A glance at highlander mono red

Sup guys,

It's a lazy Sunday morning...actually it's 12:20pm! Mario and I are curled up on the couch. Neems is in Canberra, Adam and Dan are asleep, seems like a perfect time to do a highlander blog!

I'm pretty frickin hung over too be honest. Hung ovaries...was at a wizards, hoes and hobbits dress up party last night. I wore a cape made from a rug and cuff links, Wilfy spotted me at the train stop and loved it haha.

Oh, and I had to ride that tram for 10 minutes with all the Stereosonic doof heads "sick cape mate herp derp hurr hurr".

Ok onto the magic...I guess that was kind of magic, I was dressed as a wizard after all.

So I thought I'd talk about monored/red deck wins/RDW/red/burn/sligh/ponza whatever the fuck you wanna call it.

It's surprising how deep mono-red is. Three different styles that have been around the melbourne scene are Shanley style, Crompo style and Mulch style.

I dug up old lists of Glenn (Shanley) and Neil's (Crompo) decks. You can tell how old they are by the most recently printed cards in the lists, obviously their lists would have to be updated for the new sets, points-list and metagame. I'll brief the different styles:

SHANLEY STYLE

His plan is destroy lands to disrupt you, burn any threats you play and eventually win via card advantage from his bigger spells and many manlands. Glenn's been in countless top8's and won a timetwister at some stage. The deck is stylish and he plays it well. The deck's mascot has got to be orcish librarian haha, that little guy does it's thing. Glenn's success is a real credit to Highlander's nature.

CROMPO STYLE

All in suicidal burn. Burn them straight of Crompton. In the early days of the Metagames card store Neil won 3 consecutive Mana Drains or something silly like that. Was pretty embarassing. At least I can say that he only beat me once.

MULCH STYLE

Non-basic hate and cards to complement it. Moxes to cast the moons asap. Limited dig with Magma Jet and Faithless Looting to find the moons. All my little dudes aren't the strongest cards but under a moon your opponent will be too crippled to deal with them.

Ok the lists:

Please excuse the long and difficult to read lists, to make them a little easier to read I sorted them thusly: 

• 1st category: Spells you play at the earliest opportunity, sorted by curve
• 2nd category: Reactionary spells, sorted by curve
• 3rd category: mana
• 4th category: sideboard

SHANLEY STYLE	CROMPO STYLE	MULCH STYLE
gorilla shaman	black vise	Figure of Destiny
orcish librarian	figure of destiny	Grim Lavamancer
seal of fire	goblin guide	Jackal Pup
iron myr	grim lavamancer	Rakdos Cackler
phyrexian revoker	lava spike	Stromkirk Noble
hearth kami	mogg fanatic	Ash Zealot
simian spirit guide	seal of fire	Blood Knight
fulminator mage	spark elemental	Gorehouse Chainwalker
ensnaring bridge	ankh of mishra	Kargan Dragonlord
stone rain	emberwilde augur	Phyrexian Revoker
molten rain	flame rift	Porcelain Legionnaire
pillage	hellspark elemental	Rakdos Shredfreak
goblin ruinblaster	keldon marauders	Shrine of Burning Rage
solemn simulacrum	pyrostatic pillar	Slith Firewalker
ravenous baboons	sulfuric vortex	Bloodmoon
avalanche riders	price of progress *	Boggart Ramgang
flametongue kavu	burst lightning	Magus of the Moon
nevinyrral’s disk	chain lightning	Cursed Scroll
ingot chewer	lava dart	Jeska, Warrior Adept
arc-slogger	lightning bolt	Koth of the Hammer
siege-gang commander	rift bolt	Ruination
icy manipulator	shock	Umezawa's Jitte (1)
firebolt	tarfire	Icy Manipulator
chain lightning	chain of plasma	Thundermaw Hellkite
lightning bolt	fire ambush	Chain Lightning
shattering spree	incinerate	Burst Lightning
demonfire	magma jet	Faithless Looting
shrapnel blast	searing blaze	Lightning Bolt
magma jet	shrapnel blast	Mental Misstep
burning wish	smash to smithereens	Skred
urza’s rage	sudden shock	Magma Jet
crystal vein	volcanic hammer	Seering Blaze
wasteland	char	Skullclamp (1)
strip mine **	cursed scroll	Burning Wish
great furnace	flame javelin	Incinerate
city of traitors	volcanic fallout	Price of Progress
barbarian ring	wheel of fortune **	Chrome Mox
library of alexandria *	rolling earthquake	Mana Crypt (2)
sandstone needle	fireblast	Mox Ruby (3)
11 snow-covered mountain	arid mesa	Wasteland
mana vault *	barbarian ring	20 Snow-covered Mountains
sol ring ***	bloodstained mire
forgotten cave	great furnace
rishadan port	13 mountain
mutavault	mox ruby ***
mishra's factory	scalding tarn
blinkmoth nexus	wasteland
ghitu encampment	wooded foothills
dust bowl
mouth of ronom
pulverise	ravenous trap	Pyrokenisis
pyroblast	tormod's crypt	Faerie Macabre
red elemental blast	phyrexian furnace	Surgical Extraction
pyroclasm	pithing needle	Mindbreak Trap
smash to smithereens	pyroblast	Flame Slash
scald	red elemental blast	Red-elemental Blast
culling scales	blood moon	Pyroblast
cryoclasm	chaotic backlash	Smelt
crash	ensnaring bridge	Shattering Spree
ancient runes	everlasting torment	Blackvise
shatterstorm	magus of the moon	Pulverize
boil	scald	Pyrostatic Pillar
boiling seas	sulfur elemental	Sulfuric Vortex
anarchy	anarchy	Flame-tongue Kavu
detritivore	boil	Anarchy

