Martyred Rusalka

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Legality

Format Legality
1v1 Commander Legal
Archenemy Legal
Block Constructed Legal
Canadian Highlander Legal
Casual Legal
Commander / EDH Legal
Commander: Rule 0 Legal
Custom Legal
Duel Commander Legal
Highlander Legal
Legacy Legal
Leviathan Legal
Limited Legal
Modern Legal
Oathbreaker Legal
Planechase Legal
Quest Magic Legal
Tiny Leaders Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Martyred Rusalka

Creature — Spirit

, Sacrifice a creature: Target creature can't attack this turn.

enpc on Just Stay Dead: cEDH Edition

5 years ago

Golfrolax: My issue with both the Boonweaver combo and Hulk is that without a repeatable sac outlet, they just act as a once off tutor. The deck only runs 5 repeatable sac outlets and of that 2 are immediate win conditions, 1 is a card draw engine and the other two generate infinite mana (I can generally set up a card draw engine given infinite mana).

If the deck had access to black, it would be a very different story as I would be running cards like Viscera Seer and Zulaport Cutthroat. However in the current build and in a combo situation I will aready have the sac outlet (say Blasting Station) and fenerally have access to Saffi Eriksdotter already. So at this point both Hulk and Boonwearver are stand-ins for a single creature. The whole beauty of both hulk and boonweaver is that they can assemble multiple combo creatures in one hit, however there isn't generally a requirement for this in the build.

As tutors they are ok, however both are very expensive to play and I'm already running a solid suite of creature tutors, all of which I would like to think are generally better than Hulk or Boonweaver, as well as better than Pattern of Rebirth. My biggest beef with pattern is that you have to both enchant a creature and then sac it. This means that in a worst case scenario, it is not useable to recover from a crappy board state, whereas the other tutors just cost mana. It also leaves a lot more openings for the creature to be removed.

I've thought about running cards like Martyr's Cause, Fanatical Devotion and even Reaper of Flight Moonsilver, however all of these cards are either too conditional, are a nonbo or both. I run Starved Rusalka (it was a toss up between her and Martyred Rusalka - martyred has the better ability but starved is easier to fuel with cradle) which is the closest the deck comes to Viscera Seer however is only good for jump starting combos/getting value, not for infinite loops.

I have looked into lines with Hulk, using rusalka plus Hidden Herbalists and Demonmail Hauberk (which can be fetched with Stoneforge Mystic) however they end up too clunky.

There is one deploy line which is Saffi + High Market into hulk, sacing saffi and then sacing hulk to market getting Academy Rector + Starved Rusalka, then off the second hulk sac (via rusalka) you can get Karmic Guide however this line still feels messy to me as you need 9 mana and High Market (so really 10 mana) to make it work.

That's my thought process on the whole thing, but I am always keen to get others' thoughts too.

DarthTucker on Yo-sei Goodbye, and I Say Hell-O

6 years ago

This might be the most degenerate deck I've ever seen.

But I absolutely built it (with literally 8 differences), and it's probably the most fun deck I've played in a long long time. This is brilliant, good work.

I removed:

I added:

enpc on Just Stay Dead: cEDH Edition

6 years ago

SFCD: I'm glad you like it. Saffi is one of those accidental combo commanders (like Ghave, Guru of Spores) so I figure why not just take it to its logical end point :P

As for the reason for the different deck lists - there are two main reasons. The first is that I own the main Just Stay Dead list as it is represented and that I don't have a few cards like Mox Diamond (in fact, mainly Mox Diamond), but some others like Lotus Petal/Fyndhorn Elves.

The other is that the play styles of the two are slightly different. The main list is slightly more synergistic, but slower. It has a few draw engines like Eidolon of Blossoms / Heart Warden + Gift of Immortality or Crucible of Worlds + Dryad Arbor + Skullclamp which this list has decided to drop either partially or in full in favour of cheaper card advantage to help dig for the combo faster. It has also dropped cards like Titania, Lotus Cobra and Nissa which are more land focused. Again, while they are good cards and all add value, they are not a direct line to combo and so where cut. The only exception is the addition of Aven Mindcensor who just does so much work in tutor heavy metas that he was given a slot.

The reason for starved rusalka is that it provides a creaure sac outlet on a creature. Creatures are easy to tutor (especially green ones) and being able to sacrifice stuff at will is super important, whether it's to protect a piece from exile or to get extra value from an Elvish Visionary or to assist a creature dying to Skullclamp (since Wall of Blossoms won't natively die from it), rusalka just adds value. And while Martyred Rusalka's ability is probably better, being green means she is GSZ tutorable and I can sink an entire Gaea's Cradle activation into it if I want. The other thing is that while you have to spend mana on her, as long as you have mana open she can do her thing, unlike High Market which is once a turn.

