Anything But: Seeing Red

Have you ever wondered about the idea of beating an idiom into the ground? How many articles have you come across that used the term “seeing red” as a title? As a writer little things like this cause me to sit in front of my computer, staring at the screen, and debating whether or not I’m diving into a cliche. In a similar, and Magic-related, line of thought there are a number of deck-types that become cliche over time. Rogue decks manage to wax and wane in phases, disappearing for awhile and returning when someone gets the urge to pick up an old favorite or when a new set results in the creation of the deck’s missing link. This week we’re going to look at one of two Pauper rogues that managed to solidify their lists, but first I want to talk about what is to come from our now-changed Competitive Corner…

The Competitive Corner
As I’m sure you’re all aware of by this point, Wizards decided to change their policy with regard to the information given to players from Daily Events. Previously all winners from Daily Events were posted on the Magic website until recently, when this was changed so that only one event per format per day would be listed. Because this section of my articles was built entirely upon that information, this news became a significant blow to me and the Pauper community. As a result I was unsure what direction this section of my articles would go and turned to the community, who helped make this series what it is from the beginning, to see what they thought. While I was inclined possibly to remove this section and at the very least stop posting inaccurate data, it would seem that the community doesn’t believe this is the right solution. A comment posted by hiveking did a great job of explaining the conclusion that I too have come to…

“In the world that existed before where they posted the 3-1 and 4-0 records of each daily we still didn’t have complete information about what the metagame was like and which decks would do well. It could conceivably be the case that 10% of the decks in a tournament was, say, Affinity, but none of them made it into the money bracket. On the other hand, there could also be an overrepresentation of another deck in the money bracket compared to how many copies of that deck entered the tournament. Really all you could say for sure was that information that was already at hand which is ‘which decks made it into the money bracket’ and not much else.”

While I did spend a lot of time tracking data it was a well-known fact that the data were taken entirely from only the winning decks and couldn’t be used to gain a real understanding of what non-winning decks you might find. With the full listing of Daily Events I was still able to put together a pretty nice picture of what decks had the best chance of ending up “in the money” as well as showcasing any new decks that may have made an appearance, but ultimately it still wasn’t a 100% accurate look. I’ve continued to talk about how the Competitive Corner was something made for the people and altered by the people so now it’s time to show that I’m dedicated to keeping up with the wishes of the readers. You asked for it, and I’m going to grant that wish: the Competitive Corner will stay (although with altered content).

In the previous version of the Competitive Corner there were a lot of different charts used to illustrate which deck might give you the best chance to win and what current trends would be. Most of these will be eliminated in the proposed new format. While I am willing to keep updated information on how the decks are breaking down, I don’t want to keep piling on charts and graphs relating back to data that are inaccurate. This generic breakdown will echo the previous beginning pie charts of old, which showed deck breakdowns, however it will not be eliminating rogues from that list as I once did. The information will again be running on a two-week basis and track from Wednesday to Wednesday.

In addition to this breakdown, I will also be doing a Daily Event spot light where I will take a look at a Daily Event that was not reported by Wizards and discuss the decks in it, the results, and how some of the matches went. Because of the time investment this will take, I’ll only be featuring one Daily Event per article, but will do my best to see if I can’t still provide some decent information and discussion on it. Finally, there will be a deck spotlight for any deck that would fall under the rogue/homebrew title and caught my eye. Future pieces that you may see added could include things like match commentaries, interviews, and so on. The first new Competitive Corner will be next week (due to a bit of a time crunch around the holiday), but between now and then, feel free to leave feedback on the idea. Again, this section was made for the community and will continue to be shaped that way in order to provide the most informative competitive report possible.

