Mono Red Rally

Introduction

Mono Red Rally is Pauper's go-wide red deck: it empties its hand of one-mana creatures in the opening turns, widens the board with Soldier tokens from Rally at the Hornburg, and converts all that width into one huge attack with a kicked Goblin Bushwhacker, with burn covering the last few points. At 6.6% of the field it is one of the format's better-represented aggressive decks. It is also one of the most fun ways to play fast Magic: games are short, every point of damage matters, and the turn where five creatures attack at once for exact lethal never gets old.

The matchup spread follows the game plan. Fair fights where both decks trade damage favor us: the deck is favored against Mono Red Madness and Blue Terror, two of the field's most-played decks, and slightly favored against Elves. Games get harder against opponents who attack our math instead of racing it, whether through repeatable lifegain, cheap damage to every creature at once, or a win that ignores combat entirely. That side of the ledger includes slightly unfavored matchups against Grixis Affinity and Monster Tron, and unfavored ones against White Aggro, Jeskai Ephemerate, and Spy Combo. Jund Wildfire sits at dead even, and most of the remaining field is close to it.

General Strategy

Every card in Mono Red Rally asks the same question: how quickly does this get the opponent to zero. Thirty of the deck's forty-two spells cost one mana, and twenty of the forty-two are creatures, and Rally at the Hornburg adds token pairs on top, so the board gets wide before most opponents finish setting up. Interaction is nearly absent by design; the burn doubles as removal when a blocker demands an answer, but its default target is the face. The pilot's core skill is damage arithmetic: deploy bodies every turn, attack with everything, and recognize the moment when the board plus a kicked Goblin Bushwhacker or a burn spell adds up to exactly twenty. Count it every turn.

Underneath the swarm runs a small artifact engine. Great Furnace is a land that counts as an artifact, Experimental Synthesizer is a one-mana artifact that flips a fresh card when it enters or leaves, and Voldaren Epicure leaves behind a Blood token, so the artifact count climbs without spending a single off-plan card. Three is the number to watch: at three artifacts Galvanic Blast deals 4 damage instead of 2, and any single artifact already turns Goblin Tomb Raider into a 2/2 with haste. The same pieces keep cards flowing, since the flips and a cracked Blood token replace the cards the swarm burns through.

Left alone, the curve is brutal. The draw the deck is built around, on the play, goes like this. Turn 1: Great Furnace into Goblin Tomb Raider, which the Furnace upgrades on the spot, and it attacks for 2. Turn 2: Mountain, then Burning-Tree Emissary, whose arrival adds the red and green mana that pay for Rally at the Hornburg. The Rally grants your Humans haste, and the Emissary is a Human just like the tokens, so all four creatures attack for 6 more. Turn 3: Goblin Bushwhacker with its kicker paid gives everything +1/+0 and haste, and the five attackers - a 3-power , a 3-power , two 2-power Soldiers, and the 2-power itself - deal exactly 12. That is 20 damage in three attack steps against an opponent taking no actions.

The Cards

Great Furnace

An untapped land that is also an artifact, and the deck's best opening land drop. It taps for the same red mana as a Mountain while turning on Goblin Tomb Raider by itself and counting toward the three artifacts Galvanic Blast wants, so a land slot doubles as engine fuel. The drawback is narrow but real: artifact removal aimed at it takes a land and a piece of the count in one shot. Lead with it anyway.

Experimental Synthesizer

One mana buys a lasting artifact and a fresh card at each end of its stay: it exiles the top card of your library when it enters and again when it leaves, each playable that same turn, and its sorcery-speed sacrifice ability cashes it in for a 2/2 Samurai token with vigilance on top of the second flip. A typical game uses all three stages, but a flip only pays if you can still act on it. On turn 1 you cannot: tapped out with your land drop spent, the exiled card is lost, so you cast it for the artifact it leaves behind - a second one toward Galvanic Blast's three. From turn 2 on, cast it before your land drop: spare mana plays the half of the deck that costs one, and a flipped land can still become your land for the turn even with nothing left. Sacrifice it from four lands rather than three, so paying the three mana does not waste the leaving flip. It is also the deck's favorite mana sink once the game stalls.

