Now, though, I’m back with a new reader’s problem to solve: namely, killing people with Roon.
This article’s question comes from Bishop Bliss, who asked:
Hi Chris! I’m having a problem with my Roon of the Hidden Realm deck and I was wondering if you could help me. The deck is all about flickering or bouncing creatures with enter-the-battlefield effects for all that sweet value. However, I’ve begun to notice that I don’t win very often with it. What I’ve discovered is two problems: I’m too content to sit around and get value & the deck just isn’t very good at closing out the game, even if it’s way ahead in value. What do you recommend doing/playing for actually trying to close out a game?We have all been there—we feel like we’re ahead in a game, since we have a lot of card advantage and engines set up to get even more of it, but then we find that everyone has good blockers, or too many sweepers. We’re doing relevant things, but eventually somebody else does something “broken,” and we die.
In other words: it can be a lot of fun to durdle around with Temur Sabertooth and Coiling Oracle, Eternal Witness, or Resolute Archangel, building up cards and defense, but it can sometimes be hard to translate those incremental advantages into “turning the corner” and actually killing some players.
So…what are the best ways to actually finish a game in Bant colors?
There are a few fundamental ways to end games of Commander, and Bishop’s question is a great opportunity to talk about them. In fact, this whole article will be based around what I see as the four main ways of killing your opponents in a Commander game. We’re going to focus most heavily on the first one because it answers Bishop’s question the best, but we will give some time to the other three as well.
First Option: Grind out Value Until Everyone Else is Out of Gas
We are starting with this option because it is what most Roon decks are built to do: they want to use their commander’s ability to keep their creatures from dying while also producing at least a card’s worth of value every turn by reusing enters-the-battlefield effects. In a way, then, pushing really hard on this option means that your Roon deck will continue to feel like a Roon deck rather than slowly becoming a combo deck or evasion deck as you make changes. That is why we are going to be focusing hardest on this option.In normal (non-Commander) games of magic, Roon’s default plan would be enough to win a long game on its own: getting a free trigger from cards like Duplicant or Acidic Slime every turn would produce some serious advantages that would snowball into a win against one opponent. There are two problems with this level-one strategy in Commander, though: first, everyone can see your advantage-engines sitting there on the battlefield, so people will prioritize dismantling your board state (unless another player is doing some terrifying stuff). Second, getting a card or two worth of advantage every turn is simply not going to overwhelm a normal Commander table. A Roon deck can easily last until the late game, but by then other decks will be leveraging their huge mana development to make plays that really overshadow blinking that same old Duplicant.
So… we need to stop people from disassembling our engines, and we need to kick those engines into a higher gear in the late game. Let’s take these problems one at a time, starting with protecting Roon (and the things Roon plans on blinking).
Category 1: Protecting Your Creature-Based Engine
Privileged Position, Cloud Cover, Asceticism, Dense Foliage, Veilstone Amulet, Aerie Mystics, Neurok Stealthsuit, and Temur Sabertooth. These cards protect all of your creatures, with greater or lesser degrees of efficiency. We all know how good Privileged Position is, but it’s worth noting that Cloud Cover can function as essentially the same card in a Roon deck, since you are happy re-casting most of your creatures. Both of them, too, are really good with ways to copy enchantments (like Clever Impersonator or Copy Enchantment), since then the effects will overlap and protect each other. Asceticism is probably the best overall way to protect your creatures since it also lets you regenerate Roon from effects like Day of Judgment. Dense Foliage is a card that a lot of people underestimate, but it can have a huge impact on the game: it doesn’t stop abilities, so Roon and cards like Phyrexian Ingester still work, but it shuts off any removal spells and auras with “Enchant Creature.” Check to see if your Roon deck plays any targeted spells. If not, Dense Foliage might be great for you. Veilstone Amulet is a little tricky, but if you play a lot of flash creatures (like Whitemane Lion) or instants (like Ghostly Flicker) then it can give all your creatures hexproof really consistently. Aerie Mystics is an underplayed card in Commander, but it definitely fits our purposes here—although it does give shroud rather than hexproof, so it blocks Roon activations on your creatures for the turn. Similarly, Neurok Stealthsuit can occasionally mess with your Roon activations, but it basically gives you the ability to counter any removal spell or ability by paying only two blue mana. Compare the Stealthsuit to Sylvan Safekeeper, who has a similar effect but a much higher long-term cost of operation. Temur Sabertooth may not immediately look like it belongs in this category, but you can think of it as a Cloud Cover that can block and make itself indestructible. Of course, it costs mana to activate while Cloud Cover doesn’t, but it also gives you an outlet for proactively bouncing creatures you really want to re-cast.
