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keeping me safe in the digital world! You know, when I was
younger, I didn’t respect the red deck. “Alright, so a quick start as we’ll get used
to seeing here from Martin Dang, Three creatures on turn two and
all of them attacking.” “It’s quick, very quick…none of
them are good enough to hold on to Rudisha!” “Now it’s a race…wow, what a race here" “And one thing Red Decks have always done
is really punish opponents, there’s Exquisite Firecraft, and there’s game one! That game took
all of five turns and like two minutes.” “And I think Tom will likely just close the door
from here…and that is gonna do it, so Tom Ross is not messing
around, getting game 1 over within 45 seconds.” “Knight F6 Check! Knight F6 Check! He found it! Out of absolutely nowhere.” I used to think the red
deck was cheap, dumb, simplistic. But the older I get, the more I understand
the attitude of those who play with a bunch of basic mountains and a grip full of fire. The grinders who hold nothing
back, like Jaws leaping over the Lyon 25, like Stefan Babcock blowing out his vocal chords
singing punk songs in the band PUP, like those kids in the Sandlot
who knew they had one summer to live it up before everyone moved away. "CANNONBALL!" This one’s for those who go all-in. This is the story of Red Deck Wins. It all started with a daydream. Back in 1994, Jay Schneider
was sitting in a linear algebra class at Georgia State University. But his mind was elsewhere, wandering, thinking
about Magic… “I was at Georgia State taking a linear algebra class…this is
of course in my lab, while I’m supposed to
be listening to my professors droning on about some sort of ‘finding the
slope of a curve in linear algebra’. But the concept was, hey, the same way you can sum the progressions under the slope
of a line in this linear algebra stuff the professor’s talking about, I could
apply this to Magic. What if I looked at the progression of mana, and what the average
mana that I would have per turn was, make a graph, then model against that a creature curve
so they lined up one-to-one, that I could then have this
curve of creatures that lined up with the curve of mana that the deck generates. And, as long as I know what
the curve of mana is, I know what creatures and spells to put in the deck. Suddenly there was this concept, you know, sort
of this mana curve, and I was like 'wow, that’s a good
term for it, I’ll call it the mana curve.'” In 1996, Schneider built a deck for his best friend Paul Sligh that applied the mana curve theory to its design. Sligh took it to a Pro Tour Qualifier in Atlanta
and walked out with second place. The deck surprised everyone in the room; even the
tournament organizer remarked that “up till now, I still don’t understand how
this deck got as far as it did, but it did. The math worked out, I guess!" Sligh’s name spread like wildfire through
the tournament scene. He became synonymous with this goofy looking,
61 card mono red deck, which leveraged cheap
creatures and direct damage to control the board. Even though Jay Schneider designed the deck, it
was immortalized in Paul’s name. "It was the standard to name decks after people." The Sligh decks carved out their niche in the
meta, and with the release of Tempest, they became the most dominant strategy in the Block
Constructed format. It was here that the skeleton of the original deck took its
first major derivation in the hands of Dave Price, who shifted the play away from controlling
the board in favor of a full beatdown approach. With a pile of cheap, aggressive
creatures and a streamlined mana curve, Price won Pro Tour Los Angeles in 1998 with “Deadguy Red,” a deck of his own design. In The Duelist issue number 29, Price wrote a primer on Deadguy Red, reminding readers that
“Aggressive decks are extremely focused. Their goal is to kill opponents as quickly as possible.” He would repeat this line
three times in the write-up. The DNA of all future beatdown strategies is
right here in Price’s winning decklist. The numbers are almost comically simple: 16 basic mountains and a
playset of nearly everything else. Cursed Scroll was integral to the
deck’s win condition, but it was the creature suite that carried
the load of the damage output. Among them, Jackal Pup
is especially representitive of the deck’s ethos. With two power for one mana,
it was strong on rate, and its drawback shared
the same attitude that drew players to the Red decks in the first place: that is, winning will hurt, but you
can’t make omelettes without cracking some eggs. At the turn of the century, the
