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Eye of twilight, give us sight. Take our offer, give us might. Make our power tears of night.

Razaketh, the Foulblooded represents an enormous boon to reanimator strategies, offering the potential to win the game immediately upon his reanimation.

( Razakats Discord )

Razaketh's power is multifaceted:

  • He requires a very minimal boardstate to win: 1 creature and 2 lands in this variation.

  • He has game-winning potential from the early turns.

  • He scales in resiliency to disruption as you accrue resources throughout the game.

  • Lion's Eye Diamond is functionally a Black Lotus for Razaketh's tutors.

  • Life / Death turns lands into tutors.

  • Animate Dead + Leonin Relic-Warder is a simple loop offering mass tutoring only capped by life total.

The world is Razaketh's oyster. There are dozens of viable variations of Razaketh shells. More important than the discrete deck presented here is the knowledge of the lines it utilizes and how they can shift, evolve, create, and weave into other strategies.


Remember, curiosity killed the cat -- and that's exactly what we're aiming to accomplish.

The deck resembles and plays similarly to Brewsday's BUGR Reanimator (my version; OG list), which infiniteimoc championed to the 2017 cEDH Tournament Finals.

The deck sits in the "adaptive combo" speed range; it has early lines if you seek them, but is content to play more slowly with disruption, the ability to grind with Tymna, posing non-commital threats (like Jin) repeatedly until a win window opens, and accruing value over time with efficient digging tools. Realistically, the deck will aim to win between turns 3-5 in most pods, but is happy to go later if it can preserve its life total.

Reanimating Razaketh with 2 lands, 1 creature, and floating is our victory condition.

Synergy with LED unites the combo lines: abusing a quasi-Lotus produces the manaless lines. We are able to net mana recursively using our inexpensive reanimation on Eternal Witness + LED, efficiently tutor-chaining Witness into infinite recursion of the same LED with Auriok Salvagers.

The primary outlets of the deck are infinite mana via Auriok Salvagers + LED into Thrasios and wins with Demonic Consultation + Thassa's Oracle. Additionally, the deck has a few soft-lock pseudo-win-conditions such as Jin-Gitaxias and Notion Thief + Windfall.

We have a lot of tools to find and play Razaketh. Suvival of the Fittest serves as the 1-card-tutor to win: Survival pitching Razaketh for Loyal Retainers costs + + + to summon Razaketh.

Once Razaketh has entered the battlefield, the first step to assembling victory will often be ensuring there are enough creatures to sacrifice to advance to either a direct victory or an unbounded tutor loop.

Life / Death is a key tool in this pursuit. Doubling as reanimation via Death, Life can turn a single green mana into tutors equal to the number of lands you have in play.


The Life Line:


Board: X lands, 1 creature

  • Summon Razaketh

  • Sacrifice creature to tutor and cast Life

  • Get and play Gaea's Cradle

Conversion: , 4 life, 1 creature -> X tutors, X+C green mana


Advancing to the Life Line before one of the other Razaketh chains lends extra protection to your combo, especially if proceeding through an LED line. Beware of Mental Misstep when using Life; this is often the one link of your chain that is vulnerable to it -- but the existence of one other creature ensures you can answer it with your own answers.

One of the simplest ways to win the game once you've summoned Razaketh is to assemble Oracle + Consultation. (UUB + 1 creature)

  • Sacrifice a creature, finding Thassa's Oracle

  • Play Oracle

  • In response to Oracle's trigger, sacrifice Oracle to find Demonic Consultation

  • Cast Consultation, naming a card not in library.

  • Resolve the trigger to win the game.

If, for whatever reason, we don't have access to Warder, we can take the Eye Witness line: utilizing Lurrus of the Dream-Den or Eternal Witness (to preference) and Lion's Eye Diamond to net mana into assembling the 'Bomberman' (Auriok Salavgers + LED) infinite mana combo. The end result is that reanimating Eternal Witness recurring LED nets mana if the recursion cost is less than 3 mana. This is gated by the amount of low-cost reanimation you have left in library.


Eye Witness:


  • Summon Razaketh (2 creatures)

  • Sacrifice for LED, cracking for (or )

  • Sacrifice for Eternal Witness (or Lurrus with respective colors), recurring LED and cracking for

  • Sacrifice Witness for Reanimate

  • Reanimate Witness, recurring LED and cracking for in pool

  • Sacrifice Witness for Dance of the Dead

  • Dance recurs Witness recurs LED and cracking for in pool

  • Sacrifice Witness for Auriok Salvagers, cast, in pool

  • Activate Salvagers recurring LED -- looping for infinite colored mana

  • Win with Thrasios (15 life spent)

Once infinite mana has been generated, you have several options for winning the game with Thrasios:

  • Play Thassa's Oracle

  • Twister loop, creating infinite tokens with Swan Song and holding up a deck of Silence/countermagic

If you play these cards:

  • Assemble Leonin loop + Blood Artist

  • Twister loop, killing a creature via Trophy with a Blood Artist in play.