Mother of Runes, Eight-and-a-Half-Tails, Armored Guardian, and Glory. Since we are talking about protecting our creatures, it’s worth mentioning the actual “protection” ability. These cards can be very effective in saving your creatures from targeted or damage-based removal, frequently with the added bonus of letting your creatures attack without fear of blockers. Of course, using the protection ability to save your creatures also has a slight drawback: Roon himself is three colors, so—unless you are giving protection from red or black—he will often be unable to target any affected creatures for the rest of the turn. Mother of Runes costs basically nothing to cast and use, so she is the “leanest” option, although she is much more limited than the others. Eight-and-a-Half-Tails is probably the best overall option here, since it costs so little to cast, can defend non-creature permanents as well (like Asceticism), and is able to scale up to protect a lot of cards in the late game. Armored Guardian is a good blocker who can spread around protection as necessary, although he is more color-intensive than ol’ 8.5 Tails. And, finally, there is the often-forgotten creature Glory. This card is a game-changer if you can get it in your graveyard: it is great for both defense and offense, it only asks you to leave three mana open, and it is hard for opponents to interact with since it works from the graveyard.
Eldrazi Displacer, Eerie Interlude, Spirit Bonds, and Selfless Spirit. These four cards are actually each standing in for several others. If one of them looks good, there are definitely others that can fill a similar role! First, there are the “targeted blinking” cards like Eldrazi Displacer: Deadeye Navigator, Mistmeadow Witch, and Nephalia Smuggler. These cards are generally quite good with the core themes of a Roon deck to start with, so the fact that they can protect any of your creatures—and most particularly Roon himself—makes several of them automatic includes in such a deck. Next, there is one other “mass blink” card like Eerie Interlude: Ghostway. As mentioned earlier, blinking all of your creatures is the sort of thing that Roon does anyway, so these are already very good in such a deck (although Eerie Interlude is better because you don’t want to give Roon summoning sickness if you can avoid it). Next, there are the other “repeatedly make your creatures indestructible” cards like Spirit Bonds: Avacyn, Angel of Hope; Eldrazi Monument; Soul of New Phyrexia; and Deathless Angel. These are all fairly self-explanatory, although Eldrazi Monument is actually not a great fit for the average Roon deck, since you don’t want to sacrifice your value creatures every upkeep. Finally, there are the other “one-shot indestructibility for all your creatures” cards like Selfless Spirit: Dauntless Escort, Make a Stand and Rootborn Defenses. These cards are generally not as strong as the preceding options, but they are good to know about in case your playgroup runs a lot of non-exiling mass removal.
Flickerform, Shield of the Oversoul, Momentary Blink, and Lightning Greaves. Again, each of these cards is standing in for other, duplicate effects. Since Roon can do such a good job of protecting his friends by blinking them, as long as we can focus our protective efforts on keeping Roon alive, we should be pretty well covered. First, there is one other “whisk Roon away from danger” enchantment like Flickerform: Vanishing. They are both incredibly effective at keeping your commander alive, although they are best in different situations: Flickerform can also be amazing with other creatures in a standard Roon deck, but it costs more to use, while Vanishing is laser-focused on keeping Roon alive. Next, there are a couple of “make Roon indestructible” cards like Shield of the Oversoul: Bastion Protector and Darksteel Plate. These are pretty straightforward and effective. (It’s worth noting, too, that there are two less-efficient options: Shield of Kaldra and That Which Was Taken.) Next, there are quite a few other “blinking” cards like Momentary Blink that can stop targeted removal: Cloudshift, Essence Flux, Liberate, Otherworldly Journey, Turn to Mist, Ghostly Flicker, and Vanish into Memory. The only really interesting ones here are the last two, since Ghostly Flicker can target two creatures (perhaps an Eternal Witness, to form a loop?) and Vanish into Memory can help you filter through a lot of cards. Finally, there are a LOT of “make Roon impossible to target” cards like Lightning Greaves: Swiftfoot Boots, Champion’s Helm, Shielding Plax, Canopy Cover, Elgaud Shieldmate, Alexi’s Cloak, Diplomatic Immunity, Aspect of Mongoose, and Plaxcaster Frogling. It’s worth noting that the first five of these extra options give hexproof rather than shroud, which can be great if you plan on using other effects on Roon. Also, the two creature options here—Elgaud Shieldmate and Plaxcaster Frogling—both play fairly well with Roon’s ability to blink creatures. (The Shieldmate, too, is particularly good with Eldrazi Displacer, to give hexproof to whomever needs it.)
Category 2: Scaling Up Your Engine in the Late Game
Commanders like Animar, Soul of Elements; Mizzix of the Izmagnus; and Karlov of the Ghost Council are really powerful because they naturally “scale up” to become more powerful as you move toward the late game. With more land, you can naturally do more of the things that they focus on. The same is not true of Roon, who can only blink one creature per turn. In order to have a chance of outpacing other Commander decks, you need to find a way to let Roon translate extra mana into extra effects.
