This is a basic primer for Mono-Red Prowess. I have played this deck on and off for over three years and it's a deck I can always come back to. The deck is fairly cheap and somewhat customizable, depending on the meta. This is my current list, as well as some suggestions for other cards you could play.
The main focus of the deck is to play either Monastery Swiftspear, Soul-Scar Mage, or Dragon's Rage Channeler on turn 1, then aggressively cast cheap and free spells such as Mishra's Bauble, Lightning Bolt and Lava Dart to gain tempo and start decreasing your opponent's life total. Mulligan any hand that doesn't have a 1-mana creature.
The most prominent card in most builds that isn't in my build is Mutagenic Growth. I don't feel like this is entirely necessary, since it can be a dead draw in long games and is only marginally helpful against removal. I currently run Gut Shot in its place, since I feel Gut Shot does more for actually winning the game.
Bedlam Reveler is a budget-friendly option that can be swapped in over Seasoned Pyromancer. Bedlam Reveler does make you more susceptible to graveyard interaction, so be wary of that. The tokens from Seasoned Pyromancer
are solid for matchups in which having an extra body or two can matter. You will very rarely get to make tokens from the graveyard with it.
Only running 17 lands as opposed to the 19-20 that is commonplace among decks like this might seem like a bad idea, but in general you only need about 3-4 lands at most to win, and you can sometimes do well with only 2. As long as you have basic Mountains and not just Sunbaked Canyon for red mana, you will be fine. Sunbaked Canyon is there to draw extra cards and fuel Dragon's Rage Channeler's delirium.
This deck plays a lot like burn, but it's much more reliant on the creatures to win. Your burn spells can only do so much, and there aren't a lot of them like in burn. It also struggles against some of the life gain in the format, such as Omnath, Locus of Creation or Solitude, and you need to be ready for those. Roiling Vortex helps a bit, but it isn't a saving grace by itself. Be ready to be sided against as if you were a burn player, since that's arguably the best approach to take.
A lot of the cards in the sideboard are customizable to what you think is comfortable and/or good, so play around with it however you like. You absolutely have to have Blood Moon, Orvar, the All-Form, Tormod's Crypt and Unholy Heat for the majority of relevant decks in the format, but the rest is open to interpretation.
Playing with prowess is definitely a meta call, but it can take people by surprise if they aren't expecting it.
