Misunderstood Bear Commander Turns Vanilla Creatures Into Real Monsters

Last updated on July 16, 2026

Ruxa, Patient Professor | Illustration by Ilse Gort

When's the last time you put a vanilla creature in your Commander deck on purpose? It's probably been a while. After all, it's hard to justify including a card with no abilities when things like Questing Beast exist. But what if I told you that there was a Commander that not only let you play vanilla creatures and is actually good? Well, you're in luck, because this Commander exists, and it's a ton of fun.

Ruxa, Patient Professor

Ruxa, Patient Professor is an interesting Commander because it asks you to play vanilla creatures, something that seems almost impossible to build a good deck around. Are there even enough creatures without abilities in green? That's what I asked myself when I first saw this card, but then I got to thinking about it for a minute and I realized that this card secretly has a lot of potential.

Getting Vanilla

So how do you get enough vanilla creatures in your deck? Well, there are a few ways to do it. The first way is to simply play vanilla creatures. I know it sounds simple, but this deck is simple and simple is good. You want to play creatures that are good on rate, cards like Gigantosaurus, Quakestrider Ceratops, and Terrian, World Tyrant. Having enough of these is essential to getting maximum value out of the first ability on Ruxa, Patient Professor.

The second way to increase the number of vanilla creatures in your deck is by getting face-down creatures into play with effects like morph and manifest/manifest dread. Even though you can turn these face-down creatures face-up, they still technically have no abilities, thus they benefit from Ruxa, Patient Professor while in play.

There are a lot of good green cards that let you get face-down creatures into play and/or benefit you for having them, such as Valgavoth's Onslaught, Temur War Shaman, Threats Around Every Corner, Trail of Mystery, Deathmist Raptor, etc. There are many more cards that play into this angle, and it's definitely worth including plenty of them in your deck.

The last way to get vanilla creatures into your deck is to make tokens. It wouldn't be Commander without an uncountable number of random tokens on board at any given moment, and Ruxa, Patient Professor pays you off for having them better than most. You can can go tall and wide with these effects, as you really benefit from both, just as long as the tokens you're making don't have any abilities. Effects like Sylvan Offering, Thelonite Hermit, March of the World Ooze, Ezuri's Predation, etc. Much like with the face-down synergy cards, you'll want to play plenty of token makers and token synergy cards in your deck, as it's where most of your creatures will be coming from.

Other Inclusions

Be on the look out for other cards that synergize with this strategy. There aren't many that explicitly do so, but there are a few. Specifically, Muraganda Petroglyphs might be one of the most powerful cards to include, but there are a few more that will help your deck.

There are a small handful of cards that can strip abilities from your creatures and also double as removal: Kenrith's Transformation, Invasion of Muraganda, and Trickster's Elk. As far as cards that specifically care about creatures not having abilities, there really aren't any others that are worth playing, other than perhaps Fang-Druid Summoner. Outside of these cards, you'll really just want to be playing the cards that any Commander deck would want. Things like ramp, protections spells, utility lands, etc.

Wrap Up

Muraganda Petroglyphs | Illustration by Scott Altmann

Once you have it all together, this should really start to look like a very well rounded deck that will definitely be competitive at any lower bracket table, and could even possibly fight with the big dogs at a higher bracket table, although it all depends on how you build it. At any rate, Ruxa, Patient Professor brings something unique to the table that few, if any, other Commanders are capable of, and that's always a recipe for fun. So give it a chance, you'll be glad you did.