This is a normal Red Control Deck, however our main way of getting damage is with Dash Creatures. Our game plan is pretty standard for a control deck. Kill everything that moves. However, it is best to save our removal for creature removal, because our player removal would prefer for the board to be clear. Let's get to that creature removal.
Lightning Bolt is the best red spell in pauper, and a staple overall. It is the most consistent in our deck, being a solid 3 damage for 1 mana, which can take down the majority of important creatures you'll see.
Flame Slash can have a slightly farther reach, with the only downside being sorcery speed.
Firebolt is a great 2 for 1, and considering we are playing mono-red, we need to squeeze all the value we can get out of our deck.
Martyr of Ashes is a great sweeper, with a 3 to 4 bomber able to clear entire board states. Overall, Martyr is a great on-board threat that only gets better with time.
Magma Jet is another value removal spell, with it's scry being actually very relevant.
Staggershock is both parts of Firebolt, for half the mana. the only bad part is sometimes the rebound is awkward, and we have to send the leftover damage upstairs. Overall, a great spell.
Swirling Sandstorm is often a boardsweeper, and all for 4 mana. Most decks just can't endure 5 damage to all of their guys without a lot of casualties.
Fissure is reserved for creatures out of our league, such as big reanimator targets like Ulamog's Crusher
The reason why our dash creatures work is because it avoids our board damage and sorcery speed removal, such as Journey to Nowhere and Chainer's Edict, while still being reliable damage every turn.
Mardu Scout is a repeatable Searing Spear and has the best dmg:mana ratio out of our dashers. Only one or two of these guys can bring a world of hurt.
Goblin Heelcutter is more flexible because we dont necessarily need a empty board for chip damage. Combining this with Mardu Scout can truly be punishing.
Sprinting Warbrute is chunky, smacking in with 5 power and it's toughness, as shown in the art, can eat an opposing Lightning Bolt. For sure a great beater in the late-game.
The oddities:
Curse of the Pierced Heart is great for grindier matches were we have to slow things down.
Faithless Looting is nice filtering that can make sure we are drawing straight gas.
Pristine Talisman can help pay for spells like Swirling Sandstorm and Firebolt's Flashback while gaining us life, something we could really use in grindier matches.
Landbase:
Quicksand a one-shot piece of removal on a land IS a free piece of removal, nevertheless.
Desert is a little hit or miss, with the creature having to hit you before you hit it, however I think that having a free deterrent on a land, even how bad it might be, is pretty free.
Forgotten Cave is again, technically a value land since it lets us waste less draw steps on land.
Mountain because Mountain
The Sideboard:
See, a funny little piece of text that they put on older cards is "Creature/s without flying" or "Non-flying creature/s" which invalidates quite a chunk of our deck against flyer decks for almost no reason. Fiery Cannonade, while worse than our other wipers, actually hits flyers. And no, i am not running Thunderbolt out of spite.
Flame Jab is a weird sideboard card but is sweet against X/1 decks like faeries or goblins. Also, in sigh; grindier matches, it can hold the line no-handedly (depending if you think fire is animate or not).
2 more Curse of the Pierced Heart is for... Grindier matches.
Molten Rain is a decent silver bullet for either tron or to snipe a enchanted land. (is also pretty naughty against Bouncelands)
Gorilla Shaman is almost mandatory at this point, either to smash low cmc artifacts, or to smash artifact lands.
Deck struggles against bogles. Big time. Not much we can do about it, seeing as how red gets no enchantment removal.
I have actually had this deck idea for a while, but couldn't implement it into a red control shell successfully. Hopefully this is a good deck, i don't know. I just wanted to fit the dash creatures into a deck because it is a cool ability that hasn't seen much/any play.
