Rakano Midrange (Top 10)

After tanking my rank by trying to make FTS Sentinel Reanimator work, I got back into the top 10 with this Rakano Midrange list (25:5 record). It takes inspiration from the list that dominated the 2019 world championship, but of course with a lot of new powerful inclusions that got released since then. The deck has a very consistent powerbase (additional cheap power with Eyes and Etchings and ramp with Icaria), only the second fire influence can sometimes be a problem. But if you take that into account when you mulligan, it shouldn't be a problem too often.

It has good tools against aggro: Cheap removal (Torch, Defiance), well stated units to slow them down (Lawmage, Helena, Enforcer) and lifegain (Eyes, Magniventris, Stormhalt Knife).

Against other decks you have a strong proactive plan with cheap flyers, complemented by Patrice, Magniventris and Varbuk to put on additional pressure. Patrice has a lot of great hits here: Sediti and Icaria are big flyers (you will always have 6J on turn 6), Helena and Steyer's Eyes can also do a lot of damage because they can target themselves with their buffs, Magniventris can immediatedly attack for 6 and Varbuk and Enforcer can act as removal. Smuggler can also get additional threats: Plate on Smuggler is a bit risky, but if it works it quickly wins the game and Icaria is still a decent finisher out of the market.

The market also has great reactive options: Cloak is a flexible answer for problematic relics and units (putting it on a flyer to silence an opponent's flyer can be a strong tempo swing), Pristine Light is a great answer to big boards (and you can use it to reuse some of your summon effects) and Stormhalt Knife helps against aggro. Enforcer and Torch help to slow down unit based ramp, which I saw a lot of and Lawmage and Steyer's Eyes even give you some tools against combo/heavy synergy decks (Lawmage counters Recruit, token spam and most combo decks and Eyes helps against reanimator, Rebuild and Katra decks, although you should only go for Gavel if you are really sure that the opponent is heavily relying on void recursion).