INTRODUCTION

Sometimes White spells have a pretty boring reputation. They make tokens, they attack for 2, they tax/grief the table. Great out of the sideboard in your Modern deck, but not terribly exciting to play in a world where you can draw 6 cards or play 7/7 monsters. But once upon a time Mark Rosewater was designing some vertical cycles for the set that would become Urza's Destiny. And he needed a neat little mechanic for White. He submitted three cards in the cycle but only one survived the development process and became a quirky rare in that set: Flicker. Usually called "Blinking" by most players, the Flicker ability has been in White's color pie ever since, providing a whole host of neat interactions. Flickerwisp and Mangara of Corondor may be best friends in Legacy, but we need to think much bigger than that. Blinking is shared in Blue's color pie, so obviously our general needs to be blue too. And since my favorite blinking tricks in the world require Red mana, we'll be playing UWR. Enter Ruhan of the Fomori. Blink and you're dead!

DECKLIST

CARD CHOICES

If you're doing a neat mechanical deck, why would you pick a big dumb beater like Ruhan? Because he's actually the only one of the three UWR commanders that interacts favorably with blinking at all. This deck has two goals. The first is to make a lot of epic little odd duck plays as the game goes along. That part is easy. The second is to kill via general damage. Ruhan's two biggest faults are that he has no evasion and that he has to attack every turn. Blink cards fix both of these. Some blink cards blink your opponent's board, making them a mini falter. Sure, it's card disadvantage, but Ruhan wins the game in three easy swings so why stress. The rest of the blink cards can either re-set Ruhan's summoning sickness so he can't attack or blink him to give him pseudo-vigilance. Either way, you've given yourself lots of options to get around his downsides. If he spends even 1 turn being a 7/7 for 4 mana with no downside, you may very well win the game.

For one mana, some people just want to play Brainstorm. For others it's Thoughtseize or Llanowar Elves or Lightning Bolt. I can't think of a 1 mana spell that's more fun to cast than Cloudshift. There's almost no limit to the tricks you can pull. We already talked about giving a creature like Ruhan pseudo-vigilance. At instant speed he becomes a surprise blocker. But what if you build your whole deck around the idea of Cloudshifting everything. You can rebuy every single ETB effect on any creature you own. Cloudshift returns the creature under your control, even if you don't own it. So swipe it with Zealous Conscripts or Molten Primordial and then blink it. It'll be especially hilarious when your opponent wonders why you've stolen his Sylvan Primordial for a turn and then you smash his own nonland permanent with it. And we're just scratching the surface . . .

Now for my three favorite cloudshift tricks. Mulldrifter is a beautiful card. You can draw two and keep a 2/2 flier for the low price of 5 mana, or in a pinch you can trade it for 2 new cards for just 3 mana. You can also cast it for 3 mana, stack the triggers so that the draw resolves first, draw into a Cloudshift and blink it for a total of 4 cards and a 2/2 flier for 4 mana! It's a thing of beauty that this deck frequently sets up at some point. Now let's play something less scary looking. Like a morphed Akroma, Angel of Fury. It's just a 2/2, what's the harm in that? But when you cloudshift a morphed creature, it returns to the battlefield un-morphed. Is a 4 mana 6/6 flier any good? Aurelia, the Warleader triggers double combat steps, which is great value when you'd like to kill someone with General Damage. And what's better than double combat steps? Triple combat steps! After the first combat step in the end of combat phase - the same phase everyone's been excitedly playing Celestial Flare in M14 - you Cloudshift Aurelia. Your blinked Aurelia counts as a new permanent, so when she attacks in combat step number 2, from her perspective it's combat step number one and her ability triggers again. Ruhan can deal all 21 damage in one turn with that trick!

We can't very well build a blink deck with just Cloudshift. Momentary Blink is a classic and being able to cast it twice is bonus value. Venser, the Sojourner gives Ruhan unblockability to aid our general damage strategy and blinks every value creature in our deck. His ultimate is a huge beating if anyone ever lets him get that far (spoiler alert: They won't). Flickerwisp has all sorts of interactions. He blinks any permanent, so he can certainly rebuy our ETB abilities. But he can do much more. He can reset the counters on your Vivid Creek, remove all the counters from your opponent's Everflowing Chalice, or just use it to untap a land so you can keep a counterspell up.

Sometimes blinking one permanent isn't enough. Legion's Initiative gives a small boost to power and toughness but it's also a great Rattlesnake. Leave two mana up and every board wipe looks less awesome. You can blink your team in response to all kinds of anti-social things your opponent will try to do to you. Ghostway is a classic card that does the same thing but stays hidden in your hand until you're ready. Who cares if you can't counter their Supreme Verdict, just blink everyone instead. Sudden Disappearance blinks all permanents belonging to any player. While you can blink your own army to get some bonus effects, I prefer to use it as a mass-falter that lets me smash for the last bits of damage. Incidentally this card completely ruins the day of anyone playing a Tokens deck as an exiled token disappears forever.

