Legends Legends - Rubinia Soulsinger
Welcome back to Legends Legends, our regular sabbatical into 1994's Legends set and Magic's original run of 55 legendary creatures. We're here to build a fun, thematic (if not particularly competitive) Commander deck for each of these oddball legends, and we've almost reached the end!
This time, we've traveled far into the deep woods, into the land of fae and magic, and found ourselves ensorcelled by the lovely Rubinia Soulsinger. Rubinia is one of the only Legends Legends to be reprinted in an official Commander product (Commander 2013), meaning she's earned at least WotC's respect as an actual playable card in "modern" Magic: The Gathering. Well, by "modern," I suppose I mean 12 years ago.
Rubinia might seem like a casual commander to the untrained eye, but she packs a wallop when built with the smallest bit of intention. She can be incredibly punishing for your pod, and has one of the best pathways to ensuring nobody has any fun at the table but you. How exactly does it work? Let's find out!
General Thoughts
Rubinia Soulsinger is a five-mana Bant 2/3. She has an activated ability to tap and gain control of a target creature for as long as she remains tapped. Then, you can choose to not untap her during your untap steps to maintain control of that creature. Back in 1994, this was a great way to swing a game in your favor for five mana: suddenly that Serra Angel your opponent ran out has been both removed from their board and swapped to stare them down, ready for combat on the following turn.
These days, we'll use Rubinia in a little more oppressive manner than simply grabbing powerful creatures off the board. While that's always on the table, this Rubinia deck wants to deny our opponents access to their commanders by stealing them, humbling them, or otherwise neutering them of their key cards and watching them flounder about. Forcing folks to play a battlecruiser-esque game with no pay-off is tons of fun (for you!) and is surprisingly easy to assemble.
Theft
First things first, let's talk about stealing permanents. We have quite a few spells that'll steal spells and permanents on their own without Rubinia Soulsinger, and quite a few to make her thefts more effective.
I'll start by apologizing: something has happened to me these past few weeks, and I can't seem to get Acquire and Bribery out of my mind. Maybe it's because I'm the type of player who is just dying to see my opponents' libraries, or maybe I just like to unnecessarily force players to sift through a 100-card deck (I'm the type of Temur player who can't build without a Guided Passage). Whatever my problem is, these two sorceries are just too much fun for me to be without, especially in a deck built around stealing. Even though it's loudly broadcast for three turns, Inevitable Betrayal gives us the consistent access to this effect that we need.
Rubinia Soulsinger's effect only grabs a single creature on its own, but with Illusionist's Bracers, Strionic Resonator, and Lithoform Engine, we're just a few mana away from grabbing two or three creatures whenever we activate her.
Normally, we'll want to use Rubinia's effect on our opponents' commanders to keep them away from any cards they could be planning to synergize with them, but should we need another source for this effect, we can use Empress Galina to permanently gain control of any legendary permanent.
Remember that we can use this to steal noncommander legends, like the inevitable Etali, Primal Storm, or pull a Drakuseth, Maw of Flames away from that Dragons player. Willow Satyr works similarly, albeit a bit more restrictive. He's a classic Legends card, though, so we'll let his less-than-perfect effectiveness slide this time.
Sower of Temptation, Mind Flayer, and Agent of Treachery each steal a card when they enter the battlefield, and the Agent of Treachery makes a great target for our blink effects. It's also one of the best card advantage-generators in our entire deck; we'll quickly reach three permanents we "control but don't own" and soon see our hand refilling at the end of each of our turns.
Djinn of Infinite Deceits must tap to activate, but it lets us swap control of any two nonlegendary creatures on the battlefield. This is best used to move key combo creatures away from the opponents attempting to set them up, trading them away in exchange from some useless Saproling or Soldier token. We should use Switcheroo and Shifting Grift similarly.
Beguiler of Wills's effect might be hard to activate in the early turns, but with so many creature-stealing effects, we'll have more than enough creatures to activate her ability without any trouble.
Roil Elemental is great, and keeps those late game Cultivates and Rampant Growths useful.
[/el]Sphinx Ambassador[/el] is another of my favorite "tutor your opponents' libraries" cards. The chances that they guess the correct creature vary wildly depending on the opponent, but this will always be a fun mini-game you can play at the table.
