Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Rakdos, the Showstopper!

Rakdos is a six mana 6/6 with flying, trample, and when Rakdos enters the battlefield we flip a coin for each creature that isn’t a Demon, Devil, or Imp and we destroy each creature whose coin comes up tails.

Rakdos is very much a typal Commander, caring about three creature types, and being a conditional board wipe that can potentially be devastating or a minor inconvenience.

With the fact that this Rakdos has the base of being a typal Commander, we can have a theme in being a primarily coin flip deck while having the typal aspect be the core that we build around with goofy coin flip nonsense.

The first thing we need is the typal core built around a lot of Demons, Devils, and Imps.

We need to look for creatures that help us maintain board advantage, and Reaper from the Abyss is great for this since we can help keep the board in check after a Rakdos board clear since statistically a creature will have died and we can get the Reaper’s Morbid trigger easy otherwise to get rid of any creatures that still remain.

Kardur, Doomscourge is also a solid choice to include in the deck since when it enters we can effectively goad our opponents creatures, which helps us against decks that go wider than we do, and if an attacking creature dies then each opponent loses 1 life and we gain a life which helps us keep ahead.

Once a creature has died we can use Abyssal Harvester to exile a creature that was put in the graveyard this turn to make a token copy of it that is a Nightmare in addition to its other types, which can serve us well in a variety of ways. While we can’t have multiple since the ability says we exile all other Nightmare tokens we control, we can still get some solid enters effects and sacrifice fodder if necessary.

Torch Fiend serves utility in being able to destroy an artifact, Perforating Artist can force an opponent to lose 3 life if they don’t sacrifice a nonland permanent or discard a card if we attacked, and Zurzoth, Chaos Rider serves as extra draw hate by making a Devil creature token that pings any target and can force everyone to draw and discard a card at random when one or more Devils we control attack.

Now that we have an idea for a solid typal core, we can work with coin flip cards for added calamity.

Mana Clash can be a one mana ping to either us or an opponent, or it can be a way to drain either us or an opponent a dramatically low life if we can get the coin flips to go on for a while.

While coin flip cards are “bad” purely because they provide a random element to the game, we can play cards like Krark’s Thumb in order to have some sort of control over the flips and how we can skew the coin flips in our favor, at least in some capacity.

Speaking of, Krark, the Thumbless can potentially help us copy any instant or sorceries we cast if we win a coin flip and if we don’t then that card comes back to our hand. Some of the instants and sorceries we cast could also be coin flip cards like Molten Birth, which makes 1/1 Elemental tokens and flips a coin that if we win we get the card back in or hand.

If we are looking to also maximize on our coin flip wins then we can play Tavern Scoundrel, who makes two Treasure tokens whenever we win a coin flip and also has a way to enable a coin flip by being a sacrifice outlet.

Coin flip cards can also be a way for us to control what our opponents do with cards like Planar Chaos, which does destroy itself if we lose its upkeep coin flip, but otherwise if a player plays a spell and lose a coin flip, that spell is countered. Now it is symmetrical so keep that in mind and play it when you feel behind and need more time to set up.

There is even a land that can enable coin flips in The Gold Saucer, which lets us flip a coin that if we win we make a Treasure token and let’s sacrifice three artifacts in order to draw a card, which can be helpful if we need a bit more fuel later in the game.

Our deck will be a bit slower since we are adding coin flip cards that can potentially hinder us, so our win condition will be something that can help us deal massive swings of damage.

Blood for the Blood God! is one such card that we can potentially play after playing Rakdos since it should hopefully be massively cheaper because of how many creatures died this turn, letting us discard our hand to draw eight cards and deal 8 damage to each opponent, letting us refuel and doing a ton of damage.

If a lot of creatures are dying, then we can also use Orca, Siege Demon as a way to have a massive damage dealer that can trample in that if they die can deal damage equal to its power divided among any number of target, which if we get high enough can take out one opponent or deal a ton of damage to each opponent.

Plague Drone can deter life gain strategies, Rakshasa Debaser can steal a defending opponent’s creature when it attacks while also having Encore, and Bloodthrister can be constant source of pressure by being able to attack each opponent.

Lord of the Void is also a strong way to deprive our opponents of cards and creatures since whenever it deals combat damage we exile the top seven cards of that player’s library and steal a creature onto the battlefield.

Rakdos plays well into being a chaos Commander, since the typal core is strong enough for us to maintain some form of board control, all the while the coin flip cards cause enough random elements to occur that we can expect something different every time we play.

The issue chaos decks have are that they also tend to make things difficult for you since they are often symmetrical, but this deck is not going to be immensely high power since coin flip cards are not inherently strong.

This is a fun casual multi-typal deck that has a coin flip element for variety and something to play in lower power pods for fun and zaniness, which I think tends to be lost in Commander talks as a whole, how to build lower power decks.

A discussion for another time.

Thank you for reading, see you tomorrow for the next Daily Commander!

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual