Rakdos Ramp Deck Guide: A Fresh MTG Strategy

Joining Up with Rakdos to Make a Ramp Deck

Merge the chaos of Rakdos with ramp strategy in Magic: The Gathering. Discover how to build and pilot a powerful Rakdos Ramp deck.

Most of us know about the Rakdos Ramp Deck that was popular in Standard maybe a month or two ago. Sometimes it is still played on ladder, and the deck is undoubtedly powerful. For today's purposes, we are going to bring back that archetype, but we are going to use some cards from the new set, Outlaws of Thunder Junction. This time, we will have to pay closer attention to the kinds of creatures that we put into the deck. They will all provide legitimate value, but we are mostly going to be trying to cheat out or reanimate legendary creatures, and you will see why that is so relevant very soon. We do use some cheap creatures early on in the deck that are not legendary, but they generate value on the board, and allow us to get other large creatures into our graveyard. We may miss out on some other value, but the payoff will be worth it. Some of these new cards from Thunder Junction will allow us to pull off a couple of one turn kills.

Total Cards:

Relevant New Cards

Magic the Gathering Card - Rakdos Joins Up - MTG Circle

This new card is an absolute bomb. We get to reanimate a creature, and then we get extra value when a legendary creature dies. This card alone is the reason that we are wanting to run mostly legendary creatures for our payoffs. We will be using the Burn Together adventure from Callous Sell-Sword to get the ultimate combo. It will effectively be double fling. Having been personally victimized by it plenty of times since it was printed, I elected to omit Atraxa, Grand Unifier from the list, but I absolutely encourage you to add it to the deck if you don't have any issues playing it.

Magic the Gathering Card - Lively Dirge - MTG Circle

This one is pretty straightforward. We are going to use it to get a creature of our choice in the graveyard. It isn't the best value, but it's something worth trying from the new set. We can also use it to reanimate two smaller creatures if there isn't a better option. I have it in here as a one of to try out, but could easily be swapped out for Liliana of the Veil or something similar.

Magic the Gathering Card - Binding Negotiation - MTG Circle

This one is in the sideboard, but I think it will quickly become a useful tool in most sideboards. It will allow us to de-plot a card, or discard another nonland permanent from our opponent's hand. Having that kind of modality is useful, and I fully expect plot to be a powerful mechanic. Since we don't run any Deep-Cavern Bat in this deck, having another two mana hand hate spell somewhere in the seventy-five is important.

Magic the Gathering Card - Rush of Dread - MTG Circle

This is a sideboard card that I couldn't help but leave out of the list. I believe it will have an effect on the game similar to Invoke Despair, and it is too good not to have. My justification is that we can use it to be the finisher on our fling spells if the opponent has too much life. Some of the Temur decks that are floating around can easily hover over twenty life, and this can help get them down to the point where we can take them out by flinging a legendary creature at them. Making them sacrifice a bunch of creatures, or discard a bunch of cards never hurts either.

Familiar Cards that Help the Deck Function

Magic the Gathering Card - Big Score - MTG Circle

It is best if we can do a little bit of ramping in this deck, so we will need four Big Scores. We can also discard the big spell that we would like to reanimate with Rakdos Joins Up and then put two counters on it. Something that is nice about this card is that we get the discard either way, and we can cast it on our opponent's turn. Sometimes they will play differently knowing that we are holding up priority with an instand-speed spell during their turn. A lot of control decks often like to counter this spell, which we can use to our advantage by baiting them into tapping out their mana on their turn, so our reanimation spells do not get countered on our turn.

Magic the Gathering Card - Breach the Multiverse - MTG Circle

We all know it. We all fear it. Breach is that huge bomb that nobody wants to see resolved against them. This will help us get more creatures into the graveyard, and steal something relevant from our opponent. Like I said earlier, I did not put Atraxa in this deck - but I will not hesitate to take one from an opponent's graveyard.

Magic the Gathering Card - Callous Sell-Sword // Burn Together - MTG Circle

This is going to be our fling spell. It is a simple one mana win condition from the adventure portion of this card that can double the triggered ability of Rakdos Joins Up. We likely won't cast the creature part of it too often, but it will allow us to get some good value for one mana.

