Staff of the Flame Magus
, which is (very) arguably the best card in magic, is the linchpin of this deck. Combined with Well of Lost Dreams, you have a combo that literally allows you to draw a card every time you play a land. If your enemy is playing red, Dragon's Claw allows you to draw cards whenever they play a spell, and also invalidates simple burn such as Shock. This is more of an afterthought however.
Once card draw is established, you will be at about 5 life because everyone only plays rush decks nowadays. At this point however, you will have several lifegaining power artifacts out and the card draw combo.
Then the decks damage strategy starts to come out. You probably have some dinky creature like the Pyreheart Wolf sitting around. If all is going optimally (it won't) you'll have equipped the lifestaff to the wolf here. You play Earthquake for all your mana, unleashing havok upon all your foes. But wait! Earthquake is a red spell! Instead of taking the four damage or so, you actually GAIN life by blowing everything up! Furthermore, this kills your wolf, causing the lifestaff to trigger making you gain even MORE life. And your wolf has undying, so he gets bigger too. And then you pay one mana to re-equip it to your beloved expendable. Now its your discard phase. You discard
Kuldotha Phoenix
. We have so many artifacts that you can now play him from your graveyard for one less colorless. Repeatedly. 4/4 flying blocker. 5/4 if you give it a lifestaff. the phoenix combo gains you 6 life a turn and a 4/4 flying blocker. Even if it can't get rid of their creature, you're gaining 6 life a turn.
So, from back when you were at 5 life, you started gaining 6-8 life per turn (which you can turn into card draw, because consistent card draw is BEAST in red.) You have a lot of mana, and have recovered from the early game rush. And you've probably killed everything, making all your creatures stronger.
The endgame trigger is Flayer of the Hatebound. He's kind of expensive, but all your creatures are now 3/3 double strike lava axes. That should wrap everything up pretty quick. Fling doubles this effect. It also triggers the lifestaff, assuming you haven't pulled ahead at this point.
Hound of Griselbrand
is a cool card.
