Card/Deck The Rakdos Cult (BR)

ravnic

ravnic

I haven't Seen threads like these where we can have discussion on how to design out guild sections, what cards are worth running and why etc. I think this can be pretty interesting and lead to new ideas and points of view.

So Rakdos has been a tough guild for me, because I try to avoid boring basic effects in gold sections (Terminate), and Rakdos seems to be all aggro and kill stuff. I'm still looking for interesting options that fit my power level.

Like with every guild, I have 1 hybrid (only true hybrids, which work fully with either color) and 4 gold cards:



He is my hybrid and probably the best aggro 1-drop in my cube. Really good but fine and a staple for his flexibility.




Sweet card, does a lot of different stuff really well. Good in aggro, midrange and control with GY, Tokens and sacrifice synergies.




Sac outlets are welcome in BR, but I'd like something that's better with other colors. Thinking about replacing her with something like Shambling Remains. Meh.




Pet card for my pal whose running the cube with me. Doesn't really have a deck that needs him, but at least it's interesting I guess.




It's the best red Keyrune and Wildfire.dec loves it. But this is another card I'd cut.



Soo, after Cackler and Guildmage, I could see me replacing all these cards.

What are you running in your Rakdos sections? What themes/archetypes do you support? Did you have some surprising successes? What do you want the Rakdos Cult to do?

If we get some discussion here and you guys like the idea, I'll do the other guilds soon. Oh, and this thread is obviously for everyone and every kind/power level of cube.
 
Grillo_Parlante

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
I really like rakdos. It scales very well from aggro to midrange.

I've found madness themes at low power to be very effective, as well as cards that become stronger as the creature count in the graveyard grows.

In the old penny cube, you could use red token makers in an aggressive build, to sneak in ninja hits. I really liked the R/B ninja deck.

Those ravinca guildmages in general were very good, and I really like rakdos guildmage, great mana sink, board control piece, and discard outlet.

Also have really liked:

 
shamizy

shamizy

My Rakdos section is currently:



For gold cards, I usually look for more interesting effects that can't be found as easily throughout the rest of the cube. Claim // Fame is my flex card, probably the first I would swap out if a more interesting BR offering came around, but it's been just fine. I've been a fan of both Unearth and Reckless Charge at various points in my cube. A split card that can mimic parts of both is just a solid inclusion.

Fulminator Mage is just a strong card in an environment like mine where dual lands, manlands and utility lands are prevalent throughout. Even just throwing off your opponent's ability to curve out with land drops when you're applying pressure is a huge boon (part of why I love Braids, Cabal Minion and Smokestack so much) Being able to recur it with certain other cards throughout the list can make for some very powerful sequences.

Kolaghan's Command is just a sweet versatile modal spell. I've used every single mode at least once, most often the recursion and damage modes. I just like having cards in my list that can fulfill various roles in different builds, makes for more interesting deck building and gameplay scenarios.

Falkenrath Aristocrat is just meant to be a payoff card for BR Aggressive lists. It's just a strong curve-topper and I like having powerful gold cards available as clear signals/payoffs for drafters every now and then. I prefer the more synergy-driven cards for the most part, but every now and then you just need a strong card in your gold sections that can get the job done. I love that it is a sac outlet (leading to sweet interactions with Blood Artist and Zulaport Cutthroat) and has some sweet payoffs if you draft an aggressive Mardu Humans list.

Finally, my favorite Rakdos card is Murderous Redcap. I love being able to shoot down utility creatures, knock down a few loyalty from a pesky planeswalker, go straight to face, or follow up a combat sequence to pick off a bigger body. It just does so much on it's own. It's an excellent piece for Birthing Pod decks, you'll want it in most red decks as it with almost always represent 3 points of burn, and you can enable sweet sequences with a ton of other interactions throughout the cube. You can continuously recur with Meren of Clan Nel Toth and a sac outlet to gun down your opponent. Assemble an infinite combo with Metallic Mimic on Goblin, sac outlet and the Redcap? How about resetting it by blinking it off the board with a Restoration Angel or with +1/+1 counters? It's also a goblin that you can fling with Siege-Gang Commander if you'd like. It's just an excellent glue card for a variety of decks, I'll never not play it if I'm in some BRx build.
 
ravnic

ravnic

I tried Tymaret, but he was a bit disappointed. I felt like the Guildmage was a better 2-drop and Lyzolda the better sac outlet.

