Modern Rakdos Midrange Scam: The King of the Modern Metagame

Note: This article was translated from Chinese by AI and may contain errors. Read the original Chinese version.

Before We Start

I mentioned before that after LTR came out, Murktide Regent got pinged into stupidity by Orcish Bowmasters (the sauce is here). Following the spirit of “if you can’t beat them, join them,” I put together a Scam deck too.
Originally I wanted to play Death’s Shadow, but after fiddling with it a bit it wasn’t the feeling I expected. Maybe I’ve watched too many Legacy matches, but without Daze and Force of Will I’m useless.

Since I had already put the Bowmasters away, and I was missing The One Ring so I couldn’t build Dimir Control or Coffers, I chose the lowest-budget route: joining Scam.
As the saying goes, if you can’t beat them, join them. Discard two cards in your opening hand, and it’s a fun game to play every day… right?

Deck Compatibility Test

This deck is a good fit for these kinds of people:

• Those who like making the opponent discard two cards from their opening hand to mess with their mind
• Those who like games that wrap up in three turns
• Those who like cheating with full legitimacy (scam counts as a kind of cheating, I guess
• Those who think turn-two Blood Moon feels so good
• Players who prefer taking the initiative

On the other hand, this deck is not a good fit for these people:

• Those who play “you don’t move, I don’t move”
• Those who hate being topdecked on
• Those who dislike gambling on extreme opening hands
• Those who like flashy plays
• Those who like tuning their own decks

Decklist

Let me start with my decklist, MTGGoldfish link.

Almost nothing in the main deck can be changed, so here I’ll list which cards can be changed/chosen instead:

• Two one-mana removal spells, Fatal Push and Lightning Bolt. How you split them is up to you.
• Besides the four Not Dead After All, there is room for two more Feign Death-style cards. You can run the Undying Malice and Feign Death that were played before, or just go with the undying Undying Evil.
  Personally I prefer Undying Evil, because it enters untapped, so you can sometimes use it to block hasty creatures (for example, when you’re on the draw and Grief scam on turn one, and you see the opponent can dash Ragavan on turn two). The downside is that it can’t save a creature that already has a counter again, but right now Undying Evil is the only one that puts a counter anyway.
• You can choose to run two or three Terminate. Usually I run two and give the extra slot to Blood Moon.

The sideboard is a bit freer, but usually the six cards Chalice of the Void, Engineered Explosives, and Sheoldred, the Apocalypse, two of each, can’t be touched. Some people run three Chalice.
Beyond those cards, the rest is usually:

• One or two extra Blood Moons: in any case you want at least two between main deck and sideboard, and if the metagame has more multicolor decks or Creativity decks, at least three
• At least three graveyard hate cards: choose among Leyline of the Void, Nihil Spellbomb, and Unlicensed Hearse

The rest depends on what you personally want to run. For example, I wanted to punish players who try to use the Ring to be invincible for a turn, so I put two Bonecrusher Giant in the sideboard, and one Hidetsugu Consumes All for Scales.

Protection from ~ includes can't be the target of abilities or spells from ~ sources and damage from ~ sources is prevented, so you can use Stomp to make this turn’s damage unpreventable.

Mardu Scam

Finally, a quick word on a variant of the deck: Mardu Scam.
Although it’s called Mardu, the only white is the three split-card enchantment-removal Wear // Tear in the sideboard, and the main deck has one fewer red-black fast land and one more black-white shock land.

But in the current metagame you rarely need enchantment removal, and the matchups that do need it usually also need Blood Moon (against Cascade Beanstalk/Omnath). I personally feel it’s a bit awkward, so you might as well just scam in your opening hand and kill the opponent quickly.

The Deck’s Goal: Turn-One Scam!

A turn-one Scam is the deck’s main goal. Grief and Fury, when put onto the battlefield with their evoke cost (exiling a card of the same color from your hand), are sacrificed immediately (die), and combined with Feign Death-style cards they can come right back.
Besides the creature coming back, more importantly its enter-the-battlefield ability triggers again.