Voldaren Epicure

A 1/1 that arrives with value already banked: it deals 1 damage to the opponent as it enters and creates a Blood token. The token matters twice. While it sits in play it is an artifact for Goblin Tomb Raider and Galvanic Blast, and later you can pay one mana, tap and sacrifice it, and discard a card to draw a fresh one, converting a flooded land into action. Do not cash it in carelessly.

Role Assignment

The construction fixes the role before the match begins. Mono Red Rally is a linear, tempo-positive aggro deck with low inevitability: a curve that tops at two mana, damage in nearly every slot, and almost no interaction besides burn. You are the beatdown in essentially every pairing, and every extra turn the game runs erodes your position. Four axes decide how the role plays out: the race window (nearly all of the deck's damage lands in the first four or five turns), sweeper math (how cheaply the opponent can damage your whole board at once), life-total leverage (lifegain and big blockers taxing the burn), and artifact exposure (whether their interaction also strips the artifacts powering Galvanic Blast and Goblin Tomb Raider).

Vs. Aggro. Usually still the beatdown. The haste density and the burn make this deck faster than most other creature decks, so the default is to race rather than block: your 1/1s and 2/2s block badly, there is no lifegain to fall back on, and a turn spent defending is a turn the plan stalls. The role-defining play is the Lightning Bolt allocation - it kills their creature only when that creature out-trades your attackers or their lifegain threatens to swing the race, and it hits the face otherwise. If their start is clearly faster, the roles flip briefly: kill the best early threat, then go straight back to attacking.

Vs. Midrange. The beatdown, without question. Their plan is to trade one for one, land bigger bodies, and drag the game past your refill window, and low inevitability means the long game belongs to them; opponents whose removal doubles as artifact removal also shrink Galvanic Blast and Goblin Tomb Raider along the way. Play to the four-turn window: deploy everything, attack into hesitation, and treat the burn as the final points of damage rather than as removal. The role-defining play is kicking Goblin Bushwhacker for a near-lethal attack a turn before it feels safe, because waiting for a cleaner board hands them exactly the time they want.

Vs. Control. Always the beatdown, but the disciplined version. Sweeper math dominates these games: their cheapest board-wide damage answers most of your creatures, so emptying your hand into one board loses to one card. Commit enough to force action - two or three bodies is real pressure - and bank a or a to rebuild on your own turn right after they sweep. Burn gains value here too, since damage from hand cannot be swept. The role-defining play is holding the second wave while still attacking for three or four a turn.

Play Patterns

These are the ordering decisions that come up in nearly every game, listed by how often getting them wrong costs the match.

Cast Burning-Tree Emissary before the rest of your turn's spells. The red and green mana it adds on arrival disappear when the main phase ends, so sequence it first and the bonus pays for what follows: the red covers any one-drop, the green pays the generic half of a two-mana spell, and both together cast a second copy. A big turn 2 on two lands is one where two Mountains cast Burning-Tree Emissary and its red and green exactly pay for Rally at the Hornburg: the two Soldier tokens arrive with haste, and the Emissary is a Human itself, so it gains haste too and all three attack for 4 on the turn they land.
Hold Goblin Bushwhacker until the kicked attack is lethal or close to it. The kicked bonus scales with width, so each body already deployed adds a point of damage, while running it out early and unkicked adds a single power to the board and nothing more. The option never comes back: the kicker is chosen only as you cast it, so once it enters plain, the pump is gone for good. Inside the big turn, cast it after that turn's other creatures and after Rally at the Hornburg, because the bonus covers only the creatures already on the battlefield when it lands.
Lead Great Furnace as your first land when your hand has both it and a Mountain. Both produce the same red mana, but only one turns on Goblin Tomb Raider and counts toward Galvanic Blast. The two-Raider draw shows the stakes: off a turn-1 Furnace the first Goblin Tomb Raider attacks as a 2/2 the turn it lands, the second does the same on turn 2, and the pair deals 6 combat damage across the first two turns. Lead the Mountain instead and the first one sits home as a 1/2.
Run out Experimental Synthesizer on your earliest spare mana, even when you cannot use the card it flips. Its job on the battlefield is being an artifact for the count; the flip is a bonus. Waiting for a turn when the exiled card is castable delays 's upgrade and 's 4-damage mode for little gain, and nothing is truly lost, because the leave trigger flips another card whenever you sacrifice it or the opponent removes it later.

