Protection Racket

Enchantment

At the beginning of your upkeep, repeat the following process for each opponent in turn order. Reveal the top card of your library. That player may pay life equal to that card's converted mana cost/mana value. If they do, exile that card. Otherwise, put it into your hand.

Legality

Format	Legality
1v1 Commander	Legal
Archenemy	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
Oathbreaker	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Tiny Leaders	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (19)

Optimator on Devil in the Detroit City

11 hours ago

Protection Racket might be really good since your creatures are so expensive.

Harvester of Souls is worth noting too.

Promise of Power is flavorful.

DreadKhan on EDH Merens Reanimator

3 weeks ago

If you're interested in playing fair, then you might like Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest. This can take a board full of utility creatures and make them very formidable very quickly. Hell's Caretaker is a card I find useful that doesn't go infinite with anything I know of, it just lets you sneak stuff in once per turn. If you don't include anything like Pitiless Plunderer you can set up repeatable sacrifice loops to generate XP for Meren, probably to reanimate a Protean Hulk or someting else juicy. For this you might use Gravecrawler or Haakon, Stromgald Scourge and probably a 1 drop Knight to have something you can keep killing over and over. Any card that cares about creatures dying will go off, so some stuff that draws on death might be nice, Liliana, Dreadhorde General is a versatile card that fits the bill.

In my experience, the best thing you can tutor up is usually Protean Hulk, Sidisi, or Razaketh, any of these tends to spiral out of control in a deck that can reanimate them on the end step or sooner. Hulk can find various creatures to solve whatever problems you have, but you probably need a sac outlet to ensure it dies right away, the others are more generous. Razaketh notoriously likes abusing Life / Death to set up a pretty quick win when you're ready, you can find stuff like rituals to generate enough mana to go off.

If you want another reanimator that isn't picky, there is Demon of Dark Schemes that helps clear the board of weenies, and as long as you don't have cards that generate mana the Demon won't go infinite with something like Mitotic Slime or Underworld Hermit, they'll just give you lots of triggers for your extra mana. Demon also likes Merciless Executioner type creatures, they can easily generate Energy. Another reanimator I often forget reanimates stuff is Liliana, Death's Majesty, this brings back stuff as a Zombie if you don't want the ultimate, and she survives some wipes as a PW that can make 2/2s while milling you. Some people don't like PWs so ymmv.

I suspect that if you're not sure if you need more wipes, you might want to try one or two more. In Black there is Make an Example that is very brutal as you always hit your priority target for each opponent. It won't clear the board, but it can help manage it, and you can follow it up with a bunch of forced sacrifice. One card that likes seeing a wipe happen (that makes running extra feel less problematic) is Ogre Slumlord, if you run enough 'pay life'effects you might want Sangromancer, and if you think you can kill enough of your opponent's permenants then Kothophed, Soul Hoarder might work out, that can turn a Damnation into a big draw spell.

If your deck is finding it hard to stay alive, you can use Dawnstrider to save you on needing to reanimate a Spore Frog, though I use both as I find Meren can be annoying to certain players.

If you like Phyrexian Arena and aren't using 'win on the spot combos', have you considered Protection Racket? This can draw plenty of non-land cards or deal damage to your opponents, both seem good as long as you don't care if you lose some random 1-3 drops. There is also Black Market Connections, this can provide various resources without being as busted/all-or-nothing as Necropotence.

Hope some of this is helpful! Any Commander that requires a lot of tutoring is very frustrating to learn to play, Commander is incredibly hard to master, but it's easy to get better with practice!

