[Variant] All-In Mono Red

[Helios]

Yeah; I saw him crop in a few decklists and I was like "that actually seems reasonable".

/thingsINeverExpected

[Alex]

Yeah; I saw him crop in a few decklists and I was like "that actually seems reasonable". I imagine it is one of the first cards sideded out, but the actual concept seemed pretty defensible to me. Its a deck that wants to win on turn 4-5 anyway.

Some men just want to watch the world burn.

[redthirst]

Yeah; I saw him crop in a few decklists and I was like "that actually seems reasonable".

/thingsINeverExpected

Well, it is disgusting, but - iirc - zem's original opinion of VD was auto 4-of in every red deck ever.



So... not all that unexpected.

Seriously, though, if VD has a good chance of doing something consistent that you want it to no matter what then it's probably actually playable.

None the less, my opinion
of it is constant - if you have to have an entire deck built around a strategy that mitigates a card's weaknesses enough to make it just "playable" then that's not a good card.

[Tharkun]

I love this deck. Mono-Red is a nice and reliable land base. I ran something similar to this last Friday. I had been in a Jury all week and away from the net. My local FNM was 2HG and Modern the two previous weeks and so I was alone. I had every card listed in the first post in front of me when I was building my deck and eventually went with a 20 land R/g list very light on the g. Legion Loyalist made the cut but firefist striker didn't. I didn't run Reckoner at all.

But I like this concept better and my unfocused attempt did very well that night (4-1, split packs with the winner, we played for points). I am very excited about building this deck. It is well positioned for my meta.

[Calamity]

I've been testing this deck with a splash of white (the 8 duals) and 3 boros charms mainboard to see if it can make our verdict matchups any better. I tried Thalia but she strains the mana too much, at that point you might as well go boros deck wins.

I'll let you guys know how it goes on friday

[LP, of the Fires]

Well, to be fair red, most magic cards aren't good. Red decks are basically piles of goblin pikers and incinerats+4 good cards(in our cases recently hellrider). Through the lens of how I view magic, the only decks that play "good cards" are midrange and control. Aggro and combo are just piles of synergestic bad cards that try to do the same thing every game faster then everyone else.

[Helios]

I've been testing this deck with a splash of white (the 8 duals) and 3 boros charms mainboard to see if it can make our verdict matchups any better. I tried Thalia but she strains the mana too much, at that point you might as well go boros deck wins.

I'll let you guys know how it goes on friday

...See my decklist. But more testing is good. Mind posting your exact 75?

[Calamity]

[deck]
4 Stromkirk Noble
4 Rakdos Cackler
3 Legion Loyalist
4 Ash Zealot
4 Burning-Tree Emissary
4 Lightning Mauler
4 Firefist Striker
3 Gore-house chainwalker

2 Brimstone Volley
3 Dynacharge
4 Searing Spear
3 Boros Charm

10 Mountian
4 Sacred Foundry
4 Clifftop Retreat[/deck]
[deck]sideboard[/deck]

My list atm, but i change it a little every day. Considering dropping brimstones for something else for more dudes since boros charm kinda overlaps with it in function (late game reach) and then some.

Took out foundry street for now. I think he could work if you had a more tokens oriented deck with krenko's command or something replacing GHC to get him to be a 3/1 more consistently. He'd be good with Thatcher Revolt too. Come to think of it i may try testing those cards next if i can get a hold of them...

Not using
stonewright currently, in my testing the only situations he would have been helpful were ones where i was flooded and kinda fucked anyway, even if i had him. Going to try him eventually anyway though.

I'm also considering making room for 2 pyrehearts or something in the board, him + firefist would be hilarious against midrange for pushing that damage through.

Also went down to 18 land. I've been flooding too much on 19.

This might be the lack of sleep talking but would something like five alarm fire work here at all or is it just a shitty brimstone that may never even go off?

[Helios]

My list atm, but i change it a little every day. Considering dropping brimstones for something else for more dudes since boros charm kinda overlaps with it in function (late game reach) and then some.

Seems fine, we're basically on the same stuff. Main difference is that I'm not running Chainwalker, and honestly haven't missed him.

Not using stonewright currently, in my testing the only situations he would have been helpful were ones where i was flooded and kinda fucked anyway, even if i had him. Going to try him eventually anyway though.

I'm thinking of keeping him in the side, because he's just so damn good against control, but cutting the MB ones.

