I confess that, prior to starting work on this article, I hadn't logged onto MTG Arena in weeks. Don't get me wrong! I'm just like everyone else - I love Arena - I just hadn't played in a while. MTGO, weirdly, more. Paper Magic? I was capping off my birthday night with a limping 1-2 at FNM! You take my meaning, I'm sure.

But I went back to Arena for a pretty specific reason:

Edge.

As in, could I find an edge?

Let's take a moment and look at the top performing Red Deck of the larger Standard format:

Gruul Aggro | Allegiance Standard | Alex Majlaton, Top 8 Mythic Championship I

• Creatures (19)
• 3 Goblin Chainwhirler
• 4 Fanatical Firebrand
• 4 Ghitu Lavarunner
• 4 Runaway Steam-Kin
• 4 Viashino Pyromancer

• Instants (12)
• 4 Lightning Strike
• 4 Shock
• 4 Wizard's Lightning

• Sorceries (4)
• 4 Light Up the Stage

• Enchantments (4)
• 4 Experimental Frenzy

• Lands (21)
• 13 Mountain
• 4 Rootbound Crag
• 4 Stomping Ground

• Sideboard (15)
• 1 Goblin Chainwhirler
• 4 Lava Coil
• 4 Cindervines
• 3 Collision // Colossus
• 2 Treasure Map
• 1 Dire Fleet Daredevil

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Notice anything?

Majlaton played eight Green-producing lands... But had no Green spells in his main deck!

You can start off with double Rootbound Crag in this deck and get very stuck for the first couple of turns. You can be forced to Shock yourself repeatedly with Stomping Ground in the mirror, losing the game by a veritable paper cut.

But in best-of-one? There just isn't any reason to corrupt your mana base!

If we start with the premise that...

1. Red is a plausible deck to play,
2. That we can make it even better by removing the Green lands - specifically for best-of-one,
3. Then add in that Mono-Blue (a generally good matchup) is a popular performer,
4. And Nexus of Fate is completely out of the format.

... You get a little edge. If the Red Deck is a 7/10 in regular Standard, I almost feel like these variables might make it a 9/10.

But what is the proper Red Deck?

I started on this build:

Hive Mind Red | Allegiance Standard | Michael Flores

• Creatures (20)
• 4 Fanatical Firebrand
• 4 Ghitu Lavarunner
• 4 Goblin Chainwhirler
• 4 Runaway Steam-Kin
• 4 Viashino Pyromancer

• Instants (12)
• 4 Lightning Strike
• 4 Shock
• 4 Wizard's Lightning

• Sorceries (8)
• 4 Light Up the Stage
• 4 Skewer the Critics

• Enchantments (1)
• 1 The Flame of Keld

• Lands (19)
• 19 Mountain

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This is essentially what I've previously called Hive Mind Red.

It started with the core 60 of the pre-Ravnica Allegiance, and exchanged the expensive cards - Rekindling Phoenix and Experimental Frenzy - for the new Spectacle cards.

A wildly lower curve (coming from the removal of all the 4-drops) lets you shave a bunch of lands; and Arena's land-smoothing feature even makes room for a solo The Flame of Keld.

The most important chess piece in this build is Fanatical Firebrand. That probably seems weird because the Firebrand was the weakest creature in the previous version; you would very typically side it out either due to small offense or a high vulnerability to Goblin Chainwhirler for cards like Treasure Map. But in Best-of-One you really want this card because it is literally the strongest early enabler for Skewer the Critics and especially Light Up the Stage.

Okay... So how did Hive Mind Red do?

I felt like I was just getting my feet wet, so after my initial 5-5... I just went right back for another ten-set.

It's like the old saying goes: When the data supports your theory, you accept the data... But when it doesn't you ask to go and get more data.

I just didn't think that 5-5 was representative of Red Deck, or certainly my ability with Red Deck (especially starting out in the Bronze Tier).

On one hand there were outliers. I didn't recognize the Bant Prime Speaker deck; and I certainly wasn't prepared for his ability to go and search up a Lyra Dawnbringer. As often feels like the case my wins were blowouts and my losses were just unlucky.

Okay... Second set! How did we do?

5-5 Again? Not even.

At some point maybe you have to step back and say "Maybe this is a 5-5 deck, MichaelJ" and just move on.

And on the subject of data validating initial hypotheses... Three losses to Mono-Blue? Jeez.

But before we do that! Some observations...

The Hive Mind Red Deck really lacks staying power. It can get the jump on an opponent due to its largely low curve but if it gets stuck in an attrition situation (or a Control-type deck starts to establish its card advantage engines) it will not likely recover.