So how DOES red deck win??
Let us consider for a minute two well-known rogue decks in Pauper. The first is MonoBlue Control (MUC), which uses countermagic to control an opponent and whose numbers have declined dramatically since the printing of Delver of Secrets. The second would be Red Deck Wins (RDW), which uses direct damage spells in order to quickly finish off an opponent. Both of these decks have shown up randomly in Daily Events from time to time and actually managed to win. The one thing that was almost always true about these decks was that they each worked upon a small core of cards, but each list was mostly reflective of the player running it. At least this was the case until about a month or so ago when both deck-types seem to have settled down upon a list that they find more fitting and more consistent. This week we’re going to take a look at the list that RDW has settled onto and examine how it works as well as what changes could be possible while still maintaining its consistency.

There have been very few deck-types that have lasted as competitive options since the creation of Magic. Decks such as Goblins or Elves have managed to stick around not only because of their appeal to players of all skill levels, but because Wizards has continued to provide high-quality content when it comes to creatures and spells that support the core concepts. In this same way, RDW has managed to stand the test of time thanks to functional reprints as well as new approaches to direct damage. Take, for example, Incinerate, which has not only been printed five times since it was first introduced to us in Ice Age, but also has three cards of similar function. Fire Ambush and Volcanic Hammer are the slower, sorcery-speed cousins of Incinerate and then M13 brought us a near-direct copy in Searing Spear. Having Searing Spear means that you can now run up to eight copies, bypassing the “maximum 4″ rule. The one thing that Wizards is often focused on is how the cards in each set will work in Limited play and you’re likely to find at least one direct damage spell per set, which in turn gives RDW a lot of options.

When it comes to Pauper we get pretty lucky because, once again, there is a Limited focus on printing these cards, so a large number of them are released as common. There are at least 15 different direct damage spells in Pauper, which leaves players a large pool to choose from when building a burn deck. This is what led to discontinuity amongst RDW players, as each had their own brew. Somewhere, a month or two ago, one version of the deck was picked up by a number of players who managed to pilot the deck to a 3-1 or 4-0 record within Daily Events. Here’s a look at what that deck looked like…

Let us ignore the sideboard for a bit and concentrate on the rest of the deck. As you may already expect, the deck uses very few creatures in favor of more room for direct damage spells. The creatures the deck does bring in include Keldon Marauders, which is used for its cheap cost and direct damage alongside Kiln Fiend, who can get big fast thanks to all of the non-creature spells. Other creature options have been built in a similar manor, providing players with either fast or direct damage (see Arc Runner/Goblin Arsonist). Essentially the creature itself needs to act as a burn spell because the longer the deck plays, the worse off it is as a mere body.

If there is one weakness to a RDW strategy, it usually comes as a mirror to its biggest strength; speed. If we take a look at some basic math, we can assume that the most efficient burn spells (as far as mana cost vs. damage done) will be hitting for 3 damage and only cost us 1 mana. In order to beat an opponent, you simply need to use seven spells (20 divided by 3 = 7 when rounded up). Then take into consideration that the fact that the biggest casting cost of these spells will probably fall at the 2-mark, which means you can win with seven spells and two Mountains for a total of only 9 cards. At its fastest, an ideal draw for RDW will result in a win on turn 3. While this can be a turn slower than other competitive decks such as Infect and Storm, you can’t overlook the power of a deck that has that kind of potential. With the right draw, this deck can pull that early win off with decent consistency, and there are very few competitive decks out there right now that can handle this type of strategy at that type of speed. The key here is how often you will get that right draw.

Whenever I find myself playing against a RDW type of strategy, I know that if I can gain a bit of life early, then I stand a good chance of stabilizing and taking the win. In a similar manner to most aggro weenie decks, RDW can suffer from card advantage issues. If the RDW player ends up hitting a mana flood, has to mulligan down too far, or runs into a bit of life gain they can find themselves in what I like to call top-deck mode. When I say that, I mean that you’ve dumped your entire hand and are now at the point where you have no more control over the game. All you can do at that point is cross your fingers and hope that you can draw into what you need before your opponent stabilizes and finishes you off. Now the argument can be made, as I said above, that because there is not a lot of life gain available in competitive Pauper, you aren’t in such bad shape if you find yourself in this top-deck mode. What you need to consider beyond that is simply the speed of Pauper. Those who may not be frequent players of the format at a competitive level may not be aware of just how fast decks in Pauper can be. Even the heavy control decks such as DelverBlue have a decent aggro base to them, which can allow for relatively fast wins off of perhaps a flipped Delver of Secrets and army of faeries.

