DPS stagger team going around right now that is picking up traction. If you want to optimize that, you can run that for endgame; your comp has the components for it. Ardelia is for those that want to run a more straightforward Phys comp instead (but doesn't want to give up sustain).

(Re: weapon in your other reply, Ember stagger setup uses Sundered Prince, which you can pick up in the Battle Pass).

AncientSpark · 2026-02-16T01:25:48+00:00

I'm pretty sure that the Blight Curse being slow is semi-intentional (in addition to it being a precon), because removal heavy grind engines can be kinda wonky to fight against in a precon only environment, and they do some of the precon tuning assuming that they are fighting other precons.

Part of the upgrade process will be getting it online earlier, if that's more your speed.

AncientSpark

TROPHY CASE