Pit Rack LC 2026
Top 8
by Mostoman

Deck Analysis

I enjoy playing the rack in premodern (or any format for that matter), so I knew I was going to play some variant of that. Unfortunately with some personal issues going on, I had no opportunity to test any games, but was able to theory craft a bit in discord with the Philly OS crew and was able to finalize a decklist a few days before the event. 

The Threats:

The core: 4 Factories and 4 Racks. Big props to Brandon Econ for the insight that ravenous rats are not a good strategy in pit rack style decks. His quote: “if it was a 2/1, yes play it, but attacking for 1 seems not good enough.” After thinking about it more, I agreed with him 100%. Pit rack needs to race a lot of the time and the threats need to be better than ravenous rats and the mana investment didn’t quite align with the strategy. Also having 4 cabal therapy main and having to sacrifice threats did not seem like something I wanted to ever do more than once a game. So 3 therapy in the 75 was my target. Going down to 0 rats, meant I felt I should play 2 cabal therapy main. You never want to sac your threats unless it is essential or gives you a rack win right then and there. Hypnotic Specter is the key discard engine so it must be 4-of. Skittering skirge is very good in the deck and I also felt that plague spitter was very well positioned in the meta. I also knew I wanted minimum 4 graveyard hate main deck and I like to play some number of phyrexian furnaces main in non blue decks for card filtering along with incidental graveyard hate. I settled on 2 withered wretch and 2 furnaces main. You only ever want to see 1 bottomless pit, so I felt 2-3 was the right number and settled on 2 as other cards were more important and the curve was already too high. You only ever want to see 1 dark ritual in a game, so 3 is the optimal number I think. It is ok to never see dark ritual so 0-3 seems right to me. If you expect a lot of combo, then play 3. I expected a lot of combo and was rewarded with playing 3 dark rituals all day. 

Removal:

Funeral charm is a must 4-of main deck. 2 diabolical edict, 2 cursed scroll and 3 smother round out the removal suite. After playing the event, I would absolutely change this removal suite and I will describe at the end the changes I would make. 

Lands: 

4 factories is a must. I wanted to be statistically assured that most games I could curve into a hypnotic specter on turn 3, which means you should play 18 swamps. This leaves no room for wastelands I in my opinion. I would consider playing 17 swamps, 4 factories and 2-3 wastelands in slightly different build of the deck, but this version with 2 skirge, and 2 bottomless pits, sticking to 22 lands with 18 swamps felt correct and I was happy with this land count all day. Going below 22 lands makes the ponza oath matchup even harder and this is the worst tier 1 matchup I think, so anything we can do to improve our odds here is important.

Sideboard:

I knew I wanted 2 more withered wretch because I think 4 in the 75 is correct. I added 3 general yet diverse removal spells in cursed scroll, diabolical edict and smother. 3 Plagues and 4 Dystopias. The 3rd therapy is very good in post board games. Finally the knights of stromgalds were an attempt to combat white decks and get more pressure against many matchups. 2-3 sb slots for adding more pressure is very important in rack decks imo. 

Day One

Round 1: Isaac Weiner on Ponza Oath [Games 2:0 ; Record 1-0] (Final position: 268/326)

Game 1: Isaac wins the die roll and goes turn 1 mox diamond into sylvan library. Then he goes turn 2 Oath of Druids. My hand has 1 factory, 2 charms and 1 bottomless pit. For some reason he does not aggressively draw off library. I am able to set up a turn when I EOT double charm and discard him down, then play a bottomless pit and rip a rack and factory my next 2 draws. Then he can't really dig with library anymore because his life total is suddenly under threat.

Game 2: He has to mull and keeps a hand with only one land. I go turn 1 rit into duress and skirge and the skirge goes all the way. He is severely mana screwed this game.

Round 2: Grant Johnson on Cradle Control Survival [Games 2:0 ; Record 2-0] (Final position: 19/326)

Game 1: I flood on racks and get 3 of them out and then top deck a second bottomless pit right before he is able to get a big cradle survival turn. I deal 9 damage twice right before he would kill me with deranged hermit and squirrels.

Game 2: When he is on the play he goes land into elf. I duress his survival and see he has 2 call of the herds and 2 multani’s acolytes but is a bit land light with just a forest and a cradle. I ritual out a plague spitter that keeps his cradle from getting online. I swing in with a hippie and spitter to close out the game before he can deploy the COTHs.

