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Post by John Galli on Apr 10, 2012 0:00:18 GMT -5
Since I'm going to play this I figured I'd start my obligatory post about it. Despite the fact that the Meta has some very strong, very hostile decks, I think rdw is still a playable choice even though play will need to be tight and card choices matter a lot.
Anyway, this week Ryan and I both finished building a popular list that is played by a red player on magic online and we've jammed out a few games against pod and against the mirror. Not great testing but it led me to a few observations-
1. Stromkirk seems bad against a lot of the aggro creatures out there, except of course the ones in delver even though he can get vapor snagged in that matchup. It seems counterproductive to clear the way for him when the build I've been testing has better chances of winning when it throws burn at their face. With no draw power and limited big threats, you don't have resources to be doing both. He's still great against some decks, especially when followed by stormblood, but the mostly aggro field lessons his value and changes what the other cards in the deck have to do.
2. I really like running 8 one-mana-2-damage burn spells. It'd be even better if I could make galvanic blast hit for 4 on more occasions. The build I'm currently using has 4 shock, 4 blast, 4 incinerate, 3 arc trail, and 3 volt charge for it's burn package, which is a lot of disposable heat.
3. The sideboard for the large part feels highly unpolished. I've noticed that the designer has been changing his side ever so slightly from day to day but I just don't get what he's doing and some cards just seem wrong for today's Meta.
Here's a build I worked on tonight that takes red into more of a straight burn approach, dodging some of the aggro hate, the aggro baggage, and mirroring legacy in it's quest to simply ignore what they're doing. I constructed this with the current field in mind, curious to hear thoughts (not one liners)
Lava Looting, a deck by John Galli 4 Grim Lavamancer 4 Chandra's Phoenix 4 Moltensteel Dragon
4 Shrine of Burning Rage 3 Arc Trail 4 Shock 4 Galvanic Blast 3 Incinerate 4 Brimstone Volley 3 Faithless Looting
(23 Lands) 4 Evolving Wilds 4 Rootbound Crag 2 Kessig Wolf Run 1 Forest 16 Mountain
Sideboard: 4 Slagstorm 3 Traitorous Blood 3 Ancient Grudge 2 Phyrexian Metamorph 2 Tree of Redemption 1 Arc Trail
Yes, I realize this cuts the infamous duo of stromkirk and stormblood, along with other critters, but it replaces this aggro aspect of the deck with a more streamlined burn package and creatures that are both very difficult to deal with and that all pack immediate threat power. Obviously the lootings and wilds help fuel lavamancer along with the burn, giving him a similar reach to what he has in legacy. Now thi deck doesn't have lightning bolt or goblin guide, but standard isn't as fast as people think and I've already noticed how far my current burn package can take it.
Secondly, looting in this build is not as bad as in a more traditional one because its not jamming up against your perfect "curve out" draw and is instead acting as an agent to help smooth out your draws, hit land drops or key spells, and dig for sideboard cards.
Moltensteel Dragon was the one card I walked away from St Louis with a good feeling about. He was ancient grudged a few times, but I think my opponents got really lucky with their draws, there were a few games where he blew them out, and the current Meta I packing less maindeck hate for him. He is surprisingly good a lot of the time. Most decks aren't prepared for a 4/4 flier on turn 4, let alone one that can win the game in a swing or two. Also, against a red deck they usually use valuable removal earlier than he comes down so he can just rain on their parade unabated.
Lastly there's a lot of options right now for red so I will have a lot of testing ahead of me if I'm going to figure out what truly appears best, but hopefully that is something netherworld will assist with. I've got some very obscure stuff I might curveball in there and ill be keeping my eye on the tourney scene as well since the Meta seems to be shifting back and forth predictably at this time. Still a crazy new set on the way too, so that will certainly shake things up.
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Post by Travis Lannoye on Apr 10, 2012 9:04:03 GMT -5
Would it help you to run some Copperline Gorges? I have a set that I'm not currently using.
EDIT: Would it also help to possibly run Whipflare instead of Slagstorm, or are there some three-toughness guys you absolutely need to get rid of?