Pemmin’s Aura, Freed from the Real, Aura of Dominion, Vigean Graftmage, Umbral Mantle, Crab Umbra, and Galvanic Alchemist. All of these cards let you convert extra mana directly into extra activations of Roon, which can be amazing in the late game if you have been flickering Farhaven Elf or Coiling Oracle all day. Pemmin’s Aura is the strongest of them all by a wide margin, since it only takes a single mana to untap Roon while possibly also giving him shroud and pumping his toughness as necessary to keep him alive. It also opens up the possibility of killing people with a seven-power flying commander! Freed from the Real and Aura of Dominion also only cost a single mana to untap—and, although Aura of Dominion requires other creatures to tap, Roon’s ability brings creatures back to the battlefield untapped, ready to be used for exactly that purpose. Vigean Graftmage is a bit fragile, but Roon can blink it if necessary, and two mana is a good rate for untapping a creature. Umbral Mantle, Crab Umbra, and Galvanic Alchemist cost three mana to untap Roon, but at least the first two also provide a bonus (size or totem armor) along with the untapping ability.
Note that these cards are arranged by mana efficiency, which is why mana-intensive but powerful cards like Seedcradle Witch, Thassa’s Ire, and Staff of Domination didn’t make the cut to the above list. If you plan on going nuts with Mirari’s Wake and Zendikar Resurgent, though, feel free to consider them as options!
Seedborn Muse, Murkfiend Liege, Quest for Renewal, Patron of the Orochi, Awakening, and Intruder Alarm. We have already talked about the ability to multiply your use of Roon based on the mana you have available; now, we can talk about a different kind of multiplication. Seedborn Muse is an incredibly powerful Magic card—it essentially multiplies your mana and untap steps by the number of players in the game. All of the other cards in this subsection work on similar principles, although they are not as powerful as Seedborn Muse because they either provide substantial bonuses to opponents or don’t untap all of your lands. Most decks don’t even consider these other cards because the mana is generally the most important part of Seedborn Muse’s effect—but they are great for a Roon deck because it can make such good use of the untap steps! Murkfiend Liege and Quest for Renewal are very similar for untapping purposes, although the Liege clearly has higher upside to go with its higher cost and vulnerability to creature removal. Patron of the Orochi, if you have at least two forests, can untap Roon and also pay for his ability on everyone’s turns, although it affects ALL green creatures and forests—so you really don’t want to play this card against a Yeva, Nature’s Herald deck. Speaking of helping opponents, Awakening is legitimately “Seedborn Muse for EVERYBODY!” This is an incredibly dangerous thing to hand your opponents, so you should definitely think hard before putting this card in your deck. On a similar note, Intruder Alarm can accidentally give your opponents infinite combos: cards like Bloodline Keeper, Krenko, and Kiki-Jiki go infinite, and commanders like Feldon of the Third Path and Phenax, God of Deception get ridiculous even if not technically infinite. Comparatively, a Roon deck will use the card for an impressive but unspectacular amount of value: when Roon blinks a creature, he gets untapped when it re-enters the battlefield, plus Roon will get a free untap whenever someone casts a creature.
Minamo, School at Water’s Edge; Thousand-Year Elixir; and Kiora’s Follower. After all the ridiculous untapping shenanigans we have already covered, these options may seem unimpressive, but it’s important to be able to get more use out of Roon as the game goes on, and these are some low-profile ways to do exactly that. Minamo, School at Water’s Edge only takes up a land slot, Thousand-Year Elixir gives Roon’s ability haste (so Roon’s death isn’t as much of a tragedy late in the game), and Kiora’s Follower is a great mana-ramp creature (particularly with, say, Simic Growth Chamber) that can also let you double up on Roon activations. The most important thing to note here is that all of these cards do other things while serving as Roon-untappers: stuff like Magewright’s Stone, Retreat to Coralhelm, Scryb Ranger, or even Derevi, Empyrial Tactician often just aren’t good enough if they’re just in the deck to untap Roon once a turn.
