Rakdos Charm | Art by Zoltan Boros

What is one Rak + one Rak? Rakdos.

The question of planeswalkers as commanders has been brought up in Magic discourse an infinite number of times. People say it would kill EDH as a format, and others say it will do nothing but give more options to an endless pool of commanders. I believe the truth is somewhere in the middle. My name is Nick, and the ninth installment of Myth Realized will cover Rakdos (red, black) cards and how they would each ruin (or not ruin) your favorite 100-card singleton format.

If you've stuck around with me until this article, you might not know that this article is going to be a bit shorter than others. I have some bad news if you are a fan of this color combination. There are only six, (count them!) six, red-black planeswalkers printed on paper in all of Magic: The Gathering. The good news is that I think these are pretty robust as far as planeswalkers go. So, let's jump in.

• Angrath, Captain of Chaos - 2BB/2RR/2BR

First, a fan-favorite character: Angrath. They have one goal and one goal only: get back home to the kids. Well, I guess not to die in the War of the Spark as well. This is the most boring version of everyone's favorite Minotaur father figure, but simplicity can breed creativity in the right hands. Giving your creatures menace is just good; it's really that simple. Blocking becomes much more complicated, if not impossible, and chump blocking is something you don't get to do anymore. Amass has gained more support as the years go on, and it seems to be a reusable keyword, so this card can get better as the years go on. It's better in the 99 in most cases, but it would be interesting to lead a deck, and according to EDHREC, many commanders want access to this card.

• Angrath, Minotaur Pirate - 4BR

The only "planeswalker-deck planeswalker we have to deal with in this article, so everyone doesn't have to live through infinite Chandra's like a few articles ago. This card isn't coming out fast in black and red at six mana in most scenarios. You can power it out with something like Dockside Extortionist or Treasonous Ogre, but I think you want to invest in your board before playing this out of the command zone. The +2 on this card will not do much by itself but has ways to make it work to your advantage. Something like Curse of Death's Hold can turn Angrath into an every-turn sweeper.

The -3 looks terrible, but a quick Scryfall search will let you know there are some heavy hitters for Pirate reanimation. Creatures like Dockside Extortionist, Emberwilde Captain, Dire Fleet Ravager, and Angrath's Marauders are all worth getting into the grave early to spring out late. Finally, something we don't see often on planeswalker-deck planeswalkers is an ultimate that can win the game. And -11 will take a bit to get to, but it destroys a player's entire board of creatures and also damages them. I guess it might just be the Pirate's life for me.

• Angrath, the Flame-Chained - 3BR

The final version of Angrath screams synergy as loud as I imagine he's screaming in the art. A +1 to make everyone discard and lose life is not bad. Black is ripe with benefits for making your opponents discard cards. Geth's Grimoire will help make your card advantage flow. Liliana's Caress or Megrim doubles up the life loss. And if you really want to make people angry every time they have to pitch a card, put in something like Waste Not, Tourach, Dread Cantor, and the extremely mean Tergrid, God of Fright. The -3 on this card isn't very synergistic unless you take something that has a surprising synergy in your opponent's deck. Still, it can be removal or just another attacker. Finally, if protected, Angrath has a respectable ultimate that can punish decks with its own strategies without you having to do anything at all.

• Daretti, Ingenious Iconoclast - 1BR

The first of two, count the TWO, three-mana planeswalkers. By now, we all know the rule about this mana cost; if you don't, it is straightforward. Never underestimate a three-mana planeswalker (here's looking at you, Lilly). Sometimes used in cubes and a non-zero amount of decks spanning a variety of formats, the Iconoclast Daretti might be the hardest to rate on this very short list. While making a token to protect himself is very nice, and doing it on an uptick is even better, the tokens have a nasty little keyword: defender. So they'll only be doing one thing: getting sacrificed to the -1 on this walker. Who wants a 1/1 defender when you can use it to destroy someone's other creature or their pesky artifact? The -6 on Daretti is where things get spicy. The possibility of getting three token versions of an artifact card in the graveyard or on the battlefield can do nasty things. And black and red are very good at getting things into graveyards. Gamble and Entomb are the most cost-efficient ways to get something in the yard, though possibly not the card you want with Gamble. Adding in Mycosynth Lattice will give you three copies of anything on the board and get this card a higher spot on the Scoville scale. I have a soft spot for this card as I've tried it in many a cube deck to a losing record. This would be a very cool commander and one I would imagine seeing a lot of play.

