Magic: The Gathering – Warhammer 40,000 Commander Deck Previews: The Ruinous Powers
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- The Commander: Abaddon The Despoiler
- Every New Card
- The Full Decklist
Magic: The Gathering's Warhammer 40,000 Commader Deck preview season continues, with day two giving us the second of four decks in full. Across a whopping 41 new cards we're introduced to the Chaos Warlord Abaddon the Despoiler, and the demonic forces from the Warp that he represents.
Whether it's the endless, corrupt pleasure of Slaanesh, the bloodshed of Khorne, the jubilant decay of Nurgle, or the ever-changing mystery of Tzeentch, this deck lets you play with the full power of 40K's Chaos.
For Magic players, you should already know what to expect from a deck based on 'Chaos'. There's lots of cascading, lots of Chaos Warps, and a whole army of Demons to back you up. Here's everything revealed for the blue/black/red The Ruinous Powers deck.
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The Commander: Abaddon The Despoiler
The Warmaster of Chaos and its greatest champion, Abaddon the Despoiler is the leader of the Chaos Space Marines, a horrific corruption of the supersoldiers that so famously represent the Imperium of Man.
True to his loyalty to Chaos, Abaddon's ability in Magic is highly random, granting cascade to spells that cost less than the total amount of life lost this turn by your opponents. While you do need to jump through hoops to make your opponents lose life, simply saving your big plays for after combat in the second main phase could allow you to cascade off of some of the deck's bigger cards and hit some spicy bombs.
It helps that this deck has a surprisingly high mana curve, with lots of expensive spells to cascade off of. Being able to cast one spell and get another for free helps counteract a few of the problems with this deck, notably its somewhat lacking land base for such big spells, and the deal is made even sweeter with some of the enters-the-battlefield effects you could be unexpectedly triggering.
The Ruinous Powers' backup commander is Be'lakor, the Dark Master, which is a much straighter Demon Tribal commander. As you'd expect from a Demon of Chaos from deep within the Warp, he's a bit of a double-edged knife: you can gain huge hand advantage when you play him thanks to the Prince of Chaos ability, but it's a one-off ability that could also end up dealing more damage to you than you'd like.
To help offset that, the second ability is very powerful. Demons are often big creatures with high power, so being able to use them to blast an opponent's creature off the board – or even go straight for their face – gives you a way to either force the life loss that Abaddon so desperately wants, or simply bring everyone else down to your life total.
Every New Card
The Ruinous Powers deck has two key themes: cascade and Demon Tribal. By playing cards like Sloppity Bilepiper and Heralds of Tzeentch, you can hope to hit cards that generate you even more value on hitting the battlefield, such as Chaos Defiler and Lords of Change.
Your second strategy is more straight-forward: fill the board up with Demons. Most creatures in the deck are Demons, which allows Be'Lakor to blast your opponent away with lots of damage. Make use of Herald of Slaanesh to reduce the cost of your Demons, and you could be both cascading off big spells and dealing huge damage on a single cast spell.
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 Like the rest of the 40,000 decks, the majority of The Ruinous Powers is brand-new cards. However, it does also include over 30 reprints, including some much-needed reprints for format staples. Alongside the ever-popular Blasphemous Act and Chaos Warp, we're also getting one of the game's best mana smoothing tools, Chromatic Lantern. Dark Ritual can be a fantastic first-turn play to speed you ahead of the rest of the board as well. Particularly interesting to note for those hoping to run Be'lakor instead of Abaddon is Warstorm Surge, which deals damage to any target equal to the power of a creature entering the battlefield under your control. As long as you have Be'Lakor out at the same time, your Demons will be firing off double damage with this and could speed up your gameplan signifiantly. Like most preconstructed decks, the big weakness here is in the mana base and how slow it is. While Chromatic Lantern is a very nice addition to help ensure you have access to the colours you need, if you're going to upgrade this improving the lands and swapping out that Temple, Swiftwater Cliffs, and Terramorphic Expanse should be your first priority. 8 Island 8 Mountain 8 Swamp Abaddon the Despoiler Aspiring Champion Assault Suit Barren Moor Be'lakor, the Dark Master Bile Blight Bituminous Blast Blasphemous Act Blight Grenade Blood for the Blood God! Bloodcrusher of Khorne Bloodthirster Brainstorm Chaos Defiler Chaos Mutation Chaos Terminator Lord Chaos Warp Chromatic Lantern Command Tower Commander's Sphere Crumbling Necropolis Dark Apostle Dark Ritual Decree of Pain Deny Reality Dismal Backwater Drach'Nyen Evolving Wilds Exalted Flamer of Tzeentch Exotic Orchard Foreboding Ruins Forgotten Cave Great Unclean One Helbrute Herald of Slaanesh Heralds of Tzeentch Keeper of Secrets Khârn the Betrayer Kill! Maim! Burn! Knight Rampager Let the Galaxy Burn Lord of Change Lucius the Eternal Magnus the Red Mandate of Abaddon Molten Slagheap Mortarion, Daemon Primarch Mutalith Vortex Beast Noise Marine Nurgle's Conscription Nurgle's Rot Past in Flames Path of Ancestry Pink Horror Plague Drone Poxwalkers Reverberate Seeker of Slaanesh Sloppity Bilepiper Sol Ring Sunken Hollow Swiftwater Cliffs Talisman of Creativity Talisman of Dominance Talisman of Indulgence Tallyman of Nurgle Temple of the False God Terramorphic Expanse The Horus Heresy The Lost and the Damned The Ruinous Powers Tzaangor Shaman Venomcrawler Warstorm Surge Wayfarer's Bauble Worn Powerstone READ MORE Related News & Content
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