R/b Aggro aka "Dos Rakis"

[Pedros]

Ok here is a deck I constructed in my mad mind.

Numbers might be adjustedand I only present ideas of cards in sb.

Creatures:22
4 Rakdos Cackler
4 Pack Rat
4 Spike Jester
4 Chandra's Phoenix
3 Exava, Rakdos Blood Witch
3 Stormbreath Dragon

Spells:14
4 Lightning Strike
4 Magma Jet
4 Hero's Downfall
2 Chandra, Pyromaster

Lands:24
4 Blood Crypt
7 Mountain
4 Mutavault
4 Rakdos Guildgate
5 Swamp

Sideboard:18
1 Dark Betrayal
1 Duress
1 Thoughtseize
1 Doom Blade
1 Dreadbore
1 Mizzium Mortars
1 Pharika's Cure
1 Rix Maadi Guildmage
1 Ultimate Price
1 Young Pyromancer
1 Flames of the Firebrand
1 Lifebane Zombie
1 Toil // Trouble
1 Underworld Connections
1 Erebos, God of the Dead
1 Liliana's Reaver
1 Whip of Erebos
1 Sire of Insanity

Disscuss!

[magicdownunder]

I think you need to run some sort of mana fixer to make this deck work, with so many double [mana]RR[/mana] and [mana]BB[/mana] spells your bound to have colour issues - it will be like the GP Br list except even worst in that regard (I've tried the GP list I would know...).

It might run smooth in one or two games, but if you taking it to a 6+ match event I wouldn't be shocked if you end up losing critical games due to it.

[hoeiberg]

What MDU said. Decide on a main color and keep the other one a splash. With this deck you need [mana]b[/mana] on turn 2 for all your creatures while also needing [mana]r[/mana][mana]r[/mana] on turn 3. That will fail, not every time, but it will happen. I'd say either run black main and get rid of the [mana]r[/mana][mana]r[/mana] cards, or run red main and get rid of Pack Rat, Jester and Downfall.

[Pedros]

In train while testing this deck - i have aplication on tablet that lets you draw hands and then draw a cards - in 100 hands only 5 needed to be muliganed to wrong mana symbol, while the others were keepable - hands with mountain, mutavault and swamp were still good. No problem with turn 4 chandra or dragon, sometimes was short on land not mana screwed.

I changed md to play 3 heros downfall and 1 dreadbore to be safer on mana tho.

I also noticed how sweet is to dump chandra phoenxes to pack rat and then recur them back with burn or chandra

Also almost every hand with magmajet is keepable.

All of those cards in sb are somehing to consider, I/dont think connections have a spot here, same as pharikas cure. Howevr sth like lifebane zombie might be considered to fight blood baron - if mortars arent beter.

[Purp]

@Pedors What APP is that?

[windstrider]

The iPad has Decked Builder that allows you to build, store, and test decks. It also links to card prices, so you get a good idea of what it would cost to build the deck. It's not free, but I think I paid $4.99 for it, so it's not outrageous.

deckedbuilder.com will give you more info about it.

[Pedros]

Yeah that one, but for Android. It has good draw simulator and shuffler seems as good as the one on mtgo.

[notap123]

I use tappedout.net

[Zooligan]

Spikejester ranges from "uncastable" to "uncastable".

Is it really that bad? Seems pretty good to me vs. Esper, U/W, and mono B.

Against R, G/x, and mono U maybe not so much because of the low toughness...

[Valdarith]

He's exaggerating as usual.

[MattT]

Is it possible to marry Devotion and Rakdos? A guy at my WNM yesterday remarked that he´d want to see a Nykthos deck with Rakdos´s Return and I liked that idéa. That´d include 2 types of blowout cards except an aggro suite; Fanatic and Return. Something like:

[deck]Rakdos Devotion[/deck]

[magicdownunder]

Pedros crushed me with his list (unsurprisingly) when it works that deck is scary . His decks is quite strong I recommend trying it if you like RB, once the next set comes out its only going to be stronger.

[Keftenk]

Ok here is a deck I constructed in my mad mind.

Numbers might be adjustedand I only present ideas of cards in sb.

