MTG Salvation

So over the past few months, I've been working on creating a commander deck for each of the Ravnica Guilds. Boros went first for me since that was the one I was the most familiar with. After that, however, I started working on Rackdos. And I wanted to use Rakdos himself as the commander, easy enough. However, I realized that in order to really make the deck complete I needed a card that could change or add permanent types that fit into the red and black color identity. I have yet to find one though as of posting this I haven't checked out artifacts. If anyone has any ideas I'd love to hear them. Also, I wanted to share the deck I've created so far and see what people thought, see if there are any changes they would recommend that I make. Thank you ahead of time for those that offer ideas and any help at all.

"Rakdos" is spelled without a 'c'.

As to your question, it seems you want to make your creatures all Demons for Rakdos the Defiler's ability. Is that correct? Then it seems that Conspiracy is your best option. However, the main issue is that there is no card that, on its own, would make your lands into Demons which means you will always sac them. You could try some weird Kormus Bell + Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth shenanigans to turn them into creatures (and, thus, Demons with Conspiracy) to not have to sac them. Though, it does stop your opponents from having to sac their lands too so keep that in mind.

I am not sure there is a good way to do what you want to.

On a final note, decklists should be posted in the decklist subforum, not here.

Thanks for all the insight and for letting me know about the decklist thing I'll go ahead and edit it out. And yes trying to prevent having to sac off lands with Rakdos' effect is exactly right.

If you build the deck with the intention of not ending up saccing anything, you’re not gonna like how the deck plays.


Honestly, just make it into a “all-in, suicide aggro” style deck. Big demons, reanimations, some number of fast mana in artifacts and rituals, [cards=infernal contract]draw 4s[/cards], wheel of fortune, and go at it.

my rakdos deck is exactly that, and it’s a crowd pleaser every time. Never plays the same, and always entertains even my opponents.

Unfortunately what you want to do will be very difficult to pull off and very ineffective. There is not much more than what WizardMN suggested you can do. Conspiracy type effects are almost exclusively in blue part of color pie.
You can extend the strategy as bobthefunny suggested - add mass land destruction / stax effects like:
- Kormus Bell + Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth + Night od Soul's Betrayal (or similar effect, there is a few) - noone will have any lands to sacrifice, ever,
- Kormus Bell + Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth + Cower in Fear (or similar effect, there is a lot of them) - one sided MLD,
- Kormus Bell + Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth + Massacre Wurm - one sided MLD with possibility of eliminating opponents in late game.
The problem is that a lot of those pieces don't do anything on their own and losing one will make the rest dead cards. This would be fine if BR provided recursion effects for lands/artifacts/enchantments but it does not (well, there is Crucible of Worlds). So any removal (and there is a lot of removal for artifacts/enchantments) will invalidate your whole plan. The strategy you want to execute can be effective on its own only when there is no immediate interaction from opponents, they don't have non-land mana sources for further interaction and you commit a lot of resources to execute strategy that does not exactly win you the game. Well, anyway, good luck.

I honestly wouldn't bother with the conspiracy antics. This color combination is pretty hard to stick an expensive enabler (that won't 100% save you) and an expensive commander.

How many opponents do you have?

In 1v1, rakdos the defiler is amazing but can be tricky to interact with. You need thoughtseize and duress effects (removing opponents removal spells) before you can safely declare him to attack, and those are typically best used at earlier stages in the game. If the coast is clear to attack without your opponent removing him, then a temur battle rage or assault strobe on him should just end the game. Most of the deck should be control and removal, so hopefully the opponent just has lands. Doesn't hurt to sac half of yours when your opponents has to sac 3/4 of theirs.

In multiplayer although rakdos the defiler becomes a defender until someone invokes your wrath, or until you get assault suit on him and various goad effects (bloodthirsty blade if you can somehow equip at instant speed)


Either way, he is a little dangerous to play and if this is your first go into the color combination for edh, perhaps rakdos, the showstopper would be more enjoyable, or rakdos, lord of riots if you really want to play big demons.

I think Rakdos is one of those cards you have to play intelligently. Like when you know your opponent can't do anything, you can put the final nail in the coffin with an attack from him even if it costs you your lands because you know it will hurt your opponent more than it hurt you. Following a board wipe, Rakdos is pretty good.