What's red and bad for your teeth? A brick! (also this deck.)
The plan is simple:
Step 1: Start a Riot. There are plenty of bricks.
Step 2: Engage wantonly in loss of life and free stuff (Just like a real riot!).
Step 3: Profit.
I've experimented for many years with the best way to start riots and the most profitable creatures to riot with. Within my playgroup/meta, this is the very best I can do, with the goal of maximizing fun-times without caring about consequences. (But I repeat myself.)
Spells are for chumps. Creatures are where it's at. The bigger the better.
Important Notes!
-
"Dave," I hear you saying, "You're running a deck with 98 permanents in a format where
Cyclonic Rift
is EVERYWHERE. Doesn't that suck?" The answer is yes, cyclonic rift does suck. It's basically the worst thing that's ever happened to anyone ever. Which is why a bunch of these cards are all about shutting down board-wipes:
Myojin of Night's Reach
,
Sire Of Insanity
,
Myojin of Infinite Rage
,
Keldon Firebombers
,
Void Winnower
, and
Nullstone Gargoyle
are all outstanding wrenches in the gears of the board-wipe machines that my friends all think are fun for some reason. Also they're all creatures,
so they party hard with Rakdos on board. ("Party hard" is a euphamism for "Riot," which is a euphamism for "Be basically free because
Rakdos, Lord of Riots
is absurd and out of control.")
Stromgald Cabal
also does work in the anti-board-wipe department, and he can start a riot early-game if someone's missing blockers.
-
"Those sure are good cards, but surely you can't stop ALL the boardwipes. EDH is is basically nothing but boardwipes, 'cause people hate fun and also parties." You are correct, astute reader, people do hate fun. So we have a back-up plan! Phase 1 of the back-up plan involves creatures that interact with board-wipes.
Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre
just ignores most of them.
Manor Gargoyle
is good at surviving, then starting a Riot so you can re-cast Rakdos.
Darksteel Plate
is clutch.
Bearer of the Heavens
is fun - turns out mutually assured destruction is a decent nuclear deterrent, especially if you have some indestructible dudes to clean up the players after he wrecks all the permanents. Lastly, if lots of stuff does die,
Harvester of Souls
sets you up to recover nicely. Which brings us to phase 2.
-
Phase 2 of the back-up plan is recovery. As long as you can re-fill your hand, Rakdos can recover pretty quickly - Creatures are basically free after all, you just have to draw them.
Harvester of Souls
is outstanding because he's reactive.
Sandstone Oracle
,
Knollspine Dragon
,
Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
,
Rune-Scarred Demon
, and
Combustible Gearhulk
are all good at proactively putting cards in your hand. (Sometimes the gearhulk just straight murders a dude instead, if they think they can survive the CMC of three cards from this deck. That's never not funny.) The other side of the Recovery plan is getting creatures back.
Sheoldred, Whispering One
and
Artisan of Kozilek
are here for that. Again, every part of this entire plan is attached to creatures. The advantage creatures have over every other card type is that creatures are free if you party hard enough, and they party hard. That is to say: they're criminally cheap and they kill people, which is, lets be honest, ideal.
-
"Wow, you're super ready for board-wipes! What else does the deck do?" uh....
Murder
people's
entire
Faces
?? It attacks. It's not complex.
Notable exceptions!
-
Sol Ring
isn't actually good in this deck.
Rakdos, Lord of Riots
involves zero generic mana, and makes pretty much every other spell in the deck involve zero generic mana as well. That makes Colorless mana pretty useless. The deck has space for exactly 3 mana rocks, and
Sol Ring
is fourth best.
Cryptolith Fragment
is best. It starts Riots.
-
Relatedly,
Kozilek, the Great Distortion
is more-or-less un-castable in this deck.
Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
is tragically banned. All the other titans are present and accounted for.
Endbringer
would be outstanding, but the colorless mana restrictions make it pretty useless to me.
-
I experimented with
Kaervek the Merciless
, he always died before he accomplished much.
Platinum Emperion
was too defensive.
Hypnox
targets a player - I wanted to share the love, so
Sire Of Insanity
got his spot (self-love is discarding your own hand too).
-
Sorin Markov
looks like a beautiful way to start riots, but it's much too slow. is just too much to justify.
-
The way I've got the deck set up to focus on creatures to the exclusion of all else, Haste doesn't do much. I cast all my creatures in the second main, after I've delivered Rakdos to some poor bastard's skull. Hasty creatures in the second main aren't super useful, unless you've got a second attack phase. I experimented with that for a bit. I imagined attacking with Rakdos, dropping a bunch of Eldrazi Titans and an
Urabrask the Hidden
, then casting
Seize the Day
and annihilating someone. I tried for years - it never worked out. It's far too unreliable and mana-intensive. If Sorceries got the riot discount, it would be unstoppable. As it is, I ended up just cutting the extra attack phases and most of the haste enablers. I left Urabrask in to keep Sheoldred company, and also to ruin someone's entire day if I can start a decent pre-combat Riot, like with
Tree of Perdition
or
Nettle Drone
.
Fun edit! Just did some quick math: this deck contains 255 printed power worth of creatures. Eldrazi are hilarious.
Edit number [i lost track a long time ago]:
Razaketh, the Foulblooded
is pretty absurd, it turns out. If you're rioting for 11 or more, he just ends the game:
Not an infinite combo... but definitely a game-ending combo, for sure. And it's kind of a one-card combo? Just riot hard and cast Razaketh for 3 mana. God I love this deck.
EDIT NUMBER [the next one]:
Razaketh is out. His combo was fun a couple times, but it's entertainment has been eclipsed by my dislike for abrupt "whoops, game over" events in EDH.
Rakdos, the Showstopper
is getting his spot.
