Magic: The Gathering - Ingest, Explained

As the eldritch spawn of Ulamog writhe across the planes, devouring all before them and processing matter and mana for their own purposes. In the lore of Magic: The Gathering, Ulamog and his spawn embody consumption. In terms of in-game mechanics, they're represented by the ingest keyword.

The ingest keyword represents your creatures eating your opponents' resources, consuming their library with every successful attack. Not only does this prevent your opponents from accessing important spells, but it also feeds your Processors, a creature type with abilities that need exiled cards to pay for.

What Is Ingest?

Ingest is a keyword ability that shows up on a handful of Eldrazi Drones. When a creature with ingest deals combat damage to a player, that player must exile the top card of their library. Like most other effects that exile cards, these cards are exiled face-up, which is important when interacting with Processors.

If you manage to give a creature multiple instances of ingest, each triggers separately, exiling that many cards from the defending player's library.

Ingest was introduced for Battle of Zendikar as an inexpensive way to fuel Processors, which need your opponent to have cards in exile in order to use most effectively. While several Eldrazi-themed spells exile your opponents' cards, they tend to be expensive, so ingest serves to provide cheap, repeatable exile triggers for limited formats like draft.

How To Use Ingest

Ingest is a rare ability that mostly appears on small, inexpensive blue or black Eldrazi Drones. It was intended to support the Processor draft archetype and doesn't stand up to the power level of most constructed formats.

Despite the low power level, there are niche uses for most cards, including ingestors. Creatures with ingest stand out in limited formats like draft, where players typically only have 40 cards in their decks and only one or two copies of their most powerful spells. This can make them useful inclusions in a cube as support for a mill archetype or an Eldrazi theme.

Ingestors can also provide support in other formats, such as Commander and Oathbreaker, by providing cheap, repeatable exile and mill effects. They fit particularly well in an Ashiok, Nightmare Muse deck, building up the catalogue of spells you can cast from their ultimate ability before they ever come into play.

Best Cards With Ingest

There are only a few cards with the ingest keyword, and Magic Head Designer Mark Rosewater has confirmed that it's unlikely to return in future sets, placing it at nine on the Storm Scale. However, there are a few that stand above the rest.

Fathom Feeder

Fathom Feeder is the best ingestor by a significant margin. For two mana (one blue, one black) you get a 1/1 with deathtouch and ingest. Ingest is not a strong enough mechanic for your opponents to worry about enough to sacrifice an important creature to block a creature with deathtouch, so you'll often be able to swing unopposed.

In addition to being a fair early-game attacker, Fathom Feeder has another useful ability later in the game. For three generic, one blue, and one black mana you can draw a card and force your opponents to each exile a card from the top of their library. While it's a little expensive for card draw, you can use this to block opponents who are using scry and tutor effects to manipulate the tops of their decks.

Vile Aggregate

Vile Aggregate is an unusual card with both ingest and a red color identity, but also the only one with trample and the one with the highest power most times that you'll play it.

Since Eldrazi creatures are either colorless or have devoid, Vile Aggregate is a solid addition to any Eldrazi deck that includes a red color identity. Running it alongside Eldrazi Spawn and Scion generators can cause its power to grow fast, sometimes at instant speed, and the red identity makes it an excellent sacrifice for Fling effects.

Red also includes several options to give Vile Aggregate double strike and to gain extra combat phases, giving you more opportunities to hit and ingest cards from your opponents' libraries.

Ruination Guide

Ruination Guide is a good addition to Eldrazi (and blue artifact) decks not for its ingest ability, but because it serves as a colorless "lord". This Eldrazi Drone provides a static 1/ 0 bonus to all of your colorless creatures, from Advisors to Zombies.

Eldrazi decks tend to swing tall, rather than wide, putting a lot of emphasis on large, virtually unstoppable creatures like Ulamog. Those titans will only get a tiny buff from Ruination Guide, but it empowers decks with lots of small creatures, like Eldrazi Spawn or Thopters, by distributing its bonus to all of them.

Benthic Infiltrator

Benthic Infiltrator only has one power, but four toughness means that it's a solid blocker that can hold up to most damage-based removal. And when it isn't blocking, it's straight-up unblockable.

One damage isn't anything to write home about, but there are several options in blue (or at least blue/white) that allow you to assign damage based on toughness. Drop it into your "toughness matters" deck and go to town.

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