  

Random comments:

Mono-red's mana is sweeeeeet. So pleasant to not have to fetch every game, you just play your lands and it's all good.

Mono-red is cheap!...well apart from Mox Ruby. So it's a great deck to start playing highlander with. If you're building a deck for a friend you could build a deck that's a blend of these three styles and they can migrate to whichever is more their play style.

There are some cards that mono-red really struggles against. If you want to have success with mono-red you’ll need to have plans against these cards:

Big chunky dudes

Sphinx of the Steel Wind, Tarmogoyf, Kitchen Finks, Thragtusk, Baneslayer, Rhox Warmonk, Elderwood Scion etc

Anything with 4+ toughness can be a real pain in the arse. You’ll notice a few unusual cards in mono-red lists that are concessions to fatties; Icy Manipulator, Brittle Effigy, Trip Noose, Burning Wish etc.

You really just need to hope that all the U control decks scare people away from playing these cards. Playing red is quite risky in this sense. Sometimes there’s a guy who’s like “I’m frickin sick of losing to zoo, I’m gonna build GW fatties and crush them” and they crush you. Mono-red is a metagame deck. I always bring Mulch style red to highlander tournaments and if I think everyone’s playing 3+ colour decks I’ll gun it.

Sword of Fire & Ice / Jitte

These are serious problems. The plan to deal with these cards is have the burn spell ready the turn they play the equipment and then in your turn effectively destroy the equipment.

Elspeth, Bitterblossom, Spectral Procession, Lingering Souls...lots of little dudes

Jitte is a good answer to these cards. Burning Wish can find you nifty sweepers as well. If you’re not playing many dudes yourself (eg crompo/shanley style) you can play sweepers.

Combo decks

Mono-red hasn’t got much disruption against combo. It has non-basic hate and random things like ash zealot and phyrexian revoker. Depending on your build you can try race. At a 3 round weekly highlander at Games Laboratory you’ll be unlikely to play against combo but if you want to win a big tournament you’ll need a plan and plenty of good sideboard cards.

This article has been pretty disjointed but whatever. I think I prefer writing articles that go into the finer details of one subject.

Ages ago I wrote a pretty comprehensive article about building aggro decks in highlander, i you have't read it before I suggest you do :) I just gave it a re-read myself.

Less UU more Pewpew

But yeah, if you haven’t given mono-red a try, chuck it together for a highlander event and burn some cunts :D