Playing the deck can often be a little more complicated than it may seem at first. While the first, and most of the time correct, instinct may be to throw everything and anything in your opponent’s face, you may find yourself in one of those top-deck situations where you need to then decide between your opponent or a creature as your spell’s target. There will be times where you have to decide whether killing off a creature will allow you enough time in order to draw into more burn spells so you can take the game.

So let’s take a look at this deck once again and see how often I can get it to work at its ideal speed…

Now there are quite a few things on my mind after playing through this deck that I wanted to take a look at. The first thing is the creature base. While I understand why the choices were made, my first thought was whether or not there was a better option that had been given to us with Return to Ravnica. The Rakdos cards from that set brought in a lot of fast creatures that used the new unleash ability, which allows them to trade the ability to block in order to grow a little bit bigger.

Of the five common creatures that we got in Return to Ravnica with the unleash ability, only these two would be playable in RDW. Now as much as I personally love Splatter Thug, it really has no place in this type of deck because of the fact that it falls into that 3-casting-cost slot. The deck looks to capitalize on fast, direct spells usually around that 1-mana-cost slot. If you look back at our quick discussion over the fastest way this deck would win, you’d be slowed down considerably by a 3cc creature, which wouldn’t be able to even attempt to do damage until Turn 4, when it loses summoning sickness. A creature like this should have a place in Classic Pauper, but this isn’t the deck.

Looking at Gore-House Chainwalker is a little more complicated. If any creature was going to be replaced in this deck, it would be the Keldon Marauders as opposed to the Kiln Fiend. At its best, Keldon Marauders will do five damage to your opponent (2 damage from the entering/leaving triggers and then 3 for an unblocked attack). If you were to play Gore-House Chainwalker and unleashed it then it would also be allowed to attack for 3 as early as turn 3, but it would stick around to hopefully do another 3 on the following turn. Once the Keldon Marauders has had that chance to do 5 damage to an opponent, it is dead and gone. After much debate, the conclusion I came to over the addition of Gore-House Chainwalker was based upon the fact that Pauper is very creature-friendly. In other words, the odds are pretty good that you’ll be playing across the board from an opponent’s creature so damage may not even go through, not to mention that its low toughness would make it an easy target. In this case, the Keldon Marauders would still be able to do 2 damage, but a Gore-House Chainwalker may never get through to do damage and won’t be able to block a few early swings from an opponent either.

The last creature I considered for this slot was Rakdos Shred-Freak. One of the appeals of other creatures such as Spark Elemental is that it has haste, so it can deal the required damage early, most likely before an opponent has had a chance to play a creature to block, thereby turning the creature into a burn spell. One of the big differences between a Rakdos Shred-Freak and Spark Elemental is the trample ability. Because of trample, the elemental has a chance to do damage to an opponent even if they manage to get an early creature wall going or if you draw into the elemental in later turns. If we also go back to the idea of an ideal win coming at Turn 3, then the use of any creature other than the Kiln Fiend will increase the number of turns it takes to win. So what it came down to was a direct comparison of the size of Rakdos Shred-Freak and Keldon Marauders, which the Marauders clearly wins.

So if the creature base wasn’t going to change, where was I going to go with this? Well, I actually wanted to focus more on the one thing I feel the deck really struggles with… drawing cards. We talked earlier about how the deck can drop its hand quickly and then find itself in top-deck mode, waiting to find the one spell it needs to finish off an opponent. Sure the deck does run a set of Forgotten Caves, but is that enough?

