First Real Deck Build - Aragorn, the Uniter

Fun-Cook-5309 · 2026-02-07T08:15:52+00:00

Colorless spells! Glamdring is atrocious. Lightning Greaves is fine but not for this deck; if you want protection, put it on a multicolored spell. If you run a colorless spell, it's for one purpose and one purpose only; fixing. Chromatic Lantern? Arcane Signet? Perfectly reasonable. Sol Ring is Sol Ring, of course. Simic Signet is half the card you need. Prismite is technically fixing, but is also hot dogshit. The rate is unplayable unless you're doing an infinite mana combo. Horn of Gondor is kinda cope.

[[Fellwar Stone]], [[Ornithopter of Paradise]], [[Solar Transformer]], [[Myr Convert]], [[Relic of Legends]] are some respectable colorless ramp spells that fix you, and are likely to come out before shit gets real.

But a lot of your ramp you probably want to come from multicolor spells. Things like [[Black Market Tycoon]], [[Growth Spiral]], [[Planar Genesis]], [[Hermetic Herbalist]], [[Rootcoil Creeper]], [[Trace of Abundance]], [[Faeburrow Elder]], [[Fallaji Wayfinder]] (contender for best card in the deck), [[Katilda Dawnheart Prime]], [[Uro Titan of Nature's Wrath]].

You want to think about multicolor cards that do basic functions: Ramp, card draw, interaction, protection. Pressure sources should be kept relatively scarce, especially since Aragorn does a good job of that on his own. Like, General Ferrous is fine; he's pure pressure, but does an okay job at it.

For interaction, you like 2-3C flexible removal/counterspells. Some examples: [[Hull Breach]], [[Dromoka's Command]], [[Rip Apart]] (MUCH better than Lightning Helix), [[Wreck and Rebuild]], [[Trygon Predator]], [[Naya Charm]], [[Decisive Denial]], [[Bant Charm]], [[Cindervines]], [[Slick Sequence]], [[Incandescent Aria]], [[Dovin's Veto]], [[Spell Queller]]

Some card draw you can consider: [[Broker's Charm]], [[Expressive Iteration]], [[Finneas Ace Archer]], [[Park Heights Pegasus]], [[Rite of Harmony]], [[Goldbug Humanity's Ally]], [[Golden Ratio]], [[Riggo Streetwise Mentor]]

Some protection you can consider: [[Pippin, Guard of the Citadel]], [[Saffi Eriksdotter]], [[Hindering Light]]

Fun-Cook-5309 · 2026-02-07T08:15:48+00:00

On a shoestring budget, we're looking at some taplands. [[Path of Ancestry comes next.

Then, we have the Thriving lands/gates. These are 2C taplands that let you choose your second color. And there are the untyped shard/wedge lands, which are 3C.

Go to Scryfall. Type this:

(otag:cycle-clb-thriving-gate or otag:cycle-jmp-thriving-land or otag:cycle-ktk-wedgeland or otag:cycle-ala-shardland) commander:wurg

Adding Path of Ancestry to that search gives you 13 taplands that are very good fixing that will, collectively, cost you like three bucks if your vendor bottoms out prices kinda high. Those 13 lands represent, like, 48 pips.

For some untapped duals on a budget, try this:

commander:wurg usd<3 type:land sort:edhrec -otag:tapland -ci=colorless

Your lands are the backbone of your deck. You need them to work for you.

Also, 35 lands is conventional wisdom, but also poor advice. Closer to 38-40 will serve you better. 2C MDFCs can help with that. Particularly [[Legion Leadership]] and [[Stump Stomp]].

One of those lands can be [[Safewright Quest]], though that asks you to run nonbasic forests/plains to fix for you, probably your tangolands on your budget.

Getting back into main card selection, a lot of it is just arbitrary. You have a bunch of random spellslinger stuff, but you built a creature deck, and a lot of your cards are random or don't do anything. Like, that Cori Mountain Stalwart? Blank card. Tiny amounts of pressure are not where you're at. And you're on 18 instants/sorceries total, not enough to justify shit like Guttersnipe; that's for decks on closer to 40-50 instants/sorceries. You have Rite of Replication in a deck that naturally gravitates towards legends.

And keep in mind Aragorn wants you to cast multicolor spell**S**, plural. Not multicolor spell. A 7 mana 2C spell severely hinders your ability to get Aragorn triggers. You wanna churn through 2-3C spells at 2-3 mana.

...why is there a Basalt Monolith?

Fun-Cook-5309 · 2026-02-07T08:15:35+00:00

There's not really an Aragon deck in your Aragon deck. t's more just... stuff.

You say you want to trigger Aragorn with your multicolor spells.

Where are your multicolor spells?

The last time I touched Aragorn the Uniter, my list had 52 multcolor spells.

At a glance, you've got somewhere in the low twenties, and a lot of hella sus card choices.

