Commander Top 10: Brallin, Skyshark Rider + Shabraz, The Skyshark

What a wild preview season it’s been!  In two weeks, we’ve been given cards from both Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths and Commander 2020, and there are a ton of great legends to build cards around.  The first write-up I did was digging deep into the free preview our Commander VS team showed off: Zaxara, the Exemplary, so make sure to check it out if you haven’t seen it already. 

When the preview came out for the partner legends Brallin, Skyshark Rider and Shabraz, the Skyshark, I knew this would be the next deck I wanted to build.  I mean, Humans riding flying Sharks!  Who wouldn’t want to play that sort of deck?  Brallin gives Sharks trample and Shabraz gives Humans flying, so a tribal deck split between Humans and Sharks looked to be exactly the sort of Jeskai Commander deck I wanted to experience. 

But as I began researching cards for the deck, I realized a problem: there weren’t all that many actual Sharks!  The Oracle changes rolled out April 10 changed some Fish to Shark:

Sadly, the green Sharks couldn’t fit into my color scheme, and the two old blue Shark cards weren’t really worth digging deep into tribal synergies outside of what the two commander cards did.  But they had some other abilities in their text boxes outside of dealing with Sharks and Humans.

Whenever you discard a card, put a +1/+1 counter on Brallin, Skyshark Rider and it deals 1 damage to each opponent.

Whenever you draw a card, put a +1/+1 counter on Shabraz, the Skyshark and you gain 1 life.

I mean, there’s a reason they’re included in the cycling-themed deck from Commander 2020, Timeless Wisdom.  Cycling triggers both the discard ability on Brallin and the card draw trigger on Shabraz, which is really sweet!  I actually like them as the commanders for a cycling deck rather than the precon’s face card of Gavi, Nest Warden. I decided to build a Jeskai cycling deck from scratch, though we get a lot of new card support from both the Timeless Wisdom deck and Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths.  Let’s get cooking!

1. Spellpyre Phoenix

There are a lot of great cycling support cards available now, but I think Spellpyre Phoenix has the edge because of its recursive nature and that it brings back instant or sorcery cards with cycling from the graveyard.  Over time, this will generate a ton of value, not to mention having an ever-present flying attacker or blocker.

We’re all very thankful that Fluctuator got reprinted in Commander 2020, because it’s obviously a linchpin for any cycling deck.  Amonkhet and Hour of Devastation dipped into cycling themes, so we’ve got additional cycling support with cards like Abandoned Sarcophagus, Drake Haven, and Curator of Mysteries. 

Unpredictable Cyclone, I’m a little unsure of.  Sure, getting to cast spells basically for free at instant speed is awesome!  But this replaces the draw ability of cycling cards so Shabraz won’t trigger, and sometimes I can see hitting spells you don’t want to cast right then.  Still, it seems delightfully chaotic with the chance to cast some big, game-impacting spells at the speed of cycling cards, so I think it’s worth a slot!

2. Shark Typhoon

So yeah — I’ve never, ever watched any of the Sharknado movies because that level of silliness isn’t something I want to spend my very limited free time on.  However, I have always enjoyed knowing that we live in a universe where those movies exist, and I love that Wizards of the Coast (WotC) paid homage to it in Ikoria with Shark Typhoon.  While this doesn’t really play into the theme of cycling outside of having cycling itself, I’m excited that this makes actual flying Shark tokens so Shabraz has some buddies in the skies.  Not to mention, who doesn’t want to see Shaheen Soorani and his control decks closing out games with flying Sharks in Standard in the coming months?

I’ve included a bunch of other good cards with cycling too.  I usually prefer the cycling lands like Lonely Sandbar over Remote Isle because it’s cheaper in raw mana to cycle, but with Fluctuator in the deck I think the Cycling 2 lands get the nod instead.

A quick word about Yidaro, Wandering Monster—never have I wanted to build a mono-red deck until this card was previewed.  I very much want to cycle this four times and get a hasty, trampling 8/8 Dinosaur Turtle at instant speed for 1R.  And heaven help me if I open up a Godzilla, Doom Inevitable!

3. Jeskai Ascendancy

Outside of cycling cards, cards that “loot” or “rummage” to both draw and discard also satisfy both of our commander’s triggers, and we’ve got quite a few choices available to us in red and blue.  But having white in our color identity opens up the use of Jeskai Ascendency, a potent enchantment that attaches a free loot trigger each time we cast a noncreature spell, and also just happens to give +1/+1 enhancement to all our creatures until the end of the turn. 

I didn’t want to dig too deep into these cards because we have so many payoffs for cards that actual cycle, but I think these are worth the slots.  I’m especially excited to find a home for Book Devourer from Guilds of Ravnica, which produces a reusable one-sided Windfall effect each combat, but what’s nice is that it’s optional—if you don’t want to pitch your hand, you don’t have to. 

