[Primer] RDW

[Elricity]

The deck doesn't want removal maindeck. It's too busy shitting its hand on the board to play it, and you're doing it indirectly with Madcap Skills and Firefist Striker. When you're pumping your Hoplite to massive levels or making a million Soldier tokens, you just don't care about the fatty across from you.

I'm actually interested in adding a combo element to the deck. With Madcap Skills and Titan Strength and Firefist Striker it's tempting to add Armed / Dangerous for potential blowouts.

I figured that out very fast.

I wouldn't know what to take out to use dragon mantle. I'm generally more tempted to pull out cards.

I'm going to try satyr nyx smith in replacement for eidolon. It's weird to say but the hate bear just felt
durdly here.

[Valdarith]

I would not put Nyx-Smith in. You already have Flamespeaker on three. You need another 1-2 drop or an enabler. Dragon Mantle is mighty tempting with a Flamespeaker list.

[Elricity]

I guess. Was trying to play less into removal with some of that sideboard but if it can resolve, i guess it replaces the card which can be valuable.

[Tyrael]

Try this:

[deck] Flamespeaker pt.2[/deck]

[Elricity]

Why do I want shock?

Doing this at the second. Sunchasers have been nice actually for board stalls. 3 may be too many in which case I would put back in a mutavault.

[deck]
Creatures (31)
4 Burning-Tree Emissary
4 Prophetic Flamespeaker
4 Firefist Striker
4 Firedrinker Satyr
4 Mogis's Warhound
4 Rakdos Cackler
4 Satyr Hoplite
3 Impetuous Sunchaser

Buff (11)
3 Madcap Skills
4 Dragon Mantle
4 Titan's Strength

Land (18)
18 Mountain

Sideboard
4 Harness by Force
4 Mizzium Mortars
4 Skullcrack
3 Eidolon of the Great Revel
[/deck]

[Tyrael]

Sunchaser is awful

You want shock because it removes small blockers early game which is when you wanna win anyway

if you seriously need to start using Mortars then you've already lost the game

you are playing AIR atm, you have no late game

[Elricity]

You want mortars to kill coursers. That matchup is not good without the full playset.

Also, surprising how much i'm overloading on 18 lands =\

You're running arena athlete over firefist so yes, sunchaser wouldn't be good there. I could see athlete over sunchaser though for extra falters that don't require me committing with firefist. I'm going to grind out some more games with sunchaser before I decide. It's netted me several points of damage when I can suit it up.

Also, the deck isn't quite dead turn 5.

[hoeiberg]

How good has Flamespeaker been for everybody? He seems terribly risky in the current meta with instant speed spot removal everywhere. I have done zero testing with him, so all i do is speculate but to me it seems very unappealing to tap out turn 3 for Flamespeaker, just to have it removed next turn when i try to suit it up. At a glance i think i would much rather have Chandra's Phoenix in that slot. It has haste, it flies, it has 2 power, and if you play even a small amount of burn it has the option of coming back. (I'm currently playing 4 Lightning Strike, not for using as removal but to give that bit of reach that i feel these aggro decks need).

Also i feel like cutting Ashley from this deck is not the best of ideas. She is so powerful on her own, and paired with TS or Strike she plows straight through Polukranos, Courser, BBoV, and probably several more that i haven't thought about, leaving only DD as a viable blocker,
and we should have a creature to sac to him at least for the first turn he is down.

I don't really thing you need mortars vs Courser. A 2/2 + a TS lines up favorably vs Courser and dragon mantle with a few mana up lets you trade easily enough. Now all this of course requires them to block with courser, but if the don't he really isn't that big of a problem. That said Courser is very annoying to deal with, Ashley helps though.

[Elricity]

I've found flamespeaker to be obscene here. I was worried about removal but the deck is aggressive enough that they generally have to do something or lose regardless. 6-10 damage hits through blockers is a regularly occurance. Sometimes the scry gets wasted but only when you used your mana to crush into them which is fine.

I originally cut Ashley after playing with it for a couple hours because of the usual nonbo with BTE. That said, it probably should be what I was testing sunchaser with regardless even if I can't chain it off her. Fitting in the full 4 is rough though.

