Legends Legends - Ramses Overdark
Ramses Overdark by Richard Kane Ferguson
Welcome back to Legends Legends, our weekly column exploring the dark and dank depths of 1994's Legends set and its original run of 55 legendary creatures! This week, we're taking a look at a Ramses Overdark Commander deck based around enchanting our opponents' creatures, then blowing them up. It's a simple one-two punch that's guaranteed to keep the board clear!
General Thoughts
Ramses Overdark is the snivelling Starscream to Nicol Bolas' Megatron. He willfully misinterprets Bolas' commands to further expand his own influence in Madara on Dominaria. Despite commanding his own army of minions, like Boris Devilboon, Ramses sought to usurp Bolas, betray the kentsu and Tetsuo, and rule Madara for himself. Eventually, he achieved this, but was subsequently cut down by Tetsuo, who absorbed his powers to use against Bolas. If you haven't read any of the Legends Cycle novels, I really recommend them; it's got those over-the-top fantasy plots that 90s Magic: The Gathering demanded.
Mechanically, Ramses Overdark is a six-mana 4/3 with the ability to tap and destroy any target enchanted creature. Built-in removal means Ramses is great at controlling the board, but it will also draw a ton of removal himself once your opponents catch on. Here, we'll be using the cheapest and most easily recurrable enchantments to keep our opponents' boards clear of blockers, and then swing in for damage with either their own creatures, or Ramses himself. Alternatively, we have a couple combos we can dig out to end the game once the board has been locked down.
Auras: The Cheap and the Free
Auras form the backbone of this deck. We don't want to waste valuable mana we could use to cast our expensive commander on keeping Auras on the field, so we're focusing on cheap, one-mana Auras and Auras that can recur themselves to the field. We'll be destroying those creatures as soon as we enchant them, so we'll need new enchantments constantly.
Nurgle's Rot is one of my new favorite Auras, and it slots right into a Ramses deck. Vampiric Link is another fun cheap card you can cast on an opponent's creature to make sure you never lose life from it again. Well, technically you'll lose that life, but you'll gain it right back from the anti-lifelink that effect creates.
Private Research and Betrayal make great early-game enchantments for our opponents' mana dorks, turning those ramp creatures into value engines for us!
Several of our Auras can return themselves to the field or to our hands once they're destroyed. Screams from Within is probably our best use since it'll return itself without any additional mana investment, and it has a negative effect on its target. Dragon Wings and Dragon Shadow are two others that you can use offensively on your opponents' creatures as they come into play, tapping to destroy them with Ramses as soon as your Aura sticks to them.
Ghoulish Impetus is another great offensive Aura: goading your foes into each other is the best way to get them to forget about you, so Psychic Impetus is also here.
There are three enchantments that are meant for Ramses Overdark himself (or Fatestitcher; we'll get to that). Crab Umbra, Freed from the Real, and Pemmin's Aura are all essential untappers to get multiple activations out of our commander per turn. Ramses' effect is strong, but only if we can destroy more than one creature per turn. Otherwise, he's just a six-mana Murder.
Speaking of destroying creatures, we have some wonky artifact removal in the form of Ensoul Artifact to change those pesky Lightning Greaves into a 5/5 creature that Ramses can immediately assassinate.
Finally, one of the best new cards for a Ramses Overdark Commander deck is Asinine Antics. For the low, low price of four mana, we can enchant every single one of our opponents' creatures, Humble-ing them at the same time as we prepare to destroy any of them with more threatening effects.
Enchantments: Reanimators
This Ramses Overdark deck doesn't run a lot of its own threats. Instead, we'll be using our opponents' dead creatures against them. Ramses' ability to destroy any enchanted creature instantly means we can use cards, like False Demise, Fool's Demise, and Unholy Indenture, to instantly steal a creature and get its ETB effect if it had one.
Grave Betrayal is our big top-end for this deck. Dropping this big enchantment guarantees we'll steal every one of the cards Ramses destroys, plus any other deaths from board wipes or combat.
Besides this, we've got Animate Dead to pull something cool that we missed from a 'yard, and Rise of the Dark Realms to obliterate the board in the end game.
Ramses' Minions
A handful of creatures act as support and synergy for Ramses Overdark.
A few classic Constellation creatures are here, namely Agent of Erebos (our best Bojuka Bog) and Grim Guardian (effectively our Corpse Knight). Doomwake Giant is some of the best anti-token tech available to Ramses, and Demon of Fate's Design is our only source of recursion besides Skull of Orm.
[elWicked Visitor[/el] works as our Blood Artist, while Hateful Eidolon and Ashiok's Reaper keep the value engine rolling. Besides that, we've got Warehouse Tabby for a fun combo with Screams from Within.
Willbreaker is one of my favorite choices for this deck, as it'll steal any of our opponents' creatures whenever we hit it with an enchantment. This gets even better when you can flash in your cheap Auras with Rootwater Matriarch, and even better when you hit them with an Unholy Indenture and get them again after they die.
Combos and Ending the Game
Destroying all of our opponents' creatures is fine and all, but how do we actually end the game with Ramses Overdark?
Rise of the Dark Realms gets exponentially better the more creatures we kill, especially if we can hit those big Utvara Hellkites and Wurmcoil Engines with it.
We have two combos we can use to go infinite. The first involves Warehouse Tabby and Screams from Within, which can generate infinite Rat tokens for us.
The second uses Iridescent Drake and Altar of Dementia to mill out our opponents instantly.
Finally, remember that once Ramses has targeted an enchanted creature and put his ability on the stack, you can use Aura Finesse and Crown of the Ages to instantly move that Aura to another creature, marking another target for another assassination.
Mana Base
Blue and black aren't known for their ability to ramp, so even though we're running only 36 lands, a significant portion of this deck is artifact ramp. Ramses Overdark is an expensive commander, and we really need him on the field for the deck to pop off.
The typical suite of Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, Dimir Signet, and Talisman of Dominance are here, but our notable mana rock is Patriar's Seal, which we'll use to as another source of untapping for Ramses. We're also running both Solemn Simulacrum and Burnished Hart (which both are fair targets for our False Demise in a pinch).
Budget Options
All told, this Ramses Overdark Commander deck rounds out to about $250. That's including the roughly $50 for a copy of Ramses himself (sorry, no Chronicles reprint of this one). That's about the average deck price when you consider a deck built up over the course of several months, but let's take a look at some expensive cards to cut for the burgeoning Commander player.
Our two most expensive cards, besides Ramses, are Minamo, School at Water's Edge and Damnation. Minamo is good to have an extra source of untapping, and Damnation is the classic board wipe for black decks, but they can be replaced with Kelpie Guide and In Garruk's Wake, respectively, without losing much value to the deck overall.
Ramses Overdark Decklist
Wrap Up
With the release of the Assassin's Creed set right around the corner, I thought it was high time we paid our respects to the original assassin lord, Ramses Overdark. While this Ramses deck focuses on enchanting our opponents' creatures and then destroying or stealing them, there are countless ways you could build around Ramses. By virtue of being Dimir-aligned, Ramses has the potential for any number of broken Dimir builds. Maybe a mill deck built around casting Fraying Sanity and Curse of the Bloody Tome? Or what about a full-on Dimir Curses deck where we run out Curse of Misfortunes as quickly as possible? Let me know what you think in the comments!
Thanks for reading! Check back next week for another exciting installment of Legends Legends!
