Welcome back, dear readers! With the set release still a week away, it's time for more wild speculation. This time, the subject is the color most dear to my heart: Red. While at first Red seemed to have gotten the short end of the stick once again in New Phyrexia, further inspection has shown that to be not precisely true—you just had to know where to look. Red mages have been spoiled by Zendikar Standard, with The Greatest 1-Drop Ever, Plated Geopede, Teetering Peaks, Searing Blaze, and Lightning Bolt all obviously amazing. The strong Red cards in New Phyrexia are less obvious, and in true Phyrexian style, they ask you to pay a high price for the power they offer.

Red decks may appear to be simple to build and play; however, there are some significant variations that are usually grouped under the banner of "Red Deck Wins." Within just this one color, it is possible to play aggro, midrange, and control, all utilizing the sheer power of Lightning Bolt in slightly different ways. Alongside these three main types, we can even wring tribal Goblins or combo decks out of our Red cards, though those are normally grouped separately from the vague RDW. Which Red strategy is superior at any given time is strongly dependent on the metagame, as the current crop of Red cards are of a consistently high power level, allowing all three archetypes to be reasonable in a vacuum. As such, the New Phyrexia Red cards will need to be evaluated with these archetypes in mind to determine their Standard viability.

Burn (Or Perhaps Deadguy Red)

With the current metagame being what it is—Valakut forcing midrange out of the format, and Jace decks punishing non-Haste creatures—the most successful Standard Red deck of recent times has been Patrick Sullivan's burn/Deadguy Red deck, reportedly built by adding four each of his nine favorite Red cards to some lands. The deck has a very fast clock and can ignore or burn away the opponent's blockers, beating Valakut in races and bringing Caw-Blade within burn range before the stone wall that is Gideon drops between our beaters and the opponent's vulnerable underbelly. Patrick is a master of the Red spells, but many other players have had success in online events by copying his deck. Here it is, pre-NPH:

"Patrick Sullivan's Burn"

• Creatures (16)
• 4 Ember Hauler
• 4 Goblin Guide
• 4 Plated Geopede
• 4 Spikeshot Elder

• Planeswalkers (4)
• 4 Koth of the Hammer

• Spells (16)
• 4 Burst Lightning
• 4 Lightning Bolt
• 4 Searing Blaze
• 4 Staggershock

• Lands (24)
• 12 Mountain
• 4 Arid Mesa
• 4 Scalding Tarn
• 4 Teetering Peaks

• Sideboard (15)
• 4 Manic Vandal
• 3 Mark of Mutiny
• 4 Arc Trail
• 4 Ratchet Bomb

Buy This Deck

Burn spells, a planeswalker that's virtually a burn/burn split card, and creatures that permanently live in the Red zone—and sometimes turn into burn spells. The environment has become pretty hostile to this deck since Patrick's initial success, with Kor Firewalkers springing up like weeds all over the place. This hate bear is particularly troublesome for Patrick's deck with no colorless cards, but the janky Ratchet Bomb and no evasive creatures to get around it. Firewalker isn't unbeatable by himself, but he does take the edge off the Red deck's assault and buy the defender a ton of time to get his own game plan online—if Firewalker pushes your kill turn from four to six, that's enough time to get a Baneslayer down and swinging, and then the Red player is in dire straits. Thankfully, New Phyrexia has produced a fantastic card for Red decks to deal with these brutal hate cards, only there was apparently an error at the printers and they had to change it to a Black card at the last minute. I'm talking, of course, about Dismember, the best Red card in the new set.

The Dragon's Claw ability on Firewalker is, of course, secondary next to the obnoxious protection from Red. Red is by far the best protection ability to have on a small defensive guy, as Red is almost always aggressive, and all the creatures in Sullivan's deck can't attack profitably into a Firewalker. Additionally, none of the removal spells in the main deck can get him out of the way. This ability is shared by Phyrexian Crusader, another particularly difficult card for Red decks to beat, as once the Black deck has stabilized, Crusader becomes a very fast, unblockable clock.

To beat these cards in the past, red mages have had a number of options, all narrow and mostly terrible. Perilous Myr is a colorless source of 2 damage, but the difficulty is in getting him killed. Ratchet Bomb is slow as molasses, and when you need Firewalker out of the way to finish off your opponent, laying a Ratchet Bomb is almost as bad as doing nothing—Contagion Clasp has a similar problem. Once upon a time, we even had to use Unstable Footing, the narrowest answer of all.