Now that you mention madness, though, can anyone recommend Bloodhall Priest? It looks neat, but I have a hard time evaluating it. Like, I can't tell if it would be unexciting, just fine or too good for my meta.

Edit@Shamizy: Oh I forgot about K-Command. That card is great, but sadly a little on the costy side. I try to spend not more than 5€ on a single card.
 
Grillo_Parlante

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
Priest has been ok. I've found the madness deck to be less about actual madness, and more about value discard.

So this card has been very good



Because you can value madness sooner with 2-3cc effects, and not so much because of the hellbent abilities.

The 3cc cards can still be good, but of course, that extra mana can be significant. I would say it dosen't take much for a lot of format's to be too fast for them.
 
Aston

Aston

I run



at the moment. I've also at various times run



Murderous Redcap and Falkenrath Aristocrat I'm both very happy with. They each fill several roles, with Murderous Redcap being a recursive creature, direct damage, and a combo piece, and Falkenrath Aristocrat acting as a curve-topper for aggro, a sticky midrange threat, and tying into the humans subtheme in the Mardu colours. They both also fit into the sacrifice synergies present in black (and to a lesser extent red).

Rakdos Cackler, aka Racky McCacky, is unexciting but solid, really just in there to ensure the critical mass for aggro decks. I guess there could be some +1/+1 counter considerations if you run that, but I don't. It would be sweet with the outlast guys that give keywords to +1/+1'd creatures.

Grenzo has been a bit of a flex slot, and I'm not sure I've seen him in play yet. In theory he should be good in aggro decks as a threat that scales up over the course of the game, a midrange mana sink and if applicable a way to get non-creature cards into your graveyard (although I've just noticed that I think he works with Sidisi, Brood Tyrant. Before that he was Anathemancer, Blightning, and Terminate (which I cut for the same reason of not wanting basic effects in multicolour slots), and I haven't really been happy with any of those. Some cards I've been considering for that slot are:



Or bringing back Olivia.
 
Peter LaCara

Peter LaCara



Surprised to see so little love for this one. She does exactly what BR decks tend to want, which is generating value by pitching resources into the yard while beating face. Besides her I run



Haven't really gotten to test Daretti yet, but he looks promising. Goes well with Furnace Celebration and Goblin Bombardment, which also might as well be Rakdos cards.
 
ravnic

ravnic

Jason Waddell said:
I always liked this dumb guy:



He's pretty borderline, but, depending on your composition, can be pretty "on theme".
Click to expand...

Does he see play outside of straight aggro decks? I try to keep the number of pure aggro cards low where I can. Olivia would probably better, but I fear she might be too pushed for my meta.
 
Rasmus Källqvist

Rasmus Källqvist

Shambling remains is kinda cool in conjunction with both discard and sacrifice. I mean, it's pretty much an aggresive card seeing as it can't block, but it's a little bit more techy than other similar "vanilla" beat down cards.
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
ravnic said:
Does he see play outside of straight aggro decks? I try to keep the number of pure aggro cards low where I can. Olivia would probably better, but I fear she might be too pushed for my meta.
Click to expand...

Not really. Maybe it's changed now, but it used to be the case that both Red and Black had pretty weak aggressive 3 drops, so this was a good fit in that slot.
 
japahn

japahn

As you know, I avoid too much rules text, and Rakdos is a guild that has good options that cut down on complexity:



Rakdos Cackler is a great card to have in cube, as he goes in any red or black aggressive deck. Shambling Remains gives aggro some extra fuel. Blazing Specter does disruption and reach, like Blightning.

I'm still deciding if the power level of the "rare" Rakdos card is adequate for my cube:

 
japahn

japahn

James Stevenson said:
Kolaghan's Command looks super cool to me. My take on low power has always been about removing bomby cards, but still having awesome spells. I'd be interested to hear thoughts from better designers about this.
Click to expand...


