Thursday, August 9, 2012

Red War

Continuing the mono-color theme, we have a deck that I didn't mean to talk about but entered in so...here we are. If you have not heard Dave Grohl's excellent side project Probot then Red War is as good a place to start as any. Like the song, this deck is aggressive and barely has a plan beyond punching you.

But it does have a plan.

2 Hammer of Bogardan

2 Bloodfire Kavu
4 Lightning Serpent
4 Coretapper
3 Thunderblust
4 Spark Elemental
1 Ball Lightning
3 Skizzik
3 Goblin Tinkerer

4 Lightning Coils

3 Genju of the Spires

3 Seal of Fire

21 Mountain
2 Keldon Megaliths

1 Koth of the Hammer

I saw Lightning Coils and I thought to myself: this card gets a benefit when my creatures die and red has creatures that tend to die easily. Sounds like a theme!

Of course, now I'm diluting a straight up attacking theme with some cards to try and give this deck a hint of the long game. It's a violation of avoiding the Glory Of Cool Things rule because these ideas don't mesh but sometimes, a hook gets into my brain and I don't get to let go, so this is the deck. To help support the long game, should I get there, Keldon Megaliths and Hammer of Bogardan to keep the pressure on and Genju of the Spires as a hard to kill creature that doesn't harm my manabase should it die, and Coretapper to explosively add 3 counters to a Coils.

Now I'll admit that this deck won't always execute the Coils plan but it doesn't have to. I'll put a Coils down on turn three and then drop whatever creatures I can to build it up, hitting for later. Attacking for 15+ in a single turn is difficult for any deck to handle. If I don't have a Coils though, screw it! Just put down creatures and hit for as hard as I can.

It isn't a complicated plan but it's a plan.

2 comments:

  1. coretapper successfully puts 4 counters. tap add one, sac add two then lightning coils adds one for it dying :3 I know I used to run a lightning coils deck back when Mirrodin first came out. now that I think about it mixing that in with hellrider might just be gross :P

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    1. I was told there would be no math!

      But you're correct; my bad! Also, nice call on something like Hellrider. I'm not sure how effective it would be, since so many of my creatures die after one use but if that comes down on a turn after the Coils triggers, that's pretty huge.

      I should probably look into any Red Undying creatures as well. The Thunderblust has done very well for me and been very problematic so working a similar line is probably a good idea.

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