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.
Relevant New Cards
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
