Standard: Rakdos Lizards - Deck Tech & Sideboard Guide

One of the main additions that Bloomburrow brought to Magic were interactions with creature types that, for years, had no support to establish their own archetypes.

Among them, two strategies stood out in the Standard Metagame: Boros Mice, which mixes a “go wide” plan with pumps to trigger the abilities of its creatures, and Rakdos Lizards, which takes advantage of the post-combat phase to extract value from the damage caused to the opponent and has become one of the new bets for Aggro decks in Standard today.

In this article, we delve deeper into it and present a Sideboard guide for the main matchups of the current Metagame!

This is the list that I have been using on Magic Arena for the last week, and it includes exactly 75 of the lists that made Top 8 in Challenges in the last few weekends. There is some debate between the slots for Go for the Throat, Lightning Strike and Cut Down in the maindeck and sideboard, but Rakdos Lizards is an Aggro deck without much flexibility for backup plans, so we keep the speed we expect from the list with Burn spells that also serve to deal with small creatures.

Maindeck

Lizards is all about dealing damage to the opponent to get the benefit of your creatures, and this is one point that makes it a viable option in the Metagame today: your opponents don't know how safe it is to let a single point of damage slip by because what comes next can change the course of the game.

Gev, Scaled Scorch is the main payoff and the “Lord” of the deck. Removing it means taking damage, it has a decent body for its cost, and it snowballs if we execute our game plan with ease.

Flamecache Gecko is the Burning-Tree Emissary we have at home and allows for some of the most explosive third-turn plays after playing Gev. Using it alongside any other creature is a huge boost and, in the worst-case scenario, we can use its mana to draw a card.

Thought-Stalker Warlock is another motivator for playing Lizards. A Thoughtseize attached to a 2/2 body with Menace makes up for its three-mana value and allows us to protect ourselves from sweepers like Sunfall and Temporary Lockdown while increasing the pressure on the board.

Fireglass Mentor gives us more range throughout the game, but it is relatively conditional in this role, being significantly worse when we fail with our game plan.

We need ways to guarantee our damage every turn, and we have a dedicated package for that.

Iridescent Vinelasher turns all of our lands into Sunscorched Desert, allowing us to get the most value out of our creatures without investing mana or the combat phase to deal damage. Its Offspring ability also makes it a late-game threat if the opponent's life total is low.

Hired Claw is our aggressive one-drop and is usually the main mana investment with Flamecache Gecko on turn two. Powering up once takes it out of the Shock zone, and the second time takes it out of Gix’s Command range.

Deep-Cavern Bat isn’t a lizard, but it’s a disruption to the opponent’s hand in the maindeck—essential to avoid sweepers—and its 1/1 body with Flying usually provides the damage needed to trigger our abilities.

Except for Deep-Cavern Bat, all of our creatures are outlaws, so Laughing Jasper Flint allows us to exile a portion of the opponent’s deck while it’s in play and even play key cards from their list, in addition to being a 4/3 for three mana. There are games where it’s too slow or irrelevant because the opponent’s list has few cards that interact with our game plan, so it’s a common side out.

Lightning Strike deals with smaller creatures while also offering more reach to end games and/or the ability to trigger our lizards' abilities, while Go for the Throat should be reserved for larger creatures that we need to respond to avoid losing the game, such as Sheoldred, the Apocalypse, Atraxa, Grand Unifier, among others.

In addition to the eight untapped duals we have in the format today and Cavern of Souls to protect us from No More Lies, we have Restless Vents as a manland in longer games and Mudflat Village as a recursion element.

It is common to remove Mudflat Village in games where we reduce our mana curve and decrease the number of creatures. If we remove four or more three-drops from the list, and we don't add Urabrask's Forge or another card with a mana value of three or higher, playing with 21 lands is an option.

Sideboard

More interaction when necessary.

Cut Down is used against other Aggro decks where we need to respond quickly to low-cost drops such as Slickshot Show-Off, Monastery Swiftspear or Warden of the Inner Sky.

Go for the Throat also usually enters the maindeck against these matchups, but it also covers games against Midrange or even on Domain Ramp when we are on the draw.

Duress is our main answer against cheap sweepers and more reactive archetypes like Domain Ramp and Azorius Control, complementing Deep-Cavern Bat and Thought-Stalker Warlock to delay the opponent for enough turns.

Glistening Deluge is our answer against any go-wide with small creatures and/or white decks that use many tokens. It is common for us to side-out our X/1s when we add it.

Urabrask’s Forge is the only cheap way we have today to maintain our gas in the game against sweepers, punishing strategies that take too long to win.

Golgari Midrange

IN

OUT

Domain Ramp

Na Play:

IN

OUT

Na Draw:

IN

OUT

Azorius Control

IN

OUT

Boros Convoke

IN

OUT

Gruul Prowess

IN

OUT

Boros Tokens Midrange

IN

OUT

It's tempting to add Glistening Deluge to these matchups, and it can work in some situations, but I don't think we want to be on the "Control" side of the game against Boros Tokens.

Rakdos Lizards

IN

OUT

That's all for today!

If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to leave a comment!

Thanks for reading!