Magic the Gathering Card - Bitter Triumph - MTG Circle

This is a deck where we can get full value out of our removal spell. We will turn the added tax of discarding a spell into an added bonus. Just drop the Etali, Primal Conqueror into the graveyard, or Rakdos, Patron of Chaos, maybe even Junji, The Midnight Sky, or Drivnod, Carnage Dominus. Actually - we need to talk about Drivnod in a little bit more detail, because he adds even more value.

Magic the Gathering Card - Drivnod, Carnage Dominus - MTG Circle

Not only is the chonky guy a great fling target, but he will also double the death triggers from Rakdos Joins Up. We could potentially have triple fling damage within this deck. The possibilities really start to rack up, and the deck easily is filled with win conditions.

The New Card that Didn't Make it, But Should Still be Great

We aren't sure on the official translation of this card's name- but most websites have it listed this way.

Akul, The Unrepentant

Legendary Creature — Scorpion Dragon Rogue

Flying, trample

Sacrifice three other creatures: You may put a creature card from your hand onto the battlefield. Activate only as a sorcery and only once each turn.

This guy holds ridiculous amounts of value. As if a 5/5 flyer for four mana wasn't enough, he will let us sacrifice three other creatures in order to put out two other creatures from our hand. I love what the card does, and I think there is a list within this archetype that has a place for him - I just didn't see it working in this deck. I did not believe that we were able to have enough creatures on the board in the early game to effectively profit from his ability. I think the card is great however, and there is a strong chance you might see a Numbskull deck in the future that features him!

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I am a Magic The Gathering competitive player, and streamer. I specialize in homebrew decks. My favorite formats are: Standard, Pioneer (Explorer on Arena), and EDH. I first started playing MTG in 2001, and have played on and off since then.

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Explore the new Aetherdrift mechanics in Magic: The Gathering, rated for Limited and Constructed play. Discover which mechanics excel in Standard format.

Examining the Aetherdrift Mechanics, and Rating them for Limited or Constructed

Every time a new set comes out, there always seems to be a mechanic we are excited for, but maybe it doesn't pan out to be as powerful as we thought. Sometimes we think it will be good in constructed, and it ends up only being good in draft. There are other times when it is a sleeper, and we may have overlooked it when we were predicting what might be good. When we examine set design, sometimes we can also see the clear intent for the mechanics to be good in both the limited and constructed environments, and there are cards with power levels for each different environment. One might be watered down a bit to be more limited-friendly, and another might be that overpowered card that you need to be a bomb in constructed. There are a few ways to go about it, and we do what we can to identify which mechanics we should be mindful of in constructed, particularly in Standard, where the new cards affect the format more than other constructed formats. What we will do today is look at the mechanics that are prevalent with the new cards. There are some that are familiar mechanics, and I will still go over those. There are a couple of new ones that I think are quite interesting, and I have opinions on. Let's check out these mechanics, and give them some ratings! Exhaust You guys can tell that I am pretty excited about this one. The deck that I made for exhaust seems like it will run pretty smoothly. I believe that Exhaust is a mechanic that has cards that are intended for limited, and cards that are intended for constructed, and that the mechanic will be useful in both environments. One of the reasons that I believe it can be so good in draft is that you can almost consider the ability to act as another card later on in the game. You could have no cards in hand, but if you have two exhaust creatures, it is almost like you have two cards in hand that can make something happen. I'm excited for the mechanic, and I'm excited to draft the set and see if I can get a good bit of Exhaust cards going. I think it will be relevant in constructed because of the crazy value that you can get from some of the rares, and because there is one that allows for graveyard recursion.

