Magic the Gathering

Casual

Ben’s Smash into the Red Zone

By Ben Mcdole ⋅ November 17, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment ⋅

I’ve been a mem­ber of many teams in my life. I’m part of a fac­ulty, I’ve been a stu­dent, played var­i­ous high school ath­let­ics, and been on aca­d­e­mic teams. I’m also mar­ried which is a two per­son team. In our EDH league I’m also a part of a team, team ‘Lives in the Red Zone.’ Our team was founded by Shel­don Men­ery (level 5 super judge), and includes myself, Bren­nan DeCan­dio and Todd “Jaz­zhands” Palmer.

The tenets by which our team gov­erns itself are sim­ple and pure, ‘live in the red zone.’ If you have the oppor­tu­nity to attack some­one, you should. Bren­nan lives in the red zone with con­trol decks, Shel­don usu­ally casts Liv­ing Death and then crushes dreams and Todd favors let­ting his tokens shimmy their way through the red zone. I favor a dif­fer­ent approach to the red zone, I like to let Prog­en­i­tus thun­der his way over (some­times accom­pa­nied by other play­ers crea­tures, thanks Bribery!)

That being said, I feel like I’m not quite liv­ing in the red zone as much as I could be, and this week we aim to change all that. I want to build the most bat­tle themed deck I can! I want this whole deck to live in the red zone and just gen­er­ally be angry! If a crea­ture looks like it’s ready to bat­tle then it’s got a home in this deck. On a side note, when­ever I declare attack­ers I tend to say “bat­tle.” Give it a try once or twice and you’ll see that it’s pretty fun and really fits what you’re doing.

We need to start with the appro­pri­ate gen­eral. Right away I’m think­ing we need a five color crea­ture. Though the zone is red we don’t want to color dis­crim­i­nate! While I could just cheat and make Prog­en­i­tus my gen­eral I think I want some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent. Accord­ing to my research there are exactly two leg­endary crea­tures with five col­ors and haste. The first one is Horde of Notions. While the Horde is a splashy beater there are prob­a­bly a few peo­ple who are going to use him in their ele­men­tal decks and I don’t want to snipe him for no reason.

With Horde of Notions out of the way we fall to Karona, False God. Karona is meant for the red zone! Not only does Karona have haste, she spreads the love of the red zone around to every­one. Karona makes every­one want to live in the red zone, which is what our team is really all about. It’s worth not­ing that Karona’s cur­rent crea­ture type is avatar, so if you want Karona to get the bonus for attack­ing that’s what you need to name.

Now that we’ve found the right gen­eral, we need a suit­able group of cards to charge into bat­tle. I want to start with the most fun haste crea­ture. Madrush Cyclops is an obvi­ous choice. Madrush has art­work that reminds me of how all haste crea­tures should be: If you’re going to run all the way to the fight, make sure you’re good and angry when you get there!

Though we want this deck to be crea­ture based there are some cards that will help us dom­i­nate the red zone that we just can’t ignore. Fires of Yav­i­maya was dom­i­nat­ing the red zone before EDH was the cool for­mat to play! Sarkhan Vol also acts as a pseudo-fires while pump­ing the team to more volatile pro­por­tions, or just steal­ing some­one to join in the raid!

We want to be slam­ming crea­tures into play and turn­ing them side­ways and I want to fill up the deck with every card I can find that helps get us to that end. Before I dis­cuss any­more card choices let’s throw the deck out there for every­one to discuss.

As you can see every­thing in the deck either turns crea­tures side­ways, steals your oppo­nents crea­tures to turn them side­ways, or just res­onates anger. This deck wants to live in the red zone and doesn’t care what gets in the way!

There are a few cards miss­ing from the deck that I really would like to add but sim­ply don’t own. I think Through the Breach would be a fun addi­tion, instant speed block­ers (espe­cially ones with per­sist) can be really fun. Addi­tion­ally, Nat­ural Order would be a great fun, if I could get my hands on one. I also feel like Prog­en­i­tus has a place in this deck, if only because if he resolves the game pretty much ends.

And now a few quick rules items. Oran-Rief puts coun­ters on all green crea­tures that have come into play that turn, mean­ing if you’re not care­ful some of their crea­tures will get coun­ters too. Also, pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive coun­ters are removed as a state-based action, mean­ing that Wood­fall Primus is pretty awe­some with Oran-Rief!

For next week’s arti­cle I’m work­ing on a saucy lit­tle EDH num­ber inspired by WotC’s great April Fools joke from last year, Duel Decks: Pirates vs. Nin­jas! I will hope­fully be show­cas­ing the Pirates ver­sion (since we all know that Pirates rule!)

Until next time I look for­ward to hear­ing from you all, this is Ben McDole giv­ing you a hun­dred rea­sons to play Magic!

My name is Benjamin McDole and I’m a level 2 judge from Tampa, Florida. When I’m not teaching math at a local college or spending time with my wife I’m usually playing EDH at Armada Games or running some events. My long term goal is to make sure everyone enjoys Magic and especially EDH as much as I do. I’m a member of a few organizations, Team Lives in the Red Zone and the American Association for the Advancement of Pie (I’m the only member!)

Useful Author Links Read more by this Writer! Subscribe to this Writer's RSS Feed

Last 4 posts Rainbow Stairwell - Yawgmoth's Storm Rainbow Stairwell - I'll Take Mine Monocolored Please Rainbow Stairwell Explored EDH Deck Layer 1/Layer 2