Ruxa, Patient Professor

Legendary Creature — Bear Druid

Whenever this enters the battlefield or attacks, return target creature card with no abilities from your graveyard to your hand.

Creatures you control with no abilities get +1/+1.

You may have creatures you control with no abilities assign their combat damage as though they weren't blocked.

Legality

Format	Legality
1v1 Commander	Legal
Archenemy	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
Oathbreaker	Legal
Planar Constructed	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (20)

legendofa on Meek’s Inheritance

3 months ago

The thing here is that as soon as a creature gains landwalk, it has an ability, so it can't get anything from Ruxa, Patient Professor, or Jasmine Boreal of the Seven, or Muraganda Petroglyphs, which are the biggest reasons to use vanilla creatures. If you want these bonuses to be usable together, they can't actually be granted abilities.

May I suggest rewarding casting vanilla creature spells, or giving them some benefit? Something like "Whenever a nontoken creature with no abilities enters, draw a card." or "Creature spells with no abilities cost {1} less." or something.

legendofa on Is this the end of …

3 months ago

Apologies for the clickbaity title, but this is a milestone in creature complexity. Right now, there's exactly one vanilla creature in Standard, and it's the very unorthodox Yargle and Multani. When March of the Machines rotates out next year, unless something unusual happens, that will be the first ever Standard season with no vanilla creatures.

Nobody really gets excited for another 2/2 for 2 mana or 3/6 for 4 or whatever, and French vanilla creatures still have lots of room for flavor text. Ankle Biter, Bolrac-Clan Basher, and Timberland Ancient show this pretty well.

https://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/679207540942356480/there-havent-been-any-vanilla-creatures-printed#notes

But vanilla creatures apparently aren't a fully essential part of the game, and complexity creep is absolutely a real thing. Bloomburrow doesn't appear to have any, and I'm skeptical for Duskmourn having any. If nothing else, this is going to drive Jasmine Boreal of the Seven and Ruxa, Patient Professor into near stasis. They won't be getting any new tools besides maybe token generators, and there are better support options for token strategies.

Is it worth keeping vanilla creatures around? Do they serve any role in the game anymore, or should French vanilla be the baseline going forward?

TijuanaBachelorParty on Vanilla is a Good Flavor

9 months ago

Thanks, glad you like the deck xram666.

I plan to keep the text boxes completely empty so that does restrict the use of cards like Ruxa, Patient Professor or Jasmine Boreal of the Seven. Perhaps someday we can get these effects on an artifact or enchantment!

xram666 on Vanilla is a Good Flavor

9 months ago

Really appreciate the effort to make playing magic not that complicate ;-). +1 from me.

I know it doesn't fit the flavor of the deck perfectly, but Ruxa, Patient Professor seems like an auto include in this type of strategy.

seshiro_of_the_orochi on the POWER of the Tree Frog

10 months ago

This looks super fun, great job! You have quite a few spells that target your stuff, so why not give Season of Growth a shot? Also, this seems like a great deck to include Rite of Consumption. And finally, for an unusual pick, Ruxa, Patient Professor has some serious synergy with your commander.

TheMeadiator on Yargle says size matters. *C*

1 year ago

Oh my gosh, Ruxa, Patient Professor is so good with this!! Terrifying. Any thought on damage doublers like Unnatural Growth? Given your set up, it's more than likely to be a one hit kill. Just a thought!

legendofa on Wide, Wider, Widest

2 years ago

These suggestions are my eyeball guesses and not any sort of optimization, but I would cut Ruxa, Patient Professor and either Access Denied or Mouth / Feed for two doublers.

For Ruxa, a lot of your tokens have incidental abilities like flying and reach, and it has no interaction with any nontoken creatures. Once something like Combine Chrysalis or Esix, Fractal Bloom comes out, it's a generic 4/4.

For the other one, this is conditional on how often you have {3}{U}{U} available to counter a spell vs. how often you have 3+ creatures with power 3 or greater, and whether countering is more important than drawing in this deck.

Artizan81 on Does Ruxa work with instant …

3 years ago

Thank you very much.

This confirms the idea I had of it. It's a good point for Ring of Xathrid; as well to protect a vanilla creature as to protect Ruxa, Patient Professor