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"God-Eternal Rhonas" Deck Tech – "Magic: The Gathering"
Welcome (or in many cases, welcome back) to our Magic: The Gathering deck tech analyses of the Amonkheti gods and the grim, grisly fates that took four out of the five of them (or is that the eight of them? The verdict is out). Currently, we are covering the fate of poor Rhonas, the "indomitable" snake-headed god of the Egyptian-styled plane of existence that is Amonkhet.
Rhonas was the first of the prime Gods of Amonkhet to die when faced against the gods corrupted 60 long years prior by Nicol Bolas in his attempt to achieve the godly level of power he had before the Mending, an event that shook the Multiverse to its core and depowered all Planeswalkers down to mortal degrees of strength.
As a casualty of what the surviving refugees of Naktamun, the main city of Amonkhet, would call the "Hour of Devastation", Rhonas and three of his four siblings would be Eternalized, becoming zombified warriors who retain their prowess in martial and magical ability. Thankfully, the fourth sibling, Hazoret, would go on to escape Naktamun and lead her fellow refugees – yes, even gods can become refugees – in search of a better land.
The decklist we have for you to showcase the fate of the once-Indomitable snake-god will revolve around the use of lands to the player's advantage. It's also kind of a semi-love-letter to Field of the Dead, a card that got banned in Standard this past October. In any case, the various things you can do with Field of the Dead will be highlighted in this deck tech overall.
The decklist to be discussed in this article can be found here.
Notable Inclusions
Field of the Dead – You could imagine that with a huge theme of having lands of all kinds in here that we would include such a degenerate card. Field of the Dead functions very well off of the theme of having a ton of different lands enter play. With the penchant for bringing out masses of Zombies, I'd think this card was necessary.
Cards that can copy Field of the Dead – Vesuva and Thespian's Stage are cards that can copy any land in play. Why not just use them to make copies of Field of the Dead? This is the simplest function of these utility lands, and probably the most effective as well in the context off this deck.
Scapeshift – What's better than getting ahold of a Zombie token per turn? Getting an army's worth! No, we aren't amassing a Zombie Army, per se, but with Scapeshift we get that many Zombie tokens while Field is in play, which is pretty important.
Crucible of Worlds and Ramunap Excavator – These cards will be absolutely great at letting you recur the lands you've been sacrificing to fetch other lands, and are great at triggering our nominee for "best land in the deck," Field of the Dead! What else would you expect from this article?
Green Sun's Zenith – This nifty creature-fetcher can get basically any decent green critter in the deck for just the right payment of mana. What that also means, though, is that you can pay a simple fee of one green mana, making X equal to zero, and tutor up a Dryad Arbor, which is not only a creature but another land for Field to make a Zombie from. Nifty!
In Conclusion
I think that despite the fact that Rhonas and Kefnet got the least amount of screen-time overall in the short stories about Amonkhet, their deaths hurt me the most. Rhonas's death was seen from a first-person angle and was majorly saddening, and a good look at what was likely to come next.
This deck, however, fills me with joy in that it allows me to bring a lot of dead creatures into the fray, including Rhonas himself (or not-himself? The verdict is out). It's a bit more advanced than the Rhonas the Indomitable decklist I posted earlier today, but being that the two decks share many of the same cards, it should be a reasonable second or third step that a newcomer can take to become a stronger Magic: The Gathering player.
What do you think? Can this deck be improved with any kind of changes? Have you ever put God-Eternal Rhonas to good use as a Commander? Let us know!