An archetype pretty much as old as 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Magic: The Gathering itself, Mono-Red Aggro or "Burn" as it's sometimes called in older formats, is a reliable deck build that performs well in nearly every Standard metagame. This deck is known for producing extremely fast starts that are capable of ending a game within the first five or six turns. It's often joked that players who don't wish to play Magic ought to sleeve up Mono-Red.

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Arena players in particular can use this deck to crank out a lot of games in a little amount of time, allowing you to climb the online ladder more quickly. While Mono-Red is usually at its best at the beginning of a format when players are trying to figure out what works, some iterations of the deck end up being so powerful that they perform long afterwards. Let's take a look at one such build.

Sample Decklist

Image of the Lightning Strike card in Magic: The Gathering, with art by Marta Nael
Lightning Strike by Marta Nael

Main Deck

4 Monastery Swiftspear

3 Nahiri's Warcrafting

4 Phoenix Chick

3 Sword of Once and Future

4 Play with Fire

18 Mountain

2 Strangle

2 Mirrex

4 Kumano Faces Kakkazan

2 Sokenzan, Crucible of Defiance

4 Lightning Strike

4 Bloodfeather Phoenix

3 Khenra Spellspear

3 Bloodthirsty Adversary

Sideboard

4 End the Fesitivities

4 Furnace Punisher

4 Lithomantic Barrage

3 Koth, Fire of Resistance

Key Cards

Monastery Swiftspear and Play With Fire card artworks

Kumano Faces Kakkazan

MTG: Kumano Faces Kakkazan/Etching of Kumano card

Traditionally, Mono-Red decks always want to start the game by sticking a creature that can provide pressure turn after turn. However, Kumano Faces Kakkazan is an😼 enchantment that does exactly this and more by turning 🐟into a creature itself later in the game.

Kumano Faces Kakkazan is your best turn one play and starting hands that feature this card will be noticeably stronger than those that don't.

The extra counter that this enchantment provides a creature on the following turn makes it so that many of your early threats become immune to removal like Cut Down, and too big to be traded off by opposing blockers. Additionally, the exile clause on Etching of Kumano is surprisingly relevant i🐲n a lot of matchups.

Monastery Swiftspear / Khenra Spellspear

MTG Khenra Spellspear by Artur Nakhodkin

These two prowess creatures go a long way towards giving you just enough pressure to finish off your opponent before they can climb their way back into the game with higher mana value plays. Prowess triggers essentially turn your burn and removal spells into cards that deal one additional damage to the opponent, and this damage adds up very quickly.

Spellspear in particular is a great card to have in any hand where you're forced to mulligan down to six or five cards as when it's transformed it becomes an absolute powerhouse thanks to trample, double prowess, and ward 2. A good rule of thumb is to get your prowess creatures down before you start casting burn spells and removal.

Phoenix Chick / Bloodfeather Phoenix

Bloodfeather Phoenix card and art background in Magic The Gathering.

These two threats provide the deck with some much needed evasion in the form of the flying keyword. They also allow for some recursion thanks to their activated abilities. Flying is particularly good when paired with the equipment card Sword of Once and Future but more on that in a moment.

It's important to consider that you can use Bloodfeather Phoenix's trigger at the end of an opponent's turn if need be in cases where you expect your opponent has sorcery speed removal in hand. \

One instance of instant or sorcery damage can bring back multiple Phoenix's from your graveyard, so keep that in mind.

Play with Fire / Lightning Strike

lightning strike

Here are the classic burn spells for which Mono-Red Aggro is known. Shock has been upgraded to Play with Fire which has the added benefit of allowing for a scry if you target your opponent's life total. This can be especially useful if you really need to draw into a spell as you can cast Play with Fire on your upkeep after your lands untap to give you a look at the card you're about to draw for the turn.

These cards are best used as that extra bit of reach to finish off an opponent's life total, but they also work as removal in a pinch. Knowing when to use them as burn and when to use them as removal is a key component of playing Mꦕono-Red Aggro at its best.

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Nahiri's Warcrafting

Nahiri's Warcrafting

This is a removal spell that you typically wouldn't see included in a Mono-Red Aggro list. However, it's a necessity in this format due to the prevalence of Sheoldred, the Apocalypse. Due to her lifegain triggers, a Sheoldred that sticks against you is almost always unbeatable. Nahiri's Warcrafting makes it possible to beat Sheoldred before sideboarding.

