Rakdos Aristocrats - The deck I'm using currently with some tips

As I've read the comments on the reddit posts I've decided to pump out a second entry as soon as possible. This entry will treat about the deck I'm using as of right now with some general tips in the game plan for you to watch out while playing.

The deck list is in here: Rakdos Aristocrats

Maindeck explanation - card choices

As you can see this deck is pretty much the standard version, meaning the cards I'm using are the ones that are making into the tournament decks. However, I'm going to explain each of the choices that I've made while constructing this deck.

• Cauldron familiar: this 1/1 cat forms part of the core engine of the deck, is in as 4-of, cause you really want to draw it and better if it is on your opening hand along side with witch's oven. However, you only really need one copy of it for get the engine function.
• Witch's oven: the second half of the cat/oven core engine. Clearly a 4-of, in difference with the cat, the more ovens in play the better.
• Gutterbones: best second one drop creature for this deck, i could use another one drops like knight of ebon legion but we aren't on the pure beat down plan and we want creatures to sacrifice with Priest of forgotten gods and this 2/1 creature provide us with a recursive engine that in the long run can provide lots of value. I'm running it as a 3-of, i think i might go down to 2 in favor for another top end card.
• Claim the Firstborn: This card is really good in this meta game because people are trying to play low cost creatures due to Oko and his elkifying +1. This allows you to steal one creature with CMC less than 3, gives it haste and can hit the opponent or a planeswalker and then sacrifice it to priest or oven. I'm running the complete set.
• Priest of forgotten gods: Another really good enabler for this deck. It also works as a mana dork, giving you 2 mana for each activation and a card draw, letting you ramp into other plays or recur a gutterbones that you sacrifice the same turn.
• Angrath's rampage: great piece of removal, it is really flexible. I'm running a 4-of and it is working so far.
• Midnight reaper: our card draw engine along side with priest and castle locthwain, it really shines if you have the oven and the cat on board.
• Mayhem devil: big payoff card of being in rakdos, great source of damage and really the big threat of the deck, a clear 4-of.
• Chandra, Acolyte of flame: this 3-mana planeswalker is really good in this archetype due to her second +0 ability granting us 2 1/1s that at the end of turn are sacrificed, working really well with priest and mayhem devil. Also another really good use of this planeswalker is with her -2 ability letting you to cast an instant/sorcery spell from your graveyard, letting you to recast a removal spell or a discard spell if you are past game 1, cause we are packing discard on the sideboard of course.
• Cavalier of Night: One of our top end card and our most mana restricting card in the deck with the need for 3 black sources in the casting cost. This card gives the deck an extra edge in the grindy and control match ups, letting you to recur one 3 mana or less creature from the graveyard upon the death of the Cavalier. Is in the deck as a 2-of.
• God-eternal Bontu: the second top end card and the experimental flex slot in my opinion. It can generate a potential one turn kill if you have multiple mayhem devil on the board and he saved me in some games that were lost on the board. I'm thinking in adding a second one if i see it becomes a good resource. I must say that even if you don't have any mayhem devil, Bontu can convert your excess of lands and refill your hand by sacrificing any number of them. So far it is performing really well as a 1-of.
• Land base
• Blood crypts: self-explanatory, we are on rakdos, we play the 4 blood crypts as duo lands.
• Castle Locthwain: the black castles, it provides us with a mana dump for later stages of the game letting us draw cards by paying life for the number of cards in our hand after drawing that usually is 1 or 2 in later stages of the game. I'm running 3 of them
• Fabled passage: mana fixing is useful and this provide us with that and in the process we generate one ping of the mayhem devil that sometimes it adds up to the kill.
• Swamps: I'm running 6 swamps cause we are also running the castles.
• Mountain: I'm running 7 mountains to allow the easy cast on Chandra, the most mountain intesive mana cost in the deck.

Sideboard composition

• Discard Package: I've decided to make an even split between duress and drill bit, cause drill bit with the amount of one drops that we have is a really easy cast in turn 2 as a thought erasure.
• Duress: standard discard spell, letting you watch the opponent's hand and choosing one non-creature and non-land card from it.
• Drill bit: a higher form of duress, letting you to discard a creature from the opponent hand.
• Dreadhorde Butcher: insane if you can hit for one or two turns and it has synergy with the oven, letting you to sacrifice it in case the opponent wants to exile it, giving you the damage. 4-of in the sideboard.
• Embereth shieldbreaker: hate card against artifacts, it enters in the mirror to destroy ovens, other match ups that are using sorcerous spyglass to shut down our planeswalkers or to destroy lucky clover if we are against an adventure deck that tries to go over the top with that artifact.
• Noxious grasp: uhum, Oko, uhum. clear 4-of while Oko decks are prevalent and green on the top of the colors
• Liliana dreadhorde general: for me, this is the flex spot of the sideboard, I've seen deck lists running mask of immolation. I really can't think a match up that you want to sideboard mask in in the current meta, so I've decided to go with Liliana and she is working pretty well, she enters against control decks and midrange decks as another top end card and potential finisher. She is a 1-of at the current moment.

