Necrophage1B
Creature - Insect Zombie (Common)
At the beginning of your upkeep, you may return Necrophage from your graveyard to your hand.
A deck can have any number of cards named Necrophage. "And you thought cockroaches were hard to kill."
1/1
This design is based off of Endless Cockroaches, Relentless Rats and Myr Servitor. I wanted to make something that could potentially be a deadly combo in draft, if you draft enough of these pesky buggers, you can make a pretty mean deck. In pauper, this is its own deck, where you can just swarm your opponents with a bunch of creatures. Sure, you'll end up losing a few... dozen... but it could be a viable strategy.
Volcanic Outrage1R
Enchantment (Common)
At the beginning of your upkeep, Volcanic Outrage deals 1 damage to each opponent. Only those who understand the mountains know how powerful they are.
The design is based off of Razortip Whip and Curse of the Pierced Heart. Although it looks meek, the slow, burning deterioration can win you the long run as long as your opponent doesn't deal with it, or set it aside with a life-gaining spell. The long run is not always a part of Red's game plan, however even then so this card is still a +1 damage per turn. It's something to consider, especially in limited and pauper.
Anyhow, I am still looking for three more common cards, one for white, green, and blue, all of which could be used heavily in limited and even in pauper. They have to be commons. Tell me what you think!
Holy smokes, Necro can be a LOT of unkillability and free recursion at common. IMO its closest comparison would be Reassembling Skeleton, and I think you'd either have to cost this up to maybe 4 (making it a 2/2 or something) or up it to uncommon.
Outrage - probably fine, it's just slightly slower than the Curse and it puts a surprisingly large target on you in multiplayer to make up for the damage output.
Necrophage1B
Creature - Insect Zombie (Common)
At the beginning of your upkeep, you may return Necrophage from your graveyard to your hand.
A deck can have any number of cards named Necrophage. "And you thought cockroaches were hard to kill."
1/1
that's more like Squee, Goblin Nabob than Endless Cockroaches or Mortus Strider. Squee has been used as a combo piece a lot in the past. like with Masticore or maybe with Zombie Infestation. the ability to have unlimited copies in a deck pushes this too far, especially since it turns self mill into effective card advantage
Volcanic Outrage1R
Enchantment (Common)
At the beginning of your upkeep, Volcanic Outrage deals 1 damage to each opponent. Only those who understand the mountains know how powerful they are.
An argument could be made that this card wants to be black, because, as you said, the longterm gameplan isn't really on red's radar, but depending on the environment, it could make even more sense in red. (For instance if G/R bloodthirst is around.) Even if not, I suppose it's a fine card on its own.
Necrophage1B
Creature - Insect Zombie (Common)
At the beginning of your upkeep, you may return Necrophage from your graveyard to your hand.
A deck can have any number of cards named Necrophage. "And you thought cockroaches were hard to kill."
1/1
As others have pointed out this card is probably way too powerful and/or too easily abusable. And even if not, this is not a card for common I'd say. Getting cards back from your graveyard for free and with no restriction at all? That is not common at all. I am not sure which direction you want to go. On the one hand you want it to enable combos, on the other hand you want people to make aggressive decks with it. I'm not sure how to 'fix' this, but I'd probably focus for one role.
If you want to go the combo role, you might give it the ability:
"If ~ is put into your graveyard from anywhere, you may pay B. If you do, return it to your hand."
This even enables combos that require you to discard cards from your hand and selfmilling. Not sure how useful that is.
If you, however want it to be a more aggressive card that's supposed to swarm your opponents with waves after waves of little critters, I'd probably think about a card like this:
Swarm Engine 3BB
Enchantment (R)
~ enters the battlefield with a swarm counter on it.
When ~ enters the battlefield or at the beginning of your upkeep, put X 1/1 black Insect creature tokens onto the battlefield, where X is the number of swarm counters on ~.