Gleeock on top cards of each color

1 month ago

Boy, I don't play too much mono-color. Maybe:

{W} - Akroma's Will & Tragic Arrogance

{U} - pass/ Mass Polymorph & Bident of Thassa

{B} - Protection Racket & Bolas's Citadel

{R} - Descent into Avernus & Fiendish Duo

{G} - Oath of Druids & Selvala's Stampede

Probably could be convinced of some other things though

DreadKhan on Mishra's Might

1 month ago

It feels weird to complain people aren't being creative in a game where you have to use pieces that you buy, many of which are considerably worse than the best options. Everyone ends up running similar cards when you get to certain power levels, until you hit cEDH and everyone just runs the most optimal build they can. You can fight this by running absurdist stuff (I have several decks that are doing this), but every pet card you add makes your deck strictly worse, so you either lose more games or run other, even more staple cards because they are stronger.

Not sure if you're running any key combos/cards, but with an average MV over 3.5 I'd take a look at Protection Racket. It's terrible if people know what cards you 'need' (or if you need lots of lands specifically), but if that's not a problem it's free damage or free cards. I also love Make an Example, it's probably the more aggressive 4 mana removal that will ever see print, you always hit everyone's best pile because you get the final choice, it's everything that Do or Die wishes it was, except the MV.

DreadKhan on Kaervek of the CMC!

3 months ago

Allure of the Unknown (funny with your Commander out if they take something big, you might be able to politic with it in some metas) and Protection Racket seem really good with this deck. For a big MV critter to sneak out, Dragon Tyrant can deal a lot of damage with it's Double Strike and Firebreathing, I guess 10 MV might not be big enough at this point though.

They seem bad but I find that in a slow deck there are few better ways to heap up mana in Rakdos than Mercadian Bazaar and Subterranean Hangar. I even run the Fallen Empires Storages, which are much worse but can still let you play a big drop pretty early. I get that you don't plan to cast any of these big spells, but I feel like if you start with any Storage land in your opener you'll be able to cast one by turn 6 or 7 pretty reliably (when you might be at 12 or 13 mana for a single burst), which is early enough to bother with in most metas. If you're playing Eldrazi Titans and Blightsteel, casting them unexpectedly early can just win a game sometimes, these lands can let you do this more often.

Cool idea for a build.

DreadKhan on Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest - Insect tribal

3 months ago

If you end up running no combos/don't care much about a particular card, Protection Racket can draw a lot of cards/deal a lot of damage, especially in larger games (it hits each opponent, which is absurd in multiplayer). You'll get no extra lands, but extra spells are what you usually need. It's also great with Exquisite Blood, which is a dumb combo with Sanguine Bond if that's relevant. If you like forced sacrifice effects, Make an Example is incredibly pushed, even at 4 mana. You won't get as many bodies as Pox, but you will always hit each opponents best thing at minimum, and more potentially, it's not even targeted. It's narrow, but Do or Die also does good work at 1B, either take their most important stuff or take a ton of smaller stuff, hard to lose at 1B.

Have you thought about running some land ramping spells over 2 mana rocks like Golgari Signet? Farseek, Nature's Lore, or Three Visits are all better in this deck IMHO since you run Wave of Vitriol, each can find a basic or a non-Basic dual for fixing that won't go away as easily. You can run Utopia Sprawl instead of Sol Ring, it's not quite as good but it's still pretty good 1 mana ramp, offering fixing is always good.

Apologies if this stuff doesn't work with your restrictions, hope you have fun!

DreadKhan on Zur, the Disenchanter

4 months ago

Exquisite Blood would be pretty nice with Zur's Weirding Out, in addition to giving life for Necropotence, and with Protection Racket, it's one thing to pay a few life to keep you from getting a free card, giving you free life feels pretty awful, and Zur can dig out Protection when you just want cards without paying life. You can mention to people you don't run any 2 card combos, so they won't worry about the Sanguine Bond combo with Exquisite Blood.

With Merieke and Zur, I feel like you'd want Pemmin's Aura and/or Freed from the Real, once Zur puts the Aura on her, it's U to kill target creature, and when you're out of U you keep the best creature you can steal until you have mana again. If Merieke is a card you like digging out, there are 3 mana Transmute cards fwiw, Perplex, Dimir Machinations and the ungodly bad Drift of Phantasms.

