#old rutstein

[mtg-cards-hourly]

Old Rutstein

Artist: Greg Staples TCG Player Link Scryfall Link EDHREC Link

[niuttuc]

The Graveyard Gang

Did you know Golgari likes the graveyard? Read the cards carefully next time you face a golgari deck, and you might notice it. As a result, a lot of Golgari commanders like the graveyard a whole lot, and specifically creatures being in there. So I made a deck for them, a deck that can use any of its ten commanders, randomly selected before each game. And their companion, Umori, just to make deckbuilding a bit spicier. Here's the gang as a whole!

They all have equal chance of leading the deck every game, and even if they don't show up in the command zone, they'll be somewhere in the 99. They're all in special versions when possible and all in foil, the only foils in the deck, as to be able to find them easily when sifting through the deck to pick one at random before every game. They're of differing power levels, but that's fine! If you end up rolling one that's too strong or weak for the table, you could always reroll, or worse, pick one of them, but that's less fun.

As far as strategies, we're playing only creatures, so I wanted to lean onto creatures that get really strong from having many of them in the graveyard, so there's lot of that! Their large bodies are our wincons, either through regular attacks or throwing them at people's faces with Jarad.

Of course, we're playing commander, so we're also eating our veggies, with plenty of ramp, card advantage, interaction, and in this case, self-mill.

This deck WILL fold like wet paper in games featuring plenty of graveyard hate, but that's the life of a graveyard deck. And we can survive a reasonable amount of it. Just don't get your graveyard exiled when it's your entire library, before you can recycle it with Endurance.

Speaking of, Endurance is here as a safety valve. If we do our plan TOO well and end up milling out, like this deck is known to do on occasion, the combination of Genesis triggering on our upkeep and Endurance having flash can ensure we shuffle our graveyard into our library to avoid dying. We may have a lot of work to do once again milling all that, and a couple */*s may die, but that's a worthwhile price to stay alive.

Is Umori optimal for this deck? No, I haven't used it once. But this is a deck with ten commanders all wanting slightly different things and trying to be alright with all of them. We're not here for optimal.

[strixhaven-star]

Yes, I need these two to work together to make a trading company on Thunder Junction. That or they need to be rivals complete with stage robberies. I just need them both to be on the plane.

[pinkgoldcomet]

all it takes is a hat and some nice lighting to look sexy

[strixhaven-star]

Wouldn't it be wild if Rutstein were going to Ulgrotha? It'd make sense. As his MTG wiki page states he is "a purveyor of the finest goods and contraband, like human blood and body parts" along with a number of monster-hunting tools and that "his wares never fail to deliver... most of the time."

Apparently, he may seem like a conman but he really does want to get rid of the supernatural monsters on Innistrad ... or, at least, help someone else do so. Taking his stock and hauling it to Ulgrotha couldn't make things there any worse than they already are.

I think I would rather see Rutstein on Ulgrotha rather than anywhere else because he's a better fit there. He'd probably stick out more if he went anywhere else. Just not Western World, the man may have a scar over one eye but that doesn't mean he's Jonah Hex.

[almostlookedhuman]

[strixhaven-star]

Who has ideas on where Old Rutstein is? It doesn't look like Innistrad architecture. A good number of people want him to be on a "Wild West"-inspired plane but those buildings don't look like Old Western architecture either. Thoughts?