Whenever an Insect creature you control dies, put a swarm counter on ~.
Please note that this card is not a common and as such not what you are looking for, but then again your card, as it is, shouldn't be a common.
Another thing I'd remove is the "no card limit" clause, because it serves no real function on the card. A better way would be to make it relevant, as they did it with Relentless Rats and Shadowborn Apostle.
Necrophage 1B
Creature - Insect Zombie (Common)
At the beginning of your upkeep, you may return Necrophage from your graveyard to your hand.
A deck can have any number of cards named Necrophage.
"And you thought cockroaches were hard to kill."
1/1
This design is based off of Endless Cockroaches, Relentless Rats and Myr Servitor. I wanted to make something that could potentially be a deadly combo in draft, if you draft enough of these pesky buggers, you can make a pretty mean deck. In pauper, this is its own deck, where you can just swarm your opponents with a bunch of creatures. Sure, you'll end up losing a few... dozen... but it could be a viable strategy.
Volcanic Outrage 1R
Enchantment (Common)
At the beginning of your upkeep, Volcanic Outrage deals 1 damage to each opponent.
Only those who understand the mountains know how powerful they are.
The design is based off of Razortip Whip and Curse of the Pierced Heart. Although it looks meek, the slow, burning deterioration can win you the long run as long as your opponent doesn't deal with it, or set it aside with a life-gaining spell. The long run is not always a part of Red's game plan, however even then so this card is still a +1 damage per turn. It's something to consider, especially in limited and pauper.
Anyhow, I am still looking for three more common cards, one for white, green, and blue, all of which could be used heavily in limited and even in pauper. They have to be commons. Tell me what you think!
Dunes of Zairo
SHANDALAR
Innistrad - The Darkest Night
~THE RAVNICAN CONSORTIUM~
A Community Set
Commander: Allies & Adversaries
Outrage - probably fine, it's just slightly slower than the Curse and it puts a surprisingly large target on you in multiplayer to make up for the damage output.
Dunes of Zairo
SHANDALAR
Innistrad - The Darkest Night
~THE RAVNICAN CONSORTIUM~
A Community Set
Commander: Allies & Adversaries
that's more like Squee, Goblin Nabob than Endless Cockroaches or Mortus Strider. Squee has been used as a combo piece a lot in the past. like with Masticore or maybe with Zombie Infestation. the ability to have unlimited copies in a deck pushes this too far, especially since it turns self mill into effective card advantage
An argument could be made that this card wants to be black, because, as you said, the longterm gameplan isn't really on red's radar, but depending on the environment, it could make even more sense in red. (For instance if G/R bloodthirst is around.) Even if not, I suppose it's a fine card on its own.
As others have pointed out this card is probably way too powerful and/or too easily abusable. And even if not, this is not a card for common I'd say. Getting cards back from your graveyard for free and with no restriction at all? That is not common at all. I am not sure which direction you want to go. On the one hand you want it to enable combos, on the other hand you want people to make aggressive decks with it. I'm not sure how to 'fix' this, but I'd probably focus for one role.
If you want to go the combo role, you might give it the ability:
This even enables combos that require you to discard cards from your hand and selfmilling. Not sure how useful that is.
If you, however want it to be a more aggressive card that's supposed to swarm your opponents with waves after waves of little critters, I'd probably think about a card like this:
Enchantment (R)
~ enters the battlefield with a swarm counter on it.
When ~ enters the battlefield or at the beginning of your upkeep, put X 1/1 black Insect creature tokens onto the battlefield, where X is the number of swarm counters on ~.
Whenever an Insect creature you control dies, put a swarm counter on ~.
Please note that this card is not a common and as such not what you are looking for, but then again your card, as it is, shouldn't be a common.
Another thing I'd remove is the "no card limit" clause, because it serves no real function on the card. A better way would be to make it relevant, as they did it with Relentless Rats and Shadowborn Apostle.
Just some food for thought.