Greven, Hyper Aggressive Suicide Aggro

Commander / EDH Aggro BR (Rakdos) Competitive Lifegain Suicide Black

jajkannarr

Artifact (23)

• 1x Arcane Signet
• 1x Basilisk Collar
• 1x Charcoal Diamond
• 1x Chrome MoxGC
• 1x Commander's Sphere
• 1x Fellwar Stone
• 1x Fire Diamond
• 1x Jeweled Lotus
• 1x Key to the City
• 1x Lotus Petal
• 1x Mana Crypt
• 1x Mana VaultGC
• 1x Mind Stone
• 1x Mox Opal
• 1x Rakdos Signet
• 1x Shadowspear
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Star Compass
• 1x Swiftfoot Boots
• 1x Talisman of Indulgence
• 1x Thought Vessel
• 1x Vorrac Battlehorns
• 1x Worn Powerstone

Creature (14)

• 1x Ball Lightning
• 1x Blood Celebrant
• 1x Dockside Extortionist
• 1x Generator Servant
• 1x Immolating Souleater
• 1x Kediss, Emberclaw Familiar
• 1x Lightning Skelemental
• 1x Mischievous Poltergeist
• 1x Moltensteel Dragon
• 1x Rekindling Phoenix
• 1x Simian Spirit Guide
• 1x Treasonous Ogre
• 1x Volcano Hellion
• 1x Wall of Blood

Land (30)

• 1x Arid Mesa
• 1x Badlands
• 1x Blackcleave Cliffs
• 1x Blood Crypt
• 1x Bloodstained Mire
• 1x Canyon Slough
• 1x Command Beacon
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Dragonskull Summit
• 1x Lantern-Lit Graveyard
• 1x Luxury Suite
• 1x Marsh Flats
• 5x Mountain
• 1x Polluted Delta
• 1x Scalding Tarn
• 1x Shizo, Death's Storehouse
• 1x Smoldering Marsh
• 5x Swamp
• 1x Tainted Peak
• 1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
• 1x Verdant Catacombs
• 1x Wooded Foothills

Sorcery (10)

• 1x Chandra's Ignition
• 1x Demonic TutorGC
• 1x Essence Harvest
• 1x Feed the Swarm
• 1x Gamble
• 1x Grim Tutor
• 1x Jeska's WillGC
• 1x Phyrexian Purge
• 1x Rite of Consumption
• 1x Wheel of Misfortune

Commander (1)

Instant (18)

• 1x Blessing of Belzenlok
• 1x Bolt Bend
• 1x Cabal Ritual
• 1x Dark Ritual
• 1x Deflecting Swat
• 1x Dismember
• 1x Fire Covenant
• 1x Fling
• 1x Not of this World
• 1x Plunge into Darkness
• 1x Pyroblast
• 1x Red Elemental Blast
• 1x Rush of Vitality
• 1x Snuff Out
• 1x Soul's Fire
• 1x Unexpected Fangs
• 1x Valakut Awakening  ^Flip
• 1x Vampiric TutorGC

Enchantment (4)

• 1x Kaya's Ghostform
• 1x Necropotence
• 1x Unspeakable Symbol
• 1x Vampiric Link

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This is my version of Greven, Predator Captain. From the very first time I saw this card during spoiler season, I knew it had some serious potential and it would be my Rakdos deck. The deck has gone through changes over time from the normal basic version of Greven focusing on drawing cards and using Greven to gain value, to a hyper aggressive 1v1 deck that consistently killed my opponent on turn 3, to its current list as a fast multiplayer focused deck hoping to take out my opponents as fast as possible. The deck is crazy fun to play, with turn 1 win potential and is definitely one of the scariest decks in my play group. I hope you enjoy the absolute madness that is Greven, Predator Captain.

Understanding the Deck

This deck can be difficult to pilot if you are unaware of how the deck plays. The name of the game for this deck is speed. Greven has a hard time in the late game, so we aim to take players out of the game as soon as possible. This not only allows us to avoid important removal, but also avoid opponents strategies from interacting with ours. (Stax, go wide creatures, control, etc)

The goal to the deck is to pay life through various cards to pump Greven, Predator Captain through his ability that says Greven gets +X / +0 for the amount of life lost this turn, to attempt to take a player out with one shot of commander damage. There are quite a few ways to pay almost any amount of life like Wall of Blood or Plunge into Darkness. This can be dangerous because your life total will become low very fast, so to counteract this life loss we used to take out players, there are a number of ways to give Greven lifelink like Basilisk Collar or Alchemist's Gift to help keep your life total high.

