Arcbound Ravager

Artifact Creature — Beast

Sacrifice an artifact: Put a +1/+1 counter on this.

Modular 1 (This enters with a +1/+1 counter. When this dies, you may put this creature's +1/+1 counters on target artifact creature.)

Legality

Format	Legality
1v1 Commander	Legal
Archenemy	Legal
Arena	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
Planar Constructed	Legal
Planechase	Legal
PreDH	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Tiny Leaders	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (47)

Ogrecorps on "Unbeatable" card combo, or so …

4 days ago

Another waaaaaaaay late update just for kicks: Cannot Lose attempted to get revenge and it was the most hilariously fumbling vengeance I've ever been party to. I was basically gently tickled to death. This all happened months ago now and I'm sorry that I don't remember the details but here's the approximate series of events:

"Cannot Lose", aka Poofy_Poof, my coworker, said that he'd get me back for targeting him so exclusively and began to talk about card combos that would do terrible things to me. I was interested in seeing what diabolical shenanigans he came up with. Turns out it was "terrifying" stuff like... MILLING! and... CREATURE DAMAGE, oh nooooooooooooooo...!

I was honestly a little offended that he'd devise such mundane punishments for me. I mean, what the hell? I'd gone to all the work of starting a thread on here and crowdsourcing you all to help me defeat him - thanks again for that, I owe you all a high-five and handful of french fries - and extended myself in vulnerability during the game just to take him down, to crash his Cannot Lose deck I was willing to give it my all (within a card game) and all he was coming up with was the lamest ways to take revenge. I was disappointed. So much for being my nemesis, it's like he just didn't care enough...

So I did what I had to do: I publicly mocked his lack of creativity. I told coworkers who didn't care about Magic as much as they needed to know to then help them understand what a pathetic showing this was. I told them how I'd really made an effort and that what I was being threatened with - while surely deadly - was beneath the dignity of both Poofy Poof and myself and what's more, it was pathetic. Here he is, this striding god of MTG (within our group), a titan of complicated turns lasting 10 minutes while he talks non-stop about "tap this so that I can scry that so that I can add a counter to this other thing so that I can make copies of blah blah blah" and here he is in towering fury squeaking at me like a smol cat mad that dinner is late.

In all, it seems to have worked. I wanted to draw out some real fury and the inspired torment that could come with it and I really think I succeeded. He got quiet. A minute later he said in a mock angry voice that he'd devised a special torture for me, that he wasn't just going to beat me, he was going to make ME beat me. "I'm going to not only take your turns but I'm also going to take all of your things and I'm going to use them to kill you slowly. And then I'm going to take extra turns to slow things down even more so that I can make sure to take absolutely everything from you and when you don't have anything left, when I own your whole library and have played all of your own creatures against you, then when you've seen what it means to cross me, I'll smash you into the tiniest pieces I can using all of your favorite creatures who you never thought could do you harm." (paraphrasing, of course.)

Well hot damn, I was excited.

Come game day, I was ready. I was ready to made an example of. I'd anointed my body with the proper oils, said my goodbyes, and logged in to face my well-earned destruction.

What an absolute farce... I could not possibly be more entertained by such a mighty rage falling flat on its face. His deck? Worked perfectly, did just exactly what he threatened. He had like 30 mana out due to a ton of ramp and multiple "lands make more mana when tapped" things that I don't remember (don't worry, I'll tell him this tread exists and he'll likely come and provide specifics). He had big creatures and best of all, he did indeed take my stuff and my turns.

Here's the problem though: On a whim, I had chosen for the fight a deck that I knew wouldn't win but I like to play because someday, at some point, it's gotta win. I mean, statistically it's possible that at some point I'm going to face Poofy Poof and he's going to get mana starved or something and I'll FINALLY get to watch my Hangarback Walkers Doubling Season and Echoes of Eternity using Arcbound Ravager into a horrifying swarm of flying 1/1's (with haste thanks to Crashing Drawbridge). I mean, the math is there! Multiple Echoes trigger each other and Doubling Season triggers on those triggers as well as for the Walker's original counters and then again when the walkers explode and Doubling Seasons trigger each other too so just think about how glorious it would be! We had to make a whole calculator for it! I can't get into it right now but the exponential growth is DISGUSTING and I just want my Hangarback Walkers deck to work some day! (Hangarback Cromrars, btw)

So anyway, he's built up like an enraged hurricane with tornadoes for hands and my. deck. FLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOPS. Just absolutely fails to deliver anything useful at all. He takes my turn? All he can do is not play a land and not untap stuff. I have nothing. I have squat for mana, no creatures, expensive crap I can't do anything with... He tries again next time and it's only gotten worse. My had is bloated with crap-ola I couldn't be happier to see because his whole plan was to grab me by the arms and smack me in my own face to death as a humiliating punishment and show of absolute domination but I, effectively, was made of feathers so my own self beating was a pleasant afternoon breeze.

Okay, no problem, he thought. He'll still be able to do the other part, the part where he uses his absurd levels of mana to steal my whole deck and then play it and then HE'LL be the one to set the Hangarback swarm aloft and HE'LL be the one to kill me dead with my precious dream of a million damn flying 1/1's, muhahahahahaha!!!!

