The Commander
Guide
Gameplan
Barktooth Warbeard is a vanilla 6/5 for seven mana, so the deck builds around it rather than with it: use Rakdos's aggression and big-creature support to turn a beefy body into a Voltron threat or simply lean on the color pair for an interactive midrange game. Cast it cheaply via cost reduction or reanimation, strap on equipment and evasion, and crash in for commander damage. Otherwise, treat Barktooth as a sturdy figurehead while the 99 does the real work.
Strengths
- Big 6/5 body that's hard to kill with most chip removal and survives many board sweepers' damage thresholds
- Access to Rakdos's elite removal suite and recursion
- Cheap to acquire and unexpected, so it flies under opponents' threat assessment
Weaknesses
- Completely vanilla with no abilities or built-in evasion or protection
- Seven mana for a body that doesn't impact the board on cast
- Dies to single-target removal with zero value, and needs heavy support to threaten 21 commander damage
- No card advantage engine attached to the commander itself
Key Cards
- Fireshrieker — Grants double strike to halve the number of connects needed for lethal commander damage.
- Rogue's Passage — Pushes Barktooth through blockers to reliably land commander-damage hits.
- Sneak Attack — Cheats the seven-drop into play for a surprise attacker, sidestepping its high cost.
- Hammer of Nazahn — Provides indestructible and free equip attaching, protecting and arming your fragile finisher.
- Reanimate — Returns Barktooth from the yard cheaply after it's killed, beating the high mana cost.
Upgrade Path
Lean fully into Voltron: add protective and evasive equipment (Swiftfoot Boots, Lightning Greaves, Whispersilk Cloak) plus double-strike and trample enablers to make commander damage reliable. Add cheat-into-play and reanimation density (Sneak Attack, Goryo's Vengeance, Animate Dead) so the seven-drop arrives early and repeatedly, and round out with premium Rakdos interaction like Deflecting Swat and Terminate to defend the threat.
Core Cards
The most-played cards for this commander, built from aggregated deck data (the Mythic Graph). Build public decks to seed it.
Win Conditions
- ▸21 commander damage via equipment, double strike, and evasion
- ▸Going wide with Rakdos aggro creatures and finishing with burn
- ▸Reanimation-fueled beatdown grinding opponents out
Archetypes
- Voltron — A naturally large body wants equipment, auras, and evasion to deal commander damage.
- Reanimator — Rakdos can dump and recur the expensive body, turning its mana cost into a discount.
- Aggro/Midrange — BR offers efficient creatures and burn to back up a beatdown plan around a big front-runner.
- Sneak/Cheat — Cost-reduction and put-into-play effects make the seven-drop arrive ahead of schedule.
Combos
No combos found for this commander on Commander Spellbook.
Related Commanders
Same color identity (BR), by popularity.