4. Whirlwind of Thought

Whirlwind of Thought reminds me of a “fixed” Jeskai Ascendency, but it’s powerful in its own right as raw card drawing.  Sure, effects that both draw and discard check off all the boxes, but we also want just raw card drawing in the deck to keep our hands full of gas.  Besides, I’d rather boost my Shark commander with natural evasion over the earthbound Human one that needs some help. 

I’m including some other quality raw card-drawing effects too.  Mercurial Chemister is particularly awesome because, even though most of the time it will be used to draw cards, the discard effect could prove useful as removal too!

5. Surly Badgersaur

When this was previewed everyone’s head exploded at this cute red spin on Bone Miser.  It’s a Badger Dinosaur!  Bone Miser would be a perfect inclusion in a cycling deck but black isn’t one of the colors available, so WotC made us a new one.  I imagine this card going bonkers if we ever get set up with Fluctuator or New Perspectives and start cycling a whole bunch of cards for free!

There are a couple of other pay-off cards for discarding included in Core Set 2020 that fit well in this deck.  Glint-Horn Buccaneer provides an extra damage trigger to go alongside Brallin, and when it attacks you can sink your mana into its ability to rummage.

Bag of Holding is cleverly worded so that you get anything that triggers off discarding, but then exiles the card from the graveyard for you to bring back to your hand later if you have four mana available to sacrifice.  Just don’t be too greedy here, I imagine the more cards you tuck away with the Bag – especially cycling cards – the juicier a target it will make for opponents’ artifact removal.

6. The Locust God

This God from Hour of Devastation has long been a friend to cycling strategies and it will certainly do a bunch of work in this deck.  Plus, it even has a built-in rummage ability so it will trigger both Brallin and Shabraz while churning out 1/1 flying Insects.  Just a fantastic late-game play for our deck.

I’m including some other “good stuff” cards that will do good work for us here.  Blackblade Reforged and Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion will help make our commanders into lethal threats, and Minamo, School at Water’s Edge can give either one of them virtual vigilance if we need to both attack and block.

7. Akroma’s Vengeance

Even with all our cycling shenanigans, we still want removal options.  Lucky for us, some removal spells also have cycling!  Akroma’s Vengeance is the big daddy of battlefield sweepers and has cycling as an option if our battlefield is much better than everyone else’s. 

I’ve included some other removal spells that have cycling but made room for Supreme Verdict, which is too awesome not to include even though it doesn’t have cycling.  Sometimes you just have to reliably destroy all the creatures!

8. Fierce Guardianship

Speaking of cards without cycling, we’ll want ways to interact with our opponents too, and one of the best of the bunch is the new Commander 2020 card Fierce Guardianship.  I really love about this new cycle of “if you control your commander” free spells since they encourage you to go ahead and be proactive by casting your commander cards rather than holding back mana to cast reactive spells.  I see way too many games of Commander that just stall out because no one wants to have a “shields down” moment by tapping out to cast their commander.  This cycle lets you do just that, yet still have the ability to respond if you need to.

In addition to some other awesome interaction cards that you’d expect, I definitely made room for the awesome Voracious Greatshark!  Attaching a counterspell to a Shark with flash is just awesome, even if it’s a limited-effect counterspell—there are plenty of great creatures (commanders) and artifacts you want to counter in Commander, and the effect is so flavorful—Sharks are well known for eating both animals and inanimate objects like boots and oars.  In Ikoria, we could certainly expect to find a Fluctuator in the belly of a hungry Greatshark!

9. Flawless Maneuver

When it comes to protecting our team, another of the new “free” spell cycle finds room in our deck—Flawless Maneuver!  We can even use this aggressively by casting this for free, and then following up with Supreme Verdict or Akroma’s Vengeance, destroying all potential blockers and letting our creatures attack with impunity. 

Mother of Runes is a great way to protect our commanders from targeted removal, and Boros Charm is a flexible spell that always overperforms in games of Commander.

10. Raugrin Crystal

A mana ramp spell that fixes all of our colors and can cycle later on if we don’t really need the mana?  Sign me up!

Since we’re not playing green, we’ll definitely want to lean hard into artifact mana ramp for Jeskai.  I chose the two red Talismans because we have red rummage spells like Faithless Looting that can help us dig for other colors if we’re still trying to fix our mana in the early game.

Okay, so here’s how the deck ended up:

Here are a few graphs to visualize the decklist, thanks to our friends at Archidekt:

What do you think?  Are there any cards I’ve overlooked?  If you see any new cards from Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths or Commander 2020 that should find a home here, let me know!

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