There is a common misconception I see all too often, crossing from format to format and player to player. That misconception is the ignominy of the Red deck: that it is ‘not a real deck,’ ‘not Tier One,’ that nobody with two brain cells to rub together or any realistic budget to acquire cards with would play the Mono-Red deck. Clearly the problem is not with the combo of Mountain and Lightning Bolt, for Jund still gets respect, and Lightning Bolt has at various points in its life this past year in Standard been in Five-Color Control and Faeries in addition to the varied aggressive strategies that have burned the face. But once you want to cut the other colors for more Mountains, and the other spells for more Lightning Bolts, people start to make fun of you.
I have a rule I try to follow, and that is to be rational in my decisions when it comes to card and deck choices. There is no sacred cow I would rather have than a delicious, delicious hamburger, no card I am unwilling to cut for any reason from any deck without at least trying it. To some that gives me a reputation as a maverick, a free thinker who’s not afraid to have the bad ideas it takes to finally reach some good ones, while others see the bad ideas and discount the good, rounding me up to “idiot” instead.
With the recent topic of conversation shifting to a new Extended format, at the same time as we are playing an interesting and dynamic Standard format, I fear it is my place and my time to speak up with a dissenting opinion. Many strategists (or are we calling ourselves pundits nowadays?) have discussed the Faeries deck, while others are examining what has left Extended to figure out what’s going on, or putting together two different eras of Standard and assuming if you mash them together something awesome happens. My recent experiences with this card game have led me to chase not the Island-loving life I lived for many a year, tapping Blue mana and clutching Counterspells as if my very life depended on them, but the life of beating down. And it is on this pilgrimage to the Red side that I have seen too many misunderstand, because they are not comfortable or maybe even because the Red deck beats their deck, and say the Red deck must be trash, that it is not a ‘real deck.’
Discuss Bant strategies all you like, but don’t drink the Kool-Aid and turn off all capability to think just because something seems ‘too simple-minded’ to work. Blue’s a great color, and Jace 2.0 is a great Planeswalker, but Red’s a real color too and is unconcerned with your awesome Planeswalker because you might just be dead already by the time you can cast it. Red plays so very differently than all of the other decks in Standard right now, it’s no wonder it’s misunderstood, but to say it shouldn’t exist or is by definition the wrong choice is to dismiss concepts without analytical thought or valid deck choices without playtesting. I laughed too when someone in my playgroup picked it as their PTQ deck and misplayed his way to a PTQ Top Four finish that by all rights he should have converted into a win, because I thought I had the best deck in the room (and may even have been right) and was still stinging at the fact that I had misplayed my way out of that self-same PTQ Top Eight.
The misplay was to fail to apply Lightning Bolt directly to opponent’s forehead. When it’s right, it’s right, and following that lesson to extremes I eventually picked up the Red deck and gave it a fair chance, when it was clear that my mighty weapon of Jund with Lotus Cobra and Vengevine was losing all the free wins it was getting at the start of the season as other people also learned these cards were good and stopped letting me just slaughter them. But eventually, I picked up the Red deck, to see what was underneath the hood and because the proponents of the new best deck, Turbo-Land, have cited it as the completely unwinnable matchup. I find a lot of value in playing the best deck, but I also find a lot of value in playing the deck that other decks try to dodge all day, or at least I do when multiple good decks are trying to dodge the same deck.
Let’s make some introductions, so you can see the weapon of choice:
Creatures (18)
Lands (24)
Spells (18)
Sideboard
The deck is the only one I know of in Standard that is actually capable of killing an opponent actually-dead on the third turn. The nut draw by Mythic Conscription will leave you virtually-dead on turn 3, often with no realistic outs existing in the format as your third land drop still doesn’t cast Day of Judgment, but they still have to attack you turn 4 to seal the deal. Goblin Guide into Plated Geopede into Fetchland plus Summons/Bushwhacker dishes out twenty-three damage by the end of your third attack phase, all with a deck that costs less than two Jaces to construct. Patrick Chapin Innovated the first iteration of the deck when Rise of the Eldrazi first appeared, and it’s been showing up occasionally from time to time, but as the metagame is getting Bluer and Bluer over time I’m astounded that more people aren’t picking up Mountains and Goblin Guides.
