I fell in love with Ral Zarek when I first saw him in a spoiler back when Dragon's Maze was still being spoiled. I knew I wanted to make a deck where I could go infinite with his ultimate and that Gilder Bairn is best friends with planeswalkers. However I didn't get the chance to tinker with Ral Zarek as other matters were more pressing at the time. I recently got back into the game, now I finally have the time to make a Ral Zarek deck that I personally find great fun to play (though many of my friends might not agree that it's very fun).
Playstyle
The goal is to make your opponent go as slow as your deck via combos and counters. You want to slow it down to a snails pace to take care not to get overwhelmed (Stasis helps GREATLY with this.) Your turns will most often be very quick, a lot of times dropping a land and passing the turn and ready to counter, but games can last 20-30+ turns. **This should make your opponent feel as though they are stuck in a broken elevator with horrible music and a fart from an unknown source. They won't care where they get off they just want the torture to end.**
An ideal opening hand would depend on the deck you are playing against. While there isn't an ideal opening hand perse, you will want a hand that will keep you safe while you are building your field slowly.
Use Ral Zarek to opponents permanents and one to keep Stasis alive. Stasis locks your opponents down making them unable to their permanents until you draw what you need. Slows the game down to the pace the deck runs at.
You might need a moment of reprieve from Stasis, this is where Chain of Vapor comes into play. Pop Chain of Vapor before your oppenent ends their turn so you can your permanents at the beginning of your turn.
This is the most risky way to gain turns, it can be done and it has been done on more than one occasion. You and attack with Gilder Bairn, with him being you can pay to and target Ral Zarek to increase his loyalty. While risky the fact that Gilder Bairn has 3 toughness makes it easier to keep him alive. This requires a lot of counter and bounce cards in hand. A fresh Ral Zarek will gain enough loyalty to use his ultimate and potentialy gain extra turns to keep this combo moving.
This reduces the cost of Gilder Bairn's ability. This has a fail safe if Ral Zarek doesn't produce enough (or any) turns on his ultimate, you should still have mana to play counters to start the combo again.
The goal here is to ultimate Jace, the Mind Sculptor to exile the opponent's deck, pass the turn to yourself Ultimate Jace, the Mind Sculptor again, waste your extra turns passing the turn to the opponent, they cannot draw, they lose.
Gilder Bairn is such a great card for this deck, you don't need to have Paradise Mantle or Training Grounds to achieve the infinite turns combo with Ral Zarek The deck is by no means fast and it isn't suppose to be, it's suppose to slow the game down and keep your opponent at bay long enough for you to draw what you need and pull off one of the combos/synergies.
I am still actively working on this deck to make it better and better, so as always feedback, suggestions and a supportive upvote are always greatly appreciated.
I no longer have the time I to commit to this deck and all of MTG that I used to, so for now this is what the deck will remain as, all of you have helped me TREMENDOUSLY and I thank you all for the help I've had.
I hope I'll get time again soon to come back and truly finish this deck, but for now I'm happy with it and don't really have the time to look into pushing it any further but as soon as I do I hope to.
Magic the Gathering, FNM is TM and copyright Wizards of the Coast, Inc, a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc. All rights reserved. This site is unaffiliated. Articles and comments are user-submitted and do not represent official endorsements of this site.