If they land a turn 2 courser, you are so far behind and that early in the game, they have no reason to block you even if you have pump spells. I overloaded 3 times in the last 3 hours of testing too so I value it for that as well.

I could appreciate wanting lightning strike for reach.

Even with 18 lands, I still flood on occassion so I think I'
m staying there. I've never had a game I've lost due to lack of lands. I forgot hammer of purphoros was a card though so I should stick that in somehow.

[hoeiberg]

I've never had the bad luck of having to fight through a T2 courser. I can easily imagine that it sucks though. Maybe mortars is the right call in some meta games, though personally i don't think i would like playing removal in this kind of deck (i might change my mind on that after T2 courser beats me a couple of times though)

I'm glad that Flamespeaker is testing well, i really wanted that card to be good I'll try him out once i get my hands on some (I was reluctant to get them after being so disappointed in the phoenix from BoTG)

Is Hammer better than Hall of Triumph?

[Tyrael]

Turn two madcap skills is your best answer to a courser, or a Titan's Strength usually does the job as well

[Valdarith]

If you are playing Akroan Crusader, Hall of Triumph is worth a look. Otherwise leave it alone.

[Elricity]

Turn two madcap skills is your best answer to a courser, or a Titan's Strength usually does the job as well

In my experience after about 20 hours of testing is:

1) Not to bank on my opponent having no removal
2) Not to assume my opponent will do what I want him to do regarding blocking

[Tyrael]

Turn two madcap skills is your best answer to a courser, or a Titan's Strength usually does the job as well

In my experience after about 20 hours of testing is:

1) Not to bank on my opponent having no removal
2) Not to assume my opponent will do what I want him to do regarding blocking

He won't block (if he's smart). Just represent titan's strength even if you don't have it, always works. G/Rx players are chickens when it comes to blocking I've noticed.

PS: I've won the saturday tourney (usually 24-30 people) 6 times with AIR, including 2 times with heroic

[Elricity]

Turn two madcap skills is your best answer to a courser, or a Titan's Strength usually does the job as well

In my experience after about 20 hours of testing is:

1) Not to bank on my opponent having no removal
2) Not to assume my opponent will do what I want him to do regarding blocking

He won't block (if he's smart). Just represent titan's strength even if you don't have it, always works. G/Rx players are
chickens when it comes to blocking I've noticed.

PS: I've won the saturday tourney (usually 24-30 people) 6 times with AIR, including 2 times with heroic

Fair enough. Which list were you using, the one you listed?

[Elricity]

Try this:

[deck] Flamespeaker pt.2[/deck]

Trying this with -1 vault for +1 Warhound. He's the best card in the deck.

[hoeiberg]

+1 Warhound. He's the best card in the deck.

Agreed, or at least way too good to not play the full 4, and 20 lands seems a tad many anyway.

[Tyrael]

Turn two madcap skills is your best answer to a courser, or a Titan's Strength usually does the job as well

In my experience after about 20 hours of testing is:

1) Not to bank on my opponent having no removal
2) Not to assume my opponent will do what I want him to do
regarding blocking

He won't block (if he's smart). Just represent titan's strength even if you don't have it, always works. G/Rx players are chickens when it comes to blocking I've noticed.

PS: I've won the saturday tourney (usually 24-30 people) 6 times with AIR, including 2 times with heroic

Fair enough. Which list were you using, the one you listed?

[deck]Heroic Sligh
Creatures (31)
4 Akroan Crusader
3 Mogis's Warhound
4 Burning-Tree Emissary
4 Eidolon of the Great Revel
3 Arena Athlete
4 Rakdos Cackler
4 Satyr Hoplite
1 Rubblebelt Maaka

Non-Creatures (12)
4 Dragon Mantle
4 Madcap Skills
4 Titan's Strength
4 Lightning Strike

Lands (17)
17 Mountain

Board
4 Firedrinker Satyr
4 Shock
3 Searing Blood
4 Skullcrack[/deck]

It's a bit of a mess but I did win FNM with it for what it's worth (not much ), the other times I used slight variations of Tom Ross' old Boss Sligh list (often went like 4-1 with it too)

Flamespeaker is wack but I just wanted to goldfish at that point

[Elricity]

+1 Warhound. He's the best card in the deck.

