Hipster Legacy: Big Red

Big Red

I remember the very first time I read sneak attack; I almost couldn't believe the raw enabling strength of the card. Having been tapped out, I could only let it resolve as my opponent decided to activate it putting a 20/20 Serra Avatar into play and swinging me for lethal. The year was 2000, and having just started playing magic, I was used to more fair decks (save for the unbelievably powerful Urza’s block which I had just missed). But, after having read those two cards, and examined the deck’s components, I was sold on the combo archetype. I too wanted to throw 20/20’s at my opponents! Fast forward to 2014, we have the super popular Sneak & Show deck running a similar shell, but I’m here to present to you another flavor of the same, spicy combo: Big Red.

Big Red is a mono-red combo deck that wants to slam the biggest, baddest creatures in the game and kill your opponent in one fell swoop. The biggest difference between Big Red and Sneak & Show, except for dropping the color blue, it borrows from the “Stompy” tax package. Mono-red stompy has been in the Legacy format for about as long as it’s existed. The core package typically ran is something along the lines of Trinisphere, Chalice of the void, Bloodmoon, and Inferno Titan (seriously). However, instead of running the typical efficient red beaters that stompy relies on, we’re running a combo package that just says “you win!”

What we lose in consistency in our combo by dropping our cantrip spells, the deck certainly makes up for in raw speed. We run a ton of accelerants that aren’t slowed down by our tax package. Namely: Seething Song and Simian Spirit Guide. I like to think Big Red is the more all-in version of Sneak and Show, or similar to how TES differs from ANT. It’s actually really cool how every card works in this deck. Okay, enough talk. Let’s see a list.

Kor Fox’s Big Red:

Mainboard: 60

4 Sneak Attack
4 Through the Breach
4 Emrakul
4 Worldspine Wurm
2 Griselbrand
2 Inferno Titan
4 Magma Jet
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Trinisphere
4 Seething Song
4 Simian Spirit Guide
1 Lotus Petal
4 Ancient Tomb
3 City of Traitors
3 Sandstone Needle
9 Mountain

Sideboard: 15

2 Defense Grid
2 Pyroclasm
3 Blood Moon
2 Chaos Warp
4 Leyline of Sanctity
2 Pyromancy

So, as you can see, the name “Big Red” doesn’t mean just big creatures, but also the spicy flavor packed into every chew. One of my favorite parts about this deck is how the most important ramp pieces, Seething Song and Simian Spirit Guide, both get around the deck’s taxing effects and vastly increases the deck’s speed. Turn 1 Chalice of the void into Turn 2 Trinisphere is an ideal opener that doesn’t slow this deck down at all, but is an absolute wrench to our opponent’s tempo. Seething song is really interesting because it makes exactly enough mana for our combo; either five red for Through the Breach, or four red for Sneak Attack and one to activate. Lotus petal is just there to aid us in sticking a tax piece as early as possible, as taxing effects always become incrementally worse the later we play them. Blood moon is another corner stone card as it will shut down opposing karakas in addition to turning some decks off completely while allowing us to continue to play spells.

Now, to go over each section of this deck and explore the reason for some of the unique card choices.

Enablers:

As long as Wizards of the Coast will keep printing creatures with stupid amounts of power and toughness, we’ll keep finding ways to not pay their mana cost.

Sneak Attack: The reason for this is obvious; this is our best enabler and its reusable. It’s not uncommon to Sneak in griselbrand, activate GB, and pitch Spirit Guide or Lotus Petal to make another activation of Sneak for lethal. It’s also worth noting that the oracle text on sneak says, “Sacrifice the creature at the beginning of the next end step,” which means we can activate it at the beginning of our opponent’s endstep to untap with, and have a whole turn with our dude. Also, fluster storm can’t counter this (and that’s the only relevant 1 converted mana cost (cmc) counter magic with an online chalice for 1)!

Through the Breach: The other half of the creature enablers. If you have both Sneak and Breach in hand, you’ll want to open with this one first in the event they have force of will, or some other form of permission as you should value Sneak higher than this card.

Magma Jet: This deck NEEDS some form of filtering in it. It’s just that simple, either it finds its pieces or it doesn’t. Magma Jet helps us two fold by removing our opponent’s early clock against us while filtering our draws to find that missing piece or more tax to buy us more turns.

