Glowing Ranks: Red Legends

Happy Weekend Again Zoners!

Continuing with our on-going Glowing Ranks segment, today's topic is Red Legends.

Because the card advantage is basically non-existent when we compare it to the other "slices" in Magic's color pie, Red has been historically the "least competitive" mono-color.

Although I don't disagree with the popular opinion, I can tell you that Red decks still have a lot to offer the general metagame, forcing tempo and pressure even without the taboo. When up against the amalgam of 20 years of Magic's most overpowered, it's a daunting task to risk managers and control players who feel the need to play the format with better support.

What draws me to the red decks I've played is both the inherent challenge of overcoming better designs and flipping the script on the players who are more Wrath-inclined. By going all-in, dedicating a majority of your deck to aggressive combos, most of the best decks have success in creating an early pressure, which forms chaos, which opens up the game to players making mistakes. And if you play them with tempo, it can both render control-heavy decks completely useless and set you up on a path to victory.

Coupled with the latest in R&D, there's really never been a better time to invest in the Red sector, and I'll show you why.

Honorable Mentions

Starke of Rath

Starke is my latest red deck as a result of my Old Border/New Border "Double Rainbow" Mono-colored project. While not good by himself (hence why he didn't crack the Top 5, and probably not even a top 10), he's worth mentioning in relation to the upward trend.

The first Commander product is what gave Starke an actual chance at the table, as he inherited a very lonely road named Homeward Path. Add an Expedition Map, and now you have two copies, giving us a "free" slot in our mana base and a real slot which could also provide design for a nice set of nonbasics, which does come in handy.

As mentioned in the Better Deckbuilding article, the trick with Starke is to assemble a removal engine with an indestructible artifact, and a way to copy his ability, whether it be the beat-me-over-the-head Rings of Brighthearth, or an untap effect like Umbral Mantle. Using the Stack, your first target is the indestructible item, and then whatever thing your opponent has, making sure Starke never leaves.

The amount of half-decent cards that can enable Starke and aid in building an offensive engine give this deck a very nice little control package that gives you enough time to find other heinous combos you'd want to play with Rings, or perhaps you just take the route I did and load it up with Dragons for the later stages. Overall, it's a neat deck with cool tricks that gives you a chance, which, if you're any good, is really all you'll need.

Squee, Goblin Nabob

This is a deck I've heard about for a long time, and a new design in my playgroup.

Often, most of the red card draw spells aren't going to give you an advantage, because they take cards away. With Squee as your Commander, these problems can be lessened, and a Red engine deck can begin to emerge.

Unlike Starke, Squee is probably the most travelled commander you'll see. The card will go to the graveyard, the player's hand, and the battlefield more than several times throughout the course of the game, and it is both very difficult to stop, and inefficient to waste single removal spells on. He'll basically do whatever you want, whenever, from the too-easy Skullclamp, to the



5. Ashling, the Pilgrim

When I first started this blog a couple years ago, one of the big gimmicky decks was the self-explanatory Ashling + 99 Mountains design.

The idea behind this deck, and most "Aggro" red decks in the format is that they're going to try and find a nice combination of combat damage and burn to finish an opponent off. Ashling is pretty successful in this way, considering that she has the ability to do two things at once: Control the board and deal damage to everyone and everything.

What limits her from beating out the other decks in the list is how many times you're going to have to cast her in a given game. Hence the Mountains moniker and joke for this deck. You have to commit to a serious amount of lands, but it's worth it. There are very few other cards you'll want to play that are as good as just laying down Mountain, and at a certain point, all you'll need to have is one big combat dealing 6-10 damage to make sure you're ahead. Of course, getting a Loxodon Warhammer or Basilisk Collar will help too.

4. Heartless Hidetsugu

In terms of using Warhammer and Collar to combo with damage, HH is just superior. The ratio of damage-to-CMC is not only a signficantly better return on investment compared to Ashling, but it's also a lot easier to set up. While Ashling comes out earlier, it will still take turns to set up the bomb, whereas HH sets up proactively and is the last part of your combo to come to the party.