You can also use this removal spell in more creative ways by casting it on a low-toughness creature to set up your next spell. Of course, this i𒅌s assuming you have enough mana to cast another spell.

Sword of Once and Future

MTG Sword of Once and Future by Joshua Cairos

Speaking of beating Sheoldred, Sword of Once and Future is a recent addition to Mono-Red Aggro builds that has allowed this deck to stay dominant despite a number of cards in the metagame that have incidental life gain.

Protection from black and blue makes it so that your creatures can attack through a large number of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:the popular creatures being played currently including Sheoldred, the Apocalypse / Graveyard Trespasser / Atraxa, Grand Unifier / Haughty Djinn / and more.

Even if your opponent isn't on blue or black, your flying creatures are perfect to equip with the sword thanks to their built-in evasion. The value that this card provides is hard to understate as the surveil trigger 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:sets up your future draws, you gain a nice power boost for added pressure, and you get to recast one of your burn spells from your graveyard.

The surveil trigger on Sword of Once and Future can be used to place a burn or removal spell into your graveyard for the Sword's recast trigger if you don't have one there already.

How To Play Mono-Red Aggro

a goblin with a map on a rope bridge
Goblin Scout By Filip Burburan

The name of the game here is to reduce your opponent's life total to zero as quickly as possible. A large amount of the strength of Mono-Red comes from the fact that ending a game early essentially blanks the high mana value cards in an opponent's deck.

If you don't end the game fast enough, you will almost inevitably lose to the value that the opponent's larger cards present.

In general, you want to unload all of your creatures onto the board and then clear the way for their attacks by using removal to take care of any blockers your opponent plays. It's important to also watch for opportunities where you can both clear the way for your attacks and develop your own board at the same time. Thanks to the extremely low cost of your spells, it's possible to do this as early as turn two.

Don't be afraid to lose some creatures to a blocker if it allows your other creatures to get in for damage that would reduce an opponent's life total to five or six. Unlike other decks where you want to build a better board than your opponent, the creatures in Mono-Red only serve to reduce the opponent's life total.

Five or six is the magic life total number you're looking for as once an opponent's life total becomes this low, you can often rely on finishing them off with burn spells and evasive threats from the top of your library.

Another strength of this archetype is that once you've gotten an opponent's life total low enough, you can hold your creatures back as blockers to buy time for you to topdeck a burn spell that will win you the game. Your own unassailed life total is yet another resource you can leverage in order to give yourself the opportunity of drawing those 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:precious final few points of damage.

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As long as you have some creatures on the battlefield, it will often be hard for your opponent to pressure you and defend themselves. Consequently, don't be afraid to take a huge hit from an opposing creature if it gives you the opportunity to topdeck a hasty creature that al𒈔lows your board to go wider than the blockers the opponent is representing.

As far as sideboarding goes, Mono-Red Aggro thankfully has one of the most intuitive sideboards inಌ the game.

End the Festivities comes in against decks that have a lot of creatures with one toughness, Lithomantic Barrage comes in against decks playing white and blue creatures, Furnace Punisher is an extremely effective threat against any deck without many basic lands, and Koth, Fire of Resistance provides that extra bit of reach in matchups such as the mirror 🍎as well as those where your opponent has a lot of lifegain.

Koth, Fire Of Resistance MTG Card

Typically, you'll want to exchange these cards for the threats or removal that doesn't line up well against your opponent. This usually means taking out Play with Fire or Phoenix Chick. Sword of Once and Future should also be taken out if your opponent isn't playing black or blue creatures.

Mono-Red Aggro may have a reputation as a "novice deck" among many Magic players, but there's really no better place to start your journey into competitive Magic. Mono-Red will teach you the fundamentals of identifying who's the beatdown, resource management, and playing to your outs better than any other deck out there.

Additionally, you'll be able to churn through a lot of games in record time, further expediting your training process.

You may even find that 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:this type of deck is the way you prefer to play Magic. After all, aggro is a pillar of the Magic metagame and one that prevents those pesky control players from having their way with the field. It might be a dirty job at times, and you'll probably get flak from other players on occasion for playing aggro. But, hey, somebody's gotta do it. Stay topdecking.

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