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1001 Biting Insects [Primer Included]

Commander / EDH BR (Rakdos) Counters Infect

BardofSnow

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Creature (23)

Sorcery (11)

Land (33)

Artifact (11)

Commander (1)

Commander: The Scorpion God

Enchantment (11)

Instant (10)

Maybeboard

Artifact (21)

Land (6)

Creature (18)

Sorcery (9)

Enchantment (13)

Instant (9)

Planeswalker (3)

Rakdos control using counters, enchantments and lots and lots of bugs. Originally built to round out a collection of decks my playgroup was using for the Hour of Devastation Gods, this has become easily one of my more difficult decks to pilot, but it does lead to a lot of interesting games. A key element to remember is that you are a scorpion, it is in your nature to sting everyone at the table, but make sure that you don't sting everyone too hard or too often, otherwise you might end up dead in the water for being to much a nuisance.

First and foremost; don't play Rakdos. Not having consistent mana ramp with a commander who's only worthwhile trait is an ability to slowly snipe indestructible creatures sucks. While Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons is technically a better card due to her spawning creatures with death touch, as well as being in a better color pairing, being able to not attack and put counters on creatures is a boon of sorts. If a Jund commander ever get's released with a counter / proliferate ability, or even a different version of The Scorpion God, this deck would be improved 10 fold.
Become a scorpion lurking in the sand. Your deck will eventually become a threat, but your goal is to simply be a nuisance using your commander. Slamming your commander as early as possible is always a great play, because in subsequent turns you can really start utilizing your ability to put counters on things to start generating draw, as well as being that general nuisance to all players who have creatures out. Normally you want to do this in response to someone attack, or other general problems, but most of the time you can hand-wave your counters as, "Hey, I just really need the draw when that creature dies".

A note; fast decks will usually make quick work of you. There isn't really a way to outspeed faster decks, so you'll just need to try and get your commander out and start sniping combo pieces.

Mana ramp is something that needs to happen in this deck, because late game, you'll be needing to start pumping those larger creatures your opponents are dropping with -1/-1 counters, and maybe doing the classic Black Sun's Zenith and/or to really wipe the board and generate bugs using Nest of Scarabs.

Our enchantments are our premier way to generate mana. Black Market & Revel in Riches are the best ways to generate mana in this deck. Your goal is to control the board state, and being able to generate mana while doing so is just icing on the cake to keep the board under control.

Braid of Fire is an MVP enchantment in this decklist, almost more so than the previous two. With the large amounts of ways to generate additional black mana, any additional source of red mana to pump into The Scorpion God is a great asset. Being able to snipe creatures before you leave your upkeep can generate you additional mana with Black Market and/or Revel in Riches for your main phase, depending on how much mana you have to spend and how many creatures you want to snipe.

Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth is the premier black mana fixing in multi-color decks. It is an auto-include to help make our life easier when trying to get to playing our beefy black creatures like Mikaeus.

Crypt Ghast is just a great card for generating value in black. Nirkana Revenant offers a similar effect at a higher mana cost, and one or both of them should be included in whatever version of this decklist you decide to run. Couple them with Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth and you have a recipe for large amounts of mana, with each land generating black.

Dockside Extortionist is the best way to keep you on pace with your opponents, while also fixing the mana you need. Someone played Mox Opal, Sol Ring, and Mana Crypt all on turn one? well good for you, you just ramped your mana to turn five. Sure you don't have as much raw mana as your opponent, but getting your commander out that much earlier can really help get the ball rolling on keeping their creatures down to size.

Pitiless Plunderer is a standout card to keep our mana fixed, makes our creatures dying worth our while, and helps make people think twice about swinging at you.

Burnished Hart & Solemn Simulacrum can help give us some additional land drops.

Leyline Tyrant does an amazing job at keeping our red mana from Braid of Fire around for our mainphase to help cast some other spells that we wouldn't be able to cast at instant speed.

