Standard Mono Red Burn Deck Highlight

Hey everyone!

March of the Machine is here, and with it, a deluge of sweet new strategies I’m seeing people trying out. I’ve been trying out a litany of decks myself, but I wanted to give some shout outs to the coolest creations I’ve been seeing from other players and creators!

Easily one of my favorite strategies ever and one that is getting a pretty nice boost from March of the Machine, let’s talk about Mono Red Burn!

Mono Red Burn

by DoggertQBones

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Standard

Burn

best of 1

0 mythic

11 rare

20 uncommon

29 common

0

1

2

3

4

5

6+

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Creatures (16)

4

Monastery Swiftspear

$2.76

4

Phoenix Chick

$3.16

4

Voldaren Epicure

$1.56

4

Bloodfeather Phoenix

$1.96

Instants (12)

4

Play with Fire

$15.96

4

Lightning Strike

$1.40

4

Stoke the Flames

$1.40

Sorceries (4)

4

Reckless Impulse

$5.96

Enchantments (8)

4

Kumano Faces Kakkazan

$2.36

4

Mechanized Warfare

$2.76

Lands (20)

17

Mountain

$5.95

2

Mishra’s Foundry

$3.58

1

Sokenzan, Crucible of Defiance

$5.99

60 Cards
$54.8

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To kick off the deck, we have a boatload of one drops!

Monastery Swiftspear is a pretty iconic one drop in Burn in older formats, so no surprise it’s here and excellent. Being able to attack in immediately and threatening to grow it at any point is a great combination in a deck that needs to push damage.

Speaking of pushing damage, Phoenix Chick may be the king of that! With flying and haste, it’s going to be pretty rare that this is going to be killed, much less blocked, and it can provide a steady stream of damage that creeps the opponent closer and closer to burn range.

A more muted version of Chick, Voldaren Epicure deals one damage from the onset, but also provides a Blood token that lets you filter an unwanted card later. Admittedly, this is definitely the weakest one drop of the bunch, but providing a guaranteed damage and making sure you have a way to pitch something that isn’t helpful is still quite useful.

Finally, we have the cream of the crop in terms of one drops with Kumano Faces Kakkazan. Like Voldaren Epicure, Kumano Faces Kakkazan also guarantees one damage on entry, but instead of providing a Blood token, you get 3/3 worth of stats! That is a disgusting amount of value from a single mana investment, and even if you can’t use the chapter 2 effectively, it’s still more than worth the cost.

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Funny enough, we already reached the top of the curve and payoffs! This deck is meant to be low curve and low land count so it can cast substantially more spells than the opponent and just get them dead as fast as possible.

To help us out in getting them dead, we have Phoenix Chick‘s older brother in Bloodfeather Phoenix! This Chandra's Phoenix analog loses the initial haste, but being a whole mana cheaper and being able to recur it for just a single Red when you burn the opponent is very strong.

The bigger payoff for the deck, Mechanized Warfare is the BRO card that pushed Mono Red back into playable territory. Giving every source of damage in your deck a little buff is absolutely insane considering most of the cards deal small, but consistent damage. Two damage from Voldaren Epicure or Kumano Faces Kakkazan triggers? Yes please!

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What good is a burn deck without a bunch of burn, right?

We have the classic selections with Play with Fire as the best Shock variant to date and Lightning Strike which is the most Lightning Strike variant to date. Getting two damage for one mana and three damage for two has been the going rate for forever, and we’re more than happy to utilize it here.

A new addition to the burn lineup, Stoke the Flames is an old classic that dominated in Burn decks back when it was first legal. Four damage for four mana isn’t that great of a rate, but with Convoke, it makes it trivial to double spell very early on and kill opponents out of nowhere!

The final card of the list, Reckless Impulse is our card advantage for the deck. While you only have two turns to use them, Reckless Impulse in a low curve deck will generally just mean two cards drawn which is exactly what this deck needs. Since getting to 20 damage normally isn’t going to be easy, getting to dig for additional cards is going to be crucial most of the time.

Overall, Mono Red Burn is looking very promising with a low curve, plenty of reach, and new cards to help power up the strategy!

Thank you for reading!