Let me start off by saying that I think that almost every mono-colored deck is going to be horrendous for Champs. By “horrendous” I don’t mean that you can’t play them or that no one will play them, just that they aren’t going to be nearly as good as the polychromatic versions, especially three- and four-color Green decks. Just look at the cards next to one another and you will see how ridiculous or even humiliating the comparisons between single color and multicolor decks will be. “I’ve got Glacial Ray.” “That’s nice, I’ve got Lightning Helix.” “Takenuma Bleeder was good enough in Block, so…” “Check out my Watchwolf, will ya?”
… There is a reason that Dan Paskins just penned an article switching his allegiance to Boros Deck Wins.
I know some people liked Mono-Blue for Kamigawa Block, but that deck was just Critical Mass with terrible curve cards and lacking relevant mana acceleration. Mono-Blue was never very good against good players with a good aggressive decks, and considering the top-down proactive philosophy that consistently dominates Champs, that I don’t want to try my hand at that single color strategy for now. I suppose White Weenie and Black Hand will be okay choices if you are into those kinds of decks, but personally, I like decks with flexibility as well as speed, so White Weenie is probably out because you can build it either for utility or for aggression, but can’t really maintain both efforts given the constraints of the format. Black Hand I will get to in a moment, if tangentially. Green was the strongest color in Kamigawa Block and it is the strongest color in Ravnica, but Mono-Green is a miserable deck as far as I can see, more miserable and unplayable, perhaps, than the three colors I’ve already mentioned (not that they aren’t all miserable).
That leaves the Red Deck.
Personally, I can’t stand these decks that are all Frostlings and Hearth Kamis and Genju of the Spires. Perhaps they would enjoy the addition of Glitterfang. Goblin Balloon Brigade is in Ninth Edition. Perhaps by playing this creature, aggressive Red Deck players can latch onto the teat that has been fueling Suntail Hawk and Lantern Kami to finishes like English National Champion and Top 8 of U.S. Nationals. These Red Decks are fun to test if you are playing against Tooth and Nail all day, but given that there is no Tooth and Nail but that polychromatic Green decks (read: Sakura-Tribe Elder, Wood Elves, and other cheap mana fixers ready to block or carry a Jitte) have only gotten better, that is a big strike against this style of Red Deck. Anyway, aggro Red was out-performed statistically by Kuroda-style Red in every single tournament they were both played in, ever, which begs the question of why one was so dramatically favored over the other by the Magic playing masses. Instead, for purposes of “Mono-Colored Decks Week,” I have elected to go in a totally different direction, one that is aware of the key threats and answers in the format rather than mindless aggression missing Magma Jet… which was the only card holding together aggressive Red last season at all as far as I can tell.
Multi-Dimensional Red
Creatures (16)
Lands (24)
Spells (20)
- 4 Sensei's Divining Top
- 4 Journeyer's Kite
- 4 Shock
- 2 Yamabushi's Flame
- 2 Form of the Dragon
- 4 Seething Song
Sideboard
This deck focuses on multi-dimensional threats from a bottom-up perspective. Rather than taking some idea like “I want to play with a critical mass of efficient White creatures and finish with Charge Across the Araba,” I elected to figure out what the limiting factors of the format will be and build my Red Deck based around those.
Generally I build decks to attack the extremes of the metagame. I hate building in a vaccum and try never to have brand! new! creative ideas for fear of being attached to them, or, even worse, lying to myself about how innovative and successful my brand! new! ideas are like some deck designers. Instead, I like to build, template, and tune decks that can overcome the decks that I plan to play against in whatever tournament is coming up, anticipating their best draws and key threats, playing with the right trumps to win a war over relevance and draw quality. In the case of Champs, I predict that the primary limiting factor will be Hypnotic Specter. That is, every deck that you consider for play in the format must be able to either handle or weather Hypnotic Specter as a minimum condition for viability. It should be obvious by the above deck list that Hypnotic Specter, whether dropped on turn 3 by some sort of Black Hand or accelerated by Elves of Deep Shadow, is a card that Multi-dimensional Red can control. We have six cards that can kill Hypnotic Specter outright at equal or superior speed, and many cards that can control it midgame, either by blocking it or shooting it out of the sky.
Additionally, you have the issue of discard in general. One of the successful marks of Black Hand in late Kamigawa Block was to set up a 2/2 and a three-drop, then to lay it all on the line with Sink into Takenuma. Sink was awesome against the elegant decks of the format, and Persecute will be even worse for a deck with a high end. Therefore the only way out of it seems to be playing with Sensei’s Divining Top. In Standard for the Philadelphia LCQ, Regionals, and Nationals, we did a ton of testing v. Persecute enabled decks, and found that Kuroda-style Red would consistently recover from resource denial strategies as long as it could control its draws. Similarly, this deck might lose multiple cards on turn 4, but if it has its draw engine in place, any of the expensive guys can win the game all by its lonesome, and a succession of them, fed by Sensei’s Divining Top, should be able to overcome the raw card economy and early game tempo lost, just because Black threats tend to be so puny. Remember, Dark Confidant may be the best man in Ravnica, but he’s just a 2/1.
