Arno Dorian

Rakdos gets the Assassin lord it never had, and the color pairing makes the tribe read differently than it would in mono-black. A +2/+0 anthem is an aggressive number, not a resilience number: it does nothing for your Assassins' survivability and everything for their clock, turning a board of small deathtouch bodies into a swarm that trades up and races down. That is the deliberate reading here. Deathtouch on the anthem-holder itself compounds the point: a 3/3 that kills anything it blocks, printing a squad that all hit harder while still threatening even trades, so opposing blocks stay unappealing on both axes. Disguise is the wrinkle that keeps the lord from playing into removal on its face. Cast it down for a generic three and it sits as a 2/2 with ward 2, which does not make it untargetable but taxes every answer by an extra two mana, often enough to buy the turn you need; then flip it up at the moment the buff matters most, ideally in response to a blocking decision your opponent has already committed to. The design leans on that timing window: the anthem is not a static presence your opponent gets to plan around, but an ambush that reconfigures a combat step they thought they understood. It is a lord built for a tribe that wants to attack, wrapped in a mechanic that lets it choose when to become one.