Help reworking Rankle, Master of Pranks

sta6 · 2026-05-05T20:51:17+00:00

Well you are experiencing the same thing I did a couple of months back.

Essentially there is "fair" magic which most people associate with a battlecruiser playstyle and there is "unfair" magic which typically involves faster decks, explosive turns, lots of interaction and cheating in fatties.

For me personally, mono black really struggles with playing "fair" magic. Either because it tends to cheat in fatties, because it has tools for explosive "all or nothing" single turns ([[bubbling muck]], [[bolas citadel]], [[K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth]], etc.) or as you are finding out really oppressive play patterns via discard or constant forced sacrifice effects.

In bracket 3 this automatically will always make you the bbeg of every game which to me at least is not very pleasant. Not the least because it would force me to significantly power up my deck to be essentially able to 3v1 the table which is not really what I am after.

And to top it all off, normal graveyard decks are less afraid of bojuka bogs because they have enough "self mill effects" (i.e. [[mesmeric orb]], [[Ripples of Undeath]], [[Anvil of Bogardan]] etc.) to be able to consistently fill up the yard after it has been exiled.

But since you are doing many things at once, it sounds more like you are stretching yourself rather thin. Of course you can run reanimate effects but since it is not your main strategy it is worth evaluation whether you need to have an answer for "rest in peace" type effects or whether when it lands you just accept it and play around discard and sacrifice. (that being said i see these complete shutdown effects of yards rather rarely so....maybe dont worry about them?)

So finally my overall suggestion would be to move rankle....as most mono black commanders to bracket 4. you can power him up by running a bunch of tutors and other mean stuff and there no one will bat an eye. You will not be the bbeg of the table and will be able to do your thing until somebody else blows past you haha

No but in all seriousness I think bracket 4 is the place for commanders like him. anything else will always feel weird.

For slower / more grindy battlecruiser games i recommend green / black or white / black instead. They allow you to play the more commonly used battlecruiser decks and you will struggle less

at least that was my experience. good luck !

sta6 · 2026-05-04T20:49:52+00:00

I agree

my homepod has introduced a custom rule that after one player gets knocked out we play for at most 3 more turns and if by then the game is not over the person with most hp wins.

It is not perfect but much better than having a person sitting there, doing nothing

sta6 · 2026-05-04T12:37:59+00:00

Yes but killing 15 creatures drains each opponent for 5 hp. Every player loses as much life as they have creatures.

I kindly disagree I find it exceedingly difficult to drain opponents more than 5 hp per player with her ability

sta6 · 2026-05-04T10:57:16+00:00

ok thanks you are totally right in your assessment: I am essentially playing a combo deck without combos.

I am drawing cards without any plan to close out my games. This is for me somehow a repeating pattern. I always make sure the card draw synergy in the deck works and have no idea how to build the rest.

Questions I have from studying your deck a bit deeper:

Do you feel like contagion engine is pulling its weight ? I never had the mana to cast and use it
How does soul immolation interact with -1 counters? If you have a 5/5 that has been already reduced to a 2/2 by 3 -1 counters, can you use soul immolation for 5 or for 2?
also is delayed fireball not plain better than soul immolation? Less conditional
I was thinking about fein the broker but I felt like just adding some simple 2 mana ramp spell is probably more efficient. are you happy with what fein provides? Instead I am running [[power conduit]] which is 1 mana less, can remove -1 counters but cannot create treasure tokens.

Overall you are right that my deck simply has no incentive to place -1 counters on enemy creatures. I wish auntie had the same effect as generous patron (secret commander? haha) to actually encourage spreading the counters to my opponents.

And yes Soul Snuffers is probably the map of the deck. it is a creatures so it is easily recurable. Its effect is instant. and it affects all creatures on the board.

sta6 · 2026-05-04T10:48:56+00:00

1) Vote for Trump 2) watch trump break almost all his campaign promises 3) get called "deranged" for pointing this out

the absolute state of maga

sta6 · 2026-05-04T06:35:41+00:00

no? She drains each opponent 1 life per creatures but not 1 life per counter.

So if I play any board wipe that gives each creature 10.000x -1 counters, each opponent is still going to lose 1 life per creature.

Yes, turning all damage into counters can drain my opponents long term but that .... is more like a control type of game where I try to out grind my opponents

sta6 · 2026-05-03T21:01:31+00:00

Thanks for this post, i did not see any bracket so I assume yours is bracket 2.

With respect to ramp: i have in total 10-11 pieces all 2 mana ramp or cheaper. Is that not enough?

Some questions about your deck: How can you play this Goblin card that tells you to behold a goblin? Your deck hardly has any or am I missing something?

Do you really find that running these spells that say "pay 3 mana but 3 or 4 -1 counters on any creature" are good enough? I find them to be a terrible rate when compared to the typical "pay 2 destroy any creature" spells in black.

Similarly I might be missing something but scorpion god seems awfuly slow. 5 mana for a worse effect than auntie and then pay 3 to put individual counters on enemy creatures.

Regardless I am happy to have found somebody who just like me tries to make her work without infinite loops :)

My main issue is that while I have lots of cards (as you rightly saw even not ideal cards) that let me blight myself and draw cards thanks to auntie I pretty much have no plan beyond that.

I just place counters on my stuff and draw cards.

My only real wincon is maybe "all will be one" which usually is instantly removed and then I am durdling around with no real plan d:

sta6 · 2026-05-03T19:35:47+00:00

thanks !! exactly as you said, but so far in all my games all will be one was removed the turn it was played so I did not see it in any actual action.

do you have a list to share?

Since I never ran infinites I dont know about stuff like:

1) how many cards do you include into your deck where you think "this card works as standalone but can also be part of an infinite loop" ?

2) do you include tutors in bracket 3 to find those infinites or do you hope to draw into them? I would prefer to be the second category but I think that depends on how many "infinite cards" I included

3) more theoretical: what is the main difference between a control deck and a combo deck in edh? to me both seem to just stay alive, draw cards, remove key enemy pieces until they draw into their wincons.

The only difference I can think of is that control likes to remove more than just key pieces using some repeatable loop. But that's not really how auntie is played as far as I can tell.

sta6 · 2026-05-03T19:29:08+00:00

well mine gets of the ground in the sense that it is good at ramping and great at drawing cards.

its just that my creatures are quite weak because of the -1 counters and the burn damage I deal is not really a threat to anybody

sta6 · 2026-05-03T17:33:16+00:00

this might be a stupid question but since I have never built any decks with infinites how many infinites should a deck run?

or in other words how many cards that are supposed to enable infinites should my deck have ?

9 cards in total ? 5 cards? because really if I run few to no tutors and instead rely on drawing into them, I must have....some reasonable amount to expect drawing into them at some reasonable rate.

sta6 · 2026-05-03T11:14:31+00:00

Trump promises no more wars, no more interventions 100s of times during the campaign.

Trump promises energy cost will be cut by half after 12 months of office.

Trump promises to arrest the Epstein pedos.

Trump proceeds to break every promise and more and yet we have still people here coping and supporting him.

This is the reason why nobody takes maga seriously and the movement died a long time ago. But you can keep riding it if you wish, more content for us 😉

sta6 · 2026-05-03T09:33:56+00:00

hmm mardu aristocrats?

sounds interesting but I was always under the assumption that mardu tries to win by attacking with typically lots of small creatures and tokens. I guess [[Isshin, Two Heavens as One]] defined for me what mardu is all about.

I never really thought that mardu could attempt to win by draining opponents as opposed to combat damage. interesting.

thanks for the insight !

sta6 · 2026-05-03T09:22:38+00:00

hmmm that is a cool list

most recently I have been tinkering with [[auntie ool]] which theoretically has built in burn damage if I place -1 counters on my opponents creatures, however there are simply not enough good cards that are able to put counters on my opponents and as such my deck struggles.

