Rafiq of the many prisons
Commander Deck Help forum
Posted on May 27, 2018, 10:27 p.m. by Swamy
So I want to start a new project and I've done a little research on it and have yet to see any arch type that I'm interested in, death and taxes. I'm thinking your basic enchantment like rystic study, ghostly prison. Things like that with creatures like thalia, sanctum prelate, ethersworn canonist.
I don't have a deck list yet, but go ahead and give me your best d/t cards You like even if they don't see competitive play. Especially green cards I will need help with.
This is exactly the feedback I was looking for! Thank you so much for such a fantastic start!
May 28, 2018 12:10 a.m.
rockleemyhero says... #4
Glad to hear :). That’s just the surface of it haha. I’ve tried pretty much every style of rafiq so feel free to pm or hit me up on my wall anytime. rafiq is my passion project so I’m always excited to help others who are playing/trying him :)
If you are going for the strongest hatebear, dnt style build in a vacuum, I’d suggest tymna + partner. It’s boring but tymna is insanely powerful for hatebear decks as she allows you to snowball into more and gum up the board like no one else can. Her constant CA provides easy recovery post any board wipes.
rockleemyhero says... #2
Hey man! I’ve been playing rafiq since about 2010. Playing cedh via reddit and discord (highly competitive tier 1 stuff in pods) for about 2.5 years. I’ve been fine tuning my lists for the past couple years for cedh. Here’s a version you might like that is hatebeary: here
Disclaimer is I haven’t tested the build yet so I can’t tell you how competitive it is, but it seems like a good place to start for a hate bear shell. My most competitive list utilizes a balance of stax, card advantage, and tempo which you can find here. I’ve plyed this version for awhile and while it’s not a tier 1 deck, it has proven to be able to compete and win regularly in multiplayer pods of tier 1 decks.
Feel free to hit me up on questions about rafiq or bant hatebears! I also play a variant of blood pod that utilizes even more stax. Many people here will tell you derevi > rafiq for edh or stax, but I’d argue they are completely different decks with different objectives and styles of play. Derevi wants to play lock down stax with orb effects and Stasis to stop everyone from playing magic. Strengths would be raw stax power and parity breaking ability and speed to do so. Weakness is it has a hard time closing out games after establishing a lock. Good players will weave through a the eye of a needle to find a way out. Rafiq plays more aggressive, wanting to establish with cantrips and has more draw engines and spot removal/counterspells in my experience. It wants to establish a draw engine and hit silver bullet stax pieces that lock out your opponents’ combos a la damping sphere. Strengths are it’s arguably more versatile(runs more spot removal and countermagic), has better one sided draw engines (Cold-Eyed Selkie is MVP here), and can close out a game a little faster cuz rafiq is such a beating, especially with time walk effects. Weaknesses are it relies on the combat step and is a little slower which makes it tricky if you are the only one playing stax pieces at the table.
May 27, 2018 11:26 p.m. Edited.