This Hand of Mine is Burning Red

Modern Aggro Burn Mono-Red Red Deck Wins Weenie

ElPared

Creature (18)

• 2x Bedlam Reveler
• 2x Eidolon of the Great Revel
• 4x Goblin Guide
• 4x Monastery Swiftspear
• 3x Reinforced Ronin
• 3x Young Pyromancer

Land (18)

• 2x Castle Embereth
• 2x Den of the Bugbear
• 12x Mountain
• 2x Sokenzan, Crucible of Defiance

Sorcery (10)

• 4x Light Up the Stage
• 3x Rift Bolt
• 3x Skewer the Critics

Instant (14)

• 4x Incinerate
• 4x Lightning Bolt
• 4x Magma Jet
• 2x Stoke the Flames

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Sideboard

Instant (8)

• 3x Skullcrack
• 3x Smash to Smithereens
• 2x Volcanic Fallout

Creature (2)

• 2x Magus of the Moon

Sorcery (3)

• 3x Molten Rain

Enchantment (2)

• 2x Leyline of Punishment

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Maybeboard

Creature (7)

• 1x Ash Zealot
• 1x Chandra's Incinerator
• 1x Firedrinker Satyr
• 1x Goblin Guide
• 1x Goblin Wardriver
• 1x Grim Lavamancer
• 1x Signal Pest

Instant (2)

• 1x Magma Spray
• 1x Risk Factor

Enchantment (1)

• 1x The Flame of Keld

Land (1)

• 1x Wooded Foothills

Sorcery (1)

• 1x Skewer the Critics

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"This Hand of Mine is BURNING RED

Its loud roar tells me to grasp victory!"

Red Deck Wins

Ok, so I couldn't resist another G-Gundam Reference for my (fifth I think?) renaming of this deck.

Anyways, this is a RDW deck. I tend to make RDW creature heavy rather than burn heavy. It only runs 18 lands thanks to fetches and all my spells costing 2 or less. So far I've been land flooded more often than land screwed, but I definitely won't be going lower than 16.

So that's about it. I love to hear comments and card suggestions, and +1s are always great! Go ahead and skip to the bottom if you want, all I do after this is explain some my...

Card Choices

Many of my choices, like Goblin Guide I don't feel I need to explain. Everyone knows why they're in there. As for the others, here goes:

Maindeck

• Young Pyromancer: This little kid might cost 1 more than a 2/1 creature should, but I get a lot of value out of my burn spells when it's out. Free chump blockers (blocking in RDW? Blasphemous!) can be pretty strong in a deck that alpha strikes most turns, and if they get to be extra attackers, even better. Squeezing value out of your cards is important to RDW and sometimes it results in odd card choices like this one. Plus using the elemental tokens to convoke Stoke the Flames is really nice

• Ash Zealot: Haste, 2/2, First Strike, what's not to like? She's a deceptively great card. Free Lightning Bolts against Snapcaster Mage, Retrace, Gravecrawler, and so on and so forth is icing on the cake.

• Rift Bolt: Even though you have wait a turn for it to fire off, it's got pretty nice synergy with Young Pyromancer, Bedlam Reveler, and Monastery Swiftspear, so I run 4 even though it's sorcery speed. It can also be good for mindgames since people know its coming and may hold back their creatures a turn just so they don't get bolted.

• Incinerate: Instant speed, 3 damage, kills annoying regenerators. It's a classic for a reason.

• Castle Embereth: It's pretty cool considering all the token creation there is in this deck. Den of the Bugbear, Young Pyromancer, and Sokenzan all create tokens, so being able to buff them all, especially when I'm hellbent, can seal the deal where I might otherwise lose momentum.

sideboard

• Psychogenic Probe: Tech against fetches and Pod (since I don't have the fetches myself this is doubly nice lol).

• Smash to Smithereens: Deals 3 damage and helps against artifact heavy decks. I'm screwed against annoying enchantments but don't really think running a Stomping Ground for Destructive Revelry is worth it especially since, again, I don't actually have the fetchlands to tutor up a Stomping ground either.

• Magus of the Moon: Blood Moon isn't a creature. I could run it instead, but I'd rather have a Blood Moon that can attack even if that means it might die. I'd only play this guy to seal the deal on a win against something like Tron anyways, so he only needs to live 1 or 2 turns to serve his purpose.