While she probably does more work in the other list (as I have stuff like Titania to recur and ther eis a janky combo that she forms), she is still worth a spot here.

I hope that gives you a bit of an idea behind the reasoning. I get that neither description talks about her (I will get around to redoing the primer one day) and she's a bit of a fringe choice. But please, I love when people question cards as it makes me have to think about why I run them, so I have no problems with others pointing out stuff they don't like.

enpc on Just Stay Dead (Saffi cEDH)

6 years ago

jjp16: I'm glad you like the list. It's been many tweaks to get to here (though there's still always so much to do T_T).

The main win condition of the deck is definitely Blasting Station. It's clean and efficient and the combo doesn't need too many moving pieces. Altar of Dementia still wins me a good chunk of games, however I see my fair share of eldrazi titans so unless I have Mikokoro, Center of the Sea or Selvala, Explorer Returned ready to go, I will just try to turn Altar of Dementia into Blasting Station.

Starved Rusalka is a little bit niche, but still very good as a card. While not typically used for combo (though there is a janky one with her), being able to sac a creature in response to exile or using it with Saffi to get some extra value out of an ETB is worth the slot. I was originally tossing up between Starved Rusalka and Martyred Rusalka, who has the better ability overall, but isn't Green Sun's Zenith fetchable. I used to run Spawning Pit a long time ago, but you basically have to draw into it (I'm not going to waste Enlightened Tutor or in) and I needed something more fetchable. I toyed with Reaper of Flight Moonsilver but activating delirium was a pain, and having to pay 5 mana on top of that made her too unplayable. if she either cost less (with a smaller body) mana or didn't need delirium, it might be a different story but as it stands she's just not good enough.

As for the number of sac outlets, I currently run 5 that don't need mana or have to tap, 3 that tap and 1 that needs mana. You don't need that many technically, but I've found it's a comfortable number. However I would recommend avoiding saturating your deck with sub-par sac outlets like Fanatical Devotion or Martyr's Cause. While these are "infinite" sac outlets, you need to add more pieces to make them viable and trying to assemble 5-6 card combos is not worth it. You're much better off running cards like Academy Rector or Sterling Grove which just act as tutors for your good sac outlets.

I'd be happy to have a look at your deck. It might take me a day or two to get around to it though, unfortuately I lead a bit of a busy life. But yeah, more than happy to.

enpc on Card advantage in Selesnya

7 years ago

I am looking to tweak my Saffi Eriksdotter deck to try and increase its card advantage. Currently I am looking to take out Twilight Shepherd and Cathars' Crusade for two new cards. One of these will most likely be Starved Rusalka or Martyred Rusalka however for the other slot I am considering more card advantage for the deck.

The cards I cam currently leaning towards are:

I would love to get people's opinions of the cards in regards to how well they perform (given this deck is designed to play pretty competitively) or if poeple have other recomendations, I would love to hear them.

Here is the deck for reference:


Just Stay Dead

Commander / EDH enpc

SCORE: 65 | 97 COMMENTS | 21933 VIEWS | IN 41 FOLDERS


RogueArtificer on Oloro - Spirits Tribal!

7 years ago

Sorting cards and came across Martyred Rusalka and it seems like it might be a good fit to stop huge monsters from attacking you.

Omeros on Why does this deck suck?! …

7 years ago

Looking more closely now for cards I would remove...

Sunforger. You only run 4 instants, so this doesn't have good targets. The +4 is nice right before a fling but it feels like you're losing out on half the card's value.

Martyred Rusalka seems weak without some way to produce token spam or creature recursion loops.

Greater Gargadon doesn't seem worth the wait and it's definitely not worth 10 mana to hard cast.

And here are cards you might like to add, although I'm not accounting for CMC balancing or exactly what to swap out for them...

Molten Primordial. It's fairly big and it steals up to 3 creatures.

Stalking Vengeance. Double your fling damage.

Malignus. Half their life. One-shot someone if you have Stalking Vengeance out.

Feldon of the Third Path. Can create tokens to fling again. Low CMC, too.

Gift of Immortality. Fling, then at end of turn creature is ready to fling again. If you have ways of untapping Brion at instant speed you could chain this each turn.

Flameshadow Conjuring. Fling the token, keep the creature card in play.