Treasured Finds: Ruthless Deathfang

Welcome back to Treasured Finds, a place to appreciate sacrifice in Commander

I have a confession to make: I’m a griefer. Given my druthers my preferred style of play is to drag out the game and put the screws to my opponent(s). I grew up in an era where breaking “negative” symmetry was a viable path to victory. This can be seen in one of my favorite cards of all time: Grave Pact. In a two player game this is merely annoying but extrapolate it to a game with four people and this card becomes an absolute house.

It also is not the kind of card everyone wants to play against.

Part of any good pregame discussion is understanding the kind of game people want to be playing. Grave Pact can absolutely wreck certain strategies and if the goal of Commander is to play the game then you want everyone to be able to play. But what does this mean when your preferred play style can, in many ways, make the game miserable for everyone else at the table?

What does it mean to be a griefer? For me it is part of playing symmetrical effects but it is also about turning a downside into an upside. Look at Bottomless Pit – this card says that everyone has to discard at random, but if you build your deck to take advantage of this “downside” with cards like The Raven Man and Bone Miser allows you to break the symmetry. That’s part of the allure of this style of play – it is the deckbuilding challenge in turning something bad on its ear.

There is something to be said for running answers. This is not the usual refrain of “run more removal” but rather at any table there can be a reasonable expectation that someone will have a board wipe or graveyard hate or some other piece of interaction in their deck to handle whatever the threat might be. At the same time cards with such asymmetrical impact as Grave Pact can often generate an overwhelming amount of value before being handled which can leave it all over except for the actual winning.

All this taken together that is all well and good for me as the grifer. But Commander is not solitaire so that leaves two options.

The first is to put out the call for other folks who are okay with this style of play. High power, no holds barred but a step below competitive Commander is my idealized style of play a majority of the time. And I hope one day I can find a group where this type of game doesn’t require a pregame discussion. But these days a lot of the games I play are in my friendly local game store with a wide array of opponents.

So that means moderating myself. In it of itself this is not a bad thing. Showing restraint and consideration for the group experience is not only being a good opponent and partner, but it’s also a good way to be a human. And now we get back to the card at he top of this post.

Ruthless Deathfang is no Grave Pact. It is not a global effect and as such can be used to help play in the political realm. It also does not trigger off of any creature death but rather exclusively on sacrifice. The result is a card that provides a reasonable approximation of my desired play style while not being overly oppressive. It also adds another wrinkle to the restriction which can easily be overcome with sacrifice outlets or other cards that force you to send things to the graveyard in a way that would set the ‘Fang off. As for me, I’m excited to give Ruthless Deathfang a try in my Araumi of the Dead Tide deck.

You can see my current, pre-Deathfang list here. Encore forces a sacrifice which gives me plenty of opportunity to point the Ruthlessness at different players. If the Dragon ever hits the bin I get to bring back three* copies which can potentially yield nine Edicts. And I think that’s just nifty.

Commander is a collective experience and even though I like making my opponent’s miserable I want them to enjoy the game. As long as I’m playing in an open setting it means I have to do a good amount of self-moderating, even if it means running an objectively less powerful card for the sake of the game. Until next time, may you only have good grief.

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