Kaldheim Limited Set Review: Red

Drifter

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Drifter: C+

This strikes me as a powerful and frightening 2 drop, because the ability is so free on it and means it retains value even in the later game. Everything having haste means that a lot of creatures will deal chip damage, your opponents will be forced to hold back stuff, even fliers if they’re on a low life total, and the cost of not attacking with your 2/2 that might not have a good attack anyway is low, since whatever you give haste will usually be an upgrade.

You do need to be a beatdown deck (not necessarily aggressive deck, I do mean something different by that!) and to be ahead to make good use of this card, and while that seems to align well with what Red is doing, remember that you won’t always be able to bank on that in Draft, and that you can still win many games where you’re initially behind, even in those decks. That does harm this card’s grade a little, but it has an okay statline so it will still be doing something in those games.

Drifter: B

A 4 mana 4/2 that pings for 1, which is the floor of this card, is already quite good in Draft – it comes in and takes out a damaged creature or mops up an x/1. Obviously the goal is to get to 2-3 damage, though, at which point you’re straight up killing a very important creature and don’t need prior damage, and the card is totally absurd if you can do that – it’s an easy 2 for 1 and huge tempo swing. Also, do note that this can hit players – many of these effects can’t, and it’s a fantastic upside!

This card’s most natural home is in Izzet, since Blue has a lot of other Giants and Wizards at common – there are only two other Giants in Red that’ll be easy to pick up in every draft, and one of them costs 7 mana. If you’re in any other Red pair, you actually want to be counting Berserkers rather than Giants or Wizards – Red has five of those at common, and there are a bunch more in Black, so this card is still great but you need to do more work outside Izzet to get it to two or three damage. Still, I think it should be easy enough to make it work naturally with so many Berserkers, and most of the common ones are pretty good, so I’m giving it a high grade – I think whatever colour pair you play, there will be a decent plan for it, since this set has a lot of the same creature types.

Drifter: A-

One of the rare Gods in the set being a powerful combination of two good cards anyway? Wow, say it ain’t so. Birgi is a fantastic card which makes some of the boast commons like Tuskeri Firewalker and Hagi Mob much more frightening – when Hagi Mob is dealing two damage or you’re getting two cards per turn with Tuskeri Firewalker, things’ll get out of hand really quickly. The extra mana you gain will allow you to drop your hand sooner, but you will be out of gas quickly without Firewalker or some other way to convert your boasts into card advantage – it’s a good effect in Limited, but not nuts or anything, since you do need to cast at least two spells a turn to make good use of it, or have something to sink spare mana into. This is the mode you’ll play when you have any Boasts at all or want to be applying pressure/blocking early on.

The other mode, Harnfel, is absolutely amazing in the late game and will quickly bury them in card advantage, converting all your topdecks into live draws and often multiple cards. It’s very difficult to imagine an opponent beating Harnfel if they don’t kill you or produce some bomb you can’t beat in short order. In best-of-three, you should expect them to bring artifact hate for it, in which case you might just want to cast Birgi more, and in best-of-one, it’ll just run away with the game.

This is another modal card where the good cases cover each other really well, since Harnfel would be awkward in games where you’re being beaten down or you’re trying to attack yourself, or when you want to support your Boast cards that are already winning the game, but Birgi does all that while still giving you access to Harnfel whenever you need it. In a dynamic format like draft, where games go so differently and are so hard to predict, versatility is king, and this card really delivers.

Drifter: C

This isn’t a card I’m super excited about, because 3/2 is a really bad statline on a 3 drop, even with haste. You’ll be trading down with a 2 drop some of the time with this, or just won’t want to attack. However, it’s true that in a Foretell format, your opponents can usually afford to play fewer 2s, so maybe you’ll be able to exploit that fact – it is pretty devastating when they have to trade their Foretell creature down with this, to avoid taking too much damage. This is a pretty low C for me – I would’ve given it a C- in most sets, but I’m a little more hopeful for it here.

Drifter: B

This is a 6/4 for 4 that has an immediate impact with some of the other cards in the set, but there aren’t actually that many at common outside of Izzet (the 7 drop is hard to set up with this, but they better have a removal spell at that point). Still, if you’re Izzet and have Berg Striders or you have some of the uncommon Giants, specifically Doomskar Titan or Basalt Ravager, this will absolutely slaughter them, and the failcase is still pretty good.

Drifter: C-

This card is really expensive and being at 7 mana makes your Giant synergies really awkward – when you’re having to wait four or five turns to enable those, they’re not nearly as exciting. Remember that the difference between 6 and 7 mana will often be multiple turns in Limited. Still, when I do play my 7 drop, I really want it to have a massive impact and this delivers – they will really want enchantment-based or exile removal, or they’re in a lot of trouble, because this will 3 for 1 on most boards.

A lot of Red decks will end up cutting this if they’re trying to be aggressive (though, as per my distinction between beatdown and aggressive, this will be a fine curve-topper as a 1-of in some beatdown decks) or lower curve, or when they just have other high end – if you have 2 6 drops that are better, you probably just want to rely on those, and certainly if you have 3 – but some decks will be happy to have it, especially when you throw ramp in Gruul into the equation.

Drifter: C

4 mana 4/4 is a good statline in Limited, and not being able to block alone is very different from just not being able to block, since you can just leave a 2/2 or whatever back the turn you play this and force them to trade down. I expect this to make the cut in most decks, even if they’re not thrilled about it. It does incentivise you to play more 2 drops if you have these and are debating between your final cuts.

Drifter: C-

Generally, this kind of effect isn’t super exciting outside of specific sets and decks – the problem is that plenty of your opponents won’t have significantly more x/2s than you, and attacking first to enable this is a really awkward thing to do – what if they play around this or a different burn spell, and trade 2 drops off rather than blocking with their bigger guys? When you’re making obviously bad attacks, it’s not hard for an opponent to figure out that you probably have something!

I liked Cinderclasm a lot more, because it had two big upsides over this: a) at instant speed, you could set it up by blocking first, and you just had a lot more general utility. b) Cinderclasm gave you the option to deal 1 damage if that was better for you – and it often was. While I do see this belonging in a Giants or Gruul deck where almost none of your creatures die to it, and Foretell is a nice small upside (maybe you can chain it with haste creatures or other burn spells that way), I’m not excited to take it very highly and expect to cut it in most of my decks. This is a nice sideboard card in best-of-three, but worse in a set with Foretell and lots of big creatures.

Drifter: B+

3 mana 4 damage is a fantastic rate, more so at instant speed, and Foretell is strong upside that will enable some really devastating turns. This is a strong splash card, so you’re going to have some competition for it, and this is a great reason to pick up red snow duals in other colours.

Drifter: B

A 6 mana 5/4 haste that pumps your team is a fantastic rate – it enables a ton of damage out of nowhere and will often end games in one swing. This is a card that if you’re far ahead against Red in Limited, you really want to play around to avoid having the game snatched out from under you! Foretell is especially good here, because sometimes you won’t have that 6th land drop, or you’ll have a 2 drop to play first on turn 7 (or another Foretell card to flip up!) and then that will gain haste and be buffed up too, to make for even deadlier swings.

This is the kind of card you can get a lot of value from holding onto and waiting for the right moment for, if you’re in a stalled board or somewhere else where the body isn’t doing much – it’s worth taking some time to set it up, if it just wins you the game. If you have to draw some creatures and play them first, then so be it.

Drifter: A-

This card is the total nuts – it dominates the board on turn 2, and then it forces them to leave something pretty big back on turn 5 onwards, at which point you can cash it in for a Dragon anyway. If you have ways to push it through (e.g. end of turn burn their blocker, untap and attack), it’ll just win you the game, but even the base case of great 2 drop that upgrades into a Dragon is fantastic. Realistically, they must kill this card as soon as they can.

Drifter: D

I think Dual Strike demands too much of your deck to be a consistently good card, especially in a set like this which is rather creature-dominated – even Blue has more creatures here than in most sets. With this sort of card, it’s easy to imagine the great case of copying a premium removal spell, and forget all the times in rots in your hand and doesn’t do anything. The number of good spell targets in the average deck is pretty low for this sort of effect, since expensive spells and counterspells don’t work, and there’s also the fact that sometimes they won’t have two good targets for removal or you won’t want to copy the spell right now, but you’ll be forced to since the card isn’t doing anything otherwise. Ultimately the payoff for doing all of this work is you get a copy of one of your spells – it’s a 2 for 2, not like you’re comboing off or gaining a massive advantage as opposed to just casting a creature (which this will usually replace in your deck) alongside your spell.

The Foretell cost is really good on this card, because it would be straight up uncastable some large proportion of the time otherwise – you’d need triple Red to copy a Red spell with it. Ultimately, I think some rare decks can play this card, like those that have multiple copies of Dwarven Reinforcements or Demon Bolt alongside several other spells (minimum 7-8 spells total, preferably more) that fit these requirements, but the vast majority should stay far away.

Drifter: C+

I’m not nearly as fond of the creature half of this card as the other equipment in the cycle – a 5/1 Trample is really not good for 5 mana, so a lot of the value has to be in the equipment. Luckily the equipment does perform, making anything a very real threat, but it costs a full 6 to play and equip. Still, I think this will overperform as a strong curve-topper for a beatdown deck, giving it longevity in the late game and making use of the creatures it has on the board that aren’t quite as useful anymore. I have it at high C+ and could see moving it up, but I think Red has a lot of good high end this set, so I’m not sure I would prioritise it enough for B-.

Drifter: C+

This is a solid rate, and token generators are hard to come by this set. Beatdown decks always like go-wide cards, even if it’s not their primary plan, since you want to set up that legendary and devastating “attack with all”, and so I think they’ll want this card quite a lot. Foretell is a really nice addition to this card, and I think you’ll often want to Foretell on turn 2 and play this on turn 3, since 2/1s are at their best earlier in the game and you’ll probably just get value trading with their 2 drop.

If you already happen to have a Doomskar Titan, then you want to take these a little higher – that is a devastating 7 mana combo. White has some group buffs that really help this card, and it’s especially good with equipment, so I think this is an unusually good set for it all in all. It’s still a low C+ and I could see moving it down, however.

Drifter: C+

This card strikes me as very solid, because just getting one free 2/1 and trading with their 2 drop is something I’m very happy to do on turn 3. If you can’t set up decent attacks for it, then it’s pretty mediocre, but it’s really not that hard to do that in a Foretell set – if you can Foretell a Demon Bolt on their blocker and then make a free 2/1, I think you’re coming out really ahead on that exchange. The ability is inefficient but really it’s only asking 1 more mana than you would pay for a 2 drop, and the 2/1 can trade for those/attack about as well as one, even if you wouldn’t actually play a 2 mana vanilla 2/1.

Still, this does take some set-up, and it’s really doing nothing if it gets blanked by a blocker – but then at least they’re holding a bigger creature back than it. Like all good Boast creatures, it’s especially good with Raven Wings and Rune of Flight (yes, I know, you’re getting sick of hearing that!), but the rate on the card is just good anyway.

Drifter: C-

This is a perfectly serviceable one drop, and I’m happy to play it in my aggressive decks (better in the more dedicated aggressive decks than midrangier beatdown in this case, but I’ll still play it in the latter sometimes) – it will chip away for a few points of damage, hold equipment well, and then this ability is legitimately quite scary in the late game. A 3/1 first strike is pretty hard to block, and they’ll often be forced to double or triple block it, in which case your tricks and burn spells will kick them into next week.

Threat of activation is a big deal with this sort of card, but remember that a savvy opponent will sometimes decide to waste your mana if their 1/2 or 2/2 isn’t doing anything anyway – it isn’t always a good idea to attack with this and set yourself up for that, because a late game deck doesn’t always mind going down a card if it means you have to spend your entire turn. It’s also worth noting that there are a bunch of common haste creatures in Red, which make this a little worse – you can’t attack with it and get value from that ability.

I think this is a solid C in beatdown decks, but most decks are not that in Limited, and you really won’t want to play this that much in your big midrangey Red decks, which I think is a solid path for the colour to take in the Giants/bigger creature/slower format I expect this to be.

Drifter: B-

I think to get a lot of Boast activations off requires too much work of you for me to give this a really high grade. Every time I attack with a Boast creature and activate its effect, I am incentivising my opponent to block and trade stuff off. To keep that up, I need trick after trick or removal spell after removal spell, and I need to pump all my mana into that, and it’s not like there are millions of Boast creatures at common in Red. Still, this starts off with a decent statline and only needs one counter to be above rate, so I am definitely happy with it.

Boast is a mechanic that’s not really that aggressive, because it forces you to use your mana in some awkward inefficient ways – it’s actually a value mechanic, and it rewards you for being ahead and not needing to add that much to the board. I don’t think the payoffs are a naturally powerful inclusion in aggro decks as a result – a card like Fearless Pup, which is an aggressive card, and this don’t play that well together because you don’t actually want to spend 3 mana to deal 2 extra damage – they’re just not going to block and you won’t have that lying around until the late game where you’ve already exhausted your other cards, and your aggro deck is at its weakest.

Drifter: C+

I think this card is mostly just Shock, but you can get there if you’re Izzet (which is looking increasingly like the colour pair that Red wants most anyway) or Gruul, and Lightning Bolt is still great in the late game while Shock is pretty medium. I would ordinarily give Shock a B- but I’m giving this a C+ because I don’t think this is that great a set for it – many of the creatures outsize it, from Giants to all the Foretell cards, 2 drops at their worst in a set with Foretell, and I don’t expect to have the Snow requirement on until the late game, even in Izzet.

This is a high C+ and I could see moving it up if Shock is better than I think right now.

Drifter: A+

This is a truly absurd card, having one of the best offensive statlines of any card in the set, and leaving people trying to race you totally in the dust. It immediately refunds 2 mana off itself, allowing you to double spell the same turn you cast it and get even further ahead, and it fixes for your splashes. Then they must immediately kill it, or you untap and have up to 9 mana next turn… I doubt there is a better turn 5 play in the whole set.

Between Boast and Foretell, I think you’ll be using your mana for longer in this set than most, and this card is nuts even if you’re out of gas.

Drifter: C

This is a solid Boast card, with a fine attacking statline, and the ability to ping down annoying creatures, otherwise improve your attacks, or enable your burn spells to kill bigger things. It’s worth noting that these pair quite well, since getting to shoot down x/2s is far better than x/1s, but there are only so many 5 drops you’re going to want to run, and Red has a lot of competition this set.

This card gets truly absurd with one specific uncommon, Rune of Mortality in Rakdos, where it can kill a creature every turn and enable its own attacks. You should certainly take the Mob higher if you already have a Rune, but you can’t expect to get one specific uncommon in most Drafts (so don’t do it the other way round). I think this is a pretty high C.

Drifter: C-

Fissure Wizard is a fine card, but worse in a set with Foretell because it gets blanked so quickly and 2 drops in general are weaker. It’s nice to enable your Berserker synergies for the few uncommon payoffs, but other than that I suspect this card will get cut a lot.

Drifter: B-

With three Red Dwarves at common (two of which are good, and one which is medium – which is important, you don’t want to put bad cards in your deck to enable narrow synergies) and a fourth in Dwarven Reinforcements (which this card is great with), and three more in White, I’m pretty excited for this card – it just makes all of those cards decently more threatening attackers.

Getting some free treasure tokens is nice for fixing and to enable splashes, but I wouldn’t count on that last mode doing much all that often – even if you get to five treasures, there are no dragons at common or uncommon, and even the best artifact in your deck is likely to be decent rather than busted (and it’s not a guarantee that you’ll have one – it’s mostly just equipment, and the common ones are just okay). I think it will happen sometimes though, since there are just so many Dwarves, and it’ll be pretty sweet.

Drifter: F

Oh hey, a modal car- nope, neither of these modes are worth playing.

Drifter: C+

This is kind of like a split card with three different modes – three to a creature, 5 damage to the face if you have a big enough creature to survive and you’re not worried about your creature being killed, or 3 damage to the face. Mode A is almost always the one you cast, but having access to the other two modes is great, and offers you unconditional reach which Red doesn’t have access to much of this set (by which I mean the ability to finish off a weakened opponent, not the keyword). It’s rather inefficient in everything it does, and 3 damage might not always kill what you want it to in a Foretell/big creatures set, but I think you’ll still want to take it reasonably highly.

Drifter: B+

This is a 5/4 for 5 that shoots your opponent for 2 a turn while in play, and then sometimes you’ll actually have a Giant, and then it’ll do that even when killed or milled. That’s a lot of inevitability for free on a fine body! A lot of the removal in the format outside Red is enchantment-based, which isn’t that good against this, since the ability is a really rough thing to have in play for more than a turn or two. Not letting them gain life is nice, and will be relevant in a few spots, but doesn’t change the grade.

Drifter: F

I don’t think this is a playable card in Limited – even if 1 in 10 games, you happen to have two Vehicles and Equipment in play, it’ll do nothing or just make one 2/1 for 4 mana in the other 9. Really, even getting two Dwarves is not worth the risk of it doing nothing if you did have a crazy number of Vehicles and Equipment – you would need to get three before you were really happy, and that’s just not happening. Cost reducing your equip costs really isn’t worth that much either.

Drifter: D+

I think some of the decks with lots of boast creatures will want this card, just because they’ll want tricks, but this is a weak one – it doesn’t do anything when you’re behind, it’s vulnerable to instant speed removal, and the payoff is you get a 1 for 1 and a little damage through. Perhaps a double spell beatdown deck in Boros or Rakdos will want it too, but this is a bad card without a lot of synergy or unless you’re a dedicated aggro deck. This is a low D+, which is probably overrating this a little.