Deck's performance

I must say that this deck is one of my favorites in this standard rotation, it is fun to play and it is putting work done. I completed two traditional constructed runs with 5 wins and some others with less, but in all of them I achieved above 50% win rate and that means going infinite. I must say that I'm most thrilled to play events than ladder at least until the ban announcement on the 18th this month, cause in the runs there is much more variety of decks than in the ladder as of right now.

Tips for playing the deck

Note: I will try to keep this section update if I missed something or I think in new tips.

1. Keep in mind the number of pings that mayhem devil can generate, it may sound silly but sometimes it is really useful to keep track of this number cause if you don't you can miss lethal easily, even more if you are playing Bontu.
2. Mulligan, as other decks you don't want hands with 0, 5, 6 and 7 lands in it, the perfect number is 3 lands accompanied by cat, oven, mayhem devil, and some piece of removal or priest. However,  this depends on the match up, but you have a potential good start each game, so if you see few or none of these cards on your opening hand  consider seriously to mulligan but with head and thinking carefully.
3. Sequencing, this is an aspect really important with this deck, you should know that mayhem devil with priest makes 3 pings, 2 before priest activates and 1 after the activation, so you can clear 2 creatures of 1 toughness before priest activates leaving one big creature for the opponent to sacrifice. This is one example, there are many of this kind of line of play.
4. If you don't need the mana ASAP don't crack the fabled passage till you have a mayhem devil on board (or want to shuffle your deck and thinning it in the process). Try to delay the activation on fabled passage as long as you can and preferable do it with devil on board for one extra ping. That being said, you need to assess, your opener has 3 lands, one is a mountain, the other is a castle and the last one is a passage, here it depends on the rest of your hand, but i may consider playing the passage and cracking it for a swamp and getting my castle enabled already or you need a 2nd mountain for chandra on turn 3.
5. Don't forget about chandra's -2, it is a really good resource, but also remember you can't use it if teferi time raveler is on the board.
6. Remember to use oven if one of your creatures is about to get exiled, the food token may be of use in later stages of the games.

Next post will be about the sideboard guide, I want to wait till the ban announcement, cause i feel like the sideboard is going to be a subject of changes after the 18th.

Hope you enjoy this post!

Rakdos Aristocrats - 1st entry - Archetype

I've decided to make a extense series about Rakdos Aristocrats because is one of my favorite decks in this meta dominated by Oko decks and after the banning on the 18th (which i hope without too many expectations), Rakdos Aristocrats will become even better. Also, I've decided to climb with this deck this month and see how it evolves and changes with the meta, and i'm using it in a magic tournament as well.

So first things first, how this archetype achieve the victory?

Defining the concept

Aristocrats is an archetype that is been a thing since some time, it revolves around the sacrifice mechanic having payoffs for sacrificing your own creatures with little downside. This archetype can be played with a variety of builds and colors, the most common ones are Rakdos, Orzhov or Mardu, but with Throne of Eldraine the archetype became much more extense and we can see aristocrat decks in Jund, Abzan or even in 4 color combinations, a thing is clear: the color that is clearly a need on these builds is black with a bit of splash for red. The reason why Rakdos for me appears to be stronger than the rest of decks is due to one single card, the Mayhem Devil, which it lets you ping your for one point of damage each time you sacrifice a permanent, this is one of the payoff cards for aristocrat builds in this standard rotation.

With throne of eldraine we also received various tools for the archetype, those being the food mechanic, cauldron familiar, witch's oven and fabled passage (a land? yes, i'm not kidding you). In which way this cards have affected the archetype?

• Cauldron familiar/witch's oven combo: this combination is really good because the cauldron familiar have a drain effect that when it enters the battlefield it does one damage to the opponent face and it heals you for 1. Plus it can be casted from the graveyard if you sacrifice a food token. The oven allows you to sacrifice a creature to get a food token. So, you can sacrifice the cauldron familiar and in the process gain a food to resurrect it again, and so on.
• Food mechanic: kind of self-explained in the combo of cat and oven. However, it has more to it, in the case you are up against aggro decks, food can be sacrificed for two manas and heal you for 3 HP.
• Fabled passage: last but not least, fabled passage has become an incredible tool for this deck, letting you fix your mana in case of need and also provide a ping of the mayhem devil if you have it on the board.