Sometimes you will not have the cards you need to win so this is where Greven's other ability comes into play. The ability says when Greven attacks you may sacrifice a creature and if you do you draw cards equal to its power and loose life equal to toughness. This will also act as a way to pump Greven, but for now we will focus on using this ability as a way to gain card advantage. There are a few cards like Ball Lightning and Lightning Skelemental that have a high power and low toughness in attempts to draw into a win while not draining you too much. This is also important in the first few turns because with the deck aims to play a lot of mana rocks and quickly throw cards away in attempt to get Greven into play as soon as possible, so this card draw could mean the difference between a win and a lose in most cases.

How the Deck Plays

Playing this deck I feel like I am on the edge of my seat from the start to the finish. Especially in my meta where this deck is feared I need to go fast and play to the decks highest potential to be able to pull out a victory. The start of the game as many revolves around ramping like many decks but we put it in maximum overdrive. Turns 1-3 the deck aims to ramp into Greven and start presenting lethal damage to an opponent.

Ways to take out an opponent include combat damage as stated above or spell damage from a card like Fling or Soul's Fire. This deck is ruthless and can allow you to do some pretty wild things at the expense of your life total. For example, lets say you have Greven in play, Fling in hand, and Plunge into Darkness in hand. You attack with Greven and once no blockers are declared you can at instant speed cast Plunge into Darkness for all but 1 of your life total, finding a Soul's Fire or Essence Harvest. The combat will take that opponent out and you can use Soul's Fire to take out player #2 and Fling to take out player #3. This of course requires a lot but can also happen as early as turn 2. Another fun thing I have been able to do it attack with Greven sacrificing a Ball Lightning to loose a life and draw 6 cards. My opponent was like oh sweet doesn't look like I'm going to die this turn, but in the 6 cards I had drawn a Plunge into Darkness and ended up killing them instead after I only planned on attacking to draw cards. Because in the end if I have the chance to take someone out I am going to do it hands down.

In summary, you ramp into Greven like crazy and attempt to take players out one by one as fast as possible and there are a number of ways to accomplish this.

Turn 1 Win Combination

This elusive turn 1 win combination focuses on 2 cards, Treasonous Ogre and Chandra's Ignition. The goal for the hand is to be able to cast Treasonous Ogre leaving at least a single black mana up to be used towards Greven. With Treasonous Ogre in play you are able to play 36 life into the Ogre and make 12 red mana in combination with the floating black mana to cast Greven and follow it up with the remaining 8 red mana to cast Chandra's Ignition to deal 41 damage to your opponents.

The trick to this is being able to cast Treasonous Ogre and having a black mana for Greven. To do this there are a few options. Each way requires you to make 3 mana of any color, a red mana, and a black mana.

To make the "Colorless"

• Land + Mana Vault / Mana Crypt + Sol Ring

Ways to produce a Red Mana

• Land Play + Simian Spirit Guide + Lotus Petal + Mox Opal + Chrome Mox

Ways to Make Black mana

• Land + Dark Ritual + Lotus Petal + Mox Opal + Chrome Mox + Other mana rocks that produce black that can be played after Treasonous Ogre is in play.

Through a combination of these cards you are able to pull of a turn one win. This is of course not super easy to pull and has not yet happened in my games played with Greven. I have pulled off a turn 2 table wipe, but I'm looking forward to one day pulling off the turn 1 win.

Future of the Deck

Looking into the future upgrades for this deck, other than potential new pieces from future sets, I plan to upgrade individual cards to help power up the deck even further.

Some of these upgrades include;

• Grim Monolith, Mox Diamond, Vampiric Tutor, Gemstone Caverns, Deadly Rollick, Volrath's Stronghold, Sulfurous Springs, and Graven Cairns.

These will take time to collect and will require playtesting to ensure they will fit into the deck. If there are any other suggestions feel free to let me know.

This deck truly reminds me of the absolute chaos and madness that is Rakdos. This deck does have some downsides in late game and in heavy control metas, but sometimes it pulls through in true Rakdos fashion and I love playing it. This is definitely a deck that is only played a few times during the game night because it can become annoying very fast for your opponents, but can be very fun for your opponents to work together to attempt to outrace the deck in an archenemy style. Overall, the deck is very fun to pilot and can do some absurdly powerful things very early in the game. Thank you all for taking a look a deck and I hope you enjoyed the madness!

Date added	4 years
Last updated	2 years
Legality	This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	14 - 0 Mythic Rares 33 - 0 Rares 19 - 0 Uncommons 24 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.31
Tokens	Elemental 0/1 R, Treasure
Folders	Strongest Decks