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Rakdos Crusher - Turbo Reanimator Primer

Pauper* Aggro Budget Combo Eldrazi Primer Reanimator

franjimen421

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Creature (13)

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Sorcery (15)

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Introduction

Do you want to overwhelm opponents with the biggest, baddest fatties in pauper? Do you want to be able to make your opponent concede right after your first turn? Are you fond of graveyard strategies or aggro?

If some of these sentences apply to you, this deck - Rakdos turbo reanimator for pauper - might be the right pauper deck for you.


The Primer

In this section, We'll be taking a look over the deck's theme, Idea and Pros/Cons versus other decks in the format.

Overview

As the Reanimation strategy isn't something new to magic, many decks in all formats have been built to use it - including in pauper.

However, In the pauper format we only possess two effective reanimation spells: Unearth and Exhume.

This means every reanimator deck in pauper should run black (therefore, when building and brewing reanimator in pauper, One should always include black as the main color).

But why Red? To answer that, well need to look at what reanimator does:

Reanimation strategies in magic use the Two-step combo line: get your fattie/target in the graveyard, then reanimate it. Since in our deck Black does the second part well but doesn't quite do it for the first part (there ARE exceptions), we need a support color that's good at discarding. Obviously, Blue and Red.

While Blue has access to cards like Careful Study, Tolarian Winds and Thought Courier, they are mostly considered slower (being the color of control in magic) and less efficient than the discard outlets Red has. Of course, you can build a great Dimir reanimator deck, but since the discard outlets red has to offer are better, Rakdos is considered the more competitive version.

The deck excels at:

1) being able to be faster than a good chunk of the pauper meta

2) using efficiant card draw spells and utilizing the discard side of them

3) being unpredictable and turning the corner in tight situations

4) using the surprise "fringe deck" factor to bring death to unprepared opponents

5) providing a fun gameplay experience to both the pilot and the opponent

The deck isn't that good at:

1) beating graveyard hate pieces like Bojuka Bog

2) beating more consistant combo decks like Inside out

3) beating removal heavy decks (Uhm UB Control Uhm)

4) surviving and reacting in the mid to late game

5) interacting with the opponent's deck

The Strategy

As a Reanimator deck, our plan (executed correctly and with minimal interruptions from our opponent, Hopefully) should be:

- Loot, discard and draw cards until our fattie is sitting safely in our graveyard, waiting to be Pulled back with Exhume.

- Cast exhume, pull fattie back to serve us. Hopefully, We have a Dragon Breath in our graveyard, which gives the fattie haste upon his return.

- Attack and demolish the opponent's life total.

Of course, this is magical Christmas land - so we need to be ready for some disappointments.

In the early game, our deck looks to operate the first level indicated above - loot. We draw cards, We discard cards (hopefully fatties) and trim down our deck until we find all our combo pieces. Because our deck is very fast in comparison to almost any other pauper deck (we are able to get a turn 1 reanimation), we can exit the early game pretty quickly - and go on to the mid-game.

We reach the mid-game in one of two ways: either we have our fattie on board ready to attack, or our opponent reached their mid-game.

If we have our fattie out we are almost always favored, meaning that we can become the beatdown and finish the game via combat damage. Since our threats are the biggest beaters in pauper, we can almost always turn to the beatdown and end the game.

If our opponent reached their Mid-game faster than we did, we will need to act accordingly - and stay in the early game. Yes, you heard me correctly. we can do almost nothing against opposing deck, so sometimes we'll lose precious turns (or the game) while searching for our combo pieces. this is a considerable downside and a part of our deck being a Glass Cannon (which means that it loses to itself sometimes), but we have nothing to do about it. Either we find the combo pieces (or reactive pieces after sideboarding), or we lose to ourselves.

Late game is really simple - either crush Your opponent or get crushed  by them. Our deck isn't designed to withstand some of the excellent late game that there is in pauper, so we don't wanna get here.

We have two mini-plans as contingency plans.

1) Casting Gurmag Angler By delve, thus making a decent sized blocker/attacker to hold the line while we continue looting.

2) Using Putrid Imp to block or inflict flying damage.

Card Choices Explained

Evolving Wilds and Terramorphic Expanse. Functional reprints of each other. they are pauper's best fetch lands (there are the panoramas from Alara but they require a mana to activate). we play them for mana fixing, and the also serve the delve fuel for Gurmag Angler. the reason for the 3/3 split? my perfectionism.

We run 7 mountains and 5 swamps, and there are two reasons for this split.

first - Bojuka Bog is a tapped black source, which makes the mana sources even.

the second reason is that we'll need more red mana - because we'll cast discard spells more often than we'll cast black spells.

our red mana is also sometimes relevant for the firebreathing ability on Dragon Breath.