While we were filling our sideboards with all these terrible cards to answer just one potential hate card from the opponent, he potentially had a variety of troublesome sideboard cards for us—Obstinate Baloth and Wall of Omens don't care about the above answers, but Flame Slash is a very effective response—it is, however, terrible against Firewalker. Baneslayer Angel bites it to Combust, but Baloth and Firewalker can ignore it. All these cards are very effective against the core strategy of the aggressive Red deck, but playing effective answers to all of them would fill the sideboard before we even get to other options.

Dismember is the answer to the red mage's prayers. It'll be used out of the sideboard in matchups where we are definitely the beat-down and the opponent has or is likely to bring in problematic creatures. 4 life is a small price to pay in most of these matchups—against Caw-Blade, we are never going to lose the race if we can keep Firewalker and Baneslayer off the table. Against Infect, our life total is like a big pool of free mana—there is no cost to spending life against an Infect deck. While I expect this card will make the cut in every Standard Red sideboard from here until October 2012, it is at its best in this kind of fast beat-down that cares the least about the life expenditure and the most about a fast, cheap answer to the opponent's devastating hate cards.

While Dismember is certainly the best card for the burn deck in the new set, there are a couple of other hidden gems that are potentially interesting. The first is one that has had a lot of press already: Immolating Souleater. This guy is not, as he might first appear, an artifact Firebreathing limited guy. He's actually a one-card Channel/Fireball combo! Play him turn two, attack turn three, tap your three Mountains, and pay 18 life to pump him, and you are hitting for 13. Save one of your Mountains for Assault Strobe, and it's 24 instead! Patrick Chapin paired this guy with Kiln Fiend and surrounded the two with burn spells, Assault Strobe, and Fling in his article last week. This is a deck extremely dedicated to making the opponent dead on turn three. The plan is certainly reasonable—after all, it doesn't matter if you end the game on 20 life or 2, as long as the opponent is on 0.

The second seemingly innocuous card is Furnace Scamp. At first, this card reminded me of Emberwilde Augur from Future Sight, a card that I frequently tried when I first started out in Magic. I always found the Augur quite awkward, and initially dismissed Scamp as even more awkward, as you have to hit with him to sacrifice. Having another look through the Red cards, though, I realized he is actually Goblin Guides five through eight! 90% of the time, I expect you will sacrifice him at the earliest opportunity, meaning he has hit for 4 on turn two for the investment of 1 mana, just as a Goblin Guide will have by that point. In this, he is also like Spark Elemental +1 or Lava Spike +1, both eminently playable cards in the correct deck (a deck made of nothing but Spark Elementals and Lava Spikes).

Sligh

Next up on the scale of Red decks is Sligh, modeled on the legendary Red beat-down deck that first implemented the concept of the "mana curve." This deck has really suffered in the current metagame, as it's too slow to beat Valakut or Caw-Blade before they get their control games online. Its abstract card quality is much higher than that of the above deck, as it plays actual creatures like Masticore and Kargan Dragonlord; however, these cards are not well-suited to the current format. This is my favorite style of Red deck; it can play both the beat-down and control roles depending on the matchup, and it sideboards very well in switching between the two game plans.

"Adrian Sullivan's Sligh"

• Creatures (20)
• 4 Ember Hauler
• 4 Goblin Guide
• 4 Kargan Dragonlord
• 4 Plated Geopede
• 4 Molten-Tail Masticore

• Planeswalkers (4)
• 4 Koth of the Hammer

• Spells (10)
• 2 Searing Blaze
• 4 Burst Lightning
• 4 Lightning Bolt

• Lands (26)
• 12 Mountain
• 3 Teetering Peaks
• 3 Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle
• 4 Arid Mesa
• 4 Scalding Tarn

• Sideboard (13)
• 2 Chandra Nalaar
• 2 Staggershock
• 4 Mark of Mutiny
• 2 Mimic Vat
• 3 Ratchet Bomb

Buy This Deck

This is a very old list, but as it hasn't been able to gain a foothold in Standard, I haven't seen anyone attempt an update recently. It is better suited to playing control than Patrick's deck, but it isn't as good at playing control as Caw-Blade is, and given that that is the deck to beat, slowing down the Red deck is not a strong recipe for success. Nonetheless, there are some interesting cards to consider for a Red deck with a mana curve.

Moltensteel Dragon has deservedly gotten a lot of attention in set reviews as a dangerous finisher, potentially coming down turn four if you're in a hurry and willing to trade the life, and ending the game extremely quickly with evasion and Phyre-breathing. A Sligh deck can really take advantage of the Phyrexian mana cost—when you're in beat-down mode, you'll be happy to pay the life and try to end the game as quickly as possible, but when you're controlling, you can hang onto it, play lands and removal, and then drop it a bit later and turn the tables. The Dragon means you can freely use your burn on the opponent's creatures, confident that you'll be able to end the game without the need for your burn spells.