In the last few sets, we were given almost an odd amount of red draw spells. These three spells represent some of the most playable red draw we’ve ever seen in Pauper. These can also be combined with the madness mechanic of Firey Temper in order to give us yet another 1-cost, 3-damage spell while helping to make the discard drawback that all red draw have into a favorable thing. So I decided to take things to the extreme and give some draw a go within a RDW deck core.

Now obviously this is taking the concept of drawing cards in RDW to the extreme. This deck is using a total of 20 spells which have the potential to draw cards. I always feel that in order to determine the impact of something, you need to first go to the absolute extreme and then determine how successful it was, which cards were successful, and then you can make changes from there. This deck brings in some of the older draw like Needle Drop as well as Flame Jet over Incinerate. The first thing you may notice about this deck is that it does indeed slow the deck down considerably; however, it still has the potential for that Turn 3 win. The odds of it happening have decreased, but the potential is still there. While I won’t attempt to do the math on this, it is pretty obvious to see that the deck has now decreased the number of direct damage spells you’d draw by eight and replaced them with draw spells. We’ve also gone as far as to bring in Brimstone Volley, which has a higher casting cost than any of the spells in the competitive list. While this spell is a bit slower I fell it has great potential in a RDW strategy thanks to the fact that Keldon Marauders kills itself, and frankly I’m a little surprised that it doesn’t currently have a place on that list.

Check out the video below to see how things went…

I think what this deck did well was to point out some of the fatal errors that were made in some of my assumptions about RDW. The first assumption was that any draw spell would be a great way to increase the ability of RDW to avoid top-deck mode and find the spells it needs to finish the game no matter what. Perhaps my biggest error was a misread on Needle Drop. If you watch the video and my brief discussion on the deck, you might be able to pick up on what that was. There was a significant failure on my part to acknowledge the line of text on Needle Drop that says “that was dealt damage this turn.” This single line of text drops this card down a notch. If this line of text wasn’t part of the card, then you’d be able to use this spell as an effective means of controlling some powerful creatures in say the DelverBlue matchup. However, this drawback makes it so instead of being able to kill off an unflipped Delver of Secrets or Phantasmal Bear, you instead would have to use two spells to be able to play Needle Drop and even then you’d kill the creature on the first Lightning Bolt, leaving no target for the Needle Drop. While I think this spell can have a place within RDW, it will not be used as a full set.

In addition to learning this, we also were able to get a look at which of the newer draw spells worked out best. Faithless Looting has proven itself time and again as a competitive staple in the right Pauper deck; however, this is not that deck. Because this card works out to be trading two useless cards for two cards with (hopefully) a higher value, the trade is even and it is only an implied card advantage. With Dangerous Wager and Wild Guess, you’re able to create a much more literal card advantage by simply refilling your hand when played correctly. If you must compare the two of these remaining challengers, you will have to side with Wild Guess. Both cards have the ability to, again, trade away a lesser card in favor of drawing two new cards, but when you compare the two, you’ll note that Wild Guess leaves you with fewer awkward situations. A handful of Wild Guess would provide you at least two opportunities to draw two cards (playing the #1 discarding #2 leaving a minimum play of #3 discarding #4) while a handful of Dangerous Wagers would only give you a single opportunity to draw two cards (casting the first Dangerous Wager results in you having to discard the other three in hand).

The remaining error when taking the draw concept to an extreme is obviously going to come in the form of Flame Jet. While the basic concept for the card’s addition was simple, “well who cares if it only targets players, that’s my win condition anyway, isn’t it?” this is very flawed. Without the “target creature” portion of Incinerate, the deck loses what little control it did have. Playing RDW means that you’re often confronted with the choice between hitting an opponent or hitting a creature, but when you remove the option to hit a creature, then you’re putting yourself at a serious disadvantage.

