We all love a big game of multiplayer commander, but sometimes theres just no time for it. A four player game can last one, two, even three hours depending on the decks everyone is playing. And even if we want things to go fast, we dont want them to go TOO fast. One shot kills are usually non-interactive and boring.
To solve this, I introduce you to Party Time Red, featuring Heartless Hidetsugu! Chock full of mini-game cards, burn spells, and absolutely NO damage doubling effects, Party Time Red provides inevitability to the game and quite a lot of tension! Everyone feels safe at 40 life, but not so much at 20! With Party Time Red in play, I can almost guarantee a game of 30 minutes or less, even with up to 6 players!
Heartless Hidetsugu is a powerful commander in his own right. The ability to cut everyones life total in half changes the whole dynamic of the game. A deck could be made with cards like Furnace of Rath to instantly kill your opponents, but that seems significantly less interesting to me. In this deck he brings the table low, allowing more traditional burn abilities to finish the job.
Party Games
While were speeding things up though, we still want to get that element of zany interaction into our games a full commander experience, even if it is in half the time. Thus we have a suite of silly red mini-game cards to bring that to the forefront. While some of these can be to the decks detriment (namely Warp World), the joys of warping the game state are too good to pass up.
Of the list, Id have to say my personal favorite is Kaboom! And yes, the exclamation point is required. Tons of potentially game ending damage all in one totally random package.
Ramp (Party Starters)
We need to pull off some big effects in a short span of time, so lots of ramp is required! The faster we can get to the silly stuff the better. Shout out particularly to Journeyer's Kite. We dont run a lot of lands in here and the kite makes sure we always have a grip full of them!
Koth of the Hammer is excellent ramp, but can win games on his own if the other players let you get his ultimate off. Allowing every mountain to tap for damage can lock down the board or just knock players out of the game.
Haste
Lets be honest. Heartless does most of the work here. No one is going to let Heartless stay in play for more than a turn if they can help it. Thats why we need some haste effects! Make sure that the big boss can do his job at least once. Even if you dont get to summon him again for whatever reason, if they have less than 20 life theyre in range for some burnination. Expedite at the end of your last opponent's turn for one extra round of surprise burning!
Disco Inferno (Burn Baby Burn)
Speaking of burn, whats a red deck without some direct damage? Well this deck is chock full of ways to burn your opponents faces off and manage their boards. Winning the game is often a matter of simply doing the math with the spells you have in hand to see who you can kill. Ive slain plenty of foes with just a humble Lightning Bolt or a well-placed Blaze.
VIPs
With all this mana that were generating, we can probably drop some big threats, right? Thats where this lot comes in. While we usually prefer to win with burn, sometimes all it takes is a hasty Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre smashing into the red zone. Or a Bloodfire Colossus to bring the game to an instant draw!
Play it again DJ
Copying spells is always fun, especially if its one of our minigames! Goblin Game twice? Sure why not? Banefire for 10 twice? Well, now were just winning games here. I'm particularly keen on Reverberate, as it's extremely cheap and an easy way to leach off of your opponents' more efficient ramp and card draw.
Strategy
Party Time Red is effectively a fast red control deck. We want things to get crazy, but not TOO crazy. No need to have the cops show up to the party. Start the game off with some ramp. Get Heartless Hidetsugu into play with haste as fast as you can. If he gets to stay past the first activation, thats icing on the cake, but youve already cut life totals down from Commander levels to regular Magic levels. Comboing Heartless with options like Act of Treason and a copying spell can quickly bring the game to sudden death levels of life.
Control the board with burn spells like Chain Reaction and Blasphemous Act while you do the math to find your way to victory. Play out any party games that you come across as the result is usually lower life totals across the board. You may not always win the mini-games, but theres no denying that we had fun and did it all fast!
