Prosper, Tome-Bound | Illustration by Yongjae Choi
Precons are a mixed bag. Sometimes you get an exceptional deck that plays well out of the box and offers a slew of powerful staples to advance your Commander collection. And sometimes you open a pile of 99 cards which is a deck only if you’re exceedingly generous with how you define it.
Most color pairs have decks that range across the trash to treasure spectrum, and Rakdos () is no exception to the rule. But which decks are actually worth your time, and which precons should stay on your LGS’s shelf? Let’s figure that out together!
What Are Rakdos Commander Precons?
Karazikar, the Eye Tyrant | Illustration by Jason A. Engle
Rakdos () precons are sealed products that contain a 100-card Commander deck and have a red () and black () color identity. These are complete decks with a commander, lands, etc., and they’re designed to be playable right out of the box.
I’m evaluating these decks solely on how they play out of the box; I might mention a potential upgrade or two, but how these products play when unboxed is the primary criteria, rather than how it might play if you sink money into it. I’ll consider which of the potential commanders are best, evaluate any notable strengths and weaknesses (primarily looking at the deck’s curve, and how it handles vital pillars like card draw, interaction, and wincons), and mention any chase cards that might make the deck worthwhile to pick up. Also, I’ll steer clear of discussing common precon flaws like terrible mana bases; we already know they suck.
#5. Chaos Incarnate
Chaos Incarnate is one of the reprint-only Commander decks from the 2022 Starter Commander Decks, led by the face commander Kardur, Doomscourge.
Deck Themes
Strangely enough, Chaos Incarnate lacks any meaningful themes. It takes the midrange approach of slapping a bunch of individually powerful cards together in the hope that they overwhelm your opponents.
Commanders
You have two options for your commander: Kardur, Doomscourge and Kaervek the Merciless.
Though Kaervek offers a lot of power, the deck already has such a high curve that putting such an expensive card in the command zone seems like a bad idea. It’s not that Kardur, Doomscourge is a particularly good commander for the deck; Kaervek’s cost just makes it worse.
Strengths and Weaknesses
The deck’s strength lies in its card quality. It has many cards like Kaervek the Merciless, Sepulchral Primordial, and Sunbird's Invocation that can warp games around themselves.
The problem lies in the mana curve, which is more of a straight line in this deck. It’s very coin-flippy. Sometimes you’ll have a hand with your Talisman and Signet and you pop off hard, and sometimes you stare at a grip of 4+ mana spells that trudges along at a miserable pace.
Notable Cards
The 2022 Starter Decks generally lack impactful reprints, though this deck has a nice collection of format staples, including the on-color Talisman and Signet, Lightning Greaves, and Soul Shatter.
You also have some powerful spells like Mana Geyser and Archfiend of Depravity but, overall, there aren’t many chase cards worth picking up the deck for, especially considering how powerful it plays.
- READY-TO-PLAY COMMANDER DECK FOR NEWCOMERS AND FANS: Join friends in epic battles! This Magic: The Gathering Starter Commander Deck, Chaos Incarnate (Black-Red), is ready to play straight out of the box
- INTRO TO MAGIC’S MOST POPULAR FORMAT: Commander is a multiplayer way to play Magic! Learn how to play with your own deck, easy-to-follow rules, strategy tips, and reference card
- 100 CARD BLACK-RED DECK: With the Chaos Incarnate deck, embrace the chaos of war with the demon berserker Kardur, Doomscourge, and overwhelm foes with a multiplying army
- FOIL-ETCHED LEGENDARY CREATURE CARD: Includes 1 legendary creature card with gorgeous art and a foil-etched treatment. This card serves as your "commander" with unique abilities that make plays even more powerful
- INCLUDES ACCESSORIES AND DECK BOX: Also comes with 10 two-sided tokens, a deck box for storage, and punchout counters to keep track of creature buffs
#4. Merciless Rage
Merciless Rage is a madness-themed deck from the Commander 2019 decks, with the face commander Anje Falkenrath.