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Post by crazedferret on Apr 10, 2012 11:22:56 GMT -5
How is it verse decks that run a fair amount of undying? I would think red sun's Zenith might be helpful there simply for the rfg effect. It would also be another solid finishing card.
The deck seems like a lot of heat. The shrines and the dragon seem like your real game winners. I like the lavamancers and shrines alot more with the amount of burn you have and that combined with the faithless looting seem just good. The Pheonix will recur easily in this build due to the burn.
Have you considered alternatives or additions to the dragon at all? I understand his value as an early aggressive attacker but I don't see him living long most of the time. In this build you have gotten rid of the earlier creatures that they absolutely needed to kill and so I foresee opponents being stuck with removal in hand. Perhaps something like charmbreaker devil or the new flametongue kavu - flayer of the hatebound or inferno titan as possible additions out of the side for that longer game? Charmbreaker I think would be ridiculous in that burn deck especially laying it down after they kill your dragon.
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Post by John Galli on Apr 10, 2012 12:10:46 GMT -5
All good suggestions, there's some things I can address here for sure-
@copperline Gorge - the deck actually is just splashing green, mostly for ancient grudge flashback and kessig wolf run, adding in a heavier green landbase can cause problems for you're ability to hit your turn 2 and turn 3 drops ontime. It's a land that's for sure played in R/G aggro, but in a mostly mono-red build I think it gets in the way too much. Honestly, the green splash is not super necessary, it just gives the deck a little more reach if you're not running koth. If I was going to run this land, I'd rather just go full bore and run R/G aggro, and in that case I would need x4 sword of war and peace and x4 huntsmaster, which ain't gonna happen.
@whipflare - I have it in my collection of cards, but I think slagstorm is necessary because the Naya Pod decks that are popular run blade splicer, so killing the token is important, along with anthemed guys from spirits or delver decks. There's not a lot that whipflare doesn't hit, but there is some, and there's also the ability to use slagstorm as just an incinerate to the player if you need those last few points of damage and you draw it late.
@undying - this is actually some of the key reasons for the changes. I noticed stromkirk and some of the other creatures were having trouble with undying guys since it was somewhat futile to burn them out on many instances, so the package is a little more burn / alpha drop oriented. Usually you can race these guys fairly well if you try not to kill them. Between shrine, the heavy burn, and possibly if moltensteel dragon works out, you generally are a turn or two ahead of them. But yes it's otherwise a huge annoying problem which is one reason I don't like RDW in this meta but I like the archetype so I'm playing it.
@red Sun's Zenith - I've been casually testing and had this card in my repetoire for a while now (several months) as it seems to be the only thing to deal with undying in red. The problem is it's often just a really overcosted burnspell and it's killing guys at a rate where you're usually better off just going to the face and only using burn on creatures that are critical or at critical junctures. I'm still not on the outs yet with Zenith, it may indeed see play out of my sideboard and possibly even maindeck, this is something I think testing over the next few weeks will help me iron out. It's certainly nice late game when you draw it and can just lava axe them.
@most other versions of the deck out there and ones I've played do not run the dragon. He's susceptible to removal, and you're right I've removed mana dorks that that could have been used on, but there's also a lot of removal that misses him and people aren't running as much removal as they should. R/G Aggro runs like a few galvanic blasts and Brimstone volleys (not a full set of either), which most of the time won't be able to kill him. Some decks run artifact hate, zombies runs tragic slip, and there are a few small things out there, but generally a deck doesn't run more than x3 to x4 removal that can actually kill him, so especially in game 1 he is very potent. The other factor is he only has to live a turn or two to get the win, he's a much quicker kill condition than other stuff out there.
That all said, I've tried Koth, Hero of Oxid Ridge, and Hellrider, all of which have important places depending on the meta at the time of the tournament. The version Ryan and I currently have sleeved is running x3 Hellrider out of the board.
