Rakdos version of an old brew of mine
Deck Tech:
Core Combo:
This is a combo deck centered around the interaction between Tortured Existence and Bartered Cow.
1 Cow loop --> If you only have 1 copy of Bartered Cow in your hand/graveyard, then you can pay 2 black mana in order to swap Bartered Cow with any creature and then swap them back. This will leave you in the exact same board state except you have turned the 2 black mana into a food token.
2 Cow loop --> This loop works the same as the 1 Cow loop but as you are swapping 2 Bartered Cow's back and forth you get a food token for every 1 black mana spent instead of every 2.
Finally, we can abuse this endless supply of food tokens by sacrificing them to bring back Cauldron Familiar over and over again.
(Note: both looping with Tortured Existence and reanimating Cauldron Familiar can be done at instant speed. This will be important later)
Removal:
While having near-endless food and cats does sound pretty great, staying alive to get there is just as important! Our removal options make sure our opponents board stays clear and we stay alive. Bone Shards is a premium removal piece that can kill anything, its downside ends up being an upside for this deck as we either get to toss something into our graveyard that benefits us for doing so or we can sacrifice a Cauldron Familiar just to bring it right back for another etb trigger. But we want to deal with more than just some big stompers. Crypt Rats and Krark-Clan Shaman are both effective at clearing out hordes of enemies. Crypt Rats requires more mana investment but doesn't need any set up while Krark-Clan Shaman requires having some food tokens/other artifacts in play already but requires basically no mana to deal massive damage. Since both of these are creatures, we can just bring them back over and over again with Tortured Existence. Doing this is BRUTAL vs creature based decks, they will have a bad day once you start nuking the board every single turn. Finally, Makeshift Munitions is a flexible engine to get rid of anything else that slips through the cracks. Turn food and Cauldron Familiars into artillery to take down your opponents stuff. Makeshift Munitions is also great as one issue this deck can run into is having lots of food tokens but being unable to turn them into Cauldron Familiars because the kitties are already in play.
Draw:
All good combo decks need lots of draw to find their pieces. This decks draw spells often require us to discard but remember this is often a bonus for us, not a penalty. Faithless Looting is the premier draw spell for this list as it both draws and discards and since it has flashback is a decent option to discard to our other discard effects. Demand Answers is a great draw spell that we can use a food token to pay for instead of discarding a card if we need. Blood Fountain technically does have a little draw with the blood token but its main form of card "draw" is in its activated ability which lets you bring back your creatures to hand to replenish your gas. Sanitarium Skeleton is a one of but it allows us to never run out of fuel if we have a Tortured Existence as these two combined let us pay 4 mana in order to put any creature card into our hand. Finally, while Troll of Khazad-dum and Oliphaunt only find us land cards, these cards are ALL-STARS in this deck as Tortured Existence really demands a certain creature density in decks and these cards let us turn slots for lands into slots for creatures. Also in the late game we can use Tortured Existence to bring them back to hand and simply hardcast them as they are pretty big threats by pauper standards.
Tech:
This deck has a lot of card draw and even more self-discard. This makes this list perfect for a few one of inclusions for "tech" in certain matchups. Normally, I hate including a single copy of a card as you are unlikely to find it in any given game. However, card draw increases the odds of finding it and more importantly the self-discard allows you to then dispose of the card if it does not fit the matchup. As such we run a single copy of Faerie Macabre, Ingot Chewer, Bojuka Bog, and Stinkweed Imp. Faerie Macabre is insanely good vs any graveyard deck and can be brought back over and over using Tortured Existence. A few notes about Faerie Macabre: 1) you can use the ability at instant speed meaning in response to your opponent targetting something in their graveyard you can exile it from under their nose and fizzle their spell. 2) both Faerie Macabre and Tortured Existence use activated abilities to do their thing which means you can give a big middle finger to the blue player as they cant counter activated abilities(99% of the time). Bojuka Bog is another graveyard hate card that I just always include a copy of in my black decks when I can b/c I love to hate on GY decks. Ingot Chewer is great vs any deck with important artifacts. Since the evoke trigger sends Ingot Chewer to the graveyard we can then just bring it back to hand with Tortured Existence to evoke over and over again. Stinkweed Imp is mostly in the deck to help us find Bartered Cow. Each turn we can choose to dredge Stinkweed Imp instead of our draw for turn which means we get to see 5 cards in our draw step instead of 1. And if we mill over something important its actually a good thing as we can just discard the Stinkweed Imp we just got to Tortured Existence in order to get back whatever creature card we want.
Weird lethal lines:
Im not sure what to call this section or if I even need to but these are some lines that can be not very intuitive to newer players. This is where I said Tortured Existence and Cauldron Familiar being able to activate at instant speed would be important. The basic structure for these lethal lines is having some form of the base combo online so we have food tokens(or the ability to make them) along with having some number of Cauldron Familiar in play/in the GY. Finally, we need either Crypt Rats or Krark-Clan Shaman. The line generally goes as follows:
1) Put desired number of Crypt Rats/Krark-Clan Shaman triggers onto the stack.
------For Crypt Rats make each trigger 1 mana while for Krark-Clan Shaman the triggers will always deal just the 1 damage each.
------To figure out the optimal number of triggers: (# of Cauldron Familiars) * (# of triggers) = (# of food tokens)
2) Before a trigger resolves, sacrifice food tokens to bring back all copies of Cauldron Familiar to the battlefield dealing 1-4 damage to your opponent depending on how many Cauldron Familiars are brought back.
3) Let a single trigger resolve, dealing 1 damage to the entire board killing all of your Cauldron Familiars.
4) Repeat steps 2 and 3, bringing back all your Cauldron Familiars then letting 1 more trigger resolve to kill them all.
This lets you deal anywhere from 6-18 damage directly to your opponent in a single turn depending on how many resources you have access to and is a great way to close out games.
Sideboard:
The sideboard for this deck is split between some powerful non-creature spells to combat certain problematic matchups and some easily recurred creatures to abuse with Tortured Existence. First of all, any red deck should run a playset of Red Elemental Blast as it is so powerful vs any blue deck. A couple copies of Duress help vs decks with annoying non-creature threats(especially enchantments). Toxin Analysis lets Crypt Rats and Krark-Clan Shaman clear the whole board while also gaining you tons of life. This and the additional copy of Krark-Clan Shaman should get brought in vs any board-based aggro/midrange deck. As for the creatures in the sideboard, we have another 2 copies of Faerie Macabre and Ingot Chewer in the side to bring in vs GY and artifact decks respectively. A couple copies of Gorilla Shaman are also included bc f*ck affinity :D
The one card I am heavily considering adding the the sideboard as a 2(?) of would be Accursed Marauder. Not only is a great vs decks with only big creatures or just alongside the fodder-removal of stuff like Crypt Rats/Krark-Clan Shaman/Makeshift Munitions, we also really need an effect like Accursed Marauder to have a hope vs something like boggles. Also curious if anyone knows a good creature we could recur with Tortured Existence to deal with enchantments as we have both Ingot Chewer and Gorilla Shaman for artifacts but idk any effects similar to them in black/red but to deal with enchantments instead.
As always, please let me know any ideas, thoughts, or suggestions you have and if you enjoyed this deck check out my other pauper brews --> jonjonhholt
