If you watched the Premodern Showdown Series I was involved in over last summer, you were probably weeping into your cereal bowl every week... At least presuming you're a Michael J fan.

I kind of famously made this completely unplayable Stasis deck that I hadn't tested at all, but that oddly made sense entirely in my mind. I would post it in its entirety but it was awful... It played cards I liked or thought gave a disproportionate edge in the format (Gaea's Blessing and Thawing Glaciers) but in so doing lost most of what makes baseline Stasis an attractive deck to begin with.

What ended up happening week after week was that I essentially had two decks to every opponent's three. They mostly just banned my Replenish deck, which painted poor Lightning Rift into a series of unfair corners. I didn't get my first win until very deep in the Series; after I was already mathematically eliminated. Perhaps most heartbreaking was in a previous week against "The Grodfather" Ryan Grodinski, I finally had a matchup where Stasis could shine.

Having assembled a hand of almost all hard counters, I played an Impulse at the end of Ryan's turn. I could have taken an Arcane Denial that would have locked the game up as the literal "ESPN check mark" ... Or I could make my land drop with a Thawing Glaciers. You know, my pet Thawing Glaciers!

"What are the chances I need seven Counterspells next turn?" I asked myself, rattling off every actual kill spell in Ryan's deck. I mean, I already had six.

I needed the seven.

Thawing Glaciers got me. I'd never live it down.

But the funny thing is how I ended up on Stasis at all. I was watching some The Cloudgoat Ranger Premodern coverage from Brian Kowal's Misty Mountain Games series and became enamored of this first round Stasis battle. It just seemed so exciting to me! "Exciting" being a word we rarely associate with a deck that prevents either player from doing anything.

The punchline?

Stasis lost. Stasis lost the one match I watched and that still inspired me to jettison my very good Hermit Druid combo deck for a wild Simic build that I had tested only in my imagination.

... Which is a weird echo to Standard today.

Because this is by far my favorite deck right now:

Rakdos Planeswalkers | ONE Standard | malekz, 3rd Place MTGO Standard Challenge 4/9/2023

• Creatures (10)
• 3 Razorlash Transmogrant
• 3 Tenacious Underdog
• 4 Bloodtithe Harvester

• Planeswalkers (8)
• 4 Liliana of the Veil
• 4 Ob Nixilis, the Adversary

• Instants (9)
• 2 Abrade
• 3 Go for the Throat
• 4 Cut Down

• Sorceries (4)
• 4 Invoke Despair

• Enchantments (4)
• 4 Fable of the Mirror-Breaker // Reflection of Kiki-Jiki

• Lands (25)
• 2 Mountain
• 9 Swamp
• 1 Sokenzan, Crucible of Defiance
• 1 Takenuma, Abandoned Mire
• 4 Blackcleave Cliffs
• 4 Haunted Ridge
• 4 Sulfurous Springs

• Sideboard (15)
• 3 Duress
• 3 Graveyard Trespasser // Graveyard Glutton
• 1 Soul Transfer
• 2 Reckoner Bankbuster
• 3 Sheoldred, the Apocalypse
• 1 Gix's Command
• 2 Brotherhood's End

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This is a representative build of Rakdos Planeswalkers played by XXX in a recent Standard Challenge Top 8 from Magic Online. I hadn't seen the deck at all prior to this past weekend, but I fell in love as soon as I was paired against it at San Diego's Regional Championship.

It's just so smooth.

It attacks the format from a completely different angle. Or combination of angles.

The weird thing is - this deck was basically at least half optimized (we'll get to that "half" in a second) to crush my deck... And I won anyway. I won anyway but switched over to loving Rakdos... And not even one of the more popular Rakdos builds.