@chainbreaker, Flayer, and Inferno Titan - these are outside considerations, the main issue with them is the 6 mana casting cost. RDW just realistically never sees this much mana, and if they do the game is usually lost or won by that point. Now you could certainly add more lands and make the deck "go bigger", and if I did this I think Inferno Titan would be best as he has an immediate impact on the game/board. He's already being thrown into Naya Pod and R/G and is very good in the current meta. Personally though, I'd rather stick to the standard RDW curve, although these ideas could be testable depending on how badly the deck is getting thrashed or not.
Thanks for the input guys, always glad to hear more
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Post by Travis Lannoye on Apr 10, 2012 13:09:23 GMT -5
The more I think about it, the more I think that Rootbound Crag is likely all you'll need, unless you plan to activate it in the first 2-3 turns of the game.
Next question: do you think you have enough game against Delver/Lingering Souls? Those two cards, either by themselves or together, are really popular right now.
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Post by Zach on Apr 10, 2012 13:40:17 GMT -5
Yeah, that sideboard card called Slagstorm kinda just destroys those cards.
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Post by Travis Lannoye on Apr 10, 2012 14:01:01 GMT -5
...but that sideboard card doesn't have flashback, so I'd be concerned if those Slagstorms would be enough to contain all the Delvers and Lingering Souls and Midnight Hauntings and Snapcasters and whatever other crap they might have...
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Post by mastrcontrol on Apr 11, 2012 1:40:40 GMT -5
John, I'm not very into this list and I'm not sure if it's my proper judgement or my biased towards creatures in my mono red. Here is a list of thoughts I have about the deck's construction.
1. You have very few early game threats. Yes I know you have lots of shocks but you do not have board pressence that puts pressure on your opponent. This leads them to focus removal on the lavamancers and devote more resources to purely aggressive plans. That being said, I do like all the cheap SOB charging.
2. Why not four lootings? If you are running 4 lavamancers as your only 1 drop creature, don't you want him to be as active as possible? I think you would especially want it for situations where you are very close to shrining them down and need a few more cheap charges from the looting and cheap cards it digs for.
3. Moltensteel and shrine? Opponents always have an answer for SOB in game 2. What happens when you don't get an on tempo shrine and draw into a moltensteel? I also don't like the molten steel because he can just be blocked by most relevant creatures in the format and vapor snagged at extreme profit with delver decks. I also don't like the dragon because its ability is redundant of wolf run which equates to a lot of late game plans in RDW that sacrifice early game play.
4. The manabase seems awkward. Evolving Wilds is getting way too much respect in T2 right now, where tight early game play is most important with all the fast decks running around. Giving up a land use for a turn early game seems more detrimental than giving up a land use T4-game end.
5. Has anyone tried corrosive gales in the sideboard for when you are on the draw against tokens? I like siding in 2x slags and 2x gales in that game because they are a land drop ahead so slag might be too slow. This is something I have tried but have won the 2 times this situation came up so far before I saw gale or slagstorm.
6. My experiences are extremely limited to misty mountain standard events so I'm seeing a very different meta. However, I do look forward to testing on Thursday to see this deck play out.
