You there. Behind the glasses. Wanna play a control deck? And no, it doesn't have blue. Or white? I see your smile on your face. Well, it's time - time for your nightmare to begin! A deck designed to be pretty radical, new and revolutionary, it's Rakdos Control. It tries to kill creatures, and it does so fairly well. The deck can be mainly divided up into 4 parts: Win Conditions, Kill Cards, Lands, and Card advantage.
Lands:
I run 5 Mountains and 7 Swamps, along with 4 Shocklands and 4 Scrylands. The four
Mutavault
help to keep up the pressure and can occasionally block.
Kill Cards:
These cards make up the bulk of the nonland cards. We have
Anger of the Gods which is extremely useful when the opponent has 2-3 creatures out. It also doesn't kill my own creatures.
Devour Flesh is useful against those pesky nontargetable cards or protection cards...or sacrifice cards... you get the idea.
Doom Blade wrecks. 2 mana, and a creature is gone. Still Smiling?
Dreadbore is another 2-mana kill spell. While it is unfortunately a sorcery, it does take down planeswalkers, and just is generally annoying. Wonderful card, so we run 3.
What would a black removal deck be without Hero's Downfall? It's extremely difficult to get a planeswalker out against this deck.
Magma Jet is an extremely fun, cheap, and useful card. Kills a lot of stuff.
Card Advantage:
Rakdos's Return wins games. Over and Over again. Why? Not because it does damage, but it destroys hands. I usually drop it with around 5-6 mana, as an opponent will typically have a 3-4 card hand, forcing them to discard their entire hand. Considering their lands are probably already played, that's 3-4 cards that I don't have to deal with.
Read the Bones - I've had games where I've been waiting for this card more than any other. It's one of the strongest black commons in standard right now, and scrying 2, drawing 2 is extremely good, particularly for a deck that gets a little low sometimes.
Thoughtseize - Turn 1 and your best card is gone. Pass!
Slaughter Games
- I LOVE THIS CARD. A lot of other people don't like this card, but getting rid of their best card is incredibly useful. How else does one kill AEtherling?
Win Conditions:
Chandra, Pyromaster - it definitely doesn't finish games and is more of a utility planeswalker, but it has the ability to help finish games, and card draw is always nice.
Desecration Demon - 6 damage turn 5 can usually finish the game by turn 7ish. One of the reasons I really like this deck is that it's much faster than Azorius or Esper Control.
Master of Cruelties - A full-discard Rakdos's Return and then a next-turn MOC gives the opponent 2 cards to survive.
Stormbreath Dragon - very quick card that finishes health really fast. Even though I mess with the opponent's hand a lot, the card is still extremely useful.
Sideboard:
Dark Betrayal for those pesky black decks... which is about half of them. I couldn't pass up on a one-mana killspell.
Devour Flesh - Hexproof? Indestructible? OK.
Doom Blade - If they're not running special creatures, black creatures, or planeswalkers, there's really not a reason to keep some other cards in the deck over this one.
Duress - works against more or less every midrange/Control deck, so we sideboard 3.
Pithing Needle - for Control Decks that have planeswalkers or AEtherling, I enjoy stopping them.
Rise of the Dark Realms - I love this card. Really against most midrange decks and the occasional slow aggro deck.
Shock - This deck does poorly against faster decks, and Shock is better than some of the more expensive killspells.
Stormbreath Dragon - Protection from white wrecks a lot of decks.
Thoughtseize - I <3 Thoughtseize
Underworld Connections - against control decks, UC works better than Read the Bones, typically.
