Growing up playing MtG, red was probably my least favorite color and when I got into EDH, mono-red was considered the weakest of the mono-colors. I wanted a challenge, and worked to produce a deck I liked in my least favorite and weakest color. I've maintained some sort of mono-red deck in my collection since then and come to really enjoy playing them. My first mono-red commander was Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker at the helm of a goblin/combo deck, which my playgroup immediately hated as they were at the phase where any infinite combo was anti-fun. I hopped to Márton Stromgald next which was essentially a combo deck masquerading as a combat deck, and that worked well enough for them. Márton stayed together for many years until Grenzo, Havoc Raiser was spoiled. I benched Márton and put together a pretty nasty Grenzo deck that was quite successful and had a playstyle I haven't really been able to replicate elsewhere, but it's extremely unbalanced in a three person pod, and for that reason I benched Grenzo as well. Pashalik Mons was my next attempt at mono-red, but it turns out having too many Aristocrat/token decks gets boring and I caught myself looking at Márton again, so I got the gang back together.

The early version of Márton was pretty simplistic and one-dimensional in that it looked to generate a huge amount of tokens in one shot, give them haste, and then blast everyone off the table in one turn. While the wins were hilarious, the early turns were pretty boring, and I missed playing Grenzo, so I went all in on my love letter to mono-red and rebuilt the deck so that either Marton Stromgald or Grenzo, Havoc Raiser could be the commander. Both of them want to go wide with a bunch of small bodies, and would prefer if they weren't blocked. Well, turns out Grenzo was still hated by my playgroup so we're back to Marton.

This is a good deck to pull out in lower-powered pods since it is pretty honest about what it's doing and how it wins. The board is developed pretty fairly, not out of nowhere in most cases. Boardwipes send us back to the Stone Age, but that's been the red dilemma forever. Slate of Ancestry and Ignite the Future can really help to reload.

Cards/Interactions I think are neat:

• Spikeshot Elder can kill players off through Márton's trigger before even moving to blockers.
• Break Through the Line can make creatures unblockable before Márton's trigger resolves.
• Tempt with Vengeance is an extremely efficient token creator, even if no other player is tempted (which they should always turn down).
• Final Fortune represents everything about red and this deck in general. All in, victory or death.
• Moraug, Fury of Akoum + Marton gets out of hand really quickly. Marton plus extra combat steps in general.
• Strionic Resonator, while mainly being included to get double Marton triggers, has a ton of synergies with the token generating creatures in the deck.
• Iron Myr and Ornithopter of Paradise accelerate in the early game and turn into huge bodies in the final push.
• Mercadia's Downfall and Tears of Rage are both excellent backup-Martons.

Est. 2014

> 3/20/2023 Update

Grenzo and especially Goading has not been well received roughly 99% of the time, so I'm converting the deck back into being focused on Marton only, which ironically should make it probably a worse experience as it will be more consistent and faster. Too many changes to count, yet again.

> 12/22/2021 Update

I took the whole thing apart and reworked it so that I could use Marton Stromgald or Grenzo, Havoc Raiser as the commander depending on playgroup/mood. Too many changes to count.

> 11/18/2021 Update

Gamble needs to go in a mono-red artifacts deck I'm building, and I've wanted to find a cut for Commune With Lava for a while. Should provide more card velocity that the deck needs.

Out | In
Gamble | Commune With Lava

> 5/24/2021 Update

I realized I forgot to order a Skullclamp for another deck, and to be honest I don't want three out of my four decks to be playing the same card anyways. Skullclamp would be much better in that shell, so I'm going to be trying out a pet card of mine, Dark-Dweller Oracle in this instead.

Out | In
Skullclamp | Dark-Dweller Oracle