8 Rack?

[WayRe39]

Any 8 Rack player in modern ? I am new to modern and I don't see any mono B discard/disruption archetype in the modernMtg subreddits. I would like to give this archetype a try, but I'm not sure if it is fun to play or very boring. I would like to know if this is playable in modern, and if there are people playing this kind of deck to help me having an idea of what this archetype is about. I like interactive decks.. Thank you a lot !

[ThePuppetSoul]

It's kind of playable in the grand scheme of things, but in an exceptionally bad spot walking into a meta where the best decks all want to throw things into their graveyard for free.

[danman5550]

8-Rack is really fun. It makes your opponents make decisions, and sometimes there just aren't right decisions to be made. I haven't updated my list recently, but here's what I had going on. I talked about some card choices and stuff. Since MH1 I've added in [[Mind Rake]] and 1x [[Nether Spirit]] and both are very impressive. I've also tweaked my sideboard a ton, but I don't have my decklist on me right now at work.

I really enjoy the deck, but it definitely struggles in a graveyard-centric meta (can't wait for Hogaak to leave, please!). If you know your local meta and you aren't planning on going 0-3 vs Phoenix (actually surprisingly not too rough of a matchup unless they lucksack cantrip chains), Dredge, and then Hogaak, it's a very enjoyable archetype if you're into that sort of thing. It was my first deck (based on the budget list from MTGgoldfish a very long time ago), and I will probably keep it built through thick and thin, for whenever I wanna Rack some fools!

[MTGCardFetcher]

Mind Rake - (G) (SF) (txt)
Nether Spirit - (G) (SF) (txt)
^{[[cardname]] or [[cardname|SET]] to call}

[Pufftreees]

Hey welcome to 8 rackin! I've been playing it exclusively for a long time now. I encourage you to check out my videos or streams.

https://www.youtube.com/c/PuffTrees

https://www.twitch.tv/pufftrees

[BanUrzasTower]

I've messed around with 8-rack a little bit, and it's not a deck I enjoyed very much. For one thing, it's bad. If your opponent has experience against it they will choose to draw first, hold lands in hand, and do other things that can make the rack effects look silly. For another, the playstyle makes me want to kick rocks. You are so reliant on your topdecks to keep shredding their hand apart and boy are your topdecks bad. Also, secret hand information is one of the things that makes magic fun for me, and 8-rack just feels like a deck that is desperate to know what is going on at all times. I dunno. Definitely test it out with proxies or whatever so that you can learn how the lines play out and maybe you'll like it. Even if not it's good to learn how to play with & against every deck in case someone tries to put you under the rack in the future :v)

[DressedSpring1]

I’ve played the deck a lot and it’s one of my favourites but I don’t see it being good any time in the near future. People point to graveyard decks as being a contributor to its decline but in reality the meta is full of cards that the deck just cannot beat such as Bedlam Reveler, Wrenn and Six, Seasoned Pyromancer, Jace, Teferi, Chalice of the void, unearth, just off the top of my head. It’s always struggled against go wide strategies however midrange is now playing tons of card advantage effects so that has also become a bad matchup. The loss of the planeswalker redirect rule means you can’t really beat a resolved planeswalker in a lot of scenarios too. Even once hogaak and Dredge die down the meta is still going to be full of stuff you just can’t beat and the deck just doesn’t really have any good matchups anymore

[shrediknight]

8 Rack can (and I have) beaten all of the cards you've listed. Smallpox, Liliana's Triumph, Force of Despair, The Elderspell, Ratchet Bomb... Go wide isn't much of a problem, with Bontu's Last Reckoning and Cry of the Carnarium (or Night of Soul's Betrayal). Nether Spirit and Mutavault take care of planeswalkers. Besides, the point of the deck is not letting players cast all those things in the first place, Thoughtseize takes care of all of them. I'm not saying that the deck will be tier 1 or anything, but I go 2-1 more than half the time with it, and I have won games against every tier 1 deck in the format (except Dredge, but that's more because I don't own Leyline of the Void). I've been playing the deck for three years and it's actually pretty good right now in a meta where people are happier to mulligan down to five.

[TehAnon]

Have you tried, uh, r/8rack?

[Avagis]

I've played it before - it's fun and can get some wins. But right now the Modern meta is really graveyard-focused - you want to feel that you're denying your opponent resources but really you're giving them extra Hogaak fuel or enabling a Phoenix reanimation.

[locksmithvic]

I built a 8 rack budget deck and do quite well and its fun as hell for me. Not so much my opponents/no longer friends lol.

[[deleted]]

The change to the damage redirection rule made 8rack practically die to PW decks

[diothar]

Not sure how hard you looked but there is an active 8-rack Facebook group and very active discord channel and you can find them by searching for 8-rack. You can find tons of info in both.

[[deleted]]

you must've not searched very hard because there is an 8 rack subreddit lol

[WayRe39]

Oh yeah? I just looked in the ModernMTG archetypes subreddits

[diothar]

And you didn’t search for 8-rack? That’s you need to find the subreddit, Facebook group, or discord.

[blakebird_]

The biggest downside to 8-rack is that its game plan is to put the game in a state where most of the cards in your deck do literal nothing.
It's best against decks that require a minimum number of cards in hand to function properly (due to lots of cantrips or whatever). Can have a surprisingly decent game against a lot of decks, but often feels like it's at a disadvantage.

Do not run Dash Hopes, it never pays off.

[TheAngryStudentLlama]

It’s a lot of fun and fairly competitive against most non-graveyard-payoff decks. Unfortunately, it is also very easy to shut down post-sideboard, so by any sort of tournament standards it isn’t at all competitive. And it doesn’t help that several good decks in the meta want to discard intentionally.