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Sneaky Old Barktooth

Commander / EDH BR (Rakdos) Casual Combo Reanimator

Heisenburr

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Creature (28)

Land (37)

Artifact (9)

Instant (7)

Commander (1)

Commander: Barktooth Warbeard

Enchantment (10)

Sorcery (8)

Sideboard

Instant (1)

Maybeboard

Sorcery (5)

Instant (3)

Enchantment (2)

Land (2)

I wanted to build an old-bordered EDH deck and my color combination fell on Rakdos. So it soon became clear that my commander would be good old Barktooth Warbeard . I mean... just take a look at his... Well... Ehm... At least he has stylish artwork and a cool flavour text!

So at first sight Barktooth Warbeard doesn't make a strong impression, but he's perfect for our gameplan. Check out his attributes in the flavour text: "He is devious and cunning, in both appearance and deed." - this is exactly what our deck reflects.

Our opponents will underestimate us and will label the deck as garbage, as soon as they take a look at Barktooth. To be honest, our deck is no further away from the latter. But just like our leader Bark, we are a sneaky bitch and good for a surprise or two.

"Beware the Warbeard, for this brute bites as well as he barks!"

We are in the Rakdos colors, which is why most of our ramp consists of artifacts.

Artifacts

Bloodstone Cameo

Charcoal Diamond

Fellwar Stone

Fire Diamond

Mind Stone - can be sacrificed late game for card draw.

Sol Ring

Thran Dynamo

Worn Powerstone

Other "Ramp"

Cabal Coffers + Blanket of Night - We don't have access to Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth so we are using Blanket of Night instead.

Thunderscape Familiar - This little fella makes our black cards cheaper.

Dark Ritual - Technically it's not ramp, but who doesn't like an oldschool Turn 1 Dark Ritual into Necropotence ???

Black Market - Great value card. Can get out of control really fast.

Draw

Phyrexian Arena - Classic EDH staple.

Necropotence - Banned in modern + legacy and restricted in vintage. This piece of cardboard is probably the best card draw engine ever printed.

Phyrexian Rager - ETB: Pay 1 draw 1.

Dragon Mage - Discard + card draw = i like it.

Undead Gladiator - Allows us to discard creatures and draw cards.

Tutors

Buried Alive - Tutors us 3 creatures and puts them in our graveyard. Especially good for cards like Anger , Filth or Worldgorger Dragon .

Diabolic Tutor - Well.. Who doesn't know him?

Insidious Dreams - Instant speed tutor. We can setup our whole combo with this card.

Creature removal

Avatar of Woe - Tap Removal on a Big Bootie. Can be played for if there are enough creatures in graveyards.

Carrionette - Great effect when an opponent is tapped out. We can exile Carrionette from our graveyard to remove a creature from the game. EXILE BABY!

Nekrataal - ETB Terror on a stick.

Predatory Nightstalker - ETB: Target opponent sacrifices a creature.

Royal Assassin - One of my favorite cards of all time.

Visara the Dreadful - "My eyes are my strongest feature." ... classic female twitch streamer quote.

Diabolic Edict - Instant speed. Makes an opponent sacrifice a creature.

Smother - I love this card from the Onslaught block. But you could also exchange it with good old Terror .

Terminate - Probably one of the best rakdos removal spells.

Board wipes

Decree of Pain - Expensive board wipe, but draws us a ton of cards and can be cycled for an -2/-2 effect.

Nevinyrral's Disk - Classic EDH staple.

Mutilate - Cheap "board wipe". Gets around indestructible. But we need Blanket of Night or a lot of swamps to remove the whole board.

Plague Wind - One sided mass-removal? Where can i sign?

Inferno - Instant speed? 6 damage to everything? I love the smell of napalm in my upkeep!

Artifact removal

Keldon Vandals - Destroys an artifact. Can be resurrected with almost any graveyard recursion in our deck.

Scrap - Instant removal with a cycling ability.

Land destruction

We have only 1 card for Land hate and that is Ravenous Baboons . If you need more, you can put in Avalanche Riders or Strip Mine .