Zombies are Coming back from the Dead with Aetherdrift

Whenever I see the word "Zombie" in a new set, I always like to revisit the archetype a bit in order to see if anything could be good. I decided to raise these zombies from the dead due to some cards that I saw from Aetherdrift, and I thought that we could at least make a deck that is fun, and who knows, it may be competitive too. We have received decent support lately with cards like Gisa, The Hellraiser. Although she isn't a zombie herself, she creates them every turn, and acts as a lord for them. Not to mention, the ward cost on her makes it so that she adequately fills out the top end of our list. She will help us immensely with swarming the board with skeletons, and efficiently rebuilding after board wipes. There are also going to be some ways to play our zombies from the graveyard, whether it be re-casting or embalming. Since we have the opportunity to raise our dead, we have to give it a shot. There is too much flavor that entices me. This will be my mono black list for the new set, as I think this is the best mono black deck to showcase as many new cards as possible. Any other mono black deck would likely just be adding one or two cards into an already good mono black deck, so I wanted to give you as much as I can with the new cards showcase. Without further ado, let's check out the deck! As you can see, we have plenty of lords in the deck. We are going to make these vanilla zombies huge, both to use as infinite blockers, and to have a threatening attack. We also brought back Unstoppable Slasher for some extra fun, and to guarantee that we have alternate win conditions when needed. In typical zombie fashion, we also don't mind getting rid of some of our creatures if it produces extra value for us. We can get rid of one of our zombies to deal with any problematic creature with Final Vengeance. I chose this over Eaten Alive because it allows us to sacrifice enchantments too, and there are some useful enchantments that support our zombies, so that could prove useful too. There are new cards in the deck, so let's take a look at those. Aetherdrift Zombie Support Cards

This Deck is Sure to be EXHAUSTING to Play Against

Gruul is an archetype that is usually reserved for the aggro decks in Standard. I'm sure that you guys have had enough of that, so I will spare you another Gruul Aggro list that you only play because the deck is good. We are trying something new with this one, and we are taking advantage of the Exhaust mechanic from the new set. It is something that remains to be seen if it is a constructed-playable mechanic, or something that is better suited for limited. I believe that I am pushing the limits of its capabilities here, and that we can do some pretty cool stuff with the deck. One thing that I am excited about is that the deck features a TON of new cards. It will be really difficult for anyone in Early Access to say that this deck didn't showcase any new cards - the creatures and vehicles are almost all exclusively new! We are looking to reduce the activated costs of abilities within the deck, and then get crazy value from it that overwhelms the board. If we play our cards right, we can do some activated abilities for next to nothing, and gain a strong advantage from it. We can possibly also have a Fireball finish if we play our cards right. This deck does a little bit of everything, and I am excited to try it out. Allow me to present to you: Gruul Exhaust! There are some staple cards that we include when we have activated abilities of creatures. One card that forces its way into the deck is Agatha's Soul Cauldron. It is too powerful not to include. We have a couple of ways to mill our cards, and the meta is pretty removal-heavy. We should have enough ways to get things into our graveyard, and if we don't we simply add one or two more Hedge Shredders to mill more cards. With the Exhaust ability, you sadly can only activate it once, BUT we are going to put multiple instances of said abilities on one creature, thus making it much more palatable. We also will reduce the cost of all exhaust abilities with one of the new cards to be shown later, and with Agatha of the Vile Cauldron. I was surprised to see this card - I did not know that it came out with the Soul Cauldron itself. We have seen the Cauldron so much, but we haven't seen a ton of the actual Agatha Creature. The deck has a few removal spells, but some of our vehicles also have a way to do direct damage, so we don't need to include as many as we normally would. We kept it pretty simple on the lands due to the demanding mana values in some of our cards, and because the deck is a little faster. There are multiple cards that have two pips of each of the colors represented, so we do not want to stall when it comes to having the right mana. Although I have a bunch of new cards from the set in this deck, I will showcase to you five of the ones I think are the most impactful. Relevant New Cards

These Aetherdrift Aristocrats are Racing to Victory!

