This past week, Magic: The Gathering players have been getting to grips with the new cards of Aetherdrift in various formats. Overall, the results are a pleasant surprise. The set looked fairly underwhelming pre-launch, but now we’re seeing its cards show up in Standard, and even such remote shores as Modern. It seems Aetherdrift has more gas in the tank than we thought. As if to further prove this point, a couple of cards from Aetherdrift have also found their way into the Cycle Storm deck in Pauper.
This is not a new deck by any stretch, but it is one you likely haven’t seen if you’re not a Pauper player. It relies heavily on cards with the Cycling mechanic and graveyard-scaling rituals to end the game in a single spectacular turn. This isn’t a deck that gets new pieces very often, so the fact that Aetherdrift could provide two of them is excellent. Based on early results, it’s looking likely they’ll stick around, too.
New Aetherdrift Commons In Pauper Cycle Storm
Cycle Storm is a pretty well-established Pauper deck at this point, but the post-Aetherdrift version we’re looking at today comes via Bryant Cook. They managed to pilot the deck to a 5-0 finish in a Pauper League this Saturday past. That’s a pretty solid result for Cycle Storm, which is typically a low-tier two deck at best by MTG Decks’ reckoning.
The main new piece Cook added was Magmakin Artillerist, a card that’s gotten quite a lot of hype since release. It enables an infinite combo with Ophidian Eye, but that’s not why Cycle Storm is interested. For this deck, Artillerist serves as redundancy for perhaps the most important card in the list: Drannith Stinger.
You see, the core idea of Cycle Storm is to drop Stinger then use rituals to generate a ton of mana and cycle cards until you burn the opponent out. The Storm element comes in with Reaping the Graves, which lets you recur your Cycling creatures and cycle them all over again. Cards like Lotus Petal and Cabal Ritual let you build up to these big Storm turns.
The deck already has an alternate win condition in Horror of the Broken Lands. This can build up a huge power value and swing in for the win if you cycle enough cards. This is less reliable than Stinger, however, which is where Artillerist comes in. Though one mana more expensive, Artillerist fills the exact same role as Stinger on a much more resilient body. It also has Cycling itself, which is a major plus. Cook only opted to run a single copy of Artillerist in their 5-0 list, but I could see that number growing in the future.
An Alternate Approach
The other addition to Pauper Cycle Storm from Aetherdrift is Chitin Gravestalker. Despite only featuring in the sideboard of Cook’s list, it appears with the full four copies. Looking at the card, the reasoning behind this is fairly self-explanatory. This isn’t a card that furthers your combo when on board. It’s also not a cheap cycler, costing two where the deck really prefers one (this is likely a contributing factor to Artillerist’s low volume in the deck, too.)
What Gravestalker does offer the deck is an alternative axis of attack. Cycle Storm is all about filling the graveyard, to turn on the likes of Cabal Ritual and Songs of the Damned. For that reason, Gravestalker will be a one mana 5/4 a lot of the time in the deck. That’s a big body that can easily end the game against decks that can remove your Stinger.
Gravestalker survives a lot of the most common removal in the format, including Breath Weapon, Snuff Out, and unboosted Galvanic Blast. Drannith Stinger isn’t so lucky. Decks that can deal with Stinger on board can generally win against Cycle Storm, but Gravestalker gives it a more resilient threat that wins when comboing off isn’t an option.
While the Cycling on Gravestalker is expensive, it also shouldn’t be discounted entirely. If you do manage to stick a Stinger or Artillerist in a hostile matchup, you can also use it on your Storm turn to push some extra damage. That’s some top-tier utility, to be sure. I don’t expect Gravestalker to make its way into the main deck of Cycle Storm, at least not right now. It does seem like a slam-dunk sideboard staple, however, and one that shores up a key weakness of the deck.
A Meta Player?
With these new Aetherdrift additions in tow, is Cycle Storm ready to step up a peg in Pauper? That’s a tricky question to answer. On one hand, the two cards do add a lot to the strategy. Artillerist is redundancy for a key combo piece, and consistency is key when it comes to Combo as an archetype. Just having it in the deck increases your chance of popping off. Gravestalker doesn’t help in this regard, but it does shore up bad matchups elsewhere. All in all, it’s a considerable boost.
That said, the format might still be a bit too hostile for Cycle Storm to truly thrive. The top decks at the moment are Burn, Faeries, and Sadistic Glee Combo. Each of these are bad matchups for Cycle Storm in their own way.
Burn simply overwhelms the deck early with its blistering speed. Cycling Storm doesn’t do a great job at fighting for board or removing threats, so the creature-centric nature of Pauper Burn is tough to deal with. Sadistic Glee Combo is a similar story. This is another Combo deck with the ability to pop off sooner and more consistently. Chances are you’ll lose to Glee more often than not for this reason. As a fairly streamlined list, Cycle Storm also lacks interaction to disrupt the faster combo.
Speaking of disruption that’s where the issues with Faeries come in. The ability to counter your key plays with Counterspell or Spellstutter Sprite makes it easy for opponents to shut down your win. Cycle Storm also lacks air defense, making it very vulnerable to a gaggle of pesky fliers.
While the meta may not be right for Cycle Storm to take over right now, these new Aetherdrift cards are great additions nonetheless.
