Rip and Tear: Until it is Done

[BaronCappuccino]

I've been hopping from deck to deck like a grasshopper on cocaine. They're either too boring (Torbran), too weak (Flip-Chandra), too unoriginal (Wort, Boggart Auntie) -- you get the idea. I put this together today, and it's in the mail from TCG. I'm on the hunt for the Goldilocks' deck that's just right, and that doesn't mean necessarily winning. I'm looking for style, and in the colors I like best. I'm a Rakdos at heart. I feel like this is a good attempt at a deck that almost roleplays what it is to be Rakdos. That I already owned the manabase and half the other cards was a perk. What do you think? Is this how you envision Rakdos?

Decklist

DecklistCMCManaPricesChartsDraw 7

Commander (1)

1 Rakdos the Defiler

Creature (44)

1 Archfiend of Despair

1 Blood Speaker

1 Dread Cacodemon

1 Master of Cruelties

1 Nightmare Shephard

1 Rune-Scarred Demon

36 Shadowborn Apostle

1 Sire of Insanity

1 Sower of Discord

Artifact (17)

1 Arcane Signet

1 Blade of Selves

1 Bloodstone Cameo

1 Bolas's Citadel

1 Commander's Sphere

1 Grimoire of the Dead

1 Helm of the Host

1 Kolaghan Monument

1 Nyx Lotus

1 Rakdos Cluestone

1 Rakdos Keyrune

1 Rakdos Locket

1 Rakdos Signet

1 Talisman of Indulgence

1 The Cauldron of Eternity

1 Thrumming Stone

1 Veinfire Borderpost

Land (38)

1 Badlands

1 Blood Crypt

1 Bloodstained Mire

1 Cavern of Souls

1 Command Tower

1 Dragonskull Summit

1 Foreboding Ruins

1 Graven Cairns

1 Luxury Suite

1 Opal Palace

1 Path of Ancestry

1 Rakdos Carnarium

1 Shadowblood Ridge

1 Smoldering Marsh

22 Snow-Covered Swamp

1 Sulfurous Springs

1 Tainted Peak

Approximate Total Cost:

EDIT: So, this list has been through a half a quintillion edits since the original decklist, and it finally has a game plan.

The all-in strategy, should you choose to accept it, is to play six Shadowborn Apostle, use them to tutor for the Rune-Scarred Demon, and use him to tutor for the Thrumming Stone. The next time you cast a Shadowborn Apostle, the ripple mechanic will almost always have you casting the remaining thirty, and then you can tutor for five more. I recommend one of those five be Sire of Insanity, so that, should none of your opponents have had instant speed answers for your %$#%$#%, they'll have to hope to top-deck something. At this point, start swinging with [card]Rakdos the Defiler[/card] and seal your victory.

[OCPunisher]

Not sure if this is what you're looking for, but I've had the Rakdos deck in my sig for a couple years now and it never fails to disappoint. Every set always has a brand-new red or black fatty, so it stays fresh pretty well. Just a thought.

[BaronCappuccino]

At first, because I was on mobile and data was slow, your commander wasn't loading so I checked out the curve and thought, now here's a guy who doesn't care about curves, then I realized you were playing the best commander in the colors. Long live Rakdos.

[darrenhabib]

I don't know if 30 x Shadowborn Apostle is going to satisfy the problems you've been having?

Drawing your Nth Shadowborn Apostle in a row feels like groundhog day.

[BaronCappuccino]

So I made a few changes - 30 was a bit much in regards to the Apostles. I originally wanted 6 for each demon, because I could picture the scene in my head. I lost six of them, and now only Rakdos's four Archfiends have squads of disciples bringing them forth. I lost the generic commander color identity rocks and lands - two and three respectively -- because they didn't feel Rakdos -- for two in theme lands, urborg and tainted peak, and for all the remaining cards mentioned gone, the six disciples and three lands, I swapped in a handful of artifact and land destruction. At the very least, it feels thematic.

