Welcome to the Red Plnet
This deck's philosophy seeks to interfere with the very core of the opponent's strategy: playing spells at all! The goal is to disrupt their mana sources and put them on the back foot right out the gate, potentially stopping them from ever getting into the game. We do this with a potent combination of land destruction, Trinisphere, and Blood Moon, while we let our Chandra take over the game. We need to hit lands early and often, and ramp into some lock pieces to slow them down—or, in the best cases, shut them out completely.
Environmentally Unfriendly
Land destruction spells are always a blast. This deck uses them to keep our opponents from playing the game properly in conjunction with our prison pieces.
• Boom / Bust: Potentially a one-sided land destruction spell as early as turn 1. If we use it on our own Cascading Cataracts, we don't lose our land at all while taking one from our opponent. Even if we have to give up a land on our own, we're banking that this is more costly to the opponent than to us.
• Pillage: Some planeswalkers just want to watch the world burn.
• Molten Rain: Down came the rain and burned the world out.
Red Means Ramp
We speed up our gameplan by employing some useful red ramp spells. In a pinch, they can help serve as win conditions, too—the Guide on the old Monkey Beats plan, and the Ritual doing 5 damage if we have Chandra's ultimate.
• Simian Spirit Guide: Because what spirit apes really want to do is help you burn down every forest on the plane.
• Desperate Ritual: This ritual isn't half as desperate as your opponents will be to get out from under the lock!
Bathed in Crimsn Light
Our lock pieces. The goal is to ramp them out quickly and keep the opponent slow early on, while we systematically destroy their lands and their hopes.
• Blood Moon: This still wins games if you throw it out early, and against those who might not scoop to it, Moon can slow them down enough for us to land the other lock piece, or start blowing up precious nonbasics.
• Trinisphere: A uniquely powerful artifact with the perfect effect for our deck. No matter how cheap your opponent makes their spells, or how many free-casting tricks they try, this makes them pay at least 3 mana for everything. The goal of the rest of the deck is to deny them that mana, preventing them from playing at all once we're set up.
Fire Power
Finally, we have our win conditions.
• Chandra, Acolyte of Flame: She can create tokens to put us on a beatdown plan (albeit a slow one), she can ramp the other Chandra, and she can essentially give us flashback on our land destruction spells. Versatile, cheap, and powerful, just how we like it.
• Chandra, Torch of Defiance: What doesn't she do? She can help us dig, she can give us mana to cast more things, take out creatures, and her ultimate is one of our win conditions. Ultimately, she will reach it with the rest of our deck running properly, and then is giving our every spell a bonus Lava Axe. Yay!
• Lightning Bolt: The red all-star. General purpose removal of early creatures, planeswalkers, or the last few points of damage to close out a game.
Flying Embers: The Sideboard
Our sideboard is here to give us a few specialty answers to the threats we might face. These are just the cards that occur to me; I could use some serious advice on good general-purpose sideboard tech.
• Anger of the Gods: In case we end up against something like Goblins that spams out lots of threats, we can use these to take them out.
• Leyline of Combustion: For the burn match-up or against discard, so we still have a threat while we struggle to set up our prison.
• Vandalblast: My artifact hate of choice, for things like Affinity where we can ramp into its overload version and wipe their board quickly.
• Flame Slash: Removal for early big creatures—and hopefully the deck prevents any late-game heavyweights ever making an appearance.
• Sorcerous Spyglass: For dealing with things like enemy planeswalkers.
• Relic of Progenitus: For graveyard hate to back the control plan.
What Do You See in the Fire?
Here are some possibilities I want to include, but not sure where to slot them in.
• Chandra's Regulator: Love this card so much. It can help us double-time our Chandra powers, but also, it's cheap, repeatable card filtering.
• Chandra, Awakened Inferno: Also love this Chandra. She can serve as sweeper, can target and take out pesky creatures and planeswalkers, and her emblem makes for a win condition all on its own. I am not sure where I would slot her in, but I like the idea of having her in the deck somewhere.
I could use some advice on this and sideboard stuff!
