Roally, I am also curious about your thoughts on Phyrexian Tower. I've been trying it out as a replacement for Peat Bog. I've found Peat Bog to be very frustrating. Most of the time when I draw it, I have a bunch of fast-mana I want to drop on turn 1 so that I can complete my combo by turn 2-3. To take advantage of Peat Bog I need to play it turn 1 but, I find that it often gets in the way of dropping my artifacts. The most frustrating thing I have experienced so far with Phyrexian Tower is getting locked out of a black mana when I need one because I didn't draw a creature or any colored fast-mana. After about 100 games it feels like Phyrexian Tower has roughly the same % drawback as Peat Bog.

Is Peat Bog there with any specific intent in mind or is it there as your "best land available at last" type of deal? I'm asking this question because there are certain lands that I'd use over it and Lake of the Dead, like the somewhat new Luxury Suite and even cards like Exotic Orchard and Reflecting Pool.

I do have some issues with the filler Artifacts that you are using, though I have yet to do my own research to see if there are any superior options.

Great list nonetheless!

Lake of the Dead is your very best piece of ramp. If you drop a Swamp T1 and T2, a T3 Lake of the Dead is going to net you 6 Black Mana for the turn. That's more than enough to play Doomsday and combo out with Grenzo, Dungeon Warden.

SamsWrath, I'm with you on Mox Amber, it's just so much better and rarely is it an awkward card. You haven't quite sold me on Shadowblood Egg, but I totally respect your line of reasoning and I'm interested to see the results of your testing.

NRipHD, As Sam said, Lake of the Dead is one of the very best lands in the deck. It is an "all-or-nothing" card, so some players are hesitant to run it, but we're playing one of the most "all-or-nothing" decks in the format. The trade-off is well worth it.

DexztrO, Treasonous Ogre is one of those cards I've wanted to test, but never quite got around to try it out. In theory it seems great; it makes our Mimic/Redcap pile only require 4 pieces (Bottom-to-Top: Ogre, Sac-Outlet, Mimic, Redcap), but at the expense of 18 life to generate the mana off Ogre to complete the pile. If you are at or below 36 life when you cast Doomsday, you can't do this line, and we are almost always below 36 life. Additionally, because life is important to us, taking 4 off of Ad Nauseam is actually a big deal. I recently had a game where I Ad Nauseam'd all the way to 8 life from about 35 and didn't have a winning hand because I hit so many 3cmc cards along the way. It happens, but it's a huge factor in why we try to actively reduce the deck's average cmc. Finally, I'm not sure if Overeager Apprentice is the right cut. Being able to generate multiple black mana is more important to us than red mana when it comes to casting Doomsday and Ad Nauseam.

First things first, I am a Rakdos mage at heart. Love the deck, got me back into cedh and have been beating people with it consistently, absolutely my playstyle. I obviously had to make my own changes to perfectly make it fit my exact playstyle but I wanted to make some suggestions on a few cards here and there. I typically play with people playing top tier decks, Hulk decks along with variations, Yidris storm and whatnot. I have found that copy spells can grant TONS of value (Fork and Reverberate being the two best ones even though the double red can be annoying to cast at CERTAIN times). I personally use them to copy a counterspell to let my spell resolve or help out another player trying to counter something, copy a ramp spell and sometimes to copy someone else's DDay and use Grenzo in response to anything to pull off my combo winning. At the very least, you can copy a removal spell of yours or someone else's to get something else gone that affects you, get a counter out of their hand, copy their draw spell or copy a tutor you cast or someone else's (I prefer the latter of the two). What do you think about them and have you tested it yourself? They are not in my version right now, I need to test it more to get a complete understanding of how often it can be beneficial.

Cough cough Cruel Tutor, just realized you are not running it.

Snuff Out's cmc is higher than the deck wants to run. It has an excellent alternative cost but, the deck wants to stay away from as many cards over 3cmc as possible because of Ad Nauseam. I tested Cruel Tutor for a while and it's just too slow. For 3cmc putting the searched card on top of the library and paying life feels like a steep cost. I'd rather just pay 4cmc and use a Diabolic Tutor which, isn't making the case for Cruel Tutor look good. With regard to Fork and Reverberate there are a couple issues. If you play a few hundred games with this deck you'll notice that you have 2 regularly occurring mana issues: 1) getting at least 1 red to cast Grenzo, Dungeon Warden and 2) getting 3 black to cast Doomsday. Fork and Reverberate both operate outside the easily obtainable colors/amounts of mana needed to make Fork and Reverberate effective. They are also both somewhat situational because if there's nothing good to copy then you're sitting on a dead card. Personally, when it comes to countering a counter, I would rather stick with Pyroblast, Red Elemental Blast and Burnout. They have a smaller life impact when you Ad Nauseam and they are a LOT easier to cast in a pinch. This deck is very tight on mana--you may not even have that extra red you need to fire off a Fork or Reverberate to copy a counter spell when you need it.