Agreed, or at least way too good to not play the full 4, and 20 lands seems a tad many anyway.

I go back and forth on whether I want 18 or 19 lands.

[Elricity]

@Tyrael, interesting keeping drinker in the board but I guess with maindeck Revel, that makes some sense. I tried your build and then went back to mine with 2 ash zealots and 1 vault. I think I still prefer firefist since its effect is free and doesn't require me to commit buffs to a creature I'd rather not use it on. I guess there's a couple times it's awkward when you don't want to lose it in a swing.

Your build was good though. Coordinated Assault was good enough that I'm reworking around that.

Ash Zealot just wasn't feeling powerful enough to justify it's mana cost issues. Flamespeaker is still amazing but I don't think I want 4 due to his mana cost. Not sure on 2 or 3.

Of the buffs, madcap is the least consistant in the face of removal or multiple blockers for me and one I commonly board out against removal decks so I'm going to reduce the number to fit in some one drops to get me back to 18 lands. It's
incredibly powerful if it sticks so that might be a mistake.

At this point, I'm not sure if this qualifies as RDW or AIR but this thread seems to be drifting to the latter.

[deck]Untested RDW[/deck]

[Valdarith]

I think you'll find three Coordinated Assault to be too many and one Madcap Skills to be too few.

I've noted a nice synergy with Firefist Striker and Akroan Crusader, which makes Legion Loyalist a little less necessary.

After playing with the deck a bit I feel like it wants more powerful cards and potential blowout cards. I'm considering going to 3-4 Prophetic Flamespeaker.

[Tyrael]

@Tyrael, interesting keeping drinker in the board but I guess with maindeck Revel, that makes some sense. I tried your build and then went back to mine with 2 ash zealots and 1 vault. I think I still prefer firefist since its effect is free and doesn't require me to commit buffs to a creature I'd rather not use it on. I guess there's a couple times it's awkward when you don't want to lose it in a swing.

Your build was good though. Coordinated Assault was good enough that I'm reworking around that.

Fair enough, it's a personal preference because I was expecting a removal-lite environment

I kept the Firedrinkers in the board because of all the Naya builds
I was expecting which are usually pretty close matches. Your life total matters here and the Eidolon totally screwed them over every time it came down . I knew I'd be the one calling the shots even when I was on the draw because of their taplands.

[Elricity]

@Val: Probably true on coordinated/madcap. I totally forgot about legion loyalist but I just can't bring myself to like the card. That said, I've never tested it myself, I only have my experience playing against it. Flamespeaker is amazing. I thought you had played with it in your gruul deck.

@Tyrael: Yeah, I gathered. I love my mana dumps too much.

[Valdarith]

[deck]
Creatures (29)
4 Rakdos Cackler
4 Satyr Hoplite
4 Akroan Crusader
3 Firedrinker Satyr
4 Firefist Striker
4 Burning-Tree Emissary
3 Mogis's Warhound
3 Prophetic Flamespeaker

Spells (12)
4 Titan's Strength
4 Dragon Mantle
4 Madcap Skills

Lands (19)
19 Mountain

Sideboard (15)
1 Firedrinker Satyr
4 Shock
2 Barrage of Expendables
1 Mogis's Warhound
4 Lightning Strike
2 Scouring Sands
1 Seismic Stomp
[/deck]

[Elricity]

Val, have you tested this? Isn't electrickery much better than scouring sands? I take it that you're trying to blow out black/white weenie and shore up mono blue?

Barrage is interesting. Anti removal.deck?

I think you're going to miss skullcrack.

I forgot seismic stomp was a card. That would have made several of my test games much easier. What about blinding flare? Upside is it hits fliers and triggers our heroic as a mana dump. Downside is it can potentially cost quite a bit more mana and can't hit Carytid. I'm a sucker for mana dumps. My gut says stomp is more consistantly powerful.