These cards alongside Mayhem Devil are the fundamental core for an aristocrat build if you are planning in going the rakdos build.

Completing the core

So... We have defined the core of the deck as for this standard rotation. From this core, you can build with pretty much any card that has synergie with the core and have success with the deck. I'm going to mention the most common ones to see:

• Priest of forgotten gods: this card is really good in an aristocrat build (it can be considered as core card also). What she does is, if you tap her and sacrifice two of your own creatures, she makes your opponent sacrifice a creature of their own and it deals two damage to the face. Really good in match ups against heavy creature based decks.
• Chandra, Acolyte of flame: this 3 mana planeswalker even though she isn't as powerful as other 3 mana planeswalkers (uhum, Oko, uhum), she provides this deck with a lot of synergie with her second 0 ability spawning two 1/1 elementals that are sacrificed at the end of turn.

So this is it for this week! Stay tuned for next week post, continuing with this topic!

Competitive deck tech from MCQA VI - Temur Reclamation

Archetype concept

Temur reclamation is a blue and red with a splash of green for including growth spiral as a ramp tool and wilderness reclamation that functions really well with our instant spells and Niv-Mizzet Parun.

The aim of this deck, is to land 1 or more Wilderness Reclamation(s) onto the board and use the mana floating at the end of our turn to cast a gigantic Explosion which usually kills our opponent in the same turn.

An alternative win condition that also supports this plan is playing Niv-Mizzet on the board and play various instant or sorcery spells to get full value of Niv-Mizzet while he is on the board, because with Niv for each instant/sorcery spell you play, you draw a card and by drawing a card you get to ping for one damage to any creature/planeswalker or the face of the opponent.

Building the deck

This deck is a control/combo deck so we have card draw engine in the form of Opt and Chemister’s Insight to go through our deck quickly.

We also have direct removal in the form of Shock, letting us deal with any 2 or less toughness creature or killing a planeswalker with loyalty 2 or less or ping our opponent for 2 to the face.

Our board sweeper is Flame Sweep, it might seem to be weaker than other sweepers due to its damage output, but it has one upside, it is castable at instant speed which means that it can be cast during our opponent pre-combat phase or after declaring blockers.

We also run a countermagic/permission spells package. Things like Mystical Dispute, Quench or negate are permission spells which allow us to counter one play of our opponent. Also we are running Aether Gust as a tech card as delaying/denying one turn play, this is useful because the meta is very populated by green-based decks so chances are high for you to hit something important with Gust.

Finally, another tool is Expansion, the cheaper side of Explosion. This card let us copy one spell that cost 4 or less mana, so you can double up any spell in our roster to draw even more or secure a board sweep with Flame Sweep.

Archetype evolution

This archetype started on the release of Ravnica Allegiance with Wilderness Reclamation out.

The initial deck was almost the same as it is now but with Root Snares to stop aggression.

In War of the Sparks, the archetype was improved with the addition of Tamiyo, collector of tales as a draw/recursion engine and Ral, Storm conduit as an alternative win condition apart from Niv.

The biggest issue in War of the Spark was the popularity of Teferi, Time Raveler, which also got release during War of the Spark. This impacted very negatively driving to the nearly extinction of the archetype during the time of War of the Spark and Core 20 sets. In this expansions the “safest” bet for using wilderness reclamation was alongside nexus of fate in the simic colors.

So, why it is becoming more playable/popular now even if Teferi is still present on the meta?

The reason of Reclamation becoming more popular and present in the meta is because Teferi is phasing out the meta due to Oko, thief of crowns (joke on the name already) being so present. Oko has taken over the place of format warping that was occupied by Teferi once before. And this means, that strategies that uses instant speed plays becomes more plausible and real, so a deck with so much instant playability as ours will rise again.

Deck variants

The deck can be built in various forms, the classic one is going for the 1 turn kill with Niv-Mizzet and Explosion, but there are also another variants that plays more creatures and tries to get value out of them, creatures like Brazen Borrower, Bonecrusher Giant or Nightpack Ambusher are great examples of creatures that can fit very well on this archetype.

There is also another variant that plays around Thousand Year Storm, but it is more sketchy and difficult to set up than the straight up combo of Explosion + reclamation.