I’ve heard all the opinions. “You can’t expect to win a PTQ with a deck that is as inherently unstable as the Red deck is,” some say, then pick up Mythic, the shakiest and most unstable Good Deck we have seen in some time. While it is true that many events are won by Mythic, an individual pilot trying to win an event with Mythic has to go on a really hot streak to win an event, because as good as the deck is it can sometimes just fall apart under pressure, or it really needs the nut draws to show up to win the match because the really-great ‘average’ draw will fall short as the opponent interacts with them. “This deck is for idiots,” others tell me, failing to realize that victory with the Red deck full of highly tactical plays and that the Red deck is the most purely mathematical deck due to its straightforwardness. The same people who dislike Bloodbraid Elf for being high-power but also highly random should like the Red deck, because the proper play is all math and numbers and optimization. “Only n00bs play monored,” I’ve also heard, and while I may have been a n00b in 1996 when I first made Top Eight at a PTQ with a monored deck (with such winners as Goblin Elite Infantry and Suq’Ata Lancer alongside my Fireblasts and Incinerate) I don’t think I can be called “new” to the game. I’m old and grizzled and long in the tooth, and I, too, play the red deck.
Look at the metagame as a whole, if you need further convincing. What are the most-played decks right now? U/W Control, U/W/R Planeswalkers, Mythic Conscription, Next Level Bant, Jund, and Turbo-Land, if you want to think of the class of decks we think of as ‘real.’ Let me tell you, I can’t think of a single one of these decks actually convincing themselves that the Red deck is among their good matchups. All of them can be readily defeated by the mono-Mountain mage, many of them without even breaking a sweat, and none of them require the ‘nut draw’ to beat. Half the time I even draw “the nut draw” I don’t use it, because while it would be a fiery explosion of death and destruction raining down upon them in spectacularly impressive form, walking all of my lands into a single Negate is also the only way I could lose the game, so it’s correct not to pull that trigger. Combine that fact with the argument that there is no thought involved in the Red deck, no edge to be gained by a good player picking the deck and playing it well, and see if the “mounteins R stoopid” argument holds up.
How to play the deck. Well, I won’t try and convince you that it’s rocket science. I’m a pretty good liar when I need to be, but some whales you just aren’t going to swallow. It’s rocket science in that rocket science involves fire and math, I guess, but that doesn’t really fit because you’re trying to turn your opponent into the exploding burn-y thing, not prevent it from happening and get your boys home safe to fly another mission. Burning peoples faces, well, it feels kinda good, no lies. But there are different ways to play the deck against different opponents, different metrics to focus on that define ‘success’ or at least lead to the ‘success’ of an opponent with zero (or fewer!) life points. We’ll look at the deck itself as-constructed for the general notes, and then look from matchup to matchup to see how you modify the general case to the specific case for that matchup.
4 Smoldering Spires – People play Wall of Omens. Or other creatures that try to block. This land tells them they don’t get to save the life points they thought they did, and makes either extra damage or occasionally a dead opponent, because this changes the math.
4 Teetering Peaks — More damage is more good. Nothing is harder to crawl back from than the double Goblin Guide plus a Teetering Peaks start, on the first two turns.
4 Arid Mesa, 4 Scalding Tarn — We play Landfall cards. Free enablers mean free damage. I like damage!
8 Mountain — Sorry Rui, but 18 is no longer correct. 8 will do.
4 Goblin Guide — He’s a sharing kind of guy. He gives damages to the opponent, but also lands. It looks like this must be a terrible thing, because card advantage is something you want to give yourself, not your opponent, but the number of games that he gives your opponent something that matters are nowhere near the number of games where he starts the tap-dance festival on your opponent’s face on turn one and then they lose. Red cards are complicated, even the ones that help you also hurt you. Just not as much, or not if you know what you’re doing.
4 Goblin Bushwhacker — Half the combo, except when he’s wrong to use him as a combo piece. Sometimes, you just gotta play him turn 1, or playing him without the Summons half of that turn is correct. He adds damage to the table and Haste to your two-drops, and sometimes things explode and the opponent dies. That part’s awesome.