• Ob Nixilis, the Adversary - 1BR

We've seen static abilities on planeswalkers and only negative loyalty abilities in terms of costs. Still, we've only seen one other planeswalker with something happening upon cast. That all changes with Ob, aka Robert Nixilis. When you cast Ob, you can sacrifice a creature and get a non-legendary copy of him with a starting loyalty equal to its power. It's a pretty solid mechanic from Streets of New Capenna, and this card saw some of the most play of all the Casualty cards from the set. The real key to this card is that it's one of only a handful of planeswalkers that can make a copy of itself. The others are Jace, Cunning Castaway, and Jace, Mirror Mage.

The big difference here is this doesn't cost you extra mana the turn you play it, and you don't have to ultimate this card to get the copy. The card, funnily enough, does play very similar to Jace, Mirror Mage, where the pattern is to uptick with the lower loyalty version and downtick with the higher loyalty one (or in the case of Jace use his zero cost ability), keeping both around in most cases. The benefit of doing this with Ob is that you get a bonus from the one you uptick, assuming you did it second, thanks to the Devil token you create. You also get a body to protect both of your planeswalkers or in 60 card formats, something to pay for Casualty when you cast another copy of this card. The ultimate on this card is fine, but honestly, if you ultimate this card, you are probably in an excellent position long before you get there. But I will never complain about drawing seven cards. At the helm of a deck, Ob gets vastly more interesting. With the drive to make non-legendary copies of permanents being the current design pattern for Wizards, this card gains unlimited possibilities the more times you can cast it.

• Sarkhan the Mad - 3BR

Last and certainly least is a very confusing card. Before War of the Spark, Sarkhan was out here having only negative loyalty abilities, and no one liked it. Like most other versions of Sarkhan, he likes to deal with Dragons. Unlike his other versions, Sarkhan the Mad does not deal with them well. Dragons are often expensive when it comes to mana cost. And in black and red, they're often not lower than four converted mana cost. So, at best, you get two activations of Sarkhan before you would have to recast him. Creature removal is always important in Commander, and many playable cards "trade" your opponent's' creature for something seen as weaker to make removal seem more "fair." Generous Gift and Beast Within are the two best examples of this. But there's a big difference between a 3/3 with no evasion and a massive 5/5 flyer. It is an option that should only be used if you are desperate for removal, though, in Rakdos, you should not be struggling for that. The one thing this card does have going for it is -4 ability. Each Dragon being able to deal damage equal to its power to a player will definitely kill people. But you only get to use it once without some way to give him another counter. If you like the character and Rakdos Dragons, you could use this card at the head of a deck, but even in a color pair without a massive back stock of legendary Dragons, there are better options.

Wrap Up

Last time, I said that Dimir was disappointing. This time, I will say that Rakdos is pretty... rad. I think that, while not a powerhouse combination of colors for planeswalkers and the one with the fewest options, Rakdos has much more to it than I thought it would. This is not a color combination or playstyle I prefer in any format, but there's something for everyone, so I will not fault all the Rakdos mains in the world. Nothing is broken in these colors at the moment, and unless Pirate Reanimator becomes the norm, these planeswalkers will not cause any reason to worry. The only one that in the future could mess things up is Daretti. Artifacts are a notoriously troublesome card type; anything dealing with them must be watched closely. Daretti doesn't get to his ultimate very efficiently, and he's in colors that don't speed this process up either. There could always be something down the line that makes this entire wrap-up seem silly and downright incorrect, but as it stands right now, this is maybe the safest color and best champion on the side of letting these be the leader of a deck.

Join me next time as we put on our best impression of The Hulk as we Gruul Smash! our way through a wide range of characters and abilities. If you want to read any of my other content, you are already in the right place, and remember, everyone if "Not Gruul? Then die!"

Read more:

• Myth Realized - What if Any Planeswalker Could Be Your Commander? (Azorius)
• Playing With Planeswalkers In cEDH
• Ranking Every Planeswalker with EDHREC - 2022 Edition