Rakdos = Rat, Removal and Discard.
Updated for Journey into Nyx
I got to say a huge thank you to sharkudi and Fizzz; who also have similar decks and have been hugely helpful in developing my own version.
The deck is designed primarily to disrupt the hand as much as possible; with Thoughtseize and
Duress
doing the early work and Rakdos's Return keeping the pressure on, late game.
This became a slightly stronger strategy with the introduction of Brain Maggot, yes opponents can kill it and get their card back, but you get more hand information, and it all helps to stall your opponent in tempo terms, why you assemble your answers. They use removal on it, to get a card back - fine that's one less removal for our
Pack Rat
army.
Once we've got rid of threats in our opponents hands, they're put on a clock with Shrieking Affliction - they have to take damage and if they don't then their board state stalls; as our presence increases.
Turning our attention to the battlefield; our removal package ensures we can deal with most things that hit the board early game or if our opponent hits a lucky top-deck it won't survive for long. Anger of the Gods kills our things too, so that comes in from the sideboard if getting overwhelmed by weenies and tokens. Hopefully though, bile blight can provide some 2 for 1's.
The deck can play 2 ways, go out early multiplying our
Pack Rat
for an early aggro assault; which weenies can't hope to race us on; or follow the gameplan then when the mana is on board, make many many rats each and every turn in the mid game.
Pack Rat
and other permanents help us towards Mogis, God of Slaughter, we can activate him pretty easily and even when he's not active his ability is still very relevant.
The key to the deck is playing carefully, it's quite a thinkers deck, you really don't want to be rushed into dropping your hand, which is easy to do with such a low curve in general.
Underworld Connections is really a pivotal card in my opinion, we're playing control; we can't simply rely on controlling our opponents hand for card advantage, we need to stay on top, UC allows us to avoid getting into a battle of top-decking luck with our opponents.
This deck's strength is in the sideboard:
Slaughter Games
rips any deck apart after game 1, remember with the amount of looks we get at the opponents hand we know most things they have up their sleeves.
Pithing Needle is a given in most SB's, here we're looking at shutting down things our removal and combination of colors struggles to deal with.
Lifebane Zombie personally a great SB card, we're not devotion, but vs Green or White - they won't want to be seeing this.
Erebos, God of the Dead - absurd lifegain capabilities with some cards in standard - this guys sorts that issue out. With
Pack Rat
devotion isn't usually an issue, so another big threat.
Sire Of Insanity
- oh dear Control net-deckers - you really don't wan't to be seeing him, no matter what you draw for your card advantage is rendered useless.
Mizzium Mortars
and Anger of the Gods allows us to tailor the removal package to suit our needs - I'm thinking of you BBV.
Still looking to get this deck really tweaked so that it performs more consistently. There really aren't many decks like this in the current meta - it has huge possibilities is great fun to play (not against mind) - any comments, advice and suggestions to make this better would be appreciated.
And try to check out sharkudi and Fizzz decks too.
