Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Cynette, Jelly Drover!

Cynette is a four mana 2/2 who when they enter or die you make a 1/1 blue Jellyfish token with flying and creatures you control with flying get +1/+1.

Ability word typal is not a new concept, but having Cynette also make tokens that fly provides an additional angle to game play. It incentivizes us to use blinking/flickering in order to get a veritable army of Jellyfish that get bigger.

Supplement that with the decent amount of flying support that is available in blue and some very strong fliers, then we have an interesting deck plan.

First we need to find ways to blink/flicker Cynette in order to start getting some more Jellyfish in play.

Planar Incision is one of the most ideal ways to get this done because not only does it blink Cynette, but it also gives her a +1/+1 counter, which can be useful in keeping her alive in some combats. Essence Flux is a cheaper way to get this effect, but since Cynette is not a Spirit, we don’t get the additional value of a +1/+1 counter.

Blur is a way to flicker Cynette and draw a card, Ghostly Flicker can target two things as well as able to flicker artifacts and lands along with creatures to allow us to use a land an additional time if necessary or an activated ability of an artifact, and of course Conjurer’s Closet as a way to flicker Cynette at the beginning of each of your end steps.

We can also make use of Panharmonicon type of effects that double the trigger when Cynette enters. Blue has several of these effects in Virtue of Knowledge, which also has Vantress Visions as an Adventure to copy an activated or triggered ability one time, the Fractured Realm side of Mirror Room//Fractured Realm is a trigger doubler that is attacked to Mirror Room which makes a token copy of a creature, and Naban, Dean of Iteration who doubles the triggered ability of Wizards you control.

The next thing we need are cards that synergize with flying in order to make all of our fliers a little more effective.

Shadow Puppeteers is a solid option in this regard because not only does itself have flying and ward 2 to protect itself, but it makes two 1/1 fliers and whenever a creature we control with flying attacks, they can become 4/4’s. This means if we did our job in getting a lot of Jellyfish in play, they suddenly become Dragon Jellyfish that become 5/5’s because of the boost that Cynette gives fliers.

Gravitational Shift gives all flying creatures +2/+0 and all creatures without flying -2/-0, Windstorm Drake gives flying creatures we control +1/+0, and Favorable Winds is an anthem for fliers that gives them +1/+1.

There are also other spells that synergize with fliers by not giving them power, but giving additional benefits. For example, Lofty Denial turns a counter target spell unless the opponent pays 1 into a counter target spell unless that opponent pays 4 if you control a creature with flying.

Deluge taps all creatures without flying, Warden of the Evos Isle makes creature spells with flying you control cost 1 less, Gust of Wind is a bounce spell that draws you a card and gets cheaper when you control a creature with flying, and Mu Yanling, Wind Rider draws you a card whenever you deal combat damage to an opponnet with one or more flying creatures.

One of the better sneaky cards that assist your fliers is Stormtide Leviathan, which is a creature that prevents creatures from attacking unless they have islandwalk or flying while also having islandwalk and turning all lands into Islands.

The last thing we need are the creatures with flying that will gain benefits from Cynette.

Ledger Shredder is the sort of card that can be played early and can gain a ton of value as the game goes on. Some opponents will restrict themselves to only playing one spell a turn to make sure that they don’t have Ledger Shredder connive, and some play into it, allowing you to filter your hand and make a larger and larger threat.

Speaking of letting you draw cards, Overlord of the Floodpits lets you draw two cards and then discard one when it enters or attacks, and can be cast for its Impending cost to eventually become a creature.

If we want to take advantage of all that card draw, then Mischievous Mystic creates a 1/1 Faerie creature token with flying whenever you draw your second card a turn, Clinquant Skymage gets a +1/+1 counter for each card you draw, and Proft’s Eidetic Memory can get your creatures even bigger for each card you draw beside your first.

If you want to make sure that the damage your flying creatures can deal gets through, then you can play Archetype of Imagination, which gives all creatures you control flying and prevents creatures your opponents control from gaining or having flying while also having the creatures they control with flying to lose flying.

Cynette is a great Commander to build towards, but may suffer a bit the longer the game goes on. While it can be a viable go wide strategy, there needs to be quite a bit of work to make the deck function. Not to say that Cynette is bad, in fact she is actually a great Commander to build around for new players since she provides a steady direction for them to take and allows them to use cards they own in order to get a deck started.

The most common way to build the deck involves using cards that make token copies or clones of Cynette, but that playstyle doesn’t really interest me personally. You can certainly give it a go and I highly encourage giving it a try if that playstyle interests you.

Thank you for reading, see you tomorrow for the next Daily Commander!

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual