Card/Deck Token/Sacrifice themes in Red

[Laz]

So, this was originally posted for opinions in my Cube thread, but I am aware that is hardly the most traffic-heavy location, so I am reposting here for comment.

After a 'Ugh, so generic' moment reflecting on my proposed additions, I thought it might be interesting to see if we could take Red in a slightly different direction, going heavy on tokens and sacrifice shenanigans (which kind of lead into each other).



I suppose that this core can be broken down into a number of components.

• Cards that create multiple creatures (Mogg War Marshal, Young Pyromancer)
• Cards that benefit from multiple creatures (Hellrider, Anthems? Battle Cry guys? Battalion?)
• Cards that sacrifice creatures for fun and profit (Goblin Bombardment)
• Cards that benefit from sacrifice outlets (Goblin Sharpshooter, Tuktuk the Explorer, Threaten effects?)

My initial concern with this is the lack of modularity. Do these cards play nice enough with others both within their colour and across multiple decks? I can see Tuktuk being awesome for Birthing Pod, and Goblin Bombardment being amazing in Gravecrawler/Bloodghast decks, but what other cards need to be run outside of these?

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Hissing Iguanar was always decent in limited, and it's not like red's 3-drops are uncontested anyways, so have at it I would say. I think you need more token producers and sac outlets though. Problem is, some of the better ones come at 4 mana, and that spot is already full of very good options.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Devour cards work as well. And these:

 

[CML]

Per usual I would avoid the cards that are bad on their own. Gargadon for example fits neatly into that category. Krenko is pretty cool. The new Goblin Rabblemaster looks to be exactly what this needs. Legion Loyalist is strong with and against these strategies.

 

[Jason Waddell]

This theme is partially implemented in my big sacrifice update that has become a mainstay in my cube, but there is certainly room to push it further.

Some other important angles:
- Threaten effects. These combine super super well with sac outlets, in addition to being powerful on their own.
- (in lower power environments) Eldrazi Spawn Tokens
- Ogre Battledriver and Purphoros deserve a mention
- If you're pushing it in red, find ways to overlap with other colors. Generally this is a Jund theme, although anthems and tokens give it overlap with white, and if you do something like Opposition or Zombies there are ways to tie blue into the picture.

Barrage of expendables is terrible. Furnace Celebration won games in my cube for a while, especially when overloaded with fetchlands and eldrazi tokens.

 

[Diakonov]

I use both of those themes in my red section as well, and it has been a hit. As Jason said, if you work some of that theme into the other colors, that takes care of the modularity to some extent. A lot of the sacrifice synergies are stronk enough that you don't need to have an entirely "sacrifice deck" to make them worthwhile. For example, I've been running Preacher in white, which is pretty decent anyway, but works great in RW aggro with a couple sac outlets.

I've also been trying to introduce a +1/+1 counter theme, but it is difficult. A friend of mine suggested changing cards with Populate or Proliferate to read, "Populate, then Proliferate", like a doubling season increment of sorts. It's tempting.

 

[GenericZero]

Is Furnace Celebration good enough? To me it seems that unless you're playing with lots of fetches and eldrazi, it just sucks a hissing iguanar's raging goblin....

 

[CML]

Is Furnace Celebration good enough? To me it seems that unless you're playing with lots of fetches and eldrazi, it just sucks a hissing iguanar's raging goblin....

mnnnugh. if i wanna shock something repeatedly ill just add cursed scroll.

sac outlets should generally cost 0

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Except Cursed Scroll can never generate more than 2 damage a turn and is isn't guaranteed to end up in the red sacrifice player's card pool. If you want to support the theme I think Celebration is a good include.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Per usual I would avoid the cards that are bad on their own. Gargadon for example fits neatly into that category. [/ci]

I don't know about that. Investing one mana into an eventual 9/7 that punishes an opponent for interacting with your permanents seems pretty reasonable to me.

Plus, if you are supporting this archetype, he is arguably the best overall sac. outlet you can run for it.

 

[Laz]

Plus, if you are supporting this archetype, he is arguably the best overall sac. outlet you can run for it.

I am with Grillo, Goblin Bombardment and Greater Gargadon are awesome sac outlets in Red, though there are some solid off colour ones (Carrion Feeder, Falkenrath Aristocrat). Greater Gargadon is a very cool card.

