Grim Tuesday

Commander / EDH Aristocrats Artifact BR (Rakdos) Combo Construct Golem Reanimator Sacrifice Storm Theme/Gimmick

herpdederp92

Creature (41)

• 1x Ancestral Statue
• 1x Arcbound Ravager
• 1x Burnished Hart
• 1x Canoptek Spyder
• 1x Canoptek Tomb Sentinel
• 1x Canoptek Wraith
• 1x Chainer, Nightmare Adept
• 1x Combustible Gearhulk
• 1x Doom Weaver
• 1x Duplicant
• 1x Grim Haruspex
• 1x Harvester of Souls
• 1x Illuminor Szeras
• 1x Iron Myr
• 1x Junk Diver
• 1x Keen Duelist
• 1x Kuldotha Forgemaster
• 1x Leaden Myr
• 1x Meteor Golem
• 1x Midnight Reaper
• 1x Myr Retriever
• 1x Ornithopter of Paradise
• 1x Psychomancer
• 1x Purphoros, God of the Forge
• 1x Reckless Fireweaver
• 1x Ruin Grinder
• 1x Rune-Scarred Demon
• 1x Salvager of Ruin
• 1x Sandstone Oracle
• 1x Scrap Trawler
• 1x Scrapyard Recombiner
• 1x Shimmer Myr
• 1x Sidisi, Undead Vizier
• 1x Solemn Simulacrum
• 1x Stormfist Crusader
• 1x Technomancer
• 1x Thermopod
• 1x Walking Ballista
• 1x Wandering Archaic  ^Flip
• 1x Witty Roastmaster
• 1x Workshop Assistant

Land (32)

• 1x Blood Crypt
• 1x Bojuka Bog
• 1x Buried Ruin
• 1x Canyon Slough
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Dragonskull Summit
• 1x Emergence Zone
• 1x Exotic Orchard
• 1x Foreboding Ruins
• 1x Great Furnace
• 1x High Market
• 1x Luxury Suite
• 1x Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
• 6x Mountain
• 1x Rakdos Carnarium
• 1x Shadowblood Ridge
• 1x Smoldering Marsh
• 1x Spire of Industry
• 1x Sulfurous Springs
• 6x Swamp
• 1x Tainted Peak
• 1x Vault of Whispers

Instant (6)

• 1x Chaos Warp
• 1x Fire Covenant
• 1x Rakdos Charm
• 1x Snuff Out
• 1x Sudden Spoiling
• 1x Tibalt's Trickery

Enchantment (3)

• 1x Descent into Avernus
• 1x Goblin Bombardment
• 1x Impact Tremors

Commander (1)

Artifact (12)

• 1x Altar of Dementia
• 1x Altar of the Brood
• 1x Arcane Signet
• 1x Blasting Station
• 1x Bontu's Monument
• 1x Krark-Clan Ironworks
• 1x Rakdos Signet
• 1x Skullclamp
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Talisman of Indulgence
• 1x Trading Post
• 1x Wayfarer's Bauble

Sorcery (5)

• 1x Blasphemous Act
• 1x Dread Return
• 1x Living Death
• 1x Scrap Mastery
• 1x Toxic Deluge

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Maybeboard

Creature (20)

• 1x Anger
• 1x Ardent Elementalist
• 1x Artisan of Kozilek
• 1x Audacious Reshapers
• 1x Bane of the Living
• 1x Cathodion
• 1x Disciple of Bolas
• 1x Dualcaster Mage
• 1x Goblin Welder
• 1x Kothophed, Soul Hoarder
• 1x Memnite
• 1x Myr Battlesphere
• 1x Noxious Gearhulk
• 1x Orcus, Prince of Undeath
• 1x Phyrexian Delver
• 1x Pilgrim's Eye
• 1x Priest of Urabrask
• 1x Scarecrone
• 1x Viscera Seer
• 1x Zulaport Cutthroat

Artifact (7)

• 1x Ashnod's Altar
• 1x Codex Shredder
• 1x Cursed Mirror
• 1x Mystic Forge
• 1x Nim Deathmantle
• 1x Pyrite Spellbomb
• 1x Wishclaw Talisman

Instant (2)

• 1x Bedevil
• 1x Pyroblast

Sorcery (4)

• 1x Beacon of Unrest
• 1x Patriarch's Bidding
• 1x Reanimate
• 1x Vandalblast

Land (3)

• 1x Phyrexian Tower
• 1x Winding Canyons
• 1x Zoetic Cavern

Enchantment (1)

• 1x Gift of Doom

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All hail Wackdos the Artificer, king of all constructs, golems and various colorless weenies.

In other words, I decided that I for SOME REASON needed another aristocrats-combo commander deck. Enter the Lord of Riots, doing busted storm things with modern KCI loops in EDH.

Yeah. People play against this for some reason.

