Anything But: Seeing Red

Posted on November 29, 2012 by JustSin

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  1. Just after reading this article I hopped onto MTGO and played a few two-mans. Went two / one after three matches and I gotta say I love the changes, it still could use some tweaking but I was really impressed with it. Something to think about maybe the two mana four damage to all players. Thanks for doing this and keep doing it regardless of wizards postings.

  2. Minor correction: Incinerate was first printed in Ice Age. It was reprinted in Fifth Edition.

  5. @ Robert: glad it worked out for ya!

    @ neckbeard: you’re right! my mistake… not sure why I thought 5th happened before Ice Age, but seems I was way off and IA was 2 years before oops!

    @ Joshua: yes definitely, however the list I used off the front was the last RDW list to show up in a DE, which was pre-RtR

    @ early: while it is to each their own, I personally think (as discussed above) that Wild Guess was a better answer because it allowed for better card advantage.. if you have no hand and top into guess then you need only wait for one extra card to throw away to it and draw, however if you top into looting then you need two more in hand

  6. Interesting series, but it would be much better if you would tighten up your technical play.

    Instants do not have to be cast at sorcery speed and often it is better not to. Shooting of Lightning bolt mainphase against an opponent with discard about 6 times gets really annoying.

    If you are going to cycle in a turn, better do it before you cast any spells or play any lands.

    Goblin that sacrifice other goblins are not good against non creature decks, no matter how often you say they are. They are just 1/1′s appart from the last turn and interactions with goblin warmarshall.

    I really like the deck evolution and experimentation part and the quality of your commentary suggests that you are capable better technical play, which would make the series go from a B- to an solid A, in my opinion.

  7. Good stuff JustSin –

    I’ve made no secret that I ABSOLUTELY LOVE wizards not showing decklists! I know i’m in the minority on this topic, but as a deckbuilder first – there’s nothing worse than all your hard work/tinkering being copy/pasted in seconds by the masses. I think the best solution overall, would be for wizards to have an “Opt Out” form, similar to an “Unsubscribe List” with email. That way, it may say:

    Blahblah 4-0 (decklist), Soandso 4-0 (decklist) deluxeicoff (Blocked) It would even add a bit of mystery to the show! ;)

    RE: RDW – this deck is very meta-dependant. With so many glimmerposts about and lifegain now becoming a respectable strategy, I personally wouldn’t run it.

    However, my list is even faster and holds the 1mana = 3 damage rule closer to its heart:

    20 matching mountains
    4 x Ch.light, fireblast, flamerift, incinerate, lavaspike, l.bolt, rift.bolt, searing spear, shard volley, spark elemental

    Sideboard: 3 molten rain, 4 raze, 4 searing blaze, 4 smash to smithereens.

    No dead cards vs. storm (see Searing blaze vs. control/storm)

    Additionally, I don’t think, at the present time anyways, you can compare Muc to RDW…the ability to say “NO” trumps the spotty speed of RDW 9 times out of 10. Mix in lifegain, and there’s simply no reason to risk it…unless your feeling nostalgic for Ben Ruben in 96′ ;)

  9. @ Comments: thanks for the response and compliments, I’m the first to admit that I’m not a perfect player, but I try my best and continue to play and read to improve my game :) what I found with this deck re: your comment vs. discard was that when I was playing burn I got in this mindset where I wanted to dump spells fast in a race to the finish and did definitely avoid waiting, w/ re: to sledders the point I was trying to make is that they are hard to deal with because you can’t target down something with a sacrifice ability, same with the feeder in another game… where it can cause issue is if you’re hitting a draw that includes fiends because you won’t be able to get that big swing through

    @deluxe: yes I know which side you stand on and we can agree to disagree lol I’m not going to continue to hard on it no matter how wrong I think it is because I don’t see them changing their mind on it…. you know I spent a lot of time debating the use of shard volley, but the conclussion I came to was that when I had multiple fireblasts in hand I was unhappy because I usually didn’t have lands to throw away to BOTH so I figured shard volley would complicate that more

    MUC and RDW are two VERY different decks… the only comparison I was making there was that both had lists that were kind of patch work in that everyone would bring their own and multiple ways worked, there was no one answer… then around the same time they both found a list that became popular with the RDW version above and the MUC being the recent Upost list and that both are generic deck-types that we’ve had for years :)

  10. Good to see Mono Red Burn being explored in an article (I don’t think many writers have really looked into the deck).

    A buddy of mine, Special_Kyle, suggested playing Grapeshot in this kind of a deck to get around counterspells (I think the idea is to sandbag some burn against blue decks, and then dump a number of them in one turn with a Grapeshot to finish them off). Have you considered playing that, and if so, what are your thoughts?

  11. that’s quite an interesting idea… I can see it having some applications, but could take a bit of practice to get the timing right