My current hyper-low land count mono-r deck I'm running in Ranked Historic for MTGA. I've found that it's performed well, but I'm always open to suggestions.
Share your thoughts, please, especially of the sideboard! I may have succumbed to my greed while building this deck, so there's bound to be some criticism.
I've opted to run a super low number of lands in this deck (16, with 1 in the sideboard), as I put a high value on mono-red's ability to function well with 2 lands on the board so that virtually every draw is useful. Of course, this means that the draws overall will be weaker, as I'll need to run a far lower curve, but I think that the low probability of flooding out is well worth this slight sacrifice in card quality. The increased number of 1-drops also works well with Runaway Steamkin :)
The Fervent Champions, Flame of Kelds, and the Risk Factors are the oddballs in this deck not normally seen in other versions of RDW. I feel like Fervent Champion is a great card, and while it's definitely worse than the other 1-mana creatures here, a 1/1 with haste and first strike that becomes a 2/1 fairly regularly threatening enough to be worth including.
Flame of Keld is the replacement for Experimental Frenzy, and it's often treated as a relic of MTGA's closed beta, but its effects are fantastic, especially with the massive amount of burn I've opted to play (usually, RDW cuts most, if not all, of the Skewer the Critics). People may laugh when seeing this instead of an Experimental Frenzy or Torbran, but they definitely respect it when they go from 10 to 0 when there are 2 lands in play.
Risk Factor is the most dubious inclusion, and it's generally seen as much, much worse than Slaying Fire, which guarantees its damage. However, besides the dire situation in which you need to top deck burn in order to drop your opponent to 0 in 1 turn before they kill you instead, Risk Factor frequently provides you with way more burn damage when they let you draw (as you'll be drawing far fewer lands off of it) and is a way to turn any potential flooding or useless 1 drop into more gas or more burn. I've found that Risk Factor is better in most situations with this deck, only failing when you're about to die. I really dislike punisher effects in general, but Risk Factor has proven itself in my eyes.
Tell me what you think!
