WHY I REGISTERED HAZORET RAKDOS AT THE RC

WHY I REGISTERED HAZORET RAKDOS AT THE RC

Hello everyone! As you may know, last weekend was the American Regional Championship in Atlanta. It was an event my teammates and I had been preparing for diligently over the past few months, but much of that preparation was thrown into disarray with the recent banned and restricted announcements. Karn the Great Creator being eliminated from the format all but killed the already unpopular mono green archetype, and the unbanning of Smuggler's Copter really changed the dynamic of the format. This statement is actually somewhat of an exaggeration, as the unbanning of Copter actually didn't change many of the archetypes we are seeing in the format, nor did it add many, if any, new decks.

After a few weeks of focusing on the new format, I actually think the Copter unban may have been a healthy one for Pioneer because it actually added a higher amount of variation to deck building. This is incredibly ironic because it got banned, in the first place, for doing almost the exact opposite. We see this differentiation in deck building the most in Rakdos decks. The following are three different examples of this, all of which I tried out the week leading up to the RC.

The first picture is good old-fashioned Rakdos midrange. This build looks as though the format never changed and still is just an honest midrange deck filled with high value cards such as Fable of the Mirror Breaker and Reckoner Bankbuster. This deck looks to grind down the opponent and win a war of attrition.

The second picture is the list I tested heavily during the week leading up to the event with one of my testing partners, Raja Suleiman. This deck was quite a bit more aggressive and leaned on likely my favorite card out of the new set: Inti, Senschal of the Sun. Inti generates card advantage through discard effects via blood tokens, Fable, Copter, and its own combat trigger. This deck can still grind, but it is much better at killing the opponent quickly and finding key cards earlier with Inti. Bankbuster is a great engine, but its biggest weakness is that it takes time to develop.

Inti is able to find cards you need much faster and can also close games very quickly. Putting counters on Copter or Kroxa, Titan of Death’s Hunger is a very real way to get through with final points of damage. One big sell to this archetype as well (which many people were still debating going into the event even in this build) is that you have the option to play Jegantha as a companion given that you are willing to exclude cards such as Sheoldred the Apocalypse or Archfiend of the Dross from the main deck. Some of the inti copter builds were still on Sheoldred/Archfiend due to the high impact of these spells but having the extra resource every game in Jegantha is really nice, especially in conjunction with Inti as either discard fodder or a big body to hold counters. The extra resource with both copter and fable is also huge. The last picture is one of the more unique builds of Rakdos, which is what I ultimately chose to register at the RC.

The process for ending up on this deck was kind of wild, as I didn't decide to play this until three hours before deck submission on the Friday before the event, but it wasn't as chaotic as it may seem. As I said before, I knew weeks before this event I would play some iteration of Rakdos midrange at this event because it seemed both well positioned in the metagame as well as the best deck for me to play to give me the highest chance at success. Since I knew this, all I had played for weeks was Rakdos in Pioneer. The first picture is the list I thought I was going to play. I love the grindy plan and think Bankbuster is an incredible card. I thought animating a flying 3/3 creature on turn 3 was a suspect game plan against Phoenix, which my team believed would be roughly 18% of the field going into the RC, therefore I thought Bankbuster Rakdos would be the better call going into the event. As I tested more and more with Inti Copter builds, I became more and more of a fan. Inti is a broken magic card, and I became more impressed with it every time I played it. Gaining advantage from performing actions you pretty much always do anyways in Rakdos such as sacrificing blood tokens and discarding with chapter two of Fable is absurd. These aren't even the most broken synergy which is looting with Copter while an Inti is in play. I felt that Bankbuster was too mopey vs decks like Amalia and was very worried the deck was going to break out in a big way at the RC. I thought the aggressive nature and low-mana investment card advantage with Inti made the Inti Copter build a better choice into Amalia.

The Inti Copter build also seemed to be even more consistent than normal Rakdos because Copter and Inti only require two lands to be in play before they can start the filtering process, whereas normal Rakdos often needs at least three. I also couldn't buy match wins with traditional Rakdos to save my life in testing the day before the event which was scaring me a lot.

After getting pretty beat up by my testing group in games I sent my buddy Robert Stanley a message on Twitter asking him where he was at with his Rakdos build. We had been in communication the two weeks prior to the event and he was working on a much more aggressive build of Rakdos with another extremely strong player, Kellen Pastore. Stanley sent me a list very close to the third picture above, with a Den of the Bugbear main over the third Hive and a 4th Knight of the Ebon Legion over the main deck Graveyard Trespasser. What I loved about the list immediately was the inclusion of Hazoret the Fervent. Hazoret seemed to be about as good as it has ever been due to the prevalence of Phoenix (where it really shines), the lack of Aether Gusts due to Mono Green being almost totally gone, and the fact that it is nearly impossible to remove in Rakdos mirrors. It also has amazing synergy with Inti.

I was hesitant on playing Knight of the Ebon Legion but was told it was really good and the way to go. I can confidently say after this event that I wish I had registered zero. The card is fine, but not playing more generically good cards such as Bonecrusher Giant was almost certainly just wrong. Another thing I loved about this list was that it featured main deck Rampaging Ferocidon to foil Amalia Combo. A fair amount of lists online had zero answers to this card in their main deck which made them very appealing to me. In a deck like this which is very aggressively slanted a card like Ferocidon is much more serviceable than in a deck like traditional RB midrange. Due to these factors I was pretty confident in registering this build of Rakdos so I grabbed my Rakdos cards box that my teammate Kyle Gonzalez brought down for me and started building. One note about the mana base here is that one swamp should likely be a mountain but I accidently misregistered my lands so had to do it this way in the event. Fortunately I was never punished but it could have been very awkward. I went up to three Hive over two Hive and one Den because I think in the current metagame Hive is just much better than Den. Raja and I were very confident about this change going into the event and I still think it mostly makes sense. It is a bit awkward given that you almost always want your first two lands to be able to produce both black and red mana so going Hive into Hive is not ideal, but I think it is a risk I was and am still willing to take in the current meta.

The deck performed very well for me and I am very grateful Robert was willing to give me insights into his build. I think it was nearly perfect minus the Knights. I went 9-5 with the list and it ran very smoothly all weekend long. If I were to play the deck again, which I very well may in the near future, I would play the second trespasser in the main deck as well as two bonecrusher giants. I would then probably play either a fourth Ferocidon in the side over the Trespasser or a second Kolaghan’s Command.

If you are looking to spice up your Rakdos life a little bit in Pioneer I would look no further than this build. I hope you Enjoyed reading, Happy Holidays!