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An archetype pretty much as old asMagic: The Gatheringitself, Mono-Red Aggro or “Burn” as it’s sometimes called in older formats, is a reliable deck build that performs well in nearly every Standard metagame. This deck is known for producing extremely fast starts that are capable of ending a game within the first five or six turns. It’s often joked that players who don’t wish to play Magic ought to sleeve up Mono-Red.
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Arena players in particular can use this deck to crank out a lot of games in a little amount of time, allowing you to climb the online ladder more quickly. While Mono-Red is usually at its best at the beginning of a format when players are trying to figure out what works, some iterations of the deck end up being so powerful that they perform long afterwards. Let’s take a look at one such build.
3 Sword of Once and Future
4 Play with Fire
4 End the Fesitivities
Key Cards
Kumano Faces Kakkazan
Traditionally, Mono-Red decks always want tostart the game by sticking a creature that can provide pressure turn after turn. However, Kumano Faces Kakkazan is an enchantment that does exactly this and more by turning into a creature itself later in the game.
Kumano Faces Kakkazan is your best turn one play and starting hands that feature this card will be noticeably stronger than those that don’t.
The extra counter that this enchantment provides a creature on the following turn makes it so that many ofyour early threats become immune to removal like Cut Down, and too big to be traded off by opposing blockers. Additionally, the exile clause on Etching of Kumano is surprisingly relevant in a lot of matchups.
Monastery Swiftspear / Khenra Spellspear
These two prowess creatures go a long way towards giving you just enough pressure to finish off your opponent before they can climb their way back into the game with higher mana value plays. Prowess triggers essentiallyturn your burn and removal spells into cards that deal one additional damage to the opponent, and this damage adds up very quickly.
Spellspear in particular is a great card to have in any hand where you’re forced to mulligandown to six or five cards as when it’s transformed it becomes an absolute powerhouse thanks to trample, double prowess, and ward 2. A good rule of thumb is toget your prowess creatures down before you start casting burn spells and removal.
Phoenix Chick / Bloodfeather Phoenix
These two threats provide the deck with somemuch needed evasionin the form of theflyingkeyword. They also allow for somerecursionthanks to their activated abilities. Flying is particularly good when paired with the equipment cardSword of Once and Futurebut more on that in a moment.
It’s important to consider that you can use Bloodfeather Phoenix’s trigger at the end of an opponent’s turn if need be in cases where you expect your opponent has sorcery speed removal in hand. \
One instance of instant or sorcery damage can bring back multiple Phoenix’s from your graveyard, so keep that in mind.
Play with Fire / Lightning Strike
Here are theclassic burn spellsfor which Mono-Red Aggro is known. Shock has been upgraded to Play with Fire which has the added benefit of allowing for a scry if you target your opponent’s life total. This can be especially useful if you really need to draw into a spell asyou can cast Play with Fire on your upkeep after your lands untap to give you a look at the card you’re about to draw for the turn.
These cards arebest used as that extra bit of reach to finish off an opponent’s life total, but they also work asremovalin a pinch.Knowing when to use them as burn and when to use them as removalis a key component of playing Mono-Red Aggro at its best.
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Nahiri’s Warcrafting
This is a removal spell that you typically wouldn’t see included in a Mono-Red Aggro list. However,it’s a necessity in this format due to the prevalence of Sheoldred, the Apocalypse. Due to her lifegain triggers, a Sheoldred that sticks against you is almost always unbeatable. Nahiri’s Warcrafting makes it possible to beat Sheoldred before sideboarding.
You can alsouse this removal spell in more creative ways by casting it on a low-toughness creature to set up your next spell. Of course, this is assuming you have enough mana to cast another spell.
Sword of Once and Future
Speaking of beating Sheoldred, Sword of Once and Future is a recent addition to Mono-Red Aggro builds that hasallowed this deck to stay dominant despite a number of cards in the metagame that have incidental life gain.
Protection from black and blue makes it so that your creatures can attack through a large number ofthe popular creaturesbeing played currently includingSheoldred, the Apocalypse / Graveyard Trespasser / Atraxa, Grand Unifier / Haughty Djinn /and more.
Even if your opponent isn’t on blue or black,your flying creatures are perfect to equip with the sword thanks to their built-in evasion. The value that this card provides is hard to understate as the surveil triggersets up your future draws, you gain a nice power boost for added pressure, and you get torecast one of your burn spellsfrom your graveyard.
The surveil trigger on Sword of Once and Future can be used to place a burn or removal spell into your graveyard for the Sword’s recast trigger if you don’t have one there already.
How To Play Mono-Red Aggro
The name of the game here is toreduce your opponent’s life total to zero as quickly as possible. A large amount of the strength of Mono-Red comes from the fact thatending a game early essentially blanks the high mana value cards in an opponent’s deck.
If you don’t end the game fast enough, you will almost inevitably lose to the value that the opponent’s larger cards present.
In general, you want tounload all of your creatures onto the board and then clear the way for their attacks by using removalto take care of any blockers your opponent plays. It’s important to also watch for opportunities where you may both clear the way for your attacks and develop your own board at the same time. Thanks to the extremely low cost of your spells,it’s possible to do this as early as turn two.
Don’t be afraid to lose some creatures to a blocker if it allows your other creatures to get in for damage that would reduce an opponent’s life total to five or six. Unlike other decks where you want to build a better board than your opponent,the creatures in Mono-Red only serve to reduce the opponent’s life total.
Five or six is the magic life total number you’re looking for as once an opponent’s life total becomes this low, you’re able to often rely on finishing them off with burn spells and evasive threats from the top of your library.
Another strength of this archetype is that once you’ve gotten an opponent’s life total low enough, you canhold your creatures back as blockers to buy time for you to topdeck a burn spellthat will win you the game. Your own unassailed life total is yet another resource you can leverage in order to give yourself the opportunity of drawing thoseprecious final few points of damage.
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As long as you have some creatures on the battlefield, it will often be hard for your opponent to pressure you and defend themselves. Consequently,don’t be afraid to take a huge hit from an opposing creature if it gives you the opportunity to topdeck a hasty creaturethat allows your board to go wider than the blockers the opponent is representing.
As far as sideboarding goes, Mono-Red Aggro thankfully has one of the most intuitive sideboards in the game.
End the Festivitiescomes in against decks that have a lot of creatures with one toughness,Lithomantic Barragecomes in against decks playing white and blue creatures,Furnace Punisheris an extremely effective threat against any deck without many basic lands, andKoth, Fire of Resistanceprovides that extra bit of reach in matchups such as the mirror as well as those where your opponent has a lot of lifegain.
Typically, you’ll want toexchange these cards for the threats or removal that doesn’t line up wellagainst your opponent. This usually means taking outPlay with FireorPhoenix Chick.Sword of Once and Futureshould also be taken out if your opponent isn’t playing black or blue creatures.
Mono-Red Aggro may have a reputation as a “novice deck” among many Magic players, but there’s really no better place to start your journey into competitive Magic. Mono-Red will teach you the fundamentals ofidentifying who’s the beatdown, resource management, and playing to your outsbetter than any other deck out there.
Additionally, you’ll be able to churn through a lot of games in record time, further expediting your training process.
You may even find thatthis type of deckis the way you prefer to play Magic. After all,aggro is a pillar of the Magic metagameand one that prevents those pesky control players from having their way with the field. It might be a dirty job at times, and you’ll probably get flak from other players on occasion for playing aggro. But, hey, somebody’s gotta do it. Stay topdecking.
