Squeezing Blood from a Stone.
To reiterate, I find myself struggling to build solid Red decks nowadays. Oh, sure, I can whip together something with Earhtquakes and [c]Taurean Mauler[/s]s and do fine, but if you were to ban my top 10 most played Red cards I probably wouldn't even be able to build a deck. I often feel as though I'm trying squeeze blood from a stone when I'm constructing my lists because the card quality just isn't there in mass quantities. While I used to always make due in the past, that just isn't the case any more. I want to discuss why it's challenging for me to build Red decks and why they're reliant on playing the same old "good cards" in order to compete. I also want to explore why that might not even be good enough unless Red's situation improves.
First of all, Red doesn't draw cards nor can it recur its expended resources (barring a small number of exceptions). Sure, Browbeat will work for some people and Faithless Looting can smooth your draws, but I mean what good does that do when everyone else is slamming Rhystic Studys, Genesises, Oversold Cemeterys and Syphon Minds? I mean yes, you can turn to marginal artifact solutions, but so can any deck. Your best draw options are everyone else's worst ones (more-or-less). As such, Red decks are often forced to splash colors like Black or Blue just so that they can compete in terms of card quantity. They are far too likely to fall behind and perish otherwise. I mean you can simply play Red decks without draw, there's nothing stopping you, but that's usually not a great way to take down a table of competent players. It will work some of the time, I'm not saying otherwise, but I don't feel like the consistency is there if you're not accruing additional resources for yourself.
Moving on, direct damage is getting worse. We haven't seen cards like Sulfuric Vortex, Flame Rift, Sizzle, Earthquake, Acidic Soil, Price of Progress, Flamebreak, etc. in a long time. What this means is that with every passing set, the core burn suite of most Red decks remains unchanged. Stagnation is never a good thing. While other decks are often growing or evolving, Red decks are only able to maintain the status quo. Ok, sure, maybe Slagstorm is going to make the cut in some decks, but far more often than not the cards that are released just aren't up to snuff with what the decks need. Dealing 20 damage to each opponent isn't easy, and Wizards isn't doing much to improve that. This goes back to what I was saying earlier about being unable to build decks using a variety of cards. The variety just isn't there. If I can't use the same old burn spells, the ones that I've been using since forever ago, I basically have no good options to choose from. That's a bit disheartening to me.
Still, I have to give credit where credit is due. Red does have is some pretty solid X burn and it is only getting better. Red is improving in that respect. Cards like Comet Storm, Banefire and Devil's Play are all fairly powerful all things considered. It's not unreasonable to sit back and dome someone for 8-10 to snipe some easy kills if you want. Because of this, I often find myself playing Red Control decks that sit back, build up, and pick people off as they fall low. It's not the "wham, bam, thank you ma'am" burn deck that most people envision when they think of Red, but hey, it works.
Ok, so global burn isn't changing but X burn is getting pretty good. Isn't that fine? Well no, unfortunately it isn't. You see, mass burn isn't improving much at all and X burn is only getting marginally more powerful. It's not reaching Exsanguinate levels just yet. While that isn't an issue in-of-itself, the fact that lifegain is getting better is. You see, Wizards has started making lifegain a "free" keyword. Cards like Thragtusk, Shpinx's Revelation, Exsanguinate, Wurmcoil Engine and much more are all extremely powerful cards that just so happen to gain people life... a lot of life at that. As the popularity and power of lifegain increases, the value of burn strategies starts to diminish rapidly. I mean, how do you ever kill that person who gained 16 life from his Exsanguinate after all? Is it even remotely realistic? Like, this has now stretched way beyond the Soul Warden + Congregate decks that burn decks used to fear. Pretty much any deck of any color can gain an obscene amount of life at this point. Well, except for (you guessed it) Red decks. Big surprise there... Oh, sure, it has the same access to artifacts such as Batterskull as everyone else does, don't get me wrong, but the color doesn't offer anything itself.
Ok, so burn is getting worse and lifegain is getting better. Coupled with the fact that Red doesn't draw cards, things are looking kind of grim. Still, Red has other qualities. Like, what about artifact destruction?
Red decks, thankfully, are still the masters of artifact removal. Not only does it have access to the best recursive and mass artifact destruction spells in the game, but it can also use that destruction to actively win games (as we seen with Viashino Heretic and Hoard-Smelter Dragon). Removal is fine and all, but it doesn't win games, so I like it when the 2 can be combined together. While there will always be the Fracturing Gusts of the world that will do the job as well, the outlook looks good that Red will remain the top dog of the artifact removal world. That may prove to be of little consolation, but hey, it means that Red will always be useful for something.