4 Plated Geopede, 4 Kargan Dragonlord — Both two-drops that can deal far more than their price in damage. Geopede swings hard and does so quickly, able to attack for five on the third turn a reasonable chunk of the time. Dragonlord sometimes only attacks for two on turn 3 and has no other meaningful impact, and sometimes hits the maximum level and wins you a race you have no right to even be in. People say it’s bad, but I bet these people never cast Goblin Elite Infantry like I have. Just being a 2/2 that doesn’t fall over dead if the moon is in the second house is good enough to pique my interest, and on top of that sometimes he’s ridiculous because the opponent doesn’t have removal and dies to a Dragon. The “level up” ability is pure upside, not something to be relied upon, but the upside is amazing.
2 Obsidian Fireheart — Or as I like to call him, “Mr. Late-Game.” A 4/4 for 4 is not bad by the numbers to begin with, and when it’s right to slow down the speed of the match, he’s the guy you’ll want hanging around when you do. I’ve used Fireheart to single-handedly take down a U/W/R Planeswalker deck from an entirely untenable board position, just by lighting a couple of lands on fire and daring him to actually win the game before they got him. You don’t always want to slow the game down, or even rely on a creature in the games that you do want to, but it happens often enough that this slot has been well-used on the Fireheart.
4 Burst Lightning, 4 Lightning Bolt — Nothing too complicated. Burn the face.
4 Searing Blaze — Now this one is complicated, because it is the “card advantage” burn spell. Instead of giving you a card when you kill a creature with it, it gives you the benefit of a card: it applies a Lightning Bolt to your opponent’s forehead. Damage equals cards to the Red deck, so this is creature-kill of the best variety, and everyone has at least a Wall of Omens for you to target with this bad boy so you shouldn’t find yourself unable to kill an opponent without the damage from a Searing Blaze.
4 Devastating Summons — The other half of the combo. Sometimes it’s also right not to wait for the other half of the combo on this one; I’ve cast my fair share of turn-two Summonses (alongside some Goblin Guides going on) that just completely floored my opponent, being more damage than a U/W deck can reliably survive in the early game, and sometimes you run out the late-game Summons-and-cross-your-fingers and you get there. This is the card that makes everything so complicated and so powerful, so you really have to play it to understand the subtlety of when it is right to do so and when it would be wrong (even if it WOULD be awesome).
2 Staggershock — More card advantage and burn. Sometimes you turn this into a slow-motion Flame Javelin pointed at your opponent’s face, and sometimes you kill one creature then get to kill another. Usually, this kills a Bloodbraid Elf or finishes off a Wall of Omens, then comes back around to deal two to the opponent, and having the options is all upside.
Sideboard:
1 Obsidian Fireheart — Sometimes you want more, like against U/W decks.
2 Staggershock — Often you want more of these. Here they are!
2 Cunning Sparkmage — Excellent in this metagame for picking off mana accelerators with added value.
2 Chandra Nalaar — Another card that is excellent against U/W mages, this time for her ability to single-handed kill a Baneslayer Angel while providing some potential added value besides, but also because sometimes you just get to go click-click-BOOM and get twelve damage out of one card. She adds tension against the Kor Firewalker decks, because they have to attack to avoid getting hit with Chandra’s ultimate, and tapped Firewalkers do not block and thus do not save the opponent.
4 Forked Bolt — More important even than the Sparkmage against mana accelerator decks, as you get to kill the accelerator but still get some value out of it… like getting a Hierarch AND a Cobra, for $30 of value for your red Uncommon, oh, and you blow them out.
4 Earthquake — The thinking man’s response to the Jund deck. More on this later.
The basic idea is to play fast creatures and get as much damage as you can out of them as possible. You can accomplish this very easily by using burn on creatures, or Smoldering Spires, or occasionally by budgeting your Landfall effects until they’ll have the greatest impact or by spending mana you could be using otherwise on leveling up Kargan Dragonlord. The creature plan is important for softening the opponent up, but not so important that you should mis-use burn spells that could combine over a few turns to kill the opponent instead, so sometimes you need to know when your creatures are merely an annoyance or meant to keep the opponent busy while you do the real work of killing them with your hand instead. The Red deck is all about pressure and keeping the opponent off balance, because pressure mounting leads to opponents taking damage, and an opponent that is off balance is ill-equipped to resist the explosive potential the deck is capable of.