Skyclave Relic is just a better Darksteel Ingot. Don't think about it too much. Sol Ring is dumb and I hate it. Everyone in my group is running it, but if your group has it banned, good on you. Thought Vessel is a nice two mana rock that keeps our hand nice and available if we get a large amount of card draw. Jet Medallion lowers the cost of all of our black cards, and since approximately 75% of the deck is black, this is a great way to accelerate our plays.

Phyrexian Altar and Ashnod's Altar are ways to give your creatures additional value, as well as giving you mana fixing, generating more counters in the right scenario, or helping control the board with mutual sacrifices through some of our enchantments.

There are a few cards that if you don't run them, this deck will not function. Nest of Scarabs, Blowfly Infestation, Everlasting Torment are all necessary to get the value you need and are essential to the gimmick. Enchantments that I would highly recommend (but are not necessarily 100% essential) are: Impact Tremors, Fervor, Braid of Fire, Black Market, Revel in Riches, and Crumbling Ashes.
Dictate of Erebos is very much dependent on your playgroup, and I would definitely say you could cut it for some other cards if you feel so included. Animate Dead isn't strictly necessary, but it's a very nice card to keep some good threats available after being sniped. It could be cut if you wanted to focus the deck down.
The Scorpion God is our god. Counters on a stick, large blocking ability, and he never stays dead long. Our whole deck is based around him, he is our lynchpin, and we will be very liberal with his ability.

Black Sun's Zenith is a great boardwipe or wincon depending on your boardstate. Excellent card to use for counters and renewable. Stigma Lasher, Corrosive Mentor, Everlasting Torment, Yawgmoth, Thran Physician, Blowfly Infestation, Incremental Blight, Phyrexian Crusader, Virulent Wound, Puncture Bolt, Skinrender, Hateflayer, Carnifex Demon, Midnight Banshee, Harbinger of Night, and Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon the cards we want to help keep those counters rolling. Control the board and good things will come to you.

Since we don't have access to green, we have a very few options for proliferating the counters we are putting on everything. Sword of Truth and Justice, Karn's Bastion, Yawgmoth, Thran Physician, Contagion Clasp and Contagion Engine are the easiest ways to consistently proliferate our counters. Grim Affliction & Volt Charge are two ways to proliferate at instant speed and at least one of these should be included in your decklist.
Reanimate, Animate Dead, and Chainer, Nightmare Adept are our only real forms of recursion in the deck. Since we usually have a pretty large card advantage because of our commander, Chainer is the perfect card to let us get, for an example, Hateflayer back from our graveyard, then attack with it. We can then untap, sniping another creature, drawing another card, and continuing to keep that sweet sweet advantage rolling.

Chainer, Nightmare Adept is also a perfect card in this deck. We normally have a a fistful of cards in our hand that we can pitch if he's out, to bring back some cards that have been countered, removed, etc. Bringing back a Hateflayer, Furystoke Giant or Mikaeus, the Unhallowed with haste can be a real game changer, especially since you can also discard that card the turn you want to cast it.

Underworld Breach is one of the most powerful cards printed in red that we can use for recursion, and I would recommend it in almost any version of this deck that you are running.

Considering that black is as black does, and card advantage is the name of our game, how do we generate card advantage? Using The Scorpion God our goal is simply to "sting" enemy creatures using their ability, and then have them swing at opponents, us, etc. and draw off that creature dying. If your opponents don't swing, then it does take longer to draw cards but you can eventually snipe them off the board using said ability, a different removal spell, or by swinging your own creatures. If your opponents tend to play smaller creatures, turn 6 is where it becomes this decks time to shine, where you can begin sniping creatures off the board, drawing cards, and potentially generating mana if you have the right pieces out.

A big issue with this is that The Scorpion God forces you to draw a card with it's ability, leading to instances where I have drawn upwards of 50 cards after sniping entire board states.

Other card draw options include Dusk Urchins; combo-ing well with our commander allowing us to draw a potential of 4 cards on death instead of the usual 3. Yawgmoth, Thran Physician can let you sack creatures you aren't using to help the up your counter game, as well as drawing you a card. Lastly is Solemn Simulacrum giving us a land on ETB, and drawing us a card on death, especially good with Yawgmoth mentioned above.

