Hello planeswalkers!  Welcome to Standard Weekly!

With the banning of Fable of the Mirror-Breaker, Reckoner Bankbuster, and Invoke Despair, standard has opened up enough for other types of decks to find success.  One of the decks that is well positioned to have a larger role in standard is Mono Red.

The deck is centered around creatures with haste that have an immediate impact on the game.  This coupled with effective burn spells allows the deck to win games quickly.  The deck tech for Mono Red goes over each card in the deck and the game play footage demonstrates how to sequence spells in the deck to maximize effectiveness.

MONO RED AGGRO

CREATURES: (22)

  • 4 Monastery Swiftspear 

  • 4 Bloodthirsty Adversary

  • 4 Falkenrath Pit Fighter

  • 4 Shivan Devastator

  • 2 Feldom, Ronom Excavator

  • 4 Furnace Punisher

INSTANTS: (5)

  • 2 Lightning Strike

  • 3 Play With Fire

SORCERIES: (2)

  • 2 Nahiri’s Warcrafting

BATTLES: (4)

  • 4 Invasion of Tarkir

ENCHANTMENTS (4)

  • 4 Kumano Faces Kakkazan

LANDS: (23)

  • 17 Mountains

  • 2 Sokenzan, Crucible of Defiance

  • 4 Mishra’s Foundry

SIDEBOARD: (15)

  • 3 Bloody Betrayal

  • 1 Chandra, Dressed to Kill

  • 2 Obliterating Bolt

  • 3 Koth, Fire of Resistance

  • 4 Lithomantic Barrage

  • 2 Nahiri’s Warcrafting

The big additions to the deck are Shivan Devastator and Invasion of Tarkir.  You may have noticed that the number of copies of Play With Fire and Lightning Strike have decreased in the deck.  Invasion of Tarkir has replaced them.  When you play Invasion of Tarkir, you get to do two damage to any target and can increase that damage by one for each dragon you reveal from your hand.  Whether you attack Invasion of Tarkir or not depends on the game state.  If you can defeat your opponent without flipping the battle, then that is your best plan.  In games where you need extra help, you can attack the battle or use a Nahiri’s Warcraft to defeat the battle and get Defiant Thundermaw.  This 4/4 dragon has flying and trample.  When it or another dragon attacks you get to do two damage to any target.  One success attack from Defiant Thundermaw makes up for the damage that you lost attacking the battle.

Shivan Devastator cost X plus a red mana to cast.  Being able to poor as much mana as you can/want to into Shivan Devastator makes it a great finisher.  Typically, you will hold Shivan Devastator in your hand until you can cast it for four or more mana.  This gets around spells like Cut Down that can make it a bad early play.

Together Shivan Devastator and Invasion of Tarkir have given the deck added power for games that go long.  This gives you a chance to win games that you would otherwise lose.

I hope you enough the decktech and game play footage.

That’s it for this week.  I’ll see you next time!

By: Scott Trepanier

Scott began playing Magic the Gathering in 1994.  His preferred format is standard.  Typically, you will see him playing aggro decks focused on quickly defeating his opponent but will pivot to midrange or control when standard is unfavorable for aggro decks.  He began creating Magic content in 2019.