Commander is already the land of enters-the-battlefield abilities. In our case, we'll often re-buy these abilities at least once in the match so we have an extra incentive to play these cards. Duergar Hedge-Mage will often blow up two things and then blink to blow up two more. Zealous Conscripts and his friends Molten Primordial and Conquering Manticore threaten a lot of damage when they hit the table. Noggle Ransacker is here just because I think it's a hilarious card. Sure, everyone gets to draw, but the random discard messes with their plans in fun ways. Sometimes you'll know that some big bomb just got drawn since you got a peek with Oracle of Mul Daya or whatever and you can blink him at instant speed to spin the wheel of destiny and see if they keep their bomb or not.

Trinket Mage is here because we can blink him to gain lots of card advantage over the course of a game. Sol Ring is the obvious candidate and Grafdigger's Cage ruins a lot of plans. Everflowing Chalice, Expedition Map, and Wayfarer's Bauble ramp us higher which is something UWR always needs help doing. There's even an Elixir of Immortality if you need some lifegain in a pinch or just want to put the stuff in your graveyard back in your deck. It just makes me sad that we can't go find Strionic Resonator with him because this is the deck that makes the Resonator shine!

BUDGET

In total, this deck runs about 46 tix as listed above. Over 12 tix of that is the three shocklands alone, so this is certainly a budget-friendly choice as far as three color decks go. If you have a little more to spend, you could add fetchlands to further improve the manabase. If you're looking to get more competitive you could turn this into a Splinter Twin deck and add Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker plus their combo friends Pestermite, Deceiver Exarch, Village Bell-Ringer, and Restoration Angel. You can also get even less expensive by replacing Venser, the shocklands, and Legion's Initiative to quickly cut the price of the deck in half.

ACTION REPORT

As I've said before, I play mostly 1v1 commander despite being happy to play multiplayer too. I play at odd hours because I have kids and so its much easier to find a 1v1 opponent and to fit a short match into my schedule. In case you think all 1v1 players are cutthroat competitive players, let me assure you that there are great many casually competitive players like myself occupying the 1v1 games. Today I suited up for battle and drew a matchup with a Yeva, Nature's Herald deck.

I keep my opening seven of Rupture Spire, Wayfarer's Bauble, Elixir of Immortality, Hallowed Fountain, Command Tower, Voidmage Husher, and Plains. It's action light but it casts Ruhan on turn 3 and I'd much rather keep a commander hand that has lots of lands than one that doesn't have many. My opponent also keeps seven and we're off to the races. I draw Venser, the Sojourner and play the Bauble. My opponent plays a turn 1 Elvish Mystic. I pop the Bauble for Mountain on turn 2 and my opponent drops Sol Ring and Vine Trellis. That's a lot of mana!

I play Ruhan on Turn 3 and my opponent just passes. Suspecting shenanigans, I drop Venser and make Ruhan unblockable. 7 points of Commander damage dealt. My opponent plays Yeva and Devoted Druid on my end step so clearly Venser is dying. My opponent plays Dungrove Elder and Swiftfoot Boots and smashes for a bunch, killing Venser as predicted. I draw Ghostway and Ruhan attacks into a flashed in Boreal Druid chump block. My opponent is clearly flooding as badly as me on all those mana dorks. Ruhan gets chumped by another dork and the Dungrove/Yeva beatdowns are knocking me low. I play and active Elixir of Immortality and give myself a bit more breathing room. I attack into another chump block and play Ghostway to give myself a blocker. Things aren't looking great.

My opponent attacks with both and I block Dungrove. Even if there's a trick, I need to try and kill Dungrove before he gets out of control. There's no trick and I've got one less threat to deal with. I draw Noggle Ransacker and double his trigger with Strionic Resonator to try and draw into more action. No action drawn, but Condemn is an option if I can deal with Swiftfoot Boots. Ransacker chumps Yeva because I'm on 14 life. Ruhan gets chumped by the last mana dork on the field and my opponent flashes in a Mold Shambler to kill the Resonator. I play Archon of Justice and pass. My opponent attacks with Yeva and I block with Archon. No trick, so I kill Yeva and exile the Boots. Ruhan is now free to swing for his second big hit and we only need one more. Yeva gets flashed back in but now has no protection from the Condemn in my hand. One tuck later and my opponent is facing down a lethal Ruhan without much left. He takes a look at his next draw and concedes. Not the most epic of games, but proof that Ruhan is a walking The Abyss in a lot of matchups.

CONCLUSION

I hope I've shown you a fun spin on a neat mechanic. In my experience this deck doesn't win as much as it produces fun outcomes. In 1v1 you get a nice boost in that Ruhan always attacks the same person, which ups the power level of the deck considerably. Meanwhile in multiplayer your random attacks aren't likely to miff anyone since you can legitimately say you had no choice. Either way, the goal is fun and epic plays.