This deck is designed as a pressure deck, forcing every play your opponents make to be the wrong one by punishing their primary resource base; mana. While this deck can function in multiplayer due to the general dealing damage to everybody, and many of the cards stressing everybody's resources, it tends to get hated on, making this deck far more suited for duel commander/French/1v1.
Avalanche Riders,
Invader Parasite
,
Keldon Firebombers
, and
Ravenous Baboons
are all dudes who attack the mana base directly.
Fanatic of Mogis does a great job of blowing through defenses to hit for a few critical points of damage.
Goblin Guide is a fast beatstick who, when giving them lands, accelerates my win condition as much as it does theirs. (Zo-Zu approved!)
Barbed Shocker, thanks to haste, can ditch that nice hand the combo players carefully sculpted, or force your control opponents to play plenty of their threats earlier than they would normally want.
Kargan Dragonlord
, while mana intensive, is the best (non-goblin) two drop red has.
Flametongue Kavu
and Grim Lavamancer are removal, plain and simple.
Hero of Oxid Ridge
is a great creature for getting through an army of little tiny elves CoughEzuriDecksCough
Obsidian Fireheart
forces a quick clock on your opponent, dealing as much as four damage per turn in an average game. Oh, and he can bring the beats!
Slith Firewalker
is a quick little beater, and he gets bigger.
Urabrask the Hidden makes blocking harder and attacking easier.
Stigma Lasher is good against decks that might try to sneak in some lifegain, and the wither makes it good against the walls that a few decks play, that other creatures may not be able to break through with such ease.
Stoneshaker Shaman
forces your opponent to play much more on their turn, and just trashes control players. (Hint: Good with manabarbs)
Mindsparker
hits for a bit of extra damage against the very common U/W decks.
Zealous Conscripts grabs your opponent's best card, then beats them down with it. What's not to love?
Inferno Titan... Well, it's Inferno Titan. There's a reason it saw play in type two, and that reason is that it's REALLY GOOD. Guaranteed three damage to the dome, or blow up a utility creature or two, maybe a general.
Magus of the Moon is pretty brutal in EDH. Going up against decks like Progenitus, Animar, or Karador, you can wreck them by playing this.
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker is very powerful. Who wouldn't want another Inferno Titan? Or another guy who kills a land when he comes into play! Or ten billion Zealous Conscripts. I hear that ten billion 3/3s with haste is a win condition.
Price of Glory, Impatience all punish people for trying to interact on your turn rather than their own (Hint: Manabarbs loves these!)
Gratuitous Violence pushes the game along a bit faster, forcing your opponents to play quicker to keep up.
Impending Disaster
is... Well, it's a two mana Armageddon. Why it was okay to print, I dunno. But I will use it, and happily.
Sulfuric Vortex hurts. Moves the game faster, punishes people who foolishly attempt to gain life, all that good stuff.
War's Toll
forces opponents to go all or none. That's the way we like it.
Blood Moon is the same as Magus of the Moon, but a little trickier to kill.
Manabarbs
has too many interactions in this deck to count.
Ankh of Mishra is a 2 mana Zo-Zu without the legs.
Basilisk Collar is great on Zo-Zu, and good on... Most of my creatures, really. Especially inferno Titan and Barbed Shocker.
Black Vise... I've heard people like to play durdly control decks in EDH.
Coalition Relic, Darksteel Ingot, and Extraplanar Lens all give me some extra mana without shocking myself.
Lightning Greaves and Swiftfoot Boots all help bring your beats and protect your baddies.
Nevinyrral's Disk and Oblivion Stone are both great failsafes. Just in case your opponent is playing Grand Arbiter and has fifteen enchantments on the board, not worried about it because you are playing red, after all!
Relic of Progenitus is a must in 99% of EDH decks.
Skullclamp is... Well.... Obscene.
Storm Cauldron
is absurd. And annoying. And painful. You wanna tap out to play your general? Well, now you don't have lands. Oh, and if you wanna play those lands, take some damage!
Sword of Fire and Ice. Also known as sword of Shock and Draw, which is exactly what it does. You spend one card... Then draw one, kill one of theirs, deal extra damage, and protect your guy. How did this make it to print?
All the other swords are very very powerful, and are particularly powerful in this deck.
Umezawa's Jitte is one of the most powerful equipments ever printed. It also allows you to survive attacks from Emrakul in the right circumstances, if those circumstances are Grand Prix Strassbourg.
Arc Trail is card advantage. In red. I see no problem here. Take out Azusa and Lotus cobra? If you insist!
From the Ashes
destroys all their nonbasic lands, and then shocks them if they want to replace those lands. Pretty sweet, I think. Because I have few nonbasics, it does very little to hurt me.
Burning Inquiry on turn one is a fun little trick that can destroy your opponent, while doing much less to you.
Flame Slash
does what it says. It hurts something. For one mana.
Molten Rain,
Pillage
, and
Stone Rain
blow up lands, and Pillage can hit artifacts too.
Reforge the Soul and Wheel of Fortune restock my hand pretty well.
Ruination
. Remember that whole "Mono Red" thing? Yeah, it lets you play this with no worries!
Shattering Spree blows up a bunch of rocks.
Chaos Warp is a red EDH staple. Take care of that eldrazi, or a problem enchantment.
Rack and Ruin
Blows up a pair of artifacts quite neatly.
Lightning Bolt, while not usually at home in EDH, does a lot of work in a deck that doesn't care about big guys.
Skred
is great at killing guys that are otherwise out of reach for you.
Magma Jet
burns something then gives you scrying. Both good things.
Price of Progress
: This does about twelve billion damage. I have brought people from fifteen life to nothing pretty regularly with this card.
Koth of the Hammer
is the only red planeswalker that I will acknowledge the existence of. It gives me a dude/mana, MANA, or wins the game. Those are his abilities. I swear.
Scrying Sheets is the only utility land I need normally, but my
Tectonic Edge
is sometimes pretty handy.
Ghost Quarter removes powerful nonbasic lands and shocks my opponents in the process!
31 Snow Covered Mountain.
WHO SHOULD PLAY THIS LIST
This deck is great to play if your group doesn't hate LD (unlikely), if you want to play a deck that is unusual, in that it is an EDH burn deck, or if you want to play something fast and aggressive to beat out control decks in 1v1.
It's not a good deck for you if you don't like hurting yourself (As each player effectively starts at 15), if you think that LD is boring, or if you prefer control decks to make the game fair.
STRENGTHS
This deck punishes control. If your opponent is durdling around, if they are not laying down threats and smacking you in the face with them, they will lose. It is also MUCH quicker than other EDH decks, giving you an advantage of controlling the pace of the game. It allows you to do something unique, and players will not see many of the cards coming.
WEAKNESSES
This deck has slightly negative matches against decks that can ramp heavily without lands, such as Ezuri or Animar. If somebody has heavy artifact or enchantment hate, it can cripple you. This deck runs some risk of running out of steam, though slightly less than most red decks.
