My mind immediately went to "tribal tribal" lists. Lists that run a bunch of changelings and the best lords across all creature types. Rukarumel, Biologist, however, only changes your creatures to one type, so you could only choose the lords for one creature type.
The way I see it: If a tribe has enough lords, then it probably has enough support that you don't need Rukarumel, Biologist OR a tribe doesn't have enough lords, then you'd be forced to put a bunch of cards in your deck to try and find your lords, which sounds like a very repetitive and vulnerable gameplan.
So, if we want to build a Rukarumel, Biologist deck, we need a tribe with a decent number of lords, but not nearly enough creatures to take advantage of those lords.
I'm not sure if such a tribe exists, but the LOTR set did give us a workaround with the ability to play 9 copies of the same lord in Nazgûl. 9 lords is a reasonable number of lords to build a 100 card deck around, but not nearly enough to take advantage of said lords, so, hopefully, Rukarumel, Biologist should be able to step in and bridge that gap.
Conveniently, I've wanted to make a serious deck using a card like Relentless Rats or Seven Dwarves for a long time, but all of the other cards like this are rather uninspiring, the most exciting being Dragon's Approach.
One of the great things about the Nazgûl is that they don't provide a static buff, meaning we don't have to worry about mid-combat blowouts if our opponents hit our commander with targeted removal.
Additionally, being a 5 color deck, we'll have access to both Conspiracy, Arcane Adaptation, and Maskwood Nexus. So we should have some sort of backup plan if we can't get our commander to stick.
Fortunately, the Nazgûl are actually pretty potent lords, +1/+1 counters for all our creatures on etb, you can get more counters by having the ring tempt you, and they go pretty hog wild in multiples. Of course, P/T alone isn't all that exciting in EDH, and we can't even use tokens to swarm (unless they are sliver tokens), so we'll probably want to make sure the creatures can take advantage of the counters outside of just going into the red zone.
As I've been putting the deck together, I've realized that there is actually a lot of surprise synergies, take Aragorn, Company Leader for example, imagine playing that, then playing a Nazgûl that's a lot of counters.
While 9 cards certainly isn't enough to take advantage of Thrumming Stone (and who would want to, that card is lame). I did look at some other cards that we can take advantage of that other decks in a singleton format wouldn't be able to. I decided cards like Assembly Hall, Infernal Tutor, March of Burgeoning Life, and Bifurcate were more cute than good, but I did find Bloodbond March which seems like it might be a great way to comeback from a wipe. Echoing Return is a maybe (probably no, but we'll see). Pack Hunt is in a similar vein to Bifurcate but it's +2 cards instead of card neutral, it's an obscures card, certainly not one many people have cast in EDH, though, so I'm going to run it.
I've included a lot of the cards that cause the ring to tempt you, but I tried not to go overboard, Birthday Escape makes the cut because it replaces itself, but I think running cards like Dreadful as the Storm would be a mistake.
I wonder if I'm trying to juggle too many things, but I'd like to find a way to take advantage of the looting the ring can provide. Life from the Loam is a way to fill your hand with lands and trade them for real cards, and it is probably the safest best, as that's just a generically good card. But I wonder if I can get away with a card like Squee, Goblin Nabob or Master of Death. Oh wait, I just realized Ringwraiths are a slam dunk for this role.
Speaking of juggling too many things, I think I will drop the idea of running cards like Viridian Joiner. Having gathered a respectable list of cards to consider, it's becoming very apparent that this deck is going to be stretched a bit thin. Besides all the cool cards I want to add, this will be a swarming deck that's wide open to board wipes, so I will need a healthy dose of countermagic and protection spells.
Additionally, I want to make room for clone effects (imaging casting Rite of Replication on Nazgûl, that's 30 +1/+1 counters). I said earlier that 9 lords were enough to make a deck around, and it is, but it's still a bit on the low side. A handful of cloning effects should help.
Alright, the first draft is done:
first draft
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- Lord of the Nazgûl is suspicious, as the deck only runs 16 instants/sorceries, and most of them are interactive. However, he buffs up your wraiths and gives you token wraiths (with evasion!). so there's a pretty compelling payoff
- I decided to include some ramp, but it's slower ramp that helps color fix, so it's pulling double duty.
- I think a couple of cheap removal spells would go a long way in this deck, but I'm struggling to find cuts, so I'm going to run it as is, and beef up the interaction once I know what slots are helping me, and which are better served hindering my opponents.
- In a similar vein, the deck has many board wipe insurance cards, ranging from Heroic Intervention and Teferi's Protection to Boromir, Warden of the Tower and Selfless Spirit. that means the two board wipes I've included could be potent one-sided wipes. More wipes may be required.
- I tried to stay very mindful of colored mana pips (the deck uses all 5 colors pretty extensively), but I imagine that's still going to be a hurdle playing the deck.