Round 3: Ryan Peters on Terrageddon [Games 2:0 ; Record 3-0] (Final position: 49/326)

Game 1: He is on the play. And played a mongoose into Terravore. I play 2 racks and a wretch to eliminate his threats. After some more discard the racks and wretch close the game quickly.

Game 2: He plays turn 1 cursed totem, I duress away a swords to plowshares. He plays a werebear. I am able to kill him with a wretch and a factory after I deploy a dystopia. He has a last ditch effort after playing a sylvan library and playing 2 terravores at 2 life, and I kill one of the terravores with a diabolic edict and swing for lethal.

Round 4: Dave Kaplan on Dreadnought (Feature Match) [Games 1:2 ; Record 3-1] (Final position: 65/326)

Firstly, my apologies, I should have known to take my hat off. This was messing with the focus of the camera. Also they got the deck wrong calling it moneyball black when it is a rack deck + they got my name wrong. Phillycrew always getting the disrespect.. haha just kidding?

Game 1: So this match was fascinating. I felt favored so I was looking forward to this matchup. Dave is an excellent player so this was set up to be an epic battle. Game 1, I am on the draw and duress away a stifle. I cabal therapy away an intuition. My hand is heavy on funeral charms and discard but very light on threats only having 1 hippie. After shredding his hand and struggling to get my 3rd land Dave rips a counterspell to counter my hippie and suddenly I am in deep trouble. I really needed to resolve that hippie and was waiting for that 3rd land and instead get a dark ritual that let's me cast it. Being stuck on 2 lands and after using all my disruption and not being able to stick that hippie was what cost me game 1. He top decks that counterspell and a dreadnaught back to back with a vision charm in hand. He takes game 1. 

Game 2. I am on the play and I have to mull. I keep a hand that has a swamp, factory, ritual, pit, rack, edict,  and I ritual out a turn 1 bottomless pit. And it hits his flash of insight… booo. I then lose my factory which is the one card I really did not want to lose. So I am stuck on one swamp and decide the therapy instead of playing the rack to make sure he doesn’t just play dreadnaught on turn two. If he is able to do that and I don’t draw my second land or if he has daze, I am just dead. My therapy on dreadnaught misses. He has cantrips for days and I am lucky to not lose my rack on the next pit discard, so I am able to play that. I then get another rack and he is able to flash on insight and gush multiple times so I am not able to pressure him. I am at 3 lands so I am waiting to draw a creature to use my cabal therapy in my graveyard to get his vision charm that I still know about as he is portenting I know he would save the dreadnaught for his draw step. After he portents, I draw a plague spitter, and play it and sac it right away to therapy naming vision charm. I get the two vision charms in his hand, and see that he has 3 islands, a stifle and I am almost certain a dreadnaught is on top of his deck. My pit hits an island. He plays a dreadnaught and stifles it. I draw a skirge and play it. He loses an another island and hits me down to 7. And then I blind flip a smother, play it on his upkeep after he discards to pit and then kill him in 2 turns with 2 racks and a skirge. This was a very tight game.

Game 3:

I keep a hand with 2 removal spells but no discard. This was possibly a mistake. On the draw, I really need the discard spell, rethinking this game, I think I should have mulled this hand. Because all my removal spells cost 2 mana, and he just needs to stop 1 of them at the right time to hit me twice. And it is likely I lose with extra cards in hand so going to 6 to get discard should have been the strategy. I deploy a wretch as a threat on turn 2 which was also likely a mistake. I should have just kept my mana up for removal the whole time. He saves dreadnaught first time with a vision charm. I play out a hippy to try and discard his protection spells. My hippie hits an Impulse and I try to smother the dreadnaught on his upkeep and he has the counterspell. All I needed was to see 1 discard spell and I felt this game would have been a win in my favor. But very well played by Dave. His portents targeting my library likely made a difference. 

Round 5: Mark L on Elves [Games 2:0 ; Record 4-1] (Final position: 199/326)

Game 1: I am on the draw and see land into elf, so I blind therapy away his survival. And see he has a masticore and some elves. I get out a plague spitter on turn 3 and end up with 3 racks and a cursed scroll to close the game. 

Game 2: I therapy away a survival again on the draw, and play a spitter on turn 3 followed by 2 hippies and a skirge and swing in with 2 factories for lethal. 