Bojuka Bog is the best graveyard hate in all of Pauper. uncounterable, unconditional mass graveyard hate is great, and even more so in our deck.

Why? because Exhume is a two-sided effect. we reanimate something, but so does our opponent. while most of the time we can count on our creature to be bigger than our opponent's, sometimes dropping Bog as our land for turn, Shadowrealm-ing our opponent's grave and then reanimating alone can be an excellent play.

another argument for bojuka bog is the advantage of main deck graveyard hate, which is relevant against decks like UB control.

This is the real reason we all came here. The Emrakul of Pauper, Ulamog's Crusher is the creature with the best natural Stats in pauper. 8/8 AND annihilator 2? sign me up!

While the "attacks each turn" clause can be a downside - it is rarely so. we want to attack with the crusher almost every turn to ensure the annihilator trigger, which will put our opponent down on resources and blockers.

Eldrazi Devastator is our backup Crusher, although there are some scenarios he is better than a crusher - against a really developed elves board for example. the trample is really relevant, and since we are aiming to reanimate him with a Dragon breath, the firebreathing on his trampling body is sometimes devastating (get it?) for our opponent.

The fish from the gurmag swamp is the only fattie we can cast for a reasonable amount of mana (note that if you have enough Dark Rituals in hand you can cast your fatties).

for this reason, we'll prefer to cast it with delve rather than discarding it and reanimating it.

the neat upside of being a 7 CMC creature "convinces" Dragon Breath to suit him up too, which means you can sometimes get a surprising angle attack out of nowhere!

Putrid Imp may look weak and wimpy, but he is the exact opposite! He's a free discard outlet, can become evasive, and can even block Delvers effectively (5 cards in 'yard, Opp. Delver attacks, we discard a card to the imp, declare blocks while he can block, discard another to make him a 2/2 that is already blocking, and trade). he can become a stalled board beater, and "suiting" him with a Dragon Breath is sometimes a game-winning threat.

Faithless Looting is considered the best red draw spell there is, and is even called sometimes "red ponder" since you can see 4 cards out of it. therefore, it is natural that in a Turbo deck like ours we would want this sort of draw power.

Not only that, Looting's downside - discarding cards - is actually an upside in our deck, and the ability to flash it back (after being used/discarded to another discard outlet) is pure gas.

While not as strong as faithless looting, Tormenting Voice and Cathartic Reunion are still a power to be reckoned with. They cantrip, fill our graveyard and fill an important role in improving our hand quality.

That being said, they do still have an additional cost - discarding cards from hand before resolving. if your Cathartic Reunion gets countered you're down three cards, and while sometimes you've pitched the right ones - there will be times when you discard cards that could be necessary. So play it safe, and be careful what you discard to those rummaging spells against blue decks.

You said Pauper reanimator, You said Exhume. this is the only viable card for reanimating in pauper - Unearth is only for 3CMC or less (which makes it more of a value recursion spell or a tool for decks like Zubera storm), and Stir the Grave costs billions of mana to actually have some effect. That's why our deck is built the way that it is built, Plays the way it plays and is not tier one - Simply because we don't have enough Reanimation in the format.

While casting Exhume we have to consider some major points:

1) How likely it is to get countered/interrupted (fattie exiled from the graveyard)? If the answer is a lot - maybe wait for our opponent taps out.

2) What targets our opponent have? Remember, Exhume is a dual-sided effect, so if the target our opponent has can hurt us, maybe exiling it from his graveyard before Exhume is a smart move.

3) What are we planning to return? Is it an Angler? A Crusher? Maybe we're at game two against affinity and really need to revive that Gorilla Shaman?

The Bane cycle's second in power (right after Ancestral Recall), A turn one dark ritual play almost guarantees a turn 1/2 reanimation. (turn 1 is swamp -> dark ritual -> putrid imp {discarding fattie and dragon breath} -> exhume).

Drak ritual also makes the magic number of three black mana, which we can easily use to transmute Shred Memory.

it also pays 4 mana for an Angler (delving it and using its mana), and is a fine discard fodder by itself - which makes this card a good inclusion in our deck.

Shred Memory's purpose is twofold, and both of its modes are relevant. Transmuting for our exhume or dragon breath in a key moment could change the game to our favour, and Exiling cards from opposing graveyards is key for a safe reanimation sometimes (If you are lucky to meet the mirror match, remember that this card has the exile clause - and you'll be surprised how relevant it becomes).

Since we run four of those and two bojuka bogs main deck, they also are used as our graveyard hate against opposing graveyard decks (e.g Damned cycling), so remember that while playing against dredge and TortEx variants.

Our one and only enchantment is Dragon Breath. It gives Haste, it gives Firebreathing, but most importantly - it returns itself from the graveyard to creatures with CMC >= 6.

