The Apprentice Workshop - Episode 2

The Apprentice's Workshop

KrazyCaley

30 July 2010

1602 views

Welcome back to the Apprentice Workshop.

Today we'll be working on Red Speedy by bruntonspall, at his request. The description says

"This deck is supposed to bring out some hasty creatures turns 1 and 2, pump them slightly for turns 3 - 5 and then burn to the face for a turn 6 or 7 win. It does this if you are lucky. Hints for making it better would be accepted."

Let's take a look at what he's got.

Original Decklist

Instant (10)

4x Lightning Bolt

2x Punishing Fire

1x Seismic Shudder

2x Seismic Strike

1x Staggershock

Creature (8)

4x Raging Goblin

4x Skitter of Lizards

Enchantment (10)

4x Claws of Valakut

4x Crusher Zendikon

2x Zektar Shrine Expedition

Sorcery (8)

2x Fireball

4x Lava Axe

2x Spire Barrage

Land (24)

24x Mountain

Discussion!

All right, we've got a pretty good base here. The land quantity is about right here, so let's take a look at the most important part of any good RDW deck, the instants and sorceries. We'll come back to land TYPE later.

The instants include Lightning Bolt, Punishing Fire, Seismic Shudder, Seismic Strike, and Staggershock.

First of all, let's leave alone the 4x Lightning Bolt. No changes necessary to the game's best burn spell.

There is only ONE copy of Staggershock, which is unfortunate, given that it's 4 damage for one card and 3 mana, which makes it exceptional, especially since it can hit a creature one turn, a player the next, etc. Let's try to make some more space for it if possible.

The Seismic cards are here apparently to perform the function of creature control. Seismic Shudder I don't like because it is likely to kill our Raging Goblin and whatever else we might come up with that has 1 toughness. Seismic Strike I just don't like in general because it's too expensive and doesn't DO enough; at its very BEST it will kill something for three mana, and it has a big downside- it's often useless because the creature is too big for the mountains you have out. Plus we can't cast it to the face if we want to. Even Incinerate would be a better choice if it were presently in Standard.

So let's scratch those Seismic cards. That leaves us with three slots, which, conveniently, mean that we can add three Staggershock, a great card which sets you back a quarter per copy.

We've also got Punishing Fire, which is generally kind of meh given that life-gain isn't super common, and given that if you're up against life-gain as RDW, you're probably dead in the water anyway. I'll scratch it for now and see if we can find something to do with these two open slots later.

Sorcery-wise, we've got Fireball, Lava Axe, and Spire Barrage. These are all late-game cards for RDW, and we have, perhaps, a bit too many of them. They are expensive and will often be sitting in our hands! Really we only need a few, maybe six or so at most, rather than the eight that we already have. Lava Axe and Spire Barrage are not great. I'm not sure why there's 4x Lava Axe and 2x Spire Barrage when Spire Barrage is basically better- it can do MORE than five damage for the same cost, and can also target creatures. Still, I'm not a huge fan of either card, so let's scrap it.

You know what I like instead? Fireball. Great versatility, competitive in the late game, it's a fantastic card. And you know what a BETTER version of Fireball is? Comet Storm. So I'm adding in 4x that and leaving the 2x Fireballs, because hey, you're not living if you're not casting crazy re-targeting X spells in some mad, mad, mad version of a Standard RDW build. Plus it's a cheap, two-dollar rare, so hey.

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Next, let's move on to creatures. Now, most RDW decks in standard nowadays prefer to run the one-shot or two-shot creatures like Hellspark Elemental, Hell's Thunder, and Ball Lightning. But bruntonspall wants tiny, fast creatures, then to pump them up somehow through the early mid-game, then to finish with a big sorcery. So instead of the tired old Hellspark Elemental formula, let's find some craziness.

Raging Goblin is already in there, and it does pretty well for itself, so let's keep it. Skitter of Lizards is also in there, but 90% of the time it's going to be Raging Goblin. We might consider adding some Goblin Guide if we can find the space for it. Guide is a bit pricy, $3-$4 per copy, but well-worth it in this deck. Plus, hopefully its drawback will be meaningless. If we can't find the room for it, then I'll just recommend scrapping the Raging Goblins and replacing them with Goblin Guides.

We might also consider adding a Tim card for fun and profit, most likely Cunning Sparkmage. We'll have to find the room somewhere though.

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The other spells are all enchantments. Zektar Shrine Expedition is good, let's leave that alone for now. Crusher Zendikon I'm not a huge fan of because we need our lands in this deck for tappin', not for swingin'. Instead, why not something that pumps the creatures in the mid-game like our builder wants? Something like Bull Rush, only better. Maybe Firebreathing, or one of the enchantments or instants that gives +x/+0 and first strike, like Lightning Talons or Slaughter Cry. These all leave us open to two-for-one death if the opponent has a removal card, but there's no getting around that anyway. Personally, I like Firebreathing best because it's so modular, so I'll go with that, but Slaughter Cry, etc. are also good choices, especially since they function as quasi-removal.

Claws of Valakut is decent, but I'm starting to worry that we don't have enough creatures, so I'm going to cut it so we have space for Cunning Sparkmage or some such. Claws of Valakut and our other boosters won't work well anyway if we only have 8 creatures; we need to kick it up to 12 at least. So I'm cutting Claws and adding Cunning Sparkmage in their place.

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Let's briefly look at the land. 24 is about right, but could we add in some beneficial nonbasics? Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle probably isn't a good idea in this deck, plus it's a little costly. However, we might consider a few copies of Teetering Peaks or Smoldering Spires, which are cheap and don't need tons of land out to work. We don't want to go overboard with these because we need our lands to come into play untapped most times, so let's do two of each of these just for fun.

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Finally, we have two slots still left for instants. We don't have a lot of dedicated creature control, so let's fix that with a couple copies of something that will help us burn away blockers in the midgame. What's the best card for doing that in this deck? I think it's Searing Blaze, which most of the time is basically Lightning Bolt to a creature, Lightning Bolt to the face for the low cost of one card. With only two copies, we'll hopefully rarely run into it when we have no lands to trigger landfall.

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Now we're done! Let's see how the deck looks now.

KrazyCaley-Recommended Decklist

Creatures (12)

4x Raging Goblin or Goblin Guide, depending on budget.

4x Skitter of Lizards

4x Cunning Sparkmage

Instants (10)

4x Lightning Bolt

4x Staggershock

2x Searing Blaze

Enchantments (6)

4x Firebreathing

2x Zektar Shrine Expedition

Sorcery (6)

4x Comet Storm

2x Fireball

Land (24)

20x Mountain

2x Teetering Peaks

2x Smoldering Spires

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And there we are! Better? Tell me what you think below!