Grenzo, Havoc Raiser I think is their attempt to further test reds ability to cast from exile without the potential fallout it could bring to standard if done incorrectly.

To me, it feels like they are trying to emulate Reds Randomness and unpredictability with grenzo's Ability. You still don't know what you're going to get but by exiling the top of the opponent's Library not only do you get a bonus but you prevent them from getting a card. I would love if this weekend a major mechanic for red

I personally find red to be a boring color by itself. To me it just seems very underwhelming unless it is paired with another color.

I like the temporary card advantage red is getting with Commune with Lava and Abbot of Keral Keep. It has that red aggro feel that is consistent with direct damage, but gives a useful secondary mechanic that the randomness factor failed to do in olden days.

I very much enjoyed reading your investigation! I primarily play EDH/Commander and it's all to obvious how red has yet to solidify over the years.

I can't guess what might fix red...but I know the answer isn't in flip-the-coin and chaos/slug mechanics, as you say. I'd also like to add artifacts to that list. A huge chunk of playable mono red edh decks have to resort to these very few deck archetypes and frankly, its gotten old.

What I DO like, its your observation on "borrowing from the future". I think this can be seen in cards like Commune with Lava , Aurelia, the Warleader, and even Narset, Enlightened Master...borrowing spells and attack phases from "elsewhere" to speed up the game.

Many players I know are constantly looking for the red "spell-slinger deck". Experienced players know this can't be done without blue. But I get excited for the day red spells can "chain" efficiently. If you ask me, Splice-onto-Arcane needs a good re looking at, 'cuz they were onto SOMETHING.

Thanks for taking the time to write up!

So what is your take on "steal your things" effects in red? Do you think we could ever see that effect on Chandra or even on another Walker in the near future? I've actually got a Xenagos, God of Revels deck that generally wins games because of Insurrection and once even from Tibalt, the Fiend-Blooded ulting out (it ramps everybody at once with Mana Flare and Heartbeat of Spring type effects).

Personally, I see these steal effects as the leftovers of those chaos effects you mentioned before. Like, red is the only color that can get away with playing off the predictability of the other colors, because it is the only one that can be unpredictable.

White is about obeying laws and blue thinks too much to act without reason. Black may do some stuff that is insane, but that's more from a lack of morals. Anything for the right price type deal. Green is the only other one that could do something random and completely unpredictable, but again the color stops itself because it is too in awe of life. It has too much self preservation to completely disregard its own natural order of things.

But when it comes down to it red has to be the one to have these chaotic effects because its the only on willing to go the extra mile. The only color willing to cut its nose to spite its own face, or to hit people right where they hurt (I.E. the land destruction/land sacrifice effects). The only one who will try and be so intimidating you'll join them in fear of retribution (i.e. the steal opposing creatures effects)

Nice article. Being a long term player myself it's obvious red is the weakest. Some observations why are:

1. Aggressive 1CC drops are a thing of the past. Historically, that's more than half what red had going for it.

2. All other colors have gotten better with more value attached to them.

3. The burn sucks. Outside of weird cards and big dragons that's what defines red.

Take in mind there are always exceptions to the rule. Overall that about wraps it up, however, from what I've seen. Poor red.

@joemick, I agree. A good example of this is Goblin Bangchuckers, as many cards are incorporated with "Flip a coin" effects.

I'd argue that, historically, red has been one of the strongest mono-color decks in the game, outside of EDH. Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Lava Spike, Rift Bolt, Fireblast, etc. are all very potent spells. Back in the day, we used Wheel of Fortune to refill our hand, albeit our opponent's also, but it generally won us the game by giving us more burn.

Creatures like Goblin Guide and spells like Lightning Bolt have been deemed too potent to print in any sort of Standard sets, which is an unfortunate problem for red. Interesting enough is that the older printings of Chandra have been rather sub-par and the newer ones seem to show some promise in potency and effectiveness. That aside, it does seem that red has been given the short end of the stick from an R&D standpoint.

Going forward, I would like to see more ramp effects from red, as WoTC is leaning towards creatures matter and printing (generally) better creatures and 'worse' spells (comparatively speaking). If red isn't going to ever get another Goblin Guide or Lightning Bolt, then give us a Ritual to get out a Thundermaw Hellkite for crying out loud!

Hey berryjon. Great article, interesting read. I guess if you look at 'competitive' Modern you see red decks in their purest form with Burn. There the mechanics are seldom changing but you're simply swapping out parts for more efficient options as new sets come out (e.g. Eidolon of the Great Revel).