aggressive red decks soldified their place in competitive Magic and embraced a new
nickname that has endured in the decades since. Red Deck Wins, originally designed by John
Ormerod, was made famous by Dan Paskins at the 2000 English National Championship. With a more even distribution between creatures and spells, this deck provided another variant to the Sligh archetype. Cards like Arc Lightning and Shock gave pilots
choice in targets between creatures and opponents, and Hammer of Bogardan and Ghitu Encampment
afforded the deck some late-game inevitability. With the inclusion of 3 Pillages, this
deck could also destroy opponents’ lands, a strategy called ‘Ponza’ that would shoot
off as another branch of the Sligh tree. Four years later, another unexpected red
deck took Top 8 of Pro Tour Columbus in Extended with a list that resembled Paskins’ build. Against a field of complex combo decks and fancy blue instants, Shuhei Nakamura registered 25 one drops. This all but guaranteed a first turn play in every single game. Red Deck Wins has no time to waste: it fires on all cylinders when its basic mountains enter the battlefield tapped. The same is true of its creatures. As Michael Flores famously noted, the theoretically ideal red deck of 40 bolts and 20 mountains
needs four turns to kill you dead. Four turns. “It’s time to begin. The finals here of our Standard Open in Las Vegas.” Keith Selden on the left here hopes to get to turn 4 alive. He’s piloting a blue-white control deck that stabilizes at four mana with a timely Supreme Verdict. But Kevin Rand’s mountains are entering the battlefield tapped. He’s going all-in for turn 4, racing to beat the board wipe. “You gotta be a little quicker to the ground than that! This is a Rakdos Cackler. It’s gonna be unleashed, so a 2/2 right away. Elspeth is not the ideal draw.” Turn two. Selden plays Mutavault and passes. Rand attacks with Cackler, then chains together
two Burning-Tree Emissarys into a Firefist Striker. “Burning-Tree Emissary...Oh boy…and Kevin’s draw’s not shabby!” Turn three, Selden plays Banishing Light to remove one of the red creatures, then passes back to Rand, who
immediately starts counting. “We see Rand doing the Math... When you see Red Guy tapping the table like
that, it’s not a good sign. You’re dead! Not a good sign.” With an all-out attack and a Bloodrushed
Rubblebelt Maaka, Selden’s life total is cut clean in half. Rand then passes the turn. He’s aware of a potential sweeper, which is exactly what
Selden draws in Supreme Verdict. But he has no Islands to cast it, so he passes back to the Red Deck. Rand taps two mountains for Ash Zealot
and all the creatures turn sideways. “And I think this is a lock. Titan’s Strength, that is it,
Kevin Rand wins game number one! in very impression fashion over Keith Selden." Four turns. Game two went exactly as
long, the magic number for the red deck. “That’s a Shock, and that is gonna
do it. Mono Red Aggro in the hands of Kevin Rand is gonna defeat Keith Selden.
And it’s a three-peat for the Mountains!” Another prototypical feature of the ideal Red
Deck is its cost. Not only do the creatures and spells run a low rate on mana, but most
of the cards can be found leftover at draft tables and in bargain bins at the local game
store. Tom Ross the Boss proved that sometimes you can’t buy wins with expensive cardboard. As they say, all that glitters is not gold. “Five damage comes across for Ross, Bertoncini’s
gonna take the draw, looks like it was a copy of Xenagos. He’s got a lot of, you know, expensive cards in his hand, they’re worth a lot of value in dollars, but they’re not gonna get the job done against Ross’ sock full of pennies! The sock full of pennies, the garbage bag full
of batteries beatdown that Tom Ross is bringing to the
table here, just awesome stuff.” Tom Ross took this pile of draft chaff to
the SCG Invitational in the summer of 2014. He named the deck after Paul Sligh and built
it by following much the same principles: 17 basic mountains, 31 one drops, 26 creatures:
60 bucks and a spot in the finals. I love this moment in game 3, when Ross drops three Legion
Loyalists into his own Eidolon of the Great Revel. "Tom’s going to six himself. Gosh, you gotta love that.” Like omelettes and eggs, Red Deck Wins when
the life totals go down, their own included. After a hammering in game 2 of the finals, Tom let the Boss Sligh deck rip in games
3 and 4. You know how this one ends. “Madcap Skills, swing for five, and
he’s gonna go for a kill it’s Rubblebelt Maaka, and the Titan’s Strength for the overkill.
