The One Ring

Legendary Artifact

Indestructible (Damage and effects that say "destroy" don't destroy it.)

When The One Ring enters the battlefield, if you cast it, you gain protection from everything until your next turn. ((Remember the acronym debt.) You can't be damaged, enchanted, equipped, blocked or targeted by anything. Anything attached to you immediately falls off.)

At the beginning of your upkeep, you lose 1 life for each burden counter on The One Ring/

{T}: Put a burden counter on The One Ring, then draw a card for each burden counter on The One Ring.

Legality

Format	Legality
1v1 Commander	Legal
Arena	Legal
Block Constructed	Legal
Canadian Highlander	Legal
Casual	Legal
Commander / EDH	Legal
Commander: Rule 0	Legal
Custom	Legal
Gladiator	Legal
Highlander	Legal
Historic	Legal
Legacy	Legal
Leviathan	Legal
Limited	Legal
Modern	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (43)

Renegadespider on Help improve my deck pls

6 days ago

https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/genesis-surge-1/?cb=1714747746

So I'm trying to make the ulimate Genesis Deck that focuses on cheating out Creatures and producing lots of mana to activate Spawnsire, Avacyn, Angel of Hope is for boardwipe protection Archetype of Endurance is for targeting Exile protection, Nylea's Disciple is for life gain from using The One Ring for draw and all the Genesis Cards to cheat my Board state out, except Gelatinous Genesis which for an alt win con. I've managed to get everything out by turn 4 before...but it just doesn't feel fast enough, I brick way too often, by either drawing way too much mana or not drawing enough mana, any advice?

Niko9 on Are Free Spells Becoming Too …

6 days ago

wallisface For sure, in 60 card the flares seem like they won't be a problem, that's a great point! I don't even think the flares will be very good in cEDH or anything, I just think it's a big problem in casual commander where sometimes it feels like they prey on player's want to optimize decks little by little. I mean, I don't think that Esper Sentinel has ever, ever actually won me a game of edh, but just the fact that it makes so many decks slightly better has sold so many copies. I don't know, it's just a different feeling when you find some cool new tech card that fits your deck perfectly rather than wizards just printing something slightly different or slightly better in the color you're playing.

And yep, I agree that card draw is getting a little out of hand, or at least card splashable card draw. Draw in blue never felt too bad, even if Brainstorm was very good, the cards blue had to play used to be objectively less powerful 1 for 1, so it evened out. With things like The One Ring it adds powerful draw into every color, and that's pretty broken. I think the London Mulligan also plays a part in it. Players being able to just mulligan with little cost because if they hit their draw engine it didn't really matter how deep they went, that's unhealthy gameplay on a pretty big scale.

I get that draw is maybe a good overall feature because it evens out mana floods/bricks, but for a format with a large and older card pool like modern, most of those cards are not balanced for games that have that much draw. Tron almost never whiffs now, and that absolutely blows my mind. Hitting a brick on Tron was like the one downside it always had and now it's just, well, I guess you can't cast a Ragavan off of Tron, so...mid...

Ultimately I do wonder if The One Ring will get banned in modern though. The way it plays with cascade is one of those things where I feel like neither player really has fun in that match. Protection plus card draw really shores up the random aspect of cascade way too well. The one ring really feels like something that should have been in commander only. Even if it's rough in edh, at least it's not, one ring drew me a new one ring, rough.

rckclimber777 on Build a Deck with Me …

1 week ago

Sometimes when I'm deckbuilding, I focus less on the commander and more on an interesting concept/combo that I want to use or exploit. This is the case with one of my favorite decks in my profile and actually one of the first commander decks I ever built. This deck began years ago when Magic finally started caring about the EDH format. It was a more simple time then, Rhystic study was $1.27 (exactly the price I paid for mine over 10 years ago), Cyclonic Rift was a bulk rare, and demonic tutor could be found for $10.

The combo that I was interested in was Palinchron and Deadeye Navigator. The latter was my favorite card at the time and is still one of my favorites. It was a great tool and with all the ETB effects that were out around then it was an underrated and uber powerful card. In fact, the entire blink mechanic was and is a very powerful strategy.

