The Do Over Project: Ruhan Of The Fomori

Happy New Year everyone, and welcome to what promises to be an exciting year for the best Magic format ever. The format is now over a decade old, has
countless players, and has provided endless enjoyment for a legion of fans. Here’s hoping that the next ten are even better.

A few weeks back, I mentioned The Do Over Project. I’m going to take each
of my 32 existing decks and rebuild them with the same commander, using none of the same cards (besides basic lands). The idea is to take the deck in a new
direction unlike its original. Once I start putting together decks, folks I play with won’t know until after the first few cards which version I’m playing.
It should lead to some interesting times.

Speaking of the original Ruhan deck, Soulfire Grand Master, previewed in Gavin Verhey’s column earlier this week, is going
into that deck. Can’t wait to play Blasphemous Act with it.

The first deck I’ve chosen to Do Over is Ruhan, “You Did This to Yourself,” easily one of my favorite decks to play because it always creates crazy
situations. I want to reverse the tenor of the deck-Ruhan is definitely doing this to you. I want it to be aggressive, taking a cue from its Boros
components while still leveraging the trickiness of blue. I want to work in several mechanics, most notably battle cry and inspired, which means that I’ll
need ways to create extra creatures for attacking and ways to tap and untap that don’t involve attacking. Opposition is definitely a card here.

The major challenge for this deck is the manabase. Because of its Jeskai colors, it doesn’t mana ramp all that well. The original is using many of the mana
rocks and land fetchers like Solemn Simulacrum and Burnished Hart, so I’ll have to be creative and dig the depths to get the number of lands that I want
and need. It may be that card draw becomes the ramp-keeping a full hand will most likely ensure at least a land drop per turn. This creates an incentive to
keep mana costs low and use the most cost-efficient spells I can. We’ll obviously use some mana rocks to help get there.

Ruhan of the Fomori

Sheldon Menery

Test deck on 01-01-2015

Commander

Creatures (28)

Planeswalkers (4)

Lands (37)

Let’s break down the cards one by one.

Creatures

Arbiter of the Ideal: Just attacking with this is good enough; I don’t need Opposition to make this good. There are plenty of other things that will
require blocking (Ruhan being one of them) that this may get through a fair amount.

Balefire Liege: Making most of my creatures larger and tougher plus giving me the chance to gain a little life or dome players is just fine with me.

Boldwyr Intimidator: This one is just here so we can once in a while get some laughs about Rith being a coward.

Felhide Spiritbinder: I’ve tried cramming this into decks and it hasn’t worked out. Hopefully this is the right one for it.

Firemane Avenger: Getting to Lightning Helix something for doing what I’m doing anyway is all upside.

Frontline Medic: I’m a big fan of my creatures being indestructible, even for short periods of time. And you know someone is going to forget onboard tricks
and Genesis Wave for everything at some point.

Frost Titan: People sometimes forget that Frost Titan taps permanents, not just creatures. There is never a dearth of targets for its ability.

God-Favored General: Because the mana is going to be so tight in this deck, we’ll see if this actually spits out enough tokens to be worth it. With this,
Arbiter of the Ideal, and Heliod, I imagine a scenario where someone gains a zillion life from Fracturing Gust.

Hallowed Spiritkeeper: I’m sure I’ll have creatures dying as someone snaps off a game-saving Wrath of God, so recovering even a little bit makes some
sense. Too bad I don’t get them for all the tokens as well.

Hellrider: If creatures attack, it makes sense for them to deal extra damage. I should probably play Storm Herd for the one in a million chances it works.

Hero of Bladehold: There’s always that one person open to attacks, and if not, the tap mechanics should help.

Hero of Oxid Ridge: Obviously, attacking with both heroes is the call.

Knight Of The White Orchid: One of the few ramp spells in the whole deck, unless I’m going first, this will always pay dividends.

Knight-Captain of Eos: He brings friends, and there are plenty of other things in the deck that create soldiers. The only downside is a U/W/x mage being
able to Clone and use it.

Legion Loyalist: This card should be a thing in multiple other decks. At least in my local environment, most blocking is done with tokens.

Requiem Angel: Notice that the card says non-spirit, so that means when soldier tokens die, I get spirits.

Satyr Nyx-Smith: Like with God-Favored General, we’ll see if the mana is actually there in order to take advantage of it. The card makes me wonder if
Lightning Coils might be a choice for the deck.

Sphinx’s Disciple: It either attacks or becomes tapped with Opposition. It seems a little spendy, but we’ll see.

Suture Priest: With all these creatures coming into play, it seems like a no-brainer. Getting to drain other people is just gravy.

Twilight Drover: This would also combo with that Lightning Coils. It doesn’t have any native evasion, but it will frequently be large enough to not need
it.

Weathered Wayfarer: At least one opponent will always control more lands that I do. It’s the way of Ruhan.

Legendary Creatures

Avacyn, Angel of Hope: I need to take great risks for this deck to be able to do anything, so mitigating one of those risks seems like a good idea. Again,
there’s the downside of the blue mage copying it, but you can’t stop playing good creatures just because someone else might clone them.

Aurelia, the Warleader: I considered for a short period of time some silly Aurelia, Hellkite Charger, Sword of Feast and Famine nonsense, but decided that
while multiple attack steps are fun, infinite attack steps are boring.

Heliod, God Of The Sun: It’s lovely that Heliod can create tokens, but his primary duty is giving my creatures vigilance so that I can attack with them and
still use them to Opposition creatures out of the way.

Medomai the Ageless: Medomai was in a deck that it didn’t make any sense to be in (Lavinia Blinks), so it came out. It’s a roundabout way of getting an
extra combat phase.