I'm also considering making room for 2
pyrehearts or something in the board, him + firefist would be hilarious against midrange for pushing that damage through.

Try Fervent Cathar as well, he essentially fills this function, but you just get to alpha strike a turn early.

Also went down to 18 land. I've been flooding too much on 19.

This might be the lack of sleep talking but would something like five alarm fire work here at all or is it just a shitty brimstone that may never even go off?

Considering it doesn't do anything til turn 5 or 6 at the earliest, I'm going to go with the second half of that sentence. The part of you that isn't lacking sleep is making sense on that one

[Valdarith]

[deck]
4 Stromkirk Noble
4 Rakdos Cackler
3 Legion Loyalist
4 Ash Zealot
4 Burning-Tree Emissary
4 Lightning Mauler
4 Firefist Striker
3 Gore-house chainwalker

2 Brimstone Volley
3 Dynacharge
4 Searing Spear
3 Boros Charm

10 Mountian
4 Sacred Foundry
4 Clifftop Retreat[/deck]
[deck]sideboard[/deck]

Also went down to 18 land. I've been flooding too much on 19.

This might be the lack of sleep talking but would something like five alarm fire work here at all or is it just a shitty brimstone that may never even go off?

18 is probably right. When I toyed with this deck I flooded A LOT. Of course I've flooded a lot with both of my decks the
past three nights I've played with them so it could just be a run of bad luck.

I will also say I felt like more than 10 spells was too many. I always found myself wanting another dude in the close losses I had.

[Tharkun]

So after playing around with this variant I found a lack of hasty bodies. My other build had ash zealot, flinthoof boar, LM, Legion Loyalist and 3 hellriders. This build has only the zealots, lm and loyalists. I lost 7 bodies with haste. I strongly feel the lack and the deck is slower because of it.

My plan is go put in the 8 duals, go 20 lands and run something like this:
[deck]
4 stomping ground
4 rootbound crag
12 mountain

4 legion loyalist
4 stromkirk noble
4 rakdos cackler
4 burning-tree emissary
4 lightning mauler
4 ash zealot
4 flinthoof boar

3 dynacharge
3 rancor
4 searing spear
2 ghor-clan rampager
[/deck]

[Helios]

Tharkun: That seems solid, let me know how your control match-up goes. The only reason I'm in white and not green is that Charm deals with Verdict quite nicely; however, if a green-splash deck can just get there fast enough, that wouldn't be an issue. Which matchup was the lack of haste hurting you in?

Val: In my experience, drawing spells (which are mostly removal) has never been a problem in the creature matchups; which games was this hurting you in? I agree with your assessment, just curious.

[Valdarith]

Val: In my experience, drawing spells (which are mostly removal) has never been a problem in the creature matchups; which games was this hurting you in? I agree with your assessment, just curious.

Any non-aggro matchup.

I just really didn't like the deck when I tested it. I had to mulligan far more often than I'm comfortable with and I ran out of gas a lot faster than my 22-land mono red build since all of my cards were even weaker individually than the ones in that deck. I honestly felt like the deck made no improvements in my control matchup and made my midrange and aggro matchups worse.

[Calamity]

Maybe i've just had better luck/local meta but I haven't had those problems besides playing around Verdict. The deck seems to be operating for me a lot better than my old 22 land boros build

[Valdarith]

Maybe i've just had better luck/local meta but I haven't had those problems besides playing around Verdict. The deck seems to be operating for me a lot better than my old 22 land boros build

I tested on MTGO for reference.

[Calamity]

Maybe i've just had better luck/local meta but I haven't had those problems besides playing around Verdict. The deck seems to be operating for me a lot better than my old 22 land boros build

I tested on MTGO for reference.

That's probably better testing than my local meta. It's pretty good skill wise overall for an FNM but there's still some weird stuff.

[PrimalBurn]

Am I crazy to want to run copies of krenko's command with BTE to generate a huge board and make dynacharge possibly more brutal. Just thinking out loud

[Calamity]

I've been considering replacing ghc with krenkos command and trying foundry street again with them.

[Calamity]

Completely scrubbed out at FNM tonight, lost to turbo fog, Dega control, and Aristocrats. Got mana screwed way too many of the games, including not seeing more than one land for 8 turns against turbo fog.

Dunno if i'm going to keep trying this deck tbh. My meta is pretty hostile to it.

[Midnight_v]

Completely scrubbed out at FNM tonight, lost to turbo fog, Dega control, and Aristocrats. Got mana screwed way too many of the games, including not seeing more than one land for 8 turns against turbo fog.