Grim Tutor, Vampiric Tutor, Gamble, Demonic Tutor, Diabolic Intent are the way we find our pieces are the correct times, and help accelerate our board state. I would heavily recommend running 3-5 tutors, and preferably, running 4-5. There are a large number or other tutor options available, I simply think that these 5 are the best ones our deck has available.
Infect is not my preferred method of victory, but it is a very viable one if the table starts to get away from you. Using Grafted Exoskeleton or Tainted Strike and then Chandra's Ignition with any creature, but preferably your commander, you can win the game in close to one blow. You can also use proliferate triggers along with Virulent Wound and Phyrexian Crusader to win this way, using Yawgmoth, Thran Physician is the easiest way to do this. There is also Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon to smack people hard and keep them down.
Nest of Scarabs + Blowfly Infestation + Blood Artist and/or Impact Tremors + any -1/-1 counter can lead to infinite damage against your opponents. This combo does require the generation of two bug to have the infinite start. So the board state would be; the two enchantments, blood artist, and two bugs. You play any card and generate a -1/-1 counter on bug #1, killing it. This generates another -1/-1 counter, which you place on bug #2. That generates bug #3. Bug #2 dies from the counter hitting it, sending it to the graveyard and placing the counter on the other bug. That generates bug #4. Rinse and repeat until your opponents are dead. You can also use this to draw any # of cards you want from your deck while your commander is out, but sadly you are forced to draw if your commander is out, so it's not the best option for this combo.

This combo can be used with Pitiless Plunderer to generate infinite treasure tokens, which can then in turn be used to cast your commander, wipe the board using counters, and then swinging for a victory, or simply drawing the rest of your death, killing your commander at instant speed, and then pinging everyone to death with Impact Tremors

An awkward win-con, that has been achieved only once during my playtime, requires Mikaeus, the Unhallowed with Furystoke Giant and cards to generate haste. This allows you to ping everyone to death; but since Furystoke gives other creatures that tap ability, you'll want either a way to generate bugs, or to give your creatures persist that are already out. This can also be a way to draw through your deck to find the win-cons you need to win.

We have another unique Mikaeus, the Unhallowed combo, featuring another key piece in the deck, Yawgmoth, Thran Physician. Having two other creatures out, preferably Massacre Wurm and Blood Artist, you will be able to sac Massacre Wurm to Yawgmoth, drawing a card and putting a counter on an enemy creature (the counter part is optional). It will come back with a +1/+1 counter. You then sac the Artist to Yawmoth, drawing a card and putting a -1/-1 counter on the Wurm, removing the undying +1/+1 counter. You can now rinse and repeat, sac'ing your creatures and killing your opponents board states with Massacre Wurm. Do remember, for every creature you sac, it will cost you 1 life, but this is a great way to wipe board states if your cards remain on the field. If you include Gray Merchant of Asphodel, you will be able to drain everyone to death as well. This is a combo that can be done with any 2 creatures, but Massacre Wurm and Gray Merchant of Asphodel are the most effective at wiping all other players in one go.

Mikaeus, the Unhallowed + Puppeteer Clique + Sac Outlet is a great way to steal things and win through stealing the important creatures that you have sniped. Fantastic little combo that can also draw you cards if you have your commander out.

Pesky opponents only playing large creatures? No problem! Necroskitter can steal your opponents creatures once they die, allowing you to swing right back at them with that pesky Void Winnower or It That Betrays. This is primarily what Crumbling Ashes is used in conjunction so that these problem cards become your playthings.

Kulrath Knight allows you to simply swing out after generating a large number of bugs, or simply using your commander or other creatures you've played. A great little card that can even make killing cards while Mikaeus, the Unhallowed is out worth it.

[Carnifex Demon], [Hateflayer], Insect Tokens, and [The Scorpion God] all give you very effective ways to swing for damage while you control the board state.

Balefire Dragon gets his own little paragraph at the bottom for how stand out he is. Give him wither? Congrats you just generated a board state while wiping your opponents. Doesn't have wither? You still wiped the board and probably drew some cards if your commander is out. Give him infect? No one will ever want to be your friend again.

