Should You Play The One Ring In cEDH?
The One Ring by Veli Nyström
It is a strange fate that we should suffer so many broken formats over so small a thing. Such a little thing.
- Boromir
The One Ring is all the hype in Magic right now! This is a huge flavor win for a Lord of the Rings Magic set, so bravo to the R&D department there. With all of the talk around The One Ring and its major impact in the other eternal formats, like Modern and Legacy, it raises the question: does The One Ring have a home in cEDH? The short answer is yes! The better question to ask is: where?
What Does The One Ring Offer You?
Once you're aware of the potency and impact a new card has on games, justifying its inclusion in any deck centers around knowing what your deck is looking to accomplish. "Winning the game" is an obvious, surface-level answer to this question, but the specifics of how you actually go about defeating your opponents are what dictate the type of cards you want to include in your deck. You probably don't want to put Out of Time in your Winota deck, for instance, despite the fact Out of Time is a potent card in cEDH that's seeing more play lately.
The One Ring, being colorless, makes it a viable option to play in literally any cEDH deck. With colorless mana being the easiest to generate in cEDH thanks to Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, Mana Vault, and Grim Monolith, it's also very easy to cast The One Ring ahead of schedule, so whatever deck you play, no matter how obscure or off-meta, can consider playing it.
In many 60-card formats, The One Ring has been compared to Time Walk and Ancestral Recall stapled together thanks to the "protection from everything clause" nullifying the opponent's next turn while The One Ring draws three cards across the first three turns; however, the nature of cEDH win conditions make it such that the protection clause is unlikely to be effective at stopping opponents from winning the game outright with something like Thassa's Oracle.
Therefore, if your cEDH deck is in the market to play The One Ring, the most likely reason is for the ability to draw increasing numbers of cards as the game progresses. However, while the primary mode of The One Ring is to draw you gobs of cards to build advantage and keep you in the game in most setups, there are other synergies that can be realized with The One Ring as well. For instance, a deck like Brallin, Skyshark Rider and Shabraz, the Skyshark may want to play the card simply due to its potential impact alongside Shabraz, even if the deck is not normally effective at casting many cards in one turn to utilize the bursts of cards gained fromThe One Ring.
What Kinds of Decks Should Play The One Ring?
Knowing how your deck plans to use The One Ring in practice will guide you in the deckbuilding process. Some examples of decks that could be interested in The One Ring are decks that contain Thrasios, Triton Hero as a partner option, or Tivit, Seller of Secrets. Thrasios decks are often looking to play many turns and use the activated ability of their commander to accumulate resources with cards like Training Grounds and Seedborn Muse to push past the standard rate for card output in Thrasios. In decks designed to win the game over the course of many turns, like Thrasios decks are, The One Ring is going to shine, having such an absurd rate of cards as the game progresses.
For a deck like Tivit, which also is interested in playing long games, The One Ring will also look extremely appealing. The advantages Tivit gains over Thrasios decks despite not having access to Seedborn Muse to really turbo charge the card output from The One Ring is the ability to reset it at will with cards like Displacer Kitten and Teferi, Time Raveler. The ability to reup on the "protection from everything" trigger at will or just reset the burden counters if your life total gets too low gives The One Ring additional flexibility, beyond the fact that Tivit is a slower, more interactive deck that's also looking to win the game over the course of many turns.
Another style of deck that may reach for The One Ring despite not intentionally wanting games to go long are decks that can use it as a viable recovery strategy where there are not many others. For instance, a deck that I know very well and have written a bit about on Commander's Herald is Birgi, God of Storytelling. Birgi is very good at attempting quick wins using a critical mass of mana generated from the commander and cards generated off of wheels or other card advantage spells to generate a huge combo turn. That is not a setup that, on the surface, looks like it would be a good home for The One Ring. However, if Birgi gets stopped, it's not uncommon for there to be few or no cards left in hand after the attempt given the critical mass needed to even present a win. The One Ring has a chance to shine there.
If a win attempt has been stopped, or even if there are problematic permanents in play preventing a win from even being attempted, The One Ring can function as a one-card "play a long game" strategy without having to commit the entire deck to playing a longer game. Combine that with being able to search for it in tight spots with a card like Reckless Handling, and there's even some added consistency to using it as a backup plan! The flexibility of The One Ring to serve a purpose in decks where it doesn't appear to contribute to the primary gameplan is where the power of The One Ring, even in cEDH, begins to show itself.
What Kinds of Decks Should Not Play The One Ring?
The answers to this question range from obvious choices, like decks containing Collector Ouphe, Null Rod, and Stony Silence as their plan to go long, all the way to decks that are looking to play many turns but that have more powerful things going on that are more cohesive with their primary gameplan, like Winota, Joiner of Forces. Naturally, if playing many turns makes The One Ring powerful, then stax decks should want it right? Not necessarily. The presence of Null Rod effects, which stop activated abilities, and Rule of Law effects, which stop you from using all of the cards you're drawing each turn off The One Ring, makes The Ring more of a liability than an asset when trying to entirely lock out your opponents. In addition, depending on just how many turns you're planning to play after your lock pieces have stopped the board from doing anything, it's possible that the life loss from The One Ring will add up and actually end up being your biggest threat to victory! There's a balance to be struck between a) how many turns your deck is looking to play, and b) how efficiently you can use the cards drawn that may justify the exclusion of The One Ring.
Additionally, there are some decks that are looking to play a great deal of turns but have a more cohesive gameplan going on that requires specific card types to be a part of the mix; I'm thinking of course about Winota, Joiner of Forces and the Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy decks, which aim to hit large and powerful creatures off of their commanders that slow the game down. In these decks, The One Ring may not fit in with the plan in a meaningful way. Each slot that isn't a creature in each of those decks comes at a steep cost, and the primary gameplan of the deck using the command zone to accomplish a similar advantage-over-time impact on the game makes the value of The One Ring to those decks much more diminished. Decks like Najeela, the Blade-Blossom also fall under this umbrella. The deck is looking to assemble a compact two-card combo rather quickly, and it plays a high density of tutors to pivot between combo kills based on the game texture. Najeela is relatively bad at utilizing bursts of cards turn over turn given the compact number of cards necessary to win with the deck, so The One Ring is going to be fairly incohesive with much of what Najeela is trying to accomplish.
Finally, decks that are just not looking to play a lot of turns at all or already have better backup plans when it comes to longer games are going to want to shy away from The One Ring. The first decks that come to mind in this category are Silas Renn, Seeker Adept and Rograkh, Son of Rohgahh and K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth. Both of these decks traditionally have better uses for their mana and their life totals, and the presence of cards like Necropotence and Timetwister effects provide a more powerful backup recovery plan if a quick win is stopped.
Let The Ring Tempt You!
If you are still unsure if The One Ring fits into your deck, I would recommend thinking about how The One Ring can fit into your gameplan. If you're still unsure from there, just give it a try! The applications may surprise you, and the card has a high floor, even if it doesn't ultimately make the cut in your deck, so it's relatively low-risk to play some games with it. As someone who was skeptical about the card during spoiler season, I've found myself becoming more impressed with the various applications for The One Ring, even in decks where I couldn't discern the role it would play. Just keep in mind it isn't so powerful that you must play it, but still it may surprise you. Thank you all for reading!