Deck Themes
The deck primarily focuses on madness and discard synergies, though it branches out into reanimation and has a few puzzling sacrifice cards. Though there are some questionable inclusions, it’s a fairly concise deck for a precon.
Commanders
You have three potential commanders: Greven, Predator Captain, Chainer, Nightmare Adept, and Anje Falkenrath.
Greven has no business in the command zone; this is a classic example of a card that’s cool for Commander as a format and was printed in a precon that doesn’t care about it because it wouldn’t fit a Standard set. You don’t have the life loss or sacrifice fodder to make it meaningful.
Chainer, Nightmare Adept is much more interesting. Its discard ability works well with your madness cards, despite that you can only activate it once a turn, and it provides decent card advantage. But this deck’s curve is already a little wonky, and you don’t have the mana rocks to power this out.
Anje Falkenrath is the clear winner. It’s cheap and incredibly powerful; you can have incredibly explosive turns when you land this, then churn through a couple cheap madness cards like Fiery Temper and Gorgon Recluse.
Strengths and Weaknesses
This deck primarily suffers from a bad mana curve. It essentially falls along a perfect bell curve, which means you have mostly 3-drops, and as many 2-drops as 4-drops, roughly. That creates serious issues when you curve out, especially considering a critical lack of strong 2-mana ramp spells like Rakdos Signet. While you can cast some of the madness cards for considerably less than their mana value (i.e. Gorgon Recluse, Dark Withering), you still need to set up discard outlets and stuff; they don’t help you in the early game.
There are also questionable inclusions. Why exactly does the deck have Sanitarium Skeleton, or Wildfire Devils, or Overseer of the Damned? There are a lot of cards that feel like they made the cut because Wizards ran out of madness cards.
That said, there’s some power here. Anje can pop off and lead to explosive turns, and access to a cheap, hasty rummager every game helps sort through the chaff and get to the good stuff. I’m also quite pleased with the interaction; it could be better, but it’s above average.
Notable Cards
Anje Falkenrath isn’t super expensive, but it’s notably the best madness commander, and it has even found its way to cEDH tables as a niche combo commander.
Bone Miser is probably the most influential card in the deck, a powerful discard payoff that commands a healthy price around $15.
- CARVE YOUR PATH TO VICTORY. Choose from 3 fierce legendary creatures to lead your deck or help build new ones—all printed here for the first time.
- LOSE YOURSELF IN INSANITY. Commander 2019: Merciless Rage uses the “madness” mechanic to help you tear through your deck to find your best cards.
- JOIN THE FRAY. Commander is a Magic: The Gathering (MTG) multiplayer format where alliances are formed, friends are betrayed, and grudges are repaid with a vengeance.
- COLLECT ALL FOUR. Merciless Rage is one of four decks in the Commander 2019 series.
- PLAY THE GAME THAT STARTED IT ALL. The original strategy card game, Magic: The Gathering (MTG) has inspired more than 20 million fans over 25 years.
#3. Vampiric Bloodline
No products found.The No products found. deck came out with crimson. It’s a vampire-typal deck led by Strefan, Maurer Progenitor.
Deck Themes
This deck is easily one of the most concise Rakdos precons, with a strong focus on vampire typal synergies and little else. There’s a slight sacrifice subtheme that isn’t really supported, but it’s also pretty unobtrusive.
Commanders
Vampiric Bloodlines can be led by Strefan or the partner with pair of Laurine, the Diversion and Kamber, the Plunderer.
While the partners are powerful, the deck doesn’t quite have the support to pull off the sacrificial gameplan they want you to have. Laurine feels much better as a support piece for Strefan, Maurer Progenitor, something that hits hard to make your opponents lose life and that does something with the Blood tokens Strefan creates.