One of the other things about HH is that he matches up significantly better with decks using life gain strategies, effectively halving the big boppers like Beacon of Immortality, and stopping the slow-rolling Oloro deck from staying ahead in the game, and therefore keeping the deck from its big Lim-Dul's Vault or Ad Nauseam.

HH also makes burn spells better, as he magnifies them exponentially throughout the course of the game. Two activations of HH can effectively put you in a position where one 4 power dude and a decent Fireball can finish an opponent, potentially more than one.

3. Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker

HH and Kiki-Jiki are really "even," I think, but for the purposes of this list, Kiki wins. Though significantly less consistent than Heartless Hidetsugu, the better combos in this deck are better than the things that HH can do in a 1v1 situation. In the HH/Kiki matchup, I also think Kiki wins due to the innate creature-based design and the fact that HH's best plays can be dealt with effectively in mono-red.

Against most other decks, I think HH is going to hold up better on the whole, as Kiki-Jiki, even if you don't go infinite, brings a stigma to the table that people might not like. He's going to be a lot harder of a commander to stick at the table than HH, even if HH brings more devastation.

2. Purphoros, God of the Forge

The new God on the block has really come out and made quite an impression on the greater metagame. Being a no-nonsense, tough-to-remove ETB and Combat Damage machine, the God of the Forge is a formidable Aggro deck.

One of the reasons for Purfy's vastly superior success when compared to the other gods is the fact that the card is generally not going to be a creature if you're playing it right. Unlike his fellow com-Pantheons, Purph's strength lies in a combination of him, haste outlets, and spells/permanents that spit out copious amounts of tokens. The deck's success is attributed mostly to the noncombat damage each opponent takes when he comes into play, which avoids people playing their own chump blockers while you create your own.

It is very similar HH and Ashling in this respect, the big differences being resilience and like Kiki-Jiki, it's dedication to token copies for ETB value. This blend is really a potent recipe for face-smashers everywhere.

1. Norin the Wary

Despite the God's magnanimous presence, he still pales in comparison to the effect of the Norin deck. Together, the two are also a pretty unbeatable 2 damage every turn.

What makes Norin so good is his ability to get everyone's best creatures via Confusion in the Ranks or Pandemonium, while basically dodging every relevant removal spell.

The deck is surely one of the more inconsistent decks without reliable tutelage for the key combo pieces, but it's nothing a Crystal Ball and Scroll Rack and Memory Jar and a few Wheel Effects can't find. In the meantime, this deck can also bide time with Genesis Chamber and Kiki-Jiki, as most of the better cards in Red fit right into this deck without too much tinkering.

The result is a map of various routes to chaos, which becomes a powerful ally for the Norin deck and a hard thing for an opponent to have to play against when they're already playing against another person.

That's all we have for today. Do you like these ranks? Do you disagree? Did I miss something? Lemme know in the comments below.
-UL

Better Deckbuilding: UL's Starke of Rath

Continuing in my "Double Rainbow" of Mono-Colored decks, today's feature on Better Deckbuilding is the latest and strangest tech out of Landdrops Laboratories- Starke of Rath.

WHAT!?!?!? WHY STARKE OF RATH?

When I decided to take on a second set of mono-colored decks, I needed a way to distinguish the decks. Not only can the strategies get ubiquitous, but so can the cards, if you're not careful.

Seeing as Heartless Hidetsugu is a very aggressive, combo-aggro deck with not a whole lot going on, my options for Red were pretty open.

When combined with my old border/new border requirement, Starke separated himself from the short list of mono-Red guys that I felt could give me some removal, even with his hefty drawback. And thanks to the development of a handful of awkward and strange cards, I was able to create a workable base for design.

THE STRATEGY

Part of the reinforcement for inspiration came from Stephen's Starke of Rath list featured on CMDR Decks in early May.

In his list, Stephen employed the help of a handful of weird ways to abuse Starke's abilities without getting smacked with his own ability.

Everyone knows about Homeward Path as a way to retrieve Starke. However, when combined with Illusionist's Bracers, untap triggers, Indestructible artifacts, or artifacts/creatures you want to break, Starke of Rath can create a set of triggers on the stack that boomerang him back under your control.