Here “Feign Death” refers to these cards (since there are too many of them, I call them all Feign Death):

• Undying Evil
• Not Dead After All
• Undying Malice
• Feign Death

All of these cards make the target creature return to the battlefield if it dies, with a +1/+1 counter on it (Not Dead After All gives a Wicked Role instead). Except for Undying Evil, all of them enter tapped.

Basically, against every deck, any opening hand that can Grief scam on turn one is a keep (unless the opponent is a four-color deck with a ridiculous amount of removal), and we prioritize discarding their removal, otherwise an opening hand like ours would be pointless. The point is to trigger the ETB twice and also have a creature with evasion/one that hits hard.
Also note that the evoke sacrifice trigger and the creature’s own ETB are two separate abilities. Since they trigger at the same time, you can order them on the stack yourself. Usually you put evoke first and the ETB second: first check whether the opponent has removal in hand, and if so discard it first, then throw in the Feign Death. If the opponent responds to Grief’s discard by killing Grief, we can throw in the Feign Death first, and when the removal resolves the Feign Death effect is still there.
The opponent can only break this situation in the following cases:

1. They respond to Grief by evoking Subtlety, bouncing our Grief from the stack to the top or bottom of the library
2. The opponent is on the play and has Stern Scolding to counter it
3. The opponent has two removal spells to respond with (such as two one-mana removal spells on the play like Path to Exile or Lightning Bolt)
4. They respond by pitching Solitude

Usually only case two is a headache: we discarded two cards and are stuck with a dead card in hand, while the opponent solved it with a single counterspell.
Cases one and four result in both sides losing two cards; in case three we discard other cards from hand instead, but still hand the opponent a Feign Death to respond to with removal and burn resources.

Dauthi Voidwalker: Your Ulamog/Emrakul/Primeval Titan Look So Handy, Mind If I Borrow Them?

Let’s look at Dauthi Voidwalker’s abilities:

Shadow
If a card would be put into an opponent’s graveyard from anywhere, instead exile it with a void counter on it.
{T}, Sacrifice Dauthi Voidwalker: Choose an exiled card an opponent owns with a void counter on it. You may play it this turn without paying its mana cost.

Shadow makes Dauthi Voidwalker an unblockable attacker, but that is also its drawback: it can’t act as a blocker.
The main ability is used to lock the opponent’s graveyard, and it is much better than Leyline of the Void. Just being an unblockable attacker makes you win a lot more (other than the fact that you can’t put it straight onto the battlefield).
The last ability lets you reuse the opponent’s exiled resources without paying, so we can first play Dauthi, then discard the Ulamog or Emrakul (the Eldrazi) in the opponent’s hand, and next turn sacrifice Dauthi to cast it. Besides taking a free fatty from us, the opponent also has to suffer the abilities they bring.

Note that because the card chosen by Dauthi Voidwalker’s third ability is for you to play it, and playing a spell means casting it.
So if that spell has an additional trigger on cast (for example, Emrakul, the Aeons Torn’s extra turn when cast), it will trigger as well.

All About Dauthi Voidwalker

There are quite a few rules to be aware of about Dauthi Voidwalker (since the full name is too long, I’ll shorten it to Dauthi below). Here is a brief mention, and when I have time we’ll write an article to cover it properly.