We are coming to the end of spoiler season, and we are ramping up for early access for Aetherdrift. Almost all of the cards have been revealed, so Magic players are dashing to find the new deck that will work for them. This is an exciting time for creators as well, because it is our chance to make predictions on what the most impactful cards will be. We can straight up make a prediction, we can come out with a top 5 or 10, or we can theory craft new decks. I'm going to be dropping a few decks over the next couple of days that I think will be really fun to play in Standard, and that I will be playing in early access for Aetherdrift! Here is a look at the first deck I made that is an Orzhov Sacrifice Combo Deck! This new Orzhov Creation looks to take advantage of a lot of low-mana high-value creatures. We have multiple different sacrifice outlets, and a couple of different ways to interact with our graveyard. Most of the creatures are two mana value or lower, so we can even use a card from Foundations to bring them all back at once! We will draw a ton of cards, drain our opponent's life total, and have tons of blockers for the various aggro decks that we may come across. We can even punish the opponent for killing our creatures. The deck also features 23 lands due to the fact that our curve is pretty low, and we can operate pretty well with two or three mana. You might be wondering: "OK, so what is actually new about the deck?" We are looking to take advantage of the Start Your Engines mechanic that has been brought to us in this set. If you are unfamiliar with how that works, you can read my most recent article for a deep dive! For now, let's take a look at some relevant new cards from the set! Relevant New Cards

This New Mechanic in Aetherdrift WILL Have BIG Implications!

Aetherdrift is upon us, and everyone is ready for a refresh to the current Standard format. It's not particularly bad, but it could use a bit of a shake up. Foundations beefed up some of the archetypes that were already good, and it did so to the point that it is impossible to play a few matches in the format without seeing some type of Dimir. There are so many good different artchetypes of it currently that it is difficult to decide against playing it. Aetherdrift is bringing us a ton of vehicles, and it appears that this card type will force it's way into relevancy in the format. These new vehicles are announcing themselves with a little bit of flavor, however. There is a new mechanic that is coming to MTG that is called Start Your Engines. Initially, this mechanic didn't stand out to me too much. I had to take a bit of a deep dive into how it worked, and how to get to what is called "Max Speed" before I realized that we can do some broken stuff with this. Before I did my research, I went from thinking that it would be a draft-only mechanic, to thinking this might be the most powerful mechanic in the entire set. Let's take a look at how exactly Start Your Engines works, and then we will look over some examples of cards in Standard that should allow it to be ridiculous in all of the best ways. How Does Start Your Engines Work? This is an interesting one, and it fits in perfectly with the flavor of the set. We will have the Start Your Engines mechanic on a few of the cards, and it's ability instantly starts when the permanent enters the battlefield. If it is the FIRST Start Your Engines card played, it will instantly give you a Speed of 1. This is something that automatically happens as the permanent enters, and it is not a trigger that can be stifled, or fizzled by removing the permanent giving the Speed. Now, what I initially thought for this mechanic was that you got more speed by playing cards that had the Start Your Engines ability, but that isn't how it works, and I'm glad it's not that way. So how do we gain speed? In order to increase our speed past 1, we will have a trigger of an increase in speed once per our turn when an opponent loses life. What is pretty fun about this is that we do not need the permanent to stay on the board in order for the speed to increase. This means that the mechanic is comparable to The Ring Temps You from LOTR.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Recapping MTG in 2024

2024 was a huge year for MTG. It was a lot of things. Controversial, exciting, frustrating, promising, and refreshed. We saw some formats get ruined, then fixed, then ruined again. We saw some great changes to Standard that not everyone was fans of at first, but they seemed to quickly warm up to them. We saw Wizards effectively abandon a format in favor of propelling Standard into a more prominent position. We saw some great cards printed for Standard, and some promising things to come in the next year that were announced. Along with that, a fair amount of people were still bothered by the new trajectory of the format. Some are calling into question the longevity of MTG now with the heavy lean into Universes Beyond. A little bit of everything happened this year in the MTG world, and it was interesting if nothing else. On a personal level, it was also a hell of a year for me, as I took down two different events and grew a lot as a player. We are going to look at The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly from this year! The Good I have to admit, I'm pretty excited that we have an infinite gain and drain combo in Standard right now. With Enduring Tenacity and Bloodthirsty Conqueror having made a lot of my dreams come true in my favorite format. Although the deck isn't the most viable in the format, it is incredibly fun to play, and I'm just happy that we had such exciting cards printed in the format. It leads to good card design going forward, and gives us promise for what's to come in the next year.

Examining the Aetherdrift Mechanics, and Rating them for Limited or Constructed