Since the deck mostly discards it, most people don't realize that you can actually enchant it to a flyer, and attack with firebreathing every turn. however, this isn't efficiant, so try to avoid it unless you don't have another way to win.

Mulligans

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Matchups and sideboarding

We are Mostly favored against: Multicolor control decks (e.g. Tron variants, Kuldotha variants, Affinity), Removal light decks (Stompy, Blitz). we can almost always go taller than those decks and ignore their various Shenanigans.

We are unfavored against: counter/removal.dec (mono-U Delver, Izzet Delver, Dimir control variants, MBC) more consistent combos (inside out), go wide tribes (Slivers, Elves). counters beat us hard, removal is sometimes pain in the ass, combos are - well - combos, and go-wide tribes are like the death and taxes in pauper - without the taxes part.

Our most fair matchups (as far as I researched) are Burn, heroic, TortEx and Pestilence variants. those can end in any sort of ways so we don't have a sideboard tech especially for them.

We run Apostle's Blessing to answer decks with A lot of Removal (e.g. MBC), Blockers (e.g. Elves), and bounce spells (e.g. delver variants). we want to board it only if we suspect our opponent would bring those kinds of things against us, but we do not want it so often (that's why it's a one of). The upside of Blessing is that it is tutorable by Shred Memory, being a 2CMC spell.
From Bogles to Tribe, Delvers to Blitz, a lot of the decks in pauper (including us, mind you) are trusting one or few creatures to win the game for them. That is the reason for edicts being so popular in the format. As for why to run this over Better edict, there are two reasons:

1) The main upside of Chainer's edict is the flashback. since it costs and we are a 20 land deck (6 of them are actually fetches that don't produce mana), we will never cast chainer's edict for it's flashback cost, therefore losing the best upside of it.

2) As Diabolic edict is less played than Chainer's edict (being without flashback), our opponent might not always be ready for instant speed edict. this gives us more flexibility with our edict timing, and that can ruin a game for certain decks.

Ahh, Pauper Thoughtseize. The perfect answer for combo decks, control decks, and some Tron decks, this simple spell can ruin an opening hand for an opponent, give us a lot of information and be discard fodder if need be.
The best artifact removal in pauper there is. Period. while being reusable, recurable and hosing affinity and other artifact decks, Our monkey here is actually the Cemetary keeper, and makes sure that decks with graveyard artifact hate (e.g. the tombstone, the bomb) can't activate their hate upon us.
We've mentioned that go-wide decks like elves and slivers are a lot of trouble to us - they are able to build and rebuild quickly, chump block and block our fatties easily and attack us for a lot of damage while still leaving blockers and interaction. For these scenarios, we call our favorite firemage to torch these little fellas off from our opponent's board. just make sure she has enough fuel before funneling her fiery energy.
Blue being mainstay in eternal formats is a problem/advantage all magic players know about. Since we are playing pauper, we need to be able to interact with every single Counterspell our opponent has. That said - Pyroblast (or REB in paper pauper) is our trump card against blue.
Dredge. 10 on storm scale. not only that, it's dredge 5. 5! that's the biggest dredge besides Golgari Grave-Troll! this card can gum up the skies for delver decks, be a blocker for any purpose, come back again and again and an excellent target for a dragon breath for flying damage. He has it all, even if he stinks a little.
Here I'll put my sideboarding against various decks, so everyone can benefit from them.
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Other Information

While building this deck, remember - this archetype (pauper reanimator) has a scale of investment in the comboing.

Take this deck for example. it's much much more invested on the combo than we are, allowing Reanimation on turn 1 almost constantly. however, if it doesn't succeed, it will fall apart and eat it's own resources.

This deck, On the other hand, is one of the non-Turbo reanimator variants. It is far slower than we are, runs tap lands, Karroos and cards like Lightning Axe.

So, after taking a look at the two of those, I can firmly place our deck at the more combo-focused part of the imaginary aggro scale. we are combo focused, but we have a backup plan and don't fall that easily to counters.

No record yet. will be put here.

Conclusion

Well, that's about it. thank you for Reading my Primer on Pauper Turbo reanimator. If you liked it, consider Upvoting it, sharing it or commenting about your gameplay with it. I'd be happy to share my insight about it and hear input from all of you.

Thanks again! - Franjimen421

Writing primer help by Epochalyptik here.

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Casual

98% Competitive

Date added 6 years
Last updated 6 years
Legality

This deck is Pauper legal.
Cards 60
Avg. CMC 3.15
Folders Pauper Watch, Pauper wish liat, Mazzi Interessanti
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Exhume (turn 1 hasted Ulamog's Crusher) ~20$
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