Standard

Slightly Bigger Red

This article will not have details about the games I played during the GP. Mainly because I don’t quite remember what happened. However, I will tell about how I got to my current list that got me 27th in the GP. I think it is a bit more educational as well, compared to a tournament report.

It started one Friday morning when I was driving around for work. It suddenly dawned on me that Saturday was Game Day and I still have no deck to play. So I phoned Face to Face and asked them to put aside the Pro Tour winning deck aside for me to be picked up Saturday morning before the Game Day starts. The reason why I want to play this deck was obviously because it was the winning deck, not to mention I have plans to convert this deck into a Modern deck after Game Day (I will save this for another article :>). Unfortunately, they did not have any Atarka’s Command nor [card]Mana Confluence[/card] in stock. They still made a Mono Red deck and put that on hold for me. Since I don’t have much choice nor cash to buy another deck, I decided to play it at Game Day anyway. All I wanted was the promo Thunderbreak Regent, but not the play mat. I figured that I might be able to get lucky with mono red and get into top 8. When I got the deck from Face to Face, the deck looked like this:

Game Day Mono Red by Jacky Tang

[deck]
[Lands]
20 Mountain
[/Lands]
[Spells]
4 Dragon Fodder
4 Lightning Strike
3 Stoke the Flames
4 Wild Slash
[/Spells]
[Creatures]
3 Eidolon of the Great Revel
4 Foundry Street Denizen
2 Frenzied Goblin
3 Goblin Heelcutter
4 Goblin Rabblemaster
1 Lightning Berserker
4 Mardu Scout
4 Monastery Swiftspear
[/Creatures]
[Sideboard]
1 Arc Lightning
2 Hall of Triumph
1 Harness by Force
3 Magma Spray
3 Magmatic Chasm
2 Roast
3 Scouring Sands
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

When I got to my LGS, I asked my friends to lend me some cards I obviously needed in this deck.

-2 [card]Frenzied Goblin[/card] +2 [card]Zurgo Bellstriker[/card] – I did not like the fact that [card]Frenzied Goblin[/card] taxed me mana for its effect. I am playing tons of dash already so it is hard for me to keep up that extra mana.

-1 [card]Foundry Street Denizen[/card], -1 [card]Mardu Scout[/card] + 2 [card]Hordeling Outburst[/card] – [card]Hordeling Outburst[/card] is a must in all red decks right?

-2 [card]Hall of Triumph[/card], + 2 [card]Obelisk of Urd[/card] – Since we have so many goblins, I thought that it would be more beneficial to play [card]Obelisk of Urd[/card] instead of [card]Hall of Triumph[/card], because it will negate my opponent’s [card]Drown in Sorrow[/card].

In the end, I got to top 8 both Game Days. At this point, I know that I was onto something. There is an edge with this version of red over Atarka Red.

The first thing I realized is that [card]Hordeling Outburst[/card] is by far, the worst card in the deck. It seems counter intuitive but Outburst is worse than [card]Dragon Fodder[/card] (and if it wasn’t for [card]Monastery Swiftspear[/card] and [card]Foundry Street Denizen[/card], I wouldn’t even include the [card]Dragon Fodder[/card] in the final version). The reason comes down to your 3 drop versus their 3 drop. Comparatively, all the other deck’s 3 drop will outperform your [card]Hordeling Outburst[/card]. I might be able to squeak in 2 extra points of damage on the play with the tokens before they are all dead, and it is even worse on the draw. Not to mention, it was terrible when your opponent responds by either [card]Drown in Sorrow[/card] or [card]Virulent Plague[/card], your aggression falls flat. It was almost always better to play a combination of spells on turn 3 to outmaneuver your opponent.

The second thing I noticed was that the dash creatures were insane. They were basically burn spells with free buy backs. With the use of dash creatures, it also nullified all wrath effects. I was able to keep up pressure without over-extending. There were multiple games where my opponents had to [card]Drown in Sorrow[/card] away a single Foundry on the board.

