The Commander
Flying
When Ryusei dies, it deals 5 damage to each creature without flying.
Guide
Gameplan
Beat down with a 5/5 flier, then turn Ryusei's death into a one-sided board wipe that clears ground creatures while your flyers and indestructible threats survive. Sacrifice or reanimate Ryusei repeatedly to chain 5-damage sweeps, grinding opponents out while you keep pressure in the air.
Strengths
- A repeatable 5-damage board wipe that doesn't hit your flyers
- Mono-red gives access to the best sacrifice outlets, rituals, and aggressive ramp
- Pressures the board both offensively (5/5 flier) and defensively (sweeper) with one card
- Cheap to recast and easy to abuse with recursion and blink-style reanimation
Weaknesses
- The death trigger is symmetrical to your non-flyers and can wipe your own ground board
- Mono-red lacks card advantage and recursion outside red's narrow tools
- Big indestructible or high-toughness creatures shrug off the 5 damage
- Vulnerable to exile-based removal and graveyard hate that stops reanimation loops
Key Cards
- Goblin Bombardment — Free sacrifice outlet that lets you trigger Ryusei's wipe at instant speed on demand.
- Ashnod's Altar — Sacrifices Ryusei for mana while detonating the board, fueling recast loops.
- Feldon of the Third Path — Makes a token copy of Ryusei that you can sac for another sweep each turn.
- Purphoros, God of the Forge — Turns repeated Ryusei recasts and token copies into direct damage to all opponents.
- Dockside Extortionist — Generates the explosive mana to recast Ryusei and chain death triggers.
Upgrade Path
Lean into cheap sacrifice outlets (Goblin Bombardment, Ashnod's Altar, Viscera Seer) plus reanimation and clone tech (Feldon, Chaos Warp into copies) to make the sweep repeatable. Add big mana enablers like Dockside Extortionist and rituals to recast Ryusei multiple times a turn, and include payoffs such as Purphoros and Terror of the Peaks to convert recasts into damage. Build a flyer-heavy board so your wipes stay one-sided and protect Ryusei from exile removal.
Core Cards
The most-played cards for this commander, built from aggregated deck data (the Mythic Graph). Build public decks to seed it.
Win Conditions
- ▸Air superiority with flyers while Ryusei wipes blockers each cycle
- ▸Purphoros or similar etb/death pingers draining opponents through recast loops
- ▸Grinding the board to zero with repeated 5-damage sweeps then attacking out
Archetypes
- Sacrifice / Aristocrats — Sac outlets let you fire off Ryusei's death sweep whenever you choose.
- Reanimator — Red's reanimation and recursion repeatedly return Ryusei for more wipes.
- Stax / Control — Repeatable board wipes keep opponents' creatures off the table while you stay ahead in the air.
- Aggro — A 5/5 flier backed by a sweeper makes for an efficient beatdown plan.
Combos
No combos found for this commander on Commander Spellbook.
Related Commanders
Same color identity (R), by popularity.
