Last week we discussed a RDW list that received a lot of response both on the forums and via email. It was clear players wanted to discuss the deck further due either to confusion over the initial list or to comment on it both positively and negatively. Here is the list for reference:
Creatures (24)
- 4 Mogg Fanatic
- 4 Keldon Marauders
- 4 Countryside Crusher
- 4 Mudbutton Clanger
- 4 Mudbrawler Cohort
- 4 Tattermunge Maniac
Lands (22)
Spells (14)
Creatures as Burn Spells
Last week the argument was made for two specific cards that were expected to draw derisive comments from the audience: Mudbrawler Cohort and Mudbutton Clanger. The idea was to make the case for those two cards so that players could understand how they were useful presently and how they’ve been useful historically. Judging by the response, many couldn’t make the leap.
The modern Red deck is almost universally known as aggressive beatdown backed by a modicum of burn to provide reach after the initial onslaught is stymied. This strategy is so prevalent it’s practically incorporated into the very ethos of Magic itself: “Red Deck Wins” simply refers to this type of strategy and decks like Skred Red, a control strategy, have to qualify themselves as being “other” than the norm for Mountains. For that reason the decks have historically eschewed traditional mantras of “play good cards” to utilize cards that maximize damage to cost ratios and allow a deck’s user to do as much damage as they can early in order to put the opponent away late with burn spell after burn spell. Red decks and their success over the years is as credible an argument as you can find for the Zac Hill school of thought on evaluating Magic cards.
Which brings us back to our Mud clan members. Before we can grasp how Red decks work we must first absolve ourselves of the sin of card power. When building RDW we aren’t looking for cards which are the most powerful in a vacuum, but instead for the cards that will fulfill the role with which they are tasked. That role? To deal as much damage over the first few turns as possible so that we can finish our opponents with burn later in the game.
One of the keys to accomplishing this, and something Jay Schneider first laid out in Constructed many moons ago with his Sligh build, was the concept of the mana curve. For those unfamiliar with the concept this paramount of deck building tenets states that by utilizing every mana over the course of the first few turns of the game we may gain an advantage over our opponent and overpower him or her with “weaker” cards that are much faster. To maximize the potential to “curve out” you build a foundation with a maximum number of one drops, slightly fewer two drops, even fewer three drops, and so on. Here’s a reasonable guideline for such a curve:
8-12 one drops
6-8 two drops
2-4 three drops
0-2 five drops
So if we’re set on playing 12 one drops and we want to do the most amount of damage over the first few turns of the game, which ones are best for the job? The list quickly decided on Mogg Fanatic and Tattermunge Maniac as they functioned as a burn spell/creature and two-powered one drop respectively. The third member was a harder pick but eventually Mudbutton Clanger was selected. Why? No other creature deals as much damage as a one drop.
It became clear last week that players were very hung up on playing a 1/1 that wasn’t always a 2/2. How greedy we’ve become with the sight of just a single tournament caliber 2/1! After years with no Jackal Pup a single preview was all we needed to turn up our noses at the thought of “just a 1/1” on our first turn. Of course Clanger ISN’T just a 1/1. In reality the Clanger is approximately 1.5/1.5 given this build of the deck in which almost half the cards trigger kinship. Truthfully just under half the deck triggers the 1/1, but its potential power/toughness changes with each draw based on the percentage of targets left in the deck after those draws (and after we open on our initial seven). For the sake of argument 1.5/1.5 seems like a reasonable estimation.
There were calls that another “one drop” would be better: Rift Bolt. That card dealt 3 damage on the same turn Clanger could at most be attacking for two. So why not play the burn spell over the creature? Let’s try looking at it slightly abstractly.
Let’s say we sit down to check out the latest spoiler for Eventide and read the following card:
R
Instant
Deal 3 damage to an opponent. Prevent all damage dealt by target attacking creature.