Strengths and Weaknesses
This deck is pretty clean. The curve’s a little high, with a few too many 5+ drops for my taste, but you have Strefan, Maurer Progenitor to cheat some of them into play and the deck has a fairly robust ramp package.
It could also use a little more card draw; it feels prone to either a stall-out because it hit a few too many lands in the mid to late game or a good start that’s flattened by a board wipe. Overall, though, it looks perfectly acceptable.
Notable Cards
This deck has all the good vampire staples, like Cordial Vampire, Stromkirk Captain, Sanctum Seeker, and Malakir Bloodwitch, to name a few, so it’s a great grab if you want to build around the creature type.
Nirkana Revenant is a notably powerful mana doubler and black staple, reprinted with excellent alternative art.
Shadowgrange Archfiend is one of the stronger madness cards as a substantial threat that destroys a bunch of creatures, all for a very low cost.
Molten Echoes provides aggressive typal decks with excellent support that dominates games if left unchecked.
Imposing Grandeur isn’t at its best with Strefan given that the progenitor has a relatively low mana cost, but it does a ton of work with more expensive commanders or those that care about discard/draw effects.
No products found.
#2. Planar Portal
Planar Portal is a deck from Adventures in the Forgotten Realm with Prosper, Tome-Bound as the face commander.
Deck Themes
Most precons suffer from an abundance of themes, with so many ideas crammed into one deck box that none of them pan out. Planar Portal suffers from this amply. You have some sacrifice stuff because you’re Rakdos, and some goad cards in case you want to use the alternate commander, and then there’s just a whole lot of air between them. The deck wholly lacks cohesion.
Commanders
Planar Portal offers you two Rakdos legends that can lead the deck: the infamous Prosper, Tome-Bound, and Karazikar, the Eye Tyrant.
Karazikar, the Eye Tyrant isn’t the choice. It’s not a bad card by any means; Prosper is just that busted, plus this deck doesn’t have a low enough curve to truly exploit the beholder.
Prosper, Tome-Bound is just one of the best Rakdos commanders ever printed, and it helps to make up for this deck’s lackluster card quality.
Strengths and Weaknesses
This deck’s curve is actually pretty good; it’s a little steep, but for once, you have the ramp package to support it. You actually have a good number of 2-mana rocks, so the deck should reliably play Prosper, Tome-Bound ahead of time and land its more expensive spells at a reasonable pace. Prosper does a lot to aid the card advantage, too.
The biggest weakness here is a generally low card quality. Multiple themes make any deck worse, but this doubles down on the under-supported themes not being very good. The sacrifice payoffs are cards like Chittering Witch and Dark-Dweller Oracle, and you don’t have enough goad cards to really force your opponents to kill each other. You can probably cast enough of this to overwhelm your opponents with quantity, but the world where you're casting three or four spells a turn looks bleak.
Notable Cards
Both commanders are great inclusions to the format. Prosper is a ridiculously busted design mistake that provides card advantage and ramp, while Karazikar is just a lot of fun in aggressive decks.
Grim Hireling manages to be both one of the best Treasure producers and one of the best Treasure payoffs in the game, so it’s an instant black staple for anything moderately aggressive.
Wild-Magic Sorcerer provides an excellent cast-from-exile payoff that gets out of control quickly, especially once you begin to trigger cards like Nalfeshnee and Passionate Archaeologist.
Share the Spoils is a fun little design that provides a group hug/theft effect that adds novelty to Commander gameplay.
- 100-card ready-to-play Adventures in the Forgotten Realms (AFR) Commander deck
- Deck includes 2 traditional foils 98 nonfoil cards
- 1 foil etched Display Commander
- 10 double-sided tokens life tracker and deck box
- Reduced-plastic packaging
#1. Endless Punishment
Endless Punishment is the newest Rakdos () precon released alongside Duskmourn: House of Horror with the face commander Valgavoth, Harrower of Souls.
