Modern Mayhem: Free Win Red! (Modern, Magic Online)
We've got a beautiful view this episode because we've got an early Blood Moon!
Gameplan
This deck has some sweet 3 drops to drop early on the board that can get you...well....free wins!
It's not hard to get these cards early as we play Simian Spirit Guide and a bunch of Desperate Ritual! Even getting these cards one turn three can be a savage beating for some opponents. Blood Moon will lock the decks with greedy mana bases out. Goblin Rabblemaster can run wild on your opponent if they don't interact with us. Ensnaring Bridge is what keeps our opponent's forces at bay after we've dumped our hand.
We don't need to do much with these two. Chandra can just use her +1 to deal 2 damage while also digging through our decks for more prison-like cards. She can also serve as a way to ramp our Stormbreath Dragon to Monstrosity and burn our opponents even more! Chandra can also serve as a removal spell with her -3. Lastly, her ultimate is quite going to give us a Lava Axe with every spell we cast so it'll be quite easy to close out a game after that.
Hazoret, the Fervent is a nice indestructible threat that will also help us keep our hand size low so things can't slip through our Ensnaring Bridge and can burn our opponent for two. Even though Hazoret won't be attacking through a bridge, she's still a powerhouse for her activated ability.
We can control the board with our removal suit
These cards will help us stabilize and clear boards in the event that our Ensnaring Bridge gets blown up. Abrade will be huge as that will help us a ton against Affinity and help us blow up Amulet of Vigor so an opponent doesn't go too wild with their bounce lands.
Match Recaps:
Jeskai Control 0-2 (L): We got demolished. Plain and simple. We don't have tons of ways to generate card advantage in this deck so when they start countering our few bombs and then slam a Teferi, Hero of Dominaria or Search for Azcanta we're in a lot of trouble. They also played around Blood Moon early and they did it very well so nice!
Mono Red Phoenix 2-1 (W): We got really lucky game 1 as they didn't have any Arclight Phoenix early. We were able to just edge out with aggression from Pia and Kiran Nalaar. We lose game two due to an army of Arclight Phoenix taking flight. Game three we were able to get there just on the back of an early Hazoret, the Fervent. Hazoret was just too hard to remove outside of a Soul-Scar Mage and we dumped a chunk of our hand early so we were able to just deal 5 damage upstairs every turn.
Izzet Phoenix 1-2 (L): We got a free win game one but then got destroyed games two and three when they brought in Ancient Grudge for our Ensnaring Bridge. Phoenix and Thing in the Ice took over from there.
Titanshift 1-2(L): Although we lost this one....we got to assemble the dream of Blood Moon and Ensnaring Bridge which was all we wanted! Unfortunately, the opponent being able to easily find a Reclamation Sage from Summoner's Pact makes the deck a scary matchup even with our Blood Moon and Ensnaring Bridge. This match was just a race for time and unfortunately, we didn't find what we needed early enough
Merfolk 1-2 (L): We got an easy concession game one with an Ensnaring Bridge. We held on game two to the very end until our opponent cast Echoing Truth to seal the game after us going fishing and casting a timely Anger of the Gods off the top! They were able to just rebuild and then bounce our bridge for the win. Game three we just couldn't find any prison effects outside of our Chalice of the Void on two to keep them off their bounce effects.
Conclusion
Despite going 1-4 (I messed up in the video saying 2-3. Probably because the deck was so fun I got a moral victory somewhere along the way) the deck can do some silly things early. The deck currently suffers from no way to gain card advantage and really does rely on just landing an early lock-out effect to win the game. I had mentioned in the outro that I would like to see some black sources added so I can actually cast Leyline of the Void in case we don't have it in the opener and so we don't have to worry about having them be completely dead. By adding black we could potentially solve some way to dig through our deck and generate advantage by potentially adding Theater of Horrors or we can just stay in red and maybe try Experimental Frenzy. Maybe I'm just crazy and those cards will fall flat but I'd really like to try this list with those out of the sideboard. I still recommend this style of deck for FNM as it's hilarious, so if you're a fan of Blood Mooning people and prison style decks...take this for a spin!
Thank you for watching! See all your beautiful faces at the next one!
-TheAsianAvenger
