Budget Magic: $80 (16 Rare) Rakdos Fling | Standard
Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Budget Magic! This week we're heading to Bloomburrow Standard to see just how many turn three kills it takes to hit mythic on Magic Arena with a $80 / 16 Rare budget deck! The plan of our deck today is simple: we're looking to play Heartfire Hero or Cacophony Scamp, target them with some pump spells to grow their power, attack and then use Callous Sell-Sword to throw them at our opponent's face for what is essentially double damage since we'll deal damage equal to the creatures power with Callous Sell-Sword itself and then again with Heartfire Hero or Cacophony Scamp's death trigger. Oh yeah, did I mentioned that we're doing this on turn three for one of the fastest possible kills in Bloomburrow Standard? How many turn three kills does it take to hit mythic with a budget deck? Let's get to the video and find out!
Budget Magic: Rakdos Fling
Wrap Up
Rakdos Fling is pretty awesome. Overall we went 9-2 with the deck (good for an 82% match win percentage) running it all the way up to mythic on Magic Arena! The deck is super scary, it's consistent and very fast. In fact, I can't think of another Standard deck I've played that can kill on turn three so easily and consistently.
The primary game plan is to play Cacophony Scamp or Heartfire Hero, target them with a couple of pump spells to grow their power, get in an attack and then post-combat use Callous Sell-Sword to throw them at our opponent's face for lethal, although one of the upsides of the deck is that it can easily win without the Fling combo kill by casting random prowess creatures like Slickshot Show-Off and Monastery Swiftspear, backing them by pump spells and beating down. This flexibility - being able to win like a fair-ish aggro deck but also combo kill our of nowhere - is what makes Rakdos Flings so strong!
If you're looking for a budget deck for Bloomburrow Standard that is competitive enough to win tournaments or rank up to mythic on Magic Arena, this is the best option I've found so far! In paper nearly half of the $80 budget is Slickshot Show-Off, so if you already have copies of the Bird Wizard the deck is only $40 to put together. Meanwhile on Arena half of our 16 rares are Blackcleave Cliffs and Sulfurous Springs in the manabase. In all honesty, I think you could play the deck without them and run an all-Mountain manabase. The only black card in our main deck is Callous Sell-Sword and in our 11 matches I never actually cast the creature side of the card. While it is technically correct to have black mana to cast it in a pinch, in practice this doesn't seem to come up very often. Otherwise you'd just have to cut a couple of medium sideboard cards and you'd be good to go (although long-term you should upgrade to the optimal manabase, especially if your goal is to be as competitive as possible).
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today. As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive, or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