Ok, so that's finally a point for the Red team. Phew. Still, what about some of the pertinent matters at hand. Like oh say creatures. This, again, is an area where Red suffers a lot. Yes, while your deck can always curve a Kargan Dragonlord into a Taurean Mauler/Chandra's Spitfire and follow it up with an Obsidian Fireheart and a Malignus, once you remove that set of creatures from the equation it's difficult to piece together an impressive curve. I mean yes, it can cobble something together, but at the end of the day the number of powerful, playable Red creatures in probably like 30 or so tops. Everything else is some small, dorky do-nothing that works well in a duel setting (i.e. it's aggressive) but is complete trash in a multiplayer setting. You're never going to aggro the table out after all and so something like ~50% of the Red creatures being printed aren't even on the table for consideration. What this means is that Red creatures tend to be gold ones such as Olivia Voldaren and Lighting Reaver and not cards found solely within the color itself. Since Olivia doesn't care if your deck is base-Black splashing Red or base-Red splashing Black (or whatever), it comes down to what the rest of the color has to offer. When it comes to Red, the answer is often "well we can give you Taurean Mauler at 3 but not much else." That's a bit depressing, at least to me.
Last night I explained how I feel as though Red decks may be forced to rely on cards like Sulfuric Vortex now more than ever if they hope to stay competitive. Still, perhaps a more realistic way to look at it is that Red might have to make the transition over to a support color since base-Red decks may not longer have what it takes to compete. Exceptions will arise, I'm not saying otherwise, but the idea of Red being a "generically strong" color might disappear altogether. I mean yes, you'll splash it to get Mizzium Mortars, Shattering Pulse and Kessig Wolf Run into your decks, but you're probably not whipping out a throng of Red beaters other than a select few gems. It's weird to think of a Red as being a purely support color given its aggressive nature, but really, what choice will it have if the situation doesn't improve?
**Request**
I'm curious to know what people think is the worst overall color in their own metagame. Feel free to discuss why I'm right or wrong about the idea of it being Red, but if you have a different opinion I'd like to hear it. I realize that everyone is different and card pools, game size, experience levels and much more will all influence this immensely, but I'd still like to hear what others have to say. I'm not looking for something as extensive as what I've written obviously, but it would nice to peek into the world of other players for a change.
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Posted Nov 24, 2012Red is also a popular choice to be paired with any color, for any number of reasons. A growing reason is for 3-4 Demolish, as our meta now contains several artifact-heavy decks, as well as a number of key fancy lands, to include 8post and at least two Urzatron decks, alongside the ubiquitous Glacial Chasm (in three different decks, only one of which is mine, and that one without lifegain).
For us, while the Earthquakes and such make regular appearances, it is the Red enchantments like Furnace of Rath and Mana Flare that have proven to be the most popular at our table. This is because they speed up games.
Red also provides a number of potent hand reloaders: Wheel of Fortune, Wheel of Fate, and Reforge the Soul. While these affect everyone, canny red players get the most advantage from playing these cards; at the very least, the game speeds up because people are back out of topdeck mode.
Generally speaking, the mindset of myself (and a few others) is that while winning is nice, ending games spectacularly and quickly is ideal. Red can end games (or force a draw) in spectacular fashion.
The color least represented as a monocolored deck in my meta is Blue. There is one Blue countermagic heavy deck (it just added a Guile, so should be more entertaining), a Blue theft/copy deck, and a Blue Mesmeric Orb deck. All others use Blue to supplement other strategies or just draw cards.
The use of life gain for nothing but a shield is common in my group as well, from the lucky charms (Angel's Feather and company) to cards like Angel's Mercy. Infect was tried half-heartedly as a cure, but went nowhere. I have a handful of enchantments that prevent life gain, but they don't appear in every single game. So we just target those players first, IF we can tell that the deck they are playing is full of lifegain.
Cheers!
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Posted Nov 19, 2012I know what you mean about the Chasm. I had to set mine aside as well. My Black drain decks with Exsanguinate were proving to be a bit too obnoxious. Red can clearly do the same thing, it just has to work slightly harder since it doesn't have Blood Tithe and such that gain you tons of life in the process. It still leads to some pretty free wins though.