Revel in Riches is a classic alternative win-con; working nicely with Pitiless Plunderer and Dockside Extortionist. Pitiless Plunderer also can generate infinite mana with the classic infinite bug combo.
Token spawning decks are putty in our hands. The Locust God is a far better commander than ours, but if one bug gets on the field, we can simply snipe it for three mana, or if a whole army is out and we need some wide removal, Blowfly Infestation can clear entire boards of smaller creatures or tokens.

Similarly, big creatures decks, depending on the style, can be dealt with relatively easily with our deck. It sometimes takes a while to lower the creatures on our opponents boards, but sometimes the other people at the table are willing to block or even start swinging at someone who played an Emrakul, the Promised End if you're lowering their power and toughness. Keep playing party politics in these situations so that people can target everyone but you until you start sniping these creatures to your board with Necroskitter.

Spellslinger decks tend to be more problematic than any other deck type, since our basic game-plan revolves around taking creatures integral their game-plan and then slowly removing them and making them less effective. While a lot of these decks do need to utilize one or two creatures to get their game-plans off, if they are able to take a turn while we don't have our mana accelerators, it can lead to a very quick endgame.

Similarly, Reanimator-style decks tend to be a bad match up for us, especially if you aren't running Leyline of the Void. We might snipe their creatures, but they usually have a way to bring them back, which can lead to additional card draw and other situations, but in a four player match, you can't always deal with their shenanigans immediately, and they can occasionally get a turn to pop-off.

Deck's designed to go fast and chew grass are typically something that will send you to pound town. As mentioned at the top the primer, you don't really have any particular options on how to deal with them, besides maybe Phyrexian Crusader as a nice early answer to help make sure you don't get hit by some annoying creatures. Basically, go for some on curve drops like Dusk Urchins, Soul Snuffers, etc. cast your commander, and start sniping their combo and speed pieces.

Lastly, Superfriends can be a pretty big problem. Running some removal spells like Vraska's Contempt isn't a terrible idea, but usually our deck simply struggles to remove the planeswalkers without swinging. If a SuperFriends deck can get rolling quickly, our deck usually has trouble catching up to stop the inevitable snowball.

These are the decks that we don't do great against, but we don't do bad against. Combos decks are a weird situation for us. If we can snipe certain combo pieces are the right time, we can roll over our opponents. If we can't, we get rolled over. Sounds pretty average on that front.

I'll be honest here; any deck running blue can make our life significantly more annoying since counterspells exist, and if they counter your Midnight Banshee, you'll just have to roll your eyes and pass, hoping to do something less optimal the next turn. Just make sure you look for opportunities to exploit the board state to play cards at the perfect time when they can't be countered. It's definitely a very cerebral match up.

Everything in the maybeboard is a card that I am either in the process of testing in some capacity, or is something that I think could fit in the deck in some capacity. I know the list is about as large as the deck itself, but if I'm being honest, there are quite a large number of cards that can be changed around in the deck depending on how you want to play it. As I refine the deck to a core list that can incorporate a few different game-plans and how best to get there, I will continue to add and remove cards from the list. As of 11/29 I have begun adding Stax pieces to the maybe board. While our deck needs to be mana-efficient to be able to work effectively, there are many other decks out there (and in my play group) that are just faster and more efficient at getting online. We are not attempting to control our opponents mana base per say, but being able to control the flow of the game for a few turns will give us that needed time to catch up with our opponents. I will continue to experiment with the list and update the primer accordingly. As for the pieces I think will see play in this deck; Trinisphere, Crawlspace, Koskun Falls, Smoke, and Tangle Wire are the most likely options.

11/4/2020

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Date added 5 years
Last updated 2 years
Legality

This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)

10 - 0 Mythic Rares

38 - 0 Rares

22 - 0 Uncommons

10 - 0 Commons
Cards 100
Avg. CMC 3.07
Tokens Copy Clone, Goat 0/1 W, Insect 1/1 B, Treasure
Folders EDH Ideas
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