Against the Odds: Red Deck Wins...By Not Letting You Play (Timeless)
Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Against the Odds! If you know me, you might already know that Mono-Red Prison is my all-time favorite deck. We used to play it a ton in Modern, but sadly, it's not very good in the format anymore. Thankfully, we just got some really powerful new prison pieces on Magic Arena, which means it's finally time to bring Mono-Red Prison to Timeless and teach some Arena Zoomers about the archetype! What are the odds of winning with Blood Moon, Strip Mine, Chalice of the Void, and friends in Timeless? How many Zoomers can we lock out of the game in frustration? Let's get to the video and find out!
Against the Odds: Mono-Red Prison
The Deck
Our deck today is built around three iconic prison pieces, all of which can win games all by themselves in the right matchups. First, we have Magus of the Moon and Blood Moon to turn all non-basic lands into Mountains, which, assuming we can get them down fast enough, can pick up free wins by color-screwing our opponent. Chalice of the Void, on the other hand, is funny. Traditionally, the idea of Chalice is to set it on one to counter all one-drops, but in Timeless, a Chalice on zero is also incredibly strong against some decks because Chrome Mox and Mox Opal are super popular. Speaking of the Moxen, they are also annoying for our Blood Moon plan since they give decks a way to make colored mana even through a Blood Moon. But we've got a plan for that too...
Karn, the Great Creator is in the deck to tutor silver bullet artifacts from our sideboard. But the more I play with the deck, the more I've begun to consider Karn another prison piece thanks to its static ability keeping our opponent from activating the abilities on artifacts. Because of the Moxen's popularity, Karn is actually incredibly important in some matchups. We're in rough shape if we dump our hand to play a fast Blood Moon only to have our opponent drop a couple of Moxen, unless we have a Karn to lock down the Moxen. It also shuts down The One Ring, which is pretty popular in Timeless as well. Oh yeah, and we can also use Karn to snag graveyard hate, Pithing Needle, land destruction (in Liquimetal Coating), combo hate (The Stone Brain), or even a finisher like Wurmcoil Engine from our sideboard.
Of course, we need to get our prison pieces on the battlefield quickly for any of them to matter, ideally on Turn 1, which means we have a pretty unique mana base. First, we have Ancient Tomb, which is the most straightforward way to play a prison piece on Turn 1. A single Ancient Tomb by itself gives us a Turn 1 Chalice of the Void, and if we add in a single Mox, we can cast a Turn 1 Blood Moon. (More on this in a minute.) Meanwhile, Strip Mine might look funny in a Blood Moon deck since we can't Strip Mine if we have Blood Moon, but it's actually pretty great. If we don't have Blood Moon, we can use Strip Mine to pick off our opponent's basics to prepare for a Blood Moon, and if we do have Blood Moon, our opponent's mana base will be such a mess that Strip Mine being a Mountain is still fine.
We also have two different but related Mox plans. The first is Chrome Mox with some MDFC lands, which we can exile to turn it on.
The second is more interesting: Mox Opal. As I was digging to find another source of fast mana since Simian Spirit Guide doesn't exist on Arena, I realized that we might be able to use the new-to-Arena Mox Opal with some sneaky deckbuilding. We need three artifacts to turn on Mox Opal, and we've already got Chalice of the Void and Chrome Mox (along with some more expensive artifacts and whatever we can tutor up with Karn), which isn't quite enough to make Mox Opal mana consistently. But by adding Great Furnace as an artifact land, we can increase our odds of turning on Mox Opal as early as Turn 1.
Together, these cards give us multiple pathways to playing a Turn 1 Blood Moon or Magus of the Moon. And if we get really lucky, we can even drop something like The One Ring or Karn, the Great Creator on Turn 1!
We also have some powerful card-filtering three-drops, which are super important to the deck since they give us a way to filter away dead prison pieces for new cards. Occasionally, we need to play a Chalice of the Void on zero to shut down our opponent's deck, which means any future Moxen we draw do nothing. Fable of the Mirror-Breaker and Tersa Lightshatter let us rummage them away for new cards. Meanwhile, Laelia, the Blade Reforged gives us a hasty beater that also generates card advantage with its impulse draw when it attacks.
We also have some removal creatures that double up as finishers. Bonecrusher Giant's just a one-of, but it can snipe a creature early in the game and leaves behind a decent-sized body later. It also gives us an out to The One Ring by shutting off its protection. Fury is an absurd card against creature decks. In the early game, we can evoke it as removal; later, it offers a big 3/3 double-strike body. Finally, we have Pyrogoyf, which was just added to Arena and is actually a trick from Legacy Mono-Red Stompy. The four-mana Tarmogoyf deals damage equal to its power to any target when it enters, which is typically five or six, making it a great removal spell that can also hit face. And if we ever draw multiples, we're likely to just burn our opponent out of the game altogether.
Last but certainly not least, we have The One Ring, which is insane in the deck. We've got so many Moxen and so much fast mana (and we mulligan pretty aggressively) that we often dump our hand very quickly. The One Ring gives us a way to refuel; plus, the protection it offers when it enters can get us out of some sticky situations. Additionally, thanks to our fast mana, we often can cast The One Ring by Turn 2, which is super strong. It is worth mentioning that we're only playing three copies in the main deck since we have the fourth copy in the sideboard for Karn, the Great Creator to tutor up.
Wrap-Up
First off, did I mention that I love playing this deck? It's such an amazing feeling to lock someone out of the game with Chalice, Blood Moon, and now Strip Mine. I'm also really loving Timeless right now because it seems like every other match is some sort of resource-denial Strip Mine matchup, which is my favorite way to play Magic. Not only did we get a flawless victory with the deck, but we also got a (mostly) reverse flawless victory, winning a game with zero lands in play!
The deck also felt really strong. While I don't have the exact record because my tracker has been bugging out for some reason, we hit Mythic with the deck after starting in the middle of Diamond. The deck felt like it had answers for pretty much everything (outside of big creatures like Barrowgoyf, which might mean adding Dismember to the sideboard could be worth it) and gets off to some hilariously broken starts. If you like making your opponents not play Magic and dropping broken lock pieces on Turn 1, give Timeless Mono-Red Prison a try!
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today. As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