I don't mind Destructive Force either but land d doesn't fly well in every meta so there's that to consider. I think that Red is capable of winning games, it's just that you typically need to do cheesy things like suspend a bunch of stuff and then exile the world with Apocalypse/Worldfire or something. It's not the funnest win ever but I mean what choice does the color have realistically? Not much of one.
I'm with you on this and it's why I like having a Sword of Vengeance in a good chunk of my lists. The biggest problem with Haste is that most creatures who have the keyword aren't very good, which was the primary argument against it that the other poster was making. I agree that only a select-few Hasters are actually worth running, although the keyword is pretty sweet in a vacuum.
Anger is actually quite a solid card and I should probably play it more. It would only be as like a 1-of, but it still seems like most Red decks would want it. Trading a card to give all of your guys Haste is probably worthwhile in the long-run since Red decks probably need to end the game quickly anyways.
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Posted Nov 18, 2012Unsurprisingly the color with Goblin Welder is interested in artifacts ;).
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Posted Nov 18, 2012-
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Posted Nov 18, 2012Couldn't have said it better myself. I mostly agree with this point of view and it's what sparked me to write my entry in the first place.
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Posted Nov 17, 2012I've seen it done all ways, and I'm not going to say any of them are ideal, but there's been Cranial Plating with tons of artifacts, generic pump infect, Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon with Lashwrithe, Glistening Oil, Blightsteel Colossus, it's all been tried in my playgroup, and some of it still remains. I think the infect phenomenon has a lot to do with many of our players all being new to magic, or returning to magic during the Scars block.
Getting back to red; the fundamental problems with red in multiplayer I think boils down to its piece of the pie.
Black can do nearly anything: destroy creatures, draw cards, tutor, reanimate, force discard, drain life, gain life, distribute -x,-x counters, field creatures with flying, intimidate, fear, undying, regenerate, and deathtouch. The only blaring weakness for black is artifact and enchantment removal.
Green can in general: destroy artifacts and enchantments, draw cards, tutor, pump, scale, ramp, field creatures with shroud, hexproof, reach, regeneration, and trample. Green's weakness lies in lack of removal, and it's general weakness to control elementals, but it does have plenty of tools to remove flying creatures.
White can: destroy creatures, destroy artifacts and enchantments, gain life, negate damage, tax, tutor,
field creatures with vigilance, first strike, flying, lifelink, and protection. White has a limited amount of draw at its disposal, and the draw it can access is marginal.
Blue can: draw cards, counter, tutor, steal, bounce, mill, tap permanents,
field creatures with flying, shroud, hexproof and flash. I think blue's weakness lies in its inability to simply end games reliably, while blue has answers to almost anything, many of its prized skills are ineffective in a multiplayer game as one-shot countering is ineffective.
Red can: deal direct damage to players and creatures, destroy lands, accelerate mana (one-shot), steal, field creatures with haste, flying, firebreathing, and double-strike. Red is weak at removing enchantments and reliably drawing cards.
Red just doesn't come to the table on equal grounds; the haste mechanic is hard to utilize to its fullest in multiplayer as the creatures are either tiny or large powered and sacrificed after their attack. One-shot mana acceleration is inferior to ramp, card draw options are abysmal, and the menagerie of creatures doesn't compete with black, green, or white. So much of the color is aggro and duel-centric so many that red's strengths are lost in multiplayer, which is often a war of attrition. There are gems like our mentioned Taurean Mauler, Chandra's Spitfire, and Earthquakes, but they are few and far between. Black has a massive weakness, yet the whole is so much greater than the sum of its parts, and we can always weasel around the glaring weakness with colorless options. Red (and blue to an extent) just have too numerous multiplayer shortcomings built-in to the color.
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Posted Nov 17, 2012Agreed. I see a lot of "pointless" lifegain myself, although I will say that it does, on occasion, enable people to win games that they otherwise wouldn't. It boils down to the rest of the table failing to handle lifegain correctly (which is insanely easy, you just attack the person since they're wasting cards doing nothing), but hey, that's not "nothing." If random lifegain leads to game wins a non-trivial % of the time, it might be a bit better than I think it is.
Agreed. That's how I use it as well.
The marquee Red cards, for me, are Earthquake, Taurean Mauler, Chandra's Spitfire, Mass Mutiny and Insurrection. I'm not sure if they're the best ones or anything, I'm not suggesting otherwise, they're just the cards that I'm the most happy to see when I play. I agree with you that if you were to ban me from playing them that I probably wouldn't even touch the color.
