Heartless Summoning will render Master of Cruelties useless, as he cannot do damage. I would use something different. Even with your Funeral Charm, it makes the card useless 90% of the time. I'd sayuse the Indulgent Tormentor instead.

Otherwise, seems pretty neat.

Actually, Master of Cruelties works just fine. The ability triggers when he attacks and is not blocked (i.e. after blockers are declared & if no blocker is assigned to him). He does not need to do combat damage to the player and, if unblocked, cannot due to the triggered ability going off.

In fact, due to the way Master of Cruelties works, if any other creature can get damage through & he is unblocked, the player is going to zero life. His ability triggers BEFORE combat goes off, meaning the player's life total is at 1 before combat damage is calculated. Makes him a nasty addition to Kaalia of the Vast EDH decks!

Master of Cruelties ability doesn't trigger on combat damage, it triggers on attacking and not being blocked. It still doesn't kill in one turn, however, so MoC + Urbog + Funeral Charm is an awful lot of setup for something that won't even score the kill. If Master of Cruelties triggers even once during a game, it will typically be unable to finish the opponent off (they'll continue to allow it through and it will never deal combat damage, as they exile/kill any other creature you may cast).

If you want to play with Master of Cruelties and win, use him plus Ninja of the Deep Hours (or quite literally any creature with Ninjutsu), since that'll kill in a single turn if successful and take fewer cards. There's no point in trying to reinvent the wheel when it comes to one-trick ponies like Master of Cruelties- no matter what route you take, it'll usually be simple to stop, and the fewer cards it takes to break into a win off of a card, the better.

If you run Master of Cruelties, run 4 and run 4 of something like Skullsnatcher so you just win the game when you draw both of them and the opponent has no answer. This, "If I draw 1 of each of three different sets of 2 ofs" is a probability nightmare and won't happen very often unless your deck gets stacked. You have a 37% chance to get one of these cards by turn 6- that goes down a significant amount for wanting one of each of them, and to make it worse they don't win you the game? Nah, just use Skullsnatcher, up the numbers to 4 and just win if they have no kill when he attacks.

No, I mean that he can be blocked without penalty. Yes, he resets life to 1, but he can just be blocked.

needs 1 of Overgrown Tomb for flashing back Ancient Grudge out of sb

Ah, I get what you mean, now. You were worried about the deathtouch not mattering due to 0 power, which is a legitimate cause for concern. So, in order to get him through, you would need the combination of Urborg, Tomb, Funeral Charm, and Master of Cruelties, which is, what, a 6-7% chance of happening at all?

Might just be better to eliminate Master of Cruelties, as well as Funeral Charm (or make the charm more Inquisition of Kozileks). I thought there was something else in the deck to make the guy evasive, but I believe I was mixing this with a mono black Commander deck I was just looking at, as a couple cards I thought were in aren't at all.

Hey FineCashew9, PookandPie, BTolputt, Megablaster326. Thanks for all the feedback. Take the point on Master of Cruelties + probability. Have dropped him and Funeral Charm for Archfiend of Depravity + more Inquisition of Kozileks.

3 Overgrown Tomb seems like a lot since you only have the 2 Ancient Grudge, i would maybe play 2 Overgrown Tombs, but 1 seems like the best number. with the way your lands are set Blood Moon really kills you if you don't fetch both of your two Swamps. and having green in a match where you face Blood Moon isn't really relevant, so you wouldn't need a Forest, but having black does effect the match so I would say go to 1 Overgrown Tomb and put in 2 more Swamps

Thanks Megablaster326. Made that tweak to the lands. Cheers

This looks good. I'm not an expert on manabase, but it will pretty much wreck midrange, and absolutely destroys tokens. How do you expect the matchup against control?

On a second note, those Leyline of the Voids are kind of redundant with your Rakdos Charms. Perhaps adding more Rakdos Charms in the sideboard would be a better move.

Hey FineCashew9. Against control I was thinking of side boarding in Sire Of Insanity to get them to repeatedly discard their hand. Combined with Thoughtseize and Inquisition of Kozilek, should hopefully be able to manage their counters.

Hey nothing too complex, props to a fellow rakdos player btw. Swap out Sign in Blood for Night's Whisper

Maybe play Go for the Throat as well. You want as much removal as possible to kill your Abyssal Persecutor , maybe even play Rune-Scarred Demon so you can tutor up a removal card.

Thanks CTRLer_Head. Swapped out the Sign in Bloods. Also added a Faithless Looting to cycle excess Heartless Summonings. IzzetGod, added in those go for the throats. Other card I was thinking was Plunge into Darkness or mainboarding Dismember.

I would say that you only play Night's Whisper over Sign in Blood if you don't expect to have by turn 2 or 3, but in this list you clearly are very likely to have that by turn 2 or 3. As such I believe Sign in Blood to be the better option since it can kill your opponent if they are at 2 or less life. I know, corner case of the corner case, but still worth having if it causes no detriment to you.

