You've got your Burn in my 8Rack! You've got your 8Rack in my Burn!
The best burn decks splash back. I wondered if the best 8Rack would be one that splashed red. Turns out that it's more than splashing: going full-on Rakdos makes for a brutal deck.
Here's the problem with burn: it does a lot of damage up front, but stalls out if it runs out of cards. Here's the problem with 8Rack: it doesn't do any damage up front, but dominates the game if it can run out of cards. So, like peanut butter and chocolate, these are two great tastes that taste great together.
Think of this as a reactive 8Rack deck which plays differently in two ways:
- it tries to cling to card advantage, so the even trade discards are gone;
- it tries to also do damage, in order to accelerate the long tail that plagues 8Rack. (This has the added benefit of making Bloodchief Ascension playable.)
This deck plays heavy control with Rakdos Charm, Black Sun's Zenith, Funeral Charm, and of course the classic Lightning Bolt. This is how you get through the early game, while you're trying to whittle down their cards to zero and get your racks in play.
Blightning is your primary way to force discard, and Rakdos's Return mimics it while also acting as a finisher.
Once you have their hand empty, Funeral Charm and Kolaghan's Command can be played in response to their draw, which keeps a hard lock on their deck and keeps up the pain from the racks.
Your goal here is to charge a Bloodchief Ascension, drain their hand, and keep the board clear. Then just let things play out as they will to the end.