Tested it, won't add it

There are a few cards that I know will get suggested, but I've tested and they simply don't work as well as the options that are already in the deck.

• Dragon's Rage Channeler: Yes, she's good, great even, but she's simply too slow for this deck. This deck also wants to be attacking with its one drops, and DRC wants to stay alive long enough to Hulk out. Plus it's very hard to get 4 card types in my graveyard in this deck since most of my burn spells are Instants. It might be different if I had Seal of Fire and Mishra's Bauble or something to dump a couple of cards in the 'yard for free/cheap, but then I'd basically be building the deck around her in which case I might as well build another deck instead of forcing this one to work with one card.

• Grim Lavamancer: Another good to great card that is simply too slow for this deck. I want my 1 drops to do damage and, while Lavamancer does that, he mostly just sits around the whole game until I'm hellbent. I've found him to actually be, in this deck at least, a "win more" card in the sense that when he works, I'm already going to win anyway. So far his spot is better served by something like Bedlam Reveler who can just draw me more burn spells and has a bigger body I can attack with. I think if the deck were more burn heavy, and less creature based, he would work a lot better, though.

• Lava Spike: Again, a great card, but I want my burn spells to be able to remove things that are in my creatures' way, and Lava Spike doesn't do that.

• Wooded Foothills: Yes, they, and other Mountain fetching lands, would be amazing in the deck. I respect deck thinning and the ability to do things like sideboard Destructive Revelry and Stomping Ground, or even just having them to enable Searing Blaze at instant speed. I respect these strats a LOT, but here's the problem: I'm not gonna drop $200+ on fetches when I could simply run $0.10 Mountains in their place. Yes, it would make the deck more consistent. Yes, it would allow me to do some cool sideboard antics and cute combat tricks. But as a mostly casual player, I don't see myself droping the cash on those lands unless I decide to start getting serious about competitive play (although if I did do that, this would probably be the deck to try it with, though I think Cosmic Crypt Blitz would have a shot as well, assuming Faithless Looting ever got un-banned).

Considering Adding

There are some cards I'm wavering on as I haven't been able to test them much, but seem like they'd be great fits in this deck:

• Eidolon of the Great Revel vs Ash Zealot: I really like both of these cards. On the one hand we have a 2/2 Haste First Strike that punishes a lot of graveyard strategies (Snapcaster Mage, Gravecrawler and a few other cards come to mind as possible bonuses to playing her). Haste is great, but first strike also means you need a 2/3 to kill her by blocking, or their own 2/2 first strike, which means she's often just getting through for 2 damage; that's great value for 2 mana. On the other hand we have the eidolon, which doesn't have haste or first strike, but punishes people for casting cheap spells, which is also great value for 2 mana. The problem there is that includes me, and I only have 7 cards in the deck that don't trigger it, but the advantage of it is if you're playing it turn 2, most players will end up being forced to trigger it at least once or twice because they'll need to do something about the pressure you're putting on them with your other creatures. I've been testing both and I quite like them, so I'm a bit torn. The only real solution I can come up with is to use both and axe Young Pyromancer, but I'll have to test it quite a bit to see which works best.

• Risk Factor: Much like I always did with Browbeat (and let's be real Risk Factor is the strictly better version), I'm wavering on this card. On the one hand, it seems like I'd want both of its effects, but on the other hand I hate putting my actions in the hands of my opponents. 4 damage for 3 is great, though, and the odds of me drawing more than 5 damage worth of cards from it are pretty good, plus I can cast it twice! (although I'd be punished by any Ash Zealots I have in play) However I just feel like other options are better, like Light Up the Stage. Speaking of...

• The Flame of Keld: This card is super cool; I love that it refreshes my hand a bit, and then it makes literally everything in the deck do more damage for a turn before it goes away, but I also feel it's a bit slow? I haven't had a ton of time to test it, but I do feel that Bedlam Reveler is overall a better choice as it does the I and II effect when you play it, even though it doesn't have the cool Pyromancer's Swath effect, it can attack.

Date added	10 years
Last updated	6 months
Legality	This deck is Modern legal.
Rarity (main - side)	14 - 7 Rares 30 - 5 Uncommons 4 - 3 Commons
Cards	60
Avg. CMC	2.26
Tokens	Elemental 1/1 R, Goblin 1/1 R, Spirit 1/1 C
Folders	new, RDW browses