I have a confession to make.

As much as I've been writing about playing multiple lands per turn, or blowing up the world (or one land) twenty points at a time - with and without Truefire Captain - I've just been playing boring, soulless, Mono-Red at FNM the past couple of weeks.

When I say "boring" ... I mean boring. As in, no variation from the stock sixty.

When I say "soulless" ... I mean completely without soul. I mean, when Patrick Chapin says something like "If you're 100% netdeck, you have no soul / if you're 100% brew, you have no brain" ... brainy ay eff.

My Etienne Busson's most recent pyrotechnic paramour:

Mono-Red Aggro | Guilds Standard | Etienne Busson, 1st Place GP Lille

• Creatures (22)
• 2 Rekindling Phoenix
• 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

• Enchantments (4)
• 4 Experimental Frenzy

• Lands (22)
• 22 Mountain

• Sideboard (15)
• 2 Banefire
• 3 Fiery Cannonade
• 3 Fight with Fire
• 3 Lava Coil
• 4 Treasure Map

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So what was the reason to switch to this? This list so close¹ to Etienne Busson's from Grand Prix Lille?

In fact there are eight.

1. Six-Eighths of the PT Top 8 were Some Kind of Boros Aggro

It doesn't matter how many times a writer or PT Finalist reminded us that the Top 8 was defined by stellar Limited records. The casual fan - the average FNM participant - gazes upon the Atlanta Top 8 and concludes that he should have Healer's Hawk on turn one. Or like, a Skymarcher Aspirant.

It's not that the players who did so well with their various White Weenie builds, legit Boros decks, or lifegain hybrids did anything wrong... But they were clearly short on their expectations for Mono-Red. As the aspiring Mono-Red player, adoption by Planeswalkers around you on the odd Friday night is something you can exploit. I mean, have you ever lined up the matchup between this deck and Adanto Vanguard? Do they pay four life the first time you Lightning Strike it? How about when you untap and play your Goblin Chainwhirler? Did you win or lose the exchange when you block the next turn, and the now-indestructible Vanguard strikes down your first striker?

How about Benalish Marshal? Some versions of Boros bend their mana to essentially Mono-White... Some bend it to the tune of a Boros Guildgate, even, purely to accommodate Benalish Marshal. This card is one of the most meaningful possible plays for a strategy bent on going wide with either small creatures or 1/1 tokens (or both). Its matchup with "Shock" is atrocious. Bad on mana; worse on the potential instant-speed impact on the game, or a difficult combat.

Over and over during PT coverage, we were told that the beautiful Magic being played in front of us was uncharacteristically tactical. It was about the kinds of things that we usually associate with Limited Magic, rather than Constructed. Savvy attacks. Good blocks. Forcing the opponent into bad trades, and exploiting any imbalance despite limited resources. While Mono-Red is also largely a small creature deck, it isn't bound up in that tactical Magic.

I've already given you a confession: Now here's time for a secret. I'm not all that great at creature combat. I like attacking... Blocking, not so much. Playing a deck with the ability to go over the top with Rekindling Phoenix or Experimental Frenzy allows me to play a different, often bigger, game than my opponents... While remaining a small creature beatdown deck. All the fast removal (including most of the sideboard) lets me pick my spots to attack, and robs the opponent of the advantageous decision-making afforded by choosing how to block.

2. Frenzy is the Best Card to Play; Mono-Red is the Best Frenzy Deck

If you check out those selfsame Top 8 Boros players, you'll see a common theme: All six decks played at least one Experimental Frenzy in their sideboards; some as many as all four copies. That is because Experimental Frenzy is awesome in a deck with a lot of cheap cards. No doubt it's good in Boros (or essentially, White Weenie).

That said, it's even better in Mono-Red!

Unlike Boros, in Mono-Red, your lands never come into play tapped. That's a big deal. You're never stuck on a singleton Guildgate, or paying life with a Sacred Foundry, uncertain of what's coming up next.