Urabrask the Hidden is a very exciting curve-topper for Red, as discussed in depth by @gavinverhey last week. Both abilities are exciting, as the first one means your Ember Haulers and such off the top can immediately get in the action; meanwhile, the second severely impairs your opponent's ability to defend himself, as all his blockers will enter tapped—often, all you need is one extra turn without Baneslayer or the Hawk Squad—interfering. It's also very good against opposing Haste creatures, of particular note Vengevine and Cunning Sparkmage.

Big Red

Finally on our arc of Red decks is Big Red, which is currently built relying heavily on artifact mana to power out monsters like Inferno Titan, Kuldotha Phoenix, and Wurmcoil Engine. This deck saw a spike in popularity a few weeks back, but seems to have quickly faded out of MTGO—I had to dig through a half-dozen tournaments before finding the following 3–1 list.

[cardlist]

[Creatures]

4 Cyclops Gladiator

4 Kuldotha Phoenix

2 Wurmcoil Engine

[/Creatures]

[Planeswalkers]

4 Koth of the Hammer

[/Planeswalkers]

[Spells]

2 Spawning Breath

4 Galvanic Blast

4 Lightning Bolt

4 Everflowing Chalice

4 Sphere of the Suns

4 Tumble Magnet

[/Spells]

[Lands]

18 Mountain

2 Tectonic Edge

4 Dragonskull Summit

[/Lands]

[Sideboard]

3 Oxidda Scrapmelter

4 Tunnel Ignus

4 Go for the Throat

4 Duress

[/Sideboard]

[/cardlist]

The card that has me most excited to try in this deck is Volt Charge, a mildly inefficient burn spell with a significant upside. Proliferate has proved very strong in combination with Everflowing Chalice, which itself combos nicely with Red Sun's Zenith for the big finish. Proliferate is also a particularly nice follow-up to Koth—lay Koth turn four (or three), attack, the following turn Volt Charge to tick him up to 5, and blow the ultimate before your opponent even knows what's happened. Urabrask and the Dragon could also stake a claim for a place in this deck, as could even Chancellor of the Forge—a warm body early can put your opponent on the defensive and later perform admirable chump-blocking duties, while the 5/5-plus body is great for an eminently castable 7.

It's certainly not all good news for Red in New Phyrexia, as two of the best cards against Red are the first- and second-best cards in the set, period. Sword of War and Peace and Batterskull will immediately enter the top deck in the format, among others, and will mandate artifact hate in Red sideboards—likely Shatter, as an end-of-turn Batterskull can swing before you untap and put the game out of your reach. Stoneforge Mystic will also become a kill-on-sight threat à la Lotus Cobra, as an early Batterskull is basically unbeatable. This is starting to get me down, though, so let's wrap it up for the week. Dismember is my pick for the strongest Red card in the set, with Moltensteel Dragon a close second. One card I'm quite excited about is Shrine of Burning Rage, though I won't know exactly where it fits in until I've played with it—if you saw any in action at the prerelease, please let me know how they worked out! Also sound off in the comments on whether you think Red is about to enter a renaissance or be buried by equipment, and as always, you can catch me on Twitter: @rtassicker.

Bonus Block Deck List!

I'm a Johnny at heart, and I love putting together my little synergies even in noncombo decks, and the combination of Volt Charge and Shrine of Burning Rage is just too cute for me to ignore. Cutting all the crappy creatures from the block Big Red deck, I've jammed this list full of burn with a Proliferate subtheme—the plan is controlling the board with burn and sweepers, and then going big with Koth, Shrines, and burn to the face.

[cardlist]

[Creatures]

3 Moltensteel Dragon

[/Creatures]

[Planeswalkers]

4 Koth of the Hammer

[/Planeswalkers]

[Spells]

4 Galvanic Blast

4 Volt Charge

4 Red Sun's Zenith

4 Slagstorm

4 Tezzerets Gambit

4 Shrine of Burning Rage

4 Sphere of the Suns

[/Spells]

[Lands]

21 Mountain

4 Inkmoth Nexus

[/Lands]

[Sideboard]

2 Hoard-Smelter Dragon

1 Moltensteel Dragon

2 Into the Core

2 Shatter

4 Dismember

4 Tumble Magnet

[/Sideboard]

[/cardlist]