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BMoor's Magic The Gathering Deck Garage
Rakdos Deck
January 8, 2009

Dear BMoor..

Well, recently i have been attempting to create a Rakdos deck. My first step was buying the theme deck and adding some cards to it, but this turned out to be a complete mess because all the themes of the deck got muddled up. I wanted it to be a hellbent beat down that focused on keeping any creatures out of the opponent's field and attempting to keep both our hands at 0 cards each.

I have played the deck a few times and it seems to be good against my friends u/b mill, but against a typical rush burn deck i was completely out BURNT! although some parts of my deck were burns, it didnt stand much of a chance against a burn deck. So plz can u plz help me out and tell me how i can improve my deck.

Creatures:
1 Locust Miser
3 rakdos ickspitter
2 Ghost-Lit Stalker
3 Gobhobbler Rats
2 Drekavac
4 Demon's Jester
2 Slithering Shade
1 Rakdos Guildmage
1 Lyzolda, the Blood Witch
1 Rakdos Pitt Dragon
2 Jagged poppets

Non-creatures:
3 Seals of Fire
2 Ignorant Bliss
2 Taste for Mayhem
2 Rakdos Signets
2 Delirium Skeins
2 Cackling Flames
1 Twinstrike
1 Wrecking Ball
1 Bond of Agony ( backup finisher)

Lands:
9 swamps
10 mountains
1 Rix Maadi, Dungeon Palace

( i dont use rakdos caranthruim because it returns land to my hand which ruins hellbent)

Facts:

- iam on a middle bughet
- this deck sucks pretty bad against burn
- if i hit a bad hand i usually lose
- can't really burn someone to death

Thanks for your time BMoor for looking at this. I hope u can respond asap and i appreciate all the time u put into this. If you cant do it no one can!
________________________________________

It is nice to revisit the classics. And when Dissension first hit shelves, I remember getting hit with quite a few decks revolving around Graft, Hellbent, and... not so much Forecast. Some mechanics are easier built around than others, and Hellbent is easy to build, if hard to build well. Let's see what we can do.

Now, Hellbent is built on a very tricky proposition: usually having no cards in hand is a bad thing. Hellbent rewards you for what is often a poor way to play. You need to make sure it's worth it for you to empty your hand. What's the best way to do that?

Traditionally, it's been Madness cards. These negate the downside of pitching your hand, in that they let you play all those cards you're discarding instead of just throwing them away. And since you've mentioned that you have trouble racing burn decks, what better Madness card that Fiery Temper? Fiery Temper, and also Dark Withering, are great for Hellbent/Madness decks because their 1-mana madness cost allows you to play them even when you may not have been expecting to discard cards, like when your opponent pings your Jagged Poppet. Also a good choice for a deck like this is Reckless Wurm, a 4/4 trample for 2R.

Finally, try a Hellbent card that also has Madness itself: Gibbering Descent. This will help you gain the edge over burn decks: not only will it keep them from being able to stockpile burn spells and make them pitch a few for no gain, but once your hand is empty, it'll still hit them for one a turn and not you, giving you that extra fuel with which to race them. Best of all, it's an enchantment, and most burn decks have no answer to enchantments.

You can also exploit that weakness of Red through Nihilistic Glee, an enchantment that lets you pitch cards to gain one life and make them lose one life. It's not much, granted, but it will let you gain back a little of what the burn decks take from you.

So what can you pull for all these lovely things? Taste for Mayhem, for starters. Locust Miser isn't great either. Ignorant Bliss? It's a little weak. That lone Twinstrike is a bit weak too. Actually, if there's anything in here that costs more than four mana, you can let it go-- and I count Gibbering Descent as costing four mana for these purposes. Ghost-Lit Stalker doesn't seem all that effective either. And Bond of Agony? That's just a bad card all over.

As for what is effective, I like Delirium Skeins here, as well as Seal of Fire. Slithering Shade is also better than it looks: after all, if you're out of cards in hand, what are you doing with your mana every turn?

Good luck!

~BMoor