Why Zada?
Amongst the Magic community there are many truisms. Three that I often hear are:
1.) Magic is about money. You gotta pay to win.
2.) Mono-coloured decks suck.
3.) Red is weak in EDH.
I wanted to make a mono-red budget deck that would show that these are not absolute truths, despite them having some merit. A quick squiz at red legends and I was set on Zada and her unique capacity (in red) to draw cards.
Theres also the fact that Zada is awesome. Her art is wicked, she has great abilities and subtypes, and is very fairly costed in both mana and dollars. She encourages you to play cards that have not seen the inside of a sleeve since, well, ever.
How Zada?
You've probably seen this plan before. Play your chumps, drop Zada, cast your pump spells and proceed to the wrecking-face step. Play cantrips to replenish your hand BEFORE the next guy wraths the board in a state of terror. Then do it again.
It's very important not to over-extend yourself. If you've got 5+ creatures in play hold onto the other critters for the post-apocalypse. Then you can cast your Siege-Gang Commander, Goblin Rally et. al., drop Zada and bust some more chops.
Usually I wouldn't go for one-off ramp spells like Seething Song in EDH, but because you draw so many cards in one hit they inject timely wads of mana into your face-smashing engine.
Everyone knows that infinite combos are super laem - EXCEPT if they're in a budget deck, in which case they're clever, charming and attractive. This deck goes infinite with Dualcaster Mage and either Twinflame or Heat Shimmer as early as turn two! Cast Dualcaster in response to either sorcery, Dualcaster hits the board and its trigger goes on the stack, resolve the copy of the sorcery, get a Dualcaster token, the trigger from the Dualcaster token goes on the stack targeting the original sorcery, and so on ad infinitum. The tokens are hasty and so you swing and kill. You can pull this off with Dualcaster in play by targeting Zada because the triggers go on the stack after the spell, allowing you to copy it.
Twinflame and Heat Shimmer are good outside of the combo, with Hanweir Garrison, Siege-Gang Commander, Beetleback Chief, Goblin Dark-Dwellers, Goblin Matron, and Goblin Recruiter, justifying their inclusion (well to me anyway).
The Elements
Win Cons
1.) Dualcaster Mage combo - see above.
2.) Zada + tokens + pump spells.
Card Draw
Panic
,
Chaotic Strike
, Expedite, Renegade Tactics,
Accelerate
, Skullclamp,
Balduvian Rage
,
Crimson Wisps
,
Stun
, and
Boiling Blood
.
There's two main card draw timings happening here. Some are straight up "draw a card" which is great when you want to go off in your turn. The other is "draw a card at the beginning of the next upkeep", which is handy when you're going to draw a buttload of cards and don't want to have to discard in your cleanup step. Remember that it's at the beginning of the next upkeep, not at the beginning of your next upkeep.
Also, some cards can only be played at certain steps during the combat phase.
Panic
is cast in the declare attackers step, and can be cast even if you don't attack with any creatures.
Chaotic Strike
is cast in the declare blockers step, which is skipped if no creatures are attacking. Thus you either need to attack with something to cast it or wait for someone else to attack in their turn.
One day the ability to remove a blocker with
Panic
or
Stun
is going to win a game. Can't wait!
Mana Acceleration
Sol Ring, Seething Song,
Brightstone Ritual
, Ruby Medallion, Iron Myr, Mana Geyser, Skirk Prospector, Battle Hymn, Treasonous Ogre.
The deck has a pretty low curve, so it doesn't need much ramp. Note the explosive mana sources.
Removal
Board: Chain Reaction. Short list huh? If the deck is doing its thing properly your opponents should be throwing all their creatures under the bus trying to stop your ridiculously powerful tokens.
Spot:
Arms Dealer
,
Goblin Tinkerer
, Chaos Warp, Siege-Gang Commander.
If someone plays an enchantment I'm boned if I don't have Chaos Warp.
Pump it Up
Goblin Bushwhacker,
Goblin King
,
Goblin Lookout
, Goblin Chieftain,
Balduvian Rage
, Brute Force,
Enrage
,
Downhill Charge
, Invigorated Rampage, Sure Strike, Titan's Strength,
Uncanny Speed
,
Reckless Charge
,
Screaming Fury
and
Marton Stromgald
.
I've deliberately avoided Assault Strobe and Temur Battle Rage because they require a pump spell to be worth casting. I'd rather just have another +3/+0 and be done with it. Time in the field might change my mind though.
Edit: still not feeling the need for double strike.
Tokens
Beetleback Chief, Hanweir Garrison, Krenko, Mob Boss, Mogg War Marshal, Siege-Gang Commander, Young Pyromancer, Kher Keep, Dragon Fodder, Empty the Warrens, Goblin Rally, Hordeling Outburst, Heat Shimmer, Twinflame, Spawning Bed and
Snake Basket
.
The Other Things
Goblin Chirurgeon is great for protecting your best gobbos against boardwipes. Unless they have the "can't be regenerated" clause we all don't usually give a crap about.
Cast Chaos Warp on Zada when you have heaps of tokens out. The deck is one third instants and sorceries so it will probably suck, but chaos can be fun and sometimes it kicks arse. It's not a bad response to a board wipe as you usually will hit a bunch of lands.
Edit: every time I do this it absolutely rocks! Highly recommended.
Strionic Resonator is super fun and quite powerful. Of course it goes gang-busters with Zada, but there are heaps of other targets too. I particularly like Goblin Dark-Dwellers, Goblin Matron, Goblin Piledriver,
Goblin Grappler
,
Tuktuk Scrapper
and Dualcaster Mage. I also love the idea of copying the storm trigger of Empty the Warrens - yep, it's a triggered ability!
Strionic Resonator + Isochron Scepter: if you use the Resonator to copy Scepter's imprint trigger you can actually cast zero, one or both spells you imprint when you activate Scepter's ability. This is because of ruling:
607.3. If, within a pair of linked abilities, one ability refers to a single object as the exiled card, a card exiled with [this card], or a similar phrase, and the other ability has exiled multiple cards (usually because it was copied), the ability refers to each of the exiled cards. If that ability asks for any information about the exiled card, such as a characteristic or converted mana cost, it gets multiple answers. If these answers are used to determine the value of a variable, the sum of the answers is used. If that ability performs any actions on the exiled card, it performs that action on each exiled card.
There's nine cards that can give all creatures haste. Why kill someone tomorrow whom you can kill today? Twinflame and Heat Shimmer also get half marks.
Titan's Strength gives you multiple scry triggers for digging good times.
Otherworldly Outburst is a superb response to board wipes at 1 mana. Highly recommended.
Thanks for having a geez. If you have any suggestions I'd love to hear them - just remember they need to be very budget. I'm also a sucker for upvotes ;)