Creatures:22
4 Rakdos Cackler
4 Pack Rat
4 Spike Jester
4 Chandra's Phoenix
3 Exava, Rakdos Blood Witch
3 Stormbreath Dragon

Spells:14
4 Lightning Strike
4 Magma Jet
4 Hero's Downfall
2 Chandra, Pyromaster

Lands:24
4 Blood Crypt
7 Mountain
4 Mutavault
4 Rakdos Guildgate
5 Swamp

Sideboard:18
1 Dark Betrayal
1 Duress
1 Thoughtseize
1 Doom Blade
1 Dreadbore
1 Mizzium Mortars
1 Pharika's Cure
1 Rix Maadi Guildmage
1 Ultimate Price
1 Young Pyromancer
1 Flames of the Firebrand
1 Lifebane Zombie
1 Toil // Trouble
1 Underworld Connections
1 Erebos, God of the Dead
1 Liliana's Reaver
1 Whip of Erebos
1
Sire of Insanity

Disscuss!

This shit is ridiculous lol
Of course, this is just my initial excitement after 3 matches.
Esper Control, Mono U Devotion, and BG Aggro. Murdered them all, but I may (or may not have) got lucky vs Mono U Devotion. Seeing 4/4 rats crashing in.

[RaidaTheBlade]

Man this list looks tempting... I might have to drop my holiday money on grabbing some pieces for it...

Any chance we might get a vid of you using this on modo, MDU?

[Pedros]

I dont think MDU is going to play this deck when I had a chat with him. Henis rocking hard with boros legions and finkshed last 2 dailys 4-0 - ifmu want solid finish I would suggest not to play it yet as it isnt tested much right now.

Also changes to a md if u want to tet:
-1 hero's downfall, +1 dreadbore

With this mana is easier.

Sb:
2 Erebos
1 Whip of Erebos
1 Rix Maadi Guildmage
3 Thoughtseize
1 Mizzium Mortars
1 Doom Blade
1 Ultimate Price
1 Dreadbore
2 Flames of the Firebrand
2 Toil//Trouble

Going to 10$ TNM to a competitive shop - on a last Gp 6 people from there had day 2.

[LaZerBurn]

Like the list a lot Pedros, my fave version of BR I've seen so far

[Zooligan]

When did Hero's Downfall jump in price?!? Haven't been following that one.

Is it something that will survive standard rotation and become a Modern staple?

[magicdownunder]

I dont think MDU is going to play this deck when I had a chat with him.

Yep, I won't be trying it until I get crushed with Big Boros first - I had really bad experience with GP Br, but after chatting and playing against Pedros I'm convinced he maybe on too something

If we put the list together it would look like this:

[deck]Pedros BR Aggro[/deck]

Non-tested thoughts

I really like the Rix Maadi Guildmage vs Ux and Wx decks, I'm a tad concerned about BW control - I'm not sure if 1 Mizzium Mortars or 3 Thoughtseize is enough to deal with them, sure you can Erebos the vampire but you still have a 4/4 wall which almost nothing in your deck can deal with. Would cutting [card]Toil//Trouble[/card] for more Mortars cause a huge dent in your SB plan?

Is TS just for the Control MU? Beside PackRats what are your boarding out against them? Boarding seem hard with this list.

[Pedros]

Ok quick report from a front, lost to 1st and 2nd place in ~30 people tnm, however games were close.

Wins

2-0 bg devotion
2-1 mono blue
1-2 uw control - last game mull to 4 on a play.
2-1 uw control
1-2 rg monsters - drew 11 lands and no pacl rats to use them.

Overall happymwith the deck performamce, however uw control sb plan is brutal. Soldier of the pqntheon, precinc captain and paladin are brutal vs this deck, if u dont have remova it s going to be bad. Lucky we have heros downfall to get rid of soldier (plus all the burns) and rix maadi guildmage plus chandra for paladin.

Pack rats are stone cold nuts, however I have to think about sb a little bit, as right now it might be bad. Erebos outdrew uw control and I had life from last breaths. Toil trouble also were awsome - shot fpr 4 draw 2 cards? Howerer I dont knpw if I want sth like thoughtseizes in this match over stuff like heros downfall. Imo it was
bad and I lost couse of it as we played topdeck wars for a while with board parity.

If u are happy with md please help to develop sb. Manabase was good, as I often was mana screwed not color screwed. Had no problem casting downfall turn 4 or 5

[magicdownunder]

The MD is good but the SB is a mess, I don't really own HDF or PackRats which are quite expensive so I can't help develop the SB at all .

EDIT: I take it back HDF went from $10 last month to $3 now, PackRats are only $2.3 what happen to the prices.