Creature Package:

Emrakul: While his inclusion is obvious, it’s not without its drawbacks. Technically Emmy can’t just say “you win” unless your opponent is already at 15 or less. However, given the speed of our deck, we will eat almost every early board state putting our opponent on doing nothing until either they concede or we kill them. Emmy is like that guy that is willing to drive you most of the trip to your destination, but you have to meet him at his place first. What a bro.

Worldspine Wurm: Here’s that burning, spicy taste! The idea to this deck is we want to stick a single creature and end the game on the spot is perfectly encapsulated in this ginormous 15/15 trampler. Representing 30 damage over two turns is more than enough to closeout games. While weak to swords compared to Emmy, but because we run chalice and 3-sphere it makes it even harder to answer this guy and all his friends.

Griselbrand: Surprisingly the weakest of the creature package to put into play, hence why we’re only running two. The lifelink is almost irrelevant as we aren’t keeping GB around long enough to reap the benefits of gaining 7 life a turn like a reanimator style deck. Rather, we’re more interested in his card drawing capabilities. I mentioned earlier, it’s not uncommon to have GB be both a wincon, and an enabler. He’s going to give us enough cards to reload another round for lethal, or draw us into more things we can do. If we’re really hurting, we can flash him into play with a resolved sneak or breach on our opponent’s turn to block and draw cards to give us a hand that will kill on our next turn.

Inferno Titan: This guy is actually carried over from the Mono-Red Stompy package, but is even better in this shell. Believe me when I say, once you resolve this guy, you’ll see why he fits. So starting off, he’s actually completely castable in this deck. We run so many Sol lands that it’s not uncommon to just hard cast him without any ramp spells at all. If we’re running blood moon, he’s even better as all our lands just funnel into increasing his power. Sneaking him into play actually presents a harder hit than griselbrand at a potential 9 damage as opposed to 7. You’ll definitely want to stick him against fast aggro decks too. If you really want to have a good time, play this guy against elves, for some reason they really hate this guy, go figure! Inferno Titan serves as a very good and efficient plan B or C to aim for if our combo can’t resolve, and he’s almost always fine to draw mid-late game. If you really like him enough, run 4 sandstone needles and kick the number up to 3 Titans mainboard. If you prefer to mainboard your bloodmoon he gets even better.

Tax Package:

The tax cards play a very important part in this deck. Since we aren’t running any permission in the mainboard, we often have to have cards that say, “You should counter this or you’re going to have a really bad time.” So even if they force our Chalice on turn one, I’m usually okay with that as long as it means less forces for when I try to stick my combo. It’s worth noting that if you can, save your Simian spirit guides to pitch for daze where appropriate. Resolving our tax pieces in that matchup will give us many more turns to play with to warrant being down a red source.

Chalice of the Void: One of my favorite cards in here. Stompy decks are Notorious for slamming chalice for 1 on turn 1. There’s just something about my opponent’s reaction when you do this on the play that just puts a little spring in my step. Doing this is achieved through any number of openers which include Sol lands (Ancient Tomb or City of Traitors), or Mountain + lotus petal/Simian spirit guide. Mid game, it’s perfectly okay to put this on 2 and against some matchups (mostly combo) you’ll even want it on 0. This will put so many delver decks so far back while answering game 1 problem cards such as Swords to plowshares, thoughtseize, and spell pierce. Just remember that this doesn’t mean your opponent can’t play 1cmc cards when the chalice is on 1. You still have to be responsible for the trigger.

Trinisphere: In my opinion, this is your best 3cmc tax card that you have access to game 1, which is why we’re running it in the starting 60. You will reap a ton of benefit from this card while your opponent is either locked from playing spells, or is tapping out every turn to play one spell at a time. It’s also very vital against permission cards as our opponent is frequently unable to pay the price to resolve a Force of Will or Daze against us with this on the board. It is worth noting that against aggro decks this card isn’t as amazing as it is against slower decks as they can still afford to pump threats out, especially if we’re on the draw and they resolve a Deathrite shaman turn 1. It does completely hose most combo decks though, and I will guarantee that your opponent will be upset this card is in your starting 60.

