While Edge of Eternities doesn’t officially hit store shelves until this Friday, its cards are actually already legal. Unnecessary confusion aside, this means we’re starting to see decks trying out the new cards, across a range of Magic: The Gathering formats. Cryogen Relic was easily the most-hyped common in the set during preview season. Now that it’s out in the wild, it’s proving itself worthy of that fanfare and then some. In a huge Pauper event yesterday, Cryogen Relic showed up as a full playset in a Flicker Tron list.
A card seeing this much play right out of the gate is remarkable in itself. What’s even more remarkable is that the deck in question actually took first place, in a field of 128 Pauper players. It’s too early to say for sure, of course, but all signs point to Relic becoming a lasting Pauper classic in the years to come.
Cryogen Relic In Pauper Flicker Tron
Pretty much everyone suspected that Cryogen Relic would make some kind of impact in Pauper. We even rated it as the best Pauper common in the set in our ranking list. Most had Cryogen Relic pegged as an inclusion in Grixis Affinity or the like, mind you, and not Flicker Tron.
This is a pretty obscure deck, making up about 1.3% of the current meta according to MTG Decks. It’s essentially an extremely slow Control deck, using the huge mana advantage the Urza lands provide to fuel an inevitable value engine. Said engine is largely made up of the title card, Ghostly Flicker, and Mnemonic Wall. By using the former on the latter and another permanent, you can return Flicker to your hand while generating incremental value.
Cryogen Relic, according to deck pilot Tommaso Loss on X, comes in as a replacement for Mulldrifter. This has long been a staple in the deck, serving as a great Flicker target as well as a potential finisher. Relic is much easier to weave into Flicker lines due to its low cost, however, and easier to just run out in the early game for the same reason. Because it draws you a card on leaving play rather than going to the graveyard, it’s viable in a deck like this in a way format staple Ichor Wellspring never was.
Relic is great for drawing into Tron early, or hitting your finishers later on. The sacrifice ability is very relevant too. While Flicker Tron can permanently lock out Aggro decks by looping Breath Weapon, it struggles with bigger creatures like Tolarian Terror. Cashing in a Relic can buy you two extra turns against threats like that.
The Long Road To Victory
Cryogen Relic is a great fit in Pauper Flicker Tron, but the removal of Mulldrifter does leave a vacancy in the finishers department. To remedy that problem, Tommaso Loss threw in another recent card that’s had Pauper players talking.
Mysidian Elder is a common from Final Fantasy, and one of the only ‘Black Mage’ cards not to see immediate success with the release of that set. It’s made up for it since, however, showing up in a range of Ephemerate decks in the format. Here, it provides a nice win condition for the deck.
The token it creates pings your opponent for each noncreature spell you cast. When paired with the deck’s gameplan of casting Ghostly Flicker once or twice each turn, this is a legitimate win condition. You can get extra tokens by Flickering the Elder itself to speed up the clock. Elder is joined by Murmuring Mystic, which fills a very similar role. Your spells create 1/1 Fliers, which can eventually overwhelm your opponent.
Surviving long enough to win with one of these cards is no mean feat. To that end, Flicker Tron also runs a number of lifegain tools. Pulse of Murasa, Weather the Storm and Moment’s Peace are all excellent in this regard. The deck only runs one copy of each, but the Flicker/Mnemonic Wall loop lets you cast them multiple times as needed. You can also tutor for them with Mystical Teachings in a pinch.
Outside of these key spells, Flicker Tron is mostly about the mana. Expedition Map finds your Tron pieces, and Prophetic Prism/Energy Refractor let you filter your plentiful generic mana into the deck’s many colored pips. Prism was only recently unbanned in Pauper, and its inclusion here makes the deck much more consistent overall.
A New Player Already?
It’s fantastic to see Cryogen Relic find a home in Pauper already, especially in an established deck like Flicker Tron. The question now is whether the card is good enough to propel a solid tier two deck into the upper echelons of the metagame.
Looking at Tommaso Loss’s results, which they shared on X, we don’t quite get a definitive answer. The decks they came up against at the Ragnarok 3.0 event were mixed, and not all top players in the current Pauper metagame. Some certainly were, mind you.
For example Faeries, which Loss faced in four separate matches, with an overall 8-3 record. Faeries is definitely a tier one list, so this is a great start. Loss also went 2-1 in their only matchup against Mono-Red Synthesizer, which is another high-tier Pauper player. These are both relatively aggressive lists, so it bodes well that Flicker Tron can handle them.
The deck’s other positive matchups, however, are a bit more obscure. Altar Tron and Caw-Gates are both solid tier two lists, but hardly the type to dominate Leagues or Challenges regularly. It’s great that the deck performs well against them, of course, but without testing in the Blue Terror and Madness Burn matchups it’s hard to say for sure where it stands right now.
In any case, this deck is a fine first outing for Cryogen Relic. Magic: The Gathering players are legendary for letting powerful cards slip under the radar, but in this case they got it 100% right. I expect to see this one show up in a lot more decks as the new format develops, too.
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