We’ve seen the Eldrazi make their way into the highest tiers of both Modern and Legacy competition. For all of that, we’ve seen relatively few Thought-Knot Seers and Reality Smashers in Standard. Outside of a handful of Mono-Black and Mono-Blue builds which lean heavily on the power of Ghostfire Blade, we just haven’t seen much of the Eldrazi in Standard. That’s a big part of why this Mono-Red take by BlackDocter is so exciting:

Mono-Red Eldrazi ? Oath of the Gatewatch Standard | BlackDocter, 3-1 Standard Daily Event

• Creatures (19)
• 2 Eldrazi Obligator
• 2 Hangarback Walker
• 3 Hedron Crawler
• 3 Matter Reshaper
• 3 Pia and Kiran Nalaar
• 3 Reality Smasher
• 3 Thought-Knot Seer

• Planeswalkers (3)
• 3 Chandra, Flamecaller

• Spells (12)
• 1 Fall of the Titans
• 1 Warping Wail
• 3 Fiery Impulse
• 2 Roast
• 2 Touch of the Void
• 1 Molten Vortex
• 1 Oath of Chandra
• 1 Hedron Archive

• Lands (26)
• 12 Mountain
• 1 Blighted Gorge
• 1 Sea Gate Wreckage
• 1 Tomb of the Spirit Dragon
• 2 Bloodstained Mire
• 2 Mirrorpool
• 3 Foundry of the Consuls
• 4 Shivan Reef

• Sideboard (15)
• 1 Chandra, Flamecaller
• 1 Fiery Impulse
• 2 Roast
• 1 Touch of the Void
• 1 Warping Wail
• 2 Arc Lightning
• 2 Crumble to Dust
• 3 Exquisite Firecraft
• 1 Outpost Siege
• 1 Ugin, the Spirit Dragon

Buy This Deck

This deck is effectively a Mono-Red midrange deck, featuring early Red removal as a way to keep the early game under control. This leads into Hedron Crawler and Hedron Archive as fragile ramp spells, with Matter Reshaper being an inconsistent source of mana advantage. The removal and ramp buys time to set up powerful midgame plays like Pia and Kiran Nalaar and Hangarback Walker to stall out the ground or Chandra, Flamecaller to sweep the board and begin grinding out value.

Additionally, against more controlling decks, you have access to the dynamic duo of Thought-Knot Seer and Reality Smasher, which go a long way toward stripping relevant interaction from your opponent’s hand and applying an enormous amount of pressure. This, combined with the ability of Hangarback Walker and Pia and Kiran Nalaar to grind out the last few points of damage gives the deck an enormous amount of reach and the ability to close out games surprisingly quickly.

A huge part of the power of this deck is in the addition of spell-lands which force you into a single color, but enable you to cast Eldrazi monsters. Foundry of the Consuls is awesome in attrition-based matches. Mirrorpool is potentially more powerful, functioning as a second copy of Eldrazi or of removal spells as necessary, but Foundry certainly pulls its weight as a way to generate instant speed Thopters to chip in for damage. Similarly, Tomb of the Spirit Dragon is great against more aggressive strategies given the number of Thopters this deck can produce. Sea Gate Wreckage is a reasonable way to fight against other midrange or control decks. It’s especially important to note the exact composition of the mana base can be adjusted to optimize the spell-lands against the field you expect.

This seems like a great way to play midrange in the current format. Chandra hits a sweet spot in this format, functioning as not only a sweeper, but also a card advantage engine and a way to apply pressure. The power of this card backed by the raw card advantage of Pia and Kiran and the aggressive power of Thought-Knot Seer and Reality Smasher is monstrous, especially with Eldrazi Obligator playing cleanup by stealing Siege Rhinos and the like. All told, if you’re looking for a flexible deck which takes advantage of the Eldrazi core, this seems like a great place to start.