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Post by John Galli on Apr 11, 2012 8:42:08 GMT -5
Much appreciated feedback. You guys bring up some good points, I'll see what I can do to address or acknowledge them here- @travis: Firstly, the meta has been shifting from week to week, Sam Black had a great article a few weeks back discussing how he prepares for each weekend and it seems to be unfolding truthfully since I read his article and watched the tournament scene. Basically, Deck A beats up on Deck B, and deck C beats up on Deck B, so there's that little rotation going on. Now obviously, that's kind of the case in any meta, but it's really noticeable in standard right now. Hence why U/W Delver was really hot 2 and 3 weeks ago, and now R/G aggro and Naya Pod are the hot picks. I'm guessing some versions of Wolf Run, U/B Control, and tokens are next. The importance of this will matter for whatever RDW build I ultimately decide on come tourney time. Secondly, Delver and Lingering Souls are largely two different decks in standard, unlike perhaps some legacy counterparts. From what I've seen, the popular iterations are U/W Delver (either with 4 drops like Dugeon Geists, or strictly smaller builds, and then B/W tokens similar to what Craig Wescoe plays (lots of anthems and token cards). It's important to differentiate these as they all play out as relatively different matches when considering sideboard cards even though there is some crossover. For instance, Ratchet Bomb is much more effective against tokens, whereas against Delver I'd prefer to have the Slagstorm/Whipflare variety. I think right now, from what I've seen and a few games of play, RDW needs to be faster than these other decks to win. A lot of the time this is possible by directing much of your burn package at their face, while killing a few key creatures along the way. Obviously, not having an early shrine hurts a lot. The problem is that the typical creature suite of RDW (Stromkirk/Stormblood) is outclassed right now by the majority of the field, so they end up not being able to get in for damage unless you use burn to clear the way, and then you risk simply walking into vapor snag or tragic slip. This completely destroys a lot of the effort you put forth in your creatures. There are some of those matches, like U/B control or Wolf Run, where the early creatures in RDW shine like allstars, but those seem to be the less prevelantly played decks these days. Early fliers / beatdown, early removal, and early undying creatures, and early tokens are much more active in today's meta. Especially in the case of Undying, removal actually tends to turn against you since their creatures get bigger and the two racing clocks even out. So far, Ryan and I tried to combat this a little by throwing more burn at the face, and usually in games he was a turn ahead of me. Games where I got T4 lifegain were troublesome for him but he even pulled out a few of those. Then there were other games where he didn't. This meta "situation" is currently what I'm trying to figure out because it will be the key to whether or not I can make RDW successful again. I don't think there is a right answer here, I think it's more a matter of finding out which incremental advantages can be gained to push the matchups slightly in the right direction. Play, as always, has to be tight with this deck as forgetting 1 damage can be the end of the road (as I saw in St. Louis where I lost my first 5 games when my opponent was at 1 life). mastrcontrol (Brian?) - 1.) The idea with not running the early threats was to try and just be more of a burn deck due to some of the lines of play I discussed above. That said, this hasn't been tested other than the stock versions I ran, so you're right in that the deck design of my homebrew could be an absolute flop. Hopefully on Thursday I can try a lot of different ideas and start to get a clearer picture again like I had at the State Championship last year. Btw, we are doing testing at Netherworld from 6pm - Close every Thursday until the 5k in Madison, so you should definitely come if you have time as it will be a lot more valuable than any other testing in the area for the next month. Back to Lavamancer for a moment, I'm not really concerned if he dies, he's really only there to provide refuelable shock damage, he's basically a semi-permanent burn spell. I fully expect removal to get exhausted on him. The nice thing about lavamancer is that he's really good no matter when you draw him, and in this deck multiples aren't a terrible thing. 2.) Faithless Looting seems to be a big questionmark right now. A lot of pro writers have discussed that the card is only playable in combo decks, as it doesn't give you true card advantage. I think it has value in the "digging" aspect, but there's also another concern that you don't really want to play it early in RDW because you have other spells which it competes with that are more important. In this build, it's effective because you're digging for certain cards or filtering for lavamancer and shrine, but it's still not necessary as a 4-of. I played 4 of them in goblins a few weeks back at misty and I really found it annoying to have multiples in hand. Sure, you can ditch the multiple to the looting itself and still gain some value out of that exchange, but I'd prefer the card to be a supplemental value addition in RDW. If I were running Frites, that's a different story, but not here. That all said, running this card at all in red might be a mistake, and I'm totally open to bigtime discussion over it since the stuff I've scoured on the interwebs has been really devoid of detail. 