I also police proactive cards mostly, but the reactive cards that are too much value are also concerning to me. Kolaghan's Command is a guaranteed 2-1 that can often be made a 3 for 1, at 3 mana instant-speed. At a low power level, this card feels dirty to play. I haven't made many cuts for this reason, from the top of my head only Control Magic and Malicious Affliction, besides the Command.

More generally, when proactive cards are weak and reactive cards are strong, there are too many cards that are 100% maindeck (always correct to maindeck them), drafting becomes less interesting due to too many easy picks, and value-based decks become too good without the unanswerable bombs. Also, value decks become boring - it's just the pile of Grixis good stuff plus a few finishers, every time. Control then becomes too good, because it has strong tempo AND card advantage.
 
ahadabans

ahadabans

Gold cards are super narrow because they require 2 (or more) colors. Even at low power, I think you can argue that your gold cards should be well above curve. There is a very large cost to drafting gold cards early as they can waste quality picks or effectively lock you into an overdrafted color. Most pros will choose a weaker mono colored card early over a better gold card for this reason. So if you draft your cube as the primary method of playing it, I honestly feel you can stretch the power on gold cards significantly even and largely justify it from a design standpoint.

Kolaghan's Command is super powerful. It's great early interaction and as japahn said a virtually guaranteed 2 for 1. It is a card that pulls me into that color combination. I am a fan of gold cards which do that. In my mind, KC the best Rakdos card by a pretty wide margin.
 
Alfonzo Bonzo

Alfonzo Bonzo

How do we feel about


It goes against my normal policy of avoiding simple removal spells in gold, but I like both the simplicity and encouraging artifact interactions/deck content.

I wonder if I have a bit of a problem in rakdos. I have:
* self discard effects/madness
* artifact synergies
* sacrifice aggro/combo
* reanimator

I wonder if it's too much altogether, but seems okay so far. They mostly cross over anyway.
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
Why do people want to avoid simple removal spells in gold slots? Sure some sort of build around can be cool, but in the dark I tend to favor mono-color removal spells anyways, since there's more combinations available (A WR young pyromancer, for eg)

Like sure, Vindicate is probably boring, but no matter what I add or cut from my cube, it seems the more vindicates I add the better, lest my cube turn into portal 3 kingdoms.
 
sigh

sigh

This doesn't really seem like a"simple"removal spell for exact reasons mentioned. It has multiple synergies with aggressive artifact decks. If that's the color pair's theme, then it's a great multi color card.

I definitely don't think that multicolor cards all need to be rockstar build-arounds. If a color pair is designed for an archetype, that color pair should be able to naturally form with or without multicolor cards to guide you. There should be some reward cards for color pairs too, maybe is the way I look at it. Unlicensed Disintegration is one of these reward cards, not immediately signalling into a color pair, but providing a strong component/reward for the deck for being there.

Lots of gold removal also does stuff that most mono-color doesn't, like destroying permanents, non-land permanents, or being modal.

The card I run in this slot for just being super duper good is
 
Alfonzo Bonzo

Alfonzo Bonzo

Yeah, think I will give it a whirl. Also pyromancers goggles, sunforger synergy.

I like that command has incidental artifact destruction, and I live jamming more raise deads in but it is duuuuuull.
 
Aston

Aston

Chris Taylor said:
Why do people want to avoid simple removal spells in gold slots? Sure some sort of build around can be cool, but in the dark I tend to favor mono-color removal spells anyways, since there's more combinations available (A WR young pyromancer, for eg)

Like sure, Vindicate is probably boring, but no matter what I add or cut from my cube, it seems the more vindicates I add the better, lest my cube turn into portal 3 kingdoms.
Click to expand...


My reasoning is that if eg Maelstrom Pulse is going to be the same as Oblivion Ring 90% of the time, and I run 50 white cards and 4 green/black cards, why take up the space in the gold section that could go to something more interesting.
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
Aston said:
My reasoning is that if eg Maelstrom Pulse is going to be the same as Oblivion Ring 90% of the time, and I run 50 white cards and 4 green/black cards, why take up the space in the gold section that could go to something more interesting.
Click to expand...

Sure, but the overlap in decks between Pulse and ORing is hardly 100% :p
Even if you set the example to something like detention sphere, there's merit in the blue white player being able to wheel what tends to be a really important removal spell
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top