Ghostway and Mnemonic Wall. Untapping Roon is not the only way to supercharge the “blinking” theme of the deck. The two cards shown above, if used together, will let you continually pay three mana to blink ALL of your creatures during everyone’s turns, which can get very powerful very quickly. The best part is that there are other cards that combine in this way, and in fact the ones shown above are not even the best for the job! First, let’s look at potential replacements for Ghostway: as mentioned earlier in this article, Eerie Interlude is slightly better since it can exclude Roon himself. Another previously-mentioned card, Ghostly Flicker, can also do great work here: although the combo only allows you to blink one bonus creature per three mana you spend, it can do so many times in the same turn! You can also use Faith’s Reward or Second Sunrise in combination with a recursion creature; this combo really only kicks into high gear when you have a sacrifice outlet like Spawning Pit or Fanatical Devotion, though, so it’s probably not worth using unless you play a lot of sacrifice outlets or your opponents cast Wrath of God all the time. Now, we can look at a list of replacements for Mnemonic Wall: Eternal Witness, Greenwarden of Murasa, Skullwinder, Archaeomancer, and Scrivener. Eternal Witness is obviously the best of these and Scrivener is probably the worst, but if you’re playing the right spells in your deck then any of these cards can do some serious work in combination with Roon!
Category 3: Slowing or Stopping Your Opponents’ Engines
So far, we have only talked about how to preserve and supercharge your own deck’s engine, but your opponents will have engines of their own that can easily outperform poor old Roon. It’s hard to out-value somebody who is looping Demonic Tutor and Seasons Past, or drawing cards with Future Sight and Sensei’s Divining Top. Without some good ways to keep opponents’ plans in check, you are likely to fall behind as the game goes on—depending, of course, on the quality of your opponents’ decks. We’ll assume that, since you’re having trouble winning with Roon, you’re facing some stiff competition and could use some big guns.There are, of course, the standard options like Acidic Slime and Duplicant that can handle specific permanents and be re-used by Roon’s ability. Probably the best of these is Mangara of Corondor (particularly with a Thousand-Year Elixir out)…but no cards like this, not even Mangara, can stop many Commander decks from going over the top of your normal plan. Of course, if you use enough of the cards listed in the previous two categories, targeted removal can pile up enough to get you the win. You already know about those cards, though. Instead of looking at them, we will be looking at cards that can have sweeping consequences for opponents’ whole strategies.
Oblivion Stone, Tragic Arrogance, Divine Reckoning, Perilous Vault, Angel of the Dire Hour, and Ixidron. Speaking of “sweeping consequences,” Roon decks play quite well with mass destruction effects since you can usually find a way to blink out several creatures and save them from the sweep. The only problem is that Roon often dies in the process…which is why Oblivion Stone, Tragic Arrogance, and Divine Reckoning can be really good in such decks. The ability to save Roon and blink your most important creature (or two) away from the sweep can get you out of some tough situations. In the toughest of situations, though, you may just need to short-circuit everyone’s plans by getting rid of everything. Perilous Vault sends things to exile, which permanently solves a lot of boards in a way that people can’t shrug off or recur from their graveyards. If you can wait a turn to blow it up, too, you may even have enough mana to blink some creatures away in addition to the activation cost. (Ugin, the Spirit Dragon can do a similar job, but he is less likely to survive for a turn while you get open mana to blink things.) Angel of the Dire Hour is just a fantastic Commander card in general, and although you can’t profitably blink it with Roon, any way to return it to your hand can lead to some very frustrated opponents. Ixidron is great in a Roon deck, as long as you have some way to prevent Roon from being turned into a 2/2 face-down creature, because he can blink your creatures and restore them to their normal states while everyone else’s are stuck as colorless Gray Ogres.
Knight-Captain of Eos, Spike Weaver, Dismiss into Dream, and Sundial of the Infinite. These cards all handle your opponents’ creatures in less direct, but often equally effective, ways. Knight-Captain of Eos and Spike Weaver are Fog machines that you can refresh by blinking them with Roon, which means that you don’t have to worry about combat damage as long as nobody can kill them. Dismiss into Dream is an incredibly powerful card when your commander taps to target a creature—it even handles indestructible creatures—and it also shuts down a surprisingly large number of things your opponents want to do to their own creatures. Sundial of the Infinite only works on your own turn, but it can cancel the “return to the battlefield” part of Roon’s ability, permanently stranding creatures in exile. It is also great with cards like Flickerwisp or Glimmerpoint Stag that you might be playing anyway—those cards in combination with the “Fun-dial” allow you to exile any permanents you want.
Aura Shards, Terastodon, Fracturing Gust, Bane of Progress, and Kalemne’s Captain. While we have talked about removing creatures from the battlefield, much of the time the real problem consists of the artifacts and enchantments that are supporting those creatures. Several of the sweepers we discussed at the beginning of this category will take out those types of permanents along with all the creatures on the battlefield, but the strength of a Roon deck is really in its creatures, so sometimes you just want to sweep away people’s toys. With Aura Shards, you even get to keep your own toys! This card changes games of Commander, and with the ability to make creatures enter the battlefield easily, a Roon deck can make great use of it. Similarly, Terastodon lets you destroy a lot of troublesome permanents, particularly with Roon to blink it: dealing with six 3/3 Elephants is much easier than dealing with five planeswalkers and a Doubling Season! The remaining three options are much blunter instruments, but if you construct your deck to avoid artifacts and enchantments, these cards can absolutely cripple decks that rely on them. Fracturing Gust is an instant that can often gain you upwards of 20 life, while Bane of Progress and Kalemne’s Captain can both be reused by blinking them with Roon. The Captain costs a lot more mana to use, of course, but she actually exiles things as a result, which can be significantly better for actually solving your opponents’ board states.
