Elk, after two straight losses to toppers, I'm deleting the deck. It had a great run tho. Final record is 28-6 including a 12 win streak

Fun deck, thanks.

I'm curious why the need to delete it. Are you strapped for room or is it some sort of superstition about the deck losing a game or three in a row?

Personally I cycle through test decks a ton but once I've got a good deck going (whether it's mine or not), I tend to keep them for competitive play or fall back when I'm getting wrecked (it's always good to run something you know will work after a bad run of testing). It's only on the release of a new expansion do I look at the deck again to see if it can be updated to stay competitive or it should be removed because of the new pool/meta.

To each their own I guess.

Thanks a bunch for all your help and testing. It was invaluable and greatly appreciated.


elk

He deletes everything after two losses in a row.. in search of that perfect deck that never loses two in a row. It is typical for Barney to only have 2-4 decks total. Don't get butthurt about it.. he deleted my Temur deck pre-BFZ after going on some absurd win streak with it. The only deck I know he loved enough to keep was DH50's mono red burn deck.

As long as folks are willing to spin a list I post and give feedback, that's all I hope for. Love it, hate it, delete it, I'm good either way. I was just curious about the reasoning.


elk

Yeah, Beast nailed it. It's just superstition that no great deck can lose two in a row in the pubs. 28-6 wasn't blowing the roof off anyway. I was so sad when I deleted Beast's Temur deck. That thing was crazy. Dh50's dragon deck from last year you mean? Or Pure's burn deck? I deleted the latter in the end. My longest running deck to survive the don't lose-two-in-a-row gauntlet is that thopters deck but if it doesn't win the tournament, it's gone.

should be gone even if it does win

pure trash

Ouch


elk

3 x Goblin Glory Chaser
4 x Foundry Street Denizen
4 x Titan's Strength
1 x Molten Vortex

4 x Mage-Ring Bully
2 x Abbot of Keral Keep
3 x Ember Hauler
4 x Makindi Sliderunner
2 x Call of the Full Moon
4 x Infectious Bloodlust
4x Twin Bolt

2 x Exquisite Firecraft
1 x Touch of the Void
1 x Chandra, Fire of Kaladesh
1 x Act of Treason

1 x Avaricious Dragon

18 x Mountain
1 x Looming Spires

This my mono Red Aggro deck. It is very efficient, fast and acid Moss proof. Why? Because it can win with 2 land. Not many decks can do that, especially with the available card pool. I know many of you will cringe at the 19 land, but when I played paper magic (about 15 years ago... Around VII edition if memory doesn't fail me), playing with more than 20 land was for loosers and you'd get laughed at if you tried to play a 10 cmc card (except with reanimation maybe...). So this is a blitz deck, not quite the classical sligh mana curve + X spell.
Yes there are several similar decks here, but this is my version. Its sweet for farming and improving your rank because it can potentially beat everything in the meta and does so regularly.
Main diferences:
Less land. It rarely needs more than 4, so thats what the Molten Vortex is for. I keep land in hand after 4 unless I can pump the sliderunners. I only run 1 Looming Spires because I don't want a hand full of them slowing down the onslaught.
Act of Treason is my ultra secret anti-Ulamog tech (incidently, I haven't seeing ulamog once yet playing this deck. I guess it must scare him away...lol. When he does eventualmente turn up I hoje to top deck this, steal him and kill the stinking, acid-mossing, evil, ramp deck playing looser!). That and it rocks to finish off your opponent with the critter he hoped would keep him alive til next turn.
I don't play Firebird because... 6 boosters to go and Still haven't got him, or Ulamog... (don't know if it happened to anyone else, but most of the best cards of bfz are in the last 10 boosters and the same happened with origins)
The rest is pretty much what everyone else plays except for Dragon fodder which I don't like. This deck does need to be played properly in order to maximize damage potential. Any newbie scrub can play it and win but it does have alot of tricks to get the most out of it.
There is so much card advantage (for Red) and prowess pumping tech with burn to the face, it hurts. The perfect deck to play to get your morale up after getting your ass handed to you testing new decks.

Always like to see other people's takes on mono-red!

I think anything from 18 to 22 lands is a possible way to go. It is definitely right to not play the full 4 Looming Spires with only 19 lands; you could maybe go up to 2 though.

As for the 2-drops, I believe everybody has his one he does not like (Personally I don't like Ember Hauler). Definitely interesting to see you not run Dragon Fodder. Might try my list without them (adding in Sliderunners instead), though I generally like them.

I definitely know how it feels to wait for that Firebird; or Ob Nixilis, for that matter. I don't think I got them in the last six boosters, but I definitely got both very late.

Hi,

What do you think about using Rogue's Passage in a red aggro deck ?

Red Aggro should win way before being able to use Rogue's Passage and it interferes with ember hauler (if you play with that card). I prefer mountains or looming spires.

Red shouldn't need a mid game... just burn to the face.

Weird that you didn't chose to play Dragon fodder
Worst case it's a bear over two bodies
Best case :
+2/+0 to Foundry Street Denizen
+1/+1 to Mage-Ring Bully / Abbot of Keral Keep
It's also a great target for Infectious Bloodlust
Basically, it screams "SYNERGY" with the rest of the deck.

I'd probably cut some of the Makindi Sliderunner for them. You have a low amount of lands, and no way to trigger twice... it is likely that the poor critter will stay a 2/1 for 2 every other turn.

