Ragost, Deft Gastronaut Commander Deck Guide

Ragost, Deft Gastronaut | Illustration by Zack Stella

Order up! Edge of Eternities just dropped the best Food token synergy Magic: The Gathering has ever seen! Ragost, Deft Gastronaut is just the lobster we needed to turn Boros () artifact decks into a wild fling deck built on Lightning Helix-ing the hell out of your opponents in a messy food fight.

Come along with me as I build a Ragost, Deft Gastronaut Commander deck that wants to blast your opponents in the face with a whole cornucopia of food artifacts.

The Deck

Rock Lobster | Illustration by Heather Hudson

Artifacts weren’t always the domain of Boros decks. This deck’s commander forms the missing link between red’s direct damage spells and white’s lifegain with an artifact twist. The general gameplan is to run out your Ragost, Deft Gastronaut as quickly as possible, then set up an engine to sacrifice an artifact each turn to its second ability.

You want to gain life and untap Ragost on both your turns and each of your opponents’ turns to keep the orders flowing, so you’ll use lifegain triggers like Leonin Elder or just give Ragost itself lifelink with various equipment artifacts.

There are a handful of powerful synergies in this deck and at least one infinite combo, so I’ve included a plethora of tutors to dig these artifacts out of the deck. You’ll finish off your opponents with some big artifact creatures with death triggers to push out those last few plates before you clock out from the cook shift at the ol’ seafood restaurant (or wherever this lobster is supposed to be working).

The Commander: Ragost, Deft Gastronaut

Ragost, Deft Gastronaut is a 2-mana legendary lobster citizen creature with three abilities. First, Ragost makes all artifacts you control into food in addition to their other types. It also gives them the typical food ability that lets you sacrifice them for 2 mana to gain 3 life. Ragost’s second ability is the most important: It can tap, pay 1 mana, and sacrifice a food to hurl a Lightning Bolt at each opponent. And Ragost untaps on the end step of any turn in which you gained life, which opens up another round of 3-damage food-flings.

If you can guarantee lifegain on every activation of Ragost’s ability, you can set up a near-infinite number of sac’-and-blasts. The easiest way to do this is via lifelink, but in a pinch you can always pitch a food artifact from the field to get that extra untap. Many of this deck’s artifacts and artifact creatures have death triggers, so even if you can’t sacrifice them for damage, you can eat them as food and still enjoy the benefits of that delicious meal.

Serving Up Pain (Making Artifacts)

The first thing a Ragost, Deft Gastronaut deck needs is artifacts. You want consistent ways to create artifacts each turn so your commander doesn’t run out of juice, and luckily these don’t need to be food types since Ragost can cook anything into a meal.

Loyal Apprentice is my favorite of the lieutenant cards in Commander. Since your commander is so cheap, Loyal Apprentice spits out a Thopter token each turn and starts early. Illustrious Wanderglyph also creates an artifact token each turn; a delicious Gnome token Ragost can swallow and turn into damage.

Treasure Nabber is one of the nastiest tricks this deck runs. Whenever your opponents use their Sol Rings or Arcane Signets, you gain control of them, which lets Ragost turn them into food and then sacrifice them before your opponents regain control. This both results in damage from your commander and slows their ramp significantly.

Speaking of ramp, Game Changer Smothering Tithe creates more Treasure tokens than just about anything else, and with Academy Manufactor on the field you’ll triple up whenever you create Treasure, Food, or Clue tokens.

Weapons Manufacturing creates Munitions tokens whenever you get a nonartifact token, perfect for squeezing an extra 2 damage out of any of the food Ragost sacrifices.

Ichor Wellspring, Mycosynth Wellspring, and Prized Statue are three cheap artifacts with ETB and LTB abilities, so they’re excellent ingredients for Ragost’s recipe of death.

A Succulent Artifact Meal

Ragost, Deft Gastronaut’s meals aren’t just delicious, they’re nutritious! Ragost needs you to gain life each turn to operate at maximum efficiency, so you need consistent sources of life.

The simplest way to guarantee you gain life each turn is by giving Ragost lifelink. Equipment is the best bet for this route – there’s no shortage of Shadowspears and Basilisk Collars in this deck. Important to note that I’ve included Spirit Loop, as it gives the enchanted creature an un-keyworded lifelink effect, so you gain double the life you normally would.

A handful of creatures can also help you gain life: Leonin Elder is the soul sister of artifacts, and Circuit Mender can help you to untap Ragost in a pinch. Haliya, Guided by Light is a legendary Leonin Elder with a better body and stronger effect, which gives you some much-needed card draw. You also have Well of Lost Dreams to squeeze some card draw out of our lifegain triggers.

The Second Course

With all these artifacts going to the graveyard, it’d be a waste of food not to save those leftovers in the fridge for another meal. That’s why this deck runs a load of artifact recursion to keep your kitchen running at a steady pace.

Myr Retriever, Workshop Assistant, and Scrap Trawler are the basic and most common versions of this effect. They’ll get another artifact back when they die, something you can assure each turn with Ragost’s sacrifice effect.

Ratchet, Field Medic has the added bonus of both triggering lifegain and returning an artifact to the battlefield. Osgir, the Reconstructor works a bit differently, permanently exiling the artifact in exchange for two copied tokens of it. Osgir’s favorite targets are the Wellsprings for cheap advantage generators or any of your big artifact creatures with death triggers like Phyrexian Triniform.

Settling the Check

Once you’ve eaten your fill, it’s time to pay the bill. To finish out the game, you need more than just a simple 3 damage per turn.

You can significantly increase the amount of damage Ragost, Deft Gastronaut causes each turn with spells like Mechanized Warfare and Aether Revolt. Taii Wakeen, Perfect Shot lets you dump extra mana into Ragost’s damage before the turn comes back around to you.

Illusionist's Bracers and Battlemage's Bracers double Ragost’s damage output for each activation, while Patriar's Seal and Thousand-Year Elixir can give you extra activations before your own end step.

But wait! I almost forgot the tip. Don’t even think about leaving less than 20% for Ragost, else it’ll send one of its big beaters like Wurmcoil Engine, Phyrexian Triniform, or Triplicate Titan after you.

The Mana Base

This is a fairly ramp-heavy deck – the focus on artifacts means you can justify quite a few mana rocks and colorless dorks for ramping the mana base. This deck runs a total of 36 lands and 8 mana rocks/dorks (plus Solemn Simulacrum), plus a whole host of effects that’ll create Treasure tokens for you to use to reach those high-cost artifacts like Portal to Phyrexia.

The Strategy

The strategy here is fairly straightforward: You want to ramp and cast Ragost, Deft Gastronaut as soon as possible while you fill your battlefield with tasty food artifacts. Then, give Ragost lifelink and use its ability as many times per round as possible; at minimum you want to activate it once during your turn and once during each of your opponents’ turns. With lifelink and three opponents, Ragost gains 9 life each turn.

The ideal opening hand has enough mana to cast Ragost, a mana rock/dork of some kind, and a source of lifelink. The cheaper the better, so if you can stick a Sol Ring to the field and drop Basilisk Collar, you’re set up nice and cozy for your kitchen shift. If you don’t see any spells that fit this description, feel free to burn one of your cheaper tutors to fetch something important from the deck; Goblin Engineer is a great early game tutor since you can use it as recursion for as long as it remains on the battlefield.

The next step is to start to crank out artifacts for use as fodder for Ragost. Loyal Apprentice and Illustrious Wanderglyph are my favorite passive token generators here, but running out Academy Manufactor can triple up on most other tokens you’ll create.

Next, it’s good to set up some recursion for your artifacts to mitigate the inevitable Vandalblast. Osgir, the Reconstructor turns artifacts in your graveyard into advantage, while you can use any of your Scrap Trawler-type effects to recur cheap artifacts over and over.

Once the engine is up and running, start to blast your opponents with Ragost’s activated ability. Give your commander lifelink and start to chunk away at their life while you soar into the 60s and 70s as you gain 9 life per turn. Finish up either by increasing Ragost’s damage to an unmanageable level with your Aether Revolt effects or by dropping huge threats like Wurmcoil Engine and Phyrexian Triniform.

Alternatively, you can finish out the game with this list’s infinite combo.

Combos and Interactions

This deck runs one infinite combo to mill your opponents out immediately. To trigger it, you need Nuka-Cola Vending Machine, Academy Manufactor, and Grinding Station all on the field, as well as one Food token.

First, activate Grinding Station by sacrificing your Food token, and put the mill effect on the stack. The Vending Machine then triggers and creates a Treasure token, which becomes a Treasure, a Food, and a Clue. When the tokens enter, Grinding Station untaps three times. Resolve the mill effect on the stack, then repeat the steps infinitely until your opponents’ libraries are empty. Now you just pass the turn and watch everyone lose!

Rule 0 Violation Check

Some folks don’t approve of infinite combos, but this one is fairly difficult to set up. Depending on the vibe of your current pod, you may want to either cut this combo from your deck or cut back on tutors so it’s not so easy to assemble.

Budget Options

This deck clocks in at about $282 before tip. That’s about what I’d expect to spend on a fairly upgraded deck, but most of the cost is focused on some high-power advantage generators you could easily replace with cheaper versions.

If you want to skip the Game Changer Smothering Tithe, you can always replace it with Trading Post or Monologue Tax as advantage generators. Skip the Esper Sentinel as well and include some loot spells like Collector's Vault.

Save a quick $50 by ditching Shadowspear for Loxodon Warhammer and Portal to Phyrexia for a Lifelink.

Other Builds

While this Ragost, Deft Gastronaut deck looks to split the difference between burn, lifegain, and artifacts, you could always double-down on one of those aspects. A deck centered around burn would run more direct damage effects like Weftstalker Ardent and Reckless Fireweaver. Lifegain decks favor cards like Astrid Peth and The Gaffer, and token generator decks will focus on making Myr, Gnome, and Thopter tokens and double up on them with Anointed Procession.

Commanding Conclusion

Nuka-Cola Vending Machine | Illustration by Anthony Devine

Magic has added tons of spells that synergize with their new evergreen artifact tokens in the past five years. Ragost, Deft Gastronaut is one of the best food-based commanders to come out in that time, and it finally gives Boros the “fling” strategy red decks are known for. I, for one, am excited to see where we go with Food tokens in the future, and I’d love to see some sort of Anointed Procession or populate effect that works on Food tokens.

What are your favorite food commanders? And what are the best ways to make a ton of food in red and white? Let me know in the comments, or join Draftsim’s Discord to get in on the discussion.

Until next time, I hope you enjoyed your meal!