A new iteration of the Rakdos Vampire deck has emerged with wins in 50+ player events over the past week and numerous leagues.
This latest version of Rakdos Vampire or Rakdos Agatha largely maintains the traditional shell while adding a new combo interaction and a few spicy vampires.
It uses a combo between Agatha’s Soul Cauldron & Tree of Perdition to get an opponent down to 2-4 life with a single tap of a creature. Some versions of the deck also maintain the Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord and Vein Ripper combo. Essentially, you’ve got two killer combos in one vampire deck!
Generally speaking, mish-mashing combos together is a bad idea; but this Rakdos build does it better than most thanks to multiple discard-into-draw outlets to ditch unneeded combo pieces. It also has vampires that synergize with both strategies.
This might be one of the best brews in Pioneer, and unlike the Amalia Combo, there’s been no hint of bans for the Vampire Rakdos deck in this week’s B&R update. There have been a few versions of this deck before, but none that reached today’s level of popularity.
Here’s a breakdown guide of the Rakdos Agatha Combo deck:
Rakdos Agatha Combo: Agatha’s Soul Cauldron & Tree of Perdition
When you tap Tree of Perdition, it swaps its toughness with an opponent’s life total. This deck asks the question: what if I swapped a creature with two toughness for an opponent’s life total instead?
The way this combo works is once Tree of Perdition is in the graveyard, you exile it with Agatha’s Soul Cauldron to put a counter on a creature you control. Say a 1/1 creature (which becomes a 2/2 with the counter). That creature then gains Tree of Perditions ability of exchanging target player’s life total with that creature’s toughness.
That means if you have a 2/2 creature and tap to activate, your opponent’s life total becomes 2, and you’re left with a lethal creature.
I’ve been testing this deck myself in Pioneer and the combo can go off as early as Turn 3. Here’s how it works by turn:
- Turn 1 – Cast Voldaren Epicure
- Turn 2 – Cast Agatha’s Soul Cauldron
- Turn 3 – Sacrifice blood token from Voldaren Epicure to discard Tree of Perdition. Activate Agatha’s Soul Cauldron and exile Tree to put a +1 counter on Voldaren.
- Activate Combo – Voldaren now has Tree of Perdition’s abilities. Tap Voldaren to switch its toughness with the opponent’s life total. Their life total is now 2.
That’s the easiest way to get the combo off. It can be too fast for some decks to interact with as the only permanents on board to make it pop off are one and two drops. There’s also a lot of redundancy in this deck and some spicy inclusions we will go over next.
Rakdos Agatha: The Discard Outlets
To make this combo work, you’ve got to able to discard Tree of Perdition. Rakdos Agatha can do this with:
- Bloodtithe Harvester
- Voldaren Epicture
- Fable of the Mirror-Breaker
- Surveilling with Raucous Theater
- Milling with Takenuma, Abandoned Mire
- Thoughtseize yourself (usually not a good idea)
- Or getting Tree of Perdition into the graveyard after it’s in play
As you can see, there’s quite a few ways to accomplish this. The first four being the ideal method.
These discard-to-draw cards also make the deck so much more consistent. In a typical Rakdos Vampire deck, there were flex spots filled with powerful cards that are nowhere near as impactful as the Vein Ripper combo. By removing the chaff and adding this new combo, there are double the amount of ways to win quickly.
If for some reason you have mixed combo pieces in hand, such as Agatha and Vein Ripper, you can use these blood tokens or Fable to ditch the ones you don’t want and draw into the cards needed.
Rakdos Agatha: New Vampire Synergies
Other than the previously mentioned Voldaren Epicure, Rakdos Agatha adds Voldaren Thrillseeker and Vadmir, New Blood to the main deck.
Thrillseeker is a key component. Because the Agatha combo doesn’t take your opponent’s life total down to zero, she allows you to sacrifice itself or another creature for the final damage.
Vadmir isn’t in every build of the deck, but the ones that run him take advantage of Agatha’s Soul Caldron. Since you can target opponents graveyards, and do it on their turn, you can easily pump Vadmir to formidable stats.
Both of these cards also work well together. Once Vadmir is big, you can use Voldaren to Backup 2 on it and sacrifice it for game.
In testing the build myself, I’ve found Voldaren Thrillseeker to punch well above its weight. It has the flexibility of acting as removal when you can’t combo out, and when you’re ahead it deals the final damage to win the game.
Rakdos Agatha: The Decklist
Above and below is the full decklist of a popular 5-0 list from a Pioneer League. This version uses the Sorin & Vein Ripper shell alongside the Tree combo.
4 Fable of the Mirror-Breaker
3 Voldaren Thrillseeker
4 Vein Ripper
2 Vadmir, New Blood
3 Tree of Perdition
4 Voldaren Epicure
4 Bloodtithe Harvester
4 Agatha’s Soul Cauldron
4 Thoughtseize
4 Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord
1 Takenuma, Abandoned Mire
4 Blackcleave Cliffs
2 Raucous Theater
1 Mountain
2 Swamp
2 Sulfurous Springs
4 Blood Crypt
1 Castle Locthwain
4 Blightstep Pathway
1 Den of the Bugbear
1 Hive of the Eye Tyrant
1 Sokenzan, Crucible of Defiance3 Duress
Decklist by Bymeoryou
3 Fatal Push
3 Grafdigger’s Cage
2 Extinction Event
2 Ob Nixilis, the Adversary
2 Sheoldred’s Edict
If you’re looking for other new spicy builds, we recently covered the updated Eldrazi Tron build in Modern as well as the Nadu Chord Toolbox Combo.
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