If you take EDH, trying to brew a mono deck takes you down the road of the older chaos mechanics. Here I've paired a full set of 'wheel' effects with group hug artifact draw, but Insurrection and Chandra's Ignition aside you have to go colourless for real finishers:

Shoot that Adamaro through my deck

Commander / EDH Draw_Wurm

SCORE: 52 | 38 COMMENTS | 3959 VIEWS | IN 21 FOLDERS

I don't think that card designs ever made effective use of coin flips. Most cards approached the idea with an "all-or-nothing" mentality that made using those cards a resource risk, since you could end up wasting a card+draw+mana for no effect. As far as strategy, deck planning, and resource management goes there is no way a card like that has any reason to be played beyond as a janky gimmick.

I think that when they colour shifted Psionic Blast to Char, Wizards was on to something. Red aims for quick answers to the problems right in front of it and doesn't really plan for the long term. Red is willing to throw out a powerful attack at the risk of backlash if it means taking its target out, like with Earthquake. Coin flip cards should guarantee a playable, maybe even powerful effect at the cost of a potential downside determined by the coin flip. It would make sure the cards are playable, but still offer some randomness to how the game would play out. Coin flip spells, to be playable, shouldn't come with the risk of doing nothing for you.

Unfortunately, any sort of "I loose life in exchange for a powerful spell" type approach infringes on the flavour that Black has traditionally held. Granted, Black has seemed to shift a bit away from the whole "Suicide Black" methodology to a slower, more attrition based style. Maybe there is room now for Red to pick up some of that flavour like it did for the spell based mana acceleration?

Where Red had the most depth for exploration as a philosophy is in its emphasis on gut driven action and emotions, but from the start Red was given all the aggressive emotions while the more calm ones were given to White and Green. Red was supposed to be the fast aggressor, but White and Green have, in more recent years, been given a boon of very cost efficient cheap creatures. Direct damage burn spells have been the only real form of aggressiveness in the game that has been left to Red.

There are mechanics that I think are very Red in nature; like Prowess, Dash, Unleash, and Spell Mastery; that reward being aggressive with your resources. Prowess gives you a temporary boost in power for using spells that will only give you an effect once. Dash gives you a creature for cheap but it won't stick around to defend you and will cost you more mana over the game to keep using. Unleash is similar, since it lets you be more aggressive at the cost of defence. And Spell Mastery rewards you for using spells that don't have repeatable board interaction like a permanent would, thus feeding into Red's lesser concern for building into the late game in exchange for a powerful early game.

In the end though, everything I've talked about are just different ways for Red to do what it has always done. You are right, Red's slice of the colour pie doesn't give it room for much diversity in its game mechanics.

Thank you very much for the article, it provides a lot of food for thought.

great article. I am a new(er) player and have nevery really played with the choas effects and can undestand why. Another part of reds identity is earth and mountain and hence some land destuction.

Stensia Innkeeper is the new attempt at a possible red ability for standard. I agree Goad in conspiracy was an attempt at how mono red works in standard. Impulse drawing is also very topically red (and obviously being exstensively tested)Spark of Creativity

Talking about land destruction as one of red's main aspects: there hasn't been any good LD spell since Boom/Bust and there's absolutely no other useful mass removal for lands in Modern (which sucks very much).

If you go further back, Sinkhole outruns Boom/Bust for targeted LD and Armageddon is a much better mass removal...so, red isn't even the best choice for land destruction but rather . Even blue has better land denial stuff with Mana Vortex and Land Equilibrium.

I think they didn't do red a favour by dropping the chaos parts. What could have been done is to add cards that can increase the chance of getting the result you want from these chaos cards, more things like Krark's Thumb for example. Or just make the positive effects of random stuff more powerful so that the game of chance is actually worth the risk...if you think about what character a typical red player would have, taking huge risks for a straightforward strategy is surely one of the first things that comes to my mind but is something that has currently no representations on red spells AT ALL.

@ Winterblast

You have a point about land destruction, but you also have to remember that cards like Sinkhole and Armageddon were printed before each color's boundaries in the color pie were were really ironed out.

It's true that in the early days of the game the most prominent decks that destroyed lands were Balance decks, and today you see Sinkhole played alongside Smallpox in Legacy. But there was a point were the standard cost of a red land destruction spell was 3 mana instead of the the average 4 mana that gets printed today. 2 red decks from semi-recent history that made heavy use of red land destruction were the UR Wildfire decks in Kamigawa standard and the red Arc-Slogger decks that saw some play during the original Mirrodin standard, so it's not like red has never seen any tournament representation in regards to land destruction

I think it was the Wildfire deck that resulted in land destruction spells being shifted from 3 mana to 4. It is also probably at least partially responsible for modern Boomerang type spells no longer being able to target lands. The deck basically played by stalling the opponent's mana base with Boomerang, Eye of Nowhere, and Stone Rain while ramping with Annex. It would then blast what lands and creatures the opponent had left with Wildfire and win with big flying creatures. After that deck had its run through standard you start to see WotC shift away from cheap ways to interact with the opponent's lands, since those types of spells were counter-productive to the more interactive games that WotC wanted to foster.

