Last week, on a whim, I asked my brother if I could borrow his Skred Red deck to bring to Tuesday night Modern.
“Sure, but I haven’t looked at it in months.”
I took the deck home and laid it out on my table. There was a proxied Mind Stone, a seven card sideboard, and gross Ultra-Pro sleeves that looked like they had been played exclusively in back alley duels. I resleeved the deck, found a real Mind Stone, added some cards to the sideboard, and took the terrible foil Koths and tried to straighten them by pressing them in a book. I took this to the event:
Skred Red
| LANDS (23) 21 Snow-Covered Mountain 2 Scrying Sheets CREATURES (11) 4 Boros Reckoner 3 Stormbreath Dragon 3 Magus of the Moon 1 Simian Spirit Guide INSTANTS and SORC. (13) 4 Lightning Bolt 4 Skred 3 Pyroclasm 2 Volcanic Fallout OTHER SPELLS (13) 4 Blood Moon 4 Koth of the Hammer 3 Relic of Progenitus 2 Mind Stone SIDEBOARD (15) 1 Relic of Progenitus 4 Combust 4 Dragon’s Claw 2 Molten Rain 2 Shattering Spree 2 Shatterstorm |
I 4-0’ed, beating Assault Loam, Zoo, Burn, and Mono-White Hate Bears.
While I don’t think that 4-0’ing a local event means a deck is viable at the GP level, I do believe it’s worth looking into. I decided to do some research online and found that MTGO user adonis2k has taken down several daily events with an updated version of the deck. Here is the latest list:
adonis2k Skred Red
| LANDS (23) 21 Snow-Covered Mountain 2 Scrying Sheets CREATURES (6) 2 Wurmcoil Engine 2 Stormbreath Dragon 2 Solemn Simulacrum INSTANTS and SORC. (12) 4 Skred 4 Lightning Bolt 2 Volcanic Fallout 1 Anger of the Gods 1 Pyroclasm OTHER SPELLS (19) 4 Relic of Progenitus 4 Koth of the Hammer 3 Mind Stone 3 Blood Moon 2 Chandra, Pyromaster 1 Pyrite Spellbomb 1 Batterskull 1 Ugin, the Spirit Dragon SIDEBOARD (15) 2 Pyrite Spellbomb 1 Boil 3 Combust 4 Dragon’s Claw 2 Molten Rain 1 Shattering Spree 2 Shatterstorm |
Let’s break down the deck and discuss card choices and match-ups.
The manabase—23 lands. Every land counts toward Skred, you take no damage from the manabase, and are essentially immune to opposing Blood Moons, Tectonic Edges, and Ghost Quarters. The two non-basics in the deck, Scrying Sheets, are basically free since the deck has no issue with color commitments. Since mono-red doesn’t have a lot of card drawing available, Sheets acts as mana sink and repeatable source card advantage.
The creatures—Every Skred Red list I’ve seen has some number of Stormbreath Dragons. The card is too big to be Lightning Bolted, can’t be Path to Exiled, and gets through Lingering Souls tokens. Adonis’s list also plays Solemn Simulacrum and Wurmcoil Engine. Simulacrum helps ramp into Dragon and Engine while putting a body on the board that replaces itself. Engine is insane against Burn and Abzan alike and offers a way for the deck to gain life where it otherwise wouldn’t be able to. Notably absent here is Boros Reckoner, a card that traditionally sees play in these strategies because of the powerful interaction with Skred which will often kill opponents out of nowhere. I can understand cutting Reckoner in an Abzan/Splinter Twin heavy meta as it relatively easy to kill and doesn’t clock the opponent quickly enough without Skred. Other lists I’ve seen play Magus of the Moon to add redundancy to the Blood Moon plan or Simian Spirit Guide to help power out an earlier Blood Moon or Koth. One potential new addition to the deck is Thunderbreak Regent. Regent is harder to kill than Reckoner (AKA doesn’t die to Bolt), has evasion, and will always hit the opponent when they point a removal spell at it.
The instants and sorceries— Every Skred Red deck starts with four Skred and four Lightning Bolt. Having eight instant speed one-mana removal spells allows this clunky deck to interact in the early game. After the one-mana removal spells, Skred Red plays a bunch of Pyroclasm effects based on the expected meta; Pyroclasm, Anger of the Gods, Volcanic Fallout, or Firespout could make an appearance. Adonis opted for a spread of these effects but had two Volcanic Fallout to have an instant speed/uncounterable way of dealing with Blinkmoth and Inkmoth Nexus, Geist of Saint Traft, and Boggles as they are being enchanted. These effects are also cute in the lists that do play Boros Reckoner as you can often kill bigger creatures thanks to the extra damage Reckoner provides.