The Flame of Keld was great! I don't know if you can afford to play more than the one copy, but it was dynamic almost every time I played it. The interplay between this card and Light Up the Stage is actually pretty cool. You can keep your Light Up the Stage cards set aside, so you get a virtual hand, even if you have to discard your real one.

I moved on to:

Frenzy Red | Allegiance Standard | Michael Flores

• Creatures (19)
• 3 Goblin Chainwhirler
• 4 Fanatical Firebrand
• 4 Ghitu Lavarunner
• 4 Runaway Steam-Kin
• 4 Viashino Pyromancer

• Instants (12)
• 4 Lightning Strike
• 4 Shock
• 4 Wizard's Lightning

• Sorceries (4)
• 4 Light Up the Stage

• Enchantments (4)
• 4 Experimental Frenzy

• Lands (21)
• 21 Mountain

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With a trio of Goblin Chainwhirlers that can make a religious Red Deck mage's eyes bleed, this build is essentially the Majlaton with 21 Mountains.

Fanatical Firebrand is still important in this build but a little less so because there is no Skewer the Critics. But because the deck returns Experimental Frenzy (and its four casting cost) to the sixty, hitting land drops for this 21-Mountain deck has to be prioritized. turn one Fanatical Firebrand (or Ghitu Lavarunner) to set up second turn Light Up the Stage is one of the most important opening sequences available.

The play is somewhat non-intuitive. You will want to attack - without first playing an additional Mountain - in case you flip over a Mountain (or two) with Light Up the Stage. It really only matters if you get two Mountains or a Mountain and another Light Up the Stage (which can in turn flip over another Mountain or two).

How did this version do?

6-4?

A little disappointing but an improvement on the previous two sets for sure.

I have to admit I was pretty high beating Sultai and Golgari Explore decks in my third and fourth matches. That Orzhov deck drew double Bell-Haunt and was essentially unbeatable. If you want to beat aggressive decks, Bell-Haunt midrange seems like a great path. Not only was I forced to discard a Shock when it entered the battlefield, I spent six points of burn getting it out of the way so I could swing in for five. That was an eight life-point swing not even counting its own life gain! I was therefore wholly out of fuel when the second one hit; and The Eldest Reborn follow-up four-to-five was perfect. The Eldest Reborn is a strong card in general, but after beating up the opponent's hand with a Bell-Haunt? The Eldest Reborn is not only more likely to hit something that matters... If you've left the opponent with a bunch of stuff like Fanatical Firebrand and Viashino Pyromancer, resurrecting Goblin Chainwhirler just makes the opponent look silly.

Ditto on the Selesnya one. He basically went March of the Multitudes into Trostani Discordant and that was that: It's these games where you really miss access to your sideboard. The Red Deck just doesn't have the tools main to deal with a hundred small (but lifelinking) creatures going wide, or, um, 4 toughness creatures at all.

So I decided to "get more data" yet again. Partially because the Frenzy deck did well for me and I figured I could get its win rate up; partially because I really do love playing the Red Deck and was having fun.

Redux

With a blazing 5-0 start I was more than a little disappointed to finish up 6-4 in the second Frenzy set. The first loss came when I paid for Risk Factor twice. He put me to three and then drew a Wizard's Lightning, dead on board. I have to say all these losses to Mono-Blue after the first set were pretty disorienting. Who are these people? Autumn Burchett? How are there enough Tempest Djinns in the world for them all to be drawing three every best-of-one game?

What I really learned was that the individual stories in best-of-one just aren't as interesting. In a way playing forty games of my favorite archetype (archetypes? I'm not even sure) felt less satisfying than the 4-12 contests I might contend on a Friday night. I think one of my strengths as a player is in building sideboards... And those just don't exist in this Brave New World.

Can we do better than a solid 60%?

Even if we could, I think it'd be hard to make consistent.

There are some other possibilities. One might be to swap Goblin Chainwhirler and Experimental Frenzy 4:3 rather than 3:4... And another might be - gasp - playing four of everything in reliance of Arena's land smoothing openers! Last - and I've encountered this more than once - might be to play some sideboard cards in a kind of metagame nod: Lava Coils or Dire Fleet Daredevils are both options.

One thing I'm pretty confident about is that Mono-Red is going to stay strong come the rotations. It's already one of the best set up types of decks against Planeswalkers. And given thirty-six Planeswalkers?

Wouldn't mind getting to cast one of these, again:

LOVE

MIKE