Round 6: Teddy Lockman on Replenish [Games 2:1 ; Record 5-1] (Final position: 59/326)

Game 1: I have lost of dead cards with lots of removal. He casts replenish for opalescent and 2 waves and I concede

Game 2: I strip his hand and get good pressure quickly with a wretch controlling the graveyard.

Game 3: He gets out an exalted angel but I have 2 wretch and a knight of stromgald and a hippie, rack and pit. The rack and knight kill him as he is not able to attack with his angel.

Round 7: Aiden Johnson on UW Tog [Games 2:1 ; Record 6-1] (Final position: 32/326)

Game 1: I am able to play a rack in to a pit. He counters a wretch and later hardcasts a glory and casts a bunch of accumulated knowledges. I have a hippy. Rack and pit do most of the work.

Game 2: I make an error of playing my all my lands out and get vulnerable to a top deck geddon and get blown out by this sequence. He has moxes and eventually kills me with elephants as I can find any lands. 

Game 3: I feel in control with good early disruption and a wretch, and scroll in play and able to apply some pressure with a factory as well, but he gets out a COTH token, and I make my first big misplay with combat math of the tournament as I try and apply more pressure to close the game out but didn’t not attack with all my creatures like I should have, lose my wretch and he suddenly gets out lots more tokens and togs. I am dead on board, but luckily I top deck a rack, and am able to apply the last 7 damage with cursed scroll, hippie and then play the rack and he has 0 cards in hand after the hippie hit, for lethal. 

Round 8: Will Holland on Hermit Feb [Games 2:0 ; Record 7-1] (Final position: 72/326)

Game 1: Discard into wretch into win

Game 2: He gets a survival out and gets to untap with a shapeshifter and a hermit. I have a wretch and 5 black mana. I don’t know how I win but Will graciously lets me know that he made a misplay. He was doing a scrounger line that I didn’t fully understand so I realize I need to study how hermit feb works for day two. 

Round 9: Jeff Robovsky on Money Ball Black [Games 2:0 ; Record 8-1] (Final position: 8/326)

Game 1: I am excited for this matchup because I think rack is favored and I have a lot of tools for this matchup like my main deck plague spitters. We both have a cursed scroll, but I have a rack and then am able to deploy 2 hippies and the rack makes too much pressure along with a factory. 

Game 2 Jeff is stuck on 1 mana after dark ritualing out a a hippie himself. I had turn 2 smother so only got hit once. I can curve out to turn 3 factory with my own hippie followed by a skirge and win the game.

Day Two

Round 10: Brian Siu on Replenish [Games 0:2 ; Record 8-2] (Final position: 1/326)

I shred hands both games and control the graveyard with wretches but a top deck parallax wave gets me both games. This is the big weakness for mono black rack decks. If you don’t have enough pressure, they will find the wave/replenish off the top eventually and win. It makes me think I need to either increase my pressure or play glooms in the side board, but gloom is not a good card in most other matchups. Brian goes on to win the tournament. I wish I had a second crack at him in the top 8 but unfortunately had to face the one matchup in the top 8 I didn’t want to face: Ponza Oath. 

Round 11: Josh Cicio on UW Tog [Games 2:1 ; Record 9-2] (Final position: 28/326)

Game 1: I play a rack into 2 duress and then a therapy. Josh is mana flooded and I edict his one tog and drop a pit and close the game

Game 2: I get run over by at least 3 elephant tokens and pyroclasm does work for Josh

Game 3: I miss on a blind therapy but then see Josh has an armageddon so I have to sacrifice my factory to take the geddon. Then I am able to deploy a rack followed by a hippie and win through elephant tokens that come online a bit too slowly.

Round 12: Rubens Campana on Ponza Oath [Games 2:1 ; Record 10-2] (Final position: 10/326)

Game 1: When I sit down and opponent starts with mox into oath on the play, I suddenly think my run ends here. Ponza oath is the hardest matchup for my deck in my opinion since I play so few lands and have no card selection and need all of my mana. Also oath, library and sphere are 3 horrible cards for me to fight through not to mention pyroclasm, elephant tokens and tree top villages all crush me. My hand has a wretch. I realize I need to fight into the oath and get lucky with the flips. I get lucky and my wretch is able to kill the first terravore over 2 turns. Opponent then gets a library into play but later reveals that he had one terravore in hand and the other one was floating ontop of his library with only one land in there. I get very lucky and take game 1.

