On the chopping block:

Bitterblossom (too slow)Scorched Earth (dead draw early game)Rix Maadi, Dungeon Palace (CMC too expensive)Temple of Malice (too many ETB tapped lands)

@elephantambush Hi there, just saw this list up on reddit (I think I've seen this list before?) and I'm quite interested in some of the card choices:
- I see you have the black rituals but why none of the red one? (I'm talking about Desperate Ritual, Rite of Flame etc) the deck seems to have enough red cards for these to be solid inclusions. Also why Inner Fire? I understand how you want to have a decent hand size via TSG, but you're only getting about 1-3 red mana so wouldn't the rituals be better?
- I'm not a fan of giving your opponents resources, but Mana Flare can backfire extremely hard (trust me, there's always someone who'll benefit more from this than you) I would replace it with Braid of Fire (bit slow so might not be the best choice tho) or with Caged Sun, or just another red ritual.
- TBH I think the first outlet should be replaced with Walking Ballista, I mean you've already got half the mike combo (NB: since ur at infinite TSG acts a sac outlet) in there, Exsanguinate and Walking Ballista can both be countered but rakdos has more ways to get back creatures from the graveyard than opposed to sorceries (red has some janky ones).
- for board clear Fire Covenant can do work here (life is just a resource) its acts as a one side clear or removal for threatening targets.
- Kozilek, Butcher of Truth > Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre
- you'll definitely need more than just reanimation spell, just having Animate Dead isn't really enough (especially since there are bearly any tutors, and this deck relies too heavily on drawing into the combo) Dance of the Dead, and Necromancy should be included in case animate dead gets countered or exiled (trust me it more often happens when your opponents know you're going for worldgorger).
- This is list seems to require TSG on the field to function, so adding in protection (eg Imp's Mischief) for the commander would be a must.
- Faithless Looting and Cathartic Reunion?
Either way, I'll leave my list if you're interested in looking for some things to improve or add (it's more of a competitive list but includes many ways to protect TSG which I think your list lacks) Scorpion god combo (CEDH)

@DiabolicEsper - Thanks for the feedback man.

On the red rituals - The black rituals can both net me 2+ mana on use, while the red ones you mentioned only net me 1, which I don't feel is a big enough payoff for the card slot. Inner Fire is more of a followup mana source for when I've had a big draw off sweeping creatures off the board, in order to provide me with a little more steam to keep going. If I have 15+ cards in hand, suddenly Inner Fire is a lot more attractive.

On Mana Flare vs Braid of Fire. I'm still not sold on Mana Flare. In the playtesting I've been doing, it has been doing as much or more work for my opponents as it has for me; I just haven't got around to re-evaluating the deck since then. I might play around with some symmetrical discard or something, since having mana flare out at that point might work out more in my favour (not much point in my opponents having 16 mana available in T8 if they only have 1 card in hand!), but I'm still trying to dial in on the ramp requirements of the deck. So far I've been finding the biggest holdup in executing the combo is simply my available mana, so I need to find reasonably costed cards that can ramp me to where I need to be.

Braid would be in if I had more ways to take advantage of Upkeep phase mana, but it feels like it would be a bit of a dead card in the current incarnation of the deck, unfortunately. Caged Sun, while being good, is also incredibly expensive (6CMC), and I already feel pretty 'heavy' around the 5-6CMC part of the curve. In an ideal game, I'd want to be executing the combo T6 or 7, so sinking my entire T6 into Caged Sun isn't ideal. I'd be looking for efficient mana creation at 4CMC or less, since the first 4 turns are where I want to be ramping and creating tokens.

Walking Ballista would be a great card for the deck. It's mainly been excluded for budget reasons.

Fire Covenant could be an option for sure. I'll probably do some playtesting with it to see how it performs. Of concern, is the fact that there could potentially be more creatures in play than I have life, which wouldn't allow me to use it as a sweeper. Though it's not like I couldn't kill some of the board to draw enough cards to find a 'real' sweeper, so that's probably a non-issue. I'll have to look into that one.

I prefer Ulamog. He gives me a way to interact with enchantments if I need to, and I really shouldn't need Kozileks draw in this kind of deck. Honestly, his CMC isn't really a big deal, since 99% of the reason he's in the deck is to allow me to recycle my graveyard back to library in order to prevent decking myself on big draws, so I don't expect to cast him very often.

Having backups for Animate Dead probably isn't a bad idea. I'd prefer not to make the deck too focussed on the infinite combo. While my playgroup are fairly competitive in spirit, we're still aiming for fun games that everyone feels like they got to participate in. I don't want to be infinite combo'ing every game,so would prefer to treat is as more of circumstantial win condition.

I probably should look at some kind of protection for TSG. An earlier version of the deck had Swiftfoot Boots/Lightning Greaves, but I cut them to fit some other stuff in. I'll have to think about re-adding them, or similar protection.

Regarding Looting/Reunion; I could add them, but it feels like I'd just be doubling up on something I can already do from the command zone, which I try to avoid when I can. They do have some nice synergy with some of my discard-related effects, but beyond that, I think I'd rather focus on reliably executing "the plan".

On the whole, playtesting has been productive, but the deck still needs work. The biggest issue has been making sure I have enough mana on the turn that I need it. The limits of my budget don't do me any favours, since I'm not in a position to pick up the more expensive tutors or better mana rocks that would help smooth things out, so I'm kinda working with what's affordable, curve friendly, and efficient, at the minute. I also feel like if I was prepared to build purely to win, regardless of my playgroups feelings, I'd at least experiment with symmetrical discard to see how it panned out, and I'd probably include some stax-like effects to try and slow the pace of the game down and help me reach that combo flashpoint. I've kinda given up on updating the deck for the time being though. I'm running some less than ideal token generators simply because they're capable of generating 2+ tokens/turn, so it feels like it won't be feasible until Rakdos get some better ways to pop tokens into play.

At some point I'll come back to it and do a proper re-evaluation, because I think he's a seriously interesting commander to build around, but it might not be for a while, sadly.