The third thing I learned was that [card]Siege Rhino[/card] was not the worst card against me. Most of the time, I just dash in the [card]Goblin Heelcutter[/card] and undo everything that the [card]Siege Rhino[/card] did. On the other hand, [card]Elvish Mystic[/card] followed by [card]Courser of Kruphix[/card] was nearly unbeatable. Not only does it stop our early aggression, we cannot attack until we draw a [card]Stoke the Flames[/card] and when we do finally draw it, we have to spend another turn convoking for it and not attacking. So the trick is kill everything else and keep heelcutting the Rhino.

The fourth thing is that we need an edge against Atarka Red and other red based decks. My deck wasn’t wide enough to deal with it.

The fifth lesson is that this deck is pretty resistant to mulligans: you can keep a lot of your hands, and even when you mull, you have the ability to win before your opponents can setup their game plan. During the Game Day weekend, I was able to keep a lot of 1 land hands. On top of that, there was a game where I mulled to five and still killed my opponent before they could play anything significant.

The last thing is that this deck preys on a unique weakness of this Standard: everyone plays enters the battlefield tapped lands. This allows this deck to run uncontested for the first few turns.

So with these lessons in mind, I made the deck into the following:

Slightly Bigger Red by Jacky Tang

[deck]
[Lands]
20 Mountain
[/Lands]
[Spells]
2 Dragon Fodder
4 Lightning Strike
4 Stoke the Flames
4 Wild Slash
[/Spells]
[Creatures]
3 Eidolon of the Great Revel
3 Foundry Street Denizen
3 Goblin Heelcutter
4 Goblin Rabblemaster
1 Lightning Berserker
3 Mardu Scout
4 Monastery Swiftspear
2 Thunderbreak Regent
3 Zurgo Bellstriker
[/Creatures]
[Sideboard]
2 Thunderbreak Regent
1 Haven of the Spirit Dragon
3 Scouring Sands
2 Harness by Force
3 Magma Spray
3 Roast
1 Arc Lightning
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

I have a personal general guideline about how many of each card you should play.

4 = You always want to see the card
3 = You always want at least 1 in hand or in play, but you don’t want 2.
2 = You don’t want this card in your opening hand.
1 = You want to only top deck this when your hand is empty and it can change the game’s flow.

– [card]Foundry Street Denizen[/card]: I only want this card in my opening hand and never draw any more.

– [card]Monastery Swiftspear[/card]: Unlike [card]Foundry Street Denizen[/card], they always get in at least 1 damage. On top of that, they are the best card against Atarka Red as it eats tokens all day long.

– [card]Mardu Scout[/card]: I don’t mind top decking more than one, however, it is hard to do anything else if I have to keep dashing them. On the play and depending on the match up, I hard cast them just so that I can do something else with my mana next turn instead of dashing them.

– [card]Dragon Fodder[/card]: I wish I can get rid of these, but these are needed for both Foundry Denizen and [card]Monastery Swiftspear[/card]. This can easily be replaced by [card]Dragon Whisperer[/card]. I did not have time to test it so I did not want to risk play it in the GP.

– [card]Goblin Rabblemaster[/card]: BESTEST CARD EVA. Due to the fact that you have so many early drops that your opponent has to deal with, by the time you slam this down, most of the time, it will go unanswered. Try to sandbag these.

– [card]Zurgo Bellstriker[/card]: Low drop curve filler, more often or not, it will deal 4 damage before it dies. If this card wasn’t legendary, I would gladly play 4 of them.

– [card]Eidolon of the Great Revel[/card]: On the play they are insane. Your opponent will need to take at least 2 damage to deal with it. Always side these out on the draw as they will only make you play from behind.

– [card]Goblin Heelcutter[/card]: He lets you save your spells to burn their face instead of using it to clear their creatures. However, because his dash cost is 3, it is bad to have multiple copies stuck in hand.

– [card]Thunderbreak Regent[/card]: This is the break out card for this deck. Not only does it protect itself by bolting your opponent when they try to remove it, you can drop it without worry about over-extending into [card]Crux of Fate[/card]. This also lets me be slightly bigger than the current red decks. I don’t remember who wrote about it but in aggro mirror, whoever is slightly bigger will always win. The only way that other deck can deal with it is to use a [card]Stoke the Flames[/card], and then they have to take 3 as well. That’s a 7 point life swing since the Stoke didn’t go to your face. Against any Abzan deck, most of their guys are ground guys and they cannot contest with the [card]Thunderbreak Regent[/card]. They will have to at least spend a removal spell and take 3 to deal with it. As good as these guys were, there is only 2 of this card because it is the top of the curve. The other 2 went into the sideboard as I can up my land count to 21 to accommodate the 4 Dragons.

