Locations
Those who are familiar with my Legacy history know that I am no stranger to slamming Blood Moons and Chalice of the Void into play on the first turn. In fact, toward the end of last year, I wrote a primer about Mono-Red Sneak Attack that you can find here. Since then, though, the Legacy format has become increasingly hostile toward combo decks. You do not have time to draw redundant combo pieces when your opponent is pairing discard and counterspells alongside 1 mana 3 power threats.
This past weekend at the team open in Cincinnati, I was playing the Legacy spot for my team and I was dead set against leaning into playing Grixis Delver mirrors all weekend. This sent me looking for a new deck to play in the format that was amusing and powerful. After trying a lot of different things, I landed on tuning the Mono-Red Prison variation that had been putting up fringe results on Magic Online for awhile now.
In my testing, this felt like a reasonable metagame choice. After logging a few dozen matches against some of the more popular decks in the format I would summarize this deck's matchups as follows:
Good for Prison:
- Miracles
- Death and Taxes
- Lands
- Elves
Close, but Prison a small favorite:
- Delver variations
- 4-color control
Close, but Prison is a small underdog:
- Storm
Go get Lunch:
- Reanimator
- Sneak and Show
Ultimately I ended up registering the following deck list for the event:
Mono-Red Prison -- Legacy | Jeff Hoogland
- Creatures (6)
- 2 Pia and Kiran Nalaar
- 4 Simian Spirit Guide
- Planeswalkers (6)
- 2 Chandra, Pyromaster
- 4 Chandra, Torch of Defiance
- Sorceries (4)
- 4 Fiery Confluence
- Enchantments (7)
- 3 Blood Sun
- 4 Blood Moon
- Artifacts (17)
- 2 Trinisphere
- 3 Sorcerous Spyglass
- 4 Chalice of the Void
- 4 Chrome Mox
- 4 Ensnaring Bridge
- Lands (20)
- 12 Mountain
- 4 Ancient Tomb
- 4 City of Traitors
- Sideboard (15)
- 2 Trinisphere
- 2 Eidolon of the Great Revel
- 3 Quicksmith Rebel
- 3 Kozilek's Return
- 3 Boil
- 2 Chaos Warp
Before I dive into talking about the cards I am playing in this deck list, I would like to make a quick mention of a couple of cards I am not playing:
 |  |
Magus of the Moon is a card I have never been a huge fan of in these Blood Moon decks in Legacy. The primary reason for this is that the decks we most often want Moon's effect against have access to Red removal like Lightning Bolt and Punishing Fire. Having your Lands opponent put a Dark Depths into play with no counters and then kill your Magus with Punishing Fire to make a 20/20 feels really bad.
Goblin Rabblemaster is a card that was moderately impressive at times, but more often than not it was simply acting to turn on removal that was otherwise a dead draw for my opponent. Making their Swords to Plowshares of Fatal Push into a live card felt really bad consistently. The few games Goblin Rabblemaster was able to steal for me, did not make up for the virtual card advantage playing a creature threat cost me.
I described this deck as a prison deck because it plays a number of elements that are intended to lock our opponent's out of the game:
 |  |
 |  |
Blood Moon and Chalice of the Void lock our opponents out of playing their cards and Ensnaring Bridge prevents our opponents from attacking us with whatever creatures they manage to get into play. Trinisphere is a main deck hedge against decks like Storm, that is also fairly good against Blue based disruptive decks. This is because it generally makes our opponent choose between playing more pressure out or holding up disruption for our future lock pieces.
Blood Sun is the least powerful of the cards here, but the floor on it is also fairly high since it draws a card when it comes into play. Blood Sun is very good in matchups where Blood Moon is poor such as Death and Taxes and Miracles. Against Taxes Blood Sun disables their mana disruption and against Miracles we cut them off of being able to shuffle their deck with fetch lands.
After we lock our opponents out of killing us, we need a few different ways to actually win the game:
 |  |  |
Chandra, Torch of Defiance pushed this style of deck over the top. She is removal that can clean up creatures that slipped under our lock pieces. She is extra mana when we are trying to get our hand empty. She keeps opposing planeswalkers in check. She generates card advantage. Most importantly though -- she creates an emblem that very quickly closes out most games.
