Well, you asked for it! Here it is, a general breakdown of RDW versus the four most popular and (arguably) best decks in Standard right now.

The list:

[cardlist]

[Creatures]

4 Ember Hauler

4 Goblin Guide

4 Plated Geopede

4 Spikeshot Elder

[/Creatures]

[Planeswalkers]

4 Koth of the Hammer

[/Planeswalkers]

[Spells]

4 Burst Lightning

4 Lightning Bolt

4 Searing Blaze

4 Staggershock

[/Spells]

[Lands]

12 Mountain

4 Arid Mesa

4 Scalding Tarn

4 Teetering Peaks

[/Lands]

[Sideboard]

4 Kargan Dragonlord

4 Arc Trail

4 Tumble Magnet

3 Mark of Mutiny

[/Sideboard]

[/cardlist]

Caw-Blade key spells: Koth, Searing Blaze, Spikeshot Elder

Sideboarding: -4 Burst Lightning, -4 Plated Geopede, +4 Kargan Dragonlord, +4 Tumble Magnet

Alternatively on the draw: -4 Goblin Guide, +4 Kargan Dragonlord

You can also mix and match Goblin Guide with a few Arc Trails, since Hawks, Stoneforge, and Planeswalkers will almost inevitably allow for a 2–1 situation.

As I said last week, Goblin Guide is one of the most overrated cards in the Red deck, and I'm willing to board them out even in this match when I'm on the draw, especially if I think my opponent is on Firewalker. Condemn and Kor Firewalker make Guide a weak card, since at best you get in for 4 damage and trade it off, while at worst, it forces a Condemn or Celestial Purge (and, you hope, a whiff on the extra card). If your opponent has Firewalker, it deals 2 damage and sits there looking stupid for the rest of the game.

Caw-Blade is the boogeyman of the format and the deck that RDW players should enjoy seeing, as it's one of the best games they have in the format and overall a favorable match. Of course, if Caw-Blade had the space and inclination, they could make the deck an absolute nightmare for you, but thankfully, there's not enough incentive for them to do that. At the most, you'll see versions with Condemn, Kor Firewalker, Baneslayer Angel, and Sylvok Lifestaff as major life sponges. These are all capable of being overcome, but if you think you can race the post-board matches, you're basically banking on the opponent to have all blanks.

The biggest key before and after sideboarding is board control and correct Planeswalker management. If you go after every Jace or Gideon the U/W player throws on the board, you'll almost always lose too many resources to actually win the game. Jace is a trap for RDW players; they tend to overestimate what opponents can actually draw off Jace to make life miserable, and often, the most devastating option for them is to bounce a Geopede or Dragonlord. Game 1, they simply don't have very many good cards to draw into—a couple of Condemn, Baneslayer Angel, Gideon, and maybe countermagic, depending on your mana situation. If they get a Brainstorm and Healing Salve out of Jace, that's a big win for the visiting team, since Jace is an expensive do-nothing, usually.

Post-board, Jace becomes a bigger threat, simply because there are more cards for them to hit, more removal—possibly Kor Firewalker, more BSA, and Flashfreeze. Not exactly the same small subsection of cards you were worried about before, and in fact, leaving a Jace active for multiple turns when one-fourth to one-third of your opponent's deck involves good answers is probably game over. Using resources to kill off JTMS becomes a requirement and is one of the only reasons to keep Lightning Bolt in over Burst Lightning.

Gideon Jura is an odd case in that you'd really like to be able to kill Gideon, but odds are good that you just can't spend the resources to do so unless a huge Geopede or Dragonlord is involved. You just have to grit your teeth and hope to have them at a low life total if Gideon comes out; if not, you have to kill Gideon. Why? Because it makes your board presence meaningless, forces you to attack into Lifestaff or Baneslayer to gain Caw-Blade life, and can team up with a Colonnade to kill you in two turns. There's no good answer to this guy, so the best you can hope for is that they don't drop another Gideon after you take the first one down.

