Rakdos for the Phoenix Meta

Strong performing, low curve, midrange take on Rakdos

We are currently ~7 weeks into the Wilds of Eldraine season and the meta has somewhat solidified. This point where there is a more defined meta to respond to is when I do my most successful brewing. It is difficult to find an overwhelmingly powerful deck in a vacuum, but finding something that has good matchups against a specific set of decks you are likely to encounter is more achievable.

Here is an excellent breakdown of the meta from Frank Karsten and here is PlayingMTG’s excellent tier list. The two big stories are the rise of Phoenix as the most played deck and the fall of Mono Green. The other big story to me is how good the Tier B decks have become. Decks like Boros Convoke (now Tier A), Boros Heroic, Rona Lukka have all really rounded into shape and are very strong and attack you from totally different angles.

So where does that leave us for brewing? One option is go linear and ask questions instead of trying to have answers to such a wide array of strategies. But I prefer interactive decks, so how do we make an interactive deck work?

First, you likely want Fatal Push and Thoughtseize, interaction that can keep up with the speed and diversity in the format.

Second, you want a strong Phoenix game 1 match. If it’s really 15% of the meta that is huge value if you can be strongly favored in that match.

So when considering those two, I came back to the Rakdos deck I discuss here.

Specifically, the maindeck Torch the Towers were very appealing in a Phoenix meta.

Also, the downswing in Mono-Green makes Rakdos more attractive. You definitely can win, but it will always be a tough matchup.

Initial Updated List

After some more testing I came to a few conclusions, mostly geared around making the deck more midrange:

• Hopeless Nightmare and Voldaren Epicure, while feeling great in some games, were too big of liabilities and could lead to the running out of gas with your opponent at 5 problem.

• Torch the Tower will most frequently be cast without Bargain, so you do not need quite as many sources as I thought.

• Fable of the Mirror Breaker is a good card.

• Synthesizer is always the best card in Synthesizer decks, so unclear why I was only running 3.

• Once Epicures were cut, there was no longer the density of creatures to justify Claim//Fame

This is the version I was running for a bit to strong results. I started with a number of 4-1’s and then rounded into more of a ~70% winrate.

I really like the deck. The idea is turn it into a scrappy low resource game with Thoughtseize, Kroxa, and removal. Then you win because you are using one mana to cast removal spells that deal with their 2-4 drops providing mana advantage and then Synthesizer, Dispute, Fable, Kroxa, Jegantha (least important of the lot) provide excellent card advantage in low resource games.

With Synthesizer, you really want to be running all one and two mana cards. Fable is strong enough that its an exception, but the version I tried with Sheoldred felt too awkward.

The Sideboard

Most of what is here is fairly standard Rakdos midrange sideboard. The one thing that stands out are the Hidetsugu’s, especially because of how unsynergistic they are with Kroxa and Synthesizer. I was really struggling against Boros Convoke and Rakdos Sac, both of which are tough matchups for flavors of Rakdos Midrange.

The idea here is doing a full swap of Kroxa’s for Hidetsugu’s in the matchups you want it: Convoke, Sac, Mono-White Humans, and Boros Heroic (though not 100% it’s right there). However, it did not prove quite as good as I hoped for the Sac matchup as I faced it frequently and always lost, so decided to try and change the deck up a bit to try improve the Sac match.

The Trophy List

I tried a few different things to some quite mediocre results that almost had me giving up on the list. Looking at options that could help the Sac match I eventually landed on Archfiend of the Dross as a strong possibility.

Sac is tough because it plays a similar low curve scrappy game, but it’s key advantage is blocking off the ground while draining you. My deck relies on a clearing a path to hit with Kroxa, which you just can’t do against Sac. Archfiend addresses this because it can both fly over and essentially shuts off the Cat/Oven drain.

Archfiend also has nice properties in other matches. It lines up well against Phoenix’s Lightning Axe and can help apply pressure against linear decks like Mono Green or Lotus, where either the maindeck interaction will not line up well or I will not have time to deploy the value cards.

I did run into a couple problems with Archfiend in my initial testing. One is that Archfiend only does 18 damage and then you lose to it. I was weirdly having trouble doing the other couple points of damage, especially if there had been any incidental life gain.

The other was that the deck was just not flowing as cleanly as I like, with cards getting stuck in my hand (Dispute, too much land, and removal) and the velocity not being quite high enough. Most of this was likely just getting more reps and seeing these issues more clearly, but Archfiend did push the curve higher, so I think it also contributed.

To try and address both of these issues I added back Epicures and a Claim//Fame, cut the two Implements, a land, Duress, and Dreadbore. Epicure produces more game objects for less, helps with velocity, and does some incidental damage and the deck felt like it had just enough card advantage to cover for that shortcoming in Epicure.

I got a trophy with this version first try and it definitely felt strong. The Archfiends came in a lot, but what they replaced varied depending on the matchup. The Epicures did feel like the weakest card, but they would also randomly win games in spots no other card in the deck could. I could see reducing to three or two, but not sure what to run in their place.

The Matchups

Going through the current top decks here are my current best guesses to who is favored (and like a true midrange deck, these are not overly polarized and all matchups are winnable or losable):

• Phoenix- We’re favored

• Rakdos Midrange- We’re favored

• Mono-Green Devotion- They’re favored

• Rakdos Sacrifice- They’re favored

• Lotus Field Combo- Even

• Boros Convoke- They’re favored

• Mono-White Humans- We’re favored

• Gruul Vehicles- Even

• Rona to Light- They’re favored

• Boros Heroic- We’re favored

• Enigmatic Fires- They’re favored

• Azorious Control- We’re favored

• Abzan Greasefang- We’re favored

What I am Trying Next

I was bringing in Archfiend in so many matchups I decided I should try it with it in the maindeck. That frees up a bunch of sideboard slots allowing more aggressive targeting of specific matchups.

My other idea if I want to move away from Archfiend is to add a small green splash for Questing Druid (primarily for Seek the Beast side). It would allow me to further take advantage of the decks low curve in a strong midrange card that works with Jegantha. The green would then also let me run Culling Ritual in the board as a potentially high impact Boros Convoke and Rakdos Sac answer.