How do we support the tokens that are the other half of this theme though? Obviously anthems, but I don't really feel that the true anthems (Glorious, Gaea's) have a lot of play to them. What are some solid non-anthem anthems? Or cards that otherwise care about number of creatures.
White offers Kongming, "Sleeping Dragon" as very direct correlation, but slightly too expensive at 4CMC I think. Battle cry is available here. Accorder Paladin and Hero of Bladehold are solid, but is something like Signal Pest playable?
Hellrider does it in a very red way, having tiny creatures to charge recklessly in. Are there other effects like this, something like 'attacking creatures get...'? Instigator Gang was in my cube for a little and whenever he flipped, games ended really fast.
In Blue, Opposition is a very real card.
Green has Overrun effects, although asides from Garruk and Craterhoof, I have little experience with them.
I am not too concerned with Black, the sacrifice themes have enough cross over.

 

[Jason Waddell]

I'm kind of torn. When I was really pushing red sacrifice I originally ran double Gargadon. It was okay, but now I run zero. I'm not sure what the answer is. I did like the Gargadon-Threaten decks. The card is better than CML makes it out to be, but probably worse than what others perceive. Then again, it is super synergistic, unique, and overlaps with, say, upheaval effects and those things in design.

 

[Jason Waddell]

Contested War Zone is a real card.

 

[Dom Harvey]

Greater Gargadon has never been anything short of fantastic for me.

 

[Diakonov]

Contested War Zone is a real card.

I've been using that in my Utility Land Draft. It's definitely strong enough.

 

[Laz]

Ah! Forgot my favourite non-anthem anthem!

 

[ahadabans]

I'm kind of torn. When I was really pushing red sacrifice I originally ran double Gargadon. It was okay, but now I run zero. I'm not sure what the answer is. I did like the Gargadon-Threaten decks. The card is better than CML makes it out to be, but probably worse than what others perceive. Then again, it is super synergistic, unique, and overlaps with, say, upheaval effects and those things in design.

Greater Gargadon has never been anything short of fantastic for me.

Like with Shelldock Isle, I suspect how good this card is depends largely on the speed of your cube. I agree with Dom that Gargadon is an excellent card, but my cube is slower than most so it has time to do it's thing. My cube has a decent amount of removal and Gargadon reads (counter targeted removal/control magic effect: Gargadon comes into play faster). The occasional threaten or control magic effect in your deck gets additional value, as does Sneak Attack (one of the best things to pair it with I think in a BR reanimator shell).

 

[Eric Chan]

Yeah, independently of Jason and CML, I came to the conclusion that Greater Gargadon wasn't cutting it in my list, so with some reluctance I finally axed it a month ago. He wasn't pulling his weight here, compared to colourless sac outlets like Blasting Station, Mortarpod, and even Jinxed Idol, all of which I still run. I can it being good if you run, say, Balance in your list.. but then, you know, Balance.

 

[Jason Waddell]

Jinxed Idol is so good and creates such fun Magic games. Run it people!

 

[Alfonzo Bonzo]

I run jinxed idol and really like it. Can somebody sell me on mortapod?

 

[Onderzeeboot]

You mean "Blasting Station-with-an-activation-cost"?

 

[Jason Waddell]

I dunno, Mortarpod was so slow in standard that I never really gave it an honest effort in cube. I imagine your mileage will vary as a function of your X/1 density. 2 to equip is kinda brutal.

 

[ahadabans]

I run jinxed idol and really like it. Can somebody sell me on mortapod?

It's colorless spot removal that is reusable. It doesn't look amazing, but it can be pretty powerful. Decks that run tokens, or even in green ramp when you no longer have any use for your mana dude... whatever. A lot of creatures have one toughness, so you'd be surprised how much one damage can do when you can toss it at anything.

 

[Alfonzo Bonzo]

You mean "Blasting Station-with-an-activation-cost"?

That's not selling it to me

I dunno, Mortarpod was so slow in standard that I never really gave it an honest effort in cube. I imagine your mileage will vary as a function of your X/1 density. 2 to equip is kinda brutal.

That's kinda what I thought.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

That's not selling it to me

That was kinda the point

To be fair though, Mortarpod comes down a turn earlier, when you actually might want to kill a 1-toughness creature, and comes with a free red shirt. It was a sweet, sweet limited card in its time (3 years already?), in part though because it worked so well with infect. If you run enough X/1's and support a sacrifice theme I suspect it's one of the better options still.