As always on your side of the field, Koth and Spikeshot Elder do a ton of work in this match. The first is the main way you can counter Planeswalker presence—by having one of your own, it forces them to act more aggressively, and you can easily kill off Jace and put a major dent into Gideon's loyalty without sacrificing burn. Additionally, on the off chance you keep Koth alive for more than two turns, the ultimate forces U/W to send everything they have to wipe out Koth or risk losing to an unstoppable emblem. Be careful with throwing away Koth, though; chucking your Koth into a bin with only three Mountains out is a gambit if they have Baneslayer Angel, since they can still protect or pump it with Sword and race.

Spikeshot Elder should be an obvious improvement over Goblin Guide or Geopede when attempting to play a board-control game against Caw-Blade. It costs a lot to use his ability, but effectively countering Squadron Hawks' card advantage is a huge boon. It can also team up well with non-Landfall Searing Blaze, Staggershock, and unkicked Burst Lightning to take down Jace quickly. Unless you're sure you can get in there with a creature, you usually want to save Teetering Peaks for this guy if you have a choice in the matter. Having the ability to Bolt without fear of countermagic throws a monkey wrench into how many U/W players lay out their turns.

My final thought is that the match can favor you overall, but it's closer than people believe, even if Caw-Blade doesn't have dedicated RDW hate. I also believe that while you can win post-board games off sheer speed, it happens far more infrequently in Game 1, and you should really focus on board control and winning over time. Speaking as someone who has played Caw-Blade to a good deal of success and played against plenty of RDW on MTGO, I can attest to the deficiency of going all-in early. In fact, outside of double or triple Goblin Guide starts, the number of games I've lost to bum-rush tactics and people unloading all their burn at my face can be counted on one hand. I'm just much better equipped to deal with early creature damage and no longer need to throw a bunch of resources away to save damage. Now I can actually trade cleanly or even at a profit until my CA engines or Baneslayers kick in.

With Kor Firewalker, I think Caw-Blade will win slightly more than lose, and vice versa without Firewalker.

R/U/G key spells: Koth, Lightning Bolt, Goblin Guide

Sideboarding: -4 Staggershock, -2 Searing Blaze, -4 Spikeshot Elder, +3 Mark of Mutiny, +3 Tumble Magnet, +4 Kargan Dragonlord

Game 1 is pretty straightforward; they have few ways to interact with you early on, and later in the game, their threats don't stop them from being turned into ash. Realistically, the main way you'll lose is keeping a hand that loses to Lotus Cobra, so absolutely make sure you have a way to take it out if you're on the draw. This goes for turn three as well, as some people tend to forget that a turn-three Cobra can be just as dangerous as a turn-two Cobra and tap out. Remember a turn-two Explore, turn-three Cobra, and fetch means they also get a Jace unless you kill it between the fetch activation.

Past that, the only other real threat is when you don't have a Goblin Guide or kill it immediately, and your hand is all burn/Koth. That's not unreasonable, but you need worry about walking Koth into Leak, because if Koth goes down, you'll have a very difficult time beating an Inferno Titan. Either you waste a lot of resources killing it off, or you need to kill the opponent before Inferno gets two swings. These aren't huge concerns, but merely the main ways you can lose the first game.

There are no special rules for hand selection here other than needing one early-game burn spell in case of Lotus Cobra. Past that, any fast hand is going to be reasonable for your needs, as they can't put a lot of pressure on the field. Oh, and one last thing—save Lightning Bolt, as it's the only cheap way you have to take out all the bits of a Precursor Golem without teaming burn spells up.

Post-board is a lot closer if they have Flashfreeze and Obstinate Baloth, and even cards like Burst Lightning and Pyroclasm give them a bit more interaction than they had previously.

