Commander Collection: Pandemonium

Commander / EDH BR (Rakdos) Bracket 3 Counters Sacrifice

Jurrane

Land (36)

• 1x Arid Mesa
• 1x Blackcleave Cliffs
• 1x Blood Crypt
• 1x Bloodstained Mire
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Dragonskull Summit
• 1x Fabled Passage P
• 1x Foreboding Ruins
• 1x Haunted Ridge
• 1x High Market
• 1x Luxury Suite
• 1x Marsh Flats
• 1x Mines of Moria
• 3x Mountain
• 1x Polluted Delta
• 1x Prismatic Vista P
• 1x Rogue's Passage
• 1x Scalding Tarn
• 1x Shizo, Death's Storehouse
• 1x Smoldering Marsh
• 1x Sulfurous Springs
• 9x Swamp
• 1x Verdant Catacombs
• 1x Volrath's Stronghold P
• 1x War Room
• 1x Wooded Foothills

Ramp (5)

• 1x Lotus Petal
• 1x Mox Amber
• 1x Pawn of Ulamog
• 1x Sifter of Skulls
• 1x Sol Ring

+1/+1 Counter Synergies (3)

• 1x Blade of the Bloodchief
• 1x Tarrian's Soulcleaver
• 1x The Ozolith P

Treasure Synergies (10)

• 1x Academy Manufactor
• 1x Descent into Avernus
• 1x Goldspan Dragon P
• 1x Magda, Brazen Outlaw
• 1x Pitiless Plunderer
• 1x Professional Face-Breaker
• 1x Revel in Riches
• 1x Spiteful Banditry
• 1x The Reaver Cleaver
• 1x Xorn

Card Draw (8)

• 1x Black Market Connections
• 1x Corrupted Conviction
• 1x Deadly Dispute
• 1x Morbid Opportunist
• 1x NecropotenceGC
• 1x Reckoner's Bargain
• 1x Skullclamp
• 1x Village Rites

Removal (8)

• 1x Bone Shredder
• 1x Chaos Warp
• 1x Feed the Swarm
• 1x Rakdos Charm
• 1x Seal of Doom
• 1x Shriekmaw
• 1x Wild Magic Surge
• 1x Withering Torment

Tutors (5)

• 1x Demonic TutorGC
• 1x Diabolic Intent
• 1x Imperial Recruiter
• 1x Sidisi, Undead Vizier
• 1x Vampiric TutorGC

Sacrifice Outlets (3)

• 1x Ashnod's Altar
• 1x Goblin Bombardment
• 1x Zuran Orb

Commander (1)

Finishers (8)

• 1x Bulk Up
• 1x Chandra's Ignition
• 1x Drivnod, Carnage Dominus
• 1x Fling
• 1x Harmonic Prodigy
• 1x Soul's Fire
• 1x Tainted Strike
• 1x Unleash Fury

Sacrifice Effects (7)

• 1x Accursed Marauder
• 1x Demon's Disciple
• 1x Fleshbag Marauder
• 1x Gravelighter
• 1x Innocent Blood
• 1x Merciless Executioner
• 1x Plaguecrafter

Aristocrat Effects (5)

• 1x Blood Artist
• 1x Marionette Apprentice
• 1x Mayhem Devil
• 1x Mirkwood Bats
• 1x Zulaport Cutthroat

Protection (1)

• 1x Swiftfoot Boots

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{B}{R} Introduction: Treasure & Pain {B}{R}

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“Pandemonium” is a Rakdos sacrifice deck, built around Juri, Master of the Revue. Unlike my other black-based sacrifice deck, which is an Aristocrats build, this one’s pretty much all about a single card: getting as much value and impact as possible out of Juri, Master of the Revue’s two abilities. The goal of the deck is to sacrifice enough permanents over the course of the game to put so many counters on Juri that he can enough take out multiple opponents, either through combat or as direct damage when he's sacrificed himself.

The deck is intended to be extremely low to the ground, with an average CMC of around 2.5. Nearly every card in the deck interacts with a sacrifice trigger in some way, either as an ETB or LTB effect, a token effect to create sacrifice fodder, or as a payoff to ensure Juri gets plenty of counters.