Blood Moon: I actually just recently started side boarding this card as I feel it’s more conditional than trinisphere is. The matchups where Blood Moon is good, it’s usually necessary for your opponent to stop this card from coming down. Delver tempo decks, Lands, shardless BUG, and deathblade all have serious problems with this card. The speed in which we can put this card out will often read, “Counter this or you lose”. However, other times this card is completely dead. While 3-sphere often will always tax our opponent into to playing slower, which is often what we need to just resolve our game-winning spells. I actually used to run both Trinisphere and Blood Moon in the starting 60, but seeing as Shardless BUG is less popular recently, I decided to sideboard it. Where you put this card is a meta-call, but it is absolutely necessary for some matchups (ones with karakas in them). Also, this card puts our Inferno titan into “GOLIATH ONLINE” mode as we can just tap out every turn to make him breathe that hot fire!

Ramp:

Seething Song: My favorite ramp spell in the deck as it makes us hit our combo mana perfectly, and it costs 3cmc so we can cast it no problem with trinisphere out.

Simian Spirit Guide: Another great mana source. This will be the most common way we stick a 3cmc tax on turn 1. While doing so will cost our hand a lot, against some matchups it may be correct, especially if we’re on the play and dropping a trinisphere or bloodmoon. If you can, try to bait out a daze against tempo decks with having this guy still in hand to reap maximum benefits.

Lotus Petal: This is the only mana source that nombos (Non-combo) with our tax package, so ideally we want to use this, or at least play it before we play trinisphere or chalice of the void on zero. While it doesn’t synergize well, it’s pretty important to have 2-3 mana as early as possible to really maximize our taxes.

Lands:

Sol Lands: Ancient Tomb & City of Traitors: I’m only running 7 of the 8 sol lands as we aren’t running bloodmoon in the main. Be mindful when playing these before our basics as these tend to draw wastelands the most (for good reason). One thing to remember when bloodmoon is out is that city of traitors no longer has the sacrifice effect as it’s now a mountain.

Sandstone Needle: This card is absolutely awesome in this deck, untapping on turn 2 with 3-4 mana just from your regular land drops is huge. While you would normally say this makes wasteland a good card against us, and I wouldn’t say you’re wrong, however we are running enough sol lands and mana sources to make up for the loss in mana without taking a huge tempo hit. When you can’t stick the tax card(s) we have in hand on turn one, this is the land we want to lead with. Only very, very seasoned Legacy veterans will have an idea what deck we’re playing when we open with Sandstone needle (the only decks are Sac-Land Tendrils and Big Red).

No fetches: There is a really, really long discussion on running fetchlands or not, but I’ll give you the short version. We only want to run fetchlands if we’re running Sensei’s Divining Top (see potential cards below). Otherwise, the loss of life will not warrant the deck thinning.

Sideboard:

Pyromancy: I used to run these in the main, but I’ve found this card is best served in the side to answer commonly side-boarded cards against us. In cases where we can’t attack (Ensnaring bridge, Peace Keeper, Blazing Archon, Moat, Maze of Ith), or something is preventing us from combo’ing (Pithing needle/Phyrexian Revoker naming Sneak, Karakas, Humility, Glacial Chasm), This card will help us get there by pitching our huge creatures at their face. It’s worth noting that we can use this to kill creatures, or even problematic plainswalkers that would otherwise snowball out of control and take the game away from us. The high mana cost, and the randomization are the rough edges around this otherwise solid card though. I wouldn’t run more than 2 in the 75 for this reason.

Defense Grid: This is clutch against decks running Force of Will, or any other permission really, as they’ll have to counter this card if they want to interact with us on our turn.

Pyroclasm: Probably our best answer for hatebears such as Thalia, Gaddock Teeg, meddling mage, in addition to the Magma Jets. Also, this card can even come in when the board wipe is a very good thing for us, namely against elves, goblins, or even affinity.

Chaos Warp: The catch-all spot removal for red. Cards I typically want to hit with this will include whatever is stopping us from winning, be it Humility, Moat, Ensnaring Bridge, Pithing needle, etc. It’s not uncommon for us to hit a troublesome plainswalker either. If we’re in topdeck mode, Jace, the mindsculpter is a serious problem.

