Hand of Cruelty
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Legality

Format Legality
1v1 Commander Legal
Archenemy Legal
Block Constructed Legal
Canadian Highlander Legal
Casual Legal
Commander / EDH Legal
Commander: Rule 0 Legal
Custom Legal
Duel Commander Legal
Highlander Legal
Legacy Legal
Leviathan Legal
Limited Legal
Modern Legal
Oathbreaker Legal
Planechase Legal
Quest Magic Legal
Tiny Leaders Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Hand of Cruelty

Creature — Human Samurai

Protection from white

Bushido 1 (When this blocks or becomes blocked, it gets +1/+1 until end of turn.)

multimedia on Rakdos, Lord of Riots Demon Tribal

1 year ago

In my last comment suggested a lot of cards to add, now here's some cards to consider cutting. For cards to consider cutting I would start with all the lower mana cost nonDemon creatures. I would simply replace these with other lower mana cost cards that can better enable Rakdos without attacking and reduce creature mana costs without attacking.

Rather than playing a lot of single creature removal spells, rely more on Demons who can destroy or remove creatures? Especially Demons who have repeatable removal effects. You could cut many creature removal spells and replace them with more draw.

Searing Spear, Shock, Disintegrate can target a player to make them lose life, but you have Lightning Bolt for that and you can make opponent lose life better ways then playing single burn spells. Some budget single removal spells are helpful such as Chaos Warp and Feed the Swarm because these spells can remove an enchantment, Warp any permanent. When attacking is important to your game plan these can remove Ghostly Prison, Propaganda and others.

Rakdos can only reduce the mana cost of creatures therefore play very few noncreature high mana cost spells or spells that require a lot of mana to be useful. Spells that need a lot mana paid to make them decent is not really what you want when playing many high mana cost creatures. Could cut these for more draw and ramp.

Rolling Earthquake is a budget spell like this that's worth playing because you can control how much damage each creature is going to take, most Demons including Rakdos have high toughness. You could cut a few of the lesser Demons.

Master of the Feast is really bad card in multiplayer Commander because only your opponents draw. Awaken the Sky Tyrant, Wretched Confluence and Seal of the Guildpact are subpar for the mana costs.

In my last comment I recommended adding a lot of loot effects for draw. Loot is excellent with Blood Speaker and Speaker is a good reason to play Demon tribal since it's a tribal tutor that can be repeatable, return to your hand from your graveyard. Rakdos can reduce Speaker's mana cost to only 1 mana, making it a mana efficient way to repeatedly tutor for Demons.

Loot can be an enabler for reanimation and recursion which are helpful effects to have with Demons. Reanimation is a way to get Demons onto the battlefield without having to cast them, a backup for when Rakdos is disrupted. Recursion is getting Demons back into your hand or casting them from your graveyard. Patriarch's Bidding can reanimate all Demons in your graveyard. Persist and Exhume can reanimate for only two mana.

Chainer, Nightmare Adept has interaction with looting, getting Demons into your graveyard to cast them using Rakdos mana cost reduction. If you discard a Demon using Chainer's ability you can cast that same Demon giving it haste to attack. Rakdos also gains haste from Chainer when he's cast from the Command Zone. Any creature you reanimate gains haste from Chainer.

Chainer has excellent interaction with creatures who can sac themselves for value such as Magus of the Wheel and Doomed Necromancer. With Chainer these creatures gain haste when cast from your graveyard allowing them to tap and activate their abilities right away. Doomed Necromancer can reanimate even at instant speed. Chainer is good with Blood Speaker as discard outlet that can keep coming back to your hand.

Some more budget Demons to consider adding:

Some budget land upgrades to consider:

Temple of the False God is not a good land when you have no land ramp. It will not tap for mana until at least turn five and that's if you make all your land drops. Even if playing green and land ramp such as Cultivate I still wouldn't play Temple of the False God, it's just not a good enough land in the early turns of a game.

legendofa on Card creation challenge

2 years ago

I've never had a problem pronouncing Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar. It's a good way to show off, or sound like you're speaking gibberish.

Twisting Shard

Artifact

Spells you control with changeling can't be countered.

Permanents with changeling you control have ", Discard a card: This permanent becomes a copy of target permanent with changeling in your graveyard until end of turn."

Create one of a mirrored pair of cards, like blue / Red Elemental Blast or Hand of Cruelty / honor . Bonus points if it's green.

landofMordor on Magic Art Pairs

6 years ago

Divine Favor and Dark Favor

Hand of Cruelty and Hand of Honor

Knight of Glory and Knight of Infamy

a few more will probably come to mind after a bit.

Nisoth on Black Anti-White

6 years ago

Anti-white, huh?
Black Knight is a cheap, efficient creature that your friend will never be able to block.
Dystopia could help against enchantments, if that's what your friend is going for.
Gloom will be essential, especially if you decide to go the discard route.
Hand of Cruelty is like Black Knight.
Inquisition is inexpensive, and gives you some reach.
Jovial Evil is similar to Inquisition.
Knight of Infamy, Knight of Stromgald, Order of the Ebon Hand and Stromgald Crusader would be good if you decide to go aggro.
Lifebane Zombie is a solid pick, especially for the discard route.
Marauding Knight could be a bomb against your friend.
Self-Inflicted Wound gets around protection.
Stromgald Cabal should probably go in no matter what.
Virtue's Ruin should definitely go in no matter what.