Background & Concept

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In MtG lore, Rakdos is the embodiment of hedonism, taken the most violent extreme. It gets great pleasure from dealing pain and this is perfectly characterised by as charismatic master of ceremonies at the Cult of Rakdos Revue on Ravnica. Juri's shows at the Revue inevitabily involve flame, spikes and blades. Most performances involve skewering the audience, sometimes literally.

I like to think of Juri as basically the Joker, probably the most quintessential black/red character there is. Both are selfish, driven only by a desire to entertain themselves, this desire manifesting itself through chaos, violence and death. Wearing his signature crown of blades and gesturing with his flaming whip for emphasis, Juri directs the frenetic action of the murderer-performers around him, having a ball of a time as MC of the barely controlled insanity around him.

So Juri’s all about pleasure and pain. But he’s also about Treasure and pain. That’s because we use Treasure tokens as one of the main ways to ensure Juri accumulates +1/+1 counters quickly. Many of our cards either create Treasure tokens, or gain value from them in some way. We support this Treasure sub-theme with other low-cost cards that either have sacrifice abilities themselves, or augment our game plan of powering up (and then sacrificing) Juri, Master of the Revue.

While Juri’s by far the most important card in this deck, Harmonic Prodigy comes a close second, as its static ability is absolutely incredible when Juri’s in play. This means two +1/+1 counters for each sacrifice effect and two damage triggers if Juri goes to the graveyard, often making the difference between Juri being annoying or potentially lethal.

Power Level

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I categorise decks in my collection according to four tiers of power, from 1 (most powerful) to 4 (least powerful):

Tier 1: Higher powered decks with fast mana, free spells, and infinite combos or instant wins that are searchable with tutors.
Tier 2: Well tuned decks which may have infinite combos or instant wins that are searchable with tutors, but not many fast mana sources and/or free spells.
Tier 3: Reasonably well tuned casual decks that are capable of powerful plays. May occasionally have infinite combos or instant wins but don't generally use tutors to find them.
Tier 4: Lower powered or linear decks, weak enough to play against other casual decks.

This is a tricky deck to evaluate in terms of power level. It's a lot of fun to play and it definitely fits best at casual tables. Many of the card choices are optimised and it's been honed over the past couple of years to be as ruthless and efficient as possible. But, in itself, it's not the most powerful strategy and can often be raced by other powerful or more aggressive decks. Its win/loss is currently nothing to write home about with just two wins in its first eight games.

Using the deck power level categories above, I suppose I'd call it one of my Tier 2 decks but it might be closer to Tier 3. Either way, it probably sits at the mid-power end casual and I'm usually happy to play against most opponents.

In terms of WotC's new power level brackets for EDH, I think this list sits in Bracket 3. It runs three game changer cards: Demonic TutorGC, Vampiric TutorGC and NecropotenceGC. But otherwise it plays "fair" Magic, it doesn't do anything fundamentally broken and it doesn't run any infinite or instant win combos.

Budget

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Coming in at an average price of around $800 on CK, this is definitely not a budget deck. In an effort to include as many sacrifice outlets as possible, it has the full set of black/red fetch lands, plus other premium card choices including Demonic TutorGC, Vampiric TutorGC, Phyrexian Altar, Mox Amber, The Ozolith etc.

As is often the case in Magic, in this case the extra budget tends to buy efficiency; in this case either by enabling us to be much lower to the ground, or by being faster and coming out of the blocks quickly, sometimes quickly getting a turn or so ahead. But, in casual settings (and despite the budget, this is still a casual deck), it’s by no means necessary and Juri Sacrifice is a nice deck to build at relatively low cost if you prefer. Just avoid lands that ETB tapped and you shouldn’t notice too much of an impact in performance.

Supporting Juri

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When playing this deck, we’re a bit of a one trick pony. It’s very likely that we’ll either win with Juri, Master of the Revue or we won’t win at all. So our game plan is all about sacrificing Treasures and other permanents to increase the number of +1/+1 counters on Juri, until he’s large enough to deal sufficient damage to kill our opponents.

