Rakdos Mana Dorks!
Commander (EDH) forum
Posted on Sept. 29, 2020, 10:23 a.m. by Sultai_Sir
What's the deal with these Rakdos/Mono Black mana dorks? They can be a little specific, but they're not terrible. I've never heard of them, but they seem like solid inclusions in some non-green deck: Agent of Stromgald, Bog Witch, Priest of Yawgmoth, Vesper Ghoul. For reference, Priest of Yawgmoth is in only 184 on EDHREC, while Agent of Stromgald has an even more measly 84. Am I being delusional, or are these actually good cards?
Most of these have a fatal flaw that keeps them from seeing significant play.
Agent of Stromgald is not a true mana dork, since it is not mana positive--you get out as much mana as you put into it. Filtering mana is already situational (and tends to be less important as the game progresses), and this filtering is made more situational by the limitation on the mana's use. There might be a rare instance where this card is helpful, but those instances are going to be overwhelmingly eclipsed by the number of times this will be a dead draw. It simply is not worth a card slot.
At three mana, both Bog Witch and Vesper Ghoul are a bit costly for a mana dork. Vesper Ghoul only generates 1 mana, so, that's a bit of a problem. Bog Witch at least generates a net positive of two mana and provides you with a discard outlet, so can be helpful in decks that care about graveyard shenanigans.
Priest of Yawgmoth requires you to have a high density of artifacts worth sacrificing--if not, then you just have it sitting there as a vanilla 1/2. There are some decks you can probably abuse this, but that's not going to be all of them.
September 29, 2020 11:20 a.m.
mccabej140 says... #5
I couldn't help but read your description in a Jerry Seinfeld voice. But yeah I'd much rather play mana artifacts than any of these cards in most situations.
I might play Soldevi Adnate in a certain kind of deck though.
September 29, 2020 2:12 p.m.
Yeah, I'm going to lean towards delusional. I guess the important question to ask with the cards you're refering to is, why? Why would you run these cards in a rakdos deck over the slew of decent mana rocks available? What advantage do they bring?
I'm sure there are some decks which would want effects like Priest of Yawgmoth's, like Glissa, the Traitor (or certain builds for her). Similarly, a reanimator deck might like Bog Witch as a discard outlet. But here you're leveraging the utility the card provides, not treating the card first and foremost as a mana dork.
So in the case of "need more ramp" I would say it's a hard pass on all of these.
September 29, 2020 9:07 p.m.
Both red and black get their mana ramp from either cards in hand like Dark Ritual or Seething Song. There are many more, I am just giving a for instance. This gives them explosive turns of play in keeping with their thematic styles.
Any other ramp they have is via sacrifice like with a Blood Pet or similar.
Both of these colors excel in cheating things into play without worrying about mana costs. Red uses stuff like Sneak Attack style effects and Black will just spend 1-3 mana to reanimate whatever they want. The play style of these colors don't really rely on ramp to get to their goals.
That might be why their card pools don't have a lot of good stuff for ramping.
They do have some great ones, but they are slow burn stuff like Braid of Fire and Black Market. Which are both amazing ramp but late-game kind of stuff.
September 29, 2020 10:08 p.m.
They are still making cards like this in modern sets... Priest of Forgotten Gods
VampDemigod says... #2
Agent of Stromgald is pretty bad. It only filters mana, and only 1 way. It lets you turn red mana to black. Not unplayable, but it gives you no ramp. It is NOT a manadork. Priest of Yogmoth is only kind of a mana dork. With the priest, you do still have to pay the cost of playing the artifact. This doesn’t make it bad necessarily, but it’s still debatable whether it’s actually mana advantage (tho I’d include it in almost any artifact-heavy deck).
The other two are strictly manadorks, and Bog Witch should be an include in any madness deck.
September 29, 2020 11:13 a.m.