by Gabriel Mahaffey

“You can’t keep me down”

Golos, Tireless Pilgrim, probably

I would like to talk to you about our lord and savior, Golos. When commander players see Golos, they might think of five color good stuff, powerful and spicy cards. The take I did for Golos is to really abuse him without activating him. If you’re like Patrick living under a rock, Golos is a 3/5 Legendary Artifact Golem for 5 generic mana, and when he enters the battlefield, you can search you library for a land and put that land onto the battlefield tapped, then you shuffle your library. You can also pay 2 generic mana and one mana of each color in order to cast the top three cards of your library without paying their mana costs until the end of the turn. This deck is designed in a way to not use the activated ability of Golos. 

Blink and Now He’s Gone

The object of the deck is to rarely, if ever, activate Golos’s activated ability. How can we abuse the enter the battlefield effect? There is always recasting it. Eh, seems inefficient. Blinking it! There we go! There are several ways that we exile Golos and have him come back. One way is Thassa, Deep-Dwelling and Brago King Eternal, flicker him either at the end of turn or on combat damage. Another way is Venser, the Sojourner. Exile him and have him come back at the end of the turn. The final way is to use Astral Slide effects, send Golos on a journey that lasts until end of turn whenever a player cycles a card.

Stop It, You’re Enabling Him

There are cycling payoffs and cycling enablers in the deck. The enablers make it so my cycling abilities cost cheaper, from Gavi, Nest Warden and New Perspectives, to Fluctuator. Gavi and New Perspectives makes my cycling abilities free while Fluctuator makes them cost two generic less. The payoffs are Drake Haven and Lightning Rift. By paying 1 we can either create a 2/2 flying drake or deal 2 damage respectively.

Cycling is Fun

For those of you like Patrick Star, I’m going to go over what cycling is and isn’t. Cycling isn’t a spell, so if you want spell like effects but worry about counters, then you are in luck. Cycling is an ability that you can pay mana and discard the card with cycling to draw a card. Cycling can turn cards that are dead in certain circumstances into useful cards, be it dig for answers or just wanting to draw cards. Nearly half of the deck is just cards that have cycling. Some just plain cycle such as Barren Moor and Forsake the Worldly. Other cycling cards help you get the land you need in lieu of drawing in Eternal Dragon and Ash Barrens. One notable thing about Eternal Dragon is that by paying 3 and two white you can bring it back on our upkeep. And our final category of cycling cards are card that have effects when you cycle them. There is Renewed Faith where we gain 6 life if we cast it, but if we cycle it we may gain 2 life, and Krosan Tusker, which gets us a basic land when you cycle it plus the draw.

Ladies and Gentlemen, introducing…

With all the exiling and entering the battlefield effects that we have, we might as well abuse those as well. How do we do it? We include creatures that have an ability that triggers when they enter the ring. There is one creature that doesn’t have an enter the battlefield ability, but doubles up those abilities, and that is Yarok, the Desecrated. These enter the battlefield effects can range from drawing a card with Wall of Omens, scrying with Omenspeaker, to bringing back cards from the graveyard with Eternal Witness and Archaeomancer.

I Never Miss My Target

There is a suite of targeted removal. When there is an annoying creature or permanent that you want gone, then do we have the right product for you. Here is Pongify and Rapid Hybridization for when you want that annoying creature gone. Not to your liking? Okay, moving on! You might like this one, Oblivion Ring and Cast Out. You can get rid of the annoying creature and you can also get rid of the annoying nonland permanent that you want gone. One other note is that Astral Slide and Astral Drift can also remove those pesky creatures for the turn as well.

Wipe Out!

An essential part of any commander deck is the suite of board wipes. These board wipes come in two varieties, symmetrical and asymmetrical. The asymmetrical board wipe is Archfiend of Ifnir, where whenever you discard or cycle a card you put a -1/-1 counter on each creature your opponents control. The symmetrical board wipes are Wrath of God, which destroys all creatures, Decree of Pain where you can either cast it to destroy all creatures and you draw that many cards or cycle it to give each creature -2/-2 until the end of turn, and Akroma’s Vengeance which destroys all artifacts, creatures and enchantments.

I Don’t Fit In

There are six cards that don’t fit into the above categories. I’m just going to go over the notable ones. One helps our engine go into hyperdrive. That card would be Ephara, God of the Polis. She will very rarely become a creature, but her ability draws us a card at the beginning of the next upkeep if a creature entered the battlefield last turn. With our cycling engine going, that is exile a creature and having it enter the battlefield at the end of turn, or with Gavi out, we can reliably draw a card every turn. The other card is Shadow of the Grave. Sometimes we may get carried away and cycle our entire hand in one turn and not draw any more cyclers. This is where Shadow of the Past comes in. When you cast it, you return all cards that you have discarded to your hand. You essentially refill you hand with cyclers. The final card is Reliquary Tower. Sometimes you draw a lot of cards with Decree of Pain or bring back four cards with Shadow of the Grave and at the end of the turn you would have to discard a card. Reliquary keeps you from discarding those sweet, sweet cards.

You Better Watch Out!

With the commander death trigger rule change. For those that don’t know what the rule is: 

“If a commander is in a graveyard or in exile and that card was put into that zone since the last time state-based actions were checked, its owner may put it into the command zone.

If a commander would be put into its owner’s hand or library from anywhere, its owner may put it into the command zone instead. This replacement effect may apply more than once to the same event.”

There is one thing that you might want to be aware of is an opponent using cards that counter triggers like Stifle and Disallow. Astral Slide and Astral Drift have a delayed trigger of the creature coming back to the battlefield at the next end step. One way to combat this is running Rift Sweeper. Although this card is not in the deck, it might be worth running.

The Close Out

This deck has plenty of ways to close out the game. We’re not monsters and build a deck with no win conditions. We have Maze’s End, where we use our engine to get every gate onto the battlefield with Golos. The second way the deck can close out the game is Decree of Justice. We can cast it for its mana cost and get maybe one to three angel tokens or we can cycle it for three or less and create twice as much 1/1 soldier tokens than angel tokens. The other way is to cast Approach of The Second Sun twice. When you cast it from your hand for the first time, it will be the 7^th card from the top of your library. Since we are cycling cards, instead of being seven more turns, it will become at least one more turn to three more turns before it will be the second time you cast Approach, in which case you win the game.

Sliding Out

In playing this deck, I find it very fun to play with and can win fairly quickly without going infinite. I have included a link to my deck list for you: https://scryfall.com/@MahaffeyG/decks/c8e5e9d9-dfd6-4095-b994-510eb07abe5f. 

Gabriel Mahaffey lives in Arizona and has been playing Magic since Onslaught block and has been playing Commander since September 2008, when From the Vault: Dragons debuted, in what he calls “the first officially-recognized Commander set.” You can catch him as a regular in chat on streams such as the RC’s and AffinityArtifacts.