When I built this deck, I played a few times in shops and was quickly told that edh is a casual format and interaction of any kind is not fair (was told this by a land destruction deck...) So this deck is definitely more on the competitive side, but it would be the distant fringe of cedh. Alright with that let's get into it.

Initial thoughts

So we have a combo that we like Palinchron and Deadeye Navigator, but we don't even have a commander yet and going mono-blue seems not great, so we want to figure out what color(s) to add and what commander to choose. In a combo deck, there are generally three things that I like to make sure I include beyond the normal ramp, and card draw. That is redundancy, the ability to tutor up my combo pieces, and ways to protect my combo. So when thinking about tutoring up my combo pieces, I generally like to have the best tutors. Those are in black. So things like Wishclaw Talisman, Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor and Imperial Seal (if you have money to burn or your playgroup is fine with you proxying the best cards so you can obliterate their precons j/k I proxy all my expensive cards and put them in a binder in case someone has an issue).

So we have Blue and Black and we can certainly add another color if we wanted to, but at the time I liked Dralnu, Lich Lord because Snapcaster Mage was in standard and flashback was cool. So I stuck with it when I revamped it, but decided that I wanted something that could ensure I can protect my combo from any threat and then also use it to win if I wanted to. The answer came in the form of Ertai Resurrected. He can counter basically anything from spells to activated abilities (which will come in handy) or he can take a threat on the field at the cost of letting your opponent draw a card.

So now that we have our commander, how to build the deck?

Redundancy

Combo decks need redundancy. If you don't get your two cards or one of them gets exiled, you need a backup plan, or scooping is your only option. Fortunately, there are some great redundancies here. We have Ghostly Flicker and Displace. Both of these will blink your creatures (ghostly flicker will also blink artifacts). Displacer Kitten can be helpful too, but I don't own it and it is a little more chaotic than I need it to be. Palinchron is great because you can return it to your hand and potentially play it again and create infinite mana through the use of High Tide, but a similar combo that has added benefits is Peregrine Drake, Archaeomancer, and Ghostly Flicker. This bounces both the drake and the archaeomancer untapping 5 lands, and returning ghostly flicker to your hand. Rinse and repeat for infinite mana. Archaeomancer also will help in returning key counterspells and tutors to your hand. Nothing like doing double duty. Mnemonic Wall and Great Whale also fit here. The great thing about this combo is that each component is useful in and of itself. Bring out your Great Whale early untap some lands and do some other stuff or play out the rest of your combo with the untapped lands. Cast Archaeomancer to grab a used tutor for another combo piece.

One note here, if you get Peregrine Drake (or one of the other two) paired with Deadeye Navigator and you generate infinite mana you can now draw your deck with Ertai as commander: Step 1: Bounce Deadeye, when he enters don't soulbond with anyone.
Step 2: Cast Ertai, don't choose anything or if you want kill one of your opponent's creatures. It doesn't matter.
Step 3: Soulbond ertai and deadeye. Step 4: Bounce Deadeye and while that is on the stack bounce Ertai. Step 5: Ertai enters the battlefield counter the Deadeye bounce on the stack Draw a card Step 6: Soulbond ertai and deadeye again rinse and repeat. Draw as many cards as you need. Which means draw until you find your wincon.

Wincon

Since this is an infinite mana combo we need something to use all that mana. Obviously the activated ability on deadeye is great, but we need something to actually win with. I went with Commander's Insight and Blue Sun's Zenith. Both of these cards are useful even when they aren't being used to force your opponents to draw their cards. Blue Sun's Zenith works nicely because once you cast it goes back into your deck, which I showed above you can draw as many cards as you need so you cast it once, put it in your library draw again until you find it, cast it again on the next opponent, then again. You can also tutor them up or bring them back from the graveyard with the tutors or the archaeomancer/mnemonic wall from earlier. I like this more than straight damage, because if you don't have infinite mana these cards will still draw you cards.

Tutors

This is a fairly simple step, we need some good tutors. There are a number of good choices in black so I won't belabor that too much. I don't have some of the standard ones and feel like the deck performs fine with the ones it currently has. I do have a Tribute Mage in the deck because nearly all my mana rocks are 2 mana and so is Wishclaw Talisman. I found that the consistency with the deck is vastly improved by being able to tutor up my ramp. Also with deadeye I can bounce it multiple times and get more rocks or the talisman.

