Magic the Gathering

Constructed

Off the Beaten Path — 20 20 20 Vision

By Sam Feeley ⋅ February 8, 2010 ⋅ Post a comment ⋅

We have known for a long time that the Red Deck Wins. How it gets there has changed dras­ti­cally over time. From the ear­li­est days of Sligh with Brass Man, Orcish Librar­ian, and Fire­ball to today’s ver­sions with hasty guys and the recently resus­ci­tated Light­ning Bolt, it doesn’t mat­ter if mono-red is tak­ing home the blue enve­lope. All that mat­ters is it has been a force to be reck­oned with for as long as the game has been around. Nowa­days, when look­ing for a home run and not just a string of sin­gles, mono-red has incor­po­rated Shrap­nel Blast and arti­fact lands. But John Was­son left the Great Fur­naces at home on his way to first place at a PTQ a cou­ple of weeks ago in Toronto with this:

I love it. No more tin­ker­ing with “Should I cut X of this?” or “Should I splash/add X of that?” No need to hold a Shrap­nel Blast in hand with no arti­facts. This list is as sim­ple as it gets – Twenty spells, twenty crea­tures, and twenty lands; and four of every­thing that isn’t a Moun­tain. Other burn decks try to make room for a Shard Vol­ley here or an Incin­er­ate there. There’s noth­ing wrong with those cards, but the extra util­ity one gets out of Magma Jet (dig) and Flames of the Blood Hand (negat­ing Banes­layer Angel, Mar­tyr of Sands, Kitchen Finks, etc.) push them ahead of the pseudo-Bolts.

I gold­fished this list and found that a turn three kill is not nec­es­sar­ily an elu­sive strain, but still hard to come by. Nonethe­less a more likely out­come was turn four or five, and that’s with­out count­ing things like fetch­lands, duals, and Thought­seize.

One small prob­lem I have with this deck is Cry­oclasm in the side­board. It’s cute, but I would much rather run Molten Rain. Cry­oclasm does noth­ing about Dark Depths, Urborg, Tomb of Yawg­moth, man­lands, and Hyper­ge­n­e­sis’s entire mana base, just to name a few things.

And now the ques­tion every deck asks itself: what can World­wake bring to the table? It nar­rows down to maybe only two cards with even a remote pos­si­bil­ity: Sear­ing Blaze and Chain Reac­tion. Sear­ing Blaze could war­rant the inclu­sion of fetch­lands for the full effect more often. Chain Reac­tion would be a great tool against Thopter and the mis­cel­la­neous aggro decks in the for­mat. But the more I think about it, the more I real­ize this deck needs to go to your opponent’s face far more often than your opponent’s crea­tures. And since Sear­ing Blaze requires a sin­gle tar­get crea­ture, while Chain Reac­tion is as close to a direct reprint of Wrath of God as red will get, my first ver­sion will only bring in Chain Reac­tion from the new set.

Back to the point about fetch­lands: With as lit­tle dig­ging as there is in this kind of deck (four copies of Magma Jet will not get the job done), you want to have a small a chance as pos­si­ble of draw­ing, of all things, a moun­tain when the game’s on the line. Any­where between four and eight fetches could work, as long as there’s some way to weed out the late game duds.

Here’s my ver­sion post–World­wake.

I really wanted to fit Dragon’s Claw in here too, but it’s one of those cards that has to be a three– or four-of in the side­board. On top of that, Dark Depths is becom­ing even more preva­lent in the for­mat, while other (mostly) red decks are hard to come by. There’s too much in Zoo that won’t trig­ger the Claw to war­rant board­ing it in for that matchup. So, alas, it stays home for now.

I’ll give this a shot at the PTQ at TJ Col­lectibles in Mil­ford, Mass­a­chu­setts on the 20th. I won’t be hard to find — I’ll be don­ning the Man­a­Na­tion col­ors and being my usual eclec­tic self. Hope to see you there.

One last announce­ment: Fan­tasy Realms, the WPN loca­tion in Pitts­field, Mass­a­chu­setts, has started Fri­day Night Magic in a “joint pro­duc­tion” with Team Sports­cards Plus in Adams, Mass­a­chu­setts. The two stores will alter­nate host­ing FNM each week, start­ing at the Realms on Feb­ru­ary 5th. Check the mothership’s tour­na­ment loca­tor for more details.

Until next time, go ahead and play with fire.

–Sam

Sam Fee­ley is a Timmy-Spike and PTQ semi-regular orig­i­nally from Con­cord, Mass­a­chu­setts. He enjoys Magic, sports, cook­ing, and writ­ing. He maintains two blogs, Samurai Entertainment on news, games, and nonsense; and Samurai Sports, about interior decorating. And by interior decorating he means sports.

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