If there's anyone on this site that's been following my decks, they'd notice I'm a big tribal fan. Probably no card shows up in my decks more often than Cavern of Souls. :-)
Some tribes are easy and obvious: Vampires, Zombies, Elves, Goblins, Humans, a few others. Not to take away from those decks at all (I have tribal decks for them all that I love), but some of them practically build themselves. Others take a bit of work.
I recently delved into a couple of these more obscure tribes: Archers and Warriors. In that same vein, let's go for something a bit varied and somewhat obscure: Berserkers.
Scattered tribes like Archers, Warriors, and now Berserkers are found across many colors, but show up most frequently in two. For Archers, they were green and white. For Warriors, red and green were most common. And perhaps unsurprisingly, red and green are also the most common colors in which to find Berserkers. In fact, with the exception of a couple of random black Berserkers, Gruul colors are the ONLY ones in which you'll find Berserkers.
Anyway, something I've noticed about tribes like this one is that while they may be spread across many colors and many races, they tend to have a common theme. Archers, in general, obviously deal directed damage. Warriors tend to like trample and big strength boosts to give them a leg up against opposing creatures.
And as I delved into Berserkers, I found that they like two things: haste (for themselves) and damage (mainly to the opposing player rather than creatures). Literally half of the Berserkers in Modern either have or give out haste, and a third of them care about damage dealt to the opponent, in many cases activating Bloodthirst boosts.
So it's only natural to play to their strengths. We've got a bunch of bloodthirst creatures here, and also Bloodcrazed Goblin which is best if you're damaging the opponent. So now how to conistently get that damage in...?
Haste is a good way to go about it, springing a surprise attacker when your opponent isn't prepared to block it. Therefore we have hasty Rakdos Shred-Freak and Lightning Mauler (bet you never noticed he was a Berserker before, did you?) to sneak in, and Lovisa Coldeyes (also a key cog in my Warrior deck) to hand out hastiness to one and all. Rancor and overlooked Mage Slayer can help damage get past any blockers they do manage to put in the way.
But that's not qutie enough to reliably get damage in every turn (and it doesn't help the Bloodcrazed Goblin). Some direct damage spells should help out, and for that we turn to spells like Branching Bolt, the Blood half of Flesh//Blood, and good old Lightning Bolt.
But that can still be hit or miss, especially if the game drags on for a bit. So our most reliable method of damaging the opponent isn't a Berserker or damage spell at all. It's the brand new Zhur-Taa Druid. Yes, it requires a little break from the Berserker theme, but with ramp AND guaranteed damage in one cheap little package, it's well worth it. Ramp into a bloodthirst creature and trigger the bloodthirst all at the same time!
Go ahead: go berserk.