Hmm…
This is not going according to plan.
Time Spiral Block Constructed is an amazing format. There are plenty of viable decks, with no single deck dominating. It is skill-intensive, with every game offering plenty of tough decisions, and it is fun to play.
None of which is any consolation for us Red Mages. Green/White decks should be for pointing and laughing at, not for getting beaten by.
It feels so vindictive that people would choose to play Green/White decks. I think it was Richard Feldman who put it best – while the Green/White mages were going on about how they beat the control decks, the Blue mages were changing one card in their deck to make sure that they can deal with the Mystic Enforcer, thus making the matchup one of random creatures with no burn versus a deck which can kill all the creatures in play, kill a creature and gain lots of life, and draw extra cards. (Yes, yes, I know a Green/White deck won the Grand Prix. But I think they’ll find it a lot harder in the weeks ahead when all the control decks are prepared for them.)
But it’s no good complaining. Today’s article is to look at how we need to change the Red Deck as the qualifying season develops. And in doing so, let’s look at the strategy of slaughtering sacred cows when building decks.
I won a GP: Trial (yay for going to Florence with three byes, and yay for beating nine other people to do so) last weekend with the following:
4 Blood Knight
4 Gathan Raiders
4 Mogg War Marshal
4 Greater Gargadon
2 Magus of the Scroll
4 Fiery Temper
4 Rift Bolt
3 Disintegrate
2 Word of Seizing
2 Ghostfire
2 Molten Disaster
4 Fungal Reaches
4 Keldon Megaliths
1 Pendelhaven
1 Kher Keep
15 Mountain
Sideboard:
4 Epochrasite
4 Sulfur Elemental
2 Ghostfire
2 Keldon Marauders
1 Disintegrate
1 Word of Seizing
1 Molten Disaster
If you want to know more about the development of this deck, Craig Jones has most of the background in his articles, as we developed it together. It was designed to be good against the control decks, and also in the mirror match.
Obviously, it will never do in the current environment full of Tarmogoyfs backed up with pump spells, Mystic Enforcers, and all kinds of difficult threats. But it is also a bit of a mess, because I never quite followed through on my convictions about which cards weren’t performing and needed to be changed.
A really useful exercise to go through when tuning a deck, particularly one that has been around for a while, is to ask the following question. You know those cards which you always put in your deck, and which everyone else puts in their version of the deck? Are they actually the cards that are best for the deck and the opposition that it is most likely to face, or are they the cards which were best for the deck two months ago when it was first designed, but could now be replaced with something better?
Magus of the Scroll? It’s a 1/1 for R that never gets activated (I think I used its ability twice in fourteen matches). It’s even worse when you have lands in your deck that do essentially the same thing. So get rid of it. Not “cut down to two” like I did, but just get rid of it.
Gathan Raiders? They seem so promising in the abstract compared to Sulfur Elemental, and I always remembered the times when I unmorphed one with a Fiery Temper. But you know what? Against most decks, I never wanted to discard a land to them, because I needed my land for the other expensive spells, and I never wanted to discard a burn spell except for Fiery Temper, and I’d summoned all my creatures, and they just weren’t that good.
Blood Knight? In practice, a 2/2 for two mana with two irrelevant abilities. Which is okay. But is it really the best on offer?
Three mana burn spells that deal three damage. These have always been suboptimal in every other Constructed format, even when creatures were much punier than they are now, unless they had some special ability. They are a bit underpowered compared to what everyone else is doing, aren’t they?
Greater Gargadon? Every fool knows that it is amazing, essential, the reason for playing the Red deck, as many on the Internet will tell you. But the word is out about the Gargadon, and people are designing their decks and strategies to get around him, from Pull from Eternity to Venser. He wasn’t in the maindeck of some of the Red decks in Yokohama. Might it be time for him to be returned to the sideboard?
And so on. When redesigning a deck, every card needs to be questioned. The answer doesn’t have to be negative – sometimes a card that is included in the deck but not seen as essential is worth emphasising more, and it is worth bringing in other cards that have synergy with it. That was the case with Greater Gargadon in Saito’s Grand Prix-winning deck.
I saw our editor playing Billy Moreno deck recently, and Billy had obviously been through exactly this process in tuning the Red Deck. Like my deck above, Billy’s had 25 land, 4 Gargadon, 4 War Marshal, Word of Seizing, Disintegrate, and Molten Disaster, as well as seven of the three-mana burn spells. But gone were the Blood Knights, Gathan Raiders, Rift Bolts, and Magus of the Scrolls, and in their place came Ghostflame and Sedge Slivers, Korlash, and Slaughter Pact. Against many opponents, the two decks would play out the same way. But against other Red decks, Billy’s deck had answers for opposing Gargadons, with regenerating and bigger creatures, and even Tendrils of Corruption after sideboarding.
