Rakdos Sacrifice Deck Guide for MTG Standard (Bo3)

One of my favorite archetypes across Magic: The Gathering formats is Rakdos Sacrifice because they often work towards slowly chipping away at your opponent's life points while generating value through sacrifice synergies and recurring threats.

Today, I will go over this archetype for Standard and talk about the key cards in it and what role they have in the deck.

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Rakdos Sacrifice Key Cards

This deck features a powerful removal suite with cards like Torch the Tower and Final Vengeance, which can utilize your fodder cards to generate extra value. However, its true strength lies in the interaction of three key cards designed to punish your opponents.

The main engine is Disturbing Mirth, a card that offers both a body and card advantage at the cost of sacrificing a creature or enchantment. This sacrifice is easy to accomplish with cards like Spiteful Hexmage, Hopeless Nightmare, and Tinybones Joins Up, all of which are low-cost spells that provide valuable resources to fuel your Mirth. The synergy becomes even stronger when you can play back-to-back copies of Disturbing Mirth, as one can serve as fodder for the other.

In a similar vein, Braids, Arisen Nightmare contributes to the deck as a well-statted creature that chips away at your opponent's life total while granting you additional card advantage.

Lastly, Urabrask's Forge plays a dual role, creating a growing token each turn that can serve as fodder or pressure your opponent. Having multiple copies of this card quickly escalates the pressure, as the tokens grow larger with each turn, forcing opponents into difficult positions.

Rakdos Sacrifice Tips and Tricks

While most aggressive decks are straightforward in terms of gameplay, there are a couple of interactions you should be aware of, especially in a synergistic deck like this.

When playing with Spiteful Hexmage, remember that you can put the Cursed Role token on another creature, such as an Urabrask's Forge token, to create a 3/2 creature for one mana.
If you have two Spiteful Hexmages in your starting hand, you can place both Cursed Role tokens on the first one, allowing the second to enter the battlefield as a stronger creature.
If you're playing on MTG Arena, it's easy to miss that creatures have Role tokens, so be sure to use them as sacrifice fodder for cards like Disturbing Mirth or Final Vengeance.
Remember that it's better to play Fear of Missing Out with an empty hand, as it gives you a free card. Otherwise, you'll need to discard one.
Speaking of discarding cards, some cards like Bitter Reunion require you to discard one to draw two. Because of this, it's a good idea to hold onto lands in the late game rather than playing them, especially when you have Restless Vents active.
You don't need to spend three mana to scry with Hopeless Nightmare, as this ability triggers whenever it's sacrificed. Use other sacrifice outlets that may benefit you to trigger it.
When both Braids, Arisen Nightmare, and Urabrask's Forge are in play, be sure to order your triggers correctly. Let the Forge's trigger resolve last so you can sacrifice the token it creates to Braids' ability.

Rakdos Sacrifice Manabase

Since you have double-black spells like Sheoldred, the Apocalypse and Braids, Arisen Nightmare, as well as early plays like Torch the Tower, maximizing mana fixing in Rakdos colors is crucial. Fortunately, Standard has excellent options for aggressive decks, including Blackcleave Cliffs, Blazemire Verge, Sulfurous Springs, and Restless Vents, with the latter also serving as a mid-to-late game threat.

How to Sideboard with Rakdos Sacrifice

Instead of giving specific matchups to cover, I will go over my card choices and against which archetypes they tend to perform better.

Leyline of the Void

Some decks may rely on cards like Abhorrent Oculus or Tolarian Terror as a game-ending threat to pressure opponents. Leyline of the Void is a powerful tool against them to shut them down almost entirely.

Glistening Deluge

This card is excellent against decks with small, low-toughness creatures, particularly in white or green. Its ability to give all creatures -1/-1 (or -2/-2 if they’re white or green) makes it a strong answer to go-wide strategies or aggressive boards reliant on those colors.

Duress

Duress shines against control and combo decks like Temur Otters, where you can target and remove critical non-creature spells like board wipes, counterspells, or combo pieces. It's an efficient way to disrupt your opponent's plans early on and make them discard the answer they may have to mess with yours.

Liliana of the Veil

With her edict effect and discard ability, Liliana of the Veil is well-suited for dismantling midrange decks and pressuring slower control strategies by draining their hand resources.

Cut Down

Aggressive decks with impactful low-cost creatures, such as Dimir Tempo or Gruul Aggro, are easily handled by Cut Down, which offers a cheap and efficient way to remove early threats before they gain momentum.

Cards to Try with Rakdos Sacrifice

As with any deck, there are multiple ways to build them. Because of this, here are some cards you can consider adding and adjusting to fit your meta and gameplay style.

Clockwork Percussionist

I like Clockwork Percussionist because it's an early-game threat that can start chipping away at your opponent's life points and later can be used as sacrifice fodder providing extra value when it dies.

Nowhere to Run

I like Nowhere to Run as a multi-purpose removal that not only serves as a hate card against abilities like Hexproof or Ward but also leaves a permanent behind that can be used for any of your sacrifice outlets to get additional card advantage.

Corpses of the Lost

Similar to Urabrask's Forge, Corpses of the Lost is another permanent that can consistently provide you with fodder bodies on the field, though this one requires you to spend more mana on it.

Ghost Vacuum

If you don't like Leyline of the Void too much, Ghost Vacuum is another solid option for graveyard hate that you can use to hate against graveyard-based strategies and resilient creatures like Enduring Curiosity.

Darkstar Augur

If you are looking for a Dark Confidant effect against control strategies, Darkstar Augur is a solid card to run that can provide you with two bodies for just four mana. The downside is that this can backfire against you due to the life loss, but if you are running the likes of Sheoldred, the Apocalypse , you will be fine.

Pyroclasm

A classic board wipe that deals two damage to all creatures, making it perfect for controlling wide boards of small creatures. It’s especially effective against token decks or early-game aggression.