Other spells—Aside from Skred, I would argue that most important cards in the deck are Blood Moon and Koth of the Hammer. Blood Moon is gross in this deck; you disrupt the manabase of most decks in Modern without affecting your own. While you do telegraph the fact that you have Blood Moon as soon as you play a Snow-Covered Mountain, many decks just can’t reliably play around it even when purposely fetching basics. Every ability on Koth is relevant here, the +1 pressures planeswalkers and life totals, the -2 allows you to play Koth and Blood Moon on the same turn OR if you can untap with Koth and -2, you can just jam Wurmcoil Engine or Ugin. I don’t think I need to explain why the ultimate is good, but for reference, I don’t think I’ve ever lost a game where I’ve made a Koth emblem. Adonis’s list also plays Chandra Pyromaster as a planeswalker companion to Koth. You can immediately play Chandra off the Koth -2, kill off Glistener Elves or mana dorks with the Chandra +1, and gain card advantage with the 0 ability. Adonis’s list also plays eight cycling artifacts: Pyrite Spellbomb, Relic of Progenitus, and Mind Stone. While each card can replace itself, the other abilities end up being fantastic as well. Pyrite Spellbomb can kill Kor Firewalker and Burrenton Forge-Tender where you otherwise couldn’t, Relic of Progenitus makes Tarmogoyf and Snapcaster Mage look especially bad, and Mind Stone helps ramp into turn three Solemn, Koth, Chandra etc. Lastly, the above list plays a one-of Batterskull because it’s awesome and near unbeatable in a long game and a singleton Ugin, the Spirit Dragon to clear the board and give the deck one more win condition.
The sideboard—Mono red decks have always been somewhat limited in their good sideboard options. However, this deck has a pretty strong suite of spells for problematic match-ups. Combust works pretty well to shore up an otherwise abysmal Splinter Twin match-up, Dragon’s Claw helps get you out of range of Burn strategies (especially given the life you gain off your own spells), and Shattering Spree/Shatterstorm help cement your good matchup against Affinity. Adonis also plays additional copies of Pyrite Spellbomb for the aforementioned Kor Firewalker, Molten Rain because really fuck non-basics, and Boil to make sure Twin and UWR can’t play against you even if they fetch basics.
The good match-ups—
- Affinity—You have eight one-mana removal spells coupled with red sweepers and an enchantments that turns off their colored mana and manlands alike. If the match-up was only good pre-board, you get to bring in a bunch of stuff that blows up artifacts in game two.
- Infect—Your cheap removal and sweepers are good against them. Blood Moon turns off Inkmoth and Pendelhaven.
Slightly favorable match-ups—
- Abzan—I feel like this deck was built to beat up on Abzan. Blood Moon hoses their manabase and manlands, Relic of Progenitus stops Lingering Souls flashbacks and Tarmogoyf from beefing up, and Stormbreath avoids Path to Exile and snap kills Liliana of the Veil. Wurmcoil is obviously insane against them and Skred is often powerful enough to kill a Siege Rhino or Tasigur. Having said that, Abzan is a more streamlined deck than Skred Red and there will be games where you draw the wrong parts of your deck (Pyroclasm, Lightning Bolt, etc) and just get beaten down by their big creatures. Regardless, this match-up is still heavily in Skred’s favor.
The slightly unfavorable match-ups—
- UWx Control—Counterspells are really good against us and a lot of our removal is dead. While Blood Moon is very good against these decks, they can often find a way to play around it. Stormbreath is a beating if it resolves but once again, countermagic and double bolt (thanks to Snapcaster Mage) will still take it down.
- Burn—They are just better at dealing 20 damage than we are. Unless you manage to resolve a Batterskull or Wurmcoil I wouldn’t expect to win game one. Post-board you have the four Dragon’s Claws which go a long way but are still subject to Destructive Revelry which they will probably bring in for Wurmcoil/Batterskull anyway.
The bad match-ups—
- Splinter Twin—Against UR Twin, Blood Moon doesn’t disrupt them and unless you are on the play Skred can’t stop a turn four Deceiver Exarch/Splinter Twin kill. They have counter magic for your clunky threats and will just combo you out if you do land a win condition. In the sideboard you have a bunch of Combusts, which certainly help but probably still not enough to make this an even match-up post board.
- Tron—Despite the Blood Moon package, Skred is really soft to an early Karn/Wurmcoil Engine. If they happen to be on blue based Tron, their counters are very good against us.
All in all, I like Skred a lot in this metagame. Skred is great against the aggro decks in the format and good against Abzan/Jund style midrange decks. Though Skred is pretty bad against combo, there isn’t too much running around aside from Twin and Amulet, which are still in the realm of winnable post board. It’s also worth noting that Skred is a good budget option for players as the deck plays no fetches, shocks, goyfs, snapcasters, Liliana’s etc. Blood Moon is the most expensive card in the deck at 20-ish dollars but the whole deck can be built for around $200. I would definitely recommend the deck for players looking to try something on the cheaper end that is still competitive, or players just looking to beat up on Aggro decks/Midrange decks with greedy manabases.
At age 15, while standing in a record store with his high school bandmates, Shawn Massak made the uncool decision to spend the last of his money on a 7th edition starter deck (the one with foil Thorn Elemental). Since that fateful day 11 years ago, Shawn has decorated rooms of his apartment with MTG posters, cosplayed as Jace, the Mindsculptor, and competes with LSV for the record of most islands played (lifetime). When he’s not playing Magic, Shawn works as a job coach for people with disabilities and plays guitar in an indie-pop band.