Point is that you can't rely on an early rush anymore, and they aren't so soft to just dying to a turn-five-six-seven pack of burn spells like Game 1. Even cards like Jace, the Mind Sculptor suddenly become a bigger hazard because they have relevant bodies to Brainstorm into, which means you have to deal with them instead of ignoring JTMS. Additionally, Flashfreeze means your late-game Marks and Koths aren't necessarily safe even after hitting a land pocket, so keep in mind that playing around counters is only good to a point.

Valakut key spells: Plated Geopede, Lightning Bolt, Koth

Sideboarding: -3 Burst Lightning, +3 Mark of Mutiny

Alternatively against heavy walls: -4 Burst, -3 Spikeshot, +4 Tumble, +3 Mark

There's not a ton to say about this match; every game is a straight race, and there's very little interaction on either side when each player has good draws. Mark of Mutiny is the biggest culprit for undeserved wins on the Red side, since any Titan Valakut plays just begs to be stolen and enable a crack back for at least 10 points of damage. Throw in that Avenger is a turn slower, and it isn't difficult to see why RDW runs things in this match even against turn-four Titans, and can still win against a turn-three monster. If anything, the biggest factor outside of having Mark is Valakut having blockers or a Tumble Magnet on the field, since if they get those, they can survive another turn. Obstinate Baloth isn't a threat; it's just a barrier thrown up to buy a turn or two, and is a good reason to keep Searing Blaze in the deck.

Goblin Guide barely missed the cut for important cards, because unless you're on the play, GG is pretty miserable against the bulk of Valakut decks. Overgrown Battlement, Pyroclasm, and Lightning Bolt are all sufficient answers to the damage GG can dish out early, and giving Valakut more lands somewhat offsets killing a Battlement. Post-board Guides actually get worse since some are moving toward Wall of Tanglecord, and Tumble Magnet helps take care of defense in other matches.

On the other hand, Plated Geopede suffers from the same Lightning Bolt problem, but is one of my favorite cards in the match. It doesn't require assistance to take out a Battlement (usually), so you don't waste resources, and if they don't have a burn spell, it can dish out a huge amount of pain in one or two swings that GG can't match. Even if they even out in the end, Guide gave them free peeks at the top of their deck and at minimum cleared a land. Slower card, but in the long run, it deals so much more damage, and the drawback can be quantified, unlike GG, where people don't really have any idea how badly the extra “draws” have hurt them over time.

In the end, this match is going to come down to how good a hand the Valakut player has, because you can't beat Valakut's best hands regardless of what you have. Post-board, they have more than enough ways to defend themselves; it just comes down to how many they actually draw. Like just about every match against a top-tier deck, you have a Game 1 edge, and a rather large one at that if you won the die roll, but in the end, the sideboard can doom you.

Mirror key spells: Searing Blaze, Staggershock, Koth

Sideboarding: -4 Goblin Guide, +4 Kargan Dragonlord

Alternative: -4 Goblin Guide, -4 Plated Geopede, +4 Kargan Dragonlord, +4 Arc Trail

The mirror is a long, drawn-out attrition match—at least, if both of you are playing the deck correctly. Otherwise, it's a short attrition match where one side sizes up how much life he can afford to lose to creatures and leverages his burn so he maximizes his value and wins the long game. Having someone go turn-one Goblin Guide on the play, netting me a card, makes me all aflutter, since I then get to blow it away at no loss of cards. The next turn? Searing Blaze lets me make up that Bolt damage I lost out on—thanks for playing that Geopede, B. Even better is when they play Goblin Guide in the midgame and swing into open mana, which is just a ridiculous play.

One of the biggest mistakes you can make as a Red player is letting your opponent get free value off Goblin Guide. In most matches, the damage you gain offsets the potential cards you give up, and you can give some sense if they “have it” or not without any complicated math or soul reads. In the RDW mirror, people pretty much always have it and some Red players will attack as an automatic action instead of stopping and thinking about what they should be doing. If they're going to kill Goblin Guide for sure if I attack and possibly even if I don't attack, why am I letting them net free value off Guide? Why give them the choice of looking at their top card and then allowing them to choose whether they want to take the 2 damage and have me do it again?

