Sideboard


Hello internet, my name is Blue, and welcome to my deck tech over Rakdos Arcanist in modern! I've been playing with this deck for quite some time now, long before Ikoria was released, so I thought I'd give you guys a breakdown into one of my favorite modern decks of all time. We're going to break the list up into four sections; the discard package, the removal package, the graveyard package, and finally, the pyromancer package. After that, we'll discuss the lands and finally sideboard. Without any further ado, let's get into it with the simplest of them all, the discard package!

This section is fairly straightforward and easy to remember, so we'll spend very little time here. This is where your basic discard spells are found, like Thoughtseize and Inquisition of Kozilek. There's also Kolaghan's Command for discard, though it's most often used as a Raise Dead + Shock.
This section is also relatively basic, as it's home to all the removal spells the deck has access to. Most commonly, and most expected, is Lightning Bolt and Fatal Push. In addition to four copies of both of those, there are also two copies of Angrath's Rampage and three copies of the aforementioned Kolaghan's Command. All of these spells combined give us a solid, well-rounded removal package that can easily overpower any early game aggressive deck like Humans or midrange deck like Jund. Sometimes we suffer against control, but we'll talk about that later when we go over the sideboard.
This section is the meat and potatoes of the entire deck and where most of the fun is had. For starters, there are four copies of Unearth, which can be used to reanimate the next card we'll talk about as well as every card in the last section of the deck (the pyromancer package.) Plus, it can be cycled when it's bad so there's virtually no harm in running it! Next, there are four copies of Dreadhorde Arcanist, the namesake card of the entire deck. Did you notice the majority of the deck is at 1 converted mana cost, or CMC for short? This isn't just because you want all your spells to be as mana efficient as possible in modern. This is also because they can be flashed back with Arcanist so you can continually pressure your opponent's hand with discard, keep killing their board with removal, or reuse Unearth's to reanimate your graveyard again and again to run your opponent out of resources. It's like a repeatable Snapcaster Mage in this deck! Lastly, as if we weren't abusing the graveyard enough, we also have two copies of Chandra, Acolyte of Flame. I very rarely uptick her in this deck, but her second ability can pressure our opponent's life total on a relatively difficult-to-kill planeswalker and her -2 can act as an actual Snapcaster Mage since it can also flashback Angrath's Rampage and Kolaghan's Command that we talked about earlier, as well as some cards out of the sideboard we'll talk about later. When I first built this deck, I originally didn't have Chandra. Instead, I was playing Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger but he just wasn't putting up the results I was expecting. So I made the switch and I've never been more impressed by a card in any deck than I have been with Chandra in this one. She's a powerhouse that should never go overlooked.
As we come to a close on discussing the main deck, let's go over the final package. This one consists of only two different cards with four copies of each. The first of the two is Young Pyromancer, nicknamed Young Peezy by me and my peers. The deck hosts a whopping 24 instant or sorcery spells with all but five of them at 1 CMC, meaning Peezy here can generate a lot of value over the course of a game if left unchecked. Not to mention she can be reanimated with Unearth for even more value throughout the game. The second creature here is Seasoned Pyromancer, or as I've seen her called, Spyro. When she enters the battlefield, she allows you to do a reverse Faithless Looting to discard two cards, then draw two cards. If you discarded nonland cards, you create elemental tokens to attack or block with. If you weren't sold on her yet, she also has an ability to exile herself from the graveyard to make more elemental tokens, and she can be reanimated with the aforementioned Unearth to repeatedly use her enter-the-battlefield trigger. Probably the best part about her though is you draw two cards regardless of whether you discard cards, so often times she just reads "draw two cards" in the lategame! How absurd is that?! These two cards are definitely the easiest ways to win the game against midrange and stay in the game against control.
Lastly, for the main deck, we need to quickly go over the land. For the most part, it's your typical modern mana base. Bloodstained Mire and Marsh Flats for fetches, Blood Crypt for shocks, and Blackcleave Cliffs as a fast land. As for basics, they're weighted towards Swamps for two reasons. First, the list is playing two copies of Castle Lochtwain so the swamps are to help them enter untapped as often as possible and there are two copies of Blood Moon in the sideboard, so we play more swamps to not lock ourselves out of the game when we bring it in.
In the last section of the day, the sideboard is where we can make our bad matches better and make our good matches virtually unlosable. I'm gonna break this up into three parts: "The Good", "The Bad", and "The Ugly."
The Good is our best matches. I don't believe I've ever lost against a fair, midrange or aggro deck like Jund or Humans. In a game of trading resources 1-for-1, this deck can reuse so much of its resources that decks that don't use their graveyard that much have a difficult time keeping up. In these matches, hardly any changes need to be made. I usually cut a couple graveyard pieces in anticipation of graveyard hate and bring in extra removal like Flame Slash and Anger of the Gods. We also have a good matchup against artifact decks since we have five main deck cards to deal with them, plus Rakdos Charm in the board to help as well.
The Bad is some of our unfavorable matches in game one, but get significantly better after sideboards. This consists mostly of fast combo decks that can combo off through mild disruption. A single Thoughtseize isn't going to stop Storm from going off, so we generally can't beat them game one unless our opening hand is overloaded with discard spells. For these matches, we take out most of our removal and late-game stuff like Kolaghan's Command and Fatal Push for additional discard spells with Collective Brutality and combo hate pieces like Extirpate. In any other deck, you'd want these to be Surgical Extraction, but in this deck where they're both free to flashback with Arcanist, the best bet is the one that can't be responded to.
The Ugly consists of our matches that are nearly unwinnable game one and get barely better after sideboards. These are mostly big-mana decks like Tron and hyper-aggressive aggro decks that can still win through removal like Burn. I've never beaten Tron before sideboards and I've only beaten it twice after side with the help of Blood Moon on the play. Tron is almost completely unwinnable for this deck so I've accepted it and decided not to dedicate too many sideboard slots to it in favor of helping our Bad matches get better instead of Tron. As for Burn and similar decks, I've recently added Dragon's Claw's to the board to try and help make that match a little better, but if it doesn't do much, I'll be switching it back to the third Collective Brutality and a second Flame Slash.
That's the deck! What did you think of it? Do you have any thoughts of your own or any questions about certain card choices? Let me know below in the comments or if you want to support my Magic career, follow my twitter and tell me there!

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Casual

97% Competitive

Date added 4 years
Last updated 4 years
Legality

This deck is Modern legal.

Rarity (main - side)

10 - 0 Mythic Rares

23 - 9 Rares

19 - 6 Uncommons

2 - 0 Commons

Cards 60
Avg. CMC 1.74
Tokens Elemental 1/1 R
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