To do this, we run various sets of cards that either (1) create Treasure tokens; (2) provide other sacrifice effects; (3) power up Juri in other ways; (4) draw extra cards to keep our resources going; or (5) tutor for important elements of the deck. Key cards from each of these five categories are discussed below.

Smart opponents will of course try and keep Juri off the board as much as possible, limiting the damage he’s able to cause. Although he’s cheap enough to cast several times throughout the game, commander tax soon adds up so we need to have other ways to win. We therefore have two supporting win conditions although, to be completely honest, they play second fiddle to Juri.

These are:

- Aristocrats Effects: We’re not an Aristocrats deck because we don’t have enough cards to go all-in on that game plan, but we run a series of effects that cause incremental damage to opponents as a result of sacrifice effects. These include Marionette Apprentice, Blood Artist, Zulaport Cutthroat, Mayhem Devil, Mirkwood Bats and Goblin Bombardment. It’s rare that any of these will get the job done on their own, but they can sometimes bring our enemies down to low enough life levels that they’re within range of Juri damage (or dealing the last few points of pain once Juri’s done most of the heavy lifting). We also have Reckless Fireweaver and Marionette Master, both of whom are fantastic as we’ll be creating plenty of Treasure tokens.

- Revel in Riches: If we manage to land (and stick) Revel in Riches, our game plan changes a bit. Rather than sacrificing our Treasures as quickly as possible while Juri, Master of the Revue’s on the board, we try to create – and keep – enough Treasure tokens to satisfy Revel in Riches’ alternate win condition. This won’t happen very often though, as we won’t see Revel in Riches that much, even with a couple of tutor effects in the deck.

How To Win

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We usually win by causing enough damage with Juri that we’re able to take out one or more opponents, leaving us as the only surviving player. We can do this in one or more of the following ways:

- Combat Damage: Juri’s great for dealing Commander damage, either in one fell swoop if he’s loaded up with over 20 +1/+1 counters, or incrementally over the course of the game if his power’s lower. Key to this strategy is making sure our opponents don’t have blockers by using our removal cards, or using Rogue's Passage (which is searchable with Expedition Map and other tutors) to make Juri unblockable.

- Direct Damage: Chandra's Ignition is one of the most important cards in the deck. It’s the way we can use Juri to kill multiple opponents if he has enough +1/+1 counters and/or we double his power with Unleash Fury. Soul's Fire works in a similar way but affects one target only. Of course we can sacrifice Juri too for potentially very large amounts of direct damage if we have one of our sacrifice outlets available.

- Sacrificing Juri: Providing we have a way of sacrificing Juri, either through one of our sacrifice outlets or using a card like Fling or Thud we can use him to remove players directly. Because of this, as a general rule, it’s usually best to only sacrifice Juri (assuming we get to choose when we do so) when he’s going to win us the game as otherwise, we have to re-cast him from the command zone and start the process of accumulating +1/+1 counters all over again. Harmonic Prodigy is an absolute all-star in this situation as it also effectively doubles Juri’s power when he’s sacrificed. And Tainted Strike is a great way of catching opponents unawares as we only need Juri's power to be 10 for the instant kill.

Key Cards

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This is a highly synergistic deck and we have categories of cards that contribute to our overall game plan of killing our opponents with Juri, Master of the Revue. These are:

- Treasure Generators: We have a bunch of cards that create Treasure tokens to use as simple sacrifice fodder for powering up Juri, Master of the Revue. The large number of Treasures we create also helps offset the low number of lands we’re running. Revel in Riches is the gold standard, although it's quite expensive to cost. Xorn and Academy Manufactor are both low key amazing in this deck, especially as the latter triples the number of tokens we can sacrifice when Juri’s around. The only downside to Manufactor is that Food and Clue tokens both cost {2} to use, but this is a small downside for what’s otherwise a great card. Goldspan Dragon is also very useful and it’s our usual target to search for if Magda, Brazen Outlaw is in play (unless we want Phyrexian Altar or similar as a combo piece).