Tom Ross – a sea of commons! Madcap Skills, Titan Strength, Rubblebelt Maaka, 45 cents!” Providing the colorful commentary on this
match is another legendary pilot of mono red. Patrick Sullivan is renown for his skillful
play with decks running Basic Mountain, perhaps best exemplified in this match against
Ross Merriam from the 2012 Legacy Open. After a clean back and forth, the players
head into game 3, where Merriam has a commanding board presence against Sullivan’s
Grim Lavamancer and an active Sulfuric Vortex. In this spot, Merriam is also
winning the life total race. “Patrick’s between a rock and a hard
place here. The knight…threatening lethal.” After a think, Sullivan goes all-in on the
gutsiest line, one that only pays off if Merriam makes even the tiniest of errors. Patrick starts by casting Chain Lightning on Ethersworn Cannonist,
which will let him play more than one spell on his turn. Then, he cracks a Scalding Tarn, going to
five, and taps two for Flame Rift, which deals 4 damage to each player. This puts Patrick at one life. But one is not none. “'Flame Rift'. Gutsy…I like that…Patrick
Sullivan is nothing if not gutsy.” Patrick passes the turn back, but on his end step,
Merriam has a response. Blink and you’ll miss it. "Flame Rift, Flame Rift." “Wow! Oh my god! Unbelievable! Unbelievable! That is how you play a red deck.” Merriam here taps Wasteland and activates
Qasali Pridemage to destroy Sulfuric Vortex. In response, Sullivan taps two
Mountains to cast Price of Progress, which deals two damage to each player
for each nonbasic land they control. Ross has three nonbasics in play, so he takes six. But he’s at nine life, so Sullivan follows up with Fireblast, which he casts by sacrificing
two Mountains instead of paying six mana. This deals four damage to Ross, killing him on
the spot, and leaving him in total disbelief. “Patrick Sullivan. That is how you play a red deck! You wanna know how to play a red deck? Study that game. Watch that game, once a day, until you know
how to play a red deck.” The ability to steal a game out of nowhere
is another wonderful attribute of a red deck with reach. Playing against these decks is nerve-wracking due to this ability to punish any player who even slightly overextends their advantage. A pair of untapped Mountains can sometimes be more threatening than their Island
counterparts, as Sullivan proved in this match. Wyatt Darby certainly knows all about
stealing victories with Red Deck Wins. In Game 5 of the Finals of Pro Tour Dominaria,
with 50 grand on the line and his back against the wall, Darby defied the advantage bar
with a topdeck that rivaled the legendary Lightning Helix in the hands of Craig Jones. By all measures, Gonçalo Pinto had his win secured, if not for the aptly-named Glorybringer that Darby peeled off the top of his library. “He’s gonna put him to one. Wyatt Darby
has to find an answer for that thopter this draw step or we are done here…was that a Glorybringer?!
It’s a Glorybringer. Oh my goodness.” Who says you have to be at Fenway to watch the fireworks? Listen as LSV and Paul Cheon do the quick math. “…He blocks Hazoret he takes seven,
eight, nine, ten, eleven. Are you serious?! Glorybringer kills Chainwhirler. That's eleven! Five...Hazoret gets blocked, Kari Zev is 3, Soul Scar Mage is 1, Chainwhirler is 3, Glorybringer's 4. That's 11 damage! Glorybringer off the top for Wyatt
Darby, he’s done the math…he sends it in, clears the Chainwhirler, all Pinto can do is look at
lethal damage, he can’t believe that Wyatt Darby just stole the Pro Tour from him!” Gonçalo Pinto here is experiencing what
we in the business call Tough Beats. He, too, was playing a red-based aggro
deck, and despite its catchy moniker, there are nonetheless many
matches that Red Deck Loses. Sometimes, when you go all-in, the other guy
has the nuts, and the glass cannon shatters. "Yeah, so, I just got back from the doctor who said I just tore my ACL, it's completely torn. And it's going to take about 6-8 months to heal." In the 2019 Mythic Championship, Lee Shi Tian ran into a brick wall
of midrange value in both his games in round 4. Knowing nothing about these cards, it’s still
plain to see how far behind the mono red deck is, how turn four came and went with a blur, how
little reach is left when Javier Dominguez has nine fancy lands and three wordy creatures with
dice on top of them in play. A quick snapshot of the second feature match in this round between
Luis Salvatto and Tomoharu Saito paints much the same dismal picture. Red Deck Loses when your
opponents bring paper and you’re throwing rock. "All of that hard work from Saito completely reversed by these two elementals that are just getting bigger and bigger here. There's the handshake. Luis Salvatto picking up the win there." But there is perhaps no worse feeling than dying
by the sword you carry. In general, there are only two zones that matter to a red deck player:
the battlefield, and the graveyard. The red deck argues that the cards in your hand are wasting
