If you’ve been actively playing Standard a lot this past week, you’ve probably run into a lot of Izzet Prowess. Thanks to the power of Cori-Steel Cutter, Izzet Prowess is capable of winning long, grindy games just as much as it can run people over that aren’t prepared. If you want to have success in the current Standard environment, you’d better have a good gameplan for the matchup.
Fortunately, there are still plenty of other viable archetypes. In fact, this past weekend, Rakdos Reanimator of all decks managed to win the Magic Online Showcase Qualifier, dismantling two Izzet Prowess decks in top eight. This combo shell got a major upgrade from Tarkir: Dragonstorm and is well set up versus Standard’s top tier strategies.
Reanimating Haymakers
Rakdos Reanimator has popped up from time to time even before the release of Tarkir: Dragonstorm. The main goal is pretty simple: discard one of your massive threats, then use Zombify or Valgavoth’s Faithful to resurrect it ahead of schedule.
To support this gameplan, the deck is filled with lots of cards that fit into two categories: discard outlets and haymakers. In the haymakers section, Atraxa, Grand Unifier and Valgavoth, Terror Eater are your best reanimation targets. Both are huge fliers that are nearly impossible to race.
Atraxa provides card advantage right away, making it an elite bomb versus other midrange and control decks. Valgavoth doesn’t create a huge advantage immediately, but it makes up for this with its Ward ability. Thanks to Ward, even if your opponent has Leyline Binding or Get Lost at the ready, there’s a good chance they can’t even cast them in a profitable manner.
Etali, Primal Conqueror is the last massive threat. Etali is a little worse as a reanimation target in some scenarios, since you aren’t guaranteed to hit impactful spells to cast off its trigger every time. It doesn’t have Lifelink, either, so it might not instantly stabilize the board against aggro decks. The difference, though, is that hard casting Etali in grindy games is not unrealistic.
Discard Outlets
This brings us to the deck’s various discard outlets. Rather than relying on discard outlets like Bitter Reunion that don’t impact the board in any meaningful way the turn you cast them, this deck is looking to fuel its graveyard with cards that are strong on their own.
Bitter Triumph and Liliana of the Veil, for example, double as removal spells. In the event where you don’t draw one of your fatties, these cards can buy you a lot of time.
In the creature section, Fear of Missing Out acts as a discard outlet on a decent sized body. This card’s ability to untap a creature and let it attack again can be devastating in the long run.
Overlord of the Balemurk is a particularly strong attacker to untap. It threatens a lot of damage on its own, puts cards into your graveyard, and generates value in the process. What more could you want?
Speaking of generating value and filling your graveyard, Tersa Lightshatter is the deck’s main new addition that more than pulls its weight. A 3/3 with haste that churns through your library is a good deal even without tons of graveyard synergies. Setting up Zombify just puts it over the top.
Furthermore, if any deck is built to abuse Tersa Lightshatter’s attack trigger, it’s this one. Impending Overlord of the Balemurk on turn two and then following up with Tersa Lightshatter nearly gets you to the seven card threshold.
The one downside here is that you may get unlucky and exile one of your bombs from your graveyard that you can’t play. Nonetheless, the upside of getting to recast removal spells and other creatures from your graveyard more than makes up for this bit of anti-synergy.
Playing the Midrange Game
Part of what makes this deck more powerful than previous iterations of Rakdos Reanimator in Standard is that you’re better equipped to play a normal midrange game. Your opponent is forced to bring in graveyard hate pieces for games two and three for fear of losing to Atraxa and company. Yet, curving Fear of Missing Out into Tersa Lightshatter and backing this up with Torch the Tower or Duress can end games on its own.
In some matchups, it’s in your best interest to sideboard out some of your reanimation package in favor of cards like Preacher of the Schism that can come down early and put pressure on the opponent. Opposing copies of Ghost Vacuum still mess with Tersa Lightshatter and Fear of Missing Out to a certain extent, but you are much less reliant on your graveyard this way.
This deck was also clearly constructed with the Izzet Prowess matchup in mind. Multiple copies of Abrade in the maindeck and Pyroclasm out of the sideboard give you a nice out to an early Cori-Steel Cutter. Plus, as good as Cori-Steel Cutter is at grinding, fighting through a reanimated Atraxa or Valgavoth in game one is nearly impossible.
These factors helped contribute to the deck’s success during the Showcase Qualifier, making it an excellent metacall. Players may start packing more graveyard hate following this performance, but as we mentioned, that’s hardly the end of the world. Tersa Lightshatter is a game changer, and if you’re tired of losing to Cori-Steel Cutter, definitely give this deck a try.