1. Dauthi can still be blocked by creatures with shadow, which in the current metagame means it gets blocked by Dauthi itself
2. Dauthi only exiles “cards,” so tokens aren’t exiled. When a creature with a Wicked Role dies, the opponent still takes 1 even if they have Dauthi. This differs from Rest in Peace, where RIP explicitly includes tokens
3. The card Dauthi chooses is “an exiled card an opponent owns with a void counter on it,” so a later Dauthi can use cards exiled by an earlier Dauthi
4. Because Dauthi’s third ability says “choose” and has no target, you only need to choose which card once the ability resolves; and because no target is needed on activation, Dauthi’s third ability can also be activated when there are no cards in exile
5. When the opponent kills Dauthi with a spell like Lightning Bolt or Dismember that brings its toughness below 0, the card gets exiled by Dauthi, because after the spell resolves it immediately goes to the graveyard and is changed by Dauthi to go to exile instead, and only after that do State-Based Actions (SBA) check whether Dauthi is still alive. If they use a spell that destroys directly, like Fatal Push, it doesn’t, because by the time Fatal Push finishes resolving and is about to enter the graveyard, Dauthi is no longer on the battlefield
6. When you eat a sweeper, the opponent’s creatures also get exiled by Dauthi
7. If you put a Feign Death-style card on Dauthi first, then when you sacrifice Dauthi it comes back first, and only then does the activated ability resolve and choose which card to use. You can only cast it after the ability resolves (and if that card is a spell that would go to the graveyard, it also gets exiled by Dauthi instead)
8. When the opponent casts Living End, you can respond by sacrificing Dauthi first (whether there is a target doesn’t matter). When Living End resolves, Dauthi is also in the graveyard and gets pulled back along with everything else. At that point, when Living End finishes resolving and is about to enter the graveyard, Dauthi changes it to exile. On our turn we can sacrifice Dauthi to cast the Living End in exile, and since Dauthi is in the graveyard at that time it gets pulled back again, while Living End stays in exile. As long as we always keep one Dauthi around, we can undo the opponent’s board infinitely
9. If a permanent effect like LotV or RIP, which also changes cards to be exiled instead of going to the graveyard, is on the battlefield at the same time, the card’s owner may choose “exile the card without a void counter on it”
10. You can use the flipped Fable of the Mirror-Breaker: Reflection of Kiki-Jiki to copy a Dauthi, sacrifice the copy to use the opponent’s removal spell to kill their creature (both the creature and the removal spell get exiled by the original Dauthi), then sacrifice the original Dauthi to use the opponent’s creature, successfully stealing the opponent’s creature for one mana

Some content is excerpted from a post on 勇德大叔的日常, with some light editing and additions

Match Detail

Finally, some small details about card interactions and key points of the matches:

1. You can respond with your own Fable Chapter 2 to kill the opponent’s Dauthi or Bowmasters
2. Note that in sideboard games, if you have both Chalice of the Void and Engineered Explosives, if you play Chalice first and then an X = 0 EE, the EE will be countered by Chalice
3. If you sacrifice Nihil Spellbomb while the opponent has something like Dauthi or LotV, you can’t pay one black to draw a card
4. In the mirror, the player on the play must never Fury scam. Fury scam is one of the few card-advantage removal plays in the mirror (not just a one-for-one). Also, Push is very important in the mirror: except for Fury, which it can’t kill, it can kill anything after triggering revolt
5. Against red burn, you want to go for a turn-one Grief scam discarding two cards, which usually amounts to gaining six life (discarding three cards from hand to gain six life, plus a 4/3 menace on the battlefield, huge value, huge value), and the opponent may want to spend a burn spell to burn it
6. Don’t throw in Feign Death when the opponent has a graveyard-hate permanent (RIP, LotV, Dauthi), since the creature goes directly to exile and won’t trigger the Feign Death effect

Most of the rest has to be filled in by practice. Many small details you only learn how to handle when you run into them, and writing about each one in detail would never fit in this article @@

Sideboarding

Finally, here is my current sideboard guide, written with reference to Misplacedginger’s sideboard guide and a synthesis of some other people’s opinions.
However, his list feels a bit odd and needs more testing, so I didn’t adopt it here.

If you want to print it out, there is a condensed PDF version here. It should fit on one A4 sheet printed double-sided, two pages per side.
Rakdos Scam Sideboard Guide PDF

Rakdos Scam

I think play/draw matters a lot in this matchup. On the play, a turn-one Grief scam wins half the game, and in the midgame once the resource gap has been built, you just Fury scam.
The four monkeys come out because they’re too easy to remove; one Feign Death-style card comes out because it easily backfires, and without drawing an elemental the Feign Death does little, so in terms of topdeck value it isn’t great.

Yawgmoth

You just need to stop the combo.
I chose to take out the four monkeys because they can’t build much of a resource gap, we make almost no use of the opponent’s resources, and a 2/1 body is easily killed.
Kommand is for destroying Cauldron (Agatha’s Soul Cauldron), and Sheoldred is for stopping the opponent from drawing. No draws = no resources = harder for them to come back.

Cascade Beanstalk/Omnath

This is a matchup where you need to race the opponent, but the key to the race is the resource gap.
You need to cut off the opponent’s resources before they build up the resource gap, or push their life total directly into lethal range.