[Pedros]

I dont think MDU is going to play this deck when I had a chat with him.

Yep, I won't be trying it until I get crushed with Big Boros first - I had really bad experience with GP Br, but after chatting and playing against Pedros I'm convinced he maybe on too something

If we put the list together it would look like this:

[deck]Pedros BR Aggro[/deck]

Non-tested thoughts

I really like the Rix Maadi Guildmage vs Ux and Wx decks, I'm a tad concerned about BW control - I'm not sure if 1 Mizzium Mortars or 3 Thoughtseize is enough to deal with them, sure you can Erebos the vampire but you still have a 4/4 wall which almost nothing in your deck can deal with. Would cutting [card]Toil//Trouble[/card] for more Mortars cause a huge dent in your SB plan?

Is TS just for the Control MU? Beside PackRats what are your boarding out against them? Boarding seem hard with this list.

Vs UW control (forced esper out of the field in the metagame looks like it) I boarded out 3 hero's downfall and 4
packrats for dreadbore, 2 ereboses, 2 toil troubles, 3 thoughtseizes and rix maadi guildmage.

Yes I played 62 cards, couse I didnt now how to addapt to a post board white weenie style. I shouldhave probably play downfalls over dreadbore couse it kill soldier of the pamtheon. Game goes long, and I draw a lot f cards with Erebos or Fues toil troubles. Probably was wrong but ... didnt expect to have so much problems vs this list.

Vs BW i have mortars, ereboses and thoughteizes for baron, plus potential chandra plus lightning strike or mutavault plus jet. In boros we had 2 mortars most of the time. Also vs black I tend to play whip of erebos and often can race with pack rats.

As I said in post before, Brainstorm sb with me. Am happy with md and dont know what changes to make md better.

[LaZerBurn]

Which match ups do you need the board to focus on? I'm happy to brainstorm, just lack the cards to build the deck right now. Pack Rats in here is genius BTW

[magicdownunder]

This is really hard (I'm more hands on) just using theory isn't easy.

I'm thinking about Thoughtseize, isn't that card really strong against Bx Devotion and Control? If so its worth keeping 3x in the SB, if we're running TS we need lifegain so thus we need 1-2x whips - thinking about lifegain we also need to stop other people from gaining life so that is either 3x Skullcrack or 2x Gods.

Weenies is a huge issue for this deck, so fotf 2-3x sounds good though Rix Maadi Guildmage is good vs them as well, vampire another issues 2x mortars look nice here - MoW? ok lets use 2x DoomBlade since it also answer Mr Reck and Frostburn weird + 1x Dread seems good as well.

Ok how is this:

[deck]Pedros BR Aggro[/deck]

Bx Devotion

---

In
3 Skull Crack
3 Thoughtseize
1 Dreadbore
1 Whip of Erebos

Out:
1 Mountain
3 Stormbreath Dragon
4 Magma Jet

vs BW bring in Mortars over 2x Dreadbore or HDF

Small Aggro

---

In
1 Rix Maadi Guildmage
2 Mizzium Mortars
2 Doom Blade
1 Dreadbore
2 Flames of the Firebrand

Out:
4 Rakdos Cackler
4 Spike Jester

Gx and Rx Devotion

---

In:
2 Mizzium Mortars
2 Doom Blade
1 Rix Maadi Guildmage or Whip??
1 Dreadbore
2 Flames of the Firebrand

Out:
4 Rakdos Cackler
4 Spike Jester

Ux Devotion

---

In:
1 Rix Maadi Guildmage
2 Mizzium Mortars
2 Doom Blade
1 Dreadbore
2 Flames of the
Firebrand

Out:
4 Rakdos Cackler
4 Spike Jester

Control

---

In:
3 Skull Crack
1 Whip of Erebos
3 Thoughtseize
1 Dreadbore

Out:
4 Pack Rat
1 Magma Jet
3 Hero's Downfall

Ok done, it might be wrong - the god maybe better then SC idk - I'll need to test and find out.

[RaidaTheBlade]

I'd actually be interested in seeing it have a mix of mortars and downfall main, since one of those 2 will kill almost everything in the format... And the mortars lack of upstairs doesnt hurt as much in the dos rakis list, since it relies more on creatures then pyro. And with a total of 6 exava and dragon, it has plenty of staying power.

Maybe drop the dreadbore and a single jet for 2 mortars? Dreadbore's awesome, but with baron being a thing, it's not as great. And jet's awesome, but 2 damage isn't huge here. Though losing that scry when we dont quite have the scry land yet does hurt.


And as far as the sideboard, I think mdu's getting pretty close. I seems like maadi and the whip are both getting considered for the same slot on occasion, so maybe consolidating the number we run of those would be a good idea. 2 whips would be awesome, since we're bound to have the creatures for it.

[magicdownunder]

I was chatting with Pedros earlier today, he isn't liking Dreadbore much either so I can see us cutting them, however if we do we'll need to run ultimate price over Doom Blade for the Bx MU which is a tad Bleh....

Pedros is also in favor for Erebos over SkullCrack for the draw ability and inf. anti-ligegain (until they Dsphere it) if we do go down that route Toil // Trouble or the 2nd whip looks nice .

Keep up the brainstorming guys if we do enough we may be able get it ready for Pedros PTQ (otherwise he'll just take my Boros legion deck).

P.S. You can't cut MJ, its one of the key cards which supports his unstable manabase.

[Pedros]

It is not that I dont like dreadbore, I dont like it vs UW Control over Hero's Downfall, as it doesnt kill Soldier of the Pantheon. Otherwise it is quite good.

I can see mortars over Dreadbore in main, as sometimes overloading is decent.

[Zooligan]

Is it worth adding temples in place of any of the Mountains/Swamps just to get the scry, even though they come in tapped?

[MattT]

I think Pedros idéa of Pack Rat is brilliant. It feeds of the recursive strategy in a much better way than YP$. Well done.

[Pedros]

Daily Event 6454996:

Round 1 lost 0-2 UW Control- opp on 1 and 4 hp multiple turns, played really bad, however I drew total of 21 lands both games (he had sth like 15 total). Also he HAD Dissolve (I think you only play 1 after SB) whe I toil/troubled him ...

Will edit the post later.

Round 2 lost 0-2 to Rw devo - game 1 couldnt draw more than 2 lands (mul to 5), g2 i missed kill on board after mulligan to 6 couse I am bad ;/

[Purp]

You should stream pedros, I am bored at work GL in R2!

[Tyrael]

God I hate U/W

[Pedros]

Dunno, it is not my day today. Played 3 more 8-mans, twice with Dos Rakis, once with Big Boro.

0-2 uw control... Rb
1-2 mono u... Rw
1-2 4 color no basics agro... Rb

In those 8 games I muliganed 7 times, lost 2 games to not going past 2 lands and 2 to flooding to 9 lands.1

[Zooligan]

So Pedros, based on your recent experiences, I will repeat my question:

Is it worth adding temples in place of any of the Mountains/Swamps just to get the scry, even though they come in tapped?

[Pedros]

How many temples would you run?

[Zooligan]

That's a good question. I haven't run the deck yet so don't really have a feel for what colors are most important to get online when. I'd say offhand maybe switch out 2 Mountain for the R/W scry, and one Swamp for the B/W scry. need to test and see if the dig/filter they provide outweigh the sacrifice in speed that comes with the CIPT lands.

Go trial/error and keep subbing in scrylands until you notice the speed drop off become a hinderance, and then back up one step.

[Pedros]

Tested some more in 2 mans (to get more information)

2-0 UW
2-0 UW
1-2 Gu Devotion (here drew all scry lands and even with terrors couldnt keep up, however he had god draws every game)
2-1 Boros Agro
2-0 Mono Black
2-1 UW
2-0 Br Control
2-1 Wr wheenie
2-0 RB Minotaurs tribal

[LP, of the Fires]

Seems your deck is powerful, but inconsistent. Given that fact, I'd absolutely play 2/4 temples.

[Pedros]

Tested 3 temples yesterday, they were a hidrance sometimes, however I expected taplands to go as an additional turn 1 play. However ypu often have enough lands t position your spells correctly.

[Zooligan]

Would you say that adds to the inconsistency or helps smooth the draws when they do show up?

It may be too many variables to align to get the positive impact. What scry options are available in black that don't sabotage the aggro stance of the deck? Anything?

[RaidaTheBlade]

Well, the only scry option really available to black is read the bones. There's [card]witches' eye[/card], which is an artifact, but it's kinda bad.

Since it s also red, the best one we have is already a 4x, magma jet, but there is one more that's kinda okay. [card]Titan's Strength[/card], but I don't really know about using that here.