The next assumption I made was that the use of draw spells would have minimal effects on the decks overall tempo. While both decks do rely on the same core of single-costed, 3-damage spells, they are both very different in speed. When switching the use of Rift Bolt for Fiery Temper, you are decreasing the frequency in which you get that fourth single-costed, 3-damage spell. With Rift Bolt, the only stipulation that comes with this card is that you have to wait a turn before the damage hits. In most cases with Fiery Temper you’re going to be waiting until a time where you have drawn into a self-forced discard spell to be able to play it for the single mana cost. What it ultimately comes down to is that more often than not you’re going to be playing Fiery Temper for its full 3-mana cost as opposed to the cheaper madness cost.

The ultimate conclusion that we can obtain from going to the extreme with drawing cards is that there needs to be an emphasis on cheap, high-damage spells in order to maintain the ideal tempo. This would mean bringing back in cards such as Rift Bolt and Fireblast as well as using draw spells at a minimum while trying to maximize their efficiency. Here’s what I came up with…

So what makes this deck tick? As with the other two versions we kept the core 1-cost, 3-damage spells in Lava Spike, Chain Lightning, and Lightning Bolt. After that I wanted to use other options for expanding this portfolio. One card that I had considered was Shard Volley. However, because both this and Fireblast would require the sacrificing of lands, you may end up slowing yourself down and putting a win out of range when trying to make an early play with the Shard Volley. What allows Fireblast to get away with sacrificing two Mountains is the fact that 9 times out of 10 you’ll be using it as a finisher. This means that we were going to resort to spells like Rift Bolt and Fiery Temper instead. Now using the last deck we made clear that the only way to ensure that Fiery Temper will be played for the madness cost is to use it alongside discard spells, which worked great since we wanted the draw off of Wild Guess anyway.

When it comes to draw, we took some lessons from the earlier experiment by reducing the number of Needle Drops as well as focusing our draw into only Wild Guess. Even the use of Wild Guess is reduced to a three-count in order to try and keep the deck on tempo.

The rest of the card choices are pretty self explanatory. I kept the count of Fireblast to a maximum of three in order to compensate for the fact that having one Fireblast in hand is great, but having two in hand is usually terrible. You’ll usually be able to find two Mountains that can be thrown away in favor of a Fireblast, but to use two you’ll need four Mountains that you can live without. We also used a reduced number of Searing Blazes in order to compensate for the few matches you’ll come across that are creature-light. We also kept a few copies of Brimestone Volley in the deck. While the damage without morbid is low in comparison to the cost of the spell, if you manage to use one after a creature dies, it becomes worthwhile. Even if you’re unable to find a creature to kill, there is still that chance that you’ll be able to throw one out after your own Keldon Marauders dies.

So the deck seems to be taking the best pieces of each and putting them together, but does is it as good in practice as it looks on paper? Well, you’ll just have to click the video below to find out…

So what were the lessons we learned about RDW?

1. Tempo is everything.
Every game that is played with RDW is going to be a race to see whether or not you can do lethal damage before your opponent gets a creature base that is stable enough to beat you down first. The constant debate between the use of burn spells to kill creatures or damage an opponent is going to work out best based upon a player’s basic addition/subtraction skills and knowledge of an opposing player’s decklist.

2. 3 should always cost 1.
Beyond the restrictions of Pauper, Lightning Bolt has continued to see play at the competitive level. You cannot overlook the damage-to-cost ratio of this spell and we’re blessed to have something so powerful at common. The core behind any RDW list is going to be a large collection of as many 3-for-1 spells as you can muster.

3. There is such a thing as too much draw.
Do I need to say any more? If you don’t understand why then please scroll back up and take a look at what happens when we overload the deck with draw spells. While it is a great thing to be able to add cards back to your hand after dumping a number of spells, you need enough damage spells to be able to win the game before you opponent gets himself together.

I don’t think I can emphasize enough that one of the biggest appeals to this deck, in any form, is the speed with which it plays. Win or lose, these games are always played fast. The deck actually manages to pull out a surprising amount of consistency, and with strong sideboard options such as Electrickery, the deck can get an edge over some of the worst matchups like Storm.

Well, that is it from me this week! As always feel free to leave your questions and comments below. Next time around we’ll be taking a look at our first Competitive Corner post-information removal and more!

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