R Torbran, Thane of Red Fell [Commander] (EDH / Commander) [Revision 13]

This, ladies and gentlemen, is what we would call my magnum opus. My masterpiece. The crème de la crème. And for all you youngsters out there the G.O.A.T. Yes, this is the Michael Jordan of mono-red Commander decks. Or the LeBron James for you youngsters. I'm sorry but at my age I can either be condescending toward the youth of today or afraid of them. And I'll take condescension any day of the week. Anyhow, I'd like to say I've been playing Elder Dragon Highlander (EDH) since before WotC impregnated the Rules Committee and had their bastard baby named Commander. Unfortunately, I was actually very late to the party. I just assumed that since young people were enjoying it that it must be bad. I even wrote a few letters to my congressman about making it illegal. I just received an impersonal form letter in return that basically said 'Thank you for your concern about BLANK. Now please donate to my re-election campaign' even though they just had been elected. I think election season starts earlier and earlier which is a lot like seeing Christmas and Halloween decorations duking it out to see which holiday will be the first to make us forget about the August heat.

Well that last paragraph was a bunch of rambling bloviation but this next one will actually discuss the genius behind the best commander deck ever created. As red is by far the best color in Magic it made sense to play mono-red when deciding which color/s to play during the three-hour excitement of Commander. When each turn takes fifteen minutes it's important that you yourself don't need to be paying attention. Therefore, I created this deck to autopilot while reading a book or surfing the internet. Surfing? Do people still say that? Taking a cruise on the information superhighway! No, seriously, don't you hate it when everyone else is playing combo decks and you're just like, 'Let me know when it's my turn so I can draw my card and pass.'? I hate blue decks by the way. So in response to all those damn 'in response' decks this genius deck lets you Control-F forever. Set it and forget it! All you have to do is cast a few enchantments and wait for your opponents to step into your direct damage traps. And obviously you need the maximum amount of board wipes since the only thing stopping your opponents from just crushing you and letting you go home early is the threat of blowing the whole place sky high. Oh you really want to mess with me? Really? Are you sure that's what you want to do because if it is, that's fine. That's completely fine. And then you drop the nuke which conveniently leaves your stuff unscathed so they can continue to take even more damage as they vainly try to rebuild their boards.

So with all this in mind our deck at its core is simply trying to deal damage through indirect methods so you don't have to pay attention while also ensuring your survival by constantly threatening to kill everything. This way everyone will just leave you alone and you can focus on whatever awful silent anime show is on Netflix. Or maybe that only happens in my playgroup. I guess by now you've realized that I'm a self-hating introvert who will go out of his way to be with friends only so I can go hide somewhere. So we'll go over the cards and discuss both their potential uses and why they were included. But since Commander decks are 100 cards, we'll be skipping over a lot of the chafe and trust me, Commander decks are all about 20% chafe anyhow (which, if you include lands mean about 60% of your cards don't matter.)

Lands (36)

There should actually only be 35 lands but we'll ignore that for now. The lands are just mostly snow-covered mountains to fuel our Glacial Crevasses and Sunstone. It may seem like a lot of trouble just for two cards but I assure you these cards are integral to ensuring you don't die too early. But remember that for each land you sacrifice, that's one more X-damage spell that won't be as powerful. Obviously cards like Ashling the Pilgrim and Pyrohemia are honorary X-spells. The rest of the lands are just card draw and ways to return stuff from the graveyard. Honestly you could just run 35 snow-covered mountains and probably see very little difference.

Artifacts (22)

Just like any good Commander deck our artifacts are mostly for mana ramp and mass-removal. And there's also some other fun cards thrown in like the Wands because sometimes you actually do want to interact with your opponents. Not often obviously but sometimes. And it's always fun using someone else's cards against them. It's like being a Priest in Hearthstone except not having to play Hearthstone.

Enchantments (15)

The best part of this deck is the enchantments and how they all just sit on the battleground hurting your opponents whenever they do anything. The best card is Fiery Emancipation because it makes even a simple Lighting Bolt deal almost 1/4th of your opponent's life total. Also have you ever Price of Progress'd anyone with Emancipation out? It's just beautiful.

Instants (7)

More damage-dealing and whatever.

Sorceries (11)

Mass-creature removal at its finest mixed with some face damage. Remember that since this deck only has 8 creatures you'll want to always have a way to threaten your opponents with another board wipe. The best way to stay alive is to threaten complete annihilation when provoked.

Creatures (8)

Aww, 8 little creatures in the whole deck. Aren't they so cute? As should be obvious, these creatures are not for attacking with. If anything they are simply enchantments that happen to be killed easier. Again that's what this deck is all about--mass-creature removal and mass-face damage. We don't need to have our own creatures when they're all going to be dying anyhow. Minimize your casualties and maximize your opponents'!

So as you can see, this deck is a beautiful way to play Magic and take a nap at the same time. No one is guaranteeing you will win. In fact, more often than not you will get a few enchantments out and the entire table will just attack you into oblivion. But then you can just play on your phone or watch anime until everyone else is finished two hours later. Oh, and one more thing! This deck will hurt you too. Often. But that's okay. Remember that you're not trying to win--you're just trying to make it so no one else has any fun. So if you kill everyone with a 20-damage Rolling Earthquake and someone wants to know why you killed yourself too, just say it's because the sooner we all die the sooner we can play a format that isn't Commander. Maybe if I really hated everyone I'd make an Angus McKenzie fog deck but thankfully even I have limits to my sadism. Maybe next time I'll just make a mono-blue deck with 50 counterspells. But then I'd have to actually pay attention wouldn't I?