This is a mono black good stuff deck. Just play your black cards and get some value. This deck is carefully designed to lose and gain life so life total management is very important. There are two ways to play Razaketh, the Foulblooded and neither option is necessarily better than the other. The first is as a reactive toolbox. The goal of this strategy is to play in a REACTIVE way, holding up mana and tutoring the perfect card for that moment. Many times, the correct play pattern will be to cast Razaketh and pass the turn with one or two sacrificial creatures at the ready. The second way to play Razaketh is in a PROACTIVE way. This strategy involves casting Razaketh, immediately searching for Bolas's Citadel, and then casting as many spells as possible. This is definitely a very fun strategy but by no means guarantees a win. Both strategies are viable and which strategy to go for depends on the context of the game. With that being said, let's break down the deck by each strategy.
The Toolbox
As I mentioned earlier, one strategy that we can employ is the reactive toolbox strategy. We will be tutoring in response to our opponents plays. Listed below are each of the toolbox card with a short explanation of when to tutor for them.
Archfiend of Depravity - Against any go wide strategies. Also helps with population management.
Blood Artist - Against aristocrats strategies.
Feed the Swarm - Enchantment removal
Erebos, God of the Dead - Against life-gain strategies.
Vampire Hexmage - Spot removal against planeswalkers and any permanent with counters on them.
Crypt Incursion and Nihil Spellbomb - Against graveyard strategies.
Dark Dabbling - Can be protection against spot removal or can protect against a wrath.
Tragic Slip - Against any indestructible creatures. Particularly good against the Theros gods.
Awaken the Erstwhile - Against a very controlling deck. Making the control deck discard their hand is often back breaking enough to knock them out of the game.
Skullclamp - If you run low on cards in hand and cannot lose too much life from Razaketh's ability.
In addition we also run a suite of spot removal that includes Nekrataal, Shriekmaw, Silumgar Assasin, Murderous Cut, Tragic Slip, and Ruinious Path.
Another important thing to discuss is the utility that Dark Ritual and Songs of the Damned provide. In a situation where we are tight for mana, these cards provide us with a push of mana acceleration. Also, our opponents will never anticipate a toolbox answer with 1 black mana available. Because of this reason, it is often beneficial to wait and cast Razaketh with 1 black mana untapped.
Let's Try to Win With Bolas's Citadel
Okay in this scenario we need a little bit of a set up. We need to successfully resolve Razaketh with enough resources to resolve Bolas's Citadel. This can be accomplished several ways. The least likely way is to just have 14 mana. The more likely way is through a combination of sacrificial creatures and Dark Ritual and Songs of the Damned. Once we have both cards on the battlefield, our goal is to cast many spells with life as possible. Every time we hit a land off the top, we can tutor with Razaketh to shuffle our library. At this point it should be very hard to run out of gas. If anything, our life total will definitely be the limiting factor. Luckily we have several cards that let us gain life. The cards that gain us life are Blood Artist, Crypt Ghast, Disciple of Bolas, Gray Merchant of Asphodel, Zulaport Cutthroat, Bastion of Remembrance, Bontu's Monument, Elixer of Immortality, Crypt Incursion, and Exsanguinate. We also have cards that make us lose life or give us the option to lose life and these are important to note. In addition to Razaketh, the Foulblooded and Bolas's Citadel, the cards that can make us lose life are Demonlord Belzenlok, Erebos, God of the Dead, Phyrexian Rager, Phyrexian Arena, Read the Bones, and Sign in Blood.** There is a delicate balance between the cards that gain life and the cards that lose life. A good strategy when "going off" is to tutor for the life-gain cards (plus the mana to cast them) so we can guarantee our life-gain.
Some Cool Combos
I am going to go over some combos in the deck that could be potential tutor targets.
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Awaken the Erstwhile while Archfiend of Ifnir is on the battlefield will result in all opponents losing their entire hand and all of the zombies they just made plus the rest of their creatures will be gone or severely injured.
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Awaken the Erstwhile while Dread Return is in our hand will result in all players discarding their hands and we get to return our most powerful creature in our graveyard onto the battlefield.
Alternative Commanders
Erebos, God of the Dead - There are a lot of similarities between Erebos and Razaketh. Both have a card advantage engine on them and both of them like having small minions on the battlefield (for Erebos, the devotion and for Razaketh, the sacrificial creatures). In some ways, Erebos can be considered a better commander than Razaketh because he is hard to remove and he locks out opponents from gaining life. I can see Razaketh and Erebos being pretty interchangeable depending on your mood.
Demonlord Belzenlok - So here is a challenge. This iteration of the deck is significantly weaker than Razaketh and Erebos. The card advantage created by Belzenlok is completely up to luck. You could draw 1 card or 10.
Final Thoughts
Razaketh is interesting because having a tutor on a stick gives the pilot several decision points that could drastically influence the outcome of the game. The best card in the deck goes to Songs of the Damned. The biggest problem that Razaketh poses is that our opponents can see it coming a mile away and have plenty of time to prepare for him. Songs of the Damned can add 5-8 mana out of nowhere and can result in successfully casting Razaketh with mana left to do other things. Razaketh fully embodies power at a cost. Do you have what it takes to harness that raw power?
Upgrades: Sol Ring (duh), the land base is super budget so if you have extra cash for Cabal Coffers, Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, etc. go for it. Also add an Expedition Map if you are going to run Cabal Coffers.