Loaming Shaman, Angel of Finality, Stonecloaker, and Scavenging Ooze. We have already discussed it several times, but graveyard hate is almost a necessity in a deck that wants to grind opponents out of resources. The first two options here, Loaming Shaman and Angel of Finality, are the standard ones: they both get rid of graveyards fairly simply. The Shaman is cheaper but can be used on parts of your own graveyard, while the Angel is a more legitimately-sized creature. Stonecloaker is a fantastic but underplayed card in Commander; the default use of it is to bounce itself (as a reusable pinpoint graveyard-hate option), but it can also save a key creature or re-buy a good enters-the-battlefield ability while putting a cheap three-power flier on the battlefield. It can even save Roon from targeted removal, then get bounced by Roon later on to get it back in your hand! And, finally, Scavenging Ooze doesn’t really fit very well here—it is clearly a graveyard-hate creature, but it doesn’t interact at all with Roon’s ability. Still, it is just so good that I couldn’t help but mention it. People should play this card more!
Angel of Serenity is an absolutely amazing card in a Roon deck, and it could fit into half a dozen sections of this article, so I am giving it a space by itself. The important thing to realize is that, if you bounce this Angel while its enters-the-battlefield ability is still on the stack, the “return the exiled cards” ability will happen first, with nothing yet to return, thereby wasting that ability and permanently exiling whatever you targeted. While it is most useful for exiling creatures on the battlefield, it can also serve as graveyard hate. And, of course, if used normally, Angel of Serenity can recur creatures from your own graveyard. It can serve as powerful removal, graveyard hate, and recursion—and it can even mix and match between those abilities to a certain extent, since it targets three cards every time!
(As a final note on using Roon’s ability to shut down certain deck’s long-term strategies, I feel that I should mention Gulf Squid. It is clearly not a powerful card, but if you blink it during an opponent’s turn, you can make that player tap all of his or her lands at the end of the turn. This can completely shut down decks that rely on playing at instant speed. Also, if you have some way to blink the Squid instantly (as with Cloudshift or its analogues), you can blink it during a person’s upkeep and rob him or her of a turn’s worth of mana.)
…and that just about covers the best ways that a Roon of the Hidden Realm deck can try to push its natural plan and synergies into outlasting a table of opponents! It’s likely that I missed a card or two, so if you have any suggestions, feel free to mention them in the comments and I will include them. For now, though, we can move on to the other basic ways to win a game of Commander, although we will cover them in less detail than we covered the first option. For a lot of the cards pictured below, there will be extra options and analogues listed in the paragraphs after the images, so make sure to check out those cards, too!
Second Option: Produce So Much Power that You Overwhelm People
This is the default plan for a lot of Commander decks—just keep pouring burly dudes onto the table, pump them up even more, and win. It can be really effective for Roon decks to hybridize this option with the first, “outlast everyone” option, since they are both going to be based on keeping many of your creatures alive. Let’s look at some of the foremost cards for Roon decks that want to pursue this option.
Avenger of Zendikar, Myr Battlesphere, Trostani’s Summoner, and Armada Wurm. These cards are all fairly straightforward: if you can trigger their enters-the-battlefield abilities repeatedly, you are going to put a lot of power onto the battlefield. Avenger of Zendikar is the most powerful because it produces so many creatures (that grow so quickly!) if you have any Wood Elves-like effects to play with. Myr Battlesphere’s trigger creates the smallest amount of raw power of these options, but sometimes you can just produce 20 Myr tokens and then use the Battleball’s attack trigger to destroy somebody with direct damage. Trostani’s Summoner creates nine power spread over three useful bodies every time you blink it, and Armada Wurm gives you a five-power trampling creature. Also worth mentioning: Precursor Golem, Deranged Hermit, Hornet Queen, Captain of the Watch, Maul Splicer, Sandsteppe Mastodon, and Kalonian Twingrove (if you play a lot of forests).