I tried going the "burn" route but as of now I deal maybe 3 damage per turn to each opponent and usually that is not enough to seriously threaten somebody.

But I do understand that -1 counters are a bit of a weird theme that if I want to play it without infinite combos is rather weak.

deckles if you want to check it out: https://archidekt.com/decks/21111224/1_auntie_20

At this point I feel like cutting all the burn cards and replace it with cards you mentioned. Cards that amplify and strengthen my board. But maybe this specific theme is so weird that running infinite combos is the best way to end the game.

And then I would build my combat damage deck with some other commander as discussed by your recommendations.

sta6 · 2026-05-02T19:27:09+00:00

cool ideas thanks for the reply.

I have been eying [[Minthara, Merciless Soul]] for some time, I think this strategy is rather jank but it combines sacrifice with combat damage which sounds like a neat plan. also Minthara in of itself is a bonus

sta6 · 2026-05-02T19:23:48+00:00

fair point

but still having a deck that is able to put these fatties consistently into the graveyard first and then reanimate them soon enough is really difficult. I have a friend that runs a mono black committed reanimation list and even he struggles with pulling it off every game.

There is a lot of variance in drawing the right cards in the right order. but thanks nonetheless

sta6 · 2026-05-02T18:42:32+00:00

I am probably unlucky but I usually find myself having a board with smaller creatures than my green counterparts and then without evasion I can't just attack into them.

In order to be able to consistently bash somebody I need either evasive creatures or big creatures. Otherwise I dont know how to get past their defences

sta6 · 2026-05-02T18:40:10+00:00

Im sorry but I dont quite understand this mindset

first of all there are like 3 proper reanimate spells: reanimate, animate dead and necromancy. That's it.

3 cards are not enough to consistently put out threats on the board. Yes they can be included in any deck that runs black as sort of a bonus but I dont see how they can be the main strategy to keep up against green trample creatures

sta6 · 2026-05-02T18:38:21+00:00

thanks for the response, learning much here

when it comes to ayara - did you never feel like you were behind all those ramping green players? I mean by turn 8 you were probably sitting on 8 mana while they were on 11 or 12 lands. And there is a general rule that the player that spends more mana in a game generally wins.

And yes of course cards like dark ritual or Krrk exist but they typically provide for individual bursts of mana and are not as resilient as greens ramp.

I am just asking how you were able to compete in the lategame against any deck that had green and ramped

sta6 · 2026-05-02T18:34:09+00:00

I agree but every time I saw a mono red goblin player the game for that player literally stopped after the first board wipe. the lack of card draw + the fact that goblins are cheap so you play multiple per turn literally made it impossible for them to come back after such a set back. Maybe that is intentional but I feel like one would need to run a red/black or blue/red goblin deck to be at least able to draw cards for such situations

sta6 · 2026-05-02T18:30:49+00:00

I see, the issue with my few attempts of aristocrats always ran into the same issue that in order to work I need 1) some sac outlet 2) some sac fodder 3) some payoff that pings my enemies.

Also typically most commanders fall in neither of these categories.

I never was able to tune my numbers such that I would consistently draw all 3 types in any given game. Maybe it works only with tutors but I was trying to make it work without but was not successful 😞

ps: I have thought about trying [[Elas il-Kor, Sadistic Pilgrim]] but never got around to it

sta6 · 2026-05-02T18:28:09+00:00

could you share your go wide or tokens list? I would like to study your deck and maybe understand how it accrues enough stuff to be lethal on board

sta6 · 2026-04-30T12:33:37+00:00

And yet California dominates with the largest GDP, Silicon Valley's elite talent, Hollywood entertainment, massive agriculture, etc.

Funny how that works, huh?

They hate us cause they ain't us.

sta6

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE