Commander Deck Tech: Ragost, Deft Gastronaut

Are you tired of building decks with Elf, Human, Angel, Vampire, and Beast commanders? If so, and if you enjoy artifact decks, then this space Lobster will charm you with his refined cooking!

In this article, we'll show you two lists with Ragost, Deft Gastronaut as the commander: the first one uses many interactions to create even more artifact tokens, which you can then feed to your commander to burn your opponents (quite literally!). The second one leans on cards that allow you to burn them even more. The idea is to kill your opponents before they have any time to react, all while you gain more and more life.

As usual, before we go into our lists, let's meet our commander!

Ragost is a Boros creature that doesn't cost a lot of mana, just how we like them.

His static ability states that artifacts under your control are Food besides their other types. And, best of all, he lets you sacrifice any Food to gain more life!

With Ragost's activated ability, you can sacrifice a Food and deal 3 damage to each opponent. Finally, if you do gain life in a certain turn, you can untap Ragost at the beginning of that turn's end step.

Please note that you can't sacrifice a Food to both gain 3 life and deal 3 damage at the same time. These two abilities are separate from one another, so you can't use them at the same time even though they need a sacrifice to work.

Luckily for us, Ragost is in the best colors possible if our plan is to gain life and deal burn damage.

This is our main list for today:

Mana Rocks and Ramp

Ragost is very democratic. Our little Lagost chef doesn't care whether you're sacrificing Food tokens or not, as long as you're sacrificing Food. So, with him in play, even mana rocks will be precious ingredients for the delicious (and explosive) recipe we'll be following.

Arcane Signet, Boros Signet, Fellwar Stone, Mind Stone, Sol Ring, and Talisman of Conviction are classic cards in any deck with this color combination. They basically create mana and spice up our recipe. Liquimetal Torque adds a special touch, as it can turn another nonland permanent into an artifact that we'll be able to sacrifice with Ragost.

A drink is always welcome whenever you're savoring a meal, and, for this list, we decided to use Nuka-Cola Vending Machine to get some refreshments. Besides creating Food tokens, this artifact creates tapped Treasure tokens whenever you sacrifice a Food.

This means that, even when you sacrifice your Food with Ragost, you'll always have "one more" because all your artifacts (including Treasure tokens) are Food in addition to their other types.

Many players scoff at a mere mention of this enchantment, but in this list it is as valuable as Nuka-Cola if your goal is ramping and burning the opponents even more with the Treasure tokens you create.

Smothering Tithe taxes opponents, so you'll either get an advantage when they draw cards or prevent them from playing many spells per turn. After all, because of this card, they'll have to pay 2 mana if they don't want you to create a Treasure token when they draw cards.

Crime Novelist is our favorite writer. This little fella was inspired by Ragost's recipes and will grow considerably with +1/+1 counters in this list, all while you add red mana to your reserves.

Here's an honorable mention: Treasure Nabber!

Treasure Nabber might not be "ramp" by itself, but it lets you take control of any artifact your opponents use to create mana. If you want to actually annoy them to death, you can even sacrifice their artifacts with Ragost's ability and deal even more damage.

Reducing Costs

Cost reducers are welcome in any deck, under any circumstances. However, as this list plays many low-cost permanents, we tried to add accessible cards and cards that play more than one role in this strategy.

Foundry Inspector is quite accessible and popular among players.

As for Zirda, the Dawnwaker, it is quite scary because, with it, you'll be able to activate abilities that don't cost any mana for less resources. Once this card is on the board, many combos and explosive setups will be easier to play.

In this list, this Elemental Fox supports explosive turns, helping us save some mana we'd otherwise have to use to activate our commander's ability. It is so efficient that we can even call it Ragost's sous chef in this strategy.

Finally, we have The Fire Crystal, which discounts the cost of red spells and gives you haste so you can win even faster.

Card Draw

Card draw, which is essential in any Commander list, is also an important part of this deck.

This deck creates tokens, so we also added Idol of Oblivion. It is cheap and interacts with them.

Like any great planeswalker, Daretti, Scrap Savant has many great abilities, particularly for this deck. Its +2 cycles cards in our hand by discarding them. Its -2 lets us sacrifice an artifact in play to return an important artifact from our graveyard to the board (like Nuka-Cola Vending Machine). Finally, its -10 emblem states, "Whenever an artifact is put into your graveyard from the battlefield, return that card to the battlefield at the beginning of the next end step."

Getting this emblem will give you a huge advantage, considering it essentially allows you to sacrifice your artifacts stress-free. After all, if no one exiles them, this emblem will just return them to your board in the next end step.

Haliya, Guided By Light, another legendary from Edge of Eternities, is also one of Ragost's most loyal friends.

With her, you'll gain life passively even on your opponents' turns. Because your commander will just untap at the other players' end steps, you'll be able to activate him more freely. Furthermore, she also draws a card on your turn, and her Warp is very cheap - just one white mana .

Creating Tokens

As we mentioned before, artifact tokens are also precious resources for Ragost.

One of the coolest things about this commander is that he gets a lot from cards like Nimblewright Schematic, Servo Schematic, and Weapons Manufacturing. The first two are low-cost artifacts, so you can consider them "two mana, two Foods to sacrifice".

As for the enchantment, it interacts with this deck's nontoken artifacts to create Munitions, artifacts that deal damage to any target when they leave the board.

If Sierra, Nuka's Biggest Fan and Ragost were part of the same universe, they'd probably be great friends.

This card creates more Foods and makes them even more useful: when you sacrifice a Food, you can give a target creature +X/+X at the end of the turn, where X is the number of Quest counters on Sierra.

Because of cards like Loyal Apprentice, Illustrious Wanderglyph, Anim Pakal, Thousandth Moon, and Apothecary White, you will have no trouble giving her some Quest counters.

Ragost, Deft Gastronaut's text states that he is the source that deals 3 damage to your opponents when you sacrifice Food. So, for our alternative list, we'll use the best burn and lifegain tools Boros can give us!

Marvin, Murderous Mimic is a "second" Ragost in this list, and also Food!

Besides Marvin, this list plays some support cards that give you life when your commander deals damage. This is critical when you need to untap him and get more from his effect.

And you know what's fun about this list? When you deal more damage, you'll gain even more life with our Lobster. That's why it plays cards like:

The idea behind this strategy is to burn the board and play as fast as you can, like any classic, great red deck usually does.

Ragost, Deft Gastronaut is definitely not the strongest Boros artifact commander, but he might be one of the most fun ones.

You can also certainly adapt the lists above to your game style and taste, the cards you have and don't have, or your pod's particular ruleset. Regardless of what you change in them, this commander will give you fun matches - and create true Food wars on the board!

What do you think? Tell us your thoughts in our comment section below.

Thank you for reading, and see you next time!