I don't think I could see myself ever having less than 4 warhound in a game.

[deck]Greedy deck[/deck]

Maybe this? I played with 4 madcap skills and it was...not great. Sometimes it's just lava spike. YMMV.

[Elricity]

Oh! Questionable card question time.

Ordeal of Purphoros

Pros:

Builds your creature's toughness out of removal/chump range if unanswered
Eventual lightning bolt with a little synergy with Cackler or Hoplite

Cons:

Even worse than madcap vs removal deck

It should be more powerful vs blue or white aggro, much weaker vs black, and probably weaker vs green. I haven't played against any mono blue.

[Valdarith]

Unplayable.

[Elricity]

That's what I figured. Had to see if someone tried it.

[Valdarith]

Val, have you tested this? Isn't electrickery much better than scouring sands? I take it that you're trying to blow out black/white weenie and shore up mono blue?

Barrage is interesting. Anti removal.deck?

I think you're going to miss skullcrack.

I forgot seismic stomp was a card. That would have made several of my test games much easier. What about blinding flare? Upside is it hits fliers and triggers our heroic as a mana dump. Downside is it can potentially cost quite a bit more mana and can't hit Carytid. I'm a sucker for mana dumps. My gut says stomp is more consistantly powerful.

I don't think I could see myself ever having less than 4 warhound in a game.

[deck]Greedy deck[/deck]

Maybe this? I played with 4 madcap skills and it was...not great. Sometimes it's just lava spike. YMMV.

I'm playing a list that pretty much plays at sorcery speed, so the scry 1 from Scouring Sands makes it the better choice in my opinion. Sure, it can kill an x/1 by targeting, but I'm not going to be killing ONLY one dude with this spell. I'm going to hold it until there are multiple x/1s on the other side for the blowout.

I've tested a similar list without Flamespeaker. I've always played with four Warhound but I want to try three right now and see how that works out with
Flamespeaker as another three drop.

Barrage is for control. Makes their Fiendslayer Paladin look stupid, and it's not something they want to waste a DSphere on. Makes us a little more resistant to board wipes too.

I would never play a reactive card like Skullcrack in a list like this. Besides, what am I taking out for Skullcrack? Vs control it's -4 Dragon Mantle, +2 Barrage, +1 Firedrinker Satyr, +1 Warhound. I could take out the Satyr Hoplites for burn spells since I'll have fewer heroic enablers postboard, but I like Lightning Strike for the mono blue matchup.

I thought about Blinding Flare but Seismic Stomp is really only for the Monsters matchup which is why there's only one of them in the board.

[Valdarith]

I goldfished this last night.

[deck]
Creatures (30)
4 Rakdos Cackler
4 Akroan Crusader
4 Firedrinker Satyr
4 Firefist Striker
4 Burning-Tree Emissary
4 Mogis's Warhound
4 Prophetic Flamespeaker
2 Rubblebelt Maaka

Spells (10)
4 Titan's Strength
2 Dragon Mantle
4 Madcap Skills

Lands (20)
20 Mountain

Sideboard (15)
4 Shock
2 Barrage of Expendables
4 Lightning Strike
2 Scouring Sands
1 Seismic Stomp
2 Rod of Ruin
[/deck]

It seems pretty good, but I'm unsure of the value of Firefist Striker outside of a BTE chain now that there are no haste creatures in the deck. I think a choice between Satyr Hoplite and Akroan Crusader depends on the meta. With Burn, UWx control, Bx devotion, and blue devotion being the big four online, I feel like Crusader lines up better against that field. It gives them all more targets to deal with (though they all die to Golgari Charm) whereas Hoplite is taken care of by
one removal spell or Tidebinder Mage. It's also really good with postboard Barrage of Expendables and makes Firefist Striker that much better.

Dragon Mantle is great with Flamespeaker but clunky with everything else. Drawing multiples feels terrible, so I cut it down to two.

Madcap Skills is awesome. I always want one in my opening hand. It makes the deck's kill consistency so much faster, and you get to do ridiculous shit like this sometimes.



Speaking of that, this is clearly one of the upsides of Satyr Hoplite.

