Rankle - Sac / Discard

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ISBPathfinder
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Post by ISBPathfinder » 4 years ago

So, this is my take on Rankle. I wanted to focus primarily on the discard and sac portions of him and see if I can tax players out of the game. There is a bit of recursion to pair with the discard elements of this deck as well as token generation. Essentially I want to see if people can stop hording things in and to try and smash the win button and actually play to the board.

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PLANESWALKER (1)

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Last edited by ISBPathfinder 4 years ago, edited 1 time in total.
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Tryno
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Post by Tryno » 4 years ago

I feel like Bloodsoaked Champion would fit really well here. You can put him into the battlefield in response to Rankle attacking and still sacrifice him. It's less good than Reassembling, but redundancy sounds sweet.

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darrenhabib
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Post by darrenhabib » 4 years ago

I did a post in the main commander forum highlighting Rankle a few weeks ago.

I ended up trying 3 different builds. The first one was all-in on prison theme. The next had more of a reanimation theme, and then finally I settled on something that is much closer to your build. It is a style of play that can work really well.

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Post by ISBPathfinder » 4 years ago

Tryno wrote:
4 years ago
I feel like Bloodsoaked Champion would fit really well here. You can put him into the battlefield in response to Rankle attacking and still sacrifice him. It's less good than Reassembling, but redundancy sounds sweet.
Its fairly similar and in most cases worse Reassembling Skeleton. The upside is primarily the extra point of power and the downside being that it is restricted in when you can bring it back. It also can't block which is kind of a big thing as its not like the champion is a good attacker. I guess the question is why not just run Buried Alive instead? It would be one thing if I was maxing all of these things out already. Its probably fine to include or exclude. I don't really see anything I clearly would prefer it over in my list right now.
darrenhabib wrote:
4 years ago
I did a post in the main commander forum highlighting Rankle a few weeks ago.

I ended up trying 3 different builds. The first one was all-in on prison theme. The next had more of a reanimation theme, and then finally I settled on something that is much closer to your build. It is a style of play that can work really well.

Decklist
Approximate Total Cost:

I constantly go back and forth on hand hate concepts because in the end someone always complains at how "unfun" the strategy is. Its annoying to me because those people tend to sit and set up dumb things in their hand that are hard to interact with. I like Rankle from the standpoint that its built into the commander but its also not the only thing the commander does. I am going to start mine off without going super heavy down that route but enough to just kind of see how things go for me.

Ooooo I love that Auntie's Snitch synergy. I totally overlooked that.

Dread Presence - yea, I probably should find a way to get this in. I keep forgetting about him given he is kind of newer and I haven't played much mono black of late.

Mindslicer - I didn't think about this guy but..... yea I guess I could see it. I might pass on him for now given in a lot of cases I only really feel like I need this effect if someone is drawing really heavy. I often feel like I have better draw than a lot of people in my meta.

DECK CHANGE:
  • Ravenous ChupacabraDread Presence I was thinking and generally speaking if opponents can get through the edicts its because they have multiple creatures and in a lot of cases shock will take their number down some.
  • Liliana's SpecterAuntie's Snitch I like the each opponent discards creatures as they give me something to sacrifice to Rankle and bring opponents hands size down. That said, I think the specter is my worst of the bunch and I want to include Auntie for some sweet synergy.
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Post by darrenhabib » 4 years ago

I put quite an emphasis on cards that can reset the game state, so that you can make effective use of Rankles abilities further into the game if things have slipped away. If an opponent has drawn a bunch of cards, then the discard just gets worse. Same with a board full of creatures.
That's why I have Bontu's Last Reckoning, Damnation, Toxic Deluge, and even Biting Rain for the go wide strategies. These allow you to rest the game part way through if things have gotten too wide to make use of Rankles ability.

The same goes for cards in hand, and Mindslicer I'd rank as the best card in the deck. A constant source of tutoring. The fact that Rankle can sacrifice it means that you can guarantee the effect.

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Post by ISBPathfinder » 4 years ago

darrenhabib wrote:
4 years ago
I put quite an emphasis on cards that can reset the game state, so that you can make effective use of Rankles abilities further into the game if things have slipped away. If an opponent has drawn a bunch of cards, then the discard just gets worse. Same with a board full of creatures.
That's why I have Bontu's Last Reckoning, Damnation, Toxic Deluge, and even Biting Rain for the go wide strategies. These allow you to rest the game part way through if things have gotten too wide to make use of Rankles ability.

The same goes for cards in hand, and Mindslicer I'd rank as the best card in the deck. A constant source of tutoring. The fact that Rankle can sacrifice it means that you can guarantee the effect.
Rankle puts quite a bit of pressure on people pairing edicts with hand hate. I haven't played him at all yet myself but he seems like he might pressure people to run dry on hands and boardstates unless they have a lot of interaction or heavy draw.

I can see the idea of mass hand hate given if someone is pushing hard on draw and light on board state we might not do much to them. I was more going down the line of pressuring those player's life totals via some of the big pump equipment myself but I guess I can see going deeper on the hand hate stuff. I have always found going deep on hand hate to be a little odd as once people are playing off topdeck those effects tend to lose a lot of power as you draw more of them. Its part of why I was thinking of running a little lighter on them as a whole and just picking up a minor taxation here and there with the commander on that front.

As a whole, I don't see a ton of decks that just power draw constantly. I see a few of them still but generally speaking those strategies tend to bring attention to themselves and need to defend to some degree given the attention they bring to themselves.

Catchup mechanics - honestly, I don't know that I love the number of wraths you have. Plague Engineer / Bile Blight / Echoing Decay are all fairly versatile cards that can answer swarms in a lot of ways as well as present versatile removal effects in alternate situations. I even added Umezawa's Jitte as a means to potentially remove 1-2 chaff creatures before forcing my opponents to edict. If a lot of people are running faster than you then I guess I can see it but I guess I am kind of ok just seeing how things go for now. If someone is running a higher ter deck that goes off super fast I think it might be necessary but I also don't know that I want to be in mono black against that.

Mindslicer - I want to see how the deck plays and how my opponents play against it first. It does look spicy though but my own discard theme is a bit shallower than yours appears to be offhand. I think in a lot of cases my opponents will have a hard time keeping up with Rankle on his own and I just sprinkled in a few extras to work alongside him. I want to see how it is to just tax things a little, I don't necessarily have to hit everything as a lot of the cards I am possibly worried about tend to not be things people can just curve in as their hands get low. I will get them to commit that lab man to play or cast that X mana spell / mass resurrect spell before they are ready to do so and that is sort of where I am at on my thoughts on Rankle. I am not trying to stop people from having cards as a whole just to tax them if they are slow playing things to try to assemble combos in hand or whatever. I do think slicer is a great card but I want to see how the deck plays first before I commit to him.
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