We know what RDW looks like, but what about the archetype in Black? What powers does the realm of rot hold in modern?
This is a budget deck, and part of the design intent was this: how do you mess up a game-plan most thoroughly for the expensive decks? I've always resented the feeling I get that games are decided not by how you would build a deck, but by how much you can afford to drop on a deck. Money shouldn't make your opponent roll over, and all the money in the world doesn't matter if everything you have is in the graveyard (or exiled in the dredge matchup). Even emrakul is useless if you can't cast it in the first place.
Feedback wanted: Land count review, I'm not certain sitting here with the 22, it does mean lots of fuel, but with no ramp it's hard to know. Suggestions for land count and/or ramp are appreciated.
This is intended to be an ultra-budget modern legal deck that doesn't care about interacting with opponents, and can hopefully stand toe-to-toe with decks twice its price. The goal here is to run the most linear game possible, without regard to what your opponent is playing. This is what I believe Burn/rdw looks like in black.
Notes on piloting the deck:
Use Duress early, and keep things like Wrench Mind or Funeral Charm for after you've burned through duress. Play order matters with Duress due to limitations on what you can pick out of their hand (duress into wrench mind has them avoid tossing your duress targets first, for example, and duress can pick out artifacts ensuring that you get full value from wrench mind).
Another point I want to bring up is that most offensive discard effects in magic are sorcery speed, you don't have much interaction in this deck, and that includes the fact that if your opponent goes to topdeck mode, your only options to provide a discard during their turn will be Geier Reach Sanitarium and Funeral Charmso consider this as you thin their hand. If they enter topdeck mode, half this deck is unusable until they have something in hand. That can make affinity a harder matchup. If your opponent dumps their entire hand early, side in Quest for the Nihil Stone and extra shrieking afflictions.
geth's grimore is a triggered ability, so remember that triggers don't interrupt the resolution of the active card, so if you were to play Dark Deal you would not take the draws prior to dumping your hand for dark deal's effect (and wheeling-1), after that you get to choose to draw for the opposing discards from Dark Deal. This means dark deal is one of the most situational pieces.
Card choices:
Surgical Extraction would be a 4-of were it not $20/copy.
Yes Megrim is slower, but it's essentially copy 5-8 of Liliana's Caress so I'm including it. If you have 2-3 of such effects out it makes every discard that much more painful.
Hissing Miasma is one of my favorite cards, and if you see a lot of zoo/creature-based-aggro you may want to run a playset (or something else that punishes them for attacking you).
Wit's End is an edge case, because by the time you could cast it, it's often a very expensive way to discard 1-2 cards, and you should have won already. If you rebuild for mana ramp that changes but that seems like a heavy card investment for modern imo.
I haven't included more expensive lands, yes cabal coffers has synergy with swamps, but other than wit's end (which I consider an edge case already) nothing in here is going to cost enough to justify that. (again, budget was a priority, I presume people ready to drop 250+ on a deck aren't reading by this point)
Waste Not is fantastic value-added chocolate sauce and marshmallows on top of our strategy, but it's a "winmore" and that's why it's in the maybeboard.
Thoughtseize is not bad in any case I can think of but the usefulness in this particular deck is limited in my view, since you have so many other ways to thin your opponent's hand. If you want to increase the price of the deck by $40-60 for an upgraded Duress, be my guest, but I don't run it in my copy.
You'll note the Grey merchant of asphodel + conjurer's closet setup is absent. I don't think it's really worth it as the setup is pretty heavy and has you devoting up to 8 card slots to a 2-3 damage per turn combo. If you wanted to run around with Closet/merchant, you'd want to make very different choices in order to have etb-creatures being the main focus, so I don't include this in the deck, as much as I love Merchant.
The sideboard is highly meta-dependent, as usual. I wouldn't drop the Despise count any lower (though increasing it probably isn't a bad idea). You might want to cut hissing miasma or disfigure for it, depending on your meta. (miasma is useless with infect, disfigure is useless if they're on tokens, etc)
The rest of the maybeboard are things that either didn't make the cut for my meta, or were too expensive (mana wise) to feel that they were worth the effect. In a few cases they're equal and I left them out in favor of things I had on hand. It would be fun to find a place for Rakdos Cackler in here too, but I'm uncertain of where to put it.
Note that you cannot combine Tendrils of Despair with Augur of Skulls to have the opponent discard 4, that's double dipping.
