Rakdos Aggro deck built upon Soulflayer, a very interesting creature from Fate Reforged.
Basically: very cost-efficient creatures with static abilities to power the Soulflayer, some combat tricks and removal = a fairly fast-paced aggressive red-black deck.
The main purpose of this deck is to challenge net-deckers (which I heavily dislike) at FNM while having fun. As far as I know it is a totally original homebrew!
Comments and suggestions are very welcome, as I intend to build this to challenge FNM!!
Now, onto the deck:
Soulflayer
Soulflayer is a 4/4 for a 6-CMC which should be able to come out oftentimes at 3 or 4 mana thanks to Delve. Its best thing though is it inheritates some static abilities from the exiled creatures used to pay for its delve savings, so how about forcing it to enter the battlefield as a 4/4 flyer / first striker / trampler / double striker / deathtouch, for 3-4 mana?
The abilities it can get are: flying, first strike, double strike, deathtouch, haste, hexproof, indestructible, lifelink, reach, trample, vigilance.
Lifelink, hexproof, reach, and vigilance are nearly impossible to get in Rakdos, or totally unworkable in a reasonably competitive deck. Indestructible seems tricky, as it is not easy to get one of your gods to the graveyard...
Still, there is a surprisingly high number of Rakdos creatures with the remaining, which should be enough to put up a reasonably nasty cast of characters for this deck, including some rarely played creatures...
Modus operandi: I built a big table listing nearly all Rakdos creatures from MTG 2015, THS, BNG, JOU, KTK, FRF, sorting them by CMC, Power, Toughness, static abilities (type and number of them), frequency, whatever.
Then I sorted the table by increasing CMC and decreasing number of abilities, and tried to pick up a fair mana curve. This is the result:
The casting of Soulflayer's posse:
Ruthless Ripper
: Fair 1-drop with deathtouch which can also be used as a morph creature to attack by 2 and be turned up to kill any blocker and deal 1 damage to opponent.
Monastery Swiftspear: Hasty 1-drop which can benefit from the 12 instant spells in the deck to be a 2/3 or a 5/4 (via Titan's Strength).
Gurmag Swiftwing: Yeah, I know, WTF?! absurdly non-professional creature!... but it is an evasive early drop which can give 3 abilities to the Soulflayer... I can imagine the opponent laughing at my bat and then seeing a 4/4 flyer hasty first striker for 3 mana shortly afterwards...
Prophetic Flamespeaker
: tricky to play card, it yields card advantage (not frequent in red) and then gives 2 nice abilities to soulflayer, double strike and trample, ie 8 trample damage if attacking...
Flamewake Phoenix
: I keep thinking this is an amazing creature for current Standard... a 2/2 hasty flyer for 1RR with no drawback and a potential Ferocious upside of coming back to the battlefield (NOT the hand)? It gives flying and haste to the Soulflayer.
Archfiend of Depravity
: it is a 5/4 flyer for 5 mana with no drawback. This alone seems impossible in Mirage-epoch Standard MTG (when I quit playing until recently), but then it ALSO kills opponent creatures, by making her to sac' them!! so long protection from colors or hexproof or even indestructibility!!!! The opponent is building a huge army of monk or goblin tokens? good, he will have to sac all of them but 2, and the two keepers better be flyers, because I have a 5/4 flyer facing her...
Kolaghan, the Storm's Fury: a 5/5 actual flyer for 5 mana with no drawbacks. He can bounce back to hand at the end of my turn to hinder the killing or exiling of Kolaghan during opponent's turn. It also pumps my other creatures upon attack. Only 2 copies as it is legendary though.
So, summarizing:
There are 12 creatures lending Flying to the Soulflayer; 11 lending Haste; 3 lending deathtouch; 3 lending First Strike; 3 lending Double Strike; and 3 lending Trample...
Seems that Soulflayer will hardly ever be a 4/4 vanilla... In fact, the perfect number of Soulflayers might be 3 instead of 4...
Other deck tricks
4 copies of Titan's Strength to spot-protect my creatures and scrying. It can also nicely finish an opponent desperate to block my double-striker trampler 4/4 Soulflayer by turning it into a 7/5 attacker for 14 trample damage...
3
Prophetic Flamespeaker
for the crucial lending of Double Strike and Trample at once to the Soulflayer, but also for card advantage in case it successfully damages the opponent (eg with Titan's Strength).
4 Hero's Downfall to remove ultimate threats and planeswalkers.
The 3
Archfiend of Depravity
will remove the third opponent creature, or tokens or mana dorks, leaving just two opponent creatures in range of my own removal or to combat my critters. If they don't leave a flyer to counter the Archfiend (eg if they leave a big creature to pound me), I still have a 5/4 evasive attacker to outrace them.
4
Collateral Damage
. This is a longshot (why use this instead of Lightning Strike or the new Shock with Ferocious?), but I can picture this card as useful to send to the graveyard my own creature which was going to be killed anyway in combat, so it helps delving a super-Soulflayer, and kills an opponent threat or deals 3 damage to him. I bet most people are definitely not prepared for a Lightning Bolt in current sluggish Standard... It might not totally be a 2-by-1 situation as the sacrificed card was going to die anyway and it will help the Soulflayer...
Variants and rejected cards
Some card-drawing might be necessary, but I really don't see how to fit it in the deck, aside the potential card advantage of
Prophetic Flamespeaker
...
Cards with abilities that were considered and rejected, mostly because I felt there were cheaper or more efficient options:
Typhoid Rats
,
Impetuous Sunchaser
,
Satyr Rambler
, Valley Dasher,
Spearpoint Oread
,
Two-Headed Cerberus
,
Herald of Torment
, Master of the Feast, Alesha, Who Smiles at Death,
Necrogen Scudder
,
Insatiable Harpy
,
Sidisi's Pet
,
Flame-Wreathed Phoenix
, Ashcloud Phoenix, Shaman of the Great Hunt,
Lightning Shrieker
, Stormbreath Dragon,
Dragon-Style Twins
,
Sultai Scavenger
, Nightmare, The two red and black Souls of the M15 cycle,
Thunder Brute
,
Shockmaw Dragon
...
Cards which were considered and rejected, mostly because they do not yield abilities to the Soulflayer:
Gnarled Scarhide, Bloodsoaked Champion,
Mardu Shadowspear
,
War-Name Aspirant
,
Battle Brawler
,
Mardu Strike Leader
,
Brutal Hordechief
,
Bellowing Saddlebrute
,
Bloodfire Enforcers
, Flamerush Rider...
I'm not saying some among these cards might not fit the deck, as they can no doubt be situationnally better than some of the ones I chose, but for now I have preferred to stick to the theme...
Sideboard:
I still have to think about it... for starters:
- I guess Obnu (Ob Nixilis, Unshackled), would be nice against Fetchlands, and if killed it still lends Flying and Trample to the Soulflayer.
- To deal with graveyard abusers (Sultai whips and the like), Tormod's Crypt is cheap and devastating, and I have seen very little artifact hate in current standard...
- For people infatuated by planeswalkers, Phyrexian Revoker is always nice, but probably unnecessary if I am packing 4x Hero's Downfall, so perhaps I should focus on more removal to deal with creatures and planeswalkers...
- I would be needing something against life-gaining effects (the black siege from FRF maybe), and something against control...
Please comment!!
