Modern recently experienced one of the biggest shakeups since the format’s inception. One of the biggest unbans is Faithless Looting – a card we’re definitely going to be playing a lot with in the near future. This unban has elevated many strategies, one of which is Rakdos Delirium with Hollow One.
Rakdos Delirium Decklist:
It’s been over 5 years since Faithless Looting was banned alongside Hogaak back in 2019, when Hollow One was a staple for anyone looking to win Modern tournaments with an aggressive deck. Luckily, the Rakdos Delirium archetype has adapted and gained some extremely powerful tools in those 5 years:
Nethergoyf is an incredible 1-drop. Tarmogoyf may be a bit outdated in today’s Modern environment, but Nethergoyf is usually just about as big and for half the price. Escape is a very real threat in this deck, since we often can load the bin with excess card types and still maintain Delirium for our other cards. Nethergoyf can reguarly grow to 6/7, and sometimes even 7/8 when you draw Tarfire. Detective’s Phoenix happens to combine perfectly with a massive ground beater – giving it both haste and evasion. It’s usually very easy to use the bestow ability of Detective’s Phoenix, since Street Wraith and Hollow Ones that have died or been discarded both have high mana costs.
Orcish Bowmasters has been a staple of every eternal format since it was printed, and it fits perfectly here. Often, saving a Burning Inquiry until turn 3 in order to generate a 4/4 orc and 3 additional pings can be game over.
Fear of Missing Out is a bit of a jack of all trades in this deck. It’s an enchantment to help out our delirium count alongside Detective’s Phoenix. It helps us loot through our deck, and its extra combat ability is excellent on a Hollow One or Nethergoyf, especially one that has been bestowed upon. This is just another creature that really benefits from the extreme power of Arena of Glory.
The sideboard of this deck is built with intention. We are a very focused aggressive deck, so we are not interested in trimming cards for mediocre sideboard cards that are a little bit good in a lot of matchups – we are looking for bangers that completely win certain matchups. Magebane Lizard is great against Ruby Storm – it turns out that a 4-toughness creature is way harder for them to kill than a random artifact or enchantment, and we apply enough pressure to their life total that they can get stuck very quickly. Leyline of the Void is intense graveyard disruption that does not slow us down in any way – and if we draw it past the beginning of the game, we can usually just discard it. Meltdown is very useful against the wide array of Mox Opal decks that people are bringing to the table right now, and Blood Moon can be a game winner in certain matchups. Just keep in mind that Hollow One plus Blood Moon can expose you to Force of Vigor. Pyroclasm helps out against Boros Energy as well as random creature decks like Elves that might pop up.
Overall, this is an extremely powerful deck that is fun to play – if you have the stomach for the swings that can come with Burning Inquiry. It’s nice to play an aggressive strategy that can just win games in a few turns, while also abusing the graveyard. However, we aren’t all-in on the graveyard like some decks, so if your opponent is overprepared with one type of hate card, we can just kill them by casting massive cheap creatures.
