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Oct 5, 2012 -- 4:02AM, sacrificialdreams wrote:

As good as Mizzium Mortars is I prefer Brimstone Volley as it can also hit your opponent (as well as their creatures) for a minimum of 3 damage. I included it over Searing Spear as for extra it can potentially deal 5 damage.

I'm on a bit of a budget, although I have been trying to acquire the shocklands. Would you recommend replacing the dual lands or basic lands with the shock lands?

If you're on a budget you can get away with dual lands as long as you're providing the right number of basics for them to feed off of. If you're going for shock and mix of both you usually need your main deck pretty refined in order to get the right balance.

As far as the main deck goes I think you'll find most other people will tell you to run more burn as well. Searing Spear is a pretty high pick on most lists and Brimstone Volley is a bit of an investment if most of the removal you face is from o-rings and paths. Generally I think more burn is a good idea and a few for the creatures aren't top callibur. I'm a pretty big fan of Vexing Devil in some red aggro/burn decks and I feel like it's an excellent budget card.

Personally, I don't feel like giant growth isn't very playable and if you're going red that would probably be easily replaced by some good burn.

Overall I feel like this deck has a one track mind going for it but possibly spread over too many colors over three turns. The most consistancy you're going to see there is Rakdos Cackler into Rakdos Shred-freak into Dreg Mangler into Hellrider which equates to 0+4+7+14. And that's looking at a near best case scenario where nothing is contested. I would probably try to consolidate on color a bit more as casting a double green after opening with black or red is going to be difficult most times. I think red is going to be what you want to keep, especially with the base that you have. I would suggest replacing Young Wolf with Stromkirk Noble as a start for this and Vexing Devil s as well. These are pretty good teir in red aggro for the money and may give you ideas to go from there. Perhaps going more splashy and less mainstream with the color splits will yield better results.

Hope this gives you a little bit more of a direction. The almost purely creature route without removal before is very singularly pathed and vulnerable to mass removal as well as other threats. Opening up the strategy a bit wider is probably a good idea.