This deck revolves around the gimmick of devils to deal damage when they die. We obviously have Zurzoth as our commander, who creates devils, enables a draw/discard mechanic, and encourages us to swing out with our incredibly expendable creatures, so that's exactly what we'll be doing.
With this deck, don't expect to build up a massive board of tokens, buff them, and swing for damage. Rather expect to have a smaller gang of painful creatures that you recklessly attack with, kill, and deal damage each turn, while forcing all players to cycle cards and take damage while you consistently replenish your tokens. The deck aims to be fast, painful, and careless about the creatures it deploys. Let's get into it.
Everybody Draw!
Zurzoth creates devils whenever our opponents draw a card in somebody else's turn. While he does enable this with his own ability, but redundancies are always good. It's worth noting that no matter how many cards our opponents draw, Zurzoth will only create one devil token for each player, as he only cares about the first card they draw out of turn. With that in mind, we'll be leaning away from wheel effects and focusing on cards that only grant them a single card raw at a time to reduce the benefit they receive. It's worth noting that we also draw cards off these effects, which red is always going to enjoy. So, we have Temple Bell, Howling Golem, Otherworld Atlas, and two lands, Geier Reach Sanitarium and Mikokoro, Center of the Sea to support the chaos rider himself.
Only Me Draw!
While we obviously get cards from these universal effects, we do want to try and generate card advantage over our opponents, or at the very least, listen the amount of advantage an opponent with more card draw might have. With that in mind, we have included a few cards that only draw cards for us, such as Skullclamp, Geth's Grimoire and Endless Atlas as well as Outpost Siege, Wildfire Devils, and Sin Prodder who can all pitch in to help us get our hands on some extra cards, even if they aren't exactly draw.
Bonus Damage
We do a couple of different things with this deck. We have creatures entering the battlefield, attacking, and dying fairly regularly and reliably. We also have a good amount of looting going on, for ourselves and our opponents, so we have a suite of cards that allow us to deal damage simply from doing the things our deck already does.
We have Impact Tremors, and Purphoros, God of the Forge to pack in some damage whenever a creature enters the battlefield and since we're encouraged to attack multiple opponents with our devil tokens, we've got a handful of cards that deal damage from having creatures attack, namely Hellrider, Raid Bombardment, and Cavalcade of Calamity. The restrictions in terms of creature size are largely irrelevant since most of our creatures will only have 1 power.
As has already been mentioned, we don't really care about our creatures, and we can expect them to die fairly regularly when we swing with them. That's fine, since they deal damage when they die anyway, but we can also sacrifice them ourselves to trigger this damage at will, but why not add extra damage to that built-in trigger? Spiteful Prankster, Havoc Jester, Outpost Siege, and Hissing Iguanar all deal additional damage when our creatures die.
Finally, Glint-Horn Buccaneer and Brallin, Skyshark Rider
deal damage whenever we cycle a card, which will be happening regularly off of Zurzoth's ability, and Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle will pitch in damage from us just playing our lands.
Damage Multipliers
A lot of our damage is piecemeal, one or two points at a time. For what we want,that's too slow, so we'll be ramping things up, with damage multipliers. Torbran, Thane of Red Fell, Fiery Emancipation, and Gratuitous Violence all fit the bill nicely.
Sacrifice Outlets
While our devils are likely to die in combats, we don't want to rely on that completely as it is something beyond our control. Sacrifice outlets allow us to control the timing of our creature's deaths, as well as add extra beneficial effects to their deaths, whether that is additional damage, card draw, or mana generation.
Goblin Bombardment allows us to sacrifice creatures for damage, while Thermopod and Ashnod's Altar are ways to convert creatures into mana. We can also use sacrifice outlets to generate card draw with Skullclamp. We can even turn our tokens into more tokens in order to double up on our ETB and sacrifice activations using Spawning Pit and Tooth and Claw while Chained Brute and Hobblefiend are sac outlets that are also devils.
A Horde of Devils
Zurzoth makes devil tokens, but we'll add some more to get the ball rolling and contribute their own abilities too. We're aiming to keep our mana curve low, both to help maintain the fast pace our deck wants to play at, but also because we have a good deal of activated abilities in the deck that we want to keep some mana free for. With that in mind, we'll be using cheap devils, such as Gibbering Fiend, Chained Brute, Tibalt's Rager, Scalding Devil, and Vengeful Devil. Chained Brute is also a handy sacrifice outlet, which is always welcome, and we have a few other useful abilities on devil bodies, namely Havoc Jester, Fiendish Duo, and Wildfire Devils.
We also have a selection of spells that create devil tokens, including the deck's sole planeswalker, Tibalt, Rakish Instigator and a handful of instants and sorceries that we can reuse thanks to Charmbreaker Devils.
Removal
Vandalblast, Shattering Spree, and Torch Fiend are our artifact removal package, and Charmbreaker Devils allows us to recycle them and Blasphemous Act. Captivating Crew and Mob Rule also pull duty as creature removal in this deck given our wealth of sacrifice outlets and are particularly useful for getting rid of indestructible or regenerating creatures, with Mob Rule even nabbing us Hexproof and Shrouded cards - take that Lightning Greaves.
Ramping Things Up
Apart from Thermopod and Ashnod's Altar, which are in the sacrifice dependent, we can use artifacts for the majority of our ramp, while Battle Hymn and Mana Geyser can give us a sudden boost of mana, with the possibility of reusing them thanks to Charmbreaker Devils. In terms of our mana rocks, we want to keep them cheap, since any three drops are competing for Zurzoth's slot in our opening hand, and we want him out as soon as possible. With that said, we do include Heraldic Banner as the army-wide boost is quite useful, and Burnished Hart is great value, and also has a sacrifice ability which synergizes well with our deck. Ruby Medallion and card Hazoret's Monument reduce the cost of red spells, while Sol Ring, Fire Diamond, Mind Stone, Fellwar Stone and Star Compass tap for mana, and become active on turn two or 3 (or 1 in the case of Sol Ring). Wayfarer's Bauble, Solemn Simulacrum, Burnished Hart, and Myriad Landscape fetch us basic lands to put onto the battlefield.
Ride for Chaos
So, with all that in mind the general plan for this deck is ramp up to Zurzoth as fast as possible, and then immediately start swinging out with devils. Attack recklessly and sacrifice your own creatures to get the extra effects you need while keeping the the pressure on for the table. Drown them in tiny tokens, and incidental damage, and if that doesn't work, just enjoy the chaos you cause by throwing damage and wiping the board with your expendable minions.