Drifter: C-

With Foretell cards, I think you will be able to get the upside of playing a creature on the cheap and giving it haste often enough, and at that point this is sort of like deal 4 damage, give a creature +1/+0 permanently, and draw a card for 2 mana, which is decent enough. The failcase on this, where you don’t use the haste, is quite bad and iwll come up a lot, but giving something +1/+0 permanently is at least an effect that will help your fliers and first strike cards out a little. I see this as being okay filler in beatdown decks with foretell creatures, fliers, and Fearless Pups, but never really that exciting.

What raises this from D+ to C- for me is the ability to put it on an equipment, at which point something like Goldvein Pick or Raven Wings is giving +2/+1 and haste, which is really scary – equipment gets a ton better with power buffs. Still, this is by far the worst Rune.

Drifter: D+

So this is better Tormenting Voice (since you can just use the Treasure right away) that gives you some free fixing – sure, you can’t cast it when you’re stuck on 2, but whatever. I’ve never been that excited by Tormenting Voice, because it’s the sort of card that rots in your hand until the late game when you’ve been saving up a land, and then it has a really medium effect for all that investment.

Still, I think fixing your splashes and the fact that this ramps you to 5 the turn after is enough upside that I’m kind of into playing one of these in my slower, midrangier Red decks with splashes – I think it does enough to warrant actually a filler rather than bad grade, at least in terms of where I’ll be picking it. Remember that your splash sources being one-shots is pretty awkward – you can’t count this as a full source and will still need lands alongside it (sometimes you will absolutely need to spend the Treasure on other stuff), but if you have two Treasure producers, that can be close enough to one source.

Drifter: D-

This isn’t a playable maindeck card, outside of very rare Rakdos decks with like four or five ways to sacrifice things (which is hard in a set with so little fodder, but maybe doable since Red has more token generation than the other colours).

This is a really strong sideboard card, since it has a lot more common cases than Act of Treason – which you can board in against Green decks with big creatures (importantly, you need them to have big creatures and not a lot that can stop them dealing damage – if they also have tokens and can chump, or those creatures don’t have trample, then it’s a lot worse) as a beatdown deck, or against matchups where you’re sure the game will come down to a race (say against fliers), but is never that great. In this format, Act of Treason gets a bit better anyway, since you get to use boast effects, but using this as an equipment hoser alongside all that is legitimately very real.

Drifter: F

This doesn’t hit enough good targets to ever be worth maindecking – destroying lands is not good in Limited, because you can’t massively and immediately capitalise on the mana advantage you gained, like you can in Constructed. It’s a pretty mediocre sideboard card too, but you can bring it in as an efficient answer to really important artifacts (make sure they have at least 2-3 decent targets, and preferably that one of them is an actual bomb).

Drifter: C+

I suspect this card will be 5 mana 6 damage in most cases, since there are only two common Giants in Red (and one of them costs 7 mana so it doesn’t actually combo with this), so you really need to be Izzet (which has changelings), have uncommon ones or have multiple copies of Craven Hulk. Still, when you do get there, it’ll be totally absurd – 2 mana 6 damage is the best rate you can get for a removal spell – and when you don’t, it’s still much better than Turn to Slag or Fiery Intervention since instant speed, the former which was a C and the latter which was a C+.

Drifter: F

I can only imagine they have this weird mill ability so that you can’t set this card up in Constructed by countering your own spell.. this card is awful in Limited, will put you a card down, and potentially leave you with a scarier problem. If it were actual removal rather than a counterspell, so you didn’t have to hold it up and wait for the right spot, it would be bad but not unplayable. As it is, don’t let Tibalt trick you into putting this in your deck.

Drifter: A

Wow another modal God that’s really good, I know it’s a real shock to you folks at home. A 4 mana 5/4 Trample that makes your Squashes terrifying is really good, and then the equipment gives you a reasonably efficient 4 mana way to keep blowing away your opponent’s creatures or burning their face turn after turn. You’re not going to have many Legendary creatures, so you should probably basically never play this for the +3/+0 – if the Legendary dies, you won’t have a second one to carry the buff.

I suspect you’ll play Toralf most of the time, as a big threatening creature, and then the Equipment will be a gamewinning late game play that forces them to win soon or lose almost every longer game.