I do agree with what you said on Cruel Tutor SamsWrath, but on Fork and Reverberate I don't, I consistently find myself being able to get the mana needed considering a few changes to land still heavily favoring black. In my personal play group where the game becomes slow after turn 4 due to everyone playing blue reliant decks if I have not won the game by then or them in turn. I have found value from running it by taking out board wipe since my play groups ALSO play so few creatures. I believe it is more of a play group sort of thing.

Shadow_XD can you share your list?

I love the deck!! I’m a massive doomsday fan so the idea of doing doomsday without needing lab man is kinda foreign to me. But I was wondering: if their purpose is for the doomsday turn generally, why not Workhorse as a better way to fix your mana (I know the ability costs colorless but it would help as a backup plan). Also, are there any viable lines with Goblin Chieftain and Mad Auntie for protection piles or something? Idk just was considering

Apcooper32 Workhorse used to be in the deck, but was taken out because the cmc of 6 hurts us too badly off of Ad Nauseam. It's also not very castable on its own if you're trying to win manually.

Has anyone looked into running Judith, the Scourge Diva in place of Mogg Raider or Goblin Sledder? She does the same thing as the goblins in our Kiki piles, but is more flexible since it has that Goblin Sharpshooter -like ability stapled onto it. I don't know of anything that combos with it at the moment, but I like that a potential line is open.

Hey there, I am doing a bit of research on The more competitive decks out there for my Stax deck.

• So the first question is: what kind of "Stax" or "Hate cards" would shut this deck down or make it impossible for you to win under certain singular or combined Effects?

• And the second question is about Sanctum Prelate as I am trying to gather as much information about the stopping power of calling specific CMC with this card vs certain strategies, Would you consider CMC ,, or CMC to be more effective here to disrupt your gameplan?

Kiyomei

• The two most effective ways to shut down this deck is by preventing us from tutoring or prevent us from using Grenzo. To stop us from tutoring, the universal best answer is Aven Mindcensor . I have lost several games because I cast Doomsday and someone else responded by flashing in Mindcensor, neutering my deck. Even playing Mindcensor preemptively can work well, but know that we run ~7 cards that can kill it before we try to combo. The better option is to prevent us from using Grenzo's ability. The two most effective options here are Cursed Totem and Linvala, Keeper of Silence . Not only to those two prevent us from comboing with Grenzo, they also stop us from manually comboing since all our combos require activated abilities of creatures. Another approach to stopping Grenzo is to just never let him resolve long enough to activate his ability. Countering him, killing him upon resolution, or naming him with Meddling Mage all work. Gravehate can also stop Grenzo, but you have to be careful. Rest in Peace / Leyline of the Void DON'T stop Grenzo. His ability doesn't care what zone the card is in, it just puts it into play if it is a creature with power less than Grenzo's. Grafdigger's Cage will work, since it forces creatures entering the battlefield to check where they come from. As a neat side note, Rest in Peace allows Grenzo to bypass Grafdigger's Cage, since the creature's are entering from exile, not the graveyard. TL;DR Run Aven Mindcensor and Cursed Totem / Linvala, Keeper of Silence

• Sanctum Prelate actually doesn't do much against the combos in this deck since they are all creature-based. If you can cast Prelate by turn 1-2, it'd be best to choose since 1/4th of our deck is 1 CMC and not casting those spells will slow us down significantly. If you can't get it down early and we are able to tutor/setup a bit, you're best option is to choose . The main benefit to choosing 3 is that it prevents us from casting Doomsday, but it'll turn off 4 of our removal pieces that get rid of Prelate ( Toxic Deluge , Fire Covenant , Dismember , and Chaos Warp ). Additionally, it prevents us from casting other powerful spells like Necropotence , Wheel of Fortune , and Yawgmoth's Will , further keeping us locked down.

