Back in the days of the Onslaught set in Standard, Cycling was on the mechanics and there was one deck archetype built around it that had become a top tier deck in the metagame. The deck works on the two main Enchantments that gains advantage whenever you cycle a card and those were Astral Slide and Lightning Rift. For today’s card preview and feature, we have an Ikoria enchantment that is of similar function of the previous cards mentioned.

Check out Reptilian Reflection.

Built-around a mechanic decks are usually well-supported as what I have observed in the recent Magic sets. In the upcoming Ikoria set, I think it will be the same case as it is a standalone set. How the deck setup will look like is the main question. Having a playset of this enchantment may not act as win condition on itself but a 5/4 hasty Dinosaur is one threat that you should consider seriously.

What is tricky here is that you would only activate it for open plays as it is vulnerable to spot removals. You can bait out your opponents with other threats so later on they won’t have an answer to this one.

There are relevant Cycling cards already revealed and so it will be easy to sort which cards to use. I might expect the deck to be that of the tri-color shell in Jeskai or Temur. The previous Onslaught Cycle deck was in Boros (Red-White) colors. For consistency purposes, I would personally go with two colors and then splash a third one for a safe access to that shard color in the sideboard.

I might follow up a Cycle decklist (first version) once the complete Ikoria card spoilers is out. For now, I am wrapping up this blog post and until next time.