Last week when I was doing Prossh, I was struck by a different Dragon that seemed like a great general. For a while I've been thinking about a Dash oriented etb red deck, built around Pandemonium and Warstorm Surge. Zurgo was an interesting thought for that deck. He's similar to Norin, the traditional lead for such a concoction, but he gets to attack. Red loves equipment so the attacking angle was quite valuable. I felt the deck was missing something, and realized the other Red deck I had built on this premise was Sedris. Of particular import was the Black mana. Black gives the deck all kinds of goodies. Black brings with it reanimation, tutoring, and non-toughness based removal. In particular for this deck, it lets us more effectively use Flayer of the Hatebound as another Pandemonium effect, and since we are going to want to play several dragons with Kolaghan's trigger, it gives us Patriarch's Bidding.
So the core is looking like:
Warstorm Surge
Pandemonium
Flayer of the Hatebound
Patriarch's Bidding
I think we want to max out on the mass reanimation:
Living Death
Twilight's Call
Rise of the Dark Realms
Balthor the Defiled
And have some single target reanimates:
Reanimate
Animate Dead
Necromancy
Dread Return
Torrent of Souls
Whip of Erebos
We also want to come from the other side, Hand to Play:
Sneak Attack
Through the Breach
And for the double wammy:
Cauldron Dance
Now that there's an idea of what we are trying to do, what else goes well with this? Well first and foremost we need some Dragons:
Archwing Dragon
Balefire Dragon
Bladewing the Risen
Bogardan Hellkite
Boltwing Marauder
Dragon Tyrant
Dragonlord Kolaghan
Hellkite Charger
Hellkite Igniter
Hellkite Tyrant
Knollspine Dragon
Kokusho
Moltensteel Dragon
Moonveil Dragon
Scourge of the Throne
Scourge of Valkas
Spawn of Thraxes
Stormbreath Dragon
Swift Warkite
That's all of the eligible Dragons. I'm going to shave a number of them down. The focus is on firebreathing since you can stack the Warstorm Surge trigger and then pump your guy. This lends itself to an aggressive style since the deck is capable of some explosive damage. We want to have low cost dudes to getting repeat triggers off of. That means haste enablers, and other Dashers.
Other Dash:
Ambuscade Shaman
Flamerush Rider
Lightning Berserker
Vaultbreaker
Zurgo Bellstriker
Haste Enablers:
Ogre Battledriver
Urabrask the Hidden
In the Web of War
From here two different directions emerge. Either the deck can go more of the big mana reanimator stuff, or it can go more in the Purphoros tokens and Blood Ghast route. I personally think the reanimator shtick is better served with Bladewing the Risen, and having a larger army is better with Kolaghan's triggered ability. Ok so what goes best with that deck concept? Making tokens, having grindy dudes, and etb triggers.
Purphoros, God of the Forge
Bloodghast
Reassembling Skeleton
Bloodsoaked Champion
Kiki-Jiki
Goblin Marshal
Siege-Gang Commander
Beetleback Chief
Murderous Redcap
Zealous Conscripts
Solemn Simulacrum
Of course with all these tokens some sacrifice effects will go well with them, We don't want too many, since we want an army to attack with.
Skullclamp
Tymaret, the Murder King
Greater Gargadon
Now we want to add some deathmetal juiciness.
Terminate
Dreadbore
Demonic Tutor
Vampiric Tutor
Sidisi, Undead Vizier
Yawgmoth's Will
Wheel of Fortune
Kolaghan's Command
Hero's Downfall
Night's Whisper
Read the Bones
Erebos, God of the Dead
Entomb
That's a solid set of support spells. We can run a bit less artifact mana than usual since the deck has a significant number of lower cost cards, but some artifact mana is going to be good in any deck, and we have a number of Dash costs to support so the mana isn't going to go to waste. Erebos is of particular importance since the deck attacks people to death. He stops people from pulling out of bad situations where we can just kill them.
Sol Ring
Mana Crypt
Rakdos Signet
Talisman of Indulgence
Gilded Lotus
Thran Dynamo
Unfortunately, assuming 37 land, this puts the deck 14 cards over the cap. Whoops! Cuts need to be made. The first place that gets bits taken out of it is the selection of Dragons. With a greater focus, we can easily cut eight of the Dragons, leaving us six other cards to remove. The support cards can lose Yawgmoth's Will. As much as I love the card, we aren't built to abuse it. We can also drop Beetleback Chief and Goblin Marshal since the tokens they make don't work with Flayer of the Hatebound. Rise of the Dark Realms is too expensive for the direction of the deck now, and Zurgo is a bit too vanilla for our purpose. Torrent of Souls is cool, but a bit more than I want to pay for reanimation considering the multitude of haste enablers the deck already has.
That brings us to the list:
http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/26-04-15-kolaghan/
I'm happy to start here. Its entirely possible that the number of dragons is low enough now to cut that sub-theme and just run one or two that line up with the Warstorm angle. The largest cards that didn't make it in are good equipment. I didn't include them since Dashed creatures bounce to hand and the deck doesn't particularly have the mana to re-equip every turn in addition to Dashing the creatures into play. The removal of the Dragons would only reduce my desire for additional mana, but perhaps Sword of Feast and Famine would alleviate some of that pressure on our mana.The opposite is also true, and you could just make add a ton of the dragons back in, add lots more mana to support the Firebreathing. That feels more like Bladewing's niche than Kolaghan, but there are advantages to each. The deck can also use more artifact removal in the first set of changes.
Cheers!
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