Ruinous Ultimatum

Sorcery

Destroy all nonland permanents your opponents control.

Legality

Format	Legality
1v1 Commander	Legal
Archenemy	Legal
Arena	Legal
Block Constructed	Legal
Canadian Highlander	Legal
Casual	Legal
Commander / EDH	Legal
Commander: Rule 0	Legal
Custom	Legal
Duel Commander	Legal
Freeform	Legal
Gladiator	Legal
Highlander	Legal
Historic	Legal
Historic Brawl	Legal
Legacy	Legal
Leviathan	Legal
Limited	Legal
Modern	Legal
Modern Beyond Horizons	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Pioneer	Legal
Planar Constructed	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (50)

JBTomero on Zurgo Smashes Face - [Updated Dec 19, 2025]

2 months ago

Optimator: Zurgo is not too bad at multiplayer (Commander focuses down one player, big fatties focus on another), the issue is I wanted to run Ruinous Ultimatum and gave it a shot for a few months, but the mana pips proved too difficult to pull off when so much of my ramp is colourless. A CMC 7 boardwipe in reality was CMC 10+ from all the dead mana that couldn't contribute. Thanks for the comment!

Optimator on Zurgo Smashes Face - [Updated Dec 19, 2025]

2 months ago

No Ruinous Ultimatum because it's a 1v1 deck primarily? Makes sense.

CommanderNeyo on The Ultimate Warriors (Updated)

4 months ago

I love Mardu! My favorite deck plays a lot like this one.

Below are some of my recommendations, but I would mostly recommend you check out the CommandZone on Youtube - they have a deckbuilding guide that is very good. Also, for some ideas on cards, you can check out EDHREC, which is a database for deckbuilding.

Anywho, here are some of my recommendations:

== ADD ==

Isshin, Two Heavens as One and Windcrag Siege double all your attack triggers.

Alesha, Who Smiles at Death and Terra, Herald of Hope if you face a lot of removal.

Swords to Plowshares, Damn, Blasphemous Act, and Ruinous Ultimatum for removal.

Boros Charm for protection.

Voice of Victory, Bone-Cairn Butcher, Infantry Shield, and Dalkovan Packbeasts for more Warrior tokens.

Hardened Tactician, Raiders' Spoils, Mindblade Render, Skullclamp, and Zurgo Stormrender for card draw.

Professional Face-Breaker for ramp and card advantage. Boros Signet, Orzhov Signet, Rakdos Signet, Talisman of Conviction, Talisman of Hierarchy, and Talisman of Indulgence for more ramp.

Shared Animosity, Fiery Emancipation, and City on Fire for buffs.

Reconnaissance to remove any creature your opponent blocks so it won't die, and Redoubled Stormsinger to double your tokens.

33 Lands is very low, especially since you have so little card draw and a high average cmc of 2.67. I recommend at least 38, if not 40 - you generally want to be playing a land every turn for the first 5 turns.

== CUT ==

Here are some cards I recommend cutting:

Aeronaut's Wings, Colossus Hammer, Greatsword of Tyr, Inquisitorial Rosette, Mardu Monument, Team Pennant, Amazing Alliance, Cartouche of Solidarity, Rally the Ranks, Shared Triumph, War Effort - Most of these provide modest buffs or require too much mana to use in one go. Most equipment are better in dedicated equipment builds, while Zurgo is generally more about going wide. If you do want to play equipment, I would recommend ones that provide utility (like Sword of the Animist, which you already have) or provide large buffs (like Blackblade Reforged). Cards that only buff your damage by 1 are generally underpowered.

Chromatic Lantern, Commander's Sphere - Your commander is 3-mana, so it is nice to have 2-mana ramp so you can still play your commander on curve.

Diabolic Tutor and Mastermind's Acquisition are a lot of mana for a tutor, and I would generally recommend cutting them.

Anywho, that's a lot, but let me know if any of it was helpful!