Dunno if i'm going to keep trying this deck tbh. My meta is pretty hostile to it.

If I may. . .

The cool thing that I've learned about red pre-gtc.... (and I learned a whole lot} is that when the meta turns hostile
to it you just pull a few more cards and go: Sledgehammer, Rider top, or all in Sligh like this as the local meta dictates.

Currently because you have such good land bases you can do other impressive things like going...
Dos Rakis, Gruul Ragehammer, or BorosDECK WINS.
It occurs to me that if thats what you had
to deal with the deck you might want to be playing next week is Dos Rakis.
Knight of infamy solves some of those problems, and Access to Duress, appetite for brains, and Slaughter Games might solve the rest.
I'm not sure... based on info.
My brother stopped to ask me what I was playing nowdays and I told him play Evolutionary Red. "EVO RED" which means my deck is a R/x aggro deck that evolves as I see my meta becoming at any given second. . .

So if you just go big or go black (Or hell big and black as I've seen some dos rakis lists lately) it might give you what you need to win.
A couple weeks of that and you can go comfortably back to an all in situation.

[Calamity]

Any FoS input is always welcome

I'd love to try Dos Rakis but lack the duals and falkenraths... and obtaining them isn't feasible in the hear future.

I was thinking of going old school mono red topping out at 5 with two zealous conscripts main board with lots of mana sinks, or doing a more standard 23 land mono red that can board into going big. My meta is approximately 75 percent midrange and control and the rest is aggro. Though, i suppose at that composition i should just start out big red...

[Helios]

Any FoS input is always welcome

I'd love to try Dos Rakis but lack the duals and falkenraths... and obtaining them isn't feasible in the hear future.

I was thinking of going old school mono red topping out at 5 with two zealous conscripts main board with lots of mana sinks, or doing a more standard 23 land mono red that can board into going big. My meta is approximately 75 percent midrange and control and the rest is aggro. Though, i suppose at that composition i should just start out big red...

This deck is not so hot against control. KDW seems to have a much better match-up there, because you have Stonewright with enough mana to make him relevant, and Hounds to just beat everything.

[Calamity]

wow i looked up khaos deck wins and it's pretty much exactly what i was thinking about doing...

[Midnight_v]

wow i looked up khaos deck wins and it's pretty much exactly what i was thinking about doing...

Keep some caverns in that list though. . .just in case you meet some counter control deck.

[Link]

Caverns don't pump stonewright wtf is this nonsense

[zemanjaski]

You should not want Caverns against counterspell decks...just play well and counterspells will be bad against you...

[Link]

WE DONT HIDE IN NO CAVES LIKE DEM SISSY HUMANS

WE

ARE

ON

MOUNTAIN

TOPS

[Calamity]

Thats something I've always wondered... when people say play around counter spells what exactly do they mean... like waiting until they're tapped out to play stuff, or baiting counters with not as important spells to keep the more powerful ones safe? Its a concept I've seen mentioned quite a bit around these parts but never seen talked about in depth

Control has only recently become a thing where I play, so I'm not sure if I'm doing it right, or at all really. I try to cast my spells at the right time, at least.

[Sasky]

Mostly bluffing your opponent that the spell you are casting is important so he wastes a counter on it, when in fact you have a better spell. Also, sequencing your spells in the right order.

For example, using a hellkite to draw a counter when you have hellrider to deal exact lethal, burning him at eot to send him into panic and countering it so you can resolve hellkite during your turn, attacking with small guys till he is forced to tap out for a verdict then resolving your big hasty threat etc. that kind of stuff.

[Midnight_v]

Caverns don't pump stonewright wtf is this nonsense

Ahem. It was a whim... or rather a bad stock answer. . .
the more I think about it though, I guess it isn't needed. We have a good matchup vs most counter decks so meh.
Though originally we were running Hellion crucible and they don't pump stonewright either.
There is something though. . . something I can't put my finger on that bugging me about the counter decks right now but, I suppose its the hard push by so many people to make a tempo deck that dominates the field. America Flash, U/G, U/B/x, Rug.
In fact the last deck I was reading about was Rug, huntmaster flash (with Yeva and friend), so I guess its niggling me somewhat. Don't know what I was thinking.

Edit: I posted this last night like seconds after Fate posted his post. I guess I pressed preview or something!
WTF

On playing vs control. I really depends on reading the situation as well.
Present constant thread starting turn 1 and they shouldn't be able to answer enough, barring the nut draw for them. (which is something like Cheap removal, card draw, cheap removal, wrath.