That card is clearly above the power level of what we expect from a one mana Red spell. Yet a Mudbutton Clanger on the first turn that manages two attacks, one hitting on the 50/50 kinship, does exactly that. The same amount of damage as Rift Bolt and Fogging a Tarmogoyf to buy us the time we need to draw our Tarfire for the win. Truthfully the card could read “Deal 3+ damage” as Rift Bolt will never deal 6 damage on its own while Clanger certainly could.
That does put a slight design constraint on the deck as we now have a tribal element to consider, but the rest of the creatures and Tarfire all trigger the Clanger and are great inclusions for the deck itself, including the second “problematic” creature Mudbrawler Cohort.
The Cohort is practically the poster child for mana curves in Red: hit your one drop? Get a free damage on turn 2! The only other two-drop that compares to it from a damage standpoint is Keldon Marauders which is already in the deck. The Cohort maximizes the amount of creatures we have getting in early, gives us an extra creature to attack with from the top of our deck, and plays nice with Clanger. The perfect fit for our curve seeking 8 two drops!
The goal of the Red deck is to play the cards which best do what it so desperately needs to do to be successful: as much damage as early as possible. Each card in the list was selected with that purpose in mind, with that goal having been tested. Clanger and Cohort deserve their spots in this list because they do the most damage.
One area that has been revisited and where the conclusion was wrong that there was a mistake in last week’s list was the inclusion of Countryside Crusher. The Trained Armodon is truly one of the better Red drops the game has seen. Not only is it a hefty 3/3 for three mana, but it has the added benefit of making every draw from whence we play it live, either another burn spell or an additional creature. Furthermore for each land boffed in the meanwhile Crusher gets larger and larger, something it also does with Shard Volley, and it’s a Warrior, meaning it plays nice with our tribe. After years of playing with considerably more subpar three-drops (can I get a Zozu, anybody?) it’s easy to see how one can tunnel vision their way into auto-including it.
The card the forums immediately suggested be included over it was Boggart Ram-Gang. If Crusher suffers from over-excitement regarding its stats, it’s fair to say Boggart Ram-Gang initially suffered from under-excitement. Compare it to the last RRR creature in a Mountains deck in Ball Lightning. For the same investment we get half the power and no trample? It seems better to just turn all our draws into action cards instead…
Still, the reality is we’re building a deck that tries to do as much damage as possible quickly and Ram-Gang deals 6 in the same amount of time it would take Crusher to do 3, barring insane stacks of land on top of the deck. To be completely fair to the Giant Warrior there is probably some element of the equation that dictates damage done with cards drawn over land that would have been drawn normally had we had Ram-Gang in play increases the overall amount Crusher does, but it seems unlikely to push the card over the straight amounts done by the Ram-Gang. Additionally, an opponent playing sorcery speed removal or tapped out while playing instant speed removal is guaranteed a Lightning Bolt from the Ram-Gang, while the Crusher actually just trades for the removal.
So, the moral of this story? Boggart Ram-Gang is now the three drop for the deck, and you heard it from the StarCityGames.com forums first.
Another card players seemed confused about was Keldon Megaliths, many arguing Ghitu Encampment and Mutavault are significantly better for the job. From a contextless point of view that argument seems accurate. Keldon Megaliths does but a single point of damage and then only under certain conditions on top of a mana investment. The creature-lands each do 2 damage for only a mana investment, and in the case of Mutavault an investment that’s less than half that of the Megaliths!
The problem with this argument is that we’re not judging these cards from a contextless point of view. This build of Red Deck Wins does have a context in which cards are being included (function over form, or more accurately function over perceived power) and Megaliths was determined to be the better candidate for the job after testing all three. The reasoning is fairly simple: the deck benefits more from lands which double as burn spells over lands that double as creatures.
RDW already utilizes a significant number of creatures as reusable burn and burn which later soaks up blockers; having enough attackers isn’t the problem What is a problem is the mid game, in which our hand is empty and 2/2s and 1/1s simply don’t cut it anymore. At that point in time we’re relying on the top of our deck to save us, and it’s an easy guess as to which card gets damage through two Wall of Roots and a Tarmogoyf.
