The deck looks like fun but I couldn't imagine running Cutpurse over Infiltrator, or even Ophidian. The discard effect just isn't worth the risk. If I wanted a 2 power card drawer I'd probably even choose the Ninja over him (he's four mana but he drops well off drain mana).

Because this deck has such a hard time with resolved threats, why not try a Ub only Tog build? That way you get 3 or 4 Cunning Wish and a creature that swallows potential attackers and blockers whole. In addition the Intuition->AK card pairing works well with your "chaining" plan for Circu. That would let you could reduce your kills to: 1x Circu and 1-2x Psychatog. Pyschatog is hands down the best UB critter in the entire game (possibly the best critter period), why not have him riding shotgun with Circu?

Right now my friend is playing something like this:

Creatures: 16
4x Gorilla Shaman
4x Lavamancer
4x Mog Fanatic
4x Slith Firewalker

Burn: 12
4x Lightning Bolt
4x Chainlightning
4x Incinerate? (Pretty sure he runs these, might be something else in this slot)

Hate: 13
4x Ankh of Mishra
4x Pyrostatic Pillar
4x Price of Progress
1x Black Vice

Mana: 19
12x Mountain
4x Wasteland
1x Stripmine
1x Lotus Petal (Becomes Black Lotus with proxies)
1x Sol Ring (It’s decent with his main deck but great with his board. Becomes Ruby when using Proxies.)

Sideboard (roughly):
4x ReB
4x Ensnaring Bridge
4x Rack and Ruin
3x Bloodmoon


He's been trying to make red work for awhile now and this is his best attempt yet IMO, the deck is stuffed full of spells that average at least 4 points of damage within a turn of two of casting them (Pillar, Ankh, PoP). His match up against the tier 1 decks is pretty rough game 1 but he has been playing Mono-Red for so long he can still make the powered players at the store work for their wins (at least the ones where they weren't able to mull into a first turn Oath.) The four serious vintage players at our store play Oath, Oath, 4CC+Green, Various Workshop Decks.

Post board he does surprisingly well.

He can bringing in shiz like 4x Ensnaring Bridge and 4x ReB vs my Oath deck, (boarding out liabilities like Firewalkers and Lavamancers.)

R&R proves pretty effective against the Workshop decks, especially with all the ways to burn welders. I’ve also seen him use his bridges to strong effect vs artifact decks.

Against control Blood Moon + ReB come in to back up his full compliment of main deck Mox Monkeys and ankhs giving him a pretty solid mana denial game plan.

Anyone have thoughts on this list? It cuts chaff like Jackal Pup and Fireblast for what he and I feel to be more reliable sources of damage and the ensnaring bridge seems to be genuine tech vs the dominant decks at our shop.

A couple random thoughts:
Fetchs + anhk not= a combo
Barbarian Ring + Lavamancer not= a combo
Isochron Scepter < Ankh, Pillar and PoP

...and/or drains.

@ Killa: Since you're running eight fetches right now I'd strongly recommend dropping two of them for a hard Island or two, especially if you decide to run Counterspell (which wouldn't be a terrible idea).

If you enjoy combo I'd recommend looking up a budget belcher list to start, it's already a decent deck and if null rod does start to see less play so much the better. I can't think of any other combo deck that can work it's mojo without power, unless you consider something like Food Chain Gobos.

If you're just getting started there's a lot to be said for going the Wooded Foothills, Taiga route over the blue fetch, Volcanic Island/Underground Sea route. It opens up Belcher, Foodchain and R/G Beatz which IMO are all great starter decks. Eventually you will end up playing blue, it's just a matter of how long you wanna mess around with other decks before you goto the dark side.

You're nuts about Chain Lightning, your opponent will rarely have 2 red open and even if they do you can choose not to play chain lightning until you have 3 red open. I don't like Magma Jet and I've actually play tested it in mono red where there is more room for it. If you want deck manipulation, I'd adovocate Sylvan Library or Mirri's Guile over Magma Jet.

Artifact mutation is an auto include for a R/G deck, I'd want a minimum of three in my board, it's just too nasty.

As for fractured loyalty, I can imagine it performing well in a deck with multiple Fire&Ice and/or Lava Darts as well as Lavamancers. If it works use it.

I've got a newbie question, not 100% on topic but better than a new thread. How do-able is un-powered Landstill? I’ve read the archived primer but it doesn’t touch on budget play.

It looks to me like a huge chunk of the deck is very budget friendly, and I’d think Mana Leak and/or Counterspell would be serviceable replacement for Mana Drain but I can't think of any reasonable substitutes for the Lotus and Mox (petal??). How crippling would the loss of all that acceleration be? Are we talking completely unplayable or would I still have a functional deck for a somewhat scrubish meta?

Think something like this:

Land: 27

4 Faerie Conclave
4 Mishra's Factory
4 Wasteland
1 Stripmine
2 Fetch Lands
4 Volcanic Island (Budgetish anyway...)
5 Island
2 Dust Bowl
1 Petrified Field

Counter Magic: 14
4 FoW
4 Mana Leak
2 Misdirection
2 Stifle
2 Teferi's Response

Removal: 11
4 Fire/Ice
4 Lighting Bolt
3 Nevinyrral's Disk

Card Draw: 8
4 Standstill
4 Brainstorm

Any thoughts?