So, where does this suggest we should take the Red deck?
Adding Black to the Red Deck offers us new options against the Green/White decks, and in particular lets us defend against their early rush of creatures more effectively, though Mystic Enforcer still seems like a problem. But there is a difficult balancing act. Any measures that improve the Green/White matchup by making the Red Deck better at defending against creature beatdown will weaken it against the control decks. And, yes, that’s the sort of dilemma which sideboards are for, but the matchup against control decks is already close enough that weakening the matchup in game 1 could easily be the difference between qualifying for Valencia and losing when it really matters – between Mono-Blue, U/B Control, Mono-Black Control, G/U/B Control, and the rest of the crazy gang it would be a bad idea to, say, play more Black creature removal spells instead of Red spells, but that is exactly what might be needed to reliably defeat Saffi and friends. I think another option might be worth trying before we turn to the Dark Side. (I think that kind of deck would tend to evolve into the Black/Red control deck that Frank Karsten played in Yokohama, anyway).
So instead, I made a beatdown deck with some burn in it:
Creatures (16)
Lands (24)
Spells (20)
Sideboard
This is still a first draft – Assault/Battery could easily become another Red spell, for example. But the point of it is to show what happens when you start to question what the real essentials are in the Red Deck.
If the future of creature decks involves Tarmogoyfs facing off, then we need to have four Tarmogoyfs, rather than, say, Blood Knight. But more than that, we can get an advantage in Tarmogoyf wars by also playing Brute Force. Brute Force makes sure your Tarmogoyfs kill theirs and survive, even if they have Thrill of the Hunt. Against control decks, it will occasionally mess up their Tendrils, but more than that, you can use it in the early game to deal them three damage for one Red mana.
Tarox Bladewing plays a similar role in many ways to Greater Gargadon, and when testing the Red mirror, I lost count of the number of games when I thought, "if they have got Tarox, I just lose." The existence of Slaughter Pact means that a hasty Tarox is not quite the threat it might be, but there are plenty of other Slaughter Pact targets that they might have had to use it on, and sometimes they just don’t have the Slaughter Pact. Sometimes the multiple Gargadon draw can be quite unexciting. Drawing multiple Taroxes can lead to very upset opponents, when the game which they thought they have locked up get snatched away with an attack for eight or sixteen.
This isn’t to say Gargadon is bad all of a sudden, or that Tarox is always better. As things develop, people might lose their fear of the Gargadon and play decks that are more vulnerable to the Gargadon, and might instead tune their decks with more answers to Tarox. But in this format, it is impossible to cover all the different plans of attack that the Red Deck has, and by being aware of what their defences are, it is possible to keep one step ahead providing you are prepared to keep the same structure, but weed out the under-performers.
Just a quick note on Grove of the Burnwillows – I thought at first that every time it tapped for mana, the opponent gained a life. As is, it is perfectly acceptable for play when there is nothing better available.
A different way to go would be to try out more of a burn deck. There are several incentives to trying this – control decks with lots of creature kill but few actual counterspells, and some extremely powerful (but expensive) Red spells.
One piece of Mike Flores advice that I am keen to try out is Riddle of Lightning. Riddle can’t just go into any old Red deck, because it is a five-mana spell and sometimes offers disappointing results. (Never, by the way, let Craig Jones play Riddle of the Lightning – it is a completely unfair combo).
Another couple of powerful Red cards are Word of Seizing and Boom/Bust, and both are particularly powerful against control decks. They both play nice with Riddle of Lightning, as does Greater "take ten" Gargadon. Gargadon also interacts well with Word of "no, you can’t have it back" Seizing and with Boom "Gargageddon" Bust. Put it all together and you get something like:
Creatures (12)
Lands (24)
Spells (24)
I haven’t got as far as a sideboard for this one yet, but it is just to illustrate what a burn deck might look like and be capable of.
There’s still a lot to play for this summer for the Red Mage, and many different ways of adjusting to the new decks that Future Sight has brought. But whatever Mountain-based strategy you choose to employ, make sure that every single card in your deck has really earned its place, and that it’s not just there because you read about it on the Internet.
Take care,
Dan