So Red did have its day as the prominent provider of land destruction, but that aspect of the colour was eventually neutered by the rising mana cost of those spells making them inefficient in the current tournament environment. The result: one more aspect of Red's flavor being nearly stripped away from it, leaving it to fall back on its old stand-by of burning people's faces.

This topic has reminded me that my EDH group has been pretty Blue heavy the past little while. Maybe my red decks should run Boil for a bit.

SaberTech I've realised that red doesn't really support that strategy anymore when I was thinking about what to play in modern. I played some sort of RW Stax in Extended about 8 or 9 years ago and then it was fast enough. Now without Chrome Mox it's pretty much impossible to base a control strategy on land denial in these colours because it's all too slow and expensive.

As I'm always looking for ways to play like that (damn you Wizards for encouraging more interactive play!), I happen to play mostly Commander instead. I've tried mardu colours and it worked quite ok, because the older red cards are powerful enough, also non-destructive land denial such as Manabarbs is available in red...but eventually I came back to with my Augustin's $t4ks (4000$ Solution/Stax), even without Balance being available, because in these colours you have the nastiest stuff for attacking the mana base imo.

Red is quite boring if you don't have access to older cards in the format you choose. Aggro or maybe as a supply for combo...nothing fancy. I do like the new Grenzo, Havoc Raiser though and I've made a goblin commander deck with him. Permanently stealing resources from your opponents is something that is new in red (if you ignore random stuff like Thieves' Auction) and you don't even have to waste spells on that because it happens by attacking.

@ Winterblast

I was excited when I saw Grenzo, Havoc Raiser spoiled and made sure to pick up a copy when the set went on sale. I wanted to use him in a Gahiji, Honored One political deck that I was trying to build, but that plan fell through in the end.

I really enjoy Goad as a multiplayer mechanic in Red, and I'm hoping that the new Commander 2016 deck that focuses on Chaos brings more of that sort of effect to the table.

And yeah, the Taxing and mana denial game in UW is strong in Commander. I have a Stasis/Winter Orb mana lock Derevi, Empyrial Tactician deck. I also used to run an Uril, the Miststalker deck that had a strong land destruction sub-theme, which worked out pretty well.

Thank you all for your comments.

I haven't replied before now as I wasn't certain how to go about it. In essence, this is a fairly negative article, and I didn't want to keep blasting.

That, and I totally forgot to set a watch to be alerted to any responses, and didn't bother checking manually until today. Totally not that.

As I mention with tomorrow's article, I'm not comfortable using this space to fix problems, but rather by highlighting them and their context, other people can step back and try to figure things out for themselves. I dread the day I'm asked to fix something with Magic, because I know I won't play nice about it.

And not word regarding Jaya Ballard, Task Mage? For shame! ;)

@ berryjon

Jaya Ballard, Task Mage is awesome, don't get me wrong, and I love how flavourful the card is. Considering that they eventually printed Karn and Nicol-Bolas (both being pre-time spiral planeswalkers) it is disappointing that Jaya as a character was changed into Chandra for story purposes. The lore and stories of the MtG universe was really rich to begin with, so I was disappointed when they initially tried to sweep that all under the rug to make a new reality for planeswalker cards to exist. I mean, the whole point of Nicol-Bolas now is that he's scheming for a way to return himself to the near godlike existence that planeswalkers used to be before the nature of the planeswalker spark was changed, so why did they try to shove the old lore and character aside in the first place? I'm curious about what the other old planeswalkers got up to after the shift.

Then again, from a story perspective, it would probably mess up the representation of the colour pie if the smartypants blue mage Jace was constantly being shown up by the significantly wiser and more experienced red mage Jaya. Although personally, the idea of an old granny Jaya playing Yoda for a blue mage like Jace makes me chuckle. Jace needs someone to smack him upside the head every now and again; and as her card shows, Jaya knows how to handle blue mages.

SaberTech

On another forum, I have made my dislike of Jace perfectly clear. My Mono-blue 'Walker of choice is Teferi. He can play off Liliana for being from Dominaria and griping about all the kids in his yard, and has actual character.

And Teferi playing caretaker for a bunch of younger planeswalkers is kind of funny in its own right, considering what he was like when he was young.

Hey, who better to teach kids not to screw things up than somebody who knows the consequences first hand right?

Goblin Kaboomist is one of my favourite cards.

I have one signed by Aaron Forsythe.

You can offset it's randomness by pairing it with Stormrider Rig.