And finally, there is another variant which plays planeswalkers as Tamiyo, Ral Storm conduit or even Nissa to get even more gigantic Explosions.

Tamiyo can be maindeckable almost every time because she apports enormous value even without more planeswalkers, letting you recur spells from the graveyard or letting you cycle quicker through your deck, I can see her on the place of aether gust, in fact if the meta changes and green isn’t predominant any more it would be the right call to add tamiyo.

Deck weaknesses and strengths

The strengths of the deck is that it is very consistent and resiliency. It functions well against the meta right now due to Oko can’t interact with enchantments and you can go turbo-mode and ramp quickly into reclamation and then protect Niv by using the untapped mana from reclamation.

One weakness of this deck is that is very vulnerable to pure aggression but you have the tools to stabilize in time with flame sweeps and counter magic.

Another big weakness of this deck is Teferi, time raveler, because he shuts down our instant speed game and our use of reclamation.

Last, another weakness is flood, this deck is true that isn’t that vulnerable to flood as others cause the more mana you have, more damage you can do with Explosion or more spells you can play with Niv on the board.

Sideboard choices

• 1 flame sweep: to help against aggro matchups that go wider on the board and low toughness creatures.
• 1 mystical dispute: counter really useful to fight blue base decks.
• 2 fry: hate card from red, useful when facing blue and/or white decks
• 2 veil of summer: hate card from green, it's one of the best hate cards, cause it gives you and your permanents hexproof and it mades your spells uncontereable for the turn you cast it.
• 4 disdainful stroke: counter everything higher than 4 mana, useful against control and midrange.
• 3 lava coil: removal piece against decks with high toughness creatures that neither shock or flame sweep hits.
• 2 Narset, parter of veils: tool against decks that wants to draw cards.

The meta right now is full of Oko decks but I find this sideboard well tuned for all kinds of match up having access to the best card of the three colors makes the deck better as a whole.

Tips

This section is about what to side out.You mostly want to start by siding out your chemister's insights and opts, not all of them but a quantity of them.

Against aggro you are going to want to cut one wilderness reclamation and a explosion in favour of adding removal to your deck.

Aether gust is also removed if you aren't facing red/green based decks.

Welcome to the blog

Aim of this blog

I've decided to create this blog as a form to keep track of my evolution as a player and also as a resource for other players as a learning tool. I'm not a pro but I like playing Magic and also I like writing so I think a Blog is a great tool for keep track and also for others to learn.

With that out of the way, the main purpose of this blog is to make write ups explaining a certain deck or archetype, its core strategies, the weaknesses and strengths of the deck and a bit of history of the deck/archetype if there is place to do it.

A bit about me

I started playing seriously/consistently every day since January 2019 in Magic the Gathering: Arena. I didn't start from zero, because I've had some prior experiences with Magic as a card game but never been truly involved until this year.

I consider myself as a flexible player. I like to play all kinds of decks and archetypes. I have no favorite solo color, but some color combinations that I like more are Grixis (blue, black, red), golgari (black, green), Temur (blue, red, green) and dimir (blue, black). Probably my least favorite solo color is white, despite that fact, I obligate myself to play all kind of decks to understand them and learn their strengths and weaknesses in order to develop strategies to beat them.

Structure of the deck tech

• Archetype/deck concept: overview of the deck function and how it wins.
• Building the deck: explaining the cards the deck uses and why them and not others.
• Deck/archetype evolution: track the origin of the deck and how it has evolved through different set releases.
• Deck variants: Possible paths for the deck to evolve or adjust to the meta better if it changes.
• Deck/archetype strengths/weaknesses: Dive into the weaknesses of the deck and also in the strengths of it.
• Sideboard choices: sideboard building and explanation of the cards that are included and general tips to use the sideboard.
• Gameplay: I'm not sure on this last part, but I'm going to try to upload gameplay of each deck playing a traditional constructed event run on Arena.

Schedule of posts

I'm not sure if I'll be able to post frequently due to I have really bad job schedule in my real life job. However, I'm going to start by doing just one post per week, because I think doing more can be really difficult as I mostly play on weekends so I don't have that much sample to think in sideboard guides.

What to expect next

Right now I'm planning doing 3 posts covering the 3 decks that qualified on the Mythic Invitational Qualifier of the weekend of 26th-27th of October that were outliers and performed really well. Those are:

• Antonino's Rakdos Sacrifice
• Edmvyrus' Azorius Control
• DftLeonidas' Temur Reclamation

I'm already doing the Temur Reclamation article.

Hope you enjoy the content and learn about Magic the Gathering!

Enthropy.