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Merciless Rage with alterations

Commander / EDH BR (Rakdos)

Kalkris

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Creature (28)

Instant (2)

Land (38)

Artifact (9)

Commander (1)

Commander: foil Anje Falkenrath

Sorcery (14)

Enchantment (8)

Maybeboard

Creature (10)

Enchantment (4)

Sorcery (3)

Artifact (3)

This list was produced for Bleeding Cool, in review of the Commander 2019 deck Merciless Rage.

The list of changes is as follows:

Soul of Innistrad > Sepulchral Primordial

Soul is simply outclassed by Primordial. Paying mana to return creatures back to your hand from the grave isn't nearly as good as taking your opponents' best creatures and simply returning them to play on your side.

Alchemist's Greeting > Muck Drubb

The Greeting is of lesser impact than a surprise Muck Drubb, in that the Drubb can redirect scary removal to itself, while the Visitor doesn't honestly do quite as much. This was a simple cut.

Scaretiller > Living Death

Living Death is a lynchpin for this deck, turning all your dead creatures back around and onto the battlefield. It's a great spell for you. If you've been following my decklist alterations, you'll understand my problem with Scaretiller in these decks. To be fair, it's theoretically better in here than the other three decks, but it still dosn't make the cut for me.

Nightshade Assassin > Rummaging Goblin

Sanitarium Skeleton > Putrid Imp

Champion of Stray Souls > Skirge Familiar

Here are self-discard outlets. The Goblin is good because we won't actually be discarding a lot of cards with Madness in this build, comparatively, so more draw is pretty good. The two Imp creatures are great because there is no way to cap the discard you can achieve with them, so if you even wanted to pitch your entire hand, you have that option. The cards cut, in turn, are cards that aren't of efficient payout for discard, or simply don't synergize enough with the deck.

Rakdos Guildgate > Talisman of Impulse

Rakdos Locket > Rakdos Signet

The two mana rocks put in the deck will speed it up quite considerably. The land is superfluous and the Locket is simply outclassed by better rocks, detailed here. This is one instance where I would suggest a Guild Signet, because we have not many options in the way of 2-mana rocks for red or black that could be used right away (I'm glaring at Fire Diamond and Charcoal Diamond here).

Stromkirk Occultist > Archfiend of Ifnir

Bloodhall Priest > Kulrath Knight

Key to the City > The Scorpion God

These three cards enable ridiculous plays at the end of your turns. Because this deck does not have a way to facilitate a lack of maximum hand size, at end of turn if you have X amount of cards in hand (where X is greater than 7), the cards you pitch will cause your opponents' creatures to permanently shrink, and if any die, you draw off of this with the Scorpion God, allowing you to do even more of this (additional cleanup steps are the key to this interaction, by the way). If anything still survives, Kulrath Knight keeps these threats immobilized. The cards cut are not of a positive impact for your play, and/or have a very small impact at all.

Wildfire Devils > Liliana's Caress

Memorial to Folly > Megrim

These cards provide an offensive, if slightly minor, payoff for forcing the opponent to discard cards. Both the cards cut were superfluous, and Wildfire Devils has the added push factor of being rather unsynergistic (as we want a minimal amount of lesser-impact instant or sorcery spells in opposing graves to have the best possible effect, and mass discard won't really help that cause).

Violent Eruption > Waste Not

Gorgon Recluse > Geth's Grimoire

The cards added in this section are wonderful payoffs for having opponents discard the cards they're so fond of holding on to. Both of these draw you fuel, while Waste Not might create a bit more than just that. The madness cards being cut here aren't of a high enough impact to keep in the deck.

Hedonist's Trove > Reforge the Soul

Greven, Predator Captain > Dark Deal

The Eldest Reborn > Words of Waste

Fiery Temper > Mindslicer

Ob Nixilis Reignited > Barbed Shocker

Lastly we come to cards which will force opponents to discard and then (barring Mindslicer, wherein that's just it) draw cards to later have to discard later on. The cuts here were either not synergistic (Greven, Nixilis, and the Trove), low enablement (The Eldest Reborn), or low payoff (Fiery Temper).

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