pie chart

Tempting Combo

Commander / EDH* WB (Orzhov)

GermanSpaceAce

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Mana (44)

Protec (5)

Removal (13)

Win (12)

Commander (1)

Commander: Ratadrabik of Urborg

Sac (12)

Ringbearer (14)

Ratadrabik's trigger really shouldn't combo so well with The Ring Tempts You.

Have Ratadrabik and a sacrifice outlet in play. Play a creature that either ETB or leaves/dies/sacrifices itself for The Ring Temps You. Make that creature your Ring-Bearer. It becomes Legendary as a result. Sacrifice it somehow. A Legendary creature just died, so Ratadrabik makes a copy. That copy ETB's or the trigger from leaves/dies/sacrifice resolves, Tempting You again and making the token Legendary. Repeat while gaining infinite life or dealing infinite damage/life loss.

It's possible to kill the table on turn 3 (Swamp+Sol Ring on 1, Swamp+Gollum Patient Plotter // Plains+Samwise the Stouthearted+Blood Artist OR Zulaport Cutthroat on 2, Land+Viscera Seer OR Carrion Feeder+Ratadrabik on 3. Using one of the cards that reduces the combo to 3 cards still requires Sol Ring and still requires 3 turns), though more often on turn 4-5. If disrupted, simply disrupt back with spot removal and wraths as you find the missing piece/get more mana to recast Rata.

This is a 4 card combo most of the time, but with the critical piece in the Command Zone and the others high in redundancy, the deck is startlingly consistent. Still not cEDH since there's no real way to fight through opponents' counterspells and not enough effective ways to stop their combos, but a solid 8.5-power just due to consistency.

A few cool tidbits:

  • Boromir sacrifices himself! If he's the ringbearer you draw, it's more like a 3-card combo with one piece in the command zone instead of 4-card.

  • Altar of Dementia also makes the combo 3-cards instead of 4, since it is a win condition as well as a sacrifice outlet (milling out your opponents so they lose in their draw steps).

  • Some of the sacrifice outlets are creatures that pump themselves, so they also kinda work as win conditions but not quite as effectively since EDH is typically a multiplayer experience.

  • It's best to enchant anything other than Ratadrabik with Fallen Ideal or Dark Privilege (but not the ringbearer, since that creature needs to be sacrificed) so that removal in response doesn't deprive you of the combo by sticking him back in the Command Zone. You may need to topdeck a missing piece, but at least you CAN do that rather than needing to topdeck multiple lands to get Rata back in play.

  • Infinite life is still basically a win even if the other players don't concede. There's a chance someone at a casual-level table finds an alternate win condition, but mostly you can draw into a "harder" combo finish with the time you gain from going to eleventy-billion life.

  • Multiple Nazgul out at once is hilarious. They can act as both ringbearers and win conditions since each one triggers their pump effect for the others, getting infinitely large as one gets sacrificed over and over.

  • If you have Ashnods or Phyrexian Altar as your sacrifice outlet, congratulations! You made infinite mana! This deck has no way to utilize that, but good job.

  • If you have Viscera Seer as your sacrifice outlet, congratulations! You have a convoluted and difficult-to-track method to stack your deck! More realistically, you can use the scry to find a win condition, put it on top of the deck, then draw it either next turn or with the ring-bearer's second Ring ability, looting it from the top of the deck when it attacks.

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98% Casual

Competitive