Sometimes, this is very straightforward, as you choose not to interact with an opponent who cannot meaningfully interact with you, and do some self-destructive things like cut yourself off from your mana supply to just outright kill them. If your opponent can’t stop you from killing them, you probably should, obvious as that sounds… but you won’t always know when that is, and so the intelligent player of the Red deck uses past experience to see where the game is likely to go or what the opponent could potentially do to answer your line of play. Frequently you’ll be the one asking difficult questions, but the question you should be asking yourself is not only what could my opponent have to stay in this game but also what could your opponent have to make you lose the game, which is why Summons is so tricky to play at the correct time: without Bushwhacker it can expose you to sorcery-speed removal like Day of Judgment or Maelstrom Pulse, and even with Bushwhacker your opponent can decimate your plans with a single piece of countermagic, so knowing when to pull the trigger on that to get more help from it than you suffer harm from it is a skill to cultivate.
That said, usually you cast it and kill the opponent and it’s a big fiery explosion of death and awesomeness. If you can find the appropriate tokens, Chuck Norris + Velociraptor would be the ideal two to represent the awesomeness of the two Devastating Summons tokens, unless you’re of the opinion that Jesus + Velociraptor is awesomer. (Any combination without a Velociraptor, such as Jesus + Chuck Norris, is wrong.)
Playing Versus Jund:
This one’s the weird one. After all, this is your “best matchup”, right? You’re the one deck in the room that Jund is used to thinking of as “their bad matchup”, but while it’s very favored game one it’s still not an absolute lock, it’s just that the things they do to control the board are ill-favored to win the game, and they need to reach for their sideboard to properly answer your game one plan. You can’t let yourself lose the sideboard wars, and trying to ram the creature plan down their throat after the first game is a much harder proposition. This is why I’ve found something unusual to do, because I found myself losing this “best matchup” more often than I liked, as 70% game one was turning into 50% or less for games two and three, and this does not a “good matchup” make. So here’s what I do:
-2 Obsidian Fireheart, -4 Kargan Dragonlord. +2 Staggershock, +4 Earthquake. Choose to draw first.
After sideboarding, they have things like Terminate or even Consuming Vapors to punish us for being on the creature plan. I return to focusing on the creature plan as a way of accidentally getting some damage in, rather than my primary means of winning the game, and find that I want to slow the game down to get more draw phases so I can actually win the game with burn spells. To that end, they end up with a lot of dead removal that isn’t helping them perform an active plan, and I have more cards to work with for the cards that are most important in them actually stopping my plan from being successful (Blightning). With Searing Blaze, Staggershock and Earthquake all present as four-of’s, you can reasonably put yourself on a creature-control plan while still getting damage in. Drawing first punishes them for mulligans, punishes them for keeping the kinds of hands they think they want to keep (full of Terminates and things that do nothing), and puts another card in your hand to resist Blightning with or potentially be the final nail in the coffin that actually kills them.
They think they’re the control deck, for game two. In actuality, you should be trying to be the control deck, since relying on beatdown doesn’t work out very well and makes the game a toss-up to see if they draw enough Terminates or if you win the game, and because you can accomplish your goals while stopping them from threatening your life total, granting you some strange mix of inevitability and card advantage.
That said, if they give you an opportunity to kill them with the Summons combo because they don’t have Terminate mana up, you should take it. They usually don’t, but sometimes they run out a Bloodbraid Elf and try to be the beatdown, and you can get them with the combo-kill finish your “control deck” packs. The rule is “mis-assignment of role equals game loss,” and I’ve found that mis-assinging your role as “guy who tries to kill the opponent with creatures” led to defeat, while forcing your opponent to mis-assign themselves as “guy who kills creatures like it’s nothing” cannot answer burn spells very reliably and is forced to be the beatdown when they’re ill-equipped to do so from their ‘control’ stance.
And sometimes you still lose to double Blightning, but nobody in the format has managed to crack that particular nut yet, so don’t feel too bad about it if it happens. If you do everything else right, that’ll be their only way to beat you, so focus on doing everything else right since at least that part of your plan to win the match is actionable.
Playing Versus U/W Decks:
Here, I’m going to combine the U/W/R Planeswalker deck and the U/W Control deck as the overall plan is somewhat similar. U/W/R is much, much easier, because they’re unlikely to have Baneslayer Angels or even Kor Firewalkers, but the things that matter tend to overlap.