[DirkGently]

For one thing, I can't say I recommend buying decks wholesale without testing them first. Considering the (low) power level here, I think it's unlikely your group would begrudge you using proxies as a means to test.

For a second, if chandra was too weak, I think you're likely to be disappointed with Rakdos 1.0. He's extremely bad, outside of something like kaalia where you can skip the attack trigger. Granted, adding black will likely help your power level, but Rakdos himself I think you probably won't even want to cast most of the time.

This deck also looks very...repetitive? You've got the demon package (which, honestly, sacrificing 6 shadowborn apostles to get one 5-drop demon is a huge waste of resources), a bunch of discard+draw looting-type effects, some mass-removal, and liliana's contract as what seems to be your own real win condition. If someone destroys the contract, or kills 2 of your demons, you're pretty much screwed. But worse, while you have tutors for the demons (although accumulating 6 apostles for each demon is going to be impossible without a lot more draw), you have no tutors for liliana's contract. So if it's more than halfway through your deck, you're just never going to see it in most games. And even if you do pull it off...it's kind a boring win condition imo. It's fine to have as an option, but including a lot more demons would make a lot more sense, I think, since it would give you a reasonable path to victory just by beating people down, with contract as an alternative.

Finally, there are some issues with card choice. bloodstone cameo, for example, is quite bad compared to other mana rocks. If you want to include it for flavor, go ahead, but otherwise I'd like for a mana rock that gives you a bigger benefit (worn powerstone would let you cast your commander on turn 4, although as I said you probably don't even want to cast him...and you should definitely include sol ring unless you have a strong moral compunction against it), or costs 2. Some card choices are powerful elsewhere, but I'm not sure how, for example, jokulhaups helps you win the game. Think about what your plan is to win, and make sure all the cards in your deck are helping you do that.

[BaronCappuccino]

Good points, all of them. I might lose the contract. It's actually a misguided vestige of my original intent for the four demons to be Liliana's debt collectors, but Griselbrand... Hopefully WotC prints a fairer version sometime. I don't know what my group's power level is, at least not by an arbitrary number, but my mono red Grenzo with a chaos sub theme was on par with them.

EDIT: Made a bunch of changes after deliberation. The changes were to enhance the theme, first off, and gameplay concerns came second. I really like decks that almost tell a story, or that you could picture the scenes the gameplay invokes in a movie or videogame.

[BaronCappuccino]

Lots of Archidekt playtesting led me to dislike some of the concepts in my original deck, wherein a few of the demons weren't chosen for their effect, but to better fit the whole image of the deck. Lost a handful of off theme ideas, and added hopefully more impactful plays. At the very least, and it's a small least, I'm feeling good about the demon selection. Recognized that the deck is now black with a splash of red and adjusted the mana accordingly.

[Mimicvat]

My go-to response for a deck like this is "Needs more haste". Screw dropping fatties and then watching them get wiped.

I'd also add some generic draw and particularly ramp. Yeah, phyrexian arena and friends are boring, but they let you keep drawing fatties to play later in the game when your hand would otherwise run out. Personally I run something like 12 or 15 rocks in a big fatty deck.

[BaronCappuccino]

Good point -- I'm looking into options. Unlike other buffs, it's okay if Rakdos destroys the haste generator once the game requires him to start doing his thing.

[BaronCappuccino]

Took into account the incoming advice and I'm growing happier with the playtesting. I upped the ramp, improved the mana base, and found some neat demons that complete the tribal package. Nightmare Shephard is pretty awesome here.

Edit: and just remembered thrumming stone.

EDIT: So, replacing Extractor Demon with Rune-Scarred Demon means I can use my first six apostles on like turn four to tutor for Rune-Scarred for Thrumming Stone. It's a lot more consistent than I figured. Normally this sort of deck I think, needs all the tutors, but it's already all the tutors.

EDIT: With the new Rune-Scarred Demon gimmick, Liliana's Contract has a place in the deck again. I've spent more time in TCGPlayer these last few days than I have these last few months, buying cards with all the impulse control of an actual Rakdos citizen.