Where the Boros decks invested 1-4 slots on Experimental Frenzy, the Red Deck invests those same slots on Treasure Map. It can flex in multiple directions. It can cut one-toughness creatures likely to die to an opposing Chainwhirler, or mix up its removal for matchup-appropriate options while accommodating an incremental mana and card advantage engine. This is great whether its Fight with Fire for a 5/5 Angel or Lava Coil for a Drake or Phoenix.

A small point that no one seems to bring up: Of all the possible Frenzy homes in Standard - Boros, Gruul, or Mono-Red - only Mono-Red has a large number of instants. It's actually a very important dimension of the Red Deck to untap and unload burn cards on upkeep. In the same spot Gruul would just draw that wonderful Wayward Swordtooth (and now probably never play it). Ditto for Boros and that fungible 1-drop. Red's heavy use of Shock, Lightning Strike, Wizard's Lightning, and sideboard cards gives it even more card advantage.

The other week I had a thought...

I had just written an article here about how Azor's Gateway was so great in Naya, but was difficult to get to work in Mono-Red. After all, while the Red Deck has a good number of ones and twos, both threes and fours are pretty narrow and specific. Worse yet, Azor's Gateway operates best in conjunction with one of those very rare fours.

But once I figured out I could play it at all... I suddenly wanted to. I asked the vast Kibler Google army how many I should try...

On Mono-Red. How many Azor's Gateways should I side INSTEAD OF Treasure Map?

— Michael Flores (@fivewithflores) November 9, 2018

Luckily I didn't try any. The very first match of the night, I flipped Treasure Map against a Boros deck and needed it desperately as a MANA engine to stay alive. I never drew an extra card with that Map, but used all the extra mana to stay alive to cast Experimental Frenzy (or stay alive even longer, once Fenzy was out). Treasure Map flips every single time you use it three times, and gives you a Black Lotus you can use immediately after having already helped you out. Azor's Gateway (which I still love, mind you) needs five turns... And still might not get there every time.

The cards are different, but Treasure Map is quite the treasure for the Red Deck. While it doesn't need-need Treasure Map main, having four copies in the sideboard - even just to help grind against midrange decks - is one of the main reasons Red is such a dominant home for the best card advantage engine in Standard.

3. Red Makes Outstanding Use of Non-Core Cards

Let's think about Treasure Map a little more.

First of all, with Treasure Map x4 doing things like winning a Grand Prix alongside Niv-Mizzet, Parun, Dive Down, and - I can't believe I'm typing this - Spell Swindle, it's no secret this is one of the key role players in the format.

But what about Treasure Map in Red?

On one hand, Treasure Map can function like the old Sensei's Divining Top in Kuroda-Style Red. If you remember back that far, Sensei's Divining Top gave a Burn deck something it didn't have previously: The ability to regulate its draw. Burn can draw too many lands, or not enough lands. If it draws the right number of lands relative to burn cards, the opponent generally just ends up crispy.

Treasure Map can do the same thing in a deck like the current Standard Mono-Red. The deck only has 22 lands, but you can draw too many of them. Or, sometimes, you need the fourth land to land your Phoenix or Frenzy, and you actually want to draw more. Or you have some guys but they're little... Map can help dig you to a removal card so you can swing in for far more damage than the burn spell would do to face.

It's not just the front side that is so useful: All those little Lotus Petals are magnified in their effectiveness in Burn.

Why? Because so many of the cards are so cheap! If you find yourself tapped out, but you have a Frenzy in play, trading a Treasure for a card off the top is incredibly powerful. First of all, the Treasure was kind of free to begin with; for another, you're actually getting a free card every time, so it's awesome.

I think the point here is that Red can go harder with Frenzy than other decks, because its support cards (instants, Treasure Map) let it in a way that its competitors don't.

But it's not just Treasure Map.

Is Lava Coil a "Red Aggro" card? Brad Nelson played 4x in his New Jersey main deck. Adrian Sullivan just started it in his Jeskai build. What about Fiery Cannonade? Isn't that kind of a weirdo card for a small creature deck to play?

The fact is, Red can accommodate some of the best tools of seemingly not-Red-Aggro-type cards, and angle them harmoniously... Largely due to the rest of its card quality. Lava Coil is probably the best example. The Izzet Drakes matchup is already quite solid. What happens in this good matchup when you can suddenly kill their Cracking Drake at a 2x mana advantage (and get in for 4 or so)... Or exile their Arclight Phoenix permanently?