YamishiTheWickedOne on Edgar Markov: Dark Ambitions

6 months ago

I've been looking at lowering my mana curve lately, some power cards are absolutely worth the cost, but I've never been in a situation where I needed and could pay for Ruinous Ultimatum for example, so I swapped in Toxic Deluge. Ripper is a monster and Citadel wins games. I'm still testing New Blood but I'm more focused on consistency even as I shift more to an aristocrats combo build. As great as it is, a 2-color Boros enchant that you can't really ramp into any sooner than turn 2-3 feels a little clunky. I'm experimenting now with The Meathook Massacre and have been pleasantly surprised. Also many of my recent wins have been due to the combo of Vito or Sanguine Bond + Bloodthirsty Conqueror or Exquisite Blood. With a perfect hand, I had one game where I ramped out an instant win combo on turn 3.

OberstHati on Transylvania (Edgar Markov)

7 months ago

Nice 1, I took this as a base for Arena Brawl vampires, even lacking a solid Commander it’s rather effective,… I had to Chose Olivia, Opulent Outlaw as Commander for Color Identity and Flavor, Rally the Ranks as another cheap anthem, Sorin of House Markov  ^Flip for flavor and ping,…Cards that really have an impact even without the eminence spawned coven areBloodletter of Aclazotz, especially when on the Board with another Pearl, Roaming Throne. Banner of Kinship is absurd in your Build, Ruinous Ultimatum might come in Handy too, in a few Matches. Moogles' Valor might be fun too… Since you don’t run Vito or marauding blightpriest Bloodthirsty Conqueror would not raise the Deck to Bracket 4,… Just a few Thoughts, You made me want to build Vampires with this Deck instead of Orzhov Aristocrats, definite +1!

Optimator on Kill The Poor

7 months ago

Promise of Loyalty

Ruinous Ultimatum

Baron Bertram Graywater

Demand Answers

Palantir of Orthanc

Kellogg, Dangerous Mind

Kulrath Knight

Bedevil

Stroke of Midnight

Anguished Unmaking

Take the Bait

Fracture

Despark

Get Lost

Soul Shatter

Baleful Mastery

Ogrecorps on "Unbeatable" card combo, or so …

8 months ago

UPDATE: VICTORY!!

Here's the deck I used (warning, it is not great and I'm open to suggestions to improve it as a more general-purpose meme deck that strips out important things and leaves someone else to actually kill people in free-for-all format.) https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/18-06-25-SkD-grrr/?cb=1750236034

The story: 3 players, me with the meme deck, work friend with the "you cannot lose the game" mystery deck, and a third with a deck specifically filled with legendaries of as many types as he can make work.

My starting hand had Leyline of the Void and I kicked off hostilities with Bitter Ordeal and got to peruse through the "cannot lose" deck to see how it works. Key cards found: Herald of Eternal Dawn, Negate, Three Steps Ahead, Restricted Office / Lecture Hall, Virtue of Persistence. I took out one of the 4 Heralds. The legendaries deck built up nicely with about 6 or 7 big creatures with deathtouch (All-Out Assault) and flying and vigilance and lifelink and other such nonsense. This player normally likes to be fair (i.e. spread the damage around, not pick on anyone) when he feels like he's winning so I had to warn him off with the strongest arguments I could that I was absolutely not a threat to him, that I had built the deck specifically to counter the other player. Cannot Lose had no creatures out so Legendaries swung at him fully with enough to put him to -9 life. Looked like it was over already and then pop! Cannot Lose flashed out Herald of Eternal Dawn before combat damage was dealt, keeping him alive despite negative life.

Cannot Lose then quickly got out two lecture halls from Restricted Office / Lecture Hall, giving the herald and both lecture halls hexproof. Around here I realized a major weakness in my deck: it largely has to target something in the opponent's graveyard, making Leyline of the Void super not helpful. Happily, Cannot Lose Get Lostd it. Because nothing much was going to graveyards that I wanted to strip out, I built up a little supply of Extirpate and Surgical Extraction - this will be important later... Legendaries took about 6 turns and smashed Cannot Lose to about -30 life while enjoying all the lifelink that gave him.