A) you are probably only gonna have 4 lands, at most, 3 is usually a good number

B) you should probably be using molten vortex so utility lands like that really don't do anything other then potentially mana screw you

C) if you really want unstoppable reach to kill your opponent with why wouldn't you use blighted gorge instead?

The main reason I don't like Dragon Fodder is that next turn, I'm left with 2 vanilla 1/1 goblins. Not my cup of tea. Makindi Sliderunner tramples, so imo he's better to stick an infectious bloodlust on or to titan strength because he will probably get some damage through even if he is chump blocked. I don't like to put all my eggs in the same basket, I'll usually pump my weakest creatures to make opponents removal less useful and give him more targets to choose from. The landfall is a nice extra and not the prime reason I prefer the sliderunner.

And if I did run dragon fodder, than my deck would be just like everyone else's... Not the way I like to build decks. Still, I appreciate for the opinion. Thanks

Still haven't gotten around to putting the firebird in... Been busy building other decks that are actually winning, so haven't felt the need to use Red Aggro beatdownism...

You should play a lot more lands imo, don't make the mistake of saying "my whole deck is 2-drops, so with 2 lands I can play almost everything" - that is a true statement, but how many cards per turn can you play?
Whenever you get stuck at 3 mana your deck will function at half speed, you won't be able to play 2 2-drops in the same turn, you won't be able to play a creature and enchant it with bloodlust to give it haste immediately, and you will find yourself late in the game with still plenty of cards in hand, which would be good in a control deck but when it happens in a deck like this it's a sign that something isn't quite working. Trust me, you need 4 lands in play by turn 4 - play at the very least 22.

I don't disagree with you, but you forget the 12 single mana drops. That means the deck can function with 2-3 lands, playing multiple cards. The problem with 22 lands is I that don't want more than 4 land. Above that, they're useless except for the odd chance that
Molten vortex shows up.
So I'm fine with less land and more utility in the deck and having to holding out at 2-3 mana for a few turn sometimes. It helps to muligan aggresively.

Also don't forget the Elephant in the room...Mwonvuli Acid-Moss.

Let's say you get saddled with 2 lands, which is good for the majority of your deck. Your opponent is able to stall out the first few turns with a well-timed removal spell and hits one of your lands with a Moss...suddenly, your in a bad spot, especially if you don't draw another land. And this can happen, even when the RDW goes first...you can look at my 3rd game against Legend in the Steam Showdown and see it happen, and he runs 20 lands in his deck.

You're all correct... Mana screw is a part of magic and moss helps that. Btw, when I did play against moss-tossers I didn't see it much, because they were more preoccupied with not going to 0 life most of the time to think that robbing me of a land would be a good play.
The way I play this particular deck is make or break. Blitz your opponent in the first 6-7 turns, applying maximum pressure and hopefully win by then. If things go beyond that, you better hope you did enough damage to get him into to the face burn range or your probably gonna lose. Red has always been the wheel of fortune color.
That doesn't mean I don't use my brain when I play Red, I try to effectively maximize damage with the cards I get, then when those run out... Just hope the gods of top decking smile on me.
Basically that's the winning strategy with red aggro... It can effectively beat any other deck and in that fact shapes the meta, sometimes to the point that it becomes totally dominant.
Does it always win? No. Do many wins rely on luck or perfect draws? Sure do... So whats so great about it? Its simple to play, streamlined and consistent. Any newbie can pick it up and thrash veteran magic players with some luck.
Love it, hate it, you have to be prepared for it...
I can see a lot has changed in my 10-15 year MTG hiatus. One thing is a "more land is good" bias players seem to have. This was something Wizards started doing after I stopped playing, making magic more creature based and with higher casting costs. So more land makes sense. When I played it was usually weenie, combo or draw-go. Combo with an evil thing called tolarian academy was totally dominant. Lots of "watch your opponent playing by himself for 20 minutes" antics. Probably why I got bored and quit...
All this ranting to say that back then I actually played a 16 land suicide black deck and made it to top 8 in a pretty big tournament.
Without land you can't play spells, with too much land you don't have spells to play. You have to find the thin line between these 2 extremes.

I remember that time! They called it "combo summer". Urza's Saga had just entered Standard to be combined with Tempest Block and RDW was still called Sligh (I never caught why that changed; so if anybody could shoot me a link, I'd be happy). You got laughed at for playing 20 lands in a weenie deck, that's for sure. To play more lands you better had to have good reason, like the top Sligh deck at World's, which played 22 lands (18 Mountain + 4 Wasteland), while still playing 4 Ball Lightning and 4 Fireblast. Counter-Phoenix decks would even play up to 27 lands (blasphemous in those days), but only to assure land drops in a deck, which would regularly discard two cards to buy back counter-spells.

Looking back I'd say that the average number of lands a deck needs has increased by 2 since then.

Ok, enough dwelling on the past. Story-time is over. Continue with the discussions, grasshoppers.

Passage is not doing enough for me.
You need 5 lands (including itself) in play for it to do anything, where your curve just stops at 4 and you have a lot of outs for excess lands; and even if you get to activate it, you're pushing like what, 2 damage? It's just not worth it corrupting your mana over it.



They're far from useless, especially if you are running Akoum Firebird and Makindi Sliderunner. The Firebird's second ability is erlevant at times, and Sliderunner turns your land into 1 more damage. (One of the reasons why I am currently sold on the Sliderunners btw).
22 lands seem like a bit too many to me; I'm running 21 and am very happy with it.