- Sacrifice Effects: We run all sorts of different sacrifice effects across various card types (creatures, instants, sorceries, artifacts and lands), all of which are intended to be used when Juri, Master of the Revue’s on the battlefield. We have all the fetch lands capable of finding black and red mana, as well as several evoke, echo or encore spells. Victimize is also really good to bring back our most important creatures, including Juri if his commander tax gets so high that we’d rather leave him the graveyard than return him to the command zone if he’s removed from play.

- Sacrifice Outlets: Nothing’s worse than having an enormous Juri, Master of the Revue on the board with nothing to sacrifice him to (this happens, unfortunately). To minimise this, we run various cards as sacrifice outlets that have the dual purpose of either generating value from redundant permanents that are already on the way to the graveyard, or as a sacrificial source for Juri so we get his damage trigger (or triggers if Harmonic Prodigy’s in play). Useful cards in this category include Goblin Bombardment, Costly Plunder, Deadly Dispute, Fling, Reckoner's Bargain and Village Rites, of which are great because they work at instant speed.

- Token Generators: A number of our cards create tokens, which are helpful as fodder when we don’t want to lose our more important permanents to sacrifice effects. Sifter of Skulls and Pawn of Ulamog are particularly useful because they create Eldrazi Spawn tokens as mana outlets.

- Card Draw & Tutors: As is often the case with aggressive Rakdos decks, there’s the danger of running out of gas. A range of 12 different draw spells and effects ensures a steady stream of resources. We also have Demonic TutorGC and Vampiric TutorGC to find out most important cards (I’ve found our usual targets tend to be Harmonic Prodigy, Chandra's Ignition, Soul's Fire, Unleash Fury, and Fling or Thud).

Next Steps

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After a raft of changes, this deck is now a lot more optimised and can be downright lethal with the right draws. It's capable of dealing explosive amounts of damage and has the ability to win out of relative nowhere. It's become one of my favourite decks and I'll continue to iterate it over time, as Treasure seems to be one of most pushed game mechanics at the moment.

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All My EDH Decks

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S(i)erra Sidewinder: Mono-White Angel Tribal

{U} Orvar, the All-Form {U}
Clone Zone: Mono-Blue Shapeshifters Combo

{B} Sidisi, Undead Vizier {B}
Swamp Thing: Mono-Black Midrange Combo

{B} Ayara, First of Locthwain {B}
Black Diamond: Mono-Black Aristocrats Combo

{R} Torbran, Thane of Red Fell {R}
Red Force: Mono-Red Group Slug

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Firebird: Mono-Red Storm/Tokens

{G} Titania, Protector of Argoth {G}
Timber Terror: Mono-Green Land Sacrifice

{W}{U} Grand Arbiter Augustin IVGC {W}{U}
Control Freak: Azorius Control

{W}{U} Elminster {W}{U}
Crystal Wing: Azorius Skies & Scry

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The Black Gate Opens: Dimir Spellslinger

{B}{R} Rakdos, Lord of Riots {B}{R}
Steamin’ Demon: Rakdos Life Loss

{B}{R} Juri, Master of the Revue {B}{R}
Pandemonium: Rakdos Sacrifice

{R}{G} Wort, the Raidmother {R}{G}
Barnstormer: Gruul Conspire

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Stampida: Selesnya Humans Tribal

{W}{G} Captain Sisay {W}{G}
Legendia: Selesnya Legendary

{W}{G} Sythis, Harvest's Hand {W}{G}
Diamondback: Selesnya Enchantress

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Oblivion: Orzhov Lifegain & Lifedrain

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Steel Force: Boros Equipment

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Gatekeeper: Boros Multicoloured

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Date added	3 years
Last updated	1 month
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	8 - 0 Mythic Rares 40 - 0 Rares 26 - 0 Uncommons 14 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.47
Tokens	Clue, Eldrazi Scion 1/1 C, Eldrazi Spawn 0/1 C, Food, Servo 1/1 C, Shapeshifter 3/2 C, Treasure