Rakdos the Defiler

Legendary Creature — Demon

Flying, trample

Whenever Rakdos the Defiler attacks, sacrifice half the non-Demon permanents you control, rounded up.

Whenever Rakdos deals combat damage to a player, that player sacrifices half the non-Demon permanents they control, rounded up.

Combos

• Assault Suit + Rakdos the Defiler

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
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (47)

77hi77 on I BEG YOUR F@CKING PARDON??!!! - Razaketh

1 week ago

Profet93 fantastic, thanks so much! I'll let those suggestions ferment in my mind for a bit, my next cards shopping spree is coming up.

This goes to show you my ability to spot combos, I had that full Blood Artist + Reassembling Skeleton + Carnival of Souls + Ashnod's Altar combo in the deck! I took out Blood Artist because, as well as she fits in the way the deck plays, I wanted it to be more demon focused. The deck has always had some non-demons in there, maybe I should reconsider putting her in there. That's the case in all my tribal decks, I do my best to be strict about the tribe unless I can justify breaking it thematically (in my Rakdos the Defiler deck, there are devils and tieflings that serve the demons, so they're allowed).

Thanks again, your suggestions are really helping me out! I'll report back as I update the deck!

Mave on endles whispers edh

5 months ago

I read the thread when I tried to look up the rules for the cards which is kinda important for EDH Endless Whispers. (I plan on including it in Obeka)

In a 1v1 match it mostly tries to get the best creature of an opponent while donating negative effects. But in commander it becomes a game of "hot potato" where you can never be sure who gets the creatures of another player but you can decide what "garbage" you donate. That is the gist of what the deck will do in a multiplayer game.

Depending on what you give away you may want cards that can counter triggered abilities in case ove Leveler, Sky Swallower, Boldwyr Heavyweights, Eater of Days, Hunted Wumpus, Inverter of Truth, Dust Elemental, Avatar of Discord, Indentured Djinn Ebon Drake Plague Reaver Master of the Feast Tempting Wurm, the haunted one like Hunted Troll, Hunted Dragon,Hunted Dragon, Hunted Lammasu or Hunted Phantasm. Personally I would use Obeka, Brute Chronologist to counter the ETB of the creatures you play by ending the turn and then giving them to an opponent. But that only works for when the creature with negative effect enters the battlefield during your turn. But it is a great plan B in case you don't have Endless Whispers to give your opponents creatures from the list above by simply playing an 8/8 trample for {2}{R}{R} then ending the turn before the trigger resolves.

Other options are Jon Irenicus, Shattered One or Blim, Comedic Genius both want your opponents to control your creatures. If you just want the effect of giving your opponents negative ETBs you can also build a deck on The Beamtown Bullies. But including Endless Whispers in this deck can backfire by giving you one of the negative effects if the creature dies. And it also is hard to let e.g. Leveler enter the battlefield to donate it through endless whispers. What helps with that may be to manifest a creature with a negative effect with e.g. Scroll of Fate. You can also manifest creatures with negative effect from your library but that is a bit more random.

To prevent getting creatures with negative effects from your opponents you to gain hexproof. There are plenty of effects giving yourself hexproof in white but I couldn't find a good commander for that. To gain hexproof yourself in a non white deck you most likely need Orbs of Warding which may be the way to go to prevent opponents to return the hot potato to you. Which is what I do in Obeka (sadly I don't have any list online of that deck).

If you like Endless Whispers to take your opponent cards however you might rather want to play Grave Betrayal or Lim-Dul the Necromancer. Overall it can still be used as a politicle tool. Especially if you donate one of the Haunted once you can build a pact with another player that you always trade them with each other to get more and more tokens.

Talking tokens it is also possible to put Endless Whispers in Grismold, the Dreadsower which gets into the direction of Dagger Burn known through Rampaging Ferocidon, Trespasser's Curse, Massacre Wurm, Slaughter Specialist and e.g. Illness in the Ranks/Virulent Plague. Whenever you donate Hunted Troll to an opponent or it enters the battlefield you let the 1/1 faeris directly die causing Grismold to trigger and also cards like Poison-Tip Archer.

It is also possible to play with effects like Plaguecrafter, Abyssal Gorestalker, Gravelighter. The player who gets the creature has to sacrifice one creature less and choses who sacrifice one creature less the next turn. But as long as you profit from death triggers via e.g. enchantments or artifacts you will profit most from your favourite card.

I also like Rakdos the Defiler to use Endless Whisper. After all one can donate some negative effects and if the opponent sacrifices creatures they have to donate them to someone else. Altough that also works better in 1v1.

I hope the explanation helps to find the right deck to play Endless Whispers in Commander.

