Gix Replaces Dracosaur in Rakdos Beatdown

25th January, 2024

Introduction

This is the third version of my Rakdos beatdown deck. In this version, I dropped Bonehoard Dracosaurs, which might be a bit too slow in the current meta. Instead, I added 2 copies of Gix, Yawgmoth Praetor, which is very good at drawing cards with flying creatures.

The idea of the deck is to provide haste to other creatures with Reckless Stormseeker // Storm-Charged Slasher, Archfiend of the Dross in particular. Otherwise, the deck is pretty much standard Rakdos action.

Previous Version

The previous version with Dracosaurs is here: 

Format

• The deck is for the Standard format with The Lost Caverns of Ixalan being the last legal set.
• The deck is probably Tier 1 or Tier 1.5 caliber.
• The deck can be played in both Bo1 and Bo3. However, the current main deck is designed with Bo1 meta in mind, wherefore you might want to change a few things, if you play the deck in Bo3.
• The deck is pretty fast, and thus it's suitable for quickly grinding a large number of wins in the MTG Arena ladder.

Source

This is my own brew.

Strategy

The deck has two attack angles:

1. Card Advantage

Draw cards with Preacher of the Schism and Gix, Yawgmoth Praetor and win games through card advantage.

2. Big Flying Creatures with Haste

Provide haste to Archfiend of the Dross with Reckless Stormseeker // Storm-Charged Slasher and win games with sheer damage.

Mana Base Statistics

• Total of 25 lands
• 19 lands produce black mana
• 14 lands produce red mana
• 2 lands may produce colored mana but are counted here as producing colorless mana
• 2 lands always produce colorless mana

Starting Hand Probabilities

Bo3 (No Hand Smoothing)

• At least two lands: 87.8 %
• 2–5 lands: 86.0 %
• At least 1 black mana: 94.2 %
• At least 2 black mana: 72.1 %
• At least 1 red mana: 86.1 %

Bo1 (Hand Smoothing)

Ranked Queue (Best of 2 Hands)

Hand smoothing in the ranked queue takes the best of 2 different starting hands (of 2 different deck shuffles).

• 2–5 lands: 98.0 % (approximately)

Play Queue (Best of 3 Hands)

Hand smoothing in the play queue takes the best of 3 different starting hands (of 3 different deck shuffles).

• 2–5 lands: 99.7 % (approximately)

Land Probabilities

Probabilities are for on the play / on the draw.

Land Count

With Any Starting Hand

• At least 3 lands by turn 3: 81.9 % / 88.1 %
• At least 4 lands by turn 4: 67.5 % / 76.6 %

With 2-Land Starting Hand

• At least 3 lands by turn 3: 68.4 % / 82.7 %
• At least 4 lands by turn 4: 40.0 % / 58.8 %

With 3-Land Starting Hand

• At least 4 lands by turn 4: 80.8 % / 89.3 %

Color Count

These probabilities are counted as Cavern of Souls providing colorless mana.

With Any Starting Hand

• At least 2 black mana by turn 3: 85.4 % / 89.7 %
• At least 2 black mana by turn 4: 89.7 % / 92.9 %
• At least 1 red mana by turn 2: 89.8 % / 92.5 %
• At least 1 red mana by turn 3: 92.5 % / 94.6 %

With 1-Black-Mana Starting Hand

• At least 2 black mana by turn 3: 56.8 % / 72.1 %
• At least 2 black mana by turn 4: 72.1 % / 82.1 %