Leyline of Sanctity: Discard is very relevant in my meta, and is devastating against this deck. As we don’t have the good cantripping to draw new pieces when we lose them to discard, having this as a layer of protection is vital. So, naturally we’ll need all 4 against any decks running hand disruption. I would also bring these in against ANT as another form of permanent-based hate that we would make them deal with.

Cards to consider:

Sensei’s Divining Top: This is primarily where most Big Red lists diverge. I have to admit, opening with a Sol Land into top (so you can either pay for Daze or spin) is such good value. This card will effectively extend our hand by 3 and we can do things like activate top to draw a Simian Spirit Guide to pay for a Daze. Otherwise we would just use the top to assemble our pieces quicker. The biggest drawback to running this card is Chalice of the Void and Divining Top do not get along. While we do accelerate the speed in which we assemble the combo with top, in testing I’ve found that the extra turns we get off our Chalice helps us get there at roughly the same speed while providing answers for troubling cards like swords to plowshares and spell pierce which we just can’t answer otherwise. I will admit, it is very tempting, so when it feels appropriate I sometimes run the 4x Chalice in the side and run the Tops in the main and I sideboard them around when appropriate.

Fetch lands: Again, only run these if you plan on running tops in your 75 for shuffling effects to maximize your draws.

Stronghold Gambit: Very interesting tech. This card is betting all-or-nothing that your opponent doesn’t have any creatures. I would highly recommend including this card in a control-heavy meta where you need more triggers to pull. The biggest cards you need to watch for are things like vendillion clique, snap caster mage, and meddling mage in those matchups, but decks like UW Miracles you should be very fine against and a majority of the time they won’t be expecting this card at all. However, since this is a very narrow group of decks you would bring this card in against, I wouldn’t run more than 2 in the sideboard.

Blightsteel Colossus: This was the original bomb that made this deck playable some time ago. Enabling the 1-hit kill, Blightsteel used to end a number of games in a swing from nowhere. However, since deathrite shaman, there are actually quite a few x/2 blockers that actually can let our opponent survive a turn 2 or even turn 1 swing from this guy and putting them at 9 infect. Also, because we’re using infect, it doesn’t help our gameplan with the rest of our creature package. This card gets worse as the game goes on and we’re essentially saying “I don’t think you’ll have blockers.” This card is almost completely replaced with worldspine wurm in my opinion as we’re essentially still presenting a creature that will single-handedly end the game; just how it gets there is different but more resilient.

Fathless Looting: Similar to Sensei’s Diving Top, looting can only be played if we aren’t running Chalice of the void. Some people prefer to run this over the magma jet filtering package as it can be flashed back. But, because it’s inherently card disadvantage (think, if we cast this with 5 cards in hand, including the looting, we’ll have 4 after this resolves) and we can’t run chalice at the same time, so I don’t think it’s worth running.

Grafdigger’s Cage: This is a great sideboard card, but it’s also meta dependent. Reanimator is a tough matchup for us, and this helps out there a lot as we’re forcing them to cast show and tell, which we’ll most likely benefit more from. You also want to bring this in against decks running Green Sun’s Zenith as this shuts that card down so they won’t be able to fetch Gaddock Teeg, Pride mage, or knight of the reliquary. I’m not too worried about those cards or matchups at the moment, so I’m not running it right now, but it’s still an option we should be aware of.

Volcanic Fallout: This is mostly for those matchups where our opponent has hatebears with permission. Pretty narrow, but it’s not much more difficult to cast than pyroclasm for this deck’s mana-base. The instant speed is pretty nice at times, but I don’t feel we need to run a 3cmc board wipe when we can run one that costs less.

Karakas: While this was more relevant when the old legend rule was in effect, this was mostly so we could “reload” our creature we sneak in so we can cast it the following turn. Alternatively, we can use it to save our bomb from spot removal to fire off again. Since we’re running chalice and bloodmood, there’s almost no more reason to run karakas at all anymore. Not to mention half of our bombs are non-legendary.