Drifter: C-

This isn’t a great set for Short Sword, since it’s full of big creatures and high power low toughness units – often the buff won’t be enough to get you through unless you’re putting it on literally Fearless Pup (these two cards have pretty good synergy, but you do have to draw them both very early in the game for the Helm to be doing that much as later on, you can just use the Pup’s activated ability anyway). Still, you don’t need to enable that many attacks for this to be good, it’s good with fliers or anything that’s hard to block, and it’s one of the best targets to put Runes on in the set, so it’s a much better pick if you already have a couple of those.

Drifter: B-

This is a bit hard to cast compared to Demon Bolt (which I’m realising is a pretty weird name for a card, how do Demons and Lightning Bolts interact?), and sorcery speed makes it a good deal worse.

If you’re in Izzet or Gruul, this mana refund ability is pretty nice if you have easy to cast stuff to immediately put it into – remember it only gives you colourless mana, so to run this into a Red spell will cost you triple Red, which you won’t have most of the time, so it’ll more often be Foretell costs artifacts, equip costs, or spells of your other colour, and sometimes it just won’t do anything. Still, the base case is good and sometimes this will cost effectively 1 mana, at which point it can be a real blowout.

Drifter: C+

This is a strong red common, which compares pretty well to Grotag Night-Runner – you always get to exile a card even if you don’t deal damage, and even if you trade then you’re hopefully still getting value. I suspect most of the time, you’ll just be trying to get a 2 for 1 with this, since it’s pretty expensive to use a removal spell or trick to get it through and then hope to cast whatever you get, but you can at least exile first and see if you want to – if it’s a land, which you can play off this (which is huge!), then you might be able to do that whole sequence after all. I think you should be able to get a 2 for 1 enough that this is a very solid card, though it being a 3/2 in a set with lots of 2/1s means it’s going to trade too much for me to put it in the B range.

This is a fantastic card to put Raven Wings and Rune of Fli- okay, you get the point.

Drifter: D+

This is mostly a 2 mana 1/3, which can be an okay blocking statline against more aggressive Red and White decks in the format, but is pretty underwhelming. The ability to fix you is nice, but takes a while to set up and only really makes this worth playing if you have good some splash cards or really need more defensive 2s. It’s a shame it can’t exile from your opponent’s graveyard, since it would at least hose some Black decks a bit that way.

Drifter

Red kind of has the space to do whatever it wants this set, since it has powerful burn spells and good common quality, meaning it’s well-prepared for lots of different games. I see beatdown and slower decks as both viable and potentially strong. Red’s burn spells are exceptional this set, because it has the tools to cover big and small creatures alike – there aren’t as many sweet spots for toughness against it for other colours to exploit. I suspect 5 is still a sweet spot, since only Squash hits that (and Squash will often cost 5 mana) so perhaps the 5 toughness creatures in other colours will be tough to handle (not that there are all that many).

I think slower Red decks will want to incorporate Boast, since it’s Red’s most powerful value tool. There’s kind of a weird dynamic with the slower Red decks, since Boast encourages them to have cheap and efficient tricks, but it doesn’t really have good ones, and tricks don’t generally go that well in slower decks. Still, removal will get the job done well enough, even if it’ll sometimes be too costly to remove something and then use a boast ability (though not with Frost Bite, and sometimes not with Demon Bolt!).

Boast doesn’t seem as good in beatdown decks, since it’s an inefficient form of value generation, but they’ll certainly still play the Boast cards with decent statlines. Aggressive Red this set looks it’ll be exploiting a bunch of common haste creatures to apply a lot of pressure very quickly, and then back it up with fliers and reach from other colours, or the uncommon burn sources it has access to. Boros seems like the natural home for aggression, benefitting from Red’s good cheap spells with second spell per turn payoffs, and some strong evasive Foretell creatures.

I fear one issue that Red has is that, though it has a Giants theme in theory, it doesn’t actually have very many and you’ll often have to venture into Izzet or incorporate Green’s changelings to have enough support. This wouldn’t normally be that big a problem, but a lot of its creatures this set are kind of understatted – most of them are 3/2s or 2/1s, or have abilities that hamper their blocks, so I think a big Red deck might want to get most of its creatures from colours with better blocking statlines on turns 3 and 4 (which notably Blue is good at this set).

Izzet seems like far and away the best colour combination for Red, since it has the most direct synergy in the form of the Giants deck and covers some of its weaknesses – such as that the slower Red decks don’t have all that much card advantage if they’re not getting Boast creatures through repeatedly (which will be pretty hard to do). Gruul also seems pretty strong, since Green will provide a much stronger creature core and better statlines, and has the potential to drive aggressive and slower Red alike.