Deck Themes
Endless Punishment is a group slug deck, a burn variant that uses permanents that steadily damage your opponents to whittle them down over time rather than the more traditional configuration of cheap creatures and burn spells like Lightning Bolt and Lava Spike. It’s also beautifully succinct, with no additional themes.
Commanders
Endless Punishment has quite a few choices for its commander, though there’s a clear winner here in the face commander.
Florian, Voldaren Scion, Kardur, Doomscourge, and Mogis, God of Slaughter are just too weak to really want as the commander. They’re awesome as support pieces that draw cards, but they aren’t worth having every game.
Vial Smasher the Fierce hits hard, but it loses most of its power without a partner to enhance it.
Rakdos, Lord of Riots has plenty of burn to support it, but it lacks big, bombastic spells to really break its cost reduction.
The Lord of Pain is a pretty cool card that scales well at a Commander table, where everybody slings around battlecruisers, but it doesn’t have the power Valgavoth offers.
Kaervek the Merciless is excellent top-end, but it’s relatively uninspired as far as commanders go.
Valgavoth, Harrower of Souls clearly beats the competition. It’s substantially more powerful than any of the other options (except maybe Vial Smasher, if it had a partner) and it offers an incredible draw engine and pressure that leaves your opponents scrambling as you whittle them down.
Strengths and Weaknesses
This deck is almost all strengths. It has a great mana curve, plenty of pressure, and some of the best card draw you can hope for in a precon thanks to your commander. This is one of the strongest precons to come out recently, and it plays great out of the box.
It can be slow; it relies on steadily building up a board state with cards like Gleeful Arsonist, Mogis, God of Slaughter, and Kederekt Parasite to whittle your opponents down. You won’t get many quick wins. It also draws a lot of hate from the table, since you deal large chunks of damage while you grow a very obvious threat.
Notable Cards
Valgavoth, Harrower of Souls has exploded into Commander, quickly becoming the most popular Rakdos commander and giving us a robust, powerful burn deck outside of mono-red.
Kederekt Parasite has long been one of the best group slug cards in the format, and this deck is one of its few reprints since Conflux.
Braids, Arisen Nightmare provides sacrifice decks with a ton of pressure and card draw at a low price.
Gleeful Arsonist plays well in many decks; it feels great to sacrifice it, to copy it, and to buff it.
The deck also has a great collection of generic Rakdos staples. The on-color mana rocks, Blasphemous Act, Infernal Grasp, Bastion of Remembrance, Mayhem Devil… the list goes on. It’s great value.
- ABANDON ALL HOPE, YE WHO ENTER HERE—Become the House that always wins and dish out damage to all who enter your halls until you see your new tenants evicted . . . permanently
- 2 FOIL BORDERLESS COMMANDERS—Every Duskmourn: House of Horror Commander Deck includes 2 Traditional Foil Legendary Creature cards featuring spine-tingling Borderless art
- 10 ARCHENEMY SCHEMES—Archenemy pits a team of three against one player who draws from an extra deck of powerful and nefarious schemes. Each Duskmourn Commander deck introduces 10 terrifying schemes to make the table tremble!
- INTRODUCES 10 COMMANDER CARDS— Each deck introduces fresh horrors to Magic: The Gathering with 10 never-before-seen Commander cards
- CONTENTS—1 ready-to-play Endless Punishment Duskmourn: House of Horror Commander Deck (100 cards), 10 Archenemy cards, a 2-card Collector Booster Sample Pack, 10 double-sided tokens, and 1 deck box
Commanding Conclusion
Anje Falkenrath | Illustration by Cynthia Sheppard
Rakdos () precons really capture the range of quality you can expect to find in the average precon—though it’s worth noting the general quality has gone up over time. They also offer pretty diverse strategies, from group slug to typal.
What’s your favorite Rakdos precon? Would you consider picking any of these up? Let me know in the comments below or on the Draftsim Discord!
Stay safe, and thanks for reading!
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