Odric, Master Tactician: Odric combines with Boros Battleshaper for me to change attack steps to suit my needs. Should have probably also tried to find
room for Master Warcraft and get the full set.

Tajic, Blade Of The Legion: Tajic is a complete bro. He battles and is always around afterward.

Artifacts

Azorius Cluestone, Boros Cluestone , Izzet Cluestone: I went with the Cluestones as one of the rocks because the original deck isn’t playing them, and when
it’s late enough in the game that I don’t need them, I can draw cards. Pretty simple stuff.

Bident of Thassa: Since I’m doing so much attacking, drawing cards off of them makes sense. The obvious problem is if I can’t attack, some of my card draw
is also shot in the foot.

Chronatog Totem, Forysian Totem, Thunder Totem: I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anyone play the totems in the format, so they’re worth at least a few style
points.

Eldrazi Monument: Once again, indestructible forms some of the necessary backbone of the deck. I figure that there will be more than enough tokens around,
so sacrifice one each turn.

Elixir of Immortality: This was a last slot throw-in to help recycle my graveyard. I considered Rest in Peace for this slot, but realized that it shuts off
some of my “dies” triggers.

Fellwar Stone: A cheaper rock which was in the original draft of the original Ruhan deck but made its way out when cooler cards came along.

Sword of Body and Mind: There are downsides to milling people. You know that someone is playing some kind of reanimation, meaning this helps them instead
of hurting. It still makes me think about Rest in Peace.

Enchantments

Assemble the Legion: If it stays around, it will indeed assemble a legion.

Coastal Piracy: Having legions means drawing cards, which is always special.

Field of Souls: Sometimes airs with Requiem Angel for double the tokens.

Goblin Assault: Legion Loyalist is the only other goblin in the deck, so I’m not worried about suiciding my army into anything. Like Assemble the Legion,
it gives me something for no cost beyond the original casting of the spell. I like that a great deal since it frees up mana to do other stuff with.

Goblin Bombardment: When someone board wipes because I don’t have indestructible, they will pay.

Opposition: You are very unlikely to see me tap too many lands with this. Maybe one of the crazy ones, like Cabal Coffers or Gaea’s Cradle
(circumstantially), but other than that, it’s there to help me dominate combats.

Spirit Bonds: There are multiple things going on with this card, not the least of which being its low casting cost, leaving mana available for activations.

True Conviction: While it may not make the Top 50 of Cards You Can’t Complain About When Someone Blows Them Up (trademark pending), you can’t complain when
someone blows up this thing.

Instants

Blustersquall: No, it’s not Cryptic Command, but then what is?

Comeuppance: It wasn’t part of some nefarious plot, but I never managed to actually put this into “You Did This to Yourself.” So here it is.

Dismantling Blow: Everyone needs a little enchantment or artifact destruction; drawing cards with it is chicken dinner.

Faith’s Reward: A little insurance against the inevitable. It will mostly be used for creatures and the inevitable Damnation, but that might also be a
Planar Cleansing, so I like it a little better than Ghostway.

Pollen Lullaby: Same mana cost as Dawn Charm for a potential game-winner. Who uses the other two modes on Dawn Charm anyway?

Rootborn Defenses: I feel a little squicky playing it in Jeskai because it has a Selesnya stamp on it, but I’ll get over that the first time it saves my
team.

Planeswalkers

Elspeth Tirel: Elspeth’s love for tokens is well-known. She keeps making them and making them, which is just fine by me.

Elspeth, Knight-Errant: This Elspeth can make taking a hit from Ruhan a little scarier, make some tokens, and every once in a while, get the emblem.

Elspeth, Sun’s Champion: Playing three planeswalkers with the same name might occasionally be awkward, but at least with the new (I guess they’re not all
that new any more) planeswalker rules, there are tricks to be performed.

Teferi, Temporal Archmage: I’m mostly looking to use the -1 ability in concert with Opposition. I doubt that I’ll ever have the chance to make the emblem
or really need to.

Sorceries

Archangel’s Light: At eight mana, I could play Insurrection, but that’s so been there/done that. I play this in my Phelddagrif deck, and it always gains
piles of life.

Decree of Justice: Between this and White Sun’s Zenith, I chose this because it creates soldiers (for use with Knight-Captain), and it draws a card.

Kirtar’s Wrath: Old-schooling it a little here, I just want to be able to restart a little ahead of everyone.

Martial Coup: Ditto, only replace a little with a lot.

Phyrexian Rebirth: I wanted all my wraths to make creatures in their wake. I’m not in love with this, but it will occasionally churn out something immense
that will actually last more than one trip around the table.

Ruination: If your manabase is greedy, Ruhan is coming for you. Also wanted to play Back to Basics, but there just wasn’t room.

Vandalblast: I wanted artifact destruction while being able to keep mine on the table. People already don’t play Shatterstorm enough, and this is well
worth the one additional mana.

The two cards I think I miss most here (because they’re in the original) are Blind Obedience and Sun Titan. Blind Obedience works with the tap theme. The
deck really has no recursion except in big sweeping forms, and Sun Titan would make lots more chicanery possible. This was a fun and challenging build. I
look forward to taking more shots on this project with my other decks.

If I do another Ruhan deck someday, it’ll be “You Did This to the Other Guy.” The deck will be full of copy and steal effects, and the creatures will
attack someone other than the owner of whatever they copied.

Every time that I build a new deck for the Do Over Project, I’ll list the original deck in the spot normally reserved for Decks Without Comment. Enjoy the
comparison.

Ruhan of the Fomori: You Did This To Yourself