The fox turns to the shark and says, “Hey, do you think Plum has an actual punchline to this joke?”
The shark says, “I don’t think so, he should probably just get better at writing article introductions.”
Hello and long time no see! Plum had some personal things to take care of (more info here), but I’m back and we’re getting right into the swing of things again with some new cards from Aetherdrift! So let me start by bringing attention to the card that sparked my brew for today.
This grinning shark was one of the first cards that got my gears turning during spoiler season. If you follow Modern and Pioneer, you might have seen him find a home alongside Fear of Missing Out and Hollow One. But my big brewer brain™ went straight for what I thought would be the most obvious (and probably least powerful) shell for it: Cycling!
Now, before you roll your eyes and close the article out of sheer disgust at the thought of Cycling being viable in 2025 (I know, I know), hear me out. It’s not. No sense in sugar-coating it. The deck was pretty meh. It’s fun, but definitely not breaking any records. That being said, it still gave me some cool moments, and I’m here to share it all — the good, the bad, and the ugly.
The strongest thing this deck gained was copies 9-12 of Flourishing Fox via our new Shark Pirate friend. Between those and our good pal Mr. Adept, the deck feels like it hit a critical point of redundancy for turn one plays. Cheap threats that scale quickly while cycling through our deck to find a Zenith Flare. However, although we now have 12 copies of basically the same card, Fox is certainly the weakest of the 3 and actually puts a hinderance on us. Adept and Mako trigger if we discard, but Flourishing Fox only gets triggered if we cycle. So it shoehorns us into playing only cards that cycle to maximize how much value and power we get out of all 3 of our 1-drop creatures.
There is some good news though! WOTC was kind to us and printed some better interaction in the last few sets that also happen to cycle.
While these 3 cards are not on the same power level as much of the other interaction in the Historic Format, it’s important that we view them a bit differently in this deck. We are a cycling deck. Our only goal is to cycle cards (duh). So when you shift your perspective to see that these are cantrips that happen to do other things, they get much better compared to some of the older staples. Rejection and Renunciation are actually solid contenders in this list. Both act as removal, and in the case of Rejection, it can sometimes just nullify creatures with pesky abilities (looking at you Sheoldred). They play very well alongside Go for Blood which has been the premium removal for cycling decks up until this point.
Lastly, I want to talk about the “finishers” in the list. You’ll notice that I cut a few of the classic cycling staples like Drannith Healer because we’re now trying to win entirely through combat damage. Rather than stalling or getting value from Valiant Rescuer or Healer to carry us to lethal Flare territory, I traded out those value oriented cards in order to be more aggressive. I think the package of Footfall Crater and Raking Claws is essential to this strategy now that we have Marauding Mako. We don’t care much about Haste, but using Crater to give a 5+ power Fox or Mako trample has made us much better at closing out games when the board gets clogged up. With Raking Claws thrown into the mix to help creatures consistently hit for 10+ damage, I think both of these cards are auto-includes in a RW based shell like this. I definitely view Zenith Flare as extra reach rather than our main win condition. If we draw it, great! If we don’t, our 1-drops feel like they’re enough to get there most games.
I rounded the deck out with the other cycling staples that seemed like they were actually worth while. Stinger and Rescuer both help our more aggressive game plan and are cheap to cycle. There’s a chance we could go even lower on lands and play the land-cyclers such as Eagles of the North, but I think Lurrus warrants their absence in the deck. 16 lands is already quite low, but we churn through so many cards each game I haven’t had any issues with mana so far.
With all that being said, here’s the list we ended stream with:
You can watch a quick deck-tech and gameplay below.
Gameplay
Like I mentioned, the deck felt consistent, but I still feel its game plan just isn’t strong enough for Historic currently.
If we look at an ideal curve to give us a turn 4 win, Turn 1: Land + Shark/Fox/Adept Turn 2: Land + Drannith Stinger/Valiant Rescuer (swing for 1 Damage) Turn 3: Land + Cycle some cards (swing for 6 damage and ping for 3) Turn 4: Land + Zenith Flare or Raking Claws on a creature. (Dead)
We basically have no wiggle room if we’re aiming to win quickly. -If we take a turn off to interact with the opponent, we lose out on a decent chunk of damage. -If the opponent interacts with us, say they Fatal Push our Fox, we have to wait another full turn cycle to attack. Not to mention we have to cycle some cards to make it grow. -If the opponent gums up the board (elves, tokens, etc.) we either have to find a Footfall Crater or bank on not dying before we can fire off Zenith Flare(s).
The deck is just not resilient. During our games we ran into so many cards that made us stumble. Incidental graveyard hate hurts our Zenith Flares, Ruin Crab stalls us if we don’t go all in on one creature right away, and our creatures have no protection from literally any removal spell in the format. There’s plenty of games that go well, but most of those were because our opponent didn’t interact with us either.
Closing Thoughts
At the end of the day, this cycling brew was a blast to experiment with, but it’s clear it’s not quite there yet. The synergy between Flourishing Fox, Marauding Mako, and Flameblade Adept is solid, but the deck’s resilience is definitely lacking in Historic. It’s a classic case of “fun but fragile” — if you hit the right curve and your opponent doesn’t interact, you can absolutely run over them. But get disrupted even slightly, and it falls apart.
That said, it’s still a fun deck to mess around with, and with a little more tuning, who knows? It might just be able to handle Historic’s top dogs with a bit more consistency. For now, though, it’s a janky, fast-paced, and hopefully it sparked a new idea for some of you.
Thanks for reading.
As always feel free to comment and leave any questions you have below! Make sure to come back next week for even more Fun & Jank!
If you want to see these decks in action, come hang out with me on stream where we test, refine, and have a ton of fun together!
Happy Brewing!
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Plum is the creator of the Jank Tank.
He started playing at the ripe old age of 12 and immediately fell in love with the infinite possibilities that deck building could lead to.
He truly understands that jank is a mindset, and spends most of his free time brewing and concocting new and exciting deck lists to help inspire and promote creativity within the MTG community.