Game one is all about facing down the defensive deck with Wall of Omens and Path to Exiles and other Blue/White trickery. You have the luxury of getting to think about what has to happen for you to lose, because they’re slow and defensive decks and it takes them a considerable amount of time for them to actually beat you, so you get to try and conserve your cards for the things that can actually beat you while you try to push early damage through. Game one, “Baneslayer Angel” will be the only answer on the list of “Things That Can Beat You,” so it’s important to save burn spells to answer a Baneslayer even if you’d get more damage across over the next few turns if you finished a Wall of Omens off with a burn spell right now. Except, of course, when it isn’t. If it was always one thing and never another, Red would really be the brainless deck everyone thinks it is, but like any other deck there are several lines of play you can take and which one is correct is what you have to figure out from what’s going on in this game, not just what you always do when you’re running on autopilot.
Let’s give you an example. Baneslayer Angel is important to keep in mind, but so too is Day of Judgment. Which of these is more important to keep in mind when pointing that Lightning Bolt at a Wall of Omens is tricky, and the means to determining the answer follows along this path: if your opponent casts Day of Judgment, what do you do on the following turn… and if your opponent casts Baneslayer Angel, what do you do on the following turn?
If the answer is “I cast Summons and Bushwhacker” to Day of Judgment, you can more or less ignore Day of Judgment as a valid out, and might even want to choose the line of play that makes it more likely for your opponent to cast Day of Judgment, like finishing a Wall after combat or leveling up a Dragonlord to start flying over walls. If the answer is “I play Smoldering Spires and cast Summons and Bushwhacker” to Baneslayer Angel, well, life is good and so is this matchup.
If your answer to these questions is not, however, “I kill him,” you might want to make sure you best use your resources to deal with the problems your opponent might potentially present to you. A resolved and unanswered Baneslayer Angel usually results in your death as the objective is put further and further out of reach, and you’ll want to store up burn spells to potentially kill the Angel when she appears, or even possibly two of them if they show up back-to-back. If you’re attacking for some damage even though the Wall of Omens is in the way, it might be best to leave it there and focus on what matters. “When that isn’t true,” you’ll know it already, as you can point the red spells at the opponent’s face and combo kill them already. But even that isn’t so simple, as your combo can fold to a counterspell, putting you back from “right” to “wrong” as losing all your lands prevents you from interacting with the Baneslayer Angels that are so good against you, so if you can’t ensure 100% that the Summons will resolve, because the opponent is not going to give you a readily obvious window with their mana all tapped out, you don’t pull that trigger unless it’s your only choice, at which time the question is “do you have it or are you dead.”
Usually they’re dead, sometimes they’re not. Sideboarding, you can go either of two directions, and which one you pick should be based on whether you expect a significant amount of countermagic from your opponent. If you have to worry about counters, the Summonses need to be the first card to come out, and now that they aren’t as spectacular they tend to be followed by at least some of the Bushwhackers. You’re putting in more expensive cards like Chandra and the third Fireheart anyway, so it’s not unreasonable to do this and just try to contain Baneslayers while making your opponent uncomfortable with your aggressive start and the late-game power that Obsidian Fireheart has to just erode a stable board position.
The other direction is the one I usually find myself going, as most U/W decks don’t pack countermagic enough to really worry you and without the explosive power of Summons and Bushwhacker they can play Wrath effects with impunity to try and halt the board. Either way I go, I am adding +2 Staggershock, +2 Chandra Nalaar, and +1 Obsidian Fireheart; keeping the Summons package in, I go -1 Summons (you are adding five-drops after all, and don’t want to draw multiple copies in this matchup or a hand that has to walk the Summons into a possible counter), -4 Burst Lightning. Your reach decreases a little bit because you’re pulling a Bolt effect, but you have multiple angles of attack after sideboarding thanks to a greater likelihood of drawing Mr. Late-Game and the possibility to run out Chandra and go click-click-boom.