Only one problem: He was so eager to do it all in one turn that he literally took my whole damn library. All of it. Not one card left for me to draw on my turn. And he didn't have quite enough mana to pull the whole thing off. Sure, he got some Walkers down, and they were reasonably sized and he sure was gonna really stomp me good with my own precious babies buuuuuuuuuuuttttt....... he. just. took. too much. Instead of me dying dramatically, crushed by my own stolen dreams, I merely expired in the night, sleeping comfortably in my own bed. Full of life (literally 20), and unafraid because I had made peace with my destruction. Instead of him crashing a typhoon of my perverted hopes on me, I asphyxiated quietly on the CO2 of having been milled out. As I figuratively drifted deeper into a cozy sleep, I literally almost peed my pants laughing at the stupendous impotence of Poofy Poof the Destroyer and his epicly botched scheme for revenge. That day he learned that, like Bugs Bunny, I am divinely protected from harm by powers beyond his mighty reach. That day the Cosmic Jester made one more fool...

enraged on Perpetual Patterns of Proliferated Prosperity

3 months ago

Cool design of a new Commander! I feel like Arcbound Ravager would be a super powerful include. I also really like the Phyrexian creatures that let you phyrexianize a mana off your colored spells. Defiler of Dreams could save you mana and draw you cards, the white one makes tokens which is also super powerful!

Mortlocke on Spaghetti and Beatdowns

3 months ago

Balaam__,

I got my start with the game back in '01 and played type 2 til' Darksteel came and ruined everything. I still haven't forgiven Arcbound Ravager. I was there when the old magics were written and Commander was still a grassroots thing. It was my younger friends that sucked me into the format. If you ever want to jam out with a precon, i'm always down to play on Spelltable - when my little boy is down for sleep that is. When he was three he ate a magic card - i've never let him around cards I cared about since.

SaberTech on Pattern Recognition #366 - Sacrifice …

6 months ago

Sacrificing creatures as a deck strategy is now typically established in Aristocrat style decks, but what are some of the other prominent decks in MtG's history that highlighted the power of sacrificing creatures?

Some that come to mind for me are:

• Recurring Nightmare decks.
• Arcbound Ravager affinity decks.
• Decks that ran Skullclamp, like some goblin variants.

Are there any others that come to mind?

And from the old-school kitchen table, I'm going to give a quick nod to Breeding Pit for its noble work in helping to repeatedly sate Lord of the Pit's snack attacks back in the day.

Mortlocke on When and How Did EDH …

7 months ago

I agree with the sentiment that EDH/Commander is popular, but possibly doesn't fit - it is the most popular format by a wide margin. This feels the case anecdotally as from my observations the majority of products made by WOTC are marketed toward Commander players. But in terms of raw numbers, the best I could do was search various terms in google trends. Specifically, "mtg commander", "mtg modern", "mtg legacy", and "mtg standard".

MTG Trends 2004 - Present Show

If someone else has numbers to suggest otherwise, i'd love to see what they bring and discuss. For me, Commander became a thing around 2009 - 2010 as that's where I saw it start as a niche "grass roots" format. But it really started to pick up steam around 2011 when the first Commander decks were released. That's when I started to frequent LGSes to try and learn the game.

I can only speak for myself when it comes to why interest in standard was waning - having to lose tens if not hundreds of dollars because of a format rotation gets old after a period of time. When I was paying attention to standard (circa 2002) it was called "Type 2" and I was dealing with Affinity and the ol' Arcbound Ravager. That thing pretty much dominated the format and made games samey and downright boring sometimes. After that I took a break and picked the game back up when Llorywn dropped, but even then I only played draft.

Thinking about Commander it has everything going for it - all the good stuff of magic: expression of creativity, power (and the curation of it) and diversity minus all of the annoying problems such as meta (if we're excluding cEDH), set rotations, and budgetary constraints (remember: Proxying is Officially Endorsed by Wizards!). It was the professor of Tolarian Community College who opened my eyes to true potential of the format. Deck building can be so much more than cobbling together a pile of draft chaff, or a half baked Slivers deck that you can barely pilot - it can be a form of expression. The embodiment of your fantasy army of which you are the mastermind and your commander is your champion. Once that clicked for me I was hooked; fortunately and unfortunately I know I will be a life long player. Given how greedy Hasbro and by extension WOTC have been in recent years I've been working to try and balance my budget and make careful decisions on when to even think of buying.

Scion of Primal Hunter on Artifact Chucker (40$ Budget)

1 year ago

I've always been around this idea, although I'd add an Arcbound Ravager without ifs and buts.

If the opponent swipes the table, you can always make him eat all the artifacts in response and shoot it with Fling (Which I would put 4x instead of Rite of Consumption better an instant effect than sorcery).

BlueTorche on Gandalf the white Artifact Base

1 year ago

Your deck seems pretty fun to play with ! It doesn't seem really strong, but you can do some fun things with it.

I would just point two things about your deck : - As I said, your deck is fun. But some cards (Teferi's Protection, Rule of Law and Deafening Silence) aren't really fun to play against... Your friend may hate you by playing those cards. - You play in your deck some cards that say "Whenever you cast (...)" or "Sacrifice (...) : ..." (ex : Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle and Arcbound Ravager). I would just point that these abilities don't trigger twice, as the ability of Gandalf the White trigger only when the triggered ability says "Leaves the battlefield", "Enters the battlefield", "Dies" or "Is put into graveyard (from battlefield)" as said on the Gatherer page of the card(I guess, "Is exile (from the battlefield)" and "Is sacrifices" works too, but it has to be a triggered ability, not an activated ability). (Note that I'm not a judge, neither an expert in MTG rules, I may be incorrect on this point.) The cards I pointed aren't bad in the deck, I just wanted to point that they don't trigger twice.

I hope you'll have fun playing your deck !

DeinoStinkus on

1 year ago

Irenicus's Vile Duplication, Mirror Box and Vesuvan Duplimancy could allow you to copy your commander, and with an infinite artifact sacrifice machine like Arcbound Ravager, Grinding Station, or the like, you could easily go infinite. Plus, these cards fit decently into your gameplan.

I'd probably cut Trail of Evidence, since you only have seven instants/sorceries.