Battling on a Budget - Red Deck Wins
Welcome to our new Budget series at flipsidegaming.com! Our target audience for this series are new players looking to get into Modern cheaply or entrenched players looking for a change of pace at a low cost. These decks may not crush at the Grand Prix level but they are more than capable of stealing some wins at the local level. Our first installment of the series is about a classic Magic archetype, Red Deck Wins. Red Deck Wins or RDW is the name for any aggressive red deck that is trying to kill its opponent as quickly as possible. Classic Red.
On to the list
This version of RDW is all about the pumping of tokens and cheap creatures. Goblin Bushwhacker, Reckless Bushwhacker, Signal Pest and Haze of Fury are the main payoff cards here and should allow you to hit your opponent for a bunch of extra damage. Signal Pest is cheap enough to get down early and pump the squad. Reckless Bushwhacker, Goblin Bushwhacker and Haze of Rage all want to be played when you already have a good board presence so if you have extra Goblin Bushwhackers and no guys in play to pump, it is okay to just play it for 1 mana on turn 1 or 2 just to have a guy out there. Reckless Bushwhacker is very powerful but you have to make sure you have another card to play with it. Just be careful to not leave yourself surge-less. Haze of Rage is an odd card from Future Sight but it is very powerful in this deck. Playing it by itself is fine, but you’d like to play another card on the same turn to add more storm copies. I wouldn’t worry too much about the buyback, we are just trying to deal the opponent 20, not get value from our cards. These pump effects plus cheap red beaters should add up to a lot of turn 4 kills.
Burning-Tree Emissary and Memnite are really important to the deck because they let you get more bodies in play without actually spending mana on them. They can also add up for some very explosive draws. Jackal Familiar and Goblin Glory Chaser, while not great on their own, are fine knuckleheads to brawl with the rest of the crew. Mogg War Marshal adds two bodies for the price of one card and can hang around if you have nothing else to do with your mana. Lightning Bolt, while not meshing perfectly with the rest of the deck is still the best Red card in Modern and can’t be forgotten. It also gives the deck some removal for the opponent’s creatures and some burn to help finish off the game when the opponent is at a low life total.
This deck is looking to get to the board fast with a crew of idiots and them pump them up and run the opponent over. When mulliganing, if your hand is slow or doesn’t have the cheap beaters, just mulligan. With aggro decks, it is important to try and do the same thing every game. Therefore, aggro decks should mulligan more to try to find a hand that can put together an explosive draw. With the addition of the scry rule, mulligans are less punishing and a huge skill tester in Modern. Don’t be afraid to send the bad hands back!
Sideboarding in Modern is arguably the most important part of the format. A lot of Modern decks are based around a straight forward strategy. Having cards after sideboard to counter their strategy is really important and a good way to rack up wins. Smash to Smithereens and Dragon’s Claw are great at countering any artifact based deck or burn based deck. Forked Bolt is great against opponent’s with small creatures. Dismember and Traitorous Blood are great against decks with big creatures your opponent is trying to use to block. Magmatic Chasm is similar and allows your little guys to break through a clogged board. When having cards like Magmatic Chasm and Traitorous Blood in your deck, it is important to not throw away creatures for a bit of damage. You want to use these cards to tilt the board in your favor.
When sideboarding, you can’t just add cards to your deck without taking cards out. By the rules, you are allowed to not swap sideboard cards 1 for 1, but it is not recommended. The cards you most often want to cut from the deck while sideboarding are the Lightning Bolts if your opponent has no creatures to remove. Frenzied Goblin is also not good against creature-less decks. If your opponent is trying to remove your guys, you can trim down on Jackal Familiar. That guy doesn’t like to roll without his pack and can be left vulnerable.
This deck is built for a budget player but if you like it and want to upgrade it, go right ahead. The Jackal Familiars could be upgraded into Goblin Guides and the Frenzied Goblin and some of the Goblin Glorychasers could become Legion Loyalists. If you really like this style deck but want something even more competitive, check out the Revolt Zoo decks. They have a similar game plan and have some better stand alone creatures.
Red Deck Wins is a classic MTG archetype and this is a solid version for not a lot of investment. If you ended up picking the deck up and liking, let me know in the comments!