(For those confused by the title, it's a reference to Garth Nix's Keys to the Kingdom series of YA novels.)

10/13: Tons of updates, including some spicy tech from the Necron army.

The Gauntlets of the Demon Show

So why Rakdos?

The basic idea of the deck is to vomit out free artifact creatures and proceed to loop off with damage combos or value engines. This works in basically any color shard, although notably Red gives us excellent win conditions via Impact Tremors and similar effects.

Our goal is to build a deck that storms through cards like Scrap Trawler and Myr Retriever for free. I know of three good options in the command zone: Rakdos, Lord of Riots, Hamza, Guardian of Arashin and Animar, Soul of Elements. There are probably other creatures that reduce the cost of creatures by 3 or more. I chose Rakdos. Bite me.

Most Lord of Riots decks are based around the idea of ritualistically windmill-slamming down giant creatures like Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre and Blightsteel Colossus via a turn 2 Rakdos followed by a turn 3 Price of Progress. Fun? Yes! Consistent? Hell no! Somebody Plows Rakdos, and you have a hand full of 12-drops.

In this deck, we hardly ever need more than the 6 mana reduction generated by whacking someone with our 6/6 Flamply boi, at which point we can vomit out a whole hand of dorky myr for free. Fun? Still yes! Consistent? Maybe! It mostly depends on whether we can hit an effective card advantage plan to refill our hand with more dorky myr, since all our creatures (including Rakdos) likely die over and over.

How to Abuse -6 Mana Cost for Fun and Profit Show

So the basic plan is to whack someone with a small creature, play Rakdos, and then whack someone with Rakdos. We Whackdos for fun and profit!

In some games, we can get enough damage on opponents via aggro or burn triggers ( Keen Duelist and Descent into Avernus for example) to get the 6+ discount the same turn we play Rakdos, but the 6/6 flampler is a guaranteed plan to get there a turn later.

How much do our 40-odd creatures cost after we Whackdos? Let's see! (I'll talk about card quality later, but for now, it's nice to get a holistic look at how cheap our deck becomes.)

0 mana

MANY FREE CREATURES. OH SO MANY FREE CREATURES

Ancestral Statue

Arcbound Ravager

Burnished Hart

Canoptek Spyder

Canoptek Tomb Sentinel

Canoptek Wraith

Duplicant

Grim Haruspex via Morph

Iron Myr

Junk Diver

Kuldotha Forgemaster

Leaden Myr

Myr Retriever

Ornithopter of Paradise

Salvager of Ruin

Scrap Trawler

Scrapyard Recombiner

Shimmer Myr

Solemn Simulacrum

Walking Ballista albeit with only 3 counters

Workshop Assistant

Wandering Archaic  

1 mana

These are primarily creatures that either cost 7, or have 1 colored mana pip. Still cheap as hell.

Grim Haruspex face-up

Illuminor Szeras

Keen Duelist

Meteor Golem

Midnight Reaper

Psychomancer

Purphoros, God of the Forge

Reckless Fireweaver

Ruin Grinder

Sandstone Oracle

Thermopod

Witty Roastmaster

2 mana

These are the cards that are genuinely hard to cast, since they typically have 2 colored mana pips. For a creature to warrant inclusion despite being in this category, it must have an effect that is incredibly worthwhile, since we may be dumping the rest of our meager mana pool into trying to resolve them. Thus, everything has to have a justification:

Chainer, Nightmare Adept Best repeatable reanimation engine in the deck, basically a "secret commander"

Combustible Gearhulk Great draw power

Doom Weaver Great draw power

Harvester of Souls Great draw power

Rune-Scarred Demon Tutors OP

Sidisi, Undead Vizier Tutors OP

Stormfist Crusader Comes out before Rakdos, draws cards

Technomancer Holy moly Batman, what a good reanimator card

3+ mana

Nope! This deck used to run a few cards that fit this category but nowadays everything costs 0-2.

AristoMyr Show

Now for the fun part: C-C-C-COMBOOOO!

Ancestral Statue

Our first and simplest kill switch is the Statue. After we Whackdos, our free Statue makes infinite storm count by itself. Then we press any of the following "oops you're dead" buttons:

Altar of the Brood

Impact Tremors

Reckless Fireweaver

Purphoros, God of the Forge

Bontu's Monument

Witty Roastmaster

The Statue wincons are simple and consistent, so I see no reason to change them. But hey, sometimes people have a Path to Exile to stop the turn 4 instacheese. Now what?

Myr Retriever

Junk Diver

Workshop Assistant

Salvager of Ruin

Scrap Trawler

These boys go nuts. The Retriver, Diver, Assistant and Salvager all grab each other out of the grave and cast for free, meaning we can sacrifice them to any of the deck's sac outlets:

Altar of Dementia

Blasting Station

Goblin Bombardment

Krark-Clan Ironworks

Arcbound Ravager

Thermopod

And we can win via any trigger that makes Ancestral Statue go off, or via our good necron friend Psychomancer.