Cathars’ Crusade, Beastmaster Ascension, Jazal Goldmane, Leonin Sun Standard, and Sunscape Master. These cards can increase the size of your creatures on a permanent or recurring basis. The first two, Cathars’ Crusade and Beastmaster Ascension, are two of the most powerful options, but there are several others worth looking at: Collective Blessing; Dictate of Heliod; Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite; and Thunderfoot Baloth. The next two cards, Jazal Goldmane and Leonin Sun Standard, represent the ability to transform mana into powerful but temporary increases to the size of your team. Again, there are a lot of cards that can do similar things, albeit sometimes at less efficient rates: Mirror Entity; Kamahl, Fist of Krosa; Gerrard’s Battle Cry; and Soul of Theros. And then, finally, I just really wanted to include Sunscape Master in this section, since it plays so well with the themes of a Roon deck. The pump ability is certainly solid, and the ability to repeatedly bounce any creature can be amazing!
Overrun, Garruk Wildspeaker, Overwhelming Stampede, Craterhoof Behemoth, Vitalizing Wind, and Stir the Pride. These cards represent the ridiculous number of ways to temporarily pump all of your creatures. Overrun was the first of them, and it is still quite strong, but it has become a trope that has been repeated into a whole galaxy of options. It became the “ultimate” ability of the first green planeswalker, Garruk Wildspeaker, and found possibly its strongest direct analogue (for Commander) in Overwhelming Stampede. Here are two other Overrun versions to check out: Tromp the Domains and Triumph of the Hordes. Craterhoof Behemoth is a card that needs no introduction, as it is the only competitively-played “big Overrun” creature, and it frequently just ends the game on the spot. It’s important to remember that Pathbreaker Ibex exists too, though, and Woodvine Elemental can serve as another analogue for the same effect. Vitalizing Wind wins games because it is, quite simply, the most powerful instant-speed way to pump your entire team, and waiting to pull the trigger until a person has already declared blocks can be savage. Speaking of “savage,” one strong analogue to this card is Decree of Savagery. It is joined by Charge Across the Araba, Swell of Courage, and Great Oak Guardian. (The Guardian is relatively low-impact for damage, but he is sweet because he untaps Roon.) The last card pictured above, Stir the Pride, is important because it grants lifelink, so that you can swing all-out to kill somebody and then be insulated against counterattacks from your other opponents. On that note, Tenacity pumps your creatures less, but it untaps them (along with Roon) so that you can gain a lot of life and still have blockers available!
Day of the Dragons. This card doesn’t quite fit into any of the categories above, but it can be very powerful in a Roon deck. Such decks tend to have a lot of utility creatures sitting around, and suddenly transforming all of them into 5/5 fliers can be a big deal. Now, it is unfortunate that the creatures get exiled…but if your deck plays quite a few ways to get rid of enchantments, you can terrorize people with your dragons, then (once most of those dragons are dead) just destroy Day of the Dragons and get all your creatures back, triggering a lot of enters-the-battlefield abilities in the process!
Third Option: Bypass People’s Defenses
This third way of winning games of Commander is sometimes absolutely necessary: some decks are just too good at “turtling up.” Even a hundred creatures on the battlefield are not going to be able to get through a monstrous Hundred-Handed One with a Darksteel Plate on it. Most of the time, giving creatures really good evasion (like making them unblockable) will do the trick, but sometimes you need to get really creative about killing people by having a backup plan somewhere in your deck.It is worth noting that several of the cards I have already covered in this article can do a great job of getting your creatures through blockers: for instance, the “protection” cards—Mother of Runes, Eight-and-a-Half-Tails, Armored Guardian, and Glory—are great against creatures of consistent colors. The flying that Eldrazi Monument provides is good against a lot of battlefields, too, and in fact it leads to another categorical option for getting your creatures through blockers: sweeping those blockers away. If you have a Monument, then you can happily cast Wrath of God and swing through the newly-empty board. The same is true for Make a Stand and Rootborn Defenses. You can even use Ghostway, Eerie Interlude, or Pemmin’s Aura on Roon (with enough mana) to blink away most or all of your creatures, sweep the board, and then get your creatures back. If you want to do this trick and then attack, though, you will need to do it on the previous opponent’s turn with an instant-speed option like Oblivion Stone, Perilous Vault, Rout, or Fated Retribution. And, of course, if you can untap Roon repeatedly and have enough mana, you can wait until the end step immediately before your turn, then activate Roon’s ability targeting all of the good blockers an opponent controls. When you then proceed to your turn, the creatures won’t come back until the end of the next end step, so you can attack that suddenly-wide-open opponent with whatever you want.
