ENTERTAIN ME

Reanimator, again? Damn straight we're doing this again, this is Brawl and making big, inefficient plays is what this mode (well, at least EDH) was made for! We're forcing reanimation once again with the big boy himself, Rakdos! An unreliable board clear with flample, he won't win the game if we do get to play him, but together with our other very large creatures we can come in with some really powerful surprise damage swings.

Did you know, by the way, that this is my 31st deck? Is it starting to show that I'm running out of ideas and just trodging out a rehash of one of my favorite and easiest-to-build decks of the past couple of weeks? Oh god this is what they meant talking about impostor syndrome isn't... Uh, never mind. Look, coin flips! Randomness! Reanimation! Let's go!

Trying to ramp without green:

Black and red usually have quite a few ways of getting a ton of mana in one turn, and while Irencrag Feat is definitely a legal card for brawl, it really didn't feel like it did jack in this deck, so we're stuck with these artifacts. Arcane Signet is the reason Brawl is a 58-cards-plus-your-commander format, and Mana Geode is usually just solid all around. Rakdos Locket gives us the mana we need while being some very necessary card draw later on, and we run Firemind's Vessel because Gilded Lotus is gone and I MISS IT SO MUCH! BRING IT BACK! REPRINT IT! PLEAAAASE!

Interacting, what Rakdos does best:

Well we are in black and red so let's get as much removal as we can. We have Legion's End and Cry of the Carnarium to deal with tokens, and Massacre Girl as a reanimation target that can clear the board. As targeted kill spells we have Price of Fame and Cavalier of Night for creatures and Angrath's Rampage, Bedevil, and Murderous Rider for those annoying planeswalkers. We also run a Karn, the Great Creator to animate our pretty big artifacts, as well as letting us shut off opponent's stuff like mana rocks, or our Wishclaw Talisman

Discard and Draw:

YES, I WILL TRY TO KEEP MAKING Wishclaw Talisman HAPPEN IN BRAWL. I love tutor effects, and this one is quite powerful especially in a deck that can has as much closing potential as ours. We run a lot of rummage or wheel effects, with Thrill of Possibility and Rix Maadi Reveler as cheap ways to ditch a big guy looking for spells we can cast, and it only gets better from there. Rankle, Master of Pranks lets us get a lot of value by forcing discards and draw, and the enormous Neheb, Dreadhorde Champion, Cavalier of Flame, and Dragon Mage to go "WHEEE" with our cards and hope to draw better ones! DO YOU LIKE RANDOMNESS? RAKDOS DOES! Oh right, there's a Rotting Regisaur to try to get our opponents early in the game, as well as forcing us to ditch our huge creatures to reanimate them later.

Reanimation Engines:

Oh look, there's a couple new ones here! The black reanimation package is something I've written about twice before, but red doesn't have many extra amazing ways to bring guys back, so we also run Gravewaker and Command the Dreadhorde! Yes, Gravewaker is slow and is here solely for extra redundancy. And yes, Command the Dreadhorde is probably going to hurt you. A lot. BUUUT even though it's not highlighted here we do run one Crashing Drawbridge to be able to make that spell actually do some damage. There's a lot of redundancy here so don't worry about casting an early Finale of Eternity to control the board, this deck isn't good enough to play it cool.

The Targets:

Alright, so apart from all the big reanimation targets mentioned before, we also have some pretty juicy monsters left to talk about. Ilhard, the Raze-Boar can help us get some of our ridiculous creature from our hand to board, which can help if we don't draw the discard or the reanimation sides of our deck. Skarrgan Hellkite is an absolute unit that puts Shivan Dragon to shame. and Doom Whisperer can help us pay more life to throw our big creatures into the graveyard. Paying life, by the way, is what Vilis, Broker of Blood wants you to do, and of course he's in here, as is Drakuseth, Maw of Flames, the most awesome monored dragon printed in the past 5 years, easily. There isn't much else to it, really! These are ridiculous big dudes we reanimate. That's the deck! WE'RE DONE!

The Lands:

Oh no... you can't make me... Ah fuck it. We run the lands above. I have no idea why I put Castle Embereth in there, it's probably just to swag on opponents with our one single swinging creature. We have card draw lands, Field of the Dead, Mobilized District, and a buncha other nonsense. The sacrifice lands have some nice extra value for Cavalier of Flame but, eh... Our commander might be a board clear? Sometimes? I don't know try to enjoy the deck. Have fun :)