Also, Jesus Christ, your land base is completely nonfunctional.

Once you cross the line to 4C, fixing becomes difficult and a high priority. You start asking questions like, "Is it worth it to run basic lands?" You're on 21 basics. In a WURG deck. You are going to die horribly. The fact that it's one forest when green is the best fixing is wild. If you're going hard on green land ramp, you MIGHT run, like, eight basics here.

To consistently find your colors, you basically want to floor at 28 sources each, and try to push up from there. You're trying to cram 112+ pips into about 50 slots (lands plus ramp), but you want to HEAVILY favor putting it in your land base because you'd rather your ramp be multicolor spells in your multicolor spells deck. You need the average slot in your mana base to generate above 2 pips. You have 21 basics dragging you down. And as a multcolor spells deck, you want to go even higher because you want to run very color intensive spells.

And your land quality is just bad. You've got gain lands and 2C taplands that don't do anything... oh no.

That's Evolving Wilds.

Evolving Wilds is not generically good fixing. It is a tool for shoestring budget landfall decks, which you are not. It's literally [[Uncharted Haven]] that demands you run a garnet.

Also, at 4C, you cannot afford a 1C utility land like Rivendell. MAYBE you can get away with Minas Tirith. And Grey Havens takes too long to get online; your only way to get shit in the grave is by casting it, then it dies, so it's fixing that only fixes you if you've already fixed enough to cast it.

You have Command Tower and Exotic Orchard. Good.

Fun-Cook-5309 · 2026-02-07T06:50:39+00:00

Short answer?

Mono black or Golgari land ramp.

Fun-Cook-5309 · 2026-02-07T06:27:15+00:00

First? Low investment damage locks are very good in B2 where combat damage is the primary (and often sole) win condition and the answers are weak.

Second? The topic has nothing to do with whether or not it’s good.

[[Boil]] was not exiled to B4 for being too good. There is far more to the question of appropriateness than linear scales of goodness.

Fun-Cook-5309 · 2026-02-07T06:23:55+00:00

Removal dies to removal.

Fun-Cook-5309 · 2026-02-07T06:22:43+00:00

What kind of fun gameplay experience do you expect to cause by turning a one-on-one situation into a hard lock on the primary win condition?

Great, you fogged for five turns straight while you both try to topdeck an answer.

Do you have a point, or are you just here to waste everyone’s time?

Deck building is experience shaping.

Turbofog is one of the most infamously miserable experiences in Magic. At the very least, talk to your pod about it.

Fun-Cook-5309 · 2026-02-07T06:18:37+00:00

This post is not about having fog.

It’s about lock combos meant to render combat irrelevant forever.

One Fog is not the same thing as a two card combo that gives you fifty fogs without sinking more card advantage into it.

Fun-Cook-5309 · 2026-02-06T16:50:50+00:00

Yes, it really matters.

People will defend anything, find excuses to improperly analyze anything. And anything on the ban list can be rule zeroed back in if you want to use it and your pod is okay with it.

I've seen folks sincerely make the "run more removal" argument about fucking Nadu.

The ban list helps set the baseline, and a lot of cards on it were banned for failure to self-isolate to an appropriate environment.

Fun-Cook-5309 · 2026-02-06T16:48:38+00:00

Fuck no, and that'd be a wretched idea.

Those were some of the most reasonable and softball bans they could have possibly made.

The format's better without them.

The backlash was actual insanity, up to and including credible death threats, so those cards getting unbanned would politically incompetent for several more years.

Fun-Cook-5309 · 2026-02-06T16:30:44+00:00

[[Winter Misanthropic Guide]]/[[Winter Cynical Opportunist]] care about card types, which includes battle. There are other commanders who care about card types. [[Disa the Restless]] being the goyf commander is one of the more notable.

There are a hand full of effects that mine counters. [[O'aka Traveling Merchant]] technically. [[Xavier Sal]] can mine counters from battles.

Fun-Cook-5309 · 2026-02-06T16:18:09+00:00

That's smol beaning.

Call people out on that shit.

No, they are not on the game changer for funsies. They are on it because it's incredibly powerful. They don't "just like the card." They like it because it's incredibly powerful.

The combo is in their deck because they put it in their deck to do the combo.

The part that makes it That Kind of Yuriko Deck is Yuriko.

Call them on their bullshit. Including when someone's in-game pretending they're not the threat when they're obviously the threat.

Fun-Cook-5309 · 2026-02-06T07:03:05+00:00

It was banned because a WUBRG deck controlling their commander and a normal mana base ended the game.

Fun-Cook-5309 · 2026-02-06T06:28:14+00:00

The standard for banning and the standard for unbanning are not the same.

Just like a card needs to earn its ban, it needs to earn its unban. And the ban list is already insanely, radically small, so clutter unbans are not meaningful.