There are also other cards in the format that make Megaliths better… things like Magus of the Moat, Magus of the Tabernacle, and Teferi’s Moat. Furthermore the area in which creatures shine from Red Deck Wins, the early turns before an opponent’s “better” creatures have managed to catch up to our more aggressive but “worse” creatures, are the exact turns in which we’re devoting all of our mana to play spells; there isn’t a single bit to spare on attacking with Mutavault because we built the deck with mana curve in mind. That particular 2/2 also hurts our ability to play Flame Javelin later.
The moral of this special land story is an age old Red deck adage. The goal is to deal the most damage as quickly as possible through our opponent’s resources. Keldon Megaliths is the correct card to allow us to do that.
Problems on the Horizon
RDW has certainly seen the cards needed for a resurgence with Shadowmoor, but not everything’s perfect. Persist as a mechanic is inherently strong against beatdown; Spike Feeder is bad, Spike Feeder that blocks twice is all new kinds of problematic (Kitchen Finks). Murderous Redcap isn’t quite as bad because it doesn’t undo the damage that’s already been done, but blocking twice and trading for two threats is problematic as well. Decks like Luis Scot-Vargas’ Mannequin list from last week with Wall of Roots, Finks, Redcap, card draw, and Primal Command are challenging at best and potential deal breakers at worst.
Furthermore, the Elves lists with over-powered and undercosted two drops are challenging, both in their GW and GB forms. The matchups aren’t unwinnable, but they are difficult because the bears they play are considerably larger than the average bear size that we’re used to. It is important to recognize, however, that the decks put forth in this article space are always decks which I stand behind and am willing to play myself. There is a metagame in which a deck like this build of RDW is ripe for (its existence all but spells doom for Faeries), though that might not be the present metagame or the decks you see on the day you’re playing.
As a final note, here’s the deck in its present form:
Creatures (24)
- 4 Mogg Fanatic
- 4 Keldon Marauders
- 4 Mudbutton Clanger
- 4 Boggart Ram-Gang
- 4 Mudbrawler Cohort
- 4 Tattermunge Maniac
Lands (22)
Spells (14)
Sideboarding
There was no sideboard provided last week because presently that board contains close to 40 cards. In the deckbuilding process it is a waste of time to confine ourselves to 15 static sideboard cards in the initial stages of testing. That’s the time in which we should be testing which cards are the best for whatever jobs we’re trying to accomplish. Is Smash to Smithereens or Ancient Grudge a better answer to Dragon’s Claw? How good is Everlasting Torment? Is Magus of the Moon a card to consider? What about Ib Halfheart? Could he be a possible sideboard inclusion against decks like Elves to make all of our creatures able to trade with theirs?
These types of questions must first be answered so we know which cards are final candidates for the sideboard. Then we must consider what decks are prevalent in the format to determine which of those final contenders should be included in the board, and in what quantities. That’s not always something we can do the first week after a set is out; access isn’t available to what the new format looks like or even what the best new decks will be. Continued work on this area will allow us to draw the correct conclusions about the sideboard.
Coming up
As I’m writing this I’m headed to Europe to compete at Grand Prix: Brussels. In doing so I’ll join players who I have become close with over the past few Pro Tours in Belgium and I will reach a slightly bittersweet milestone. Grand Prix: Brussels will be my final major event as a competitor for some time. Beginning in the middle of May I will be taking the sweetest of “bannings” from the DCI, as I join the people in charge of Magic: the Gathering at Wizards of the Coast in Renton for a six month internship. That means stepping away from playing to contribute my skills honed working with a number of coverage outlets and roles within Magic digital magazines (like the one you’re presently reading). While I’m really excited to have the opportunity to work at what is essentially a dream job, a part of me is sad to leave the competitive aspect of Magic behind for a time and to move from my beloved Midwest.
Still, that means next week in this spot you’ll be able to read about some of my antics in Europe with Marijn, Jan, Christoph, Stijn, Fried, Tom, and Stan, see some photos, and of course hear about the first premier level event utilizing the Shadowmoor Limited format. With luck we might even have some RDW sideboard notes…