Finally, we've got some basic theft enchantments in the form of Carry Away, Control Magic, and Treachery.
Keeping What We're Owed
Stealing one creature at a time with Rubinia Soulsinger is not how we'll win games. Stealing an entire board at a time, while letting Rubinia untap to steal even more, is our actual gameplan.
The wording on Rubinia Soulsinger's effect and the way older blink effects were worded means there are several instances where we can keep the stolen creature while untapping Rubinia to steal another. Here's how it works:
Cards like Cloudshift and Conjurer's Closet work by exiling a creature you control and then returning it to the battlefield under your control. This is different from the way more modern blink effects work, like Charming Prince, which specifies that you exile a creature you own and return it to the battlefield under your control. By using specifically cards that target a creature you control rather than own, we can blink a stolen creature, at which point it becomes a new object, unaffected by Rubinia's stipulation about remaining untapped, and it permanently becomes ours. We'll use Nephalia Smuggler and Restoration Angel for this effect as well, and we can slap Ghostly Flicker or Cloudshift on our Isochron Scepter for regular access to this synergy.
More often than not, we'll use all of our tutors to set up this combo, as it's essential to maintaining control of the board.
In addition, Willbreaker works similarly: if the triggering effect comes from Rubinia Soulsinger's ability, we'll gain control of that creature as a part of Willbreaker's resolution as well. Then, since Willbreaker's effect doesn't specify that it must remain tapped, we can untap Rubinia at the top of our next turn and not lose control of the creature.
"Control" Magic
Finally, there are some things that stealing just simply can't buy. In the interest of denying our opponents access to their most important effects and synergies, we're also running a handful of control elements to prevent anyone from pulling too far ahead while we set up.
Besides a fairly standard suite of counterspells ([/el]Archmage's Charm[/el], Arcane Denial, Counterspell), we're running a few humble effects as semi-permanent ways to lock down commanders. Song of the Dryads prevents them from sacrificing that newly neutered commander, while Darksteel Mutation and Imprisoned in the Moon also lock them onto the battlefield as nearly useless permanents.
Nevermore is one of my favorite cards ever; if you've ever wanted to feel like a real bully, run one of these out by turn three and effectively stop your opponent from playing the same game as you.
Asceticism keeps our collection of pilfered commanders safe from targeted removal which would otherwise send them back to the command zone and let them be recast. As a last-ditch effort, we can always use our Adarkar Valkyrie on something we want to keep around after we Supreme Verdict to wipe the board, too.
Mana Base
Our Bant deck's mana base is mostly blue, with just enough green to make sure we hit our mana dorks and fetch spells. At 36 lands, five mana rocks, two dorks, and three fetch spells, we should have no problem casting Rubinia Soulsinger on curve while still having enough left over to equip her with our Swiftfoot Boots or Lightning Greaves (we run both to make sure we can protect those commanders we've stolen).
Budget
TCGplayer estimates this deck's total cost to be about $340. That's actually fairly steep, but there are a few cards we can drop to save some cash.
First, the most expensive card in this deck is Willow Satyr. At $75, he's just a fun joke to include in this thematic Legends deck, but absolutely not essential to making it run. If you come across a copy, this is an excellent home for it! If you don't already have one, just run the Selesnya Signet I've omitted instead for some more consistent mana,
Next are Treachery and Smothering Tithe at $35 and $25, respectively. Neither of these are essential to making this deck work, but Treachery being a free Control Magic really does justify its pricetag. You can always swap it for a Mind Control.
Smothering Tithe is just there to harass opponents and make them think twice about drawing deep into their libraries without fear of consequences, but, depending on your local pod's meta, you could get away with a copy of Ghostly Prison instead.
Rubinia Soulsinger Decklist
Wrap Up
Of the nearly 50 Legends Legends decks I've written up thus far, this is one of my favorites. Rubinia Soulsinger's effect is relatively unique to the format that can be abused to great success. This is another one of those decks that's great for accidentally shuffling your opponents' cards into your library with, and there really aren't any other Bant commanders like Rubinia. The closest theft deck you could build besides her might be Obeka, Brute Chronologist and a ton of Act of Treasons.
If you can think of any other great theft-based commanders, let me know in the comments!
Thanks so much for reading!