away in a purgatory of rotting potential energy, that life happens in the red zone and
death is the byproduct of time well spent, that cards on the table are worth
way more than those in the grip. Nobody knows worse than Yam Wing Chun just how
important an empty hand is to Red Deck Wins. In the semifinals of Pro Tour Hour of Devastation,
Chun squared off against a titan of competitive Magic: Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa. Each player was
piloting a monster of a deck called Ramunap Red, which was among the most powerful iterations of a
Paul Sligh beatdown ever seen at the top tables. This deck won with creatures, with burn spells,
with Planeswalkers: it won early and it won late, due in part to its namesake card. Ramunap Ruins gave red another axis of attack never seen before,
and it was banned in Standard six months after the conclusion of this tournament. In the mirror match, though, another
card in the deck often proved decisive. “But of course, anything can change, as
we’ve seen in previous matches, if somebody draws a Hazoret." Game 1 went to Paulo, and game 2 ended just
as decisively with an active Hazoret in play. Facing elimination in game 3, Chun
clawed his way back to victory by doing what Red’s done best for
almost 30 years and counting. “Oh here we go, classic
mono red strategies: 3 to the dome!” Game 4 played into the midrange
strengths of this deck, ending with an Eternalized Earthshaker Khenra
bearing a beefy four toughness and a timely Collective Defiance to remove Paulo’s
only blocker. So onto game 5 we went, anxious to see the comeback kid live the dream
and topple a Magic god for a spot in the finals. And it was looking good. “Yam Wing Chun drew one of the
more important cards in the matchup here: Hazoret the Fervent sitting his hand.” After a few trades of creatures and burn spells,
we arrive at the most pivotal moment of the match. Chun casts Hazoret and faces a crossroads: with only 8 life, and Paulo at 16, he must
decide between playing defense and racing. “Oh, is it getting in there? He’s
shaking his head, he can’t decide, it’s such a close decision! Just kidding just kidding. He’s
looking at Hazoret saying ‘what would you do?’” Then…Chun goes all-in. “And he is gonna attack! Hazoret the Fervent his
the red zone, off to the races!” The turn goes back to Paulo, who follows
his main line and chips Chun down to four. Now, everything is lethal, which means Chun’s
only out is an Incendiary Flow from the top of the deck. Together with an attack from
Hazoret and a Collective Defiance to the face, he’ll have exactly 11 damage to kill Paulo and go
on to the finals. On his draw step, Chun finds… “Incendiary Flow. Is it a Flow?
'Let's see what he's got!'
It’s a Flow! it is a Flow!…” The crowd and the advantage bar go
wild, that’s lethal, the dream is real! Down goes Paulo! But just as quickly, Chun
moves to combat and everything disintegrates. “And look at this-No no, you can’t
attack, you can’t attack! He has two cards in hand! Is he in his combat step? What’s going
on? That cost him the game!” Sometimes, the omelette comes together, but you
drop it on the way back to the dining room table. Magic is a game of minute details and
micro advantages; in his excitement, Chun overlooked the critical line of text on
Hazoret that says it can’t attack or block unless you have one or fewer cards in hand. Once again,
the hand of Red Deck Wins is a purgatory of rot: either you play your cards or die holding the hot
potato. Chun lost this game a few turns later. When I was younger, I didn’t respect the red deck.
I used to think it was cheap, dumb, simplistic. But the older I get, the
more I understand those who play with fire, who burn out in a vibrant and explosive
finale as sulfur hangs in the warm summer air. Red Deck Wins with alacrity and tact,
with clever play and perfect timing, with cheap creatures printed on cheap cardboard
and a hasty dragon flying in from the topdeck. Red Deck Wins when everything
comes into play tapped, when you do the math on the table, when you turn
all your dudes sideways and the board is a mess and it’s backed up by a fiery range of basic
mountains. "There's the block.." Red Deck Wins when you go all-in. "There's the match! Joel Larson is the champion of
Pro Tour Magic Origins and he is super stoked to that!" On a gray Monday morning in October 2015,
Aaron Homoki stared down a flight of 25 stairs. After bargaining with security, the French police
gave him exactly one hour to ollie the set: it’s now or never, do or die. His dad was there, a contractor, who knew the height and length of stairs
in blueprints and in builder’s codes, but never from the top of a skateboard. After 12 tries and 12 slams, Jaws rolled down the ledge for lucky 13 and went all-in. This episode was sponsored by Card Kingdom and Coalesce Apparel and Design. Pick up some mono red heaters in the Card Kingdom store to support the show, then head to Coalesce for a shirt and a sticker. It was also sponsored by Nord VPN: protect and secure your digital devices with Nord VPN by using the link below.