Quick aside on the deck I played:

This is the deck I played in San Diego:

Mono-Red | ONE Standard | Michael Flores

• Creatures (23)
• 3 Feldon, Ronom Excavator
• 4 Bloodthirsty Adversary
• 4 Furnace Punisher
• 4 Monastery Swiftspear
• 4 Phoenix Chick
• 4 Thundering Raiju

• Planeswalkers (1)
• 1 Chandra, Dressed to Kill

• Instants (9)
• 1 Abrade
• 4 Lightning Strike
• 4 Play with Fire

• Sorceries (1)
• 1 Bloody Betrayal

• Enchantments (4)
• 4 Kumano Faces Kakkazan // Etching of Kumano

• Lands (22)
• 16 Mountain
• 2 Sokenzan, Crucible of Defiance
• 4 Mishra's Foundry

• Sideboard (15)
• 4 Fable of the Mirror-Breaker // Reflection of Kiki-Jiki
• 4 Koth, Fire of Resistance
• 3 Rending Flame
• 2 Obliterating Bolt
• 1 Bloody Betrayal
• 1 Flame-Blessed Bolt

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If you're in the market for a Red Deck, this build is very good.

I made Mythic Top 100 this month in less than one day of playing; meaning I barely ever lost with it. I did try a lot of decks for fear of being a quasi-parody of myself ("of course Michael J is summoning Monastery Swiftspear") ... But it would have been irresponsible to battle with anything else come the Regional Championship. Mono-Red really was the best deck I tested. Evidence said I could beat anything and anyone; and I had good plans for the whole field.

Bloody Betrayal main and side were last-minute tuning choices for a predicted up-tick in Atraxa, Grand Unifier decks. I in fact won with Bloody Betrayal in San Diego, and successfully swung with an opposing Atraxa at least once that I can recall. In testing this never hurt because even problem creatures (i.e. the opponent taps out for Sheoldred, the Apocalypse) can be vulnerable to one big turn with Bloody Betrayal.

The sideboard is what makes it go Go GO, though.

You strategically transform in most matchups. My least favorite card is Thundering Raiju. This deck has only 22 lands and Raiju can be really inconsistent depending on the opponent's level of discipline and ability for prediction. Koth is just better most of the time, including as a finisher.

Even if you never get to his Ultimate (which, by the by, is very easy to get to in this deck), Koth is half of the anti-Sheoldred plan. You want cards that can kill a 5 toughness creature, and between it and Rending Flame, we were mostly able to contain the best creature in the format. It's also part of an important down-shift into a grinding Gear Two mid-range strategy, often tying it all together with Fable of the Mirror-Breaker // Reflection of Kiki-Jiki.

Fable of the Mirror-Breaker is shockingly efficient offensively, especially on the play. I really don't understand why more Red Decks don't try it, including main deck. It's quite similar to Squee, Dubious Monarch; except it triggers Monastery Swiftspear and is more resilient to point removal. In our sideboard, Fable of the Mirror-Breaker mostly came in for Furnace Punisher in the Mono-White matchup, where it helps to out-grind the opponent and also get you to the mana you need to get Koth online.

What happens a lot is that opponents bring in cards like Knockout Blow and Parasitic Grasp that make your aggro creatures flatly unexciting. Think about how bad a four-mana Thundering Raiju is against these sideboard cards!

In order to accommodate an anti-fast creature / life gain plan, the opponent is often taking out high end cards like Invoke Despair, which have shockingly little text for so much mana in Game 1. Often, you'll sacrifice a Phoenix Chick, they'll draw two, and die to your next swing. So, they take it out while we essentially transform into a deck that doesn't care if they gain three or four life; where Invoke Despair would actually be pretty good.

That bore out consistently in testing but didn't all work out in San Diego. I went 5-4 on Day One; with a 6-3 cutoff. So, you know; the worst possible record.

For full transparency, it's not like I played perfectly or anything. With three losses in the second-to-last round, I desperately sent a 3/3 Bloodthirsty Adversary into a 3/3 Katilda, Dawnheart Martyr // Katilda's Rising Dawn. Protection from what now? In my defense I had no way to kill the Katilda and would have lost the game anyway, but this was still a particularly egregious on-table mistake.

End aside.

Back to Rakdos!

What is so attractive to me about this deck is how it attacks the format from a series of completely different, interlocking, and often inevitable, angles.

The baseline strategy is to play a critical mass of 2-drops. Of course, there is Bloodtithe Harvester because that is one of the best cards in the format; and widely played in almost any deck that can tap for both Red and Black mana. Razorlash Transmogrant and Tenacious Underdog are both long-term threats that are effective coming out of the graveyard... Which has especial meaning in Rakdos Planeswalkers.

