Do you have piles and piles of Time Spiral commons under your bed? Do you like winning by the skin of your teeth? This is the deck for you. Red Riddle flies in the face of many deckbuilding conventions, and its power never fails to surprise me.
I concocted this deck when I was feeling unsatisfied with my old U/R Riddle of Lightning combo deck. That deck planned to scry Greater Gargadon
to the top, cast Riddle of Lightning, and Twincast
or Reverberate
it. I found this deck to be too slow and boring to play, so I decided to try a more straightforward approach.
This deck has two main themes: Taking advantage of high CMC spells, and abusing Greater Gargadon . I packed the deck full of cards with high converted mana cost, but almost none of them actually require that much mana to cast or use.
Red Riddle
3 x Greater Gargadon
4 x Mogg War Marshal
4 x Keldon Halberdier
4 x Gathan Raiders
1 x Fortune Thief
1 x Shivan Dragon
4 x Riddle of Lightning
4 x Rough // Tumble
4 x Fiery Fall
1 x Inferno Trap
1 x Undying Flames
1 x Explosive Revelation
3 x Knollspine Invocation
25 x Mountain
In the early turns, suspend some guys and play Mogg War Marshal s/ Gathan Raiders
. See if you can sneak in some damage early, because it will help you immensely later on. Don't forget to sacrifice dying creatures to Greater Gargadon
. This deck is capable of ramping straight to 5-6 mana, thanks to the high land count and Fiery Fall
. Once you get there, you can start dropping 5-10 point bombs on your opponent's face, or clear the way for your Gargadon to start smashing.
RULES NOTE: Rough // Tumble has a converted mana cost of "2 and 6." What does this mean? Riddle of Lightning is a card that simply asks you what the CMC of the revealed card is. When you flip it with Riddle of Lightning
, it deals "2 and 6" damage to your target: 8 damage. However, Knollspine Invocation
works differently. With an X spell, you must first choose the value of X, then pay the cost to match it. If you choose X to be 8, you can't discard Rough // Tumble
, because it's actually 2 and 6, not 8. Instead, you must either choose X=2 or X=6.
In my opinion, this is a good thing. Obviously you want as much damage as possible off your Riddles, but you will rarely get 8 mana to pay for an X=8 Invocation activation.
Tips and Tricks:
Never underestimate the power of Scry 3. The extra filtering can help you get the burn you need to finish your opponent.
If you use Riddle at the end of your opponent's turn, revealing a Gargadon or something, you can use a second Riddle from your hand during your upkeep and reveal the same card. Boom, 20 points!
Knollspine Invocation is amazing if you can stick it against a control deck. If they don't have a way to kill enchantments, you can just ignore all their fancy removal and counters and burn them to death.
Altering the Deck:
The most room for improvement here is in the manabase. The list above only has the bare-bones Mountains, but I can think of a few good additions you might want to try.
Kher Keep can provide some good sacrificial fodder.
Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle can give you a little extra damage in the late game.
Fungal Reaches or Molten Slagheap
might enable you to hardcast a Gargadon.
Zoetic Cavern is always nice for some mindgames.
You also might notice the singletons throughout the deck. These slots are all very flexible; right now that's just what I had on hand. The singleton Undying Flames is really great, though. Keep that one.
This deck really strikes the right balance between powerful interactions and fun gameplay. I urge you to try it out. The deck's multiple angles of attack can throw off your opponents, and winning with double Riddle for 20 points to the face is a feeling you need to experience. This may be my most fun creation to date.
