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: a collapse (as of a society or regime) marked by catastrophic violence and disorder.
My friends, it has often been said that I like war.
My friends, I like war...
No, friends, I love war!
--The Major, Hellsing
I want to see the world burn and you do too. We shall achieve this by chaos through forced combat!
Overall I've found this a fun deck to play and, arguably more importantly, a fun deck to play against! With the right piloting, it makes the whole table interact with each other more. Of course, the deck works best with a 4+ sized commander game, the more the merrier. With 3 only players, one person tends to just get beat down and then you are stuck dealing with an almost untouched opponent.
You might annoy people if you are not careful with who you are forcing to attack. So choose your targets wisely and be sure to use politics. Also, Your commander is a guaranteed table-wide goad, so be sure to save him till the board state is nice and juicy!
You may not always win, but you will get second place guaranteed.
Goad is a mechanic that often draws in new players, only for them to realize its flaws and drop.
| Pros of Goad | Cons of Goad |
|---|---|
| Force Combat | Doesn't work when it's 1v1 |
| Creatures don't attack you | Requires a critical mass of creatures or large ones to be effective |
| Distrup opponents' plans | Spellshinger and sacrifice strategies can usually circumvent goad |
| Potentially lower opponents' life totals | Again, It doesn't work when it's 1v1 |
| Force important combo creatures to attack and die |
Luckily for us, commander is a multiplayer format so the downsides are mitigated while the advantages are increased! Unfortunately, the problem of 1v1 still exists so be sure to avoid that scenario for as long as possible!
The plan is simple. Make your opponents kill each other and then steal the last opponent's creatures to finish them off!
One thing that you might notice about this list compared to other Kardur decks is that this isn't built as a Rakdos Reanimator strategy. Certainly, that is the most common way to build and loop Kardur. However, those decks tend to focus on using Kardur as a pseudo boardwipe to slow down your opponents while they fish for a bomb like Gray Merchant of Asphodel to end the game. I really want to draw out the parts of goad that make it fun and interactive for the whole table. Thus this deck focuses more on making an army for your opponents that you then force to swing into each other. This strategy gets around one of goad decks' biggest weaknesses, a lack of creatures on your opponent's battlefield.
The typical first step for this deck is to make sure that your opponents have creatures to swing with.
This section of the deck is all about cards that give your opponents more creatures. This can be used politically in the case of Varchild, Betrayer of Kjeldor and Akroan Horse. Giving the struggling player more troops to make him feel safer or to the two players that started fighting, fueling the war effort on both sides.
Once the time is right, play one of your forced combat cards! This deck only runs 12 cards that force combat (including your commander) due to the fact that Kardur is always in your command zone. There are 8 cards that specifically say "goad" and the other 4 are "Creatures you control attack each combat if able." an important distinction to note.
If someone is building "tall" i.e. Voltron or cheating out big creatures, use your single target goad cards like Bloodthirsty Blade and Shiny Impetus to make sure that they are always swinging and they swing at you last. Though most of the time casting Kardur will the the optimal play thanks to his second ability, Whenever an attacking creature dies, each opponent loses 1 life and you gain 1 life.
When the dust settles, more than likely, there will be someone who wants to get revenge on you for ruining their plans or board. We have two types of defenses Walls and 'Dissuasion' cards.
Walls serve as our main defense force, Each wall serves a different purpose in what kinds of creatures it can block or how it deals with them. Often just the presence of an Aether Membrane or Wall of Shadows is enough to stop any large attacking creatures coming your way. Walls also have the bonus of not being affected by your cards that force ALL creatures to attack each combat like Avatar of Slaughter.
The second line of defense are the dissuasion cards. No Mercy and Kazuul, Tyrant of the Cliffs are prime examples of cards that dissuade others from attacking you. The two Vow of XX cards in the deck serve double duty. They can be placed on a creature that you NEVER want coming your way even after the game has become 1v1. Or they can be used to Buff your creatures to help swing in for lethal.
At last, it will just be you and the final opponent left. It's time for the dreaded 1v1. Hopefully, at this point, your opponent is at a low enough life total from getting hit by the other two now-dead players. This is where you employ the finishers. You have two types, grab everything or grab the biggest thing.
Insurrection and Mob Rule. These are your grab-everything finishers. You want to be sure to tutor them up before it becomes a 1v1 with Wishclaw Talisman, Varragoth, Bloodsky Sire or Demonic Tutor. Now that it is only you two left take everything they have and kill them with it.
The Akroan War and Besmirch. These are less ideal, but if your opponent has one big dude, i.e. Voltron or Eldrazi Titan then you can take control of their one thing and go for the kill.
These are 5 cards that I think really exemplify the deck's ideals or are some cool tech that I don't want you to miss out on.
This is the neatest tech in the deck in my opinion. Recall Kardur's second ability, Whenever an attacking creature dies, each opponent loses 1 life and you gain 1 life. Also note that all of the cards in the deck that give tokens to your opponents make 1 toughness creatures.
With Caltrops out and a Kardur in play, all of those 1 toughness creatures will be dealt 1 damage when they attack. Killing all of them and triggering Kardur's second ability! This can easily net you 5-6 life per opponent attack step. Spicy.
This card is an All-Star in the deck. The War-Riders pump out so many tokens to fuel the rest of your deck's strategy. By the time opponents realize that you giving out an exponentially growing amount of tokens is actually a bad thing, it's too late and you've already cast your commander.
The premiere way to repeatedly get Kardur's effect onto the battlefield. It sort of soft-locks the game for everyone else until they either get rid of it or there is only one opponent left.