Even with a workable way to control the board, the deck still needs a way to win. Unlike Stephen's deck, which is fortified with the major players in Goblin beat down (Kiki-Jiki, Krenko,  Sharpshooter), I decidemy design needed something a little more... dragon-y.

THE TECH

That's right. We're playing Dragonstorm. While Mindbreak Trap and Flusterstorm exist in this format, building storm count and getting enough threats out of the deck is totally feasible.

While we may not have the luxury of four copies of Bogardan Hellkite, or even the convenience of only having to do 20 damage, this is a card that we can play late enough in the game to get a significant amount of damage and avoid most of the removal your opponents might be too happy to play on Starke or earlier in the game.

And because the Dragons have drastically improved, so has Dragonstorm.

The first of the Dragons I want to talk about is Scourge of Valkas. His affinity (not Affinity, like the mechanic) for having Dragon friends make him a nice tutor target for Dragonstorm. When the triggers are stacked properly, he can create anywhere from 6-9 extra points of damage for your dragon squad from ETB effects alone.

Stacking this onto the effects of Bogardan Hellkite and Journey Into Nyx's latest junk rare, Spawn of Thraxes, you're looking at a potential third or half of an opponent's life total dwindling before you've even begun to attack. Obviously, our Spawn of Thraxes needs Mountains to do damage- but that's neither a problem for this deck, nor a personal design problem for me and my love of basics. Spawn has racked up anywhere from 8-12 damage for me alone.

In addition to ETB damage Dragons, we also have some nice design-friendly dragons based on or around artifacts. Hellkite Igniter leads the way with Haste and the world's cheapest value-driven pump effect. In a deck which plays many cheap cost artifacts for Starke to blow up and bring Storm count up, doubling, or more than doubling Igniter's power the second it comes into play is entirely possible. The more mana, the more nonsense happens here. This is a premier game finisher in this design.

The rest of the "Artifact Dragon" package includes Hoard-Smelter Dragon, Steel Hellkite, Hellkite Tyrant, and Hoarding Dragon. Most of these are straight utility, but they all provide solid Dragon staying power.

Darksteel Citadel is probably the best option next to Ingot for our multiple targeted removal when we play Starke. With untap, or copy effects, the trick works as follows.

1. With Starke untapped, tap to target Darksteel Citadel
2. In response, put copy/untap trigger on the stack.
3. Tap Starke again, targeting Artifact/Creature threat.

Because the stack resolves the last ability, our threat will go away, our opponent will gain control of Starke, then our undestroyed Citadel will remain undestroyed, but we'll gain control of Starke of Rath.

One of the few Goblins I didn't think this deck could survive without was Goblin Welder, so it's here.

Often, one of Red's biggest issues is the lack of graveyard interactivity and recursion. There's a lot of ways to discard cards for immediate value, but nothing that brings it back.

Not that Trash for Treasure is great, but it works well with what the deck likes to do when it's not playing Dragons.

Some of the good cards made better in this deck are the Wellsprings and my favorite Solemn Simulacrum. In conjunction with Gobin Welder and Trash for Treasure, this little package of goodies creates an underrepresented amount of value for a Red deck.

Kuldotha Phoenix is another cool little piece of card advantage. In this design, it's almost going to be as good as Squee, and in some cases better. It's pitchable, able to come back and attack, defend, and be blown up by Starke of Rath if necessary.

This dimension of the deck is what provides a unique flexibility. Cards that create "acceptable losses," things that you are okay with losing in the course of battle, really help you to focus more on actions and effects in the game, not necessarily the emotion that comes from "being hated out" through removal, disruption, or relentless attack. While this is probably just a glass half-empty way of looking at recursion and generating card advantage, it's always important to have various benchmarks for what you are willing to accept as result from your deck design. Creating those expectations will you lead you to being a more effective manager as you continue to understand the format.

As always, here's the list. +1s, suggestions, and critiques welcome.

Tony Stark(e) Built This In A Cave!

Pass (with a bunch of scraps).
-UL