77hi77 on Demon Till Your Dreams Come True

9 months ago

I've been going back to this deck for over a year now, and I have to tell you that this is my favourite deck on the whole site, and you've inspired me to take on a Rakdos the Defiler deck of my own. Mine is headed in a completely different direction to yours (and with a different budget), though mine's only been useable for like 3 weeks so who knows what it'll end up looking like eventually.

I'll tell you what I'm struggling with, I'll ramble for a bit, and then I'll direct it as a question to you: actually attacking with Rakdos. By the time I have him out, it always feels like declaring an attack will set me so far back that I won't be able to recover. I'm toying with effects like Strionic Resonator to make someone else suffer at the same time as me, and yeah I'm curious if I'm looking at him as something he isn't. Like, you want to cast a value generating commander ASAP because that's your main engine, whereas a commander that is more about setting up your wincon might want to wait more. I'm seeing Rakdos as the latter, if I bring him out it means I'm ready to end the game. It looks like you're casting him as early as you can. Is that the key? Send him out early enough that you don't have much of a board state to lose, and opponents don't have much to protect themselves?

Again, thanks for building my favourite deck on the site!

Rocketman988 on Demon Till Your Dreams Come True

9 months ago

ragincajun129, I've been playing and fine tuning the deck for over 5 years now, and the land count is correct for the deck. If you remove the cards that are not intended to be hard cast from hand or have alternate casting methods, the true average CMC of the deck is around 2.2. The entire point of the deck is to function with minimal lands on board, since Rakdos's sacrifice effect keeps the deck on 2 to 3 mana sources most of the time anyways. Also, you did not include the mdfc lands in your count, so the true land count in the deck is 34.

Whip of Erebos is a potential add, but I have not needed another source of lifegain besides Gray Merchant of Asphodel, which the deck has many ways of finding. Whip is incredibly inefficient as a reanimation effect, since it requires an 8 mana investment just to get one creature back to board. Further, it exiles the reanimated creature and there is no easy way around that, unlike Shallow Grave. This means no multiple reanimate options, and I try to avoid that because it limits the power of mass reanimation.

Regarding mana rocks, I only run mana positive mana rocks, as I have found that ritual effects are better for the deck. The whole point of mana rocks in most decks is to function as cheap and efficient reusable mana sources, but Rakdos the Defiler negates that entirely. If artifact ramp does not generate more mana than it cost to play, it is worse than a ritual in the deck. Mana Vault is the only cheap artifact ramp I decided against for the moment, since the 3 colorless isn't helpful for casting Rakdos, and the other demons are better to reanimate.

Here's an example to illustrate my point: I need 6 mana to cast Rakdos, so say I have 3 lands and 3 signets, I'll have to sacrifice 3 permanents to Rakdos. Instead, say I generate the same 6 mana with Dark Ritual, Graven Cairns, a random land that taps for black, and a Sol Ring/Mana Crypt. Now, I'll only sacrifice 2 permanents to Rakdos on the swing. Not only did I sacrifice less permanents to Rakdos in the second example, but it's possible to do that a turn or two faster, which means I've already hit two players by the time the signet ramp even lets me get Rakdos on the board.

77hi77 on Defile Me Daddy Rakdos

9 months ago

After about a week of playtests, here's what I found out:

First, there's never a good time to attack with Rakdos the Defiler. I knew going into it that it's a difficult commander to learn how to use, learning curve is steep, but like there actually has not a moment when attacking with him was a good idea. Except for one 1v1 game against a player that I'm still teaching, where I had the meanest board I could have (Tergrid, God of Fright  ^Flip giving me everything that my opponent sacrificed), and I won through commander damage. This means I always have reason to be afraid of attacking, someone played Maze of Ith and that basically decided the game.

So, I started thinking, what if, instead of damage multipliers and Double Strike, I make my opponents suffer at the same time that I do? So I put in Strionic Resonator, Lithoform Engine, and Wyll's Reversal. I declare an attack, I copy the triggered ability that forces me to sacrifice half my permanents, now even a Maze of Ith isn't too big a deal since an opponent is sacrificing at the same time that I am (or, in the case of Wyll's Reversal, instead of me). Rakdos getting damage through is just a bonus at that point. That's a tough call to make because Double Strike and City on Fire were my main wincon, but also the deck wasn't winning any games.

I also have to figure out the mana curve. In a deck that knows it's going to end up sacrificing its own lands, I've got a worse curve than any other deck I've ever built, mainly because most of the "target opponent gets to do fun thing as well" spells are CMC 5 (and Demons are expensive).