Also, unless that Faithless Looting actually does anything exciting for you I would just run a third Sign in Blood

Rakdos Charm is another do nothing card. Your Kolaghan's Commands already have artifacts handled in the main board, and the other two modes are completely irrelevant except in very specific match ups (namely Twin and Reanimator). Against Twin it isn't even a slam dunk either since they will either wait until they have counterspell back up for a removal spell or try to tempo you out of the game. I would take all 4 copies out of the 75 and replace them with more relevant cards.

As a slow deck I would consider moving two Pyroclasm from the side into the main partly to replace the Charms but also because you will probably have an issue with burn and affinity if you stumble even a little, and this will help both match ups.

As for your demons, I don't much care for Archfiend of Depravity as he is another do nothing card in several cases since, taking the rest of the main board into consideration, it seems to only be good against Tokens and sometimes Zoo. I would run four of your two other non-Abyssal Persecutor demons in its stead, or I might consider Ob Nixilis, Unshackled since it has the potential to cut your opponent off of mana sometimes. I am not saying it is strong enough that you should definitely run it, but I am saying it might be good enough for a consideration.

You are also a slower deck that is already losing a lot of life, so changing the number of Thoughtseize from 4 to 2 and the number of Inquisition of Kozilek from 2 to 4 would probably be helpful.

lastly, if you cut the mountain and one of the Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth for two more swamps then you could afford to run Blood Moon in the side board as a 2 or 3 of.

I know my criticisms probably come across a little ass hole-ish but I am a competitive modern player and am just trying to help tweak your list to be able to compete with the big dogs. I hope to that end I have succeeded.

First off, The Hart Foundation ftw. Second, Ob Nixilis, the Fallen? The -1/-1 won't matter because he buffs himself (and drains your opponent) with each Landfall trigger.

Okay, now I'm no modern player so I may be missing some big glaring weakness about it, but why no mention/use of Blightning?

If you want to go infinite there is Myr Retriever. Infinite ETB with 2 of those and Heartless Summoning. Add Blood Artist or something similar for infinite damage :).

TheRedGoat, Blightning is too narrow. it doesn't make them discard the cards you want them to and the damage is negligible when it doesn't kill them. It cannot answer threats that are already on the battlefield. It is a sorcery that is 3 mana (meaning you will tap out for it sometimes and they just kill you). It is solid but just not good enough for modern currently. On top of all that, this is not an incremental value deck, so it will not work the best in it anyway.

@awesomeragle Ah, see I'm more used to incremental value over speedy control and didn't know that's what you were going for.

Why don't you use the summoning for eldrazi instead of demons? Oblivion Sower, Ulamog, Kozilek, Butcher of Truth... Or even gigantic creatures like the Scuttling Doom Engine. I think you might search for better beasts in my opinion (keeping something castable without the summoning though, just for vigilance).

Thanks for all the feedback guys. awesomeragle Great to have your thoughts. I did a bit of a test on MTGO without the full deck (no fetches, Thoughtseize or Kolaghan's Command). Played urzatron and Esper control. Urzatron, I struggled to disrupt the assembling of the lands, Esper I got them down to 4 lives but then they kept tapping the demons with Frost Titan and killing them with Gideon Jura. The thing I notice is the lack of ETB effects. canterlotguardian Ob Nixilis, I'm really interested to try out alongside fetches.

Daedra117 I take the point about eldrazi, but I think that's more of a heartless Tron deck (which may still be better). Wurmcoil Engine is always tempting though.

Okay, so to pose a new theory, what about dragons over demons to support the instant power advantage?

For one you have acess to Dragonlord Kolaghan and Malfegor (if you're feeling risky).And with these cards you could run things like Thunderbreak Regent, Moltensteel Dragon, and Kolaghan, the Storm's Fury or Moonveil Dragon.

Throw in something to give creatures haste and you're golden!

Or maybe just an Underworld Cerberus, Olivia Voldaren, or Mogis, God of Slaughter? I know the last 2 there are best for incremental damage/control but they are still great cards to run, especially with Mogis not caring about the power decrease from Heartless Summoning.

So having play tested the previous demon version of the deck on MTGO, it became clear that although powering out the early demons was cool, they were often just beat sticks without ETB effects to change the board state, or haste to attack pre-removal.

Thanks to TheRedGoats recommendation I replaced the demons with various BR Dragons. This has seemed to make the deck more consistent, although there is still a reliance on Heartless Summoning. Taken down urzatron as well as a few other decks in the casual MTGO rooms. More fine tuning feedback v. welcome. Cheers

Consider swapping some of your dragons with some Thundermaw Hellkites. They are great against Lingering Souls and forcing through an alpha strike, plus it is a big hasty body.