Open the Gate

Standard BR (Rakdos)

Benefit_of_the_Doubt

Creature (29)

• 4x Bloodrage Brawler
• 2x Bomat Courier
• 4x Combat Celebrant
• 4x Desert Cerodon
• 4x Flameblade Adept
• 4x Horror of the Broken Lands
• 2x Kitesail Freebooter
• 2x Ravenous Chupacabra
• 3x Vile Manifestation

Land (21)

• 4x Canyon Slough
• 4x Dragonskull Summit
• 8x Mountain
• 5x Swamp

Artifact (6)

• 4x Gate to the Afterlife
• 2x God-Pharaoh's Gift

Sorcery (4)

• 4x Cathartic Reunion

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Sideboard

Creature (4)

• 2x Bomat Courier
• 2x Hazoret the Fervent

Sorcery (3)

• 3x Sweltering Suns

Instant (6)

• 3x Abrade
• 3x Fatal Push

Planeswalker (2)

• 2x Chandra, Torch of Defiance

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The Plan

God-Pharaoh's Gift has been seeing competitive Standard play since it debuted in Hour of Devastation. The most successful and prominent build is the midrange U/W God-Pharaoh's Gift, seeking to fill the graveyard and cheat the Gift into play with Refurbish. It's hard to argue with the results of the Azorious build, but since the moment it was spoiled this card has screamed "RAKDOS" at me.

The goal of this deck is to fill our graveyard ASAP with the help of cycling, discard effects, and Gate to the Afterlife to then activate said Gate to the Afterlife and cheat out God-Pharaoh's Gift . The dream is to chain as many Combat Celebrants in a single turn as possible to give us up to FIVE COMBAT STEPS, but there are plenty of blowouts possible without drawing one.

Which card? Dis-card!

With a whopping 29 creatures in the mainboard, we should have no problems finding bodies to activate our Gate. I run a full set of Horror of the Broken Lands and Desert Cerodons for their cheap cycling costs along with 4 Canyon Sloughs. Bomat Courier can give us a massive boost to our graveyard creature count and even serve as a "soft mulligan" in corner cases. Bloodrage Brawler is an aggressively costed beater with a downside that actually works in our favor! Cathartic Reunion is the only non-creature / artifact that makes the main, and is usually good for binning at least one creature. Finally, Gate to the Afterlife allows us to loot every time one of our creatures dies. Most of the time one or two creatures dying is enough to bring the Gate online by the time it hits the battlefield.

Target Practice

Traditional U/W GPG decks tend to target Angel of Invention or Champion of Wits, and who could blame them? We don't have access to these colors, unfortunately, but there are plenty of good targets for GPG that synergize with each other. Here's how I rank each:

Ideal

1. Combat Celebrant - Let's us chain multiple combat phases thanks to the haste granted by GPG.
2. Flameblade Adept - We don't have a lot of evasion, menace + cycling can lead to nice trades if they are able to double block.
3. Horror of the Broken Lands - +2/+1 is a VERY significant buff that gets out of control in a hurry.

Situational

• Ravenous Chupacabra - For when you need to get through a big blocker or take out a non-combat threat.
• Kitesail Freebooter - Useful when our opponent has no flyers or is packing a lot of removal.
• Vile Manifestation - The buff from dead cyclers on top of the 4/4 body can make this a worthy target.

Theme song

For the God-Pharaoh's blessing, play at full volume.

Date added	6 years
Last updated	6 years
Legality	This deck is not Standard legal.
Rarity (main - side)	4 - 4 Mythic Rares 12 - 5 Rares 19 - 3 Uncommons 12 - 3 Commons
Cards	60
Avg. CMC	3.13
Tokens	Copy Clone, Emblem Chandra, Torch of Defiance
Based on	The Gift that Keeps on Giving cromulorf STD