I Got Nothing (And Lots of It!)

Commander / EDH Artifact BR (Rakdos) Budget Casual Jank Pillow Fort

-Bean-

Artifact (39)

• 1x Alhammarret's Archive
• 1x Bottled Cloister
• 1x Chrome Mox
• 1x Crawlspace
• 1x Darksteel Forge
• 1x Druidic Satchel
• 1x Everflowing Chalice
• 1x Executioner's Capsule
• 1x Expedition Map
• 1x Fellwar Stone
• 1x Forcefield
• 1x Ghirapur Orrery
• 1x Gilded Lotus
• 1x Grimoire of the Dead
• 1x Guardian Idol
• 1x Mana Crypt
• 1x Mana Vault
• 1x Mind Stone
• 1x Mindstorm Crown
• 1x Nihil Spellbomb
• 1x Noetic Scales
• 1x Null Brooch
• 1x Orbs of Warding
• 1x Phyrexian Furnace
• 1x Pristine Talisman
• 1x Rakdos Keyrune
• 1x Rakdos Signet
• 1x Sculpting Steel
• 1x Semblance Anvil
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Staff of Nin
• 1x Sun Droplet
• 1x Talisman of Indulgence
• 1x Thought Vessel
• 1x Thran Dynamo
• 1x Trading Post
• 1x Uba Mask
• 1x Voltaic Key
• 1x Worn Powerstone

Land (34)

• 1x Akoum Refuge
• 1x Ancient Tomb
• 1x Badlands
• 1x Bazaar of Baghdad
• 1x Blood Crypt
• 1x Bloodfell Caves
• 1x Bojuka Bog
• 1x Buried Ruin
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Dragonskull Summit
• 1x Ghost Quarter
• 1x Graven Cairns
• 1x Inventors' Fair
• 1x Keldon Megaliths
• 1x Lavaclaw Reaches
• 1x Maze of Ith
• 1x Mishra's Factory
• 1x Mishra's Workshop
• 1x Molten Slagheap
• 2x Mountain
• 1x Rakdos Carnarium
• 1x Sea Gate Wreckage
• 1x Strip Mine
• 7x Swamp
• 1x Tainted Peak
• 1x Temple of Malice
• 1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

Sorcery (7)

• 1x Barter in Blood
• 1x Crux of Fate
• 1x Exsanguinate
• 1x Faithless Looting
• 1x Languish
• 1x Toxic Deluge
• 1x Vandalblast

Commander (1)

Enchantment (10)

• 1x Dark Suspicions
• 1x Death Pits of Rath
• 1x Ghirapur AEther Grid
• 1x No Mercy
• 1x Outpost Siege
• 1x Palace Siege
• 1x Subversion
• 1x Tainted AEther
• 1x Words of War
• 1x Words of Waste

Creature (7)

• 1x Blood Scrivener
• 1x Mindslicer
• 1x Rune-Scarred Demon
• 1x Sire Of Insanity
• 1x Solemn Simulacrum
• 1x Squee, Goblin Nabob
• 1x Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre

Instant (2)

• 1x Chaos Warp
• 1x Vampiric Tutor

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Maybeboard

Enchantment (3)

• 1x Exquisite Blood
• 1x Polluted Bonds
• 1x Smoke

Planeswalker (1)

• 1x Daretti, Ingenious Iconoclast

Sorcery (1)

• 1x Damnation

Artifact (1)

• 1x Torpor Orb

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Pillow fort! Hellbent! Artifacts! It's all in this silly little Rakdos deck.

Disclaimer: this deck is listed under the "budget" category because of its low price on Magic Online, which is where I play it. Obviously, this deck is extremely expensive on paper.

Intro

I decided to make this deck when I first saw the card Ghirapur Orrery. It reminded me of when I used to run a fairly casual Damia, Sage of Stone deck, where I used the card Bottled Cloister to guarantee drawing eight cards every turn. I had also recently been reading some vintage articles about a deck called "Uba Stax", which combined Uba Mask and Bazaar of Baghdad to draw tons of extra cards.

I decided to build a deck that loves to have an empty hand, and I chose the Red/Black color combination for two reasons: firstly, I had wanted to build a RB control deck in EDH for quite a while, and secondly, Sire Of Insanity. For a while, the deck used cards like Oppression to get the entire table empty-handed, and Shrieking Affliction-type cards to punish that, but I found that on Magic Online, people hated playing against that so much that they would hate me out of the game as soon as possible, so I switched the style of the deck to more of a pillow-fort style that focused on getting myself to zero cards, and I've had a lot more success.

Play Style

This deck is fairly simple to play: get a lot of mana and try not to bother people too much until you have a strong upper hand. The deck runs a ton of artifact ramp, so the goal in the early- to mid-game is to develop mana and card advantage and stay alive. Once one of the more powerful engines is in play, you can start to take over the game. Mogis, God of Slaughter is a slow, hard-to-remove win condition that at the same time doesn't draw a lot of hate, since he never seems like he's too much of a threat, but the damage adds up, especially with cards like Subversion to get life totals fairly low. It's a good idea to try to get him onto the battlefield early to begin damaging people (they rarely choose to sacrifice a creature). From there, you can win with other fairly small bits of damage, or just a big Exsanguinate.