Rhinos

In this matchup you only need to successfully scam out one creature. The opponent has almost no answers except Dead // Gone and Dismember, so focus your attention on the Rhinos that get cascaded out.

Amulate Titan

A good matchup. Use Dauthi to grab the opponent’s Titan or Ring and use it yourself, ez game.

Burn

Bite the bullet and mulligan down to an opening hand that can turn-one Grief scam. After that you basically just lie back and play (the opponent is burning your face anyway and there’s nothing you can say about it), and the remaining attention goes to their key creature (put an X = 2 EE on the battlefield).
Sheoldred on curve feels great, and I find Thoughtseize, trading two life for three, acceptable, and it also gives a chance to discard that key creature.
Then use Chalice to lock X = 1, more or less dodging the one-mana spells, betting the opponent didn’t bring removal for it.

Tron

A matchup you basically win if you have Blood Moon, or you can use Dauthi to grab the opponent’s Karn/Ulamog and use it yourself.
Also note that using the adventure side of Bonecrusher Giant (Stopm) makes this turn’s damage unpreventable, so even with The One Ring’s Protection from Everything you can still deal damage.

Murktide

Murktide Regent earns resources too well. Even if you scam on a very early turn you may not be able to pull the resource gap apart, and Unholy Heat can basically kill the scammed-out creature, so in this matchup you can just play it as midrange.
Also, Chalice locking X = 1 is painful for Murktide Regent. Many Murktide Regent lists no longer run removal for it (at most one Cast into Fire in the sideboard), leaving only counterspells to deal with it.

Hardened Scales

Basically the monkeys are useless, since the opponent has too many low-cost creatures, so it’s better to bring in more removal and sweepers.
Also note that the modular ability only triggers when the creature dies. If Dauthi or LotV is on the battlefield, modular won’t trigger when it dies.
And although in this matchup you should bring Blood Moon because of Urza’s Saga and Inkmoth Nexus, we might be dead before we ever land Blood Moon, so (ry

Hammer Time

Urza’s Saga is hard to deal with, and even playing Grief early doesn’t do much (Grief: well, I’m just garbage that can’t hit lands)
Sweeping directly with HCA && EE is easier. Also, if you know the opponent is playing mono-white Hammer, watch out for Solitude, and don’t brainlessly Fury scam.

Living End

Basically your opening hand has to use sideboard cards, and at worst you must be able to play Dauthi on turn two.
Also, scam isn’t very important, since their creatures going straight to the graveyard doesn’t matter either.
Finally, Dauthi is very useful in this matchup. For details, see All About Dauthi Voidwalker above.

Coffers

The monkeys basically can’t survive (4x Bowmasters, 4x Push, 4x March), so they all come out.
I don’t bring Bonecrusher Giant because in this matchup the fastest they get is a turn-four Ring, and March/Sheoldred gain life, so usually you can’t win very fast.

Dimir Control

Plays out about the same as against Creativity, but the matchup needs a more roundabout approach (dodging counterspells), and a Grief scam in your opening hand is very important.

Domain Zoo

Blood Moon players love multicolor decks the most.

Conclusion

That’s about it for Rakdos Scam. Most of the time Scam matches are boring (whether you’re facing Scam or playing it): either you watch the opponent discard two of your cards from the opening hand, or the opponent watches you discard two of theirs, and then you keep getting freeloaded on by a 4/3 menace.
Also, there have been really too many Scam top 8s recently. On reddit, every weekend someone comes out to wail about how many Scam decks placed that week, along with the past month’s history.
I still think WotC missed the window for a ban. The ban right after PT LTR was when they should have made the cut. Now it’s awkward instead: whatever they do will be a joke. If they cut, their own earlier claim of banning in Eternal formats once a year is a joke; if they don’t, Modern as a format becomes the joke.
I don’t know what WotC plans to do. The best approach would be to print a card in a main set that can counter a Grief scam, but honestly that’s very hard to design, and right now I can’t think of any more efficient way other than opening with LotV.
Anyway, for now this looks like a deck worth investing in (if you plan to play MITQ & MIT soon), and it shouldn’t get hit in the short term.

Finally, I hope everyone qualifies smoothly. See you all at the spring venue!