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!