Whenever we come to the end of a Standard season, I like to look forward to what I might be playing when rotation takes effect. I do this for two reasons. Firstly, I like to be ready for the new season with a deck I can play right away without having to buy/trade for new cards, allowing me to jump into those early tournaments. Secondly, I can write content about it. What! You wanted a more interesting reason? I got things to do, like work and work some more. Anyway, with only Core Set 2021 left to be released before standard rotates, that time of year has come at last.

Luckily for me the community has already discovered an amazing, practically rotation proof deck. What’s more, it is top tier and can be built on the smallest of budgets while still been competitive. I kid you not, the budget version of this deck took me up several levels in ranked mode on Arena in a single night with a ridiculously good win/loss ratio. So, get ready to draw some cards and know the power of the uncommon with Boros Cycling.

Boros Cycling (as you can probably tell from the name) is based around the incredibly popular and beloved Cycling mechanic. By paying a fee and discarding a card with cycling, you can get rid of potentially unplayable cards and hope to draw into something more useful. A great limited mechanic, it has also been seen gracing top tier constructed play in the past.

Decks like Astra Slide and Living End have proven that the mechanic has legs outside of draft and sealed, and it is always welcome when it comes back around and we all get to dig through our libraries like a blue mage on their birthday. So, when Ikoria was revealed to be full of cycling cards, we were all very excited to see what new toys we would all get to play with.

What we got was a ton of common and uncommon cards (chaff draft if you will) that when assemble together in a standard deck gave us a brew that could smash face with a increasing growing threats, ping our opponent to death, attack them with a horde of tokens or even one shot them at instant speed. All without putting a single rare or mythic card in the deck. What’s more, it was in my two favourite colours.

The deck is split into three, almost completely equal parts. The first part of the deck is full of cycling payoffs, most of which can become win condition if left unchecked. First up we have Flourishing Fox, our only one drop creature that packs on heck of a bite. Starting off as a 1/1, it gets a +1/+1 counter every time we cycle a card, which as you can guess can quickly make it into one of the biggest creatures on the board. Seriously, I can’t wait for the new Toho epic “Godzilla vs Flourishing Fox”, coming out next year*.

Next, we have the army in a can that is Valiant Rescuer. A 3/1 with the added upside of making a 1/1 the first time we cycle every turn might not sound like much, but we have all seen those screen shots of massive boards full of tokens swinging in for the win. Drannith Stinger turns each of our cycles into cold hard damage to our opponent’s face, and when you have more than one on the board can quickly close out a game. Our last creature is a playset of Drannith Healer, which instead of cause damage to our opponent gives us a source of life gain, which can easily trip up an opposing red deck.

Our final payoff is perhaps our best, with a playset of Zenith Flare. This super Lightning Helix deals damage to any source equal to the number of cards with cycling in our graveyard at instant speed and returns that much life to us as well. This means as well as been a solid way to close out the game, it can be used as a slightly expensive removal spell that pads out our life total and buys us some more time. And did I mention its and INSTANT!

The next part of the deck is our payload of cycling cards. Now we want to be very efficient with our mana if we are to get the most out of this deck, so that means we only want to be including cards in this section with a cycling cost of one generic mana. That means we are going to have to play some cards that are outside of our colours, but that isn’t a problem as they are literally there as one mana cantrips. My selection includes Footfall Crater, Go for Blood, Startling Development, Memory Leak, Frostveil Ambush and Boon of the Wish-Giver**.

The final part of the deck is our mana. Since we are so close to the ground, we can afford to run only eighteen lands. Since we are looking at a budget build first, we will be running four copies of Wind-Scarred Crag as well as nine Plains and five Mountains. If you were to run the deck non-budget, all you would have to do is replace the crags with a playset of Sacred Foundry.

Budget Build

For the sideboard we are sticking to our budget options. Flame Sweep, Redcap Melee, Devout Decree and Fry give us some decent removal, while Soul-Guide Lantern and Apostle of Purifying Light handle graveyard trickery. Embereth Shieldbreaker meanwhile gives us anti-artifact plays for the decks that uses them.

If we where taking non-budget options, we would replace the Flame Sweep with Deafening Clarion and the Soul-Guide Lantern with Grafdigger’s Cage. I would also probably replace one of our sideboard slots with Lurrus of the Dream-Den as a Companion. Yeah yeah, I know its a sore point for some, but Lurrus is a solid addition to the deck and we would be foolish to leave them out.

Non-Budget Build

And that’s Boros Cycling for Standard. What do you think of the deck? Is this the kind of brew you could see yourself playing? Are you also thinking about rotation? Why not let us know in the comments below. While you’re there you could like and subscribe to keep up to date with all we do here at Master of Magics.

We also have a Patreon so if you want to support future content for the site consider becoming one of our Patrons. Just a $1 a month would do so much to help us create more of the content you enjoy. If you have any ideas for new and exciting decks you want me to look at you can contact me directly @MTGTengu over on Twitter. But until next time remember no matter the game you play or where you play it, Good Luck and Have Fun.

* Not a real movie. Yet…

** While most of these cards are only here for cycling, Footfall Crater and Go for Blood are playable and have won me some games when hard cast.

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