For Zur, I like having the option to go Voltron, to do so I run All That Glitters and Heliod, Sun-Crowned. If one copy of All That Glitters doesn't quite cut it, there is also Michiko's Reign of Truth  ^Flip, but I mostly use Copy Enchantment, Estrid's Invocation and Mirrormade to make more Glitters if I want a bigger Zur, 3 is usually a 1 hit kill fwiw, and he can dig out an Unblockable aura or Thassa, God of the Sea technically. For Shroud I like Greater Auramancy, but there is also Diplomatic Immunity to consider.

If you don't mind running Vanishing, which is a very good 'dodge' effect for Zur that doesn't cost him Auras/Counters, you can also run the very funny Out of Time to just wipe creatures pretty much permanently. If you have Copy Enchantment effects, you can duplicate this before it goes away to lock away another group of creatures, very nasty vs large creature boards, and Zur finds both pieces.

Another funny Zur card is Dance of Many, which can duplicate a creature you can target, a very strong effect if your meta cares about powerful creatures. If people run Mill in your area, Nighthowler can be fetched out for a big creature or be drawn to make Zur bigger.

You can't fetch it out, but like Mother of Runes it's very good to have out, Devoted Caretaker can offer very versatile protection to more stuff.

If you want something pretty dirty you can pull out vs opponents that are running stronger than expected decks, your Smothering Tithe works very well with Stasis, which also likes Black Market Connections, though you'll want Brave the Sands to give Zur (and your board) Vigilance. Stasis also likes Archon of Emeria and you're already running Thalia, Heretic Cathar. It's certainly not fetching out Heliod after you've dropped Balista, this doesn't win on the spot, but it's a very strong/nasty effect to have access to, even if you don't dig it out very often. Fortunately Stasis is the only piece you wouldn't want to draw!

DreadKhan on Rakdos

4 months ago

It's not really a great card, but Shivan Gorge can deal some damage to each opponent, which can let you shave mana off of spells for a turn. There is also stuff like Spear Spewer that pings each player, that's a much better way to achieve that goal I suppose. There are also Kessig Flamebreather and Firebrand Archer that can turn any non-creature spell into damage, not sure you have enough stuff to justify them, but felt they were worth a mention. There is also good old Pyrohemia/Pestilence, which can ping each opponent (and it clears out x/1s if tokens are an issue in your area). Not sure if you will be able to get in for damage consistently, but Rite of the Raging Storm tokens usually suck to block, so you might get 5 damage per turn in some metas.

I feel like it's worth throwing in something like Carrion Feeder or Viscera Seer if you want a sac outlet that can clear out lots of bodies and derive value from it, Feeder even works with Pitiless Plunderer (or another 'mana from dead creature' card, Pawn of Ulamog and Bog Initiate will work on a budget) and Gravecrawler to go infinite.

Final point, maybe a few Annihilator creatures that have high MV as their drawback, they tend to be colourless anyways, so can give a full discount and be free sometimes. Artisan of Kozilek and Pathrazer of Ulamog are good examples that aren't too pricey, but Titans are obviously more expensive/powerful, it's worth noting you'll always get cast triggers, even if you're casting them for nothing/very little. Some of these can also let you run cards that care about high MV, like Protection Racket and Timesifter, both are very strong in some metas. Heck, I think I'd just run Protection Racket either way now that I think about it, I'm not sure there is a drawback to that card in this deck, it's big drawback is that it's bad in combo decks because people won't give you combo pieces, but in a deck that isn't attached to any one card you can run it safely. There is also Meteor Golem, Platinum Emperion and even Platinum Angel to offer some value if stuff like Darksteel Colossus or Blightsteel Colossus are over the budget, and there are big old utility beaters like Tsabo Tavoc that are worth a look, you can shave 5 mana off still.

Rakdos is a pretty nifty Commander, hope you're having fun with him!