On of the big things that the fires of salvation had going for it was the live video of dalies, that was going on for a while. It was really instructional and entertaining, but for example there's this hamfactorial match where he's playing vs control except he's playing Dos Rakis (with hellrider) and I start talking to him about "How to play against control" in that case having a creature on board and 2xaristocrat and a hellrider in hand...
He was like do I play it
or wait, cause I think he has an answer. I was like "Make him have it then..." and I'm sure that post is still up somewhere on his twitch.
Control hates an situation of ever present threat.
I learned from Zemanjaski, vs control presenting 4 damage a turn is often enough vs them to wrath, then you simply refill the board with 4 more damage, (preferably with haste)

However, its my fault for giving a stock answer to be honest. The biggest problem with control decks really isn't counters at all in the current meta. Which is the second reason my answer was incorrect.

...I don't want to sound like *snark *snark "learn to play" *snark * skark either, but it reallly does come with practice and understanding what the control deck your playing against general gameplan is.

[zemanjaski]

Ill snark then. It's about learning to sequence your plays correctly.

[Calamity]

ok, I get what you guys mean now. I've actually been doing that this whole time lol

[Squircifer]

i have been playing this deck as listed in the first post, save shred freaks instead of reckoners. ihave found to actually like the aspect of almost all my creatures running out with haste. and since the freak is only 2 they drop a bit more mean like with maulers and loyalists. the strikers are gold coming off shamans.

so far i have played 10 matches with a rather generic side.
4 pillar
4 reckoner
4 mizzium
3 vexing devil / conscripts

i have won 6 of the ten matches. my main problem was gruul with that silly tree of redemption... that gave me fits in two matches. the other were a blue mill type deck and a goblin/burn at the steak deck. i lost to the stake deck because i was a little too drunk to really be playing in the middle of the day.

shred freaks.... i love this little guy. of course anything with big ass fire blades of pain is a good thing... and this little guy rapes kittens all day.
noble... stuck up
snotty little bastard. but he gets buff as fuck when left alone to being his little hipster ass vampire schtick.
ash zealot.... fuck you because i am a zealot! you got life? not for long... flash that shit back you little bitch.
strikers.. you wanna block? well wait till my gay cousin mauler gets here.... boom nickel!!!
mauler.. i wont talk shit about this faggot here.
chainwalker... gay asss tight rope walking fairy. never once was he worth a fart in a thunder storm. maybe i uses him wrong?
cackler.... i just wanna touch myself and cackle bitches!!!! believe.
loyalist... little bitch can scrap. just runs up your leg and stabs your balls with his pokey thing.
tree hugger... sweet little ho always brings her friends with her... if they stay home, she always has a bucket of gasoline for your ass....

time to enter some queues and get raped a little bit.

[Link]

I approve everything in the above post sans vexing devil

[Link]

anyone started using Pyreheart wolf in these decks?

He was the nuts with firefist striker when I played him. I can only imagine him+Dyna and Loyalist on the field

[Helios]

I approve everything in the above post sans vexing devil

I greatly disapprove of said post, largely because have an appreciation for plain English, a well as a strong distaste for rape analogy and derogatory terminology.

On topic, I think that KDW is just a better deck at this point.

[Valdarith]

I think that KDW is just a better deck at this point.

I am inclined to agree, but that could also be a matter of personal taste. I really dislike the variance in this deck, but it could just be that I'm far from what you'd call a lucksack.

[Squircifer]

really?

[redthirst]

really?

Don't let Helios bother you - I think the first time he directed a post towards me it was to tell me that he wasn't afraid to report my ass to a mod...

Besides, he may not support your pro-rape views, but he'll support your right to express them - just like he supports my expressions of blatant homophobia, racism, and sexism even though he's not particularly homophobic, racist, or sexist.



Go team Dickwolves!

[zemanjaski]

anyone started using Pyreheart wolf in these decks?

He was the nuts with firefist striker when I played him. I can only imagine him+Dyna and Loyalist on the field

It is a great card. Might actually just be better than Reckoner in the 3-slot in a swarm deck. Haven't got any first-hand experience with it.

RE: Shred-Freak ~ I like the idea, most haste guys are good, although not being able to be cast by BTE is a consideration. You need to keep the number of cards that can be at/around 20+ or the deck starts to lose its explosiveness.