The Rack

Artifact

As The Rack enters the battlefield, choose an opponent.

At the beginning of the chosen player's upkeep, The Rack deals X damage to that player, where X is 3 minus the number of cards in his or her hand.

Discussion (47)

the_solitaire on First ever EDH deck... help?

1 month ago

I am really a 60 card deck kind of person, but the group I play with favors 100 card commander deck games.

In the past few days I tried to catch up with the current game (been out for 20 years) and tried to jumble together a few theoretical decks, trying to get to know some of the new cards. With some of that done, I now try to construct a 100 card singleton deck (look here: First attempt BW)

By all means, I tried to set a theme: Discard through spectres and assisting sorceries), then threw in some cards that have some kind of synergy with discarding Megrim Liliana's Caress The Rack

That left me with pretty much (after adding lands) a 60'ish card deck.

So here we go out on a limb. I added white. To get access to Wrath of God and Mageta the Lion as well as an additional tutor card.

I am not yet convinced that this wil lever work, so before I go out and buy a load of cards, maybe someone here would be kind enough to have a look at this jumble of cards and help me make some sense of it.

Caerwyn on I need some help getting …

2 months ago

Throwing in a single copy of a card is not going to help you too much - you want to build for consistency, which means running 4 copies of most cards (sometimes 2 or 3 copies of the card of it had a high mana cost or you otherwise only want to cast it later in the game, so you don’t need to draw it early). The other exception is some cards in Vintage where you can only run one copy, but they’re powerful enough that the chance of drawing your single copy could swing entire games in your favour.

I don’t think your deck is powerful enough for Vintage, since you made a comment about that format, but discard decks can be quite effective at kitchen table.

You should look into “8-Rack” lists, one of the top discard strategies. 8-Rack runs 4 copies of The Rack and 4 of Shrieking Affliction to deal a fair bit of damage per turn. Then you lock down the opponent by using cards like Thoughtseize, Raven's Crime, and Inquisition of Kozilek to keep your opponents from being able to do very much.

Another popular discard deck is Pox. Pox uses Smallpox and similar effects, like Rankle, Master of Pranks, to slow down your opponents, while running things like Flagstones of Trokair and Bloodghast to break parity.

Apollo_Paladin on Dementia's Shadow (Mono-Black Discard)

2 months ago

The Rack is also a pretty good way to land damage on your opponent based off a discard build. Another one that I use in my MTG Arena Discard build is Davriel, Rogue Shadowmage who is great recurring discard per turn as well as even more damage to speed up victories.

Stardragon on Yurlok, Mana Burn Strikes Back

3 months ago

what about card that only punish them for not playing cardsIron Maiden, Black Vise, The Rack or Scalding Tongs? Punish them for having too much mana and punish them for not using any at all since your making a slug deck the punishment the better. On that note I could of sworn there was a enchantment that dealt damage to each player during their end step equal to the number of untapped lands they had, I can't remember the name or if I remembered it right. If you can find it I would add it as it compels them to tap all there mana. Also what about one sided damage doublers like Fiendish Duo, Gratuitous Violence or Wound Reflection?

Rhyno52 on Hervaiser 5.0 (Black Control)

4 months ago

Why not go all in on Discard? With Cards like these: Blackbloom Rogue  ^Flip | Necromentia | Mind Drain | Wrench Mind | Raven's Crime | The Rack there are more Cards i could suggest but i was curious if you consider it a valid approach.

RNR_Gaming on phyrexian obliterator deck

4 months ago

You may want more pay offs like Waste Not, The Rack, Megrim and Liliana's Caress

VorelNailo on Politics

4 months ago

If we look at the existing hubs, a lot of them are actually referring to the strategy of the deck. Most decks overlap their strategy and their build; generally, the tighter those are, the more focused the deck is.

• 8-rack: This is a deck archetype, to be sure, but it's also found in the hubs of decks who don't run The Rack, where it refers to the punitive discard effects.

• Aggro: It's a deck-building theme, but it's ALSO a playstyle.

• Aristocrats: A deck archetype, but also a prevalent strategy, and some "aristocrat" decks have no "aristocrat" cards in them - it's referring to the playstyle.

Politics is more of a playstyle than a deck, but that DOES NOT mean that it is not a deck archetype. Most cards made for commander emphasize the political nature of a format that is, at its heart, a multiplayer game - interaction does not just mean removal, it means deals, alliances, and sometimes even double crosses.

Politics is a strategy that can exist ONLY in Commander - dragon tribal, aristocrats, spellslinger, these can all be found in Modern, Legacy, and even Standard, but Politics can only be found in Commander.

RNR_Gaming on

4 months ago

Looks really similar to an 8 rack deck. Maybe Waste Not, The Rack, Funeral Charm, and Ensnaring Bridge could be some good includes :]