3.) I used Moltensteel at St. Louis (and coincidentally so did the 3rd or 4th place finisher), and he was pretty good against wolf run. That said, the meta has changed and your reminder of the prevelance of delver and tokens does make me pause for concern as there is a lot of flying out there to block him in the current meta. That was one of the reasons I ran Kessig Wolf Run before, mostly to get around chumpers (not as redundancy for Moltensteel's ability). That said, this interaction requires you have both cards. The thing with Moltensteel is that often your opponent doesn't have an answer, and if they don't he's usually the fastest way to kill your opponent of all the 4 drops red has available. Koth is hard to protect in a meta with huge creature armies, but it also depends on how your build is setup. Vapor Snag is truly annoying, I definitely think it's one of the blue adoptions that has caused a lot of trouble for RDW. It may not be Moltensteel's time right now, hopefully testing will see which is the correct move here. Koth, Moltensteel, Hero of Oxid Ridge, and Hellrider are all in my red box, so I'll be trying different things to see what I like if any of them. 4.) The evolving wilds are there to fuel lavamancer since you effectively have no true one drops in my build above. Both lavamancer and looting can be played whenever and serve the same purpose. Your curve here is different, so they don't get in the way like they would in traditional RDW. That said, this particular build is the ONLY reason I have them in there. 5.) Corrosive Gale is actually a very popular sideboard card against delver at the moment. I haven't tested it personally yet, but I've heard good things and I think it would be dependant on the meta. My only beef is that the current iterations of U/W delver that are popular run x3 invisible stalker, x4 geist, and several runechanter's pikes. That combinations is absolutely fugly and demands a slagstorm to have any chance of surviving. That's why I'm thinking slagstorm is the go-to card here, especially since you can incinerate your opponent with it which is absolutely important in a meta where RDW has to "win the race". I'm not saying RDW has to be retardedly "all-in" because RDW's current versatility is one of the things that made me play it in the first place (being a former Jund player I never liked a suicidal approach, I liked having a midgame which the traditional builds of current RDW have), but it does have to race faster IMO. It's one of the reasons David Caplan's top 8 worlds list went down to 21 lands and ran all the pingers, he just simply burned them out too quickly for them to respond. 6. No problem with your experiences, I value your opinions because since St. Louis back in (November?) I've been on a relative hiatus with RDW. I've kept up with the topic of it online and played a few games with borrowed builds, but I need to get fresh legs on this again as the meta in st. louis included inferior delver decks to the builds today, no R/G aggro, and a lot more wolf run. I'm also always happy to hear someone else choosing RDW as their deck of choice since it's constantly made fun of in professional circles but people that actually like playing it know how powerful it can be and how cards like "timely reinforcements" do not just simply win you the game. When I went 6-2 at States, I can't tell you how many times I just straight crushed a white player right after they played Timely. The deck has a true level of reach, it's just a matter of playing the right cards and playing the deck well. There's a Standard PTQ at Legion Events (Misty Mountain) this Saturday, I might try to carpool with someone if I can get more information from them, if you're interested at all let me know as this would be a nice testing session at the very least even if we end up bombing out with the deck.
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Post by John Galli on Apr 11, 2012 11:09:21 GMT -5
Also here's a different build I'm considering for testing-
4 Stromkirk Noble 4 Stormblood Berserker 4 Goblin Fireslinger 3 Phyrexian Metamorph 1 Grim Lavamancer 3 Hellrider
4 Shrine of Burning Rage
4 Galvanic Blast 4 Incinerate 3 Arc Trail 4 Volt Charge
4 Rootbound Crag 2 Kessig Wolf Run 16 Mountain
Sideboard: 3 Chandra's Phoenix 2 Ancient Grudge 2 Combust 2 Act of Aggression 2 Manabarbs 2 Red Sun's Zenith 1 Grim Lavamancer 1 Dismember
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ryanu
New Member
Posts: 31
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Post by ryanu on Apr 11, 2012 11:51:03 GMT -5
looks like a 4x vexing devil would fit in well to this deck
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Post by John Galli on Apr 11, 2012 13:05:53 GMT -5
Suweeeet
Edit* crap, already going for a boatload on starcity and ebay
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Post by Travis Lannoye on Apr 11, 2012 14:30:22 GMT -5
Really? A four-power dude for one mana AND a 5-damage spell for one mana?
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Post by John Galli on Apr 11, 2012 22:35:27 GMT -5
That sob is skyrocketing in price, both starcity and eBay auctions are jacked up
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Post by John Galli on Apr 12, 2012 9:33:24 GMT -5
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