The General Sideboard Guide

With the exception of UBX control decks, you always want to side out [card]Eidolon of the Great Revel[/card]s on the draw and side in the 2 extra [card]Thunderbreak Regent[/card]s and the [card]Haven of the Spirit Dragon[/card]. This is because with the extra card on the draw, it is more likely to draw the 4th land to play the [card]Thunderbreak Regent[/card]s. They fulfill similar roles of punishing your opponent for playing their game plan out on curve.

If you see a [card]Courser of Kruphix[/card], always side in all 3 [card]Roast[/card]s.

If you absolutely need to put in certain cards and you don’t know what to take out, [card]Dragon Fodder[/card]s are usually the right choice.

Mono Red/Atarka Red: You want to be the control deck in this match up. Sideboard out all the x/1 Creatures because it does not match up against the tokens. Side in the Dragons, land, and every creature removal.

-3 [card]Foundry Street Denizen[/card], -3 [card]Mardu Scout[/card], -1 [card]Lightning Berserker[/card]
+3 [card]Scouring Sands[/card], +1 [card]Arc Lightning[/card], +3 [card]Magma Spray[/card]

Midrange/Control Azban deck: [card]Wild Slash[/card] is not that effective against most Azban decks because their creature base is usually X/3 or higher. [card]Dragon Fodder[/card] is also very bad in this match up since it doesn’t really match up to their creatures well. [card]Harness by Force[/card] is an all star against Rhinos as well.

-3 [card]Wild Slash[/card], -2 [card]Dragon Fodder[/card]
+3 [card]Roast[/card], + 2 [card]Harness by Force[/card]

Aggro Azban: In this matchup though, [card]Wild Slash[/card] is insane, while Harness is a bit weaker because their creatures are slightly smaller.

-2 [card]Dragon Fodder[/card]
+2 [card]Roast[/card]

UBx Control: This an easy match up as long as they don’t draw too many [card]Foul-Tongue Invocation[/card]. [card]Wild Slash[/card]es are not the best since it is only a 2 damage burn to the face card. You want as much sustainable damage as possible. Harness by Force is good since you can steal their Ojutai and crack for 5. You also want to side in the Thunderbreaks to make [card]Crux of Fate[/card] worse. You want to keep in the Eidolon of Great Revel in your deck at all times because you want to punish them for dealing with your creatures.

-4 [card]Wild Slash[/card]
+2 [card]Thunderbreak Regent[/card], +1 [card]Haven of the Spirit Dragon[/card], + 1 [card]Harness by Force[/card]

Bant Heroic: This matchup is becomes unwinnable if they can pop an [card]Ordeal of Heliod[/card]. Your best chance is to actually keep in the Eidolons on the draw as well and hope you can burst damage your opponent down. Harness by Force is a must since it gives you a chance to crack back at them for a huge amount of damage. [card]Wild Slash[/card]es are useless since you can’t kill anything after 1 heroic trigger. You actually need the [card]Dragon Fodder[/card] in this match up as it buys you 2 blockers.

-4 [card]Wild Slash[/card]
+2 [card]Roast[/card], + 2 [card]Harness by Force[/card]

The other decks are really just judgement calls.

I went X-3 with this deck at the GP. My first 2 lost was to [card]Courser of Kruphix[/card] and the Bant Heroic, which I knew it was a problematic match up already. The last game that I lost was on day 2 due to a sequencing error, which caused me to miss 1 point of damage. Unfortunately for me, the game ended with him at 1 life. If I didn’t made that misplay, I think I would have been at the top 8 table.

Another benefit of playing this deck I found is that the matches finish VERY quickly. Every single match ended with 20+ minutes on the clock. This gave me plenty of time to rest in between and I felt it was a huge factor to why I did so well. This is the first time I played an aggro deck in a tournament and I was pleasantly surprised with this added benefit.

@EvilKYT

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