Budget Arena: Rakdos Skeletal Surprise (Standard, Magic Arena)
This episode is a shout out to my dear friend Richard. You know him as the owner of Goldfish...I know him as somebody that hasn't been enlightened by the Skeleton archetype. Not yet at least...
Disclaimer: On Budget Arena we try to only use the number of wildcards that people can acquire after playing for about a month. We also don't account for the rares that are given to us from the starter decks.
Gameplan
The gameplan is similar in that we play a ton of sweet early game threats like Gutterbones and the new standard maker.... Barrier of Bones... okay it's not that great but it does have Surveil and it is a skeleton so we're going to stay on theme for the most part. All of our skeletons come back from the dead for quite a low cost. Reassembling Skeleton is another reoccurring skeleton for us to pair with Gutterbones and it fits the curve.
The reason we want these reoccurring threats is because of our little friend Fireblade Artist. The artist does his best work when being able to constantly chuck our skeletons at our opponent's face for two damage. It also has haste which can be quite helpful to close out some games.
We also have our Skeleton overlord in Death Baron. But let's not stop there..... I'm going to introduce to you all...a budget version of Jund Chainwhirler. Instead of going for Status // Statue and Goblin Chainwhirler...we're going for Death Baron and Skeleton Archer. That's right! With Death Baron our archer can kill any threat and stay on the skeleton fun plan.
Match Recaps:
Temur Reclamation (W): We just won on the back of Gutterbones and Fireblade Artist hitting the board early. They did enough chip damage to the point where we were able to close out with Artist's ability which feeds into Gutterbone's ability to bring it back!
Red Deck Wins (L): Not much needs to be said here. We have a ton of one toughness creatures and only twenty health. They were able to obliterate us with their creatures and then burn us to the point that Spawn of Mayhem was a liability.
Selesnya Tokens (L): We get beat up pretty bad by Adanto Vanguard. It's even worse when your opponent has two backed up by an Ajani, Adversary of Tyrants. On top of that, their deck goes pretty wide.
Izzet Drakes (W): We got on the board early. Fireblade Artist got enough chip damage in. Judith Scourge Diva also helped contribute a point of damage which helped us close out the game with a timely and extremely lucky Lightning Strike off the top of our deck,
Azorius Control (W): We were able to beat in with Gutterbones backed up by Death Baron's anthem effect. Another game decided by Fireblade Artist except this time it was the Artist's Haste that comes in clutch right as our opponent was getting their team of Planeswalkers online.
Red Deck Wins (L): RDW lives up to its name and takes another match here as Runaway Steam-Kin is a powerful card. Also packing a ton of burn is very good!
Mono U Tempo (W): The famous team of Fireblade Artist and Gutterbones just kept hitting our opponent who only had a Siren Stormtamer after we removed their Mist-Cloaked Herald that had a Curious Obsession on it. They were threat light after that so we kicked it up a notch by adding a Death Baron on board.
Conclusion
The deck was hilarious and a meme but we were able to demonstrate how long the early drops go in Gutterbones and Fireblade Artist. We didn't get to live the dream of Death Baron and Skeleton Archer but someday soon we will! I would only recommend this if you have a ridiculous amount of wild cards laying around or are just a huge skeleton enthusiast. The deck has a really bad matchup against red decks but can hang with decks that rely too heavily on one-for-one removal or if the deck doesn't interact a ton with us.
To-marrow isn't promised so go out and have fun with this deck! (did you think you'd get through this without a bad pun?)
-TheAsianAvenger
