Overview:

This Rakdos (B/R) deck helmed by Valgavoth, Harrower of Souls employs a grindy, attrition-based strategy focused on incremental life drain, forced sacrifices, and punishing opponents for common actions (drawing, casting spells, tapping lands). Valgavoth acts as a value engine, rewarding the deck’s core strategy of inflicting repeated small life losses with card draw and a growing threat. The deck lacks a singular "I win" button but leverages synergies between sacrifice outlets, universal damage triggers (e.g., Spiteful Visions, Mogis, God of Slaughter), and death-based value (e.g., Blood Artist, Syr Konrad, the Grim).

Primer:

Core Strategy Execution:

1. Early Game (Turns 1-4): Deploy incremental damage engines like Blood Artist, Harsh Mentor, or Kederekt Parasite. Use ramp (Sol Ring, Rakdos Signet) to accelerate into mid-game threats.
2. Mid Game (Turns 5-7): Activate forced sacrifice via Braids, Arisen Nightmare or Sadistic Shell Game, amplify damage with Sanguine Bond/Mogis, God of Slaughter, and disrupt opponents with Manabarbs or Rampaging Ferocidon.
3. Late Game (Turns 8+): Close with Gray Merchant of Asphodel, Massacre Wurm, or Kaervek the Merciless, leveraging accumulated life loss and board control.

Mulligan Priorities:

• Keep hands with 2–3 lands and at least one early damage engine (e.g., Blood Artist, Stormfist Crusader).
• Prioritize ramp or card advantage tools like Florian, Voldaren Scion or Theater of Horrors.
• Avoid hands overloaded with high-CMC cards without setup.

Key Tips:

• Use Blasphemous Act or Massacre Girl to clear boards while triggering death synergies.
• Mayhem Devil turns all sacrifices (yours or opponents’) into damage.
• Séance Board scales mana with deaths, enabling explosive late turns.

Weaknesses:

Critical

• Enchantment reliance: Key engines like Sanguine Bond, Spiteful Visions, and Manabarbs are vulnerable to mass enchantment removal.
• Slow inevitability: Struggles to close games quickly, allowing combo or aggro decks to outpace it.

Moderate

• Lack of recursion: Limited ways to recover key pieces after removal (outside Mishra, Tamer of Mak Fawa).
• Mana inefficiency: High-CMC threats (e.g., Kaervek the Merciless, Doomsday Excruciator) can clog hands.

Minor

• Limited stack interaction: Relies mostly on sorcery-speed removal (Chaos Warp, Feed the Swarm).
• Self-damage: Cards like Talisman of Indulgence and Sulfurous Springs add incremental self-ping.

Most Important Cards:

• Sanguine Bond (Doubles life-loss triggers)
• Mogis, God of Slaughter (Persistent damage/sacrifice pressure)
• Syr Konrad, the Grim (Universal death-trigger damage)
• Gray Merchant of Asphodel (Life-swing finisher)
• Braids, Arisen Nightmare (Forced sacrifice engine)
• Mayhem Devil (Sacrifice payoff)
• Blood Artist (Core life-drain engine)
• Manabarbs (Mana denial + damage)
• Massacre Wurm (Board control + life loss)
• Florian, Voldaren Scion (Card advantage tied to opponents’ life loss)

Attribute Ratings:

Speed: 4/10

• Wins via attrition, typically post-Turn 10. No fast combos; relies on incremental damage stacking.

Resilience: 5/10

• Redundant damage engines mitigate single removals, but key enchantments are fragile. Some recursion via Mishra, Tamer of Mak Fawa.

Consistency: 6/10

• Multiple overlapping triggers ensure steady pressure, but limited tutors make assembling specific combos unreliable.

Interaction: 5/10

• Spot removal (Infernal Grasp, Rakdos Charm) and forced sacrifices disrupt opponents but lack countermagic or instant-speed versatility.

Rating Justification:

This deck’s grindy, incremental strategy typically secures wins around Turn 10–12 via layered life-drain synergies, aligning it with Casual/Precon (4.0) to Focused Casual (4.5) tiers. While resilient against single-target removal, its slow clock and reliance on fragile enchantments cap its competitive ceiling.

Power level: 4.0 – 4.5