Are you a Quiet Speculation member?
If not, now is a perfect time to join up! Our powerful tools, breaking-news analysis, and exclusive Discord channel will make sure you stay up to date and ahead of the curve.
Well, I realize it's been a long hiatus since our last Deck of the Week, but we're back nonetheless. I spent much of the weekend tuned into coverage of Grand Prix Dallas, and if most of the on-camera archetypes were boring mainstays and known quantities, the deck that took it down most certainly was not. As much as I was rooting for Ryoichi Tamada to take his innovative Pyromancer Thing deck to another Top 8 berth, the weekend undoubtedly belonged to Skred Red.
Long-time Modern aficionados won't be wholly unfamiliar with the likes of Skred Red, as it has existed in one form or another for a while. But while you might have run into it at your local FNM or piloted it to a plucky finish in an MTGO league, it hasn't exactly put up impressive numbers on the competitive scene. As near as I can tell, until this week its best showing was a 27th place finish at the Star City Games Open in Louisville. Yesterday it cracked the Top 8 of a major event for the first time, before going on to win the whole thing.
[wp_ad_camp_1]
Skred Red, by Kevin Mackie (1st, GP Dallas)
The most obvious draw to playing this deck is unsurprisingly its namesake, Skred. On the weekend Kevin Mackie reporting using the one-mana instant to take down a Platinum Emperion and a 7/8 Kalitas, which is starting to sound shockingly similar to a Swords to Plowshares with no downside. The true cost, of course, is hidden in the hoops you must jump through to put it in your deck in the first place. As the only Snow duals available are woefully underpowered for the Modern format, this effectively translates to a mono-colored deck.
That said, the all-Snow-Covered Mountain manabase brings other benefits with it. I don't think that Scrying Sheets is the kind of powerhouse card draw engine you'd generally write home about, but a resolved Koth of the Hammer sounds quite formidable. This is truly the only deck I could fathom sleeving up Koth, as even the "mono-red" burn deck of the format nearly always splashes for Lightning Helix, Atarka's Command, or (back in the day) Bump in the Night. 
Skred Red also puts in the work to mitigate that steep four-mana casting cost with the full complement of Mind Stones.
If you ever ultimate him, good luck to the opponent—they can expect an output of 4-5 damage per turn, easily. Koth and Stormbreath Dragon let this deck laugh off planeswalkers like Liliana of the Veil, and turn the corner nice and quick when it's time to kill the opponent. This much haste might make combat math tougher too, although my guess is that Skred Red finds itself on the back foot more often than not.
The other payoff for running mono-red is access to a Blood Moon that will never, ever, punish you. In addition to Blood Moon, the deck has access to a variety of disruptive tools, primary among them Relic of Progenitus and a sweeper in Anger of the Gods. That gives Mackie some nice maindeck tools against graveyard-based combo and creature decks alike. All in all, it looks like decks that aim to attack life totals directly will have a tough time fighting through all of the removal. And Burn has to contend with a full four-of Dragon's Claw out of the board—ouch. That makes this deck well positioned against a wide swath of the field right now, dominated as it is by linear creature strategies.
What's in a Threat?
Scouring old tournament results for Skred Red finishes reveals a wide diversity of threats across different lists, which makes sense considering how little attention it has received over the years. In other lists we see appearances by Boros Reckoner (often alongside Blasphemous Act), Demigod of Revenge, Goblin Dark-Dwellers, and even Trading Post. Mackie has a relatively streamlined version, the product, as he explained in his deck tech on the mothership, of several weeks of concerted tuning. 
The two headliners here are Stormbreath Dragon and Pia and Kiran Nalaar, joined by two copies, of all things, of Eternal Scourge.
The Nalaar family needs no introduction, in Modern or elsewhere. Here they serve a similar role as in Grixis Control strategies, stabilizing the board against all manner of threats, flying or otherwise, while playing the value game in matchups where that's relevant. That second purpose is largely what Eternal Scourge is up to in this deck, threatening to recur indefinitely off of a Relic of Progenitus and grind down the kill-spell decks.
Stormbreath Dragon seems like an odd inclusion, but if you ignore its hefty mana cost, the stats line up well in format saturated with Path to Exile, Lightning Bolt, and Abrupt Decay. Between the Mind Stones, Koths, and the Chandra, Torch of Defiance, it's not unthinkable to get to seven mana for a monstrous activation either.
A Metagame Choice
Archetypally, Skred Red is kind of like a mono-red Jund. With 4 Bolt, 4 Skred, Anger of the Gods, and threats that can stabilize, you're on the kill-everything plan in some matchups and the pressure-your-life-total plan in others. I imagine this is somewhat determined by the particular opener you fan out in any given game, which is likely also one of the deck's major weaknesses. 
With no card filtering, a hand of Blood Moons and Stormbreath Dragons against an aggressive deck might fall flat, whereas a pile of Skreds does little against a control deck. Tarmogoyf and Liliana of the Veil, on the other hand, are flexible enough to be useful, if not perfect, in most situations.
Like with any midrange deck, post-board configurations of Skred Red will be much better suited to address the matchup in question. That said, I don't envy the Modern player who has to sideboard with access to just one color (unless it's white).
The one glaring weakness appears to be spell-based combo and blue counterspells—and Mackie was explicit in stating how a metagame full of such decks is bad news for Skred Red. But if you expect to face lots of matchups where 8 Bolt effects shine, the deck might be a reasonable under-the-radar choice.
