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Introduction
This deck originally started out as a jank deck idea where I would play The First Sliver to cascade into Astral Slide, Astral Drift , or Living End like the modern living end deck, but with a restriction that I can't cast anything 4 or less CMC instead of 2 or less CMC. I had a blast with it and it actually works, ramps, draws cards, blinks stuff for value, so I kept refining it more and more. Living end being cut eventually because wrathing the board a third of the time and bringing back janky cycling creatures isn't as good as hitting an astral enchantment all of the time. It is an incredibly slow deck inherently because of the core conceit of everything being 5+ CMC, but it doesn't just fall over and play nothing for 4 turns and lose every game; I have won quite a few games with this deck.
Don't get the wrong idea, this deck still is jank and loses quite a bit, but you always have options when playing this deck and you're always drawing lots of cards. Someone is bound to have fun when this deck is played, whether it be you winning or losing with a silly deck or your opponents enjoying the stupid idea of the deck. It is a great deck to pull out whenever you are in a low power pod as you get to show off some unique interactions.
How to Win With Jank
Everyone's first game with this deck goes the same:
oh no it's slivers
oh it's jank
wait, that's a lot of value
You might be the target for the first few turns if people are wary of sliver decks, but people soon figure out that your whole deck has no slivers or even cards that are below 5CMC once you cast the first sliver. At that point you can usually hang back and slowly accrue value until you can slam one of the big chunguses like Sepulchral Primordial, Avenger of Zendikar, or Agent of Treachery AND flicker it in the same cycle which can often win you the game.
Whether or not you are playing with people who are familiar with the deck, you want to lay low and keep ramping until you can play value creatures and flickering them. This all depends on your ability to politick which I can't help with, the deck might draw less hate once opponents realize that you can't cast good spells, but if you aren't good at politics be prepared to take more damage than might be necessary; I know some people that are absolutely terrible at deflecting hate off of them no matter how terrible their decks are and you probably do too.
Actually Drawing Cards When Cycling
When you cycle you don't actually go up in cards, but you just replace a current card in your hand and will eventually get you a hand of all dead cards. You only go up a card in hand if you have something like Alhammarret's Archive or The Great Henge out. That's not the only way to go positive in card advantage though, many creatures ETB to either draw cards directly like Cloudblazer.
My favorite way as it really shows off the deck is to use cards that ETB or leaves the battlefield to return something to hand, cycling will draw you a card and then returning the cycler to hand for another use getting +1 in card advantage as you have the card drawn from cycling and the cycled card back in hand. Angel of Serenity is great as it is both graveyard hate, removal, AND card draw depending on where you point the three targets. Deadwood Treefolk is amazing as you get something back upon enter and leave the battlefield. Pharika's Mender can be used to get back either astral enchantments if they get removed.
Secret virtual card advantage tech: Flickering manifested cards is effectively drawing and playing the top card of your deck, can ramp you if it's a land and maybe you can get a big payoff ETB creature.
ETB Package Flexibility
In all honesty, the ETB package I have laid out here is very flexible. There is a large number of ETB win conditions and card draw effects that you could use. There are plenty of ways you can go about changing this deck to suit your meta and playstyle.
Do you need more removal? Then maybe Noxious Gearhulk, Magister of Worth, and Overseer of the Damned could replace some of the slots.
Card draw? how about Sphinx of Uthuun, Prime Speaker Zegana, or Urban Evolution.
Need more things to cast before turn 5 since your meta is faster? Toil // Trouble, Struggle // Survive, Ponyback Brigade can be used.
Playing Below 5
There are a number of cards here that can be played for less than 5 mana, split cards such as Commit // Memory, evokers like Mulldrifter, morphs like Vesuvan Shapeshifter, and cards that reduce their cost based on some criteria like Blasphemous Act. I tried as hard as possible to utilize as many of these as possible so that I'm not just kneecapped before turn 5. Even though I have all those options I can cast before 5 mana, you will often still be just cycling for land, getting the right combinations of land is very important. With how many land cyclers we have, getting all 5 colors on turn 5 should not be a problem, but just as a heads up we want green and black the most then blue and white and red the least. Special shoutout to Shefet Monitor which can get one of the only pieces of graveyard hate in the deck in the form of Scavenger Grounds all while cycling.
Other Notes
Protip when you have a landcycler such as Timeless Dragon, search up one of the Ahmonket cycling lands with land types like Fetid Pools for extra cycling goodness; this is the reason why I cut many basic land cyclers for cards that search up specific land types instead.
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