Pauper: Mono Red Blitz Deck Tech & Sideboard Guide

Today's deck is Mono Red Blitz, which with the arrival of Monastery Swiftspear has been a great contender, especially in the competitive scenario.

I've always found the deck to be cool and a lot of fun, but despite showing up a result here and there, I still didn't consider it a very good deck. A bit of that was the fact that it was two colors, Izzet Blitz and as I always say, it seems that it doesn't match aggro deck being two or more colors in Pauper — but now that has changed, and it's just Mono Red.

It may seem repetitive, but Monastery Swiftspear has changed the way the deck is played, giving it more speed, since the other creatures are two-drops.

Two things I want to highlight are: being a one-drop and hitting on turn 1 is very relevant, since even though she's excellent, she isn't the main creature of the deck - Monastery will serve as bait for the opponent to spend the removal, and you can then play Kiln Fiend more securely.

Our deck will often look like a combo, as we're going to make several spells, growing our creatures and win the game in a one-hit kill. And for that to happen we have a good distribution between lands, creatures and spells.

The amount of mana may seem high for a monocolored and aggro deck, but it's important to guarantee the land drops, and if you flood, we'll count on Faithless Looting to be able to discard and draw new cards.

Among the creatures, there is one that I need to comment on, and they are neither the Monastery Swiftspear that has just arrived nor the Kiln Fiend that is the main creature. I want to talk about Burning Prophet, who in addition to also having the ability to grow, has scry 1, which I consider essential — often taking lands off the top or looking for a spell that we need has helped me a lot in games.

About Mulligan, this is one of the few decks that you can look at the 7 cards and think "if my opponent does something wrong, I win on turn 3", and I have to say that it happens with a certain frequency.

Even so, a hand like this won't always come, and we have to keep in mind that a hand with 6 or 5 cards can still do more damage than taking a risk with 7 and having no damage to deal.

As for postures, ours is an aggro deck, where we will often go all-in and win because the opponent really didn't have an answer, but sometimes we must remain calm and take the right attitude at the opportune moments.

vs. White Weenie

I'll start by saying that it's a tough matchup, but very winnable. Our opponent's deck gains a lot of life and for each point, we end up needing more spells to give more power to our creatures.

The part of being very winnable is because, even with their lifegain, many times our deck comes so fast that they don't have enough time.

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vs. Izzet Faeries

When we see this match, it gives the impression that it is terrible for us, but it is not always like that.

Even though our opponent's deck is blue, it's not the end of the world. Here we change our game posture and play more calmly. A card that stands out in this matchup is Lava Dart because it's something we use twice and that eliminates their biggest threat, Spellstutter Sprite.

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vs. Grixis Affinity

One good thing about this match is the number of removals our opponent runs, 4 Galvanic Blast. If this is good, the bad part is called Makeshift Munitions, which can get in our way later on.

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vs. Rakdos Burn

This is matchup is well-defined by speed. Maybe there's a problem with our opponent gaining a bit of life, and we lose life with cards like Mutagenic Growth and Apostle's Blessing, which can be quite dangerous.

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vs. Mono Red Blitz

And of course, we always have the mirror, a game practically decided by: whoever starts first will win.

It may seem strange to say that, but as we mentioned that we want to win on turn 3 or as soon as possible, here luck is also what will rule the game.

As we can see, we don't even have a side for a mirror, let's just count on a good starting hand and that the opponent's hand is bad.

Ending another article, I say that this deck I played several times on MTGO, but I'm still going to test it at my local store. Even so, it's another one that I nominate you to play, it's a deck that ends the game quickly, whether you win or lose.

Any questions or suggestions, just leave it here in the comments, and I'll come back to talk about it!

Thank you very much, and I hope you enjoyed the reading.