  • Loop bouncing Eternal Witness with any spell for infinite casts.

Twister looping under Notion Thief with Silence on upkeeps (Silence, Noxious Revival Silence, Necromancy on Witness for Silence) should be enough to lock the game in your favor.

Budget note: the same loops can be performed using Memory's Journey.

Leonin Relic-Warder loops have been superceded by Thassa's Oracle combo in recent iterations, but we will archive the loops here for posterity. They are viable to play and provide effective lines against Rule of Law.

Animate Dead + Leonin Relic-Warder is the core loop that offers unbounded tutoring (gated by life), infinite bodies to utilize, and infinite death/ETB triggers which can be converted into a win condition. It minimally requires 2 tutors and 0 mana to assemble the loop, which can begin from 1 creature if proceeding through the Life Line.


Simple Leonin Loop:

  • Summon Razaketh (3 creatures)

  • Sacrifice for Warder

  • Sacrifice for LED, cracking for and discarding Warder

  • Sacrifice for Animate Dead, reanimating Warder

  • Warder exiles Animate, trigger to sac Warder goes on the stack

  • Respond to the trigger by sacrificing Warder to Razaketh

  • Razakath's tutor goes on the stack, then Warder's death trigger goes on the stack

  • Warder's death trigger returns Animate recurring Warder

  • Loop to stack up infinite tutors gated by life (6 life spent before entering loop)


There are some key things to note about this loop:

You do not need Raza to sac Warder; if you allow the Animate Dead LTB trigger to resolve, Warder's LTB will return Animate returning Warder, creating an infinite death loop that costs no life.

You can use the reanimation enchantment that you used to reanimate Razaketh to perform the loop.


Leonin Loop off Razaketh's Animate Dead:

  • Summon Razaketh (2 creatures)

  • Sacrifice for LED, cracking for

  • Sacrifice to get and cast Warder

  • Warder exiles Raza's Animate

  • The trigger to sacrifice Raza goes on the stack

  • Respond to the trigger by sacrificing Warder to Razaketh

  • Put Warder's death trigger on the stack, then put Razakath's tutor on the stack

  • Tutor a card

  • Warder's death trigger returns Animate recurring Warder

  • Loop for infinite tutors as above. (4 life spent before entering loop)


The initial Animate Dead sacrifice trigger will remain on the bottom of the stack until after you've used the unbounded tutoring of the loop.


Low-creature, high-life Leonin Loop:

  • Summon Razaketh (2 creatures)

  • Sacrifice for LED, cracking for

  • Sacrifice for Eternal Witness, recurring LED and cracking for

  • Sacrifice Witness for Reanimate

  • Reanimate Witness, recurring LED and cracking for in pool

  • Sacrifice Witness for Warder, casting with left in pool

  • Sacrifice Warder for Animate, casting with left in pool

  • Loop for infinite tutors as above (13 life spent before entering loop)


You can shortcut the life loss by 3 if you use another reanimation, such as Dance of the Dead.

Then, we break the loop by reanimating another creature (ideally our Witness recurring LED), put Blood Artist into play, and cast a new/recycled reanimation enchantment on Warder.

Conclusion & Thanks

I hope you enjoyed this short Razaketh mini-primer. He's an incredibly powerful, versatile, and fun card to play and I feel we are just broaching the very outer layer of his potential. Ideally more of you will be inspired to brew Razaketh builds and further the cEDH representation he deserves.

Thanks to several talented pilots and brewers that helped this along:

And finally, pour one out for the fallen...

In Memoriam to Leonin Squire (RIP 2017-2017) and Leonin Relic-Warder (RIP 2017-2019):

I'm eternally sorry that you didn't make it into the build and forever grateful for your sacrifice. You'll forever be part of Razakats in spirit.

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Revision 19 See all

(4 years ago)

+1 Demonic Consultation main
-1 Fierce Guardianship maybe
-1 Frantic Search main
+1 Gemstone Caverns main
+1 Ghostly Pilferer main
-1 Life / Death main
+1 Life / Death main
+1 Lurrus of the Dream-Den main
+1 Neoform main
+1 Phantasmal Image main
+1 Preordain maybe
+1 Rhystic Study main
+1 Snow-Covered Island maybe
+1 Tainted Pact main
+1 Thassa's Oracle main
-1 Underground River main
Top Ranked
Date added 7 years
Last updated 4 years
Legality

This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.

Rarity (main - side)

14 - 0 Mythic Rares

56 - 0 Rares

17 - 0 Uncommons

12 - 0 Commons

Cards 100
Avg. CMC 2.04
Tokens Bird 2/2 U, Companion Zone, Spirit 1/1 C, Treasure
Folders EDH, cEDH Spice, Gonna proxy this shizzle masterizzle, Literally too spicy to comprehend, EDH, 3a) Potential cEDH Decks, Play dis, EDH, Thrasios and Tymna Partners, Ideas
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