Against the Odds: 12 Rhinos (Pioneer)
Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Against the Odds! This week, we're heading to Pioneer to play the deck you've all been waiting for: 12 Rhinos! The deck is basically an Abzan Midrange deck but built around playing a Rhino—either Siege Rhino, Skirmish Rhino, or honorary Rhino Debris Beetle—every turn. In a weird way, this sort of makes us an Abzan burn deck. If we can get our opponent down to six or eight life, even if our opponent manages to stabilize the board, there's a pretty good chance that we'll be able to finish them off with direct damage from our Rhino drain! Can a deck with every Siege Rhino keep up in Pioneer? Let's get to the video and find out!
Against the Odds: 12 Rhinos
The Deck
The goal is simple: play as many Rhinos as possible as quickly as possible. All three of our Rhinos do essentially the same thing: add big, trampling bodies to the battlefield that also drain our opponent for two or three, buffering our life total while diminishing our opponent's. Yes, I know, Debris Beetle isn't technically a Rhino, but it's basically a vehicle version of Siege Rhino, with the downside of needing to be crewed to turn into a creature but the upside of being a massive 6/6 trampler once it is crewed.
The rest of the deck is designed to support our Rhinos. Llanowar Elves and Elvish Mystic ramp us into our Rhinos a turn early.
Elesh Norn doubles our Rhino triggers while also randomly wrecking some decks by shutting down their enters triggers.
Unholy Annex draws us more Rhinos, and if we ever get both rooms opened so we have a Demon on the battlefield, it almost turns into an end-step Rhino, draining our opponent for two while also generating card advantage.
Finally, we have the boring stuff. Fatal Push and Vanishing Verse give us some removal, while Thoughtseize picks apart our opponent's hands and protects our Rhinos!
Wrap-Up
Record-wise, Rhinos performed surprisingly well! We went 5-2 with the deck, good for a 71% match-win percentage. It turns out that playing a Rhino every turn is actually still pretty powerful, even in 2025!
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today. As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