Thanks Roally for the In-Depth reply!!! Clay_Puppington seems to have gone inactive :).

Is Paradise Mantle better than Springleaf Drum, being 0 CMC and can help ease out the deck's average cmc for Ad Nauseam?

chopsueyrice, a creature with summoning sickness cannot activate Paradise Mantle whereas Springleaf Drum can convert a colorless into a Black the same turn a creature enters play.

YAY!!! Welcome back!

Nice to meet you & Welcome back! I'm looking forward to the update :-)

Welcome back! Clay_Puppington

Hi! I love your decklist, I adopted it and have since made a few edits. Please let me know your thoughts.

Plunge into Darkness > Shred Memory

I find Plunge into Darkness too unreliable and I don't like losing a combo piece. I'd rather transmute into doomsday using Shred Memory.

Praetor's Grasp > Tainted Pact

I am not a fan of a 3 to cast disruption, so I'm slotting in another pseudo tutor. Added a few snow covered lands to lessen Tainted Pact misses.

Mogg Raider > Undying Evil

I'm good with Goblin Sledder as my only +1/+1 sac outlet. Undying Evil can be a surprise game winner.

Springleaf Drum > Prismatic Lens

Culling the Weak > Whiplflare

Diabolic Intent > Dark Petition

There are times when these are dead cards as there are not enough creatures in the deck (even with 12). Prismatic Lens is a slower but more reliable ramp, Whipflare to kill elves and Dark Petition is usually a 2CMC colorless Demonic Tutor leaving you with the all important BBB to cast Doomsday.

Graven Cairns > Gemstone Caverns

Because of the new London mulligan. And it's fun.

In addition, what do you think of Grim Monolith and Mox Amber? (btw I have removed Shred Memory since it cannot find Doomsday)

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/1718909#paper

$25 budget as an honorable mention. (Not mine)

In your no kiki-jiki stack you require BBB + 3 mana, but you can do it with BBB + 2 mana using Workhorse .

Hi MakeShiftDie thanks for popping by. Myself and my group have tested a lot of your suggestions (although, in my absence, my primers a little behind on the new cards), so I'll try to go through them.

Shred, as you said in your followup, fails to grab DD, so it was a cut, although we did have it in there for awhile.

Tainted Pact has always been to us a very expensive Pay 2 Draw Swamps. While my personal deck runs more snow swamps, and we're slowly filtering them out with all the new lands coming out, it's still never really drawn us. That said, I will give it another test run and see if there's something worth cutting. While none of us are really happy with Praetors, Praetors allows us to steal rituals/another DD, etc etc, if ours goes south. Although, if I recall my notes, Grasp is always on the chopping block.

Springleaf was brought in to replace another card we replaced Prismatic lens with if I recall that period. Our colour needs for RB are still great, and because the deck was original built to race (prior to all the 4Colour commanders and flash/turbo variants) being able to tap Grenzo himself to feed the BBB or RB requirements for our wincomes was always viable. Lens create colourless was often dead for us, and having to filter to colour didn't help the race. I'm happy to retry it, but I've almost always been happy with Springleaf since it's addition.

Undying Evil is actually something I've started running in my own meta again (you can note the changelog, as we actually ran it for awhile, and I think it's also in my meta-card swaps list section too). I wouldn't cut Raider for it, just for reliability but, if your finding that it's not been much of a hassle, more power to you. If I recall, I've removed Grasp in my own deck, as Grasp doesn't swing the game in my fixed meta, but undying is always usable for me.

Culling the Weak is a big card in my books, and it's not something i'd consider cutting. We need that BBB, and a card that let's us pitch a creature, to essentially make our doomsday cost has always been a winner. That said, if your meta is heavy on weenies, it's probably not the worst to add more removal in. I've actually just cut Pyroclasm too, as sweepers have been underperforming lately.

Graven has always proven a great way to filter Red Rituals/Creature Sac R mana into BB for us, although Gemstone is a great card.

That said, with the new London Mulligan on the horizon, our deck should get much stronger, as it seems to favor decks with a single card wincon strategy. I'm always concerned with big sweeping changes due to other decks that are frankly better positioned in the online meta that Grenzo likely benefiting more than we do.

Thanks for your suggestions though. I've made some changes you can view in the changelog, and I will retest a few of the cards you've brought up again. The meta has changed in my absence, so if someone is telling me they're having better luck with card swaps, despite my initial thoughts I've outlined above, I'll always test them out again.