4. The Old Rules Have Changed: Red is the "Good Guys" (or at least has some very good guys)

Back when Red Decks were a fringe Rogue strategy, their novelty came in part with their terrible creatures. Other mages had White Knight or Order of the Ebon Hand at the two... Jay Schneider and Paul Slight brought Ironclaw Orcs to the table, or ran Goblins of the Flarg alongside two different kinds of Dwarves. Red's burn was so good that you could still win despite the vast gulf between Orc and Knight. Put another way, Ironclaw Orcs never had to try to block White Knight - or live through a block by Black Knight - because the stupid Knight was already smoldering off to the side. Crispy.

Today, part of the assumed value of Boros v. the Red Deck is that the Boros guys are just better. History of Benalia goes a long way in making that argument, to be fair. But don't nap on the little red men.

I'm still a little cool on Fanatical Firebrand at the one... But I was just today discussing the merits of trying Ghitu Lavarunner in Modern. It's just another Goblin Guide in the mid-game, right? What do you think about Viashino Pyromancer? In many ways, it's just a Snapcaster Mage... with a discount.

There are only two copies of Rekindling Phoenix, but I think it's still important to talk about the top of the Red Deck curve. This is a card that meaningfully goes over the top. It's resilient; it has evasion; and it actually disrupts some opponents' core strategies.

Oh, and there's Goblin Chainwhirler. Ho hum; you're probably tired of hearing about the most dominating Standard creature in a generation.

Yet it's Runaway Steam-Kin that deserves its own bullet...

5. Runaway Steam-Kin

I'm going to assume for a second you've actually played with Runaway Steam-Kin.

In fact, I'm broadly going to assume you've played with Runaway Steam-Kin and Experimental Frenzy at the same time.

If you haven't, much of what I would say is going to sound like hyperbole. For those of you who have had this experience... You know that this creature is a big part of what makes the Standard Red Deck feel more like a Modern (or other larger format) deck.

First of all, the Steam-Kin has a lot of "Tarmogoyf" to it. Like Ajani's Pridemate, the simple ability to grow up to 4/4 is, by itself, good enough to win many games. White Weenie and other Red Decks can have problems beating a 4/4. But a 4/4 is worse in the Red Deck than in a White Weenie deck. When you swing with one, the opponent is usually obligated to gang block for a two-for-one (or worse) trade. Except... Unlike White Weenie, the Red Deck can screw up your block with a Shock or Lightning Strike. Now your remaining blockers are just splattered and the Steam-Kin keeps coming.

Anway, any time your Steam-Kin is 4/4, it's only because you buffed it with at least three buddies along the way. If one of those was another Steam-Kin... Your opponent has got some problems.

It's generally best to remove three counters from Runaway Steam-Kin whenever you're casting something new, assuming you have three counters on it; this is especially true if you have Experimental Frenzy in play already, though to be fair not at all true if it's your last card in hand. The reason is that you will have floating, but the act of casting your next spell is going to put another counter on the Steam-Kin anyway... So it's kind of like only removing two counters.

When you have Frenzy in play with Steam-Kin (and especially multiple Steam-Kins, which is increasingly likely when you have a Frenzy and the first Steam-Kin, which drive each other forward) basically the only thing that can save your opponent is you getting stuck on multiple lands. These are the two best cards in the deck, each an engine in its own right, feeding one another in an orgy of size, damage, mana production, and of course card advantage. No other deck in Standard has anything remotely close to Experimental Frenzy + Runaway Steam-Kin.

And that's probably a good thing.

6. The Red Deck is Best at Presenting the Unbeatable Opening Hand

Every deck has a draw they want to get.

For Golgari, that might be Llanowar Elves plus... um... Anything. Two Llanowar Elves and any 5-drop is quite unfriendly, for instance. Yet! There are competitive Golgari builds that don't even play Llanowar Elves!

For White Weenie, it can be something like three 1-drops over turns one and two, one of them being Legion's Landing. This draw not only threatens a ferocious amount of damage, but a mana advantage as well.