Alternate Commander: Malfegor . This guy is a lot of fun to cast and works well in the deck. The deck draws a lot of cards but also doesn't mind discarding them, meaning Malfegor 's ability will often sweep all other creatures off the board with little downside. His downside is that he is more expensive, easier to remove and less consistent than Mogis, God of Slaughter , which is why he is more of a secondary option.

Key Combos and Synergies

Hellbent

A huge portion of the deck cares about you having no cards in hand, or being "hellbent", as it was keyworded in Dissension on cards like Infernal Tutor. Here are some of the cards that help you get there:

• Bazaar of Baghdad
• Grimoire of the Dead
• Words of Waste / Words of War
• Trading Post
• Sire Of Insanity
• Mindslicer

On top of that, cards that generate card disadvantage but increase card quality, like Faithless Looting or Vampiric Tutor help you lower your hand size naturally. Next, here are some of the cards that benefit when you have no (or few) cards in hand:

• Null Brooch
• Ghirapur Orrery
• Mindstorm Crown
• Blood Scrivener

On top of that, there are some more synergies you can achieve when you're empty-handed. With no cards and Uba Mask , Blood Scrivener doubles ALL of your draw effects. With no cards, Bazaar of Baghdad lets you abuse effects that replace your card draw: with Uba Mask , you exile the top cards of your library and can play them, but have nothing to discard. You can also combine it with Words of Waste or Words of War for those effects (remember that this works at instant speed!). Note that Faithless Looting works in the same way a lot of the time (also note how much better it is than, say, Tormenting Voice when Uba Mask is in play).

Artifacts

Artifacts are great, but this deck comes with a few extra ways to take advantage of them:

• Inventors' Fair
• Ghirapur AEther Grid
• Mishra's Workshop and Semblance Anvil, which should usually imprint an artifact.
• Darksteel Forge
• Voltaic Key, which works with Null Brooch , Mana Vault and other mana rocks, Druidic Satchel and more.

Creature Control

Aside from your usual boardwipes, there are a few other cards that help control the battlefield:

• Crawlspace
• Maze of Ith
• Tainted AEther, which is also a handy way to sacrifice Mindslicer
• Death Pits of Rath , which is incredible with Ghirapur AEther Grid and also works well with Staff of Nin and Words of War .

Squee

You've got to love Squee. Squee, Goblin Nabob is great with recurring discard outlets like Grimoire of the Dead, terrific with Trading Post as both discard and sacrifice fodder and a solid chump blocker on his own, if you need him to be.

Tips

This deck is a bit weird. Here are some things to keep in mind:

Stacking Triggers

Sometimes you need to be careful about your triggers to get maximum value from all your cards. Be sure that when Ghirapur Orrery resolves, you still have no cards in hand. Venser's Journal is best when it resolves last. It's also good to note that Mindstorm Crown does not have an "if" clause, so if you draw cards before it resolves, you still get to draw from it.

Replacement Effects

These can be as weird as triggers and easier to forget. Know that you can choose which replacement effect to use, so if you have Blood Scrivener , you can choose to draw two and lose one, and then replace both with Words of War . You can also use Words of Waste instead of Uba Mask if you like.

Miscellaneous

• Expedition Map is really good in this deck, since it can find incredible lands like Mishra's Workshop, Bazaar of Baghdad or Bojuka Bog. It can also find any artifact with Inventors' Fair.
• Uba Mask can get in the way of cards that really need your hand. Returning cards from your graveyard to your hand gets around this, so if you need to exile something to Semblance Anvil or get the last counter on Grimoire of the Dead, you can use something like Buried Ruin or Trading Post to get a card in hand.
• If you're trying to draw three off Ghirapur Orrery, you might not want to draw off of Nihil Spellbomb or Solemn Simulacrum.

Upgrades

Some cards are incredible but not owned by me because of their price online:

• #1: Ensnaring Bridge is so good in this deck!! It does everything this deck wants to do, but also costs as much as the rest of the deck put together on Magic Online.
• The real Damnation.
• Tutors, like Demonic Tutor and Imperial Seal, although too many tutors can make a fairly casual deck like this get boring.
• Crucible of Worlds could be a nice advantage with all the discard effects while also being great with Strip Mine and Inventors' Fair
• Trinisphere, if you're into stax.
• Liliana of the Veil, probably? That's a lot of tix...

Comments / Suggestions

This deck is still fairly new, so I'd love to hear suggestions on how to improve it. Since this is a budget deck, please keep your suggestions under 10tix on Cardhoarder, and know that generally something would have to be pretty incredible for me to spend over 5tix on it in any case.

To view cards I'm considering upgrading, sort the deck by Custom Categories.

Thanks for reading, and be sure to click the Upvote button!

+1 Upvote

Top Ranked	Achieved #1 position overall 8 years ago
Date added	8 years
Last updated	7 years
Legality	This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	7 - 0 Mythic Rares 47 - 0 Rares 25 - 0 Uncommons 12 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.26
Tokens	Goat 0/1 W, Saproling 1/1 G
Folders	Liked Decks, Decks I Like, Favourites, awesome decks, Good ideas, Decks that I can build, Ideas to Try, Favorites, fav decks, OP stuff