I've also really been struggling for card draw. Hopefully that should be a bit easier now that I've started shaping up my land base. Originally I built it with just Swamps and Mountains to see how it runs, now I'm starting to put in the card draw lands.

77hi77 on Rakdos the Defil-Loving, Kind, Salt …

10 months ago

I'm in that awful/exciting place where I'm working on 4 decks at the same time. My wallet hates it.

I've always known that I want to build a Rakdos the Defiler deck. A while ago, I posted on here looking for ideas of chaotic cards/archetypes that fit his theme. "I attack, I sacrifice myself to do it. Uh oh, you took damage, sucks to be yoouuu" is such a chaotic way to play. As I'm building the deck now, though, I'm realizing that it's so much more fun to lean hard into the politics of it. Rakdos the Defiler is a commander that forces you to get into character, and I've been fantasizing about various ways to politic with Rakdos, which should also make it a more fun game than the rampant destruction I was originally aiming for.

The two cards that really made it click for me: Sower of Discord and Scheming Symmetry. I can just imagine myself drawing a card then, grinning ear-to-ear, asking: "If this were a 2v2 game, what would the teams be?". Then proceeding to play that character of the overtly nice one to my new bestie while we both tutor. Or Wishclaw Talisman, I tap it, tutor, then give it to my new bestie; now my new bestie has to decide whether they want to give it back or betray me. It presents everyone with character choices that they have to deal with, and Rakdos the Defiler is very likely to be the scariest commander on the board, which just adds to it all. That also allows me to build my favourite kind of deck: the glass cannon, knowing that it has built in politics as a defensive measure.

So I've been looking for cards in Rakdos like Secret Rendezvous, and more Sower of Discord kind of effects to go with that theme. So far I've got the cards I've already mentioned, Zurzoth, Chaos Rider to help my bestie draw cards (and to give Rakdos some tokens to sac), Bloodthirster to pick on my non-besties, and yeah that's about all I can find. If you know of cards that help, or if you've seen decks that really play into the Generous Untrustworthy Demon archetype, I'd love to see them!

Thanks all!

77hi77 on I LOVE CHAOS

1 year ago

In another topic, I was talking about how inspired I am by decks that use Rakdos the Defiler as commander, how it's inspired me to look at Nevinyrral, Urborg Tyrant and how Rakdos shaped my Razaketh, the Foulblooded deck. In saying that, I realized how much I love chaos. As a friend of mine put it when I was describing my Razaketh deck, "I'm going down and I'm bringing everyone with me".

My question is, what unhinged chaotic cards/themes/decks do you like? The type where the whole game gets turned on its head, and no one truly knows how it'll pan out. Rakdos the Defiler is the perfect example, but I'm looking for more inspiration. I've seen other people ask this question and the conversation turned into cards with a lot of randomness built in, which is fine, but I'm just as much looking at things like Rakdos where you're paying a massive cost that may or may not pan out. Really, I'm looking at cards/mechanics/decks/themes that you think of when you think of the words "chaotic" and "unhinged". I want something funny to play against because of how unhinged it is.

Thanks all!

77hi77 on Zombie Tribal - Deciding My …

1 year ago

Max_Hammer I do actually have Liliana, Dreadhorde General, she's just in another deck (which would probably benefit more from Liliana of the Dark Realms, it's a whole thing). I think you're right, Varina will involve more milling and would enjoy Liliana, Death's Majesty. I've never considered Liliana, Death Mage, thank you!

You know what, I'm getting a very subtle sense that you don't like Nevvy, but I'm not so sure.

No, I definitely hear you, I think the biggest challenge in building that deck will be to make it fun to play against. The other deck I'm referencing (the one that my Dreadhorde General is currently in), I BEG YOUR F@CKING PARDON??!!! - Razaketh, is so far proving to be a failure at that. I was hoping to make something chaotic that results in a laugh, I ended up building a deck where the wincons involve no interaction with the other players, I just tutor and cast two cards (Fraying Omnipotence and Wound Reflection), and it really doesn't matter what the actual board state looks like. Everyone calls it my bullshit deck, it's not overpowered or tuned in any real way, it just lives in its own world and ends the game way too suddenly to be fun.

So with Nevvy, I like him because he seems to bring that same self-destructive chaos I was hoping to capture (and, down the line, will hope to capture again when I build a Rakdos the Defiler deck), my challenge will be to have that chaos without it feeling like I'm stopping others from playing. It's why I'm exploring a few different commanders, I want to see what leads to the most fun Zombie deck, without it being the exact same Zombie deck that everyone plays/expects to see.

As an aside, I do also have a proliferate deck in mind, but it'd be to pull off shenanigans like Vraska, Scheming Gorgon's -10.