As a fun way to challenge myself, I decided to create a mono-colored deck. In this case, as I really like red as a color, I tried to create a mono-red decklist. But the question really is, what direction do you want to go in? And most importantly was: What did I like to do the most?
Color Choice
Now, mono-red isn't the strongest color in EDH/Commander, with a lack of ramping and some issues in the area of card draw. Don't get me wrong, red can draw cards, but mostly at the cost of discarding cards. However, I find red to be the most amusing color to play in Magic: The Gathering, so I wanted to do something that's really red. And what red does best, is destroying stuff. And with that said...
Say hello to Diaochan, Artful Beauty.
Diaochan in a nutshell/deck idea
Now, Diaochan is one of those commanders that make most players (except for people who know the card/happen to have played during this Portals: Three Kingdoms era) look at the card, as they don't know what this card does. And I can't blame them, as this isn't really the most well known commander in the format (I can see why). However, the funny thing is: she actually has a very fun EDH ability. Tapping her to destroy a creature is kind of strong on its own. Things do get fun in the second part of her ability: target opponent may choose a creature to destroy. Here's where she shines, Diaochan is one of those commanders that creates political interactions around the table: Who's the threat? Who do you want to deal with? Big heads up: Diaochan CAN be the target of her own ability, and that's something we don't want to happen, neither to the creatures on our side of the board. And with this in mind, the process of building this deck started.
Focus of the deck
The focus of this deck lies in creating a political game that puts other players against eachother, while you, as the pilot of this deck, are assembling a good board presence. In order to make full use of Diaochan's ability, you need to make sure your own little critters stick around. And for that, protection from red and Shroud are needed in order to survive. It has to be Shroud specifically, as it prevents the shrouded creature from being targeted by any targeted spell or ability, regardless the source. That said, it can still be boardwiped of course, you can't prevent everything. That's where artifacts come into play, such as the Swords, General's Kabuto, Whispersilk Cloak, Cloak and Dagger and Lightning Greaves.
Since there are a bunch of artifacts already included in the deck, and as red happens to have a good synergy with artifacts, the artifact plan is also a viable strategy. Feldon of the Third Path and Goblin Welder do an excellent job in recursion and keeping up the pressure on the enemies, while you are just creating a stable board.
Recursion
Part of the deck is focussed on recursion, as Feldon of the Third Path can bring every creature back from the dead, using a pretty neat ability that costs 2R. Recurring a Wurmcoil Engine and having it sacrificed at the end of the turn is blissfully funny, as it's going to be replaced by two permanent tokens (that is, if they aren't destroyed). Even more funny: repeating this the next turn. More value can be found in recurring Flametongue Kavu, Dualcaster Mage, Godo, Bandit Warlord, Hoarding Dragon and so on. Most of the creatures in the deck do something on ETB, so choose according to the situation. With that said, this is pretty much one of the go-to synergies in red decks, so nothing special going on here. Moving on!
Goblin Welder is one of those other great creatures (one of the best red critters in EDH, in my opinion). If it so happens to be that the opponents remove key artifacts from your protection/shroud package, get them back pronto. Dumpster something you don't need at that moment and get something cool and shiny back. Kudo's if you outvalue your opponents in response to removal or damage. Be classy people, teach the opponent not to mess with your stuff.
Take Control
A good political leader knows when it's time to take control. Don't like your board against the others? Short on creatures, facing a lethal attack? Or, perhaps you just need to teach an opponent to back off. At least, that's what I like to do.
Taking control over a creature is one of those things red just likes to do. You could destroy them with Diaochan's activated ability, but oftentimes she won't be around for all the fun. Taking control over creatures to swing some nasty damage of use them as chumpblockers is really fun. What's more fun: slinging them at the owners with Goblin Bombardement, creating some saltiness as a result. There's a couple of fun interactions with Zealous Conscripts here as well, taking creatures and swinging with said creatures. It's about sending messages, politics.
What about card advantage?
Now, card advantage isn't red's strongest aspect. However, that doesn't mean that red is useless in that area at all. There's a few fun cards that can be used in order to create some sort of advantage by exiling the cards and using them when deemed as a good play. For that, Oracle's Vault, Chandra, Torch of Defiance and Chandra, Pyromaster are here to join the party. Sometimes, the effect of exiling the cards simply gets rid of cards that aren't fit for the situation, but mostly you'll just want that extra card to play during your turn. A fun interaction exists between Braid of Fire and Oracle's Vault, as you can just dump the mana in the Vault at upkeep and flip over the top of the deck without losing mana. There's also Smuggler's Copter, which is just looting.
Now, people will come over here and be all like: Wait, almost no wheel effects? While I do agree that wheel effects are pretty good in EDH in general, the point of excluding it in these decks is threefold:
1) Lack of ownership of the cards
2) Drawing 7 vs 21 possible answers (which is something that you can't always control/counterplay)
3) Local meta actually really likes graveyard shenennigans, there's a Meren deck and a Sharuum graveyard deck. I would only be losing value there.
You could include said wheel effects: if so, I'd defenitely remove something like Warp World and perhaps something like Smuggler's Copter.
Controlling during the game
Red actually can use a little bit of control here and there. Notables are Reverberate, Wild Ricochet (not in the list), Scour from Existence, Dualcaster Mage and the excluded Red Elemental Blast and Pyroblast. Some other classic 'Nick Fang' cards (chaos cards) do these things as well, but they have been left out for now. An original list used them, but seemed to cute. You could add those little "change target of spell" cards in order to create a more controlling type of deck, which could most certainly work.
Blood Moon is somewhat of an elephant in the room here. Yeah, I know some people hate the card, but at least I'm not all in on the MLD plan. Red's gotta make full use of its availible tools in order to win.
In order to keep other players from gaining advantages, Stranglehold has been added in order to shutdown deck searches, which red doesn't do really well either (apart from Gamble, which is a ... gamble. Yeah.). If players don't interact with this enchantment, chances are that this deck will outpace them. Another flavorful little bit of taking control over the game is Vicious Shadows, which just happens to synergize with Diaochan really well. Damage on removal of a creature? Sign me up! Keyfactor here is that it deals damage equal to the amount of cards in hand. Blue players beware.
Last but not least...
Politics
The key to this deck (and its goal) is to create interaction between players. Win by setting the opponents against eachother by playing the harmless red deck, which than comes in for some smashing times. Another aspect is keeping people of your back, as opponents will likely come to realize you're a threat once a few of the combo's in the deck come online. Be prepared to talk your way out of here and point to other players. (This is also a key aspect to playing edh in general, pun intended). Don't be shy to create conversations and create interaction, it's what EDH was designed around.
Closing thoughts
I'm looking for even better interactions here and there. Suggestions are highly welcomed, along with possible cuts to make here and there. I like other people looking at my deck and discuss about a very niche commander, that just creates fun board states/interactions/politics/shenennigans.
Thanks for reading!