Interesting. I've never experienced this phenomenon myself. Infect cards are typically "too weak" to compete with legitimate threats and it's too difficult to aggro people out early on. While lifegain seems like a good answer in theory, in practice the only cards that I've seen used effectively are cards that grant creatures Infect. Playing a Blightwidow is "fine" but not good, but giving your Forgotten Ancient Infect is usually pretty good at taking someone out.
Blue is the least played color in my meta as well. As you've eluded to, cost is the primary factor at work. Still, I don't find it overly difficult to produce reasonable blue decks on a budget. To give you an idea, my typical list starts with some combination of Rhystic Study, Hunted Phantasm and Callous Oppressor at 3, Rite of Replication, Chronozoa and Clone at 4, Sturmgeist and Murder of Crows at 5 and from there I top it off with things like Consecrated Sphinx and Stormtide Leviathan. With respect to spells I get in there with Cyclonic Rift, Capsize, Mind Control and Back from the Brink more often than not. Granted, it's probably not the best deck ever, but I at least find that I can build something passable even if I'm staying base Blue. Also, I can clearly do so without shelling out for Vedalken Shackles and Treachery and such. I'm not trying to refute your opinion or anything, I just feel as though people aren't aware of the "better" Blue cards out there and that's why their lists tend to be lackluster. I personally feel like Blue has a decent amount of tools to work with. I despise the color and I rarely play it, don't get me wrong, but Blue does have quite a bit of raw power whereas Red doesn't in my mind. Like, you don't see a Tinker or a Rhystic Study in Red.
Still, I know what you mean about UW. They go together like PB&J. White has access to awesome mass removal and Blue has access to amazing draw. Toss in a few win conditions and you're good to go. Sphinx's Revelation is also the nuts and people tend to win games whenever they resolve one. You can also do silly things like combo with Rest in Peace with Web of Inertia and Energy Field to just shut the table out. Throw in Helm of Obedience as a win condition if needed. There's also Solitary Confinement + Rhystic Study or any draw spell for that matter. So many great defensive techniques in the color combo.
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Posted Nov 16, 2012I agree with you, lifegain is currently built-in in almost every deck in my playgroup. What is a great source of frustration to me, is at this point we have a lot of decks that gain life for no apparent. I see Essence Warden and Wellwisher in elf decks in place of additional ramp or aggro, we even had someone using jank like Soul's Grace simply because there are typically massive 20/20 scalers around at some point in the game. I think the "safety" of gaining life really appeals to more inexperienced players, it's just a typical thought process for newer players when thinking about defense.
When I am gaining life, I am also draining my opponents and possibly negating the effects of Phyrexian Arena, Skeletal Scrying or Phyrexian Reclamation, as well as helping me tank out hits from my opponents. If I'm gaining life I want to abusing Cradle of Vitality, making massive Ajani's Pridemates, dropping early trigged Serra Ascendant's, etc., not simply buying time for my inevitable demise just because I want to be in the game longer.
While I do agree red is having a much harder time than ever before competing at the table; the color itself has always had issues with multiplayer. Red has some of the worst draw in the game, and has always struggled with longevity. The increased prevalence of lifegain just might be another nail in the coffin for the color. I don't think mono red is unplayable by any means; I love playing it, but as Carom said, Sulfuric Vortex is showing up in my lists more and more. I am currently the only player at my table who plays mono red; however, red supported Gruul and Rakdos are quite popular with my peers. At least we have Chandra's Spitfire and Taurean Mauler, if those creatures didn't exist I likely wouldn't even touch the color in multiplayer.
In regards to lifegain again, after a year of taking Exsanguinate hits and my sister Martyr of Sandsing on turn two for eighteen life, my meta went through an obsession with infect that continues to this day as a sort of means to keep lifegain in check. Infect is just plain potent in multiplayer, dealing ten to five players is a lot easier than dealing twenty, but after its rise to infamy, we started seeing counters to infect. The arms race is always evolving, but regardless lifegain is always going to be a major part of multiplayer.
As for the "worst" color, blue is the most unpopular color at my table by far, if it shows up its playing a support role to artifacts or being mixed with black or white. I would say in its mono form, blue is worse than red, because to get a competitive multiplayer deck out of blue it's going to cost you an arm and a leg, just to even get on the same playing field as black. I think blue works best with white in multiplayer to address card draw, but green can do that as well. I don't typically think it's worth adding to black as Phyrexian Arena can compete with Rhystic Study, unless I really must play Urza's Guilt or Diregraf Captain or something.