Planeswalker removal

Ehh what? Planeswalker removal? But we are a pre-modern deck right? The answer is: Wall of Souls - The damage from Wall of Soul's ability can be directed to Planeswalkers. So it is not only a good early-game blocker, it is also a political instrument against planeswalkers.

Enchantment removal

yeah nice joke..

Barktooth brings a little oldschool discard subtheme with him. This will help us filling the graveyards of our opponents.

Blazing Specter - Flying + Haste.

Dragon Mage - Discards everything und also draws us 7 cards.

Hypnotic Specter - OG Specter! Discards a card at random!

Silent Specter - Flying + Discards 2.

Greel, Mind Raker - We can use him as a manasink and force an opponent to discard his whole hand.

Creatures

Apprentice Necromancer - Cheap + good ability.

Bone Dancer - One of the coolest cards in the deck. We just need to make sure, that our little Napoleon Dynamite goes through the defense of an enemy, so we are able to recruit the top creature card from his graveyard.

Coffin Queen - Great card. Allows us to steal a creature for as long as the Queen is on the battlefield and doesn't get untapped. LONG MAY SHE REIGN!

Doomed Necromancer - Similar to Apprentice Necromancer but we don't need to sac the reanimated creature at the end of turn.

Gravedigger - Sometimes we need to get the creature back to our hand and not directly onto the battlefield. (e.g. Phage the Untouchable )

Scion of Darkness - The Big Brother of the Coffin Queen + cycling ability to get him in our graveyard for later reanimation.

Sorceries

Ashen Powder - for an enemy creature? I'll take it!

Unearth - We have 12 creature cards with CMC equal or less than 3 in our crew. And.. hey.. we can cycle it if needed.

Enchantments

With Animate Dead , Dance of the Dead and Necromancy we run the Triforce of black oldschool reanimation enchantments. But watch out, because we need one of those 3 for our combo.

We have a few creatures in our deck, that depend on doing combat damage to one of our opponents to trigger their ability. So we are gonna try to make life easier for our buddies by giving them haste and evasion.

Haste

Anger - We just gonna send it straight to hell.

Fervor - Great enchantment that gives our creatures haste.

Mark of Fury - Creature enchantment for one and it bounces itself back to our hand.

Evasion

Filth - Like Anger but the black one gives us swampwalk.

Blanket of Night - Makes our swampwalk effect useful against non black players.

Dragon Shadow - Brings itself back from the graveyard to enchant our big booties.

Combo

Our main win condition is an old 3 card combo from back in the days.

Animate Dead / Dance of the Dead / Necromancy + Worldgorger Dragon + Fireball / Highway Robber / Shivan Gorge .

So Animate Dead + Worldgorger Dragon generates us infinite ETBs / Mana to finish off our enemies with Highway Robber , Shivan Gorge or a FREAKING BIG Fireball .. i don't think, there is anything more oldschool than burning the whole table with a single fireball.

Deathtouch?

Thanks to our haste / evasion enablers, we can also 1 shot people out of nowhere with Phage the Untouchable . But be aware that you can't reanimate her and she can be flickered easily, because we don't have any hexproof or shroud to protect her. So better bitchslap the blue player first!

Steal from your enemies

Playing only old-bordered cards can be pretty rough, cause our opponents will have the better cards for most of the time. So what are we gonna do? Well.. how about just kill and steal their stuff? Doesn't sound that like quite a plan? We definitely have enough cards for doing that in our deck and from time to time, we are able to beat the new kids on the block with their own creatures.

Bark gonna give it to ya

There is always one player, who makes fun of our Lord and Savior Barktooth Warbeard . For this one guy, we will have a nice sideboard consisting of Hatred to teach him some manners. Just finish him off in one swing with 21 commander damage and watch him go on suicide watch.

You can upgrade the deck by simply putting in more tutors like Demonic Tutor , Cruel Tutor or Vampiric Tutor .

Entomb - Great card. Can also tutor us Worldgorger Dragon for our combo.

Insurrection - Extra win con

Strip Mine - Best land for land destruction.

Wheel of Fortune - Best wheel effect.

Badlands - Out of my budget.

No Mercy - Great defensive tool.

Doomsday - Powerful card for combo decks.

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Revision 3 See all

(6 years ago)

+1 Necrologia maybe