Commander Overview
Cynette, Jelly Drover is a very fun commander who is extremely simple but also an absolute blast to play, being able to fly over our opponents heads while drawing a ton of cards and having a control package as our secondary gameplan allows us to whittle down our opponents over multiple turns and more importantly control the game, we have many different ways to stop our opponents and protect ourselves. At the same time, we consistently hit for three to four damage every turn, unless we are in a mirror match against a Kangee deck, we fly over most decks in the format, allowing us to be pretty unstoppable against a lot of decks. My favorite part of this deck is how it truly feels like a mono-blue deck, mono-blue mages rejoice! Cynette is purely a support piece in this deck, as this deck can function fully without them, but they are a great help, as the buff helps nearly every card in our deck.
Creature 28
Instant 18
Sorcery 8
Enchantment 7
Land 35
How to Play the Deck
This is a very easy deck to play, we have next to no complicated interactions here or big decision points, the most intensive decisions you have to make in this deck are what to counter but if you have any familiarity with the format they are pretty easy decisions, understanding the weaknesses of the deck like how we don’t love blocking against a lot of decks can help make those decisions easier as well. This deck is suitable for a player of any skill level and is a great against a wide range of decks.
Synergy’s in the deck
Our largest synergy in the deck is our flyers, Cynette supports them and we have some great support cards like Warden of Evos Isle which makes the whole of our deck cheaper and is a great flyer themselves, I also love Winged Words which is another card that cares about our flyers and is a great source of card draw for the deck. Another big synergy in the deck is our control package, we have quite a few ways to shutdown opponents creatures/commander with cards like Unable to Scream and Witness Protection as well as bounce spells like Run Away Together combining that with our flying gameplan we can control the pace of the game and control what our opponents are allowed to do.
Phases of the Game
Early-Game: We are pretty good at the early-game, we have quite a few cheap flyers in the deck and we can get out Cynette in the early-game, since most opponents don’t have flyers by this point we do use this opportunity to chip in for some damage, we are pretty slow overall so getting in some early-game damage to start the bleeding is great.
Mid-Game: Not a ton changes for us here in the mid-game, we are a bit more aggressive with our bigger board as we really don’t want to go to the late-game if we don’t have too but we also do a lot of control aspects at this stage of the game, we can use them to protect ourselves but often use them to stop our opponents which is much more important a lot of the times.
Late-Game: The late-game can be a little tough for us, we don’t scale as well as most opponents do and because of this we can have a tough time dealing with them, we typically can still fly over them but are always concerned about the swing back, we do try to be more aggressive in the late-game or really as aggressive as we can because we don’t want to deal with a lot of decks that are built up.
Card Breakdowns
Ramp
Being in mono-blue leaves us with limited options for ramp. Still, we have cards like Warden of Evos Isle and Mocking Sprite which can help us accelerate our gameplan and overall make us a lot quicker, we have a pretty low overall cost in the deck with a few top-end creatures and some expensive spells in the deck so we don’t have a huge need to ramp but having a lot of our cards be discounted is very strong.
Card Draw/Card Advantage
This is one of the strongest aspects of our deck since we are in mono-blue, we have cards like Winged Words, which is almost always discounted in our deck. I also love Lorien Revealed and Into the Fae Court which are a bit pricey mana-wise but are great ways for us to fill up our hand, by the time we get to the mid-late game we are often able to cast multiple cards in a turn so being able to refill our hand so many different ways in the deck is quite strong.
Removal
While we don’t have a lot of removal, we do have a lot of counterspells that can stop our opponents, like Negate, Dispel, and Counterspell, to name a few. At the same time, we can use them to protect ourselves. We often don’t opt to stop our opponents. With many decks in the format not really doing anything with flyers, we can hit quite often, so protecting our stuff isn’t always worth it. Stopping our opponents from getting out of hand is almost always worth it.
Protection
We do have some specific counters that work great for our stuff like Turn Aside and Intervene which are extremely cheap and designed for our stuff, if an opponent targets our creatures we would much rather use these than any of our more useful counterspells, being able to protect our stuff and use our more impactful counterspells on our opponents stuff allows the gameplan to run really smooth.
Utility / Support
Let’s focus on some of my favorite cards in the deck! Crookclaw Transmuter is very interesting as both an offensive and defensive card, and can have many different ways to interact in our deck. However, in all my testing games, I found myself using this more on opponents’ stuff than on my own; it’s a great way to ruin an opponent’s combat. Flood is another card that gets a lot of usage in this deck, as we can manipulate our other opponents’ combat by tapping key blockers and helping our opponents hurt each other, a very fun political card as well. Peregrine Drake is a very fun card for the deck, as it is basically free, and with Cynette’s buff, can be a good attacker for the deck, which is worth it for an essentially free creature.
Mana Base
Our mana base is extremely simple, as most mono-colored decks tend to be, we mostly have islands in the deck but do have The Surgical Bay, Remote Isle and Lonely Sandbar which can be nice sources of draw once we don’t need our lands anymore, we have an extremely simple manabase but that does work well for the deck.
Win Conditions
Our only win condition in the deck is combat; this is, of course, made easier by our legion of flyers, but we only close out games by turning our creatures sideways, whether it’s throughout the game or a big attack all at once.
Strengths of the Deck
We are strong against many decks in the format since we have almost exclusively flyers, and a lot of decks can struggle to block against us.
Being in mono-blue, we have an amazing draw package within the deck, allowing us to always keep our hand full.
Weaknesses of the Deck
We are good at attacking but not amazing at blocking. Because of this, we can take a lot of damage from stompy-style decks that are just a lot bigger than us. Trample can be great against us as well.
We do not get better in the late-game; we mostly stay the same, while our opponents get bigger. Focusing down opponents is key.
Deck Testing/Matchups
I tested this deck against three different decks
Game 1: Vs Kangee, Sky Warden. Matchup Record: 2-3
This is not an amazing matchup for our deck, Kangee is a lot better at making their flying creatures bigger on both the offense and the defense side, this makes it quite tough for us to deal with, in the two games I did win the best strategy I had was countering Kangee and keeping them off the field, without Kangee we are pretty much even and its just a collection of flyers smacking into each other.
Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Freeze in Place, Cryogen Relic and Counterspell.
Game 2: Vs Burrowguard Mentor. Matchup Record: 3-1
This was actually pretty good for us. Burrowguard Mentor can go very wide, but we fly over the top of them, which makes it very easy for us. Our best course of action is to stop their commander. Without them, they really can’t do much, and we can easily block with our flyers and be just fine.
Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Run Away Together, Utter Insignificance and Witness Protection.
Game 3: Vs Dionus, Elvish Archdruid. Matchup Record: 2-3
We can pull off some wins here, but it’s a struggle, countering some of their key elves like Elvish Herder or Taunting Elf can help the game go a lot smoother against, Dionus presents a deck that we absolutely have to address, if we don’t we will simply die to the elfball. Countering Dionus and some of their best elves is the best way we win games here.
Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Counterspell, Arcane Denial and Unable to Scream.
Conclusion
Thanks so much for reading to the end! Cynette is a card that seems to see a lot of play in the format, and while it doesn’t have as much utility as something like Kangee, a control-focused deck with a huge emphasis on flyers is a great place to be in the format and allows us to be in a great position against the litany of creature decks present within the format.