Red Elemental Blast/Pyroblast: This is also where most of the builds fork. You can either run Red Elemental Blast (REB)/Diving Top or Defense Grid/Chalice of the Void. This decision mostly comes down to how prevalent blue combo decks are in your meta. Against control decks, I would rather run more defense grids. But if there are a lot of Omni-halls in your area, you may want to consider running some REBs as that deck is our worst matchup. Notable interactions are the secret “Monky-blast,” AKA “Red Force” where you pitch a Simian Spirit Guide to make a red, and cast Pyroblast/REB to counter a blue spell. If you want my advice though, Chalice and Defense grid just answer more card combinations currently.

Tactics:

So by now, you should have a pretty good idea on this deck’s interworkings. A lot of it is pretty self-explanatory, and this deck is relatively easy to play. How to play things out is almost completely dependent on our opener, so don’t be afraid to mull with this deck as we can easily go down to 5. Ideally we want to lead our plays with tax cards to both slow our opponent’s advancement and/or to force out their permission. Remember, if they counter our tax, that’s less permission for our combo. Alternatively, if we just have a hand of combo cards, we can often just plow through their permission. When playing against a combo deck, we have to prioritize the few ways we can interact with them. Storm for example can go off at relatively the same speed as us, more consistently faster too. So it’s very important for us to have the cards that interact with them in our opening hand.

Matchups:

I won’t be going over every matchup as I’ve already covered quite a few different ones already, however if there’s enough demand I may be able to make an addendum to cover more matches in-depth.

Delver decks: I feel pretty comfortable against most delver decks, as we have so many cards they have problems with that they really have to answer which often lets our combo resolve and we just win. Chalice on 1 on the play is almost a win on the spot. Mainboard they can’t even deal with it beside abrupt decay for Team America builds. Trinisphere is what will most likely enable us to power through their permission. Post board we want to bring in bloodmoons as they read “you win” in addition to turning off their wastelands. Also, defense grids work as an almost better trinisphere as you can jam it turn 1 while playing around Daze.

Control decks: Esperblade and Miracles are both pretty tough matchups as they have enough permission to cause us a lot of trouble. Fortunately, against miracles we’re so fast that they usually won’t expect what we’re putting on the board, and our tax is very live against them, so they’re much more inclined to answer that before our combo. Esper is tougher as they have discard which will enable them to really put us back if we can’t slow them down enough, and Stoneforge Mystic is a great answer to Trinisphere as they can keep permission up while being able to put a real clock against us. Leyline will help against them attacking our hand while protecting us against vendillion clique against the blade matchups.

Combo decks: fortunately we’re already running enough answers in the mainboard to make a lot of combo decks scoop on the spot. The key thing to know is how to identify, what combo deck is what as soon as possible to know which piece of tax is more important. For decks like Belcher, we’ll want chalice of the void on 0 over on 1, for Show and Tell chalice on 1 and trinisphere are both great at slowing them down as they have to choose to cantrip, cast a combo piece, or leave up permission, most of which will end up in our favor. We have to be careful against combo decks faster or as fast as us, Such as Tin Fins, Belcher, Oops all spells, TES, ANT, and Reanimator are all matchups to be mindful of and mulligan aggressively to find our ways to interact with them via our taxing pieces, or by having the nuts and going off faster than them.

Ending thoughts and why play Big Red:

Big Red is for those folks that want to “Go big or Go home.” It’s very refreshing to play and any combo deck that runs the pieces that most combo decks lose to is a blast to play. Blood moon is a very real card in the current meta, and the fact that it’s another card that reads “you win” against several decks is always a good thing. I would also run Big Red if you’re new to legacy and starting off with a combo deck is never a bad decision as the easier the deck is to play, the less play mistakes can be made. It’s also worth noting that this is relatively light on the budget (In terms of legacy decks), so if you want to play a combo deck on the same power-level as Sneak and Show without pitching for fetch lands, Force of Will, show and tells, and volcanic islands, you can certainly pick this up and have great success.

Thanks so much for sticking with me throughout this article. This is my very first published piece, so it would mean a great deal to me if you can comment your thoughts, not just on the deck but this article too! I’m going to try to put these out at a regular rate, so make sure you check back to have access to the latest Hipster Legacy tech!

Sneak Peak for next time: I’ll show you why we’re naming “Vedalken” on Cavern of Souls!