It was at this point that Cannot Lose messaged me privately to say that he'd won, it was just going to take an hour. The next turn, he used Loran's Escape on his Herald and then used one of his Restricted Offices for a boardwipe. My defenses being so pathetic, were fine. Legendaries, however, got cleaned out, 7 or 8 big beasts in the graveyard... This left Cannot Lose as the only one on the table with any attacking power and a pair of Fountainports to slowly grow an army of fish with.

Somewhere in the excitement I'd stripped out all of his Get Lost, and Stock Up. I knew from searching his hand that he had a Negate still ready for something that might kill his Herald, the only thing keeping him alive. Then came the exchange I'm going to be hearing about all day today at work from Cannot Lose, the part where he's kicking himself for doing what he did: Legendaries brought out a planeswalker; Cannot Lose used Three Steps Ahead to counter it, putting a copy of one of his 2 counter spells in his graveyard. I targeted it with Surgical Extraction. He Negated. I surgical extracted his Three Steps and then Extirpated his Negate, successfully exiling all of his counterspells! He has already told me that he shouldn't have countered the planeswalker, that he should have just used fish from Fountainport to neutralize it.

And then Legendaries Ruinous Ultimatumd. Herald, hexproofs, and my two Wall of Vines all gone! Cannot Lose was at -30 something life and evaporated in a long silence followed by a drawn out frustrated groan. He'd nearly fought his way back and if only he could have had another Herald in hand to flash out or I hadn't stripped out his counterspells... He was also intimately familiar with Legendaries' deck because the two of them worked on it closely together so knew exactly how little strength he had left after all of those creatures got wiped with no serious options for bringing any back. Either way though, I still had 3 Sudden Spoilings in my library somewhere so chances were decent I'd get him killed for being in negative life sooner or later.

Thus began the long, slow final phase of the battle wherein I had only defensive creatures, and Legendaries had 40-something life but only one or two offensive options left in his deck which was down to about 27 cards to my 35ish. I used Liquimetal Coating and Splinter on one of his Plains, a generally useless move and one I probably should have saved for an actual threat but I was just happy Cannot Lose had lose'd. The end came when I fired off a kicked Sadistic Sacrament, ensuring that there wasn't going to be anything left to hurt me. Before I searched his deck, however, Legendaries capitulated and we called it there, official cause of death: inevitable milling out.

Crow_Umbra on Arixmathise the Disgraced - Mardu, …

9 months ago

I agree with DemonDragonJ on this one. I think you're close, but certain aspects can definitely be dialed in a bit more. Since you brought up the mana cost, another fairly restrictive and similarly costed card is Ruinous Ultimatum, which is also 1 mana more.

Arixmathise is pretty powerful in that:

• Between the haste & ETB, you may search up and put up to 6 land cards in your graveyard the turn that it enters, and then make your opponents do an equivalent amount of discard/sacrificing.

• The combo of keywords is pretty strong in that it's also a strongly statted commander that is inherently 1/3 of the way to lethal Voltron damage at baseline, stays Vigilant for defense (which is typically a weakness for Voltron without additional support), and helps stabilize decent chunks of life each time it connects for combat damage.

• The combo of creature types can also make it a pretty relevant option for certain commanders (Kaalia of the Vast), or typal shenanigans like Party.

I think to make the card more "fair", I'd recommend:

• Increase the mana by 1

• Maybe remove one or more of Haste, Lifelink, or Vigilance

• Change the attack trigger to a combat damage one, depending on how you tweak the addition of Haste.

• Maybe remove the ETB effect portion if you would prefer to keep more of the rest of everything intact.

• P/T could probably be taken down 1-2 points each respectively and still be decent. A 5 or 6 power aggro flyer with Vigilance with a high toughness is still nothing to scoff at.

• Introduce a drawback for yourself beyond the restrictive mana cost, such as losing life if your opponents sac or discard beyond a certain threshold.

I'm not saying to do all of the above, but I think those are all options in various combinations that could work to scale the card back a bit, but still keep it fairly powerful.

Edit: Ninja'd by Bookrook, but we're on similar wavelengths.