Alexasmaoao on Momentary Blackout

7 years ago

Hand of Cruelty/Black Knight are okay-ish 2-drops. Sangromancer (0,63$ card, not 1,9...) could be a playable card here.I wouldn't recommend playing 4xDistress, atleast not maindeck. You are probably better off with a decent curve. Would also recommend playing 4xVictim of Night as the card kills almost Everything. Disfigure is very strong against specific decks, but is very clunky to play main deck.

Alexasmaoao on

7 years ago

Gatekeeper of Malakir is very good for black midrange. I would also recommend Gray Merchant of Asphodel as an alternative win-con. I would actually recommend building your sideboard with midrange creatures and the merchant to have a different approach if needed. E.G :2-3 Nighthawks, 3 Merchants 2-3 Gatekeepers.

Piranha Marsh isn't Worth it. You are almost Always better off with basic swamps, as the consistency of entering untapped tends to do more than 1 Point of damage.

I Think Black Knight and Hand of Cruelty might both be better than Knight of Infamy

Just 1-2 Tormod's Crypt would usually be enough to deal with graveyard decks. Faerie Macabre is a very unexpected one you could play aswell. I would play that and take out the Echoes,S-feed and Bog, since they aren't quite up to par.

If you want a good sideboard against aggro: Disfigure as mentioned is very good against infect (Zoo deck's run 3health creatures for the most) Mutilate could be decent against creatures but might be a bit slow Vampire Nighthawk is very good against burn. Lashwrithe is a card you might be interested in for this type of deck. Sign in Blood might be nice for slower match-ups so you don't run out of steam.

Buzzclaw on BW Painter's Servant Anti-Eldrazi

8 years ago

I think Stromgald Crusader or even Hand of Cruelty are slightly better than Knight of Infamy.

Tainted Field isn't legal in modern: Try Caves of Koilos instead.

A few other cards that may work but which you'd need to make room for are Gaze of Justice, Self-Inflicted Wound, and Talara's Bane

P47Healey on Orzhov's Debt Collector

8 years ago

I like this deck - lots of tricksy things going on; a very black deck.

That said, I think that its main issue is that it's trying to do too many tricksy things. I think that this deck has two or three strategies, and I think that you may want to refocus on one just one.

Current strategies of the deck are: - Use Dark Supplicant to cheat out Scion of Darkness - Use Crypt Ghast, Magus of the Coffers, or Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx to mana ramp up to being able to play Nefarox, Overlord of Grixis, Grave Betrayal, Scion of Darkness, or Rise of the Dark Realms - Use life-trading effects like Essence Harvest, Sangromancer, Divinity of Pride, and Gray Merchant of Asphodel to heal yourself/kill opponent. - Aggro/direct damage to your opponent via Bad Moon, Hand of Cruelty, or Graveblade Marauder.

I see these as the main "win conditions" of the deck. You're also running a lot of graveyard (Phyrexian Reclamation, Death Denied, Rise of the Dark Realms) and control (Scepter of Fugue, Mutilate), but I see these as primarily existing to support the above strategies, rather than endgames in and of themselves.

I think that the best way to improve this deck is to choose one or two of these approaches and focus on them specifically. I'm going to give my suggestions. Note that the goal here is to make this deck fun for you to play. For this reason, I'm curious to hear what you really want to do with this deck. Given the name and themeing of the cards, I think that you're more interested in graveyard effects than anything else.

That said, I think that there are three main ways that you could go with this deck:

This would focus on Death Denied, Graveblade Marauder, and Rise of the Dark Realms more than anything else. The goal would be to stall with deathtouch creatures (consider Fetid Imp as a good flying defense), board wipes, and milling, until pulling out Rise of the Dark Realms or massive damage with Graveblade Marauder. There's a TON of ways that you could go forward with this, such as focusing on zombies specifically.
This would focus on Dark Supplicant and Scion of Darkness. Consider adding cards that allow you to sacrifice cards ad nauseam:(http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?action=advanced&color=+@%28+[B]%29&text=+[%22Sacrifice%20a%20creature:%22]). Altar's Reap or Carnage Altar in particular to improve card draw. No Rest for the Wicked could be a useful way to perform combo effects by returning sacrificed creatures to the battlefield. This type of deck seems to be coming back into vogue, with lots of good cards for it in the last few blocks. Consider looking at Blood Artist, Zulaport Cutthroat, or Butcher of Malakir as ways of weaponizing the creatures you've sacrificed.
This deck would have many similarities to the aristocrat deck mentioned above, though with the addition of Dark Supplicant and other clerics he can sacrifice. The goal would be to play a lot of cheap creatures and then activate either Supplicant or Apostle to pull out a huge game-ending demon. (I'm not going to suggest those, feel free to just choose the ones you think are coolest) This deck could use No Rest for the Wicked as a method of returning sacrificed clerics to the battlefield. This deck could also make a lot of use from Crypt Ghast + Death Denied to return dead clerics to your hand for an en masse battlefield surge. (If focusing on lots of clerics, consider keeping Bad Moon as well) Crypt Ghast could also be used to play demons, should you draw them naturally. Some other useful clerics to consider:

Personally, I like this direction the most. I'm biased because I like A) Theme decks and B) Complicated strategies. This deck, if built, would likely be a little unreliable. That said, you have a lot of directions to go.

This deck would focus on Crypt Ghast, Magus of the Coffers, and pump spells. In addition, this would likely involve lots of Extort (http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?action=advanced&color=+@%28+[B]%29&text=+[Extort]) creatures. In particular, Pontiff of Blight. There have been a lot of cards encouraging lifegain decks:(http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?action=advanced&text=+[%22Whenever%20you%20gain%20life%22]&color=+@%28|[W]|[B]%29)
Whew! I hope that's useful to you! I'm happy to look at other ideas that you have

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