Rogue’s Passage, Whirler Rogue, and Nim Deathmantle. These cards do two important things, in addition to being clearly solid Magic cards: first, they let you reliably convert a creature into actual damage against a “normal” (that is, non-ridiculously defended) opponent. It is important to include cards like this in your deck so that you can keep dealing damage as the game continues. Second—and perhaps most importantly—they keep a relatively low profile. While few will ignore them, these cards won’t send a table of Commander players into a panic as those players imagine your scary monsters killing them. Rogue’s Passage should honestly be in every deck that is not ridiculously hungry for colored mana: it only takes up a land slot, and it gives you a late-game way to force your commander through any number of blockers. Whirler Rogue would be a decent card to blink with Roon even if it couldn’t make things unblockable, but the ability to sneak Roon (or multiple creatures, if you have generated enough Thopters) past blockers makes this a fantastic card. Finally, Nim Deathmantle is fantastic at keeping your creatures alive if you can generate enough mana, but you should not ignore its ability to turn your commander into a mono-black creature with intimidate. Many decks have zero (or very few) black or artifact creatures, so the Deathmantle can do some good aggressive work in addition to defending your creatures.
Archetype of Imagination; Sun Quan, Lord of Wu; Thassa, God of the Sea; Venser, the Sojourner; Noble Quarry; Champion of Lambholt; Scourge of Fleets; and Subjugator Angel. There are a lot of cards that can make your creatures unblockable in one way or another. Archetype of Imagination and Sun Quan, Lord of Wu permanently make your entire team (mostly) unblockable: only creatures with reach and horsemanship, respectively, can do anything at all to stop your attacks. Thassa, God of the Sea does the same thing with no corner-cases and a free scry every turn, although you will have to spend some mana to get creatures through. Venser, the Sojourner is probably in most Roon decks already, but it is worth keeping in mind that his second ability is just as good as his first! And, after Venser, we see the more conditional options. Noble Quarry can be cast as an aura on a random Acidic Slime or whatever, draw all possible blockers away from the creatures that matter, and then fall off to become its own creature when the attacking Roon blinks the Acidic Slime to prevent it from dying. Because it can be used the same turn you cast it and can be reused, Noble Quarry is generally better than its closest analogues, Shinen of Life’s Roar and Taunting Elf. Champion of Lambholt is a powerful card in a Roon deck (especially if you are producing token creatures) since it can easily make your team unblockable with a bit of time to grow. Scourge of Fleets is super effective if you play enough Islands to make its ability hit all of your opponents’ creatures—if they don’t have any creatures to block with, yours are definitely getting through! And finally, Subjugator Angel is great for swinging through anyone's defenses: just cast it and then attack! By bouncing it with Roon, too, you can ensure that it enters the battlefield right before your turn, tapping any potential blockers turn after turn.
There are a few more cards that aren’t quite good enough to make the cut of the above list, but I will list them here: Deepchannel Mentor is powerful but fragile and only works on your blue creatures, Lumbering Satyr is a walking pun that works well against the most common basic land type in Commander (and can be blinked when people try to forestwalk past your own blockers), Bident of Thassa can force your opponents’ creatures to attack and get off of blocking duty, Bellowing Tanglewurm is solid but only gets Roon through red and black creatures, and Dawnglare Invoker can shut down one person’s whole board of creatures for a heck of a lot of mana.
Opposition, Glare of Subdual, and Drowner of Hope. These cards are good because they can play both offense and defense, tapping down opponents’ creatures to keep them from both attacking and blocking. Opposition and Glare of Subdual are very similar cards in the context of Commander, where tapping lands can occasionally be useful but is far less important than in other formats. Drowner of Hope is clearly a less powerful card than either of the enchantments here, but it is a blinkable token producer that plays well with those enchantments and can build up a critical mass of tapping effects (or mana) over time. As a final note here, I considered suggesting Timbermare as an interesting card to blink on opponents’ turns, but I think its echo cost plus the fact that it taps Roon make it too awkward.
Cyclonic Rift, Glaring Spotlight, Cryptic Command, and Turnabout. These options represent effects that allow you to get in one big swing. They aren’t really repeatable like the options above, so they are (in a sense) less powerful—but many of them have surprise on their side, and sometimes they let you just win the game immediately. If your Roon deck tends to build up a huge amount of power on the battlefield, then these are good options for you. Cyclonic Rift has been winning games of Commander for as long as the card has existed, so it is no surprise to see it here. While nothing else is as good as the Rift, there is an interesting analogue for it: Sudden Disappearance. This can be used to get a mass blink on your own creatures, as with Ghostway (and it is similarly good with Mnemonic Wall and friends), or it can blink out all of an opponent’s nonland permanents to let you swing in. Also, it is just plain mean with Sundial of the Infinite. Glaring Spotlight has a very minor effect while sitting on the battlefield, and it will sometimes panic people, so it is often best used as a sorcery: cast it, sacrifice it, and immediately swing with unblockable, hexproof creatures for the win. It has a few analogues, all of which are worse than it is: Invert the Skies only mostly makes your creatures unblockable, and Predatory Focus and Siege Behemoth will definitely get damage through, but your creatures will also take damage from blockers in the process. Cryptic Command and Turnabout are probably the two best “tap all of an opponent’s creatures” cards in these colors, since they have so much additional utility beyond that function, but there are a lot of analogues you can play: Blustersquall, Sleep, Thoughtweft Gambit, Winter Blast, Aether Shockwave, Ensnare, and Shoving Match. Keep in mind that you will have to cast the last three of these options on someone else’s turn, before you move to your turn and untap, for them to work out well.