Creatures are repeatable sources of damage, and often, even if someone kills them on the spot, you can get some value out of them because you waited to play them with other mana open. If they do live, though, and are allowed to attack, even once, that's huge for you. That's damage you no longer have to deal with Koth or burn, and you basically got it for free at no loss of mana or cards. The point isn't to deal the maximum amount of damage in a turn; that's a losing line of play. The point is to deal damage as efficiently as you can.

With some nice timing the day before I sent this article in, A. J. Sacher wrote a nice article covering many of these points in the Red mirror. I suggest taking a look at it.

Cards like Koth and Kargan Dragonlord are big deals, because if the opponent wasted too many resources or tapped out at the wrong time, they'll lose the game to them. If I ever get Dragonlord to stage two, the game is practically over. People sometimes will let Koth live since I've left them at 20 life and I'm usually at 10 or so. They can afford to take a hit or two from Mountains. If they tap out, though, or waste all their usable burn, you can −2 Koth and have a huge Dragonlord, which will kill them in a couple of swings. Now, they're screwed unless they have a specialized set of draws or cards in hand. So, barring land– Searing Blaze–Bolt shenanigans, they probably can't kill Koth and Dragonlord on the same turn, which means you keep forcing damage through, and they can't focus on killing your life total any longer. You'll be the Red player with cards left even if your life is a bit lower, and assuming you even draw average for the remainder of the game, you'll win.

A brief tangent on Goblin Guide before we leave off: You'll notice only one of these decks includes Goblin Guide as a key card. That's because Goblin Guide is frequently one of the worst cards in the deck post-board, and is not incredibly impressive against these decks when they have reasonable draws. For example, against Valakut, almost all builds have Overgrown Battlement and either Lightning Bolt or Pyroclasm in the main deck, which really limits what GG can do. Some even go further and have cards like Tumble Magnet in the main, which is yet another way to buy some time against the quick damage Guide provides. Often, if you can get in more than 4 damage, you've won the lottery, and by that I mean you were on the play and the opponent had no real answer in hand. The only match where I think GG truly excels is against R/U/G, which has few early-game answers, and their blockers come out too late to really help.

With that, we've covered the major contenders that I've had the pleasure of playing against. I'd include decks like U/B control, Vampires, or others, but quite frankly, their popularity on Magic Online is somewhere near nonexistent at the moment. If I were to take a shot in the dark, here's what I'd do for some of the quickie matches.

Quest: -4 Goblin Guide, -4 Spikeshot Elder, -4 Burst Lightning

+4 Tumble Magnet, +4 Kargan Dragonlord, +4 Arc Trail

Your creatures don't do anything relevant in this match, and both Arc Trail and Tumble Magnet are better than the weakest burn spells in your deck.

Vampires: -4 Goblin Guide

+4 Arc Trail

Guide sucks here; if you're lucky, Vampires won't be able to take out all their 1-drops, as they're about as terrible as yours in this match.

Boros: -4 Goblin Guide, -4 Plated Geopede

+4 Arc Trail, +4 Kargan Dragonlord

You're already a huge dog in this match; they have better creatures, more card advantage, Kor Firewalker, and the Red removal to take out all of your relevant creatures. Really, you can board any way you feel like, and I doubt it'll have a major impact on the result. Manic Vandal helps a bit, but you need to hit Collar, Lifestaff, and Bonehoard to take out all the relevant equipment in the match. Might as well just hope they have a crappy draw or kill creatures as they try to equip them.

That's it for now! Thanks for all the feedback and suggestions I got from the first part of this, I'll be trying to make some more primer-esque types of articles in the future. After my Top 8 at the SCG Open in L.A., I'll definitely consider writing a mini-primer on Caw-Blade. Until then!

Josh Silvestri

E-mail me at josh dot silvestri at gmail dot com