MTG Salvation

For being mono-red, Grenzo is a hell of a card. His exile ability is like a red version of freaking edric the overpowered, and his other ability is basically like Edric's ability to force enemies to attack each other, minus the downside of them drawing cards. So basically, Grenzo is Redric. Just one problem - red sucks balls at evasion. So how to fix that? The reddest way possible: bedlam effects. Appropriate for a havoc raiser, no?

So here's my best attempt to make Grenzo work.

So many tokens and no Purphoros, God of the Forge?

Or Goblin Offensive?

Uphill Battle, perhaps? Or Ashling's Prerogative? Or Onslaught?

Cheers!

You have the Hanweir creature in the lands section (instead of the haste land).

Inkmoth Nexus's infect still counts as combat damage, right? Poison counters are a replacement for damage to the dome but not combat damage?

Flamerush Rider might be more win-more but could fit.
Were tokens abundant in your meta, I'd suggest Hero of Oxid Ridge.

Quote from MRdown2urth »

You have the Hanweir creature in the lands section (instead of the haste land).

Inkmoth Nexus's infect still counts as combat damage, right? Poison counters are a replacement for damage to the dome but not combat damage?

Flamerush Rider might be more win-more but could fit.
Were tokens abundant in your meta, I'd suggest Hero of Oxid Ridge.

Correct. Infect is still combat damage it just replaces the result of that combat damage so things like Fog or No Mercy still work

So looking at everything, what a hell of a cheap legendary creature and hell of a goblin deck he makes.
There is everything I could think of to help get in the red zone.

• Goblin Tunneler
  
• Ib Halfheart, Goblin Tactician
  
• Legion Loyalist
  
• Raging River
  
• Sensation Gorger

.
Then you can play everyone at the tables decks, so would want all the mana doublers you can get to play all those free spells.
and at 2 CMC! Impressive. Good to see Mono Red getting some attention, what a great deck.

Quote from krichaiushii »

So many tokens and no Purphoros, God of the Forge?

Or Goblin Offensive?

Uphill Battle, perhaps? Or Ashling's Prerogative? Or Onslaught?

Cheers!

Purphoros (as well as other powerful token finishers like coat of arms and shared animosity) I intentionally excluded. Purphoros especially, once he hits the table this stops being a grenzo deck and starts being a purphoros deck. I appreciate that, in a more competitive meta, I might need to have those sorts of bombs to finish the game quickly, but that's just not my goal here. I want to win by forcing everyone else to attack each other, and by stealing their cards.

Goblin offensive totally fits into the deck, it just seemed too inefficient. 5 mana for 2 tokens? 6 mana for 3? Just seems like you have to be able to pump a TON of mana into it before it gets reasonable.

The others just didn't seem quite high-impact enough. Onslaught particularly doesn't work amazingly since you have to cast the creature (and have to do it pre-combat, before you've stolen anything).

How often are you able to play the spells you exiled?

I understand not including Purphuros.

With your mana doublers, Goblin Offensive might yet work. What about Firecat Blitz?

Cheers!

Quote from MRdown2urth »

How often are you able to play the spells you exiled?

(Keeping in mind I haven't had a chance to play it since my usual wednesday has been disrupted for the past 2 weeks by a concert and thanksgiving travel)The way I INTEND this deck to work is to be more of a 50/50 between goad and casting spells. Goad works really well with effects like bedlam. Obviously getting CA is also an important part of Grenzo but I don't think I'll be exiling 10 cards and failing to cast most of them or anything like that.

Quote from krichaiushii »

I understand not including Purphuros.

With your mana doublers, Goblin Offensive might yet work. What about Firecat Blitz?

Cheers!

Blitz seems less awesome with Grenzo than with Purph, since it eats a bunch of your mana for casting spells. Haste is still great for the deck since you can use your attacks to goad even if you're tapped out, which makes it easier to attack on the next turn, but with blitz you don't get that since you sac them all. And the flashback is rarely going to be worth it, since it's so much harder to lethal the table by sacking all your lands for tokens.

Goblin offensive may be worth it, it'll take actually playing it for me to decide about that though. An overhead of 3 is quite a bit.

Got to test the deck a few times tonight. Overall it was fun, but definitely lower-power fun. Part of the problem comes from the fact that it's very dependent on the evasion-granting cards to be able to get much use out of goad, otherwise the creatures just sit there and you can't get through them to force them to attack. Didn't get to actually draw the namesake of the deck (bedlam) but the other evasion-granting cards were good. I never really felt like I was drowning in tokens, maybe I just didn't draw the right cards but it never felt like I had enough, although partially that may be because suicide attacks were necessary without the evasion cards.

The biggest weakness is just a lack of interaction with a lot of types of things, but that's red for you. The first game I lost to avenger of zendikar + cyc rift - for a few reasons. One, because it was a 3-player game and the other player for some reason targeted my stuff instead of the other guy despite me having very little on board while the other guy had 50+ power. Also because I don't have any wipes in my own deck. I don't think I can afford to run any considering how counter they are to my own strategy, though.

Second game lost to wort chaining spells together and drawing her entire deck. Admittedly partially my fault for running out both gauntlets, but I was otherwise pretty mana starved. I don't really have any way to interact with that sort of thing without changing the focus on the deck considerably.

Third game was lower-power, and managed to pull off a win in pretty spectacular fashion by using mind over matter (stolen) to tap down hakim (yes, the loreweaver, it was hilarious) and swinging in to force him to attack the other remaining player for lethal, simultaneously putting him down to single digits, and also stealing a metamorph to copy iona to deny blue. Unable to do anything, he was forced to swing into the other player, who survived thanks to platinum angel...until I untapped and killed them both with siege-gang commander.

Overall the deck seems like fun for lower-powered metas, a bit like a bad, red Geth with a little added shenanigans with goad. The lack of interaction makes it fairly frustrating for me personally to play, though. Overall, 3 stars.

I'm looking for lower powered three star deck to play. After seeing a poorly built Grenzo deck in action, I think this has some potential to produce very fun/new game-states each time it's out.

why not max out on mana to get grenzo out asap?