The Madness of Madness: C19 Precon Upgrade

Commander / EDH* BR (Rakdos) Budget Discard Madness Theme/Gimmick

SpookyToe

Commander (1)

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Madness is Underrated

When I first got the Anje Falkenrath precon, I was beyond excited. There were so many tools to build various different decks, all with tons of different directions. Chainer, Nightmare Adept is a very straightforward reanimator deck, so I tried building with him. It was a little slow and boring for me, so I went back to Anje. And wow, was that a good idea.

There are TONS of madness cards that are low impact to the board, slow, and not very interesting. Some examples are Insatiable Gorgers , Twins of Maurer Estate , Nightshade Assassin , Muck Drubb , and Ichor Slick . And while these cards aren't very impactful themselves, all of them have a very important home in Anje's madhouse.

To properly illustrate what I'm talking about, let's break down the decklist.

The Challenge of Anje

Anje is a fun and interesting card, however the deck has very little "Oops I win" buttons that many commander decks posses. Cards like Time Stretch , Craterhoof Behemoth , Expropriate , Rise of the Dark Realms , as well as various other infinite combos like Vizier of Remedies and Murderous Redcap . While there are lots of good cards that synergize with madness, many of them are not "I win" buttons. With that in mind, the strategy we have to take is slowly whittling down our opponent, removing key pieces that are stopping our progress of winning, and slamming down the demon boys that will win us the game.

How do we do this? Archfiend of Ifnir , Ruthless Sniper , Faith of the Devoted , Psychosis Crawler , Glint-Horn Buccaneer , Bone Miser , Curse of Fool's Wisdom , and From Under the Floorboards .

The archfiend and the sniper will take care of small creatures, slowly building up to wrecking larger ones. The sniper, although less powerful than the archfiend, can do substantial work if successfully dropped on turn 1 (although I have yet to have that happen, lol). The archfiend is just damn annoying, especially when you pitch 5+ madness cards to Anje on your turn.

The crawler, buccaneer, the curse, and Faith of the Devoted drain down our opponents. They can do incredible amounts of damage when you get rid of "unwanted" madness cards for more cards, then laugh maniacally as you cast Shadow of the Grave after discarding 20 madness cards.

I've seen Curse of Fool's Wisdom get a lot of "meh" from players, but in my testing, it's really nice. Sure, you only whittle down one opponent, but the lifegain from it is enough to put it over the top. I really like this card.

Why so many useless madness cards?

We have Shadow of the Grave , Palace Siege , Phyrexian Reclamation , Call to the Netherworld , and Grave Scrabbler to get back the "useless" madness creatures we discarded. Rarely do you ever want to play these: we mostly want to just pitch them for extra cards, triggering our drain spells or other effects. The noncreature spells with madness are actually pretty nice, Dark Withering and Avacyn's Judgment being my favorites. Alchemist's Greeting and Ichor Slick are pretty narrow, so most of the time you'll just pitch these for more cards/effects. Discarding an ichor slick to anje, the drawing two cards from bone miser and anje feels really good.

When Playing the Deck

Don't be afraid to play the cards that feel underwhelming, and don't be afraid to just get rid of them. More often then not, you'll actually benefit from just discarding things you have absolutely no use for. Some of the enchantments can actually be quite nice, such as madness-ing a Strength of Lunacy on a Psychosis Crawler , keeping it alive as you repeatedly pitch your hand to Anje's Ravager and drawing new cards, pinging for more life loss.

Another thing about Anje's Ravager - this card has gotten a lot of smack, and I find it pretty good. You might just pitch it to a madness effect, or you'll start utilizing it with all the other engines you'll have running on the board (i.e Glint-Horn Buccaneer and others).

Winning the Game

This will always be different with what happens in the game. The deck is very unpredictable, and relies heavily on quick decision making and timing (although I think this goes for most magic decks, lol). You'll always have something to do, and running out of steam isn't very common, since every card you "play" replaces itself. While this might discredit Bloodhall Priest , which has been regarded as awful, it still has a tremendous use here: being able to simply discard it and untapping Anje. You will win by repeatedly killing people with your drain effects, and/or smacking them in the face with big creatures, like a pumped-up Reckless Wurm or Archfiend of Spite .

Date added	5 years
Last updated	3 years
Legality	This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	1 - 0 Mythic Rares
Cards	1
Avg. CMC	3.00