I added a couple of Rubblebelt Maaka as Titan's Strength 5 and 6 that gives a toughness boost for our x/1s to push through Courser of Kruphix.

I want to test this in actual games now. It seems similar to the Gruul deck I was running only it's faster and more consistent.

[Aodh]

It seems like all-in red (heroic or not) is mostly being discussed here rather than in the AIR thread, so I'll post here.

[deck]NoH AIR[/deck]

Could decrease Ash Zealot to 3 or Dynacharge to 1 or 2 in favor of more lands, but the sideboard strategy is pretty straightforward: move Dynacharge out for more-relevant spells. Dynacharge is maindeck to steal game ones.

We definitely want 16-21 land in these kind of decks, with 16 giving max(1,2,3 land hands), 17 giving max(2 land hands), and 21 giving max (2,3 land hands)...

[Elricity]

Val, have you run into a problem having to exile your bloodrush to Flamespeaker? It's still usable if it's the first card that flips but it was the possibility that pushed me away from it.

Crusader's haste tokens helped me turn on FFS a few times when I tested.

[hamfactorial]

You can't use the Bloodrush ability if Flamespeaker exiles it. You can't pay the "discard" portion of the activation cost since it's not in your hand.

[Purp]

Why hello there Rod of Ruin, long time no talk.

[Valdarith]

Val, have you run into a problem having to exile your bloodrush to Flamespeaker? It's still usable if it's the first card that flips but it was the possibility that pushed me away from it.

Crusader's haste tokens helped me turn on FFS a few times when I tested.

As ham said, you can't bloodrush an exiled card, but it has occurred a couple of times, which is why I'm only running two.

[Valdarith]

Why hello there Rod of Ruin, long time no talk.

Yep. I've played a similar deck against mono blue and decided the matchup was decided by my opponent landing a Master of Waves. There were a lot of games that I would have won if not for 5+ elemental tokens and an unkillable body standing in my way. It may be that the matchup is so hopeless that I ought not dedicate any additional slots to it, but it's such a big player online (3rd or 4th most represented deck) that I feel like it has to be respected, and casting it on 20 lands is not out of the question.

[Elricity]

Val, have you run into a problem having to exile your bloodrush to Flamespeaker? It's still usable if it's the first card that flips but it was the possibility that pushed me away from it.

Crusader's haste tokens helped me turn on FFS a few times when I tested.

As ham said, you can't bloodrush an exiled card, but it has occurred a couple of times, which is why I'm only running two.

Right, I knew that before and logged it under "don't use them" so deeply I didn't think about it beyond that. I'm blaming this on my cold and not complete idiocy.

[magicdownunder]

@Elricity: How is RDW fairing for you online? It seems like it would be a struggle to beat BW midrange/Control, U Devotion, Rw Devotion and Monsters or Junk

[Tyrael]

@Elricity: How is RDW fairing for you online? It seems like it would be a struggle to beat BW midrange/Control, U Devotion, Rw Devotion and Monsters or Junk

BW midrange is easy
Junk is usually doable thanks to their crappy mana base
Every other midrange matchup is falter effects or bust, unfortunately

I haven't found a way to improve any of these matchups either

Thank god that Junk is not a deck on paper as most people have realised that naya is just way better

[Elricity]

[quote="[url=viewtopic.php?p=232545#p232545:3k82mez1]magicdownunder » Fri May 30, 2014 10:33 pm[/url:3k82mez1]":3k82mez1]@Elricity: How is RDW fairing for you online? It seems like it would be a struggle to beat BW midrange/Control, U Devotion, Rw Devotion and Monsters or Junk[/quote:3k82mez1]

I haven't tried it on MTGO yet, just Cockatrice for giggles. I haven't had a chance to test against blue devotion although I can imagine the matchup being pretty bad. I can usually push through Rw devotion unless they're heavy removal and monsters/junk you can race but only with a good hand. Burn feels really bad unless you're opponent is dumb and plays into titan strengths.

If I do try it on MTGO, it's if I build up enough extra tickets that I'm ok potentially throwing them away for a change of pace. I don't think it's tier 1.