Playing Versus G/W Decks:
Your plan against everything that falls under this sub-category is pretty similar, -4 Burst Lightning, -2 Obsidian Fireheart, +2 Cunning Sparkmage, +4 Forked Bolt. How you interact with each of them, however, is very different. Naya Like-Saber has no removal spells main-deck and might just die to a Kargan Dragonlord by its lonesome, so its weaknesses can be exploited differently than the other decks under this catch-all. Next Level Bant really likes its mana guys but is trying to accelerate to four, not really three, so you don’t have to jump and pull the trigger if they lead with a Forest and mana dude, you can let them live for a turn if your plays are smoother that way, and if you have a burn-light hand they aren’t doing anything broken with them so you can even let them live. The great Burn God, Dan Paskins, would disown me if I ever let an Elf live, but Next Level Bant is a deck that develops board position and grinds an advantage, not one that really utilizes its accelerants, so if you’re on the play and can drop a two-drop instead of burn a Hierarch, Dan might forgive you… if and only if that Hierarch dies next turn AND that two-drop cracks for five. Both of you are struggling for board position and the ability to deal (or resist) damage, and taking away a mana for a turn might not be required if you can develop your own board actively instead.
Playing against Mythic, it’s a different story. Their animals are bigger, and unlike the other two in this category they can do broken things with extra mana. They’re also trying to accelerate from one to three, so you can’t just let that mana creature live a turn and assume it’ll all be fine, and the chances are better too that they’re relying on that mana creature surviving to be able to make their best plays at all. Kill it, kill it dead, follow the rule and Dan will give you a mansion in the sky and all the ice cream you want.
Naya Vengevine can be a pretty easy match. Next Level Bant is a bit harder, I mean they have Blue cards that are worth more than my entire deck and actually play removal spells, but they can fall a little behind and once they do it’s easy to pressure that advantage turn after turn. Mythic is hardest of all, since they actively try to kill you and can do a pretty good job of it, but even they find that unless they have Firewalkers they are not favored to win. Against the first two, you are definitely the beatdown deck and try to sculpt the game accordingly; against Mythic you’re the controlling deck because they’re faster and beat down better, but as time has gone on people have been cutting lands they really needed from Mythic to squeeze in other spells, and even if they have a Firewalker you can make sure it’s entirely uncastable by just killing all of their mana creatures.
When Mythic is on the play, it’s even more important that you be able to kill their early creatures, so as good as Staggershock is you can’t afford the luxury of waiting for card advantage, so the ‘usual’ plan gets modified to -2 Staggershock, +2 Burst Lightning back in. Sometimes I even find it to be worth cutting a Summons for the third Burst, just to make sure. You have to be able to slow them down or they’ll get ahead of you, which is bad because against all of these various G/W decks reward you for being able to properly pace the game, not rushing too fast to push for the throat when you can just get pressure across the other side of the table and keep damage coming while you keep their board contained as something that can’t attack and kill you. It sounds obvious because all of Magic is about trying to kill them and not let them kill you, but when you’re playing the Red deck you usually don’t pay much attention to your opponent trying to kill you, and if you don’t in these matchups, they will.
Playing versus the Mirror:
Welcome to non-interactive Magic, where your skill can only take you so far. -2 Fireheart, +2 Staggershock, try not to die to a Summons without a) giving your opponent a foot in the door to stay in the games you’re supposed to win, or b) dying to the non-Summons stuff while you’re at it.
We do at least know that the Summons versions kick the daylights out of the non-Summons versions with Hell’s Thunder and Hellspark Elemental. Why anyone still plays the old version, no, I can’t tell you.
Playing versus UG Combo:
There is a reason I call the deck “Time for Lunch.”
A good deck gets a bad rap just because people think it’s “too easy to play”, but after years of watching this game I can tell you two things with certainty: one, people continually underestimate the Red deck, thinking it’s a ‘little kid deck’ even when it is not just a real deck but a very good one; two, it’s really fun to burn faces off. The plethora of articles already available on the coming “Double Standard” Extended format are all about how awesome Faeries are, and few indeed seem to be saying that 4x Figure of Destiny, 4x Goblin Guide, 4x Kargan Dragonlord, 4x Plated Geopede must be the beginnings of something awesome, or that Flame Javelin is still pretty hard to Spellstutter Sprite. Red is consistently underrated, and pretty consistently good if you can bring yourself to explore the hotter side of tournament Magic. Tapping islands may make you feel like you’re one of the ‘cool’ planeswalkers, but tapping Red creatures is surprisingly effective and leaves you enough time to hit up hot chicks in between rounds*.
Sean McKeown
s_mckeown @ hotmail.com
* Hot chicks not guaranteed to be present at a Magic tournament. This will change when Magic players learn personal hygiene and how to talk to women without creeping them out.