Protecting the combo

So I needed to figure out how to protect my combo and do so in a way that is flexible or can be used as needed. So Counterspell. Honestly, this part was fairly simple, most blue counter magic is here. Only reason Fierce Guardianship isn't here is because I don't have it. Other than that we have the typical cards here Force of Will, Mana Drain, Cyclonic Rift, Force of Negation, Pact of Negation, etc.

I also have a couple other standouts. Venser, Shaper Savant is great here as it can be bounced with Deadeye Navigator to essentially boomerang my opponent's board and all their spells. Ertai Resurrected also protects the combo and with deadeye becomes a nice repeatable counter/removal spell.

glen_elandra_archmage can be bounced when she has her -1/-1 counter allowing her to be used again and again to counter noncreature spells.

Typical stuff

There is a lot of ramp in the deck, so Mana Crypt, Sol Ring, and other mana rocks including some larger ones like Gilded Lotus and Basalt Monolith to really get the ramp going, the sooner you can get to 7-8 mana the sooner you can combo out.

For card draw some key performers here are Rhystic Study, Black Market Connections, Phyrexian Arena, The One Ring. Mystic Remora. In my initial hand I want to have 3 lands, and one of these/tutor to find one or I typically mulligan.

Special notes

A couple other cards deserve mention here. Time Stretch and Time Warp. These are both repeatable with Archaeomancer and Mnemonic Wall and I can honestly say that if I'm able to resolve either of these, it is unlikely that I'm going to lose, especially Time Stretch. With the ramp in the deck or a well timed Dark Ritual/High Tide I can play this fairly early and get a huge advantage.

Lands

Since this deck tends to be fast, you don't want lands that come into play tapped, so this deck uses fetch lands, shock lands, and duals that have the ability to come in untapped. (there are a couple that come into play tapped, but they are fetchable so I fetch them only when I know that I'm not going to be able to use the mana and only on an opponent's turn.)

I've had this deck for a while and it performs far better than any of my other decks. It always presents interesting lines that if followed will lead to surprising victories. As always let me know what you think in the comments and if you have a commander in mind that you want to see me build put it in the chat.

Here is the final decklist: Unlimited Power!

kirbysan on [Primer] Helming the Host of Heaven *Update*

1 month ago

am3ience : Doesn't look like Guerric has been on in over a year so his list is a little outdated. He also made some budget choices. Depending on the power level of your pod you may want to look at stronger support. I've been playing Giada semi-regularly since release and my list has evolved over time:

https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/help-me-giada-youre-my-only-hope/

There a few notable angels in the year since this list:

Inspiring Overseer - while it released the same time as Giada, Guerric didn't include it. When you're going for a blink theme and Sword of Hearth and Home is out then you can essentially gain life and draw an extra card once per turn.

Guardian of Ghirapur - if you have any ETB effect angels then this one can help immensely. Or if you picked up Throne of Eldraine then you can reset it, leaving 4 white up on opponents turns which is typically the magic number for protection.

Metropolis Reformer - It's a cheap angel at 2W, has vigilance as a keyword, provides us hexproof from targeted spells and semi-lifegain from blocks or a Blasphemous Act

Firemane Commando - While it's a 4 drop it provides much needed draw off attacks which you should be doing every turn.

Roaming Throne - Not technically an angel but it doubles all the triggers. If you check my list I have categories of Angel Triggers. Anything with the keywords "At, When, or Whenever" will be doubled. Unfortunately it doesn't double Giada herself as that's a replacement effect but it can still get out of hand very quickly.

Wojek Investigator - Also a cheap angel at 2W with vigilance and usually a free clue every turn I'd consider it a strict upgrade over Angelic Sleuth. However, if you need more card draw support I'd personally pick Esper Sentinel, Archivist of Oghma or The One Ring.

I didn't add Aurelia's Vindicator or Merchant of Truth because their abilities don't justify the mana cost.