And Scrap Trawler goes even nuttier, since we can use it to loop any artifact creature with higher mana value than Myr Retriever into and out of the graveyard. Wanna draw your deck with Solemn Simulacrum? Be my guest.

And since KCI generates infinite mana with nothing obvious to use it on, we're running Walking Ballista as an infinite mana outlet. Also reasonable to just whack somebody for 20 and then drop Ballista for X=10 to finish them off. We ARE running big creatures and often this deck deploys 20 or more combat power in one turn.

Let's Get Stormy, Big Draw Edition Show

Now for the fun part. When your deck has 30+ one- and zero-mana spells, you're highly rewarded for playing lots of card draw. So here's our pile of tools for refueling after a fast hand dump:

Canoptek Spyder Sleeper OP draw engine. Basically a colorless copy of Guardian Project.

Harvester of Souls Massive value, since we sacrifice TONS of nontoken creatures and Harvester works on opponents' blockers too. We're also running 3 asymmetrical Harvesters:

Grim Haruspex Morph is fun.

Midnight Reaper The damage hurts but it's still good.

Doom Weaver By all means, repeatedly Soulbond and sacrifice big things.

Beyond those basic boiz:

Skullclamp Is Skullclamp.

Combustible Gearhulk is one of the best cards in the deck. If somebody particularly wants to eat 10 damage to the face, that's their prerogative, but 90% of the time Gearhulk says "ETB: Draw 3."

Sandstone Oracle Since we can reduce our hand size super fast, Oracle puts in serious work even if opponents only have 7 in hand. Against Reliquary Tower, we're golden.

Ruin Grinder In case of emergency, hit wheel button and draw 7 more. One of the highest-consistency cards in the deck.

Solemn Simulacrum Saaaad Robot. Yum.

Keen Duelist Duelist not only gives us a plan to damage opponents and play Rakdos, but also slowly gives us extra card advantage. I would currently rate Duelist as THE highest-winrate card in the whole deck.

Stormfist Crusader Similar purpose to Keen Duelist. Effectively a Howling Mine on a stick, but with 3 damage marked onto opponents. Only downside is its mana cost (no colorless - sadge.)

Trading Post does massive work for this deck. With artifact creatures as our main theme, Post lets us choose between recursion and card draw whenever we sacrifice, both modes being helpful.

Tutors, Recursion and Consistency Tools Show

If we want to make super big plays, we often have to focus on tutoring out, protecting and recurring those card draw engines that keep the deck fueled.

Rune-Scarred Demon is effectively a free 6/6 demon stapled to the cost of Demonic Tutor.

Sidisi, Undead Vizier Cut-rate Rune-Scarred.

Scrapyard Recombiner I was sleeping on how disgusting the Recombiner is. Constructs don't sound like a powerful tribe, but they represent multiple variants of the Scrap Trawler combo, as well as Gearhulks and other big nasties. Definitely worthwhile as the deck's sole tribal inclusion

Kuldotha Forgemaster For instance, this big baddie is a Construct. Windmill-slamming down a Gearhulk or Trading Post feels pretty nice.

Chainer, Nightmare Adept We end up with a lot of lands, mana rocks, and other junk cluttering up draws, so Chainer's requirement of a discard doesn't hurt us much. Casting a creature from grave for FREE is pretty cool though. We've got plenty of other tools that dig back creatures to keep refueling the board, including:

Dread Return

Trading Post (mentioned for the second time here - it just does too much stuff)

Living Death which is the big game-ending blowout.

Scrap Mastery A narrower but often equally functional Living Death

Technomancer Did somebody say Karmic Guide for artifact creatures?

And all of the Myr Retriever cards, which can grab us some quick value anytime they're needed.

Much Spot Removal Show

So it turns out that when you're in Red-Black, removing permanents isn't much of a problem. Most of these cards need zero explanation:

Chaos Warp

Fire Covenant

Rakdos Charm

Snuff Out

Sudden Spoiling

Blasphemous Act

Toxic Deluge

Tibalt's Trickery

Meteor Golem

Duplicant

Canoptek Tomb Sentinel

Wandering Archaic   to siphon value and protect us from spellslinger, our weakest matchup

Shimmer Myr It doesn't look like much, but alongside Rakdos we can slap free creatures onto the stack just from our opponents whacking each other for some combat damage. And with 40+ creatures in the deck, flash for our creatures equals interaction.

Date added	3 years
Last updated	2 years
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	4 - 0 Mythic Rares 47 - 0 Rares 19 - 0 Uncommons 18 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.49
Tokens	Goat 0/1 W, Morph 2/2 C, Treasure