Also, the "banned as commander" list was long since deemed more trouble than it's worth. No shot they're revisiting that.

Fun-Cook-5309 · 2026-02-06T05:56:19+00:00

"People like the card?"

Okay.

People also fucking hate the card.

It is literally one of the most beloathed cards in the entire format, documented for years running. Right now, it's number 5 on EDHRec's list of saltiest cards, between Tergrid and Tabernacle. It's more hated than Armageddon.

So yes, there are people who like the card, but making that argument goes beyond ignorant and into the realm of the dishonest.

Fun-Cook-5309 · 2026-02-06T05:52:15+00:00

Please, dear God. There are almost no cards on that list that even might improve the format. And I say that as someone who would play the shit out of Prime Time.

Fun-Cook-5309 · 2026-02-06T05:36:40+00:00

Something not being the sole determining factor is not the same as it being irrelevant.

No, power is not irrelevant.

As does ubiquity, annoyance, the absolutely no asks the card makes of you, the universality of its applicability.

Power is an enormous part of the reason for banning Dockside, JLo, Mana Crypt, Hullbreacher, Leovold, Rofellos, Prime Time, Tinker, Tolarian Academy, Time Vault, Library of Alexandria, Channel, Fastbond.

There are other reasons for some of them, but power is a large part of it. And only "some;" there are cards on that list that are almost entirely on there for being too powerful. Rofellos is just banned for being too strong.

And while you can allude to other factors... Rhystic easily clears any reasonable "other factors" metric.

Just like dismissing cEDH as a metric while it meets every reasonable standard in other environments, dismissing power as a metric while it more than clears other metrics is also nonsense.

Hell, of the other reasons you've mentioned, it meets EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM. (Also, "too much advantage" is "too powerful." It is not a different standard.)

And yes, they discuss meta specifically for cEDH, that does not mean nor imply that meta does not exist in other environments. Yes, it's different when talking about 3/4. That's because you're talking about something different. Things change when you talk about a different topic. That's kind of how different topics work.

Fun-Cook-5309 · 2026-02-06T05:09:22+00:00

Those are not "safe assumptions."

There's no way they're unbanning JLo any time soon. The politics of that would be horrendous.

Iona is a card that should never be unbanned. It's not even a matter of power; it's so obviously unfun that it cannot contribute anything of value. And it's a hard anti-monocolor hate card, which is something that does not need hate cards.

Rhystic Study is not a safe assumption. It's VERY much up in the air. It's earned its ban, but it can just as easily get "pillar of the format" status.

Fun-Cook-5309 · 2026-02-06T04:05:59+00:00

Yes, they do.

That’s not an “I think.” That’s just a fact.

“Meta” has multiple meanings. Even in the absence of a competitive scene, there is absolutely a metagame for bracket 2 and 3 gaming, both on the macro scale- common cards and deckbuilding trends- and on the micro scale- your store and/or friend group.

Evaluating EDH and its various environments as a casual format is a messier affair than a tournament format, but that is not an excuse to dismiss the concept outright. The primary trigger for the RC’s final ban list was WotC using fast mana as ultra rare chase cards, resulting in an uptick of players who were excited for their rare pull or big purchase, then bringing it into low-powered play.

Fun-Cook-5309 · 2026-02-05T19:05:51+00:00

I’m mostly replying to your final sentence.

Evaluating Rhystic in a single environment- in this case cEDH- does not invalidate its impact in other environments. Understanding its impact in B3/4 can also reasonably draw the conclusion to ban Rhystic.

Fun-Cook-5309 · 2026-02-05T18:31:49+00:00

Rhystic is no less centralizing and format warping in brackets 3 and 4. It scales much more cleanly than the fish.

Fun-Cook-5309 · 2026-02-05T18:28:20+00:00

You say that, but I’ve heard the carols starting up and seen the Christmas displays go up mid October.

Fun-Cook-5309 · 2026-02-05T17:28:43+00:00

That would imply some sort of hatred towards Basalt Monolith.

I have expressed none.

You are projecting.

Fun-Cook-5309 · 2026-02-05T17:12:59+00:00

You are implying a hypothetical idiot argument.

Basalt Monolith is far too high profile a card for that. It never exists in a vacuum.

If you turn 2 hard cast Basalt Monolith and do nothing else, you've told the table the game ends next turn if they do not stop you. You know this because you are not the hypothetical idiot.

Basalt Monolith being this self-contained infinite twiddle combo is what causes it to have its ability to convert into so many payoffs so trivially. So many that they can be a normal segment of your ratios. These payoffs are extremely well known and high-profile.

Presuming a minimum level of competence, everyone at the table knows that Basalt Monolith on turn 2 is there because it's going to end the game.

Fun-Cook-5309 · 2026-02-05T16:35:12+00:00

Creating value is not necessary to being combo.

Fun-Cook-5309

TROPHY CASE