If you like Aurelia's Vindicator ability I'd recommend Angel of Serenity as the Disguise cost and ability is the same as Serenity but you don't have to jump through hoops of turning it face up. Also, you can target it with an Ephemerate or Teleportation Circle to get more than one usage out if it.

Niko9 on Has Anyone Tried a Multi …

1 month ago

jethstriker That is very cool with the shadow and reanimator swap : ) I guess I meant more of trying games in modern or something where both players have 2 decks and they can start with either one or switch between games, but both players know the decklists of their opponent, and maybe with a stipulation that the two decks you are playing can have no nonland cards in common.

I'm just thinking of it as a way to both spice up games by adding a, which deck did the players start with, and how do they switch to counter each other.

It may not be the best solution either, just kinda throwing out ideas, but a problem I see sometimes is that side decking devolves to, make a good proactive deck and side in specific answers, then you win if you draw them or don't if you don't.

The big problem I'm thinking about is how rough it is to actually watch competitive play right now. Between Thoughtseize and Grief and The One Ring being a worse Time Walk plus a slow Ancestral Recall is that interaction feels like it's at an all time low because of hand knowledge, ring loops, and cascade or tron being able to break their playstyles by having tons of ways to stall until they explode.

So, my thought was, what if players had two decks they could switch in, but they also had the limitation of nonland cards can only be in one of the two. Could it create more interaction in games? I really have no idea : ) I'm sure someone has tried it.

ThassaUpYo@ssa on Chasm and Depths Protection

2 months ago

khuyler

Solid option in Reality Scramble, and it makes me think of Chaos Warp as being another option you could use, if necessary, for The One Ring or you could use it on an opponent's particularly troublesome permanent.

Good point on Glissa Sunslayer & Vampire Hexmage, though it would be a tragedy if you had to use the Hexmage to deal with The Precious.

I would definitely be sure run all the Jund shocks and just proxy the fetches/OG dual lands to further bolster your mana base. As I mentioned before, Ignoble Hierarch would be a great play for your mana pool, too.

You picked an awesome color combo and general! Are you planning on keeping this deck for the foreseeable future and fine-tuning it over time?

ldvatwa on Everlasting Life Through Phyrexia

2 months ago

Thanks for all your suggesitons Profet93! I had Cabal Stronghold in another monoblack deck that's quite budget friendly, so I figured I'd try it out in here to see if it works instead of just sitting on the card.

I'm kind of surprised I don't have a Mind Stone in here lol. Maybe I'll try swapping it out for Arcane Signet because that added draw is very nice.

I mainly play 1v1 or at most a three person game since my playgroup is stretched thin and hard to get people, so while I initially had Syphon Mind when making the deck, it didn't feel that efficient since it never gets full 4 person value.

Lili is another one from the now budget deck that is more of a personal favorite card as its the first card I ever opened in a draft. It's probably not ideal aside from deck thinning. And I've never been big on Opposition Agent personally. I've been on the other end of it too many times and is more of a feels bad kind of card.

The current group I play with house ruled no The One Ring after our friend abused it in every single deck of his. It would be a house in this, but I'd rather keep the group happy and save myself 70 bucks that can go towards this foiling out project. I do have a friend that has a Beseech the Mirror for trades, so I can see about trying that if he's still got it!

Profet93 on Everlasting Life Through Phyrexia

2 months ago

ldvatwa +1

You don't have enough basics to reliably activate cabal stronghold. Perhaps swap it with Deserted Temple to untap coffers + politics or Thespian's Stage/Vesuva to copy coffer or other utility lands.

Mind Stone - Help ramp commander out on turn 3, and it is draw later when you don't need it.

MAYBE Syphon Mind - You draw 3, each opponent discards one.

Have you thought of swapping out Lili PW? Her +1 isn't impactful as with all your draw you're bound to get a swamp. Her second ability serves as okay removal. Perhaps for an Opposition Agent could prove more impactful given everyone searches in EDH. Whether its omni, creature or instant/sorcery tutors, or even fetchlands.

At the risk of being out of budget The One Ring might be a potential inclusion given it's a steady draw source and all your lifegain could mitigate it's downside. Maybe even a Beseech the Mirror to allow you to sacrifice it or just tutor in case you can't find what you're looking for with your draw.