No Delver. Delver of Secrets does a fine job of solving the issues presented by Stormchaser and Swiftspear. It's vulnerable to Lightning Bolt before flipping, but survives it post-transformation with some help from a Mutagenic Growth. Since Delver costs half as much as Stormchaser, it seems like a straight upgrade to me. It provides more pressure without instants and sorceries, making it a better topdeck and allowing it to smooth out land-heavy hands (which are preferable in some matchups). Delver even smooths out land-light hands thanks to its low mana cost, something crucial for a deck on only 18. The main reason to play Delver in this deck: Jeff already runs 26 instants and sorceries, so the Human Insect is hugely reliable.
With Mutagenic Growth protecting our threats, It's not uncommon for us to be attacking with two creatures by turn four. In those games, a turn-one Hierarch will have netted us 1-2 extra damage and 1-2 additional mana, which I'm not sure is worth it for the card investment. Consider that we could have led on Nacatl instead and broken even on the damage, making Nacatl something like a Rite of Flame in this scenario. That's not even taking into account what happens if (God forbid) Hierarch comes down on turn two or later.
Tarmogoyf: Don't act so surprised. Did you really expect me to play Stormchaser Mage over Tarmogoyf? Goyf plugs a crucial hole in this strategy by complimenting Mutagenic Growth. Sometimes, we don't draw the instant, and in those cases, we need to have a backup plan when our one-drop gets Bolted. Goyf rewards us when opponents interact with our clock, which they must do to not die. It also rewards us for interacting with our opponents, which we must do to not die, and are built to do throughout the game. These factors combine to make Goyf a 4/5 or larger (we'll get to that) in almost every game, and at once a more efficient attacker than Stormchaser and a behemoth on defense.
.. Oh, yeah! Seal of Fire! Seal allows us to do something with our mana early on in matchups where we want to save our Bolts for the face, threaten interaction for zero mana, set the pace of the game by forcing opponents to play around the burn effect, and pump Goyf by an extra level.
we had access to in longer games. The information was never that relevant for me in this deck and I often wanted a cantrip that always turned itself into something useful later, instead of always turning into a random card. Probe was also less important without prowess creatures. Traverse even fixes our colors when we need it to.
some benefits over Delver and Mandrills, notably that it's great at turning games around. But I don't think that beats being able to put them away more quickly, and interacting more reliably with opponents while doing so.
No Wild Nacatls and no Grim Lavamancers.
When you start writing a decklist for Burn you start with 4 Lightning Bolt, 4 Lava Spike, 4 Boros Charm, and usually 4 Rift Bolt. After those 16 cards it gets a little more fuzzy.
The fourth copy is in my sideboard because life gain isn't terribly common these days, but they're still a necessary evil. The next two slots are for Lightning Helix. It's ends up working a lot like a reverse Searing Blaze in a lot of matchups.
That being said, I still managed to find room for two of them because the games you start at 20 are a lot easier to win than the games you start at 17.
Extraction is highly specific in what it targets—some may even say surgical—helping us deal with the biggest problem card in the Dredge matchup: Prized Amalgam. The way that the most recent Dredge decks are built, it's not terribly difficult to beat a pile of Bloodghasts and Narcomoebas. The deck's true power draws involve multiple Prized Amalgams returning to play quickly. Surgical Extraction lets you interact with those types of draws without causing a strain on your mana.
It's great against decks with larger creatures, which can normally turn the corner and close out quickly. It's great against Bant Eldrazi (which can otherwise be a pretty tough matchup) as well as weird off-the-wall decks and tribal decks. I've boarded it in against Merfolk and watched as they wished they could remove their Lord of Atlantis from play to get in a meager attack.
Kataki, War's Wage: This is only a good sideboard card against Affinity. If your local meta has Ad Nauseam decks too I would recommend Stony Silence instead.
With the rest of the format focused heavily on stopping Burn and Dredge (as seen from the SCG Milwaukee results we analyzed last week), I believe Infect is poised to pounce on an unsuspecting field and claim another trophy for the Infect clan.
Maybe in an open field I would find myself going back to Distortion Strike against an unknown metagame, but on this weekend, one where I expect Infect to do very well, I’m jumping at the opportunity to next-level the mirror while also helping me against the field, albeit in a different way.
alongside Grafdigger's Cage and Anger of the Gods in the board, ensure that when Dredge’s creatures die against this deck, they’ll stay dead.
Still, we already have so much removal that as long as we’re playing anything on three we should be fine, even if we’re not getting full value. The Maelstrom Pulse debate has gone back and forth between Jund players for so long that I leave it up to them to decide for themselves. I think it’s close enough you can do whatever you choose—just be aware that you shot yourself in the foot when you cut it and find yourself facing down Lingering Souls!
The deck is fast. It is powerful. And it is coming to kill you.
Most games that Infect wins against Dredge involve Blighted Agent, and reach is the generally going to be the name of the game for beating Dredge.
Grafdigger's Cage is among the more commonly played answers to Dredge, in part because it has a textbox that also hoses Collected Company. Being findable off Ancient Stirrings is also a contributing factor. The ability to come down on turn one and turn off opposing shenanigans is very powerful, and your Dredge opponent is going to need to find some specific cards to beat a good hand with Cage.
As such, opening hands with Rest in Peace have to be examined even more critically than those with Grafdigger's Cage, and if you're on the draw your Rest in Peace will sometimes be too slow to matter.
With a Leyline in your opener you can rest assured that your oponent won't be up to anything degenerate on turn one, though you do still have to be somewhat wary of three-mana 3/3s and Nature's Claim. The one-sided nature of this hate piece is also a nice boon, and the reason that Leyline is the card of choice Dredge itself uses to beat the mirror.