Game 2: Opponent goes turn 1 sphere into land destruction and kills me with treetop villages

Game 3: I am on the play and ritual out a turn 1 hippie into wretch then dystopia to kill his sylvan library. Luckily he does not have a pyroclasm and I take game 3 and feel very lucky to be 2-0 vs Oath Ponza on for the tournament. I was very lucky in the games so far against oath ponza as my oath ponza opponents either flooded or were a bit mana screwed.

Round 13: Galen Lemei on Hermit Druid [Games 2:1 ; Record 11-2] (Final position: 5/326)

Game 1: This matchup is heavily in my favor so I am feeling confident to make top 8 at this point. Just need to play tight magic. We I mull and keep a medium hand. I can’t find any of my 4 main deck graveyard hate, but hope for the best. Galen is able to get a survival out and 2 shapeshifters on the battlefield and also a tog in play and he kills me with 2 shapeshifting palinchrons…SICK. 

Game 2: I get all my hate from the SB and it is just too much hate

Game 3: Same as game 2.

Round 14: Ben Bauer on Elves [Games 0:0 ; Record 11-2-1] (Final position: 6/326)

Ben offers to draw into top 8 and I accept. In retrospect, This was an error on my part. I should have played the match and gone into Top8 as the first seed with breakers over Galen who I just beat. Elves is a very favorable matchup with my build. I have  lots of spot removal, graveyard hate, main deck plague spitters and 3 Engineered plagues and 4 Dystopias in the board. This would have improved my chances of not having to play the 1 Oath Ponza player that had a chance to come in at 6th or 7th place. In the end I finish the Swiss in 3rd place and get the nightmare draw of playing the Oath Ponza player Claire Ackerman in the quarterfinals. The decks I wanted to face were: 1x elves, 2x replenish, 1x money ball black or 1x Hermit Feb in the top 8.

Top 8: Claire A on Elves [Games 0:2 ; Record 11-3-1] (Final position: 3/326)

Game 1: This won’t be very interesting... She is on the play and she stone rains my swamp and I lose since I can draw enough lands to keep up.

Game 2: Same thing. Sphere into stone rain on my swamp and I lose. And so the run ends! 

Changes I would make to the main deck:

1. The deck’s curve is still too high. I was very excited about Plague Spitters main, but I think it only helps matchups that are already favorable. Sadly, I would remove the spitters form the main and not sure if it is worth playing them in the sideboard either

2. Phyrexian Furnace is not impactful enough. The thought of trimming a land for the furnaces as they can serve as cantrips was a nice thought but not the right plan for aggro/tempo strategies as the 2 mana investment over 1-2 turns for a tempo style deck like the rack is not worth it. Furnace under-performed all day. I love furnace but now I am convinced it should only be played in midrange or control decks.

3. I want more Skirge. It was strong all day. Play minimum 3.

4. Diabolic edicts should maybe be something else. I am thinking at least 1 powder keg main. This deck struggles against man lands and elephant tokens

5. I would go down to 1 bottomless pit

6. I would put some chain of smog back in (1-3)

7. I would try and add 1 more swamp

8. I would try and add 1 more cabal therapy main

9. I would try and add 1 more wretch main

10. Maybe test out 1-2 wastelands main again, but unlikely to be what I want to be doing.

11. Test 1 Phyrexian Arena main

12. Test 1 Graveborn Muse in the 75

13. Test out 1-2 powder keg in the 75

Changes I would make to the sideboard:

1. Remove the knight of stromgalds. I still lost to Replenish the one game I got the knights out. You can’t race Parallax Tide + Opalescence even with an early stromgald

2. Consider bringing back Phyrexian Negators in those slots

3. Or bring in Glooms in those slots

4. Test 1 cursed totem again

5. Bring back 1 Plaguebearer in the board

6. Likely cut the diabolic edit and cursed scroll in the board

Closing: Shout Out To Philly OS

This has to end with a big shout out to the Philly OS crew for all of the help and support they gave me leading up to and also during this tournament. 2026 has been a very difficult time for me and my family due to serious medical issues that have had a toll on my mental health. I was having a hard time being in public or going to social events. The Philly crew gave me a lot of support and encouraged me to go and get out of my head and away from all of the stress for a weekend. I am thankful for their encouragement and support and if it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t have gone. In honor of the best OS club (Philly), I had to rock my Philly OS jersey all weekend and represent.