The two other controlling elements of the metagame will be White Weenie with Hokori, Dust Drinker and the various high end Tinker decks that advance mana into super expensive spells. Now not getting locked out of the game is going to be a huge deal for a mana hungry deck like this one, so I have included roughly one thousand cards to control that pesky Winter Orb. The same cards that kill Hypnotic Specter are good against Hokori, and in addition, we have swarm killing Jiwari as an additional answer. Going very long, the fight between Kumano and Hokori is not a fight at all.
From the Tinker side, the problems are a lot more complicated. There are decks as goofy as Gifts Ungiven recursion and strategies as eccentric as Enduring Ideal. No single color deck is going to have good answers to these kinds of decks straight up as well as being able to handle the opposite end of the metagame, so we have to be a little clever if we are going to win. Against Gifts Ungiven or any classic control strategy, the goal has to be to not fall behind in cards. This is easier said than done, because those kinds of decks are consistently so good against decks with expensive threats, but we have a very reasonable draw engine in Sensei’s Divining Top + Journeyer’s Kite, and should be able to deploy Shard Phoenix over and over again to play offense and defense and hopefully test out the opponent’s response cards. No, I don’t like that answer either, which is why Seething Song is in the deck. We can go long with card advantage, but the ability to try to force down one of our fives on turn 3 will be a key weapon in competing at all… Maybe with a little pressure from Kumano or Hunted Dragon on, the long game cards will have a better chance of doing their jobs. Against Enduring Ideal, our hope has to be that the opponent doesn’t set up Ivory Mask and Form of the Dragon because we are basically kold against that… It’s Dragon or no at that point, and with Confiscate in the mix, even that isn’t certain; cross your fingers.
All that said, I don’t even think that Multi-dimensional Red is necessarily out of its depth. Red Decks continually surprise players with their ability to overcome “superior” or at least answer-laden strategies… Third-turn Hunted Dragon and a Shock might just be a fifth turn kill.
As I said before, all the threats in Multi-dimensional Red are, surprise surprise, multi-dimensional. That is, though they are the Cadillacs of their respective specialties, each card can do more than one thing, and generally well. Form of the Dragon is a Moat and a kill card and life gain. Ghost-Lit Raider, presently waiting for his shot out of the sideboard, is perhaps the best Red card against Meloku the Clouded Mirror… but it is also a fine creature and superb defense against White Weenie or any other baby aggro suite. Kumano, Master Yamabushi isn’t quite Arc-Slogger, but as the only Arc-Slogger we’ve got, he is a reasonable addition to the squad, combining a respectable body with an all star ability. Shard Phoenix is Pyroclasm, control-hating finisher, and card drawing engine all in one.
When you prepare a deck for an open format by hitting the extremes of the metagame, you almost necessarily contain the decks that fall between. For example, I didn’t say anything about preparing for another Red Deck (likely an aggressive Red Deck), but cards like Shock and Kumano are just as good against those opponents as they are against Black Hand. It doesn’t ultimately matter what kind of G/x deck the opponent is playing, because even though the various decks have all different strategies, from ramping up to Yosei, recurring Cranial Extraction, or breaking Enduring Ideal, your pre-loss turns are going to follow the same path regardless. I know it seems stupid against a deck full of Sakura-Tribe Elders, but you’ll probably want your Stone Rains… they’ll help your Seething Songs race.
As for the only real downside to the deck, Hunted Dragon’s pesky tokens can be contained in several ways. If you’ve already got Form of the Dragon down, a Waylay of 2/2s isn’t going to bother you at all. If it comes to a race situation, almost all of your creatures compare favorably to 2/2s, and Shard Phoenix, Kumano, and Jiwari can all handle a couple of babies without any problems.
One of the nice things about a deck like this is that it doesn’t really get into any Jitte fights. If you are worried about Jitte, you can re-work the strategy away from the top end that I chose and go with Godo, Honor-Worn Shaku, and five or six pieces of Legendary equipment to take on the other guy’s Jittes straight on. I don’t like building a deck around this idea as much because you end up having to worry about blanks like Manriki-Gusari, and the last thing you want to do is make cards that should be completely irrelevant actually good against your core offensive strategy.
The only real question mark I have is Suppression Field. Will people play with it? Will they play it main deck? Because a multi-dimensional deck like this one doesn’t really want to spend four mana to deal one damage or five mana to recycle a five-drop 2/2. If asking this question smacks of The Fear, you have my apologies… But if you want to give this Red Deck a swing, don’t forget that this card exists. It’s awfully good against you.
LOVE
MIKE