Spoils of Victory #4: Kytheon aka Gideon

Hello Ladies and Gentlemen, yet another time!

With the spoiler season of Magic Origins starting somewhat, we have gotten quite the spoiler a few days ago:

So, how could you build a deck around the newest commanding Planeswalker? Well, I can definitely see a few ways to approach this. While there surely is a way to use both sides of him semi-effectively, I think the most reliable approach would be to focus on one of the two sides. So let's start with his "greek hero" side.

As many people on the internet already mentioned, he kind of feels like Isamaru, being a 2/x for one mana. And even though he lacks the one toughness, he more than makes up for it by bringing a useful ability: You can make him indestructible anytime you have 2W available. And while it certainly makes combat even easier with him, the biggest upside is that it allows you to play more mass-removal than you would usually.

Since we're going with an Isamaru-type build, we will be playing quite a few equipments with ways to search specific ones when needed and other general synergies with equipments. Nothing too interesting... Well, no, there are some interactions worth talking about when it comes to the equipment package:

Obviously, when running large amounts of equipment in our deck, Puresteel Paladin is a pretty good card. But what makes him so neat in a Kytheon deck is that he allows you to flip your commander into Planeswalker Mode while maintaining momentum. As long as you have 3 or more equipments on the battlefield you'll be able to animate Gideon and equip him without having to spend any amount of mana. 

Getting a huge boost in power plus lifelink onto a indestructible creature is also good value, and while Loxodon Warhammer is probably the better option for getting that, having a second copy of an effect like that is sometime very helpful. Especially since lifelink is pretty hard to come by in the equipment section. 

And then there is Scourglass! I already mentioned, that sweepers are what makes Kytheon better than Isamaru in some situations. What's so nice about Scourglass, is that not only does it also kill opposing enchantments that might prevent you from attacking, but it will also a) not destroy your equipments and b) doesn't need as much mana in the same turn as other cards do since it essentially only needs you to have the 2W to make Kytheon indestrcutible. Of course all this comes with the downside of being exposed to removal for a full round before going of, but hey great power comes at a price!

Talking about onesided sweepers...

Another Scourglass effect, a very versatile com... waaaaiiit a second! It destroys EVERYTHING except your equipments, the occasional mana rock and if you spent enough mana Kytheon will also survive. I admit that in order to pull that off you'll need to spend 13 mana, but it will most likely just straight out win you the game, so why not?! Austere Command, being the staple that he is, shines here aswell, allowing you several good modes. And Divine Reckoning is the incarnation of a voltron-sweeper. Sometimes it gets a bit awkward when facing other voltron decks though... Nobody's perfect I guess!

And now something completely different! Let us turn around 180° and focus on building the deck around the planeswalking side of our commander sp let's get a quick reminder of what it can do:

Alright, we can force our opponents to attack Gideon, that might come in handy...

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Make something indestrutible, pretty useful aswell...

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And last but not least, turning him into a beater... We already covered that.

All that while having 3 loyalty when flipping. So far so good...



So how can we abuse those abilites? Aside from doing the obvious, which is trying to generate the most possible value from turning a creature indestructible, how about we force opponents to attack and then punish them for it? Might not be overly competitive but sure as hell sounds like fun!

Unfortunately, since planeswalkers are relatively new, a lot of cards will say something along the lines of "...dealt damage to you..." or "...attacking you..." which doesn't really help since the creatures will be attacking Gideon.

So how about stuff like this?

Pretty straight forward I would say. Let's look a other possible ways to use Gideons +2 ability to our advantage...

Sometimes you can even create what I would call a very durdly engine:

Now, there are several cards like the eight I mentioned so far, but how do we prevent Gideon from dying if we don't have one of the removal spells handy?

Comeuppance even protects him against burn!

Now we might face a problem... As the deck looks for now, we're very well set to use and abuse our Planeswalker, but we're pretty bad at actually getting him to flip. Of course the best way of getting him to flip is playing some amount of token producing cards,... so why not do exactly that? Even later, with Gideon being a Planeswalker we can use those tokens to attack for damage or have them be chump blockers for their general.

With those tokens you can even gain a bunch of life triggering your Patron of the Kitsune or the Righteous Cause. Just make sure that your token producing cards either have scaleability like Secure the Wastes or also offer something else like evasion or some pump.

So how can Gideon help us actually win the game?

Making good use of the +1 ability you can semi-lock the game with Magus of the Disk or go for an Armageddon on an empty board on which you can then finish the game with Gideon becoming a creature. You could even equip Gideon with Worldslayer (since he is indestrcutible), attack to trigger the sword and empty the whole board while you're left with a Planeswalker that can attack for four commander damage each turn. If that's not grindy enough for you, you can also always go for the old...

Lattice-Disk-Forge combo, and since you already play the Magus of the Disk you actually have two Disk effects to go along with Lattice and Forge.

Whatever you choose to go for, the more aggresive greek hero or a more controlly walker among planes, I'm sure the deck will end up interesting and fun, so I'm really looking forward to Magic Origins being printed and sold

That's it for today, I hope you enjoyed reading my take on Kytheon and Gideon.

See y'all 'round!