Akroma’s Memorial and Victory’s Herald. There are a lot of cards that can give your creatures flying (for instance, Levitation or Zephyr Charge), but you can and should get other abilities to go along with your flying. Akroma’s Memorial is a high-priority card on any Commander table, and its best feature is how difficult to block it makes your creatures: flying, trample, and two kinds of protection are great in tandem with one another. Victory’s Herald’s best feature is the flying that it provides, but sometimes it is the lifelink that makes attacking reasonable at all, since it prevents you from dying to counterattacks. Note, too, that there are “temporary flying” cards like Stormcaller’s Boon and Skyshaper, but you’re probably better off going with one of the cards already discussed above.
Equipoise, Jace’s Mindseeker, Primal Order, and Stuffy Doll. And, finally, here are some cards that attack people from angles they really don’t expect. Equipoise is very powerful, but it may not seem so at first glance. Every turn, you get to mess with one person’s permanents: phase out a problematic person’s Maze of Ith and untapped Islands, best blockers, and Caged Sun. Sure, that person will get the cards back at the beginning of his or her next turn, but (depending on the layout of the table) those cards’ “down time” may consist of several opponents’ attacks. Jace’s Mindseeker is a solid card to blink with Roon normally, since it will often get to cast something good (compare it to the “no-value” option, Geralf’s Mindcrusher)—and having it in your deck means that you have the option of switching to a “milling plan” by blinking it over and over. Primal Order only really works if you tend to play a lot of basics and your opponents play nonbasics, but in that situation it can be a devastating card that kills people in just a few turns when played in the late game. Stuffy Doll is one of the best ways to get around blockers: just set it to target the person who is “turtling up” and encourage your other opponents to help you take that person out. The best thing about it in a Roon deck is that it can be reset to a new player when its original target dies.
Fourth Option: Use a Combo to Suddenly Kill Everyone
Finally, we come to the last major option for winning a game of Commander. This is my least favorite option—I have, in fact, weeded all the infinite combos out of all my own decks—and (depending on the playgroup) it can make people very frustrated with you, but there is no denying that it is technically an effective way to win the game. Sometimes, it is too effective, and you will find yourself targeted and attacked more often during subsequent games with the same people. In fact, since this option really isn’t my cup of tea, I am only going to lightly touch on some cards here rather than doing a deep dive. I’m sure you can figure out a few combos on your own. Sometimes, when you build a deck full of redundant and synergistic effects, it is hard to avoid combos!
Reveillark, Body Double, Saffi Eriksdotter, and Karmic Guide. The good thing about all of these cards is that they are naturally good in a Roon deck. They can be deadly in combination with one another, too: any of the last three cards can combo with Reveillark to infinitely get small creatures back from your graveyard as long as you have a sacrifice outlet like Altar of Dementia or Blasting Station—and, even if you have a sacrifice outlet that doesn’t kill players outright (like, for instance, Ashnod’s Altar or Martyr’s Cause), infinitely looping a Riftwing Cloudskate or Blade Splicer should make the game pretty easy to win.
Mirror Entity, Wirewood Symbiote, and Priest of Titania. Another good combo for a Roon of the Hidden Realm deck is Mirror Entity + Wirewood Symbiote: this lets you pay one mana to turn all your creatures into 1/1 elves, bounce the Symbiote to its own ability to untap a creature, then replay it and do it again. This is already quite good with Roon, since untapping him repeatedly can lead to a lot of value, but it can go infinite with a Priest of Titania, producing as much green mana as you want and then pouring all of it into Mirror Entity to get infinite-powered creatures.
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And that just about covers the best ways to push your Roon deck from “value town” to “ending the game,” in four different flavors! If your Roon deck still has trouble closing out games after you add some of the cards above, it might be worth thinking harder about which of the four plans you are pursuing. Some Commander decks include cards meant to pursue all four plans at once, which is often a recipe for a muddled and “good stuff” deck rather than a deck with a plan. It’s usually best to choose one of them (or a hybrid of two) and say, “that is what my endgame wants to look like,” then build toward that. Of course, this idea applies to all Commander decks, not just Roon-based ones—please share this article with other Commander players who have trouble closing the door on a game!Also, please head to the comments and give me some requests for future Dig Through Time articles! We all know how hard and how satisfying deckbuilding in the Commander format can be, and there are often cards out there, lost in the mists of time, that are exactly what you’re looking for to make your deck run like clockwork.
