Reckelss Bushwhacker is like Atarka’s Command five, six, and seven…
But you also have a 2/1 to show for it, and if you give any creatures haste…

Mike: I don’t know if I told you this but at the last Pro Tour I was kind of sort of cheering for PV over Jon in that Top 8 match because I just wanted to see Mono-Red win another Pro Tour consecutively.

Patrick: I’m totally telling Jon that.

Mike: Oh I told Jon. Are you kidding?

Another format, another super successful Mono-Red (or R/g) aggro deck!

Korey McDuffie opened up the first StarCityGames.com Standard Open with his new version of Atarka Red:

4 Atarka’s Command

2 Become Immense

4 Abbot of Keral Keep
4 Dragon Fodder
3 Fiery Impulse
3 Hordeling Outburst
4 Monastery Swiftspear
3 Reckless Bushwhacker
4 Titan’s Strength
4 Wild Slash
3 Zurgo Bellstriker

4 Bloodstained Mire
2 Cinder Glade
1 Forest
11 Mountain
4 Wooded Foothills

Sideboard:
2 Painful Truths
4 Self-Inflicted Wound
2 Den Protector
3 Arc Lightning
2 Pia and Kiran Nalaar
2 Smoldering Marsh

Korey’s deck starts as a Red Aggro deck that essentially swaps out Temur Battle Rage for the brand new Reckless Bushwhacker. This makes his Red Aggro deck less of a combo kill-oriented deck and more one that builds on the advantages of going wide with Dragon Fodder or Hordeling Outburst.

Consider how much damage (and haste) Korey can generate with, say, “just” a turn three Hordeling Outburst followed by a Dragon Fodder + Surge’d Reckless Bushwhacker! With haste, that’s more than half of the opponent’s life total.

Korey’s sideboard is quite inventive, a semi-transformational sideboard.

In Game One this is a Red Aggro deck. In fact it is exactly the kind of deck that opponents will side Arashin Cleric in against. But that kind of sideboarding could be disastrous against Korey!

After sideboarding Korey adds more mana — black mana actually — that allows him to not only add black advantage cards like Painful Truths and Self-Inflicted Wound; but more lands in general, allowing him to go slightly more expensive with cards like Pia and Kiran Nalaar. His opponents may be aiming for a fast combo-kill deck… When in fact they are facing a Jund Midrange deck after sideboarding.

What’s really cool about this sideboard is how Painful Truths can allow it to keep pace with the card advantage of, say, an Esper Dragons deck; while Self-Inflicted Wound (coming in over, say, Fiery Impulse) can give it easy ways to take out Dragonlord Ojutai.

All-in-all… Sweet deck, and also sweet to see Oath of the Gatewatch making such a swift waves!

Over the course of “Reckless Bushwhacker – Immediate Impact” Patrick and Michael discuss all the Top 8 decks from the Atlanta Open, as well as four different archetypes (including, not surprisingly, Red Aggro) that outperformed the rest of the field. What are they?

Find out in “Reckless Bushwhacker – Immediate Impact”

Direct Download

P.S. In San Antonio, TX this weekend? Check out Patrick (and some guy Luis Scott-Vargas) at PAX South