Razorlash Transmogrant from The Brothers’ War
- Card Name: Razorlash Transmogrant
- Mana Cost: 2
- Card Type: Artifact Creature – Zombie
- Rules Text: Razorlash Transmogrant can’t block. 4BB: Return Razorlash Transmogrant from your graveyard to the battlefield with a +1/+1 counter on it. This ability costs {4} less to activate if an opponent controls four or more nonbasic lands.
- Illustrated by: Kekai Kotaki
Transmogrant Tenets
Razorlash Transmogrant sees a decent amount of play in a variety of decks. It’s sometimes included in the main, but more often played in the sideboard for specific matchups. If you’ve participated in much Standard, you know there are simply some decks that don’t attack (ergo the inability to block is less of a downside). Decks with lots of spells rather than lots of creatures (you know, the reason they’re not attacking as much) will also tend to be more vulnerable to recurring attacking threats. Cut Down Razorlash Transmogrant the first time? Cool. How about the third? You can’t even counter it (revived from the graveyard) come the mid-game.
Perfect play against Razorlash Transmogrant is challenging (assuming you’re one of the decks it is good against). Recently, the brilliant multiple-time Top 8 competitor Matt Sperling cost himself the elimination rounds at the Regional Championships via a Razorlash-related slip. Matt was intentionally sandbagging his fifth land drop to keep his opponent from being able to buy back his Transmogrant… Until he slipped. Most players can’t even fathom Matt’s line of holding back lands! Ergo, the artifact-Zombie will sometimes burgle you a little extra value.
But Razorlash Transmogrant is stone cold awful some of the time! It has one toughness! Almost anything can trade with it the first time. Up against a Wedding Announcement deck with mostly basic Plains? The artifact creature is not exactly going to glitter. The fact that it can’t block makes it a liability against pure attack decks like the Mono-Red we posted yesterday.
It’s fantastic sometimes and a near-mulligan others. What might make it at least, more consistently, good?
Bending Razorlash Transmogrant
You can’t break this card… But what about bending it? What might be a good shell for the The Brothers’ War’s mechanical Zombie?
That’s a very slight update to a deck that I posted about on CoolStuffInc last week (use promo code “Flores” for 5% off of anything at CoolStuffInc and I’ll love you forever because they’ll love me slightly more, presumably). The update is merely -1 Mountain +1 Swamp. This is an Invoke Despair deck, and I found I was losing games to Mountain + Sokenzan sometimes; Mountain + second Mountain being a legitimate disaster.
This is a good place to play Razorlash Transmogrant for three reasons:
- The greedy Liliana of the Veil wants things to discard – Discarding Razorlash Transmogrant is unusually painless, because you can get it back eventually. Against some decks, you can get it back almost immediately, at 4/2, and at a discount.
- The deck needs a critical mass of two mana creatures to set up Ob Nixilis, the Adversary anyway. You need something!
- Given you need a creature to set up Ob Nixilis, why not a card that is painless to sacrifice that you can get back anyway, almost immediately, at 4/2, at a discount, &c.?
Welcome to Rakdos Planeswalkers, Razorlash Transmogrant!
329 Words on Rakdos Planeswalkers
This deck looks like absolute hell for a Red Deck. 4 Cut Downs + two mana instant speed removal are a powerful front line of defense. Once Ob Nixilis gets going, any deck with cards like Play With Fire and Lightning Strike can start to look a little silly.
This deck will often be operating with three or even more Planeswalkers in play, due to the Casualty on Ob Nixilis. Once you have multiple Planeswalkers in play, forcing a hellbent opponent to play off the top becomes trivial.
What are you giving up to go Planeswalkers? First, you invest in weird creatures like Razorlash Transmogrant. At the same time you eschew the usual — usual and very good — creature packages on turns three and four. Every beatdown player quakes at the prospect of a 3/3 followed by a 4/5… But decks with a lot of Go for the Throat don’t. Rakdos Planeswalkes will punish opponents with a lot of point removal. Targets are not attractive, and most played removal can’t target Liliana.
This remains a powerful Invoke Despair deck! It boasts has four copies of Invoke Despair, rather than the three or even fewer that are seen in some other black mid-range or control strategies. As such it is capable of putting tremendous pressure on the opponent, from multiple angles. Some people just aren’t very good at interacting with Planeswalkers, and the one-two punch of spell-like activations and the biggest BBBB in the format will tax almost any opponent’s defenses. Combine that with recurring threats in the form of Tenacious Underdog and Razorlash Transmogrant and mid-range decks, in particular, will wilt.
Finally, the sideboard does allow Rakdos Planeswalkers to shift laterally into a more conventional Rakdos deck with Sheoldred, the Apocalypse and Graveyard Trespasser for a better ability to gum up The Red Zone + passively gain life. This is a Swiss Army Knife with a high (though not highest) power level. The re-buy creatures also make Fable of the Mirror-Breaker (always so attractive) even more attractive than most other decks. Thanks Chapter Two!
Rakdos Planeswalkers in Action!
I made a video on my newly re-launched YouTube page featuring this powerful, innovative, and meaningfully different deck. I’d love if you watched it, “Like” it if you like it, and let me know what I can do better:
LOVE
MIKE