The whole point of the 2-drops is to tee up Ob Nixilis, the Adversary on turn three. The short-term sacrificial deaths of Tenacious or Transmogrant to Ob are merely half-cards here; while the Adversary himself is so good against interaction, including Counterspells.

Once Ob Nixilis is online, this deck can exploit an essentially unique life gain engine. Get a Devil token or two? You can gain four life per turn with a single, physical, Ob Nixilis while building loyalty and pressuring both the opponent's hand and life total.

As we said, the deck is at least half-built to be great against small creatures, whether from Red Aggro or the Thalia, Guardian of Thraben variety... Four Cut Downs lead an All-Star lineup of point defense; and the sideboard can slide Rakdos into an extraordinarily aggro-hostile board control deck... Most of the regalia that conventional Rakdos boasts, with a little more life gain going long.

The trade-offs are that Transmogrant and Liliana of the Veil are not very good in some matchups; but even against Phoenix Chicks they still have text. Not the inspiring work of Shakespeare maybe; but text.

There is almost no better deck at facing up against an opponent who deploys one big spell every turn; whether 7/7 Phyrexian Angels or seven-point Corrupts. Just earlier today I easily weathered 21 points of Corrupt damage; and the Big Spell opponent ran out way before my Planeswalkers did.

You occasionally get boards like this:

But the real lynchpin just has to be playing all four copies of Invoke Despair.

Even some of the dedicated Grixis and Rakdos players have sanded down to three or even two copies of Black's signature finisher. I think that in this deck Invoke Despair makes for a great way to tie the other windmill slams together.

You attack with good, and highly resilient, creatures; mildly up-shift into Planeswalkers - but with a ton of point removal to potentially defend those Planeswalkers as they build loyalty - and if the opponent has survived both those plans of attack, still have the most powerful trump at your highest high end.

Two small things you should know if you're going to try Rakdos Planeswalkers:

1. This is one of the best anti-Graveyard Trespasser // Graveyard Glutton decks in the format. Between so many copies of Liliana of the Veil and the Maximum Number of Invoke Despair, you rarely have to discard to Trespasser's Ward.
2. This is one of the worst decks against Ossification in the format. Ossification has very little downside against this Invoke Despair deck because of all the tokens and copies. Often the opponent's first Ossification will be pointed at a Goblin Shaman token; meaning that if they later lose it, you won't be getting anything back. Ditto on Ob Nixilis copies. Sometimes based on loyalty the opponent will be forced to Ossification the Legendary Ob Nixilis, but more commonly you'll be losing a copy only. This means that the bad guys very frequently get a free slush permanent on Invoke Despair. There's no other way to put this but for five mana you're often getting a Spirited Companion and drawing a card and that just sucks.

Even still?

I'd much rather be on the Rakdos Planeswalkers side than a typical White control side heads up. Certainly the opponent can overwhelm you with cantrips and remainders (and more than anything else multiple Wedding Announcement // Wedding Festivitys)... But that doesn't countermand Fable into Invoke Despair, or even one or two turns with Ob Nixilis unchecked.

Finally, in my CURRENT opinion, Rakdos Planeswalkers is the most fun deck to play in Standard right now. I'm excited every time I sleeve it up - well, virtually sleeve it up - because the specific interactions can be so varied and the end game states so different in victory. Sometimes the opponent concedes to one seven loyalty Ob and one six loyalty Lilly the turn before you can go double Ultimate; sometimes you're just in The Red Zone with Transmogrant into Goblin Shaman and the opponent packs to a fourth-turn Invoke Despair, life total already precarious.

It would likely be an overstatement to say that I wish I had sleeved Rakdos up rather than a Mono-Red that had been so reliable for me in testing... But you should probably know that there is a distinct, third, Rakdos strategy in Standard, alongside the deservedly more famous and established Mid-Range and Reanimator builds.

If you followed my slavish devotion to Ob Nixilis / Oni-Cult Anvil back when Streets of New Capenna was the most recent set, you've probably got four copies of The Adversary in your collection already, anyway.

LOVE

MIKE