Chandra, Pyromaster is here because they won't let us play more than four copies of Torch of Defiance. She is an additional way to generate card advantage when we are looking for specific answers and her +1 ability is very good at picking off annoying creatures like Young Pyromancer and Thalia, Guardian of Thraben. In conjunction with our copies of Fiery Confluence, Pyromaster's ultimate can often be game ending as well.
Pia and Kiran Nalaar do a lot for this deck. Four power across three bodies can stall the board in the event we have not found an Ensnaring Bridge. They are also able to pressure opposing planeswalkers nicely, while acting as pseudo removal as well. Because they tokens they create have only 1 power with flying, we can often use them to slowly attack for lethal through our own Ensnaring Bridge -- attacking before we play out the one card we draw each turn.
The last couple of cards in our main deck provide some useful utility:
 |  |
Fiery Confluence is another card that pushed this archetype over the top. It allows us to answer troublesome artifacts, kill resolved planeswalkers, and sweep clear the board should our opponent have resolved something we need to deal with. The flexibility is fantastic and powerful. Not to mention it occasionally just ends the game by doming our opponent for six points of damage.
Sorcerous Spyglass may seem like an odd inclusion, but it is a powerful one. Getting to see our opponent's hand allows you to know how to best sequence the remainder of your disruption. On the play Spyglass can also steal games on occasion by naming the fetch land your opponent has kept as their only land drop. Past this, Spyglass is a main deck way to deal with cards like Jace, the Mind Sculptor that can win the game through our Ensnaring Bridges.
Sideboarding and Playing the Deck
The following are my sideboard plans against some of the more common decks in Legacy right now.
VS Grixis Delver
In
Out
Grixis Delver can often stick a threat or two before we get our lock pieces into play. Because of this we want to board into more cards that interact with the board so we can play a controlling role when we need to.
VS Miracles
In
- 3 Boil
- 2 Trinisphere
- 2 Chaos Warp
- 2 Quicksmith Rebel
Out
This matchup is not about going fast unlike a lot of our matchups. Hitting land drops is the most important thing to be doing here so we can eventually play multiple cards in the same turn to get an important one to resolve. Trinisphere is one of our better cards here because it makes our opponent choose between playing something to the board and holding up disruption for our finishers.
Remember that Boil is an instant for some reason so be sure to get all their Islands when they tap out during your end step for something silly.
VS Lands
In
Out
This matchup is pretty good for us between Spyglasses, Bloody Enchantments, and Ensnaring Bridge. Don't forget you can use Fiery Confluence to shatter their Moxes after you Blood Moon them off of other colors of mana.
VS Death and Taxes
In
Out
We are a Mono-Red Control deck in this matchup. Kill all their things. Keep in mind that Flickerwisp can remove your bridge for a turn, so don't be afraid to keep their board small so you don't die in a game you otherwise have locked up. Remember post board that Kozilek's Return is colorless, so it gets around Mother of Runes. Same with the artifacts that Quicksmith is giving abilities to.
VS Elves
In
Out
Kill their board again, and against, and again. Lock them out of the game with your artifacts. This matchup is easily the best one this deck has. Light the little green people on fire.
VS 4-Color Control
In
- 2 Chaos Warp
- 2 Boil
- 3 Quicksmith Rebel
Out
Like Miracles this is often a waiting game style matchup. Do not rush to play out your cards unless your opponent has found their pressure to kill you. Be aware that Boil and Blood Moon do not work the way we want them to -- meaning if Blood Moon is in play, those dual lands are no longer Islands. That being said, I still like boarding in some Boils here. If Blood Moon sticks you are likely winning the game anyways so you can afford to draw a dead Boil. Finally, keep in mind that Chaos Warp can target lands -- so don't be afraid to warp away any basics they have might drawn if you had a Blood Moon stick.
VS Storm
In
Out
This matchup is hard, but not unwinnable. Post board against permanent based disruption decks like ours many Storm players will try to combo off with Empty the Warrens on the first turn -- which is why we bring in the copies of Kozilek's Return. Often it is better to play out Chalice for Zero than one in this matchup because of how important Lion's Eye Diamond is for them to combo off.
Wrapping Up
While I am not oblivious to the fact that Grixis Delver probably has the best matchups against the field in Legacy, I do think if you enjoy prison strategies more than tempo decks this Mono-Red deck is reasonably competitive.
Have a question that I didn't answer above? Let me know in a comment below!
Cheers,
--Jeff Hoogland