He is the backup commander of the deck. if Kardur is getting too much hate you can cast him and your Vow of XX cards onto him. Buffing him up and goading all of the other creatures on the battlefield. The same tech with Caltrops works with Baeloth, except you get treasure tokens rather than life drain.
This is another way to get Kardur out while ignoring Commander tax! Sure you lose some life, but it's better than casting Kardur for 10 mana.
There are a few things/cards that this deck really struggles against:
Being Rakdos (Black & Red) you will naturally struggle against removing troublesome enchantments. The only real way this deck has to remove them are Feed the Swarm, Chaos Warp, and Nevinyrral's Disk.
Some especially troublesome enchantments are:
All have different ways of achieving the same end effect. Stopping your goaded creatures from doing anything. In the case of Dictate of Erebos & Grave Pact style effects, it will hit your board harder than others because you are actively giving out tokens to your opponents that they can use as sac fodder.
A deck that is running sacrifice outlets usually will choose to sac all of their creatures, rather than have them be goaded. Thus, you get none of the benefits of your deck because of how reliant it is on the attack step. Again, if paired it up with Dictate of Erebos, Grave Pact, or some similar effect then you just gave them all the fuel they need to clear the table of threats, including you.
This is an interesting one because it can go both ways. You can easily mess them up by forcing their precious combo or engine piece to attack and die. However, they also can just dome you out of nowhere because they don't care about what is happening to the board.
Agitator Ant: This used to be in the deck! I had two problems with it. It was too slow and I couldn't control what got goaded. Sure, the synergy with Baeloth was nice, but it wasn't enough in my opinion to keep it in the deck.
Bedevil: While this is a staple of Rakdos removal, I chose to play removal cards that wanted me to sacrifice a creature as part of the casting cost. This way, I could sacrifice Kardur and cast him again.
Curse of Opulence: This deck used to run curses as well. I found that they often underwhelming in the value that they generated. Curse of Opulence is the one that you could argue including. Maybe as a replacement for Fire Diamond. I also just personally don't own the card.
Geode Rager, Parasitic Impetus, & Ghoulish Impetus: The deck has arguably too many ways to goad the board. They are just the ones that didn't make the cut. Geode Rager just came down too late, it's a good ability but I didn't need another force attacks at that CMC. The Vow and impetus aren't included because I don’t have enough room for all of them so I chose the ones that gave me the most value.
Karazikar, the Eye Tyrant: When I was brewing the deck I was stuck between him and Baeloth. I chose Baeloth over Karazikar because I valued the mana gained from treasure over the carddraw. Also, Baeloth's goad ability is easier to trigger.
Slaughter Specialist: My argument for not running it is I want repeatable forms of token generation rather than a one-off. I get more triggers with Conjurer's Closet or Orthion, Hero of Lavabrink, but I don't think that it's enough to justify its inclusion.
Q: You have cards in the sideboard, but commander doesn't have a sideboard. So what are they doing there?
A: I put cards that I am currently playtesting in the deck into the sideboard.
Q: Why is there so little ramp in the deck?
A: It just ended up that way after many iterations and playtesting. I didn't mean for it to have only 4 pieces of mana acceleration, but I so far have yet to be really mana-screwed so I never bothered to change it.
Q: Why do you use Tap lands with little to no upside?
A: Because I build my land base on a budget. Feel free to change the land base however you want.
Q: Are there any other ways to buff Baeloth other than the vows? Is he any good if his power is only 2?
A: Unfortunately no, there isn't any way to buff him outside of the vows. Yes, he is still effective at what he does with only 2 power. All of the tokens (with the exception of Rite of the Raging Storm) that we are creating and giving away to our opponents are 1/1. So he is able to goad them all the same
Q: How often does Kardor get removed? Do you have to often re-cast him with Netherborn Altar?
A: Often enough that I felt that he needed a way to have his cost reduced. Not only will he sometimes get targeted by opponents, but he is also our prime sacrifice target of the cards: Nasty End, Bone Splinters, and Bone Shards. I don't have hard numbers to give you, unfortunately.
Q: Besides Feed the Swarm, Chaos Warp, and Nevinyrral's Disk, what else can you do against enchantment-based decks? Do you just have to accept that it's a bad matchup? What tech pieces can you include in a meta with lots of enchantment decks?
A: Unfortunately, it is just a bad match-up. Rakdos is the weakest color paring to dealing with enchantments. I do my best to play around them. If you play in an enchantment-heavy meta then your only other options are collorless cards.
Add those in while cutting out cards like Visions of Brutality or Avatar of Slaughter.
9/13/2022: Playtesting replacing Curse of the Nightly Hunt with Conjurer's Closet. Deck struggles with finishing the game when It becomes a 1v1. To fix this I'm thinking of adding tutors in the deck so I can get Insurrection into hand to close out the game.
10/17/2022 Playtesting replacing Latulla's Orders, Invasion plans, and Grenzo Havoc Raiser with Dark Petition, Demonic Tutor, and Diabolic Tutor
11/15/2022: Replaced Curse of Hospitality with Visions of Brutality
Removed at some point: Agitator Ant, Diabolic Tutor, Fiendlash, Fumiko the Lowblood, Rowan Kenrith
Did some overhauls to the numbers and categories. Though, I'm still not satisfied with where it is at the moment. The deck was WAY too light on draw spells, so I added more, same for targeted removal. However, I think that I am still a little too heavy with the goad effects, seeing as how I have one on my commander. But I'll need to playtest more to smooth out the bumps. I also added more cards that make tokens for my opponents. Gotta make an army for them to swing with and for me to steal.
2 Swamps and 2 Mountains for Myriad Landscape, Tramway Station, Geothermal Bog, and Bloodfell Caves
| Removed | Replaced |
|---|---|
| Shatterstorm | Chaos Warp |
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