But who can compare with the Red Deck's best openers?

Here is a real draw I had against Izzet Drakes... as the opponent went to six.

What has to go wrong for you to not demolish the opponent with this draw? Even if he has one-for-one answers, your guys are going to get in. They're going to inflict damage and put the opponent on the back foot.

And then you're going to recover.

The Red Deck can put on an offensive show comparable to the best of the White Weenie draws. It is arguably even more dangerous because when the opponent answers with Deafening Clarion or Fiery Cannonade, you can crack back with Haste or burn cards.

... But the ability to transform from the beatdown deck to the card advantage deck - with that card advantage manifesting as a flurry of fire - simply sets the deck apart on capabilities.

Also some draws are just dumb. Another real one:

1. Mountain, go.
2. Runaway Steam-Kin
3. Ghitu Lavarunner, double Wizard's Lightning... in for six

The opponent (Boros Knights) at that point hadn't played a creature on turn one or two, and was facing down a 2/2 (haste) and a 4/4, having just eaten six points of face burn. At eight life, it isn't just that there were few things that were going to save him, it's that taking a hit from Runaway Steam-Kin at that point might be a proxy for death itself. Ergo, The Abyss.

All the decks in Standard have some version of "the draw". Often they are contextual. A Jeskai deck might want to draw a bunch of cheap removal and a Chemister's Insight... Against White Weenie. That same draw might be atrocious against another Jeskai deck.

Red, on the other hand, cares much less about the opposing draw (or deck) when it looks at its potential Unbeatable Opening Hand... It's more gravy if the hapless opponent is full of 1/1 creatures and Red happens to rip Goblin Chainwhirler.

Put another way...

7. Opposing Strategies Don't Matter As Much

This is blatantly untrue... Sometimes (see below).

But! Mostly true.

8. Given Everything Else, the Red Deck Can Still Surprise You

It was Game 2 in the last round of FNM last week.

I was up a game in the Red Deck Mirror.

I looked at my hand, evaluated the empty board, and went for it.

Both my Lavarunners were on the table, and I turned them on with five points of face burn. In!

... My opponent calmly adjusted his life total, and then tapped three for Fiery Cannonade.

Not only had I just lost three creatures - including both hasty Lavarunners - I didn't have a Wizard's Lightning for the Goblin Chainwhirler or Rekindling Phoenix he played out next.

"That's awful," I initially thought to myself. "Who sides in Fiery Cannonade?"

But you know what? I did exactly what he wanted! Fiery Cannonade is bad in part because Fanatical Firebrand is a Pirate. But you know what? My Firebrands were in my sideboard... Where he probably knew they would be. Goblin Chainwhirler was an inevitability... Fiery Cannonade wasn't even on my pregame radar.

It's not just that the deck is good. All the decks are good. Well, maybe not Golgari. That deck is the most medium deck I've ever seen in my life. But most of the decks are good to very good.

Red isn't just good... It can still surprise you. It has the inevitability of Banefire for Control... But the compact efficiency of Fight with Fire for just the Lyra. It has fast guys, but can still play powerhouse with Runaway Steam-Kin or Rekindling Phoenix. It not only has access to the best card advantage engine in Standard, it can beat you at least three different ways with that engine.

For those of you who care, neither of us went back to 'boards for Game 3; I drew Frenzy and he didn't. blah Blah BLAH

... Okay, okay.

Those were eight reasons to play the Red Deck. Wasn't there one counter argument?

How about fourteen?

... That's how many main deck Wildgrowth Walkers were in the Top 8 of Grand Prix Milwaukee.

Eep!

I think the Red Deck can beat anything. I've even seen it come back against an opponent with 50+ life and multiple huge Wildgrowth Walkers in play. I mean, Experimental Frenzy can do that for you.

But I'm not super keen to start there.

If you think the format is going to adjust towards not just Golgari - which is the mediumest deck ever by the way - but Wildgrowth Walker-heavy Golgari... That should give you pause.

But otherwise?

There are a heck of a lot worse choices you can make than sending a Fanatical Firebrand into the aptly-named Red Zone on turn one.

LOVE

MIKE

¹ I mean really close, am I right?