With last weekend’s Prerelease events out of the way, Bloomburrow is now officially upon us. Well, it is on MTG Arena, at least. With the new cards in their digital collections pros and casual players alike are furiously experimenting with the set’s new strategies. In particular, players are testing myriad animal typal decks that Bloomburrow has enabled. Out of all these options, Rakdos Lizards has perhaps proven the most popular, and powerful, on MTG Arena so far.
What Makes Rakdos Lizards Tick?
Rakdos Lizards is about as self-explanatory as MTG decks get. You play Rakdos colors, you run as many Lizards as possible, and you profit. Plain and simple. Most of these Lizards are very low on the curve, so the deck is very much a hyper-fast Aggro build. Typically, you’ll want to start every game with one of your powerhouse one drops: Iridescent Vinelasher or Hired Claw. Both have abilities that ping your opponent for incidental damage, which ties into a lot of different synergies in the deck.
Perhaps the most important of these synergies is that with Gev, Scaled Scorch. This legendary two drop is the heart of Rakdos Lizards, providing an aggressive body with three relevant abilities. While he’s in play, your other Lizards come in with a +1/+1 counter, provided your opponent lost life that turn. Both your one drops can make this happen easily, as can Gev himself, who pings your opponent when you cast a Lizard. The fact that this triggers on cast is important, as it fulfills the damage condition before your Lizards enter, thus guaranteeing the counter.
These three cards are the beating heart of the deck, but beyond them you have some room to experiment. Some builds are running Valley Flamecaller for extra damage, and Thought-Stalker Warlock for hand attack. Others go heavier on two drops, running Fireglass Mentor and Flamecache Gecko, aiming for more of a short-term tempo plan. Some lists even include the Lizards from Thunder Junction, specifically Laughing Jasper Flint and Hellspur Posse Boss. There are plenty of options.
Outside of the Lizards, the deck just runs a small removal suite to clear the way for your attackers. Again, this varies by build, but Cut Down, Go for the Throat, and Feed the Cycle are common picks.
Promising Early Results
Rakdos Lizards is a classic MTG Aggro deck, in other words. You get in with your early creatures, blow up their blockers, and win before board wipes come online. Can such a simple strategy succeed in the current Standard metagame? Based on early first impressions, it certainly seems so.
With Bloomburrow now available on MTG Arena, players have had the chance to give the new Lizards deck a test drive. Notably, TheAsianAvenger, of MTG Goldfish fame, played the deck to a lot of success in this early testing period. In fact, it performed so well that he chose to spotlight the deck via a video and article on the site. In the video, the deck runs over multiple decks with very little resistance. Newcomers like Frogs and Rabbits don’t pose much of a challenge, but established decks like Reanimator, Golgari Midrange, and Analyst all fell before it too.
Prolific MTG Arena content creator CovertGoBlue had a similar experience with the deck. Playing the deck on stream, he racked up an impressive series of wins against other strategies in the proto-Bloomburrow Standard. Mice, Rabbits, and Otters all found themselves at the bottom of the food chain, while Golgari Midrange and Azorius Control, after a bit more of a fight, lost to the Lizards too.
Though Mice was hyped as the best upcoming Aggro deck during Bloomburrow preview season, it seems like that crown may actually belong to Lizards. The deck may be simple, but it’s fast, and it has a ton of reach even if it falls behind on board. Whether it’s Gev, Vinelasher, or Valley Rotcaller, you can rack up plenty of damage here without actually getting through in combat. Which, in turn, can trigger your various powerful effects.
Anti-Lizard Countermeasures
Lizards seems like a very powerful, very consistent deck. If you’re planning to play Standard in the near future, you’d best come prepared to deal with it. Thankfully, there are a fair few tools in Standard that are more than capable of offering resistance.
As is always the case when dealing with Aggro, board wipes are your best friend. Particularly cheap board wipes, since Lizards can get on board very quickly. To that end, Temporary Lockdown is an absolutely fantastic answer. It exiles all of the deck’s one and two drops, which is the majority of its creatures. Your opponent gets them back if they remove the enchantment, but that’s very unlikely. Sunfall is also quite effective, but not as highly recommended due to its high cost.
Beyond this, incidental lifegain is one of the best ways to answer Rakdos Lizards. The deck deals in pings for the most part, so slotting in cards that can undo those, even just one life at a time, can be a huge deal. Deep-Cavern Bat does that by swinging in for one Lifelink damage every turn. Rakdos Lizards doesn’t run any Flying or Reach creatures, so it’ll always go unblocked. It can also exile a key card from their hand, which helps slow them down. Sheoldred, the Apocalypse does something similar, slowly gaining you life while holding the ground against all of their attackers. Not quite as affordable as Deep-Cavern Bat, but undeniably effective.
Whether you’re playing with or against it, Rakdos Lizards looks like a very real deck in Bloomburrow Standard. As a Rakdos fan, I for one welcome our new Lizard overlords.
Read More: Rotated Standard MTG Deck Begins Flexing Its Muscles in Older Formats