Black Sacrifice

Carrion Feeder - emblematic card for this matchup — Read the Black Sacrifice primer →

Matchup - Even

We take the aggressor's seat, even though both decks flood the board with one-mana creatures. More of our board attacks the turn it lands - Clockwork Percussionist has haste printed on it, Goblin Tomb Raider gains it while we control an artifact, and the tokens from Rally at the Hornburg arrive with haste - while their Carrion Feeder can't block at all. Their deck profits from creature deaths instead: nearly every body they lose leaves a token, a counter, or a card behind, so despite an aggressive card pool they spend the game chump-blocking, trading, and dragging things toward one big attack-plus-Rite of Consumption turn. That is the shape of the race: their removal and sacrifice tricks trim our swarm one body at a time without stopping the burn finish, and our burn must keep Carrion Feeder and Mortician Beetle small enough that the drain turn can't swing both life totals before we close. Speed is ours, resilience is theirs.

Game one, our burn has one job before it ever goes at their face: kill Carrion Feeder and Mortician Beetle the turn they land, at instant speed where possible. Once they untap with fodder and a free outlet, sacrifices in response either grow the payoff out of burn range or leave our spell with no target, and every death along the way pays them. Galvanic Blast is the spell that keeps up: with three artifacts it deals 4, enough to catch a payoff that has already eaten two or three bodies, so lead with Great Furnace and count artifacts before cracking a Blood token. Bigger than that and it takes two spells. Weight opening hands accordingly - a burn spell now rates as high as an extra creature, and on the draw higher still, since their payoff lands and starts growing before we untap.

Meanwhile the swarm keeps attacking. Their fodder must chump or let damage through, trades cost us little - Voldaren Epicure has already paid out by the time it dies, and Clockwork Percussionist banks us a card on the way out - and every Snuff Out they cast for its 4-life cost does a burn spell's work for us. Rally at the Hornburg moves up the keep order here: its tokens dodge the forced sacrifice on Accursed Marauder, out-number a defense that spends one body per attacker, and the haste it grants covers Burning-Tree Emissary on a big turn. When Accursed Marauder does resolve, hand it Clockwork Percussionist, whose death banks us a card. Hold Goblin Bushwhacker until our attacker count clears their untapped bodies; a kicked swing into a full board of expendable blockers wastes the pump. And if the game stalls into topdecks, we are still live - our burn kills a payoff or finishes the face from any board, while their sacrifice spells sit blank without bodies already in play.

Key Threats

Carrion Feeder is the matchup's defining card, and the rule is strict: kill it before they untap with it. It is a free sacrifice outlet that grows a +1/+1 counter for every body it eats, it protects itself by eating fodder in response to our burn until it is out of range, and it can't block - so it races us without ever defending. Pass the turn it lands and every later burn spell becomes a losing trade, overpaying while the eventual Rite of Consumption target keeps growing.

Rite of Consumption is the number our race math must beat. On their big turn the grown creature attacks, then gets sacrificed in the second main phase to drain us for its power - the same power counts twice, and every point drained comes back to them as life, undoing burn we already spent. Never plan a race that leaves them low but alive with a tall creature in play; one sorcery from there kills us while lifting them back out of burn range. The sacrifice is part of the casting cost, so once the spell is on the stack the creature is already gone. The only window is killing it at instant speed before they cast the sorcery.

Shambling Ghast beside a free outlet is their removal: sacrificed in the middle of combat, its -1/-1 death trigger kills any one-toughness creature we control, a pumped token included. Never build a kicked Goblin Bushwhacker swing that needs every one of those bodies to connect - one sacrifice drops the attack below lethal - so leave a damage margin or thin their board with burn first. Given nothing to shrink, the Treasure mode ramps their two-drops out a turn early instead.

Supernatural Stamina punishes burning a fresh payoff into open black mana: for one mana the creature returns tapped, the engine seat stays filled, and we have paid a full card for their one-mana rebuy. It also lets them keep the creature they feed to Rite of Consumption. Against a grown Carrion Feeder, though, the return loses all its counters - forcing that reset with a burn spell is a fine outcome for us.

Bloodthrone Vampire is the one attacker worth a chump block. Its instant-speed pump, +2/+2 for each body fed to it, turns leftover fodder into burst, and on the big turn that pumped power counts twice - full combat damage, then the Rite of Consumption drain off the same creature. Holding one spare Rally at the Hornburg token back to block it denies the combat half of that turn, the lone exception to attacking with everything.

Sideboard Plan

In:

2 End the Festivities
2 Cast into the Fire
2 Searing Blaze
2 Relic of Progenitus

Out:

4 Wrenn's Resolve
2 Chain Lightning
2 Goblin Bushwhacker

End the Festivities comes in because one red mana kills every creature in their maindeck and every Squirrel, Insect, and Mercenary token while pointing a damage at their face. Only a Carrion Feeder, Mortician Beetle, or Sadistic Glee carrier that has already banked counters survives, and bodies fed to an outlet in response still leave their fresh tokens dead under the sweep.

Cast into the Fire is instant-speed split damage that kills two of their one-toughness creatures at once - a fresh Carrion Feeder or Mortician Beetle plus a fodder creature - before counters put the payoffs out of reach.

Searing Blaze comes in against a deck that always presents creatures: with a land drop the same turn it deals three to a creature and three to their face in one card, and its two-target structure beats their sacrifice-in-response defense - if the creature is gone on resolution, the face half still lands.

Relic of Progenitus does double duty: cracked at instant speed it exiles the body out from under an Unearth or a Supernatural Stamina return trigger and strips Spinning Darkness of its free cost, and until cracked it sits on the battlefield as an artifact for Goblin Tomb Raider and Galvanic Blast that replaces itself. Two copies rather than three because their graveyard is a support angle, not the engine core, and the third slot is worse than kept pressure.

Wrenn's Resolve goes out because a two-mana turn with no board impact is a free setup turn for Carrion Feeder and Bloodthrone Vampire, and the removal coming in replaces the card flow by trading one spell for several of their creatures.

Chain Lightning goes out because sorcery speed can't act in their combat or sacrifice windows, and the face damage it deals is exactly what the lifegain on Rite of Consumption refunds. Lightning Bolt and Galvanic Blast stay: instant speed is what the fight over their payoffs demands.

Two copies of Goblin Bushwhacker come out because their standing supply of expendable blockers, plus the Drown in Sorrow that roughly half their lists board in, punish the all-in pump turn. Two stay: a kicked swing right after End the Festivities clears their board is still our cleanest kill.

Sideboarding barely moves this pairing. Our one-sided sweep is exactly what an all-one-toughness deck fears, but their package - Tragic Slip, Drown in Sorrow, and incidental lifegain - hits our swarm just as hard. Both sideboards were built for this exact fight, and neither clearly outweighs the other.

Post-board Strategy

Post-board games become a fight over who overextends into the other's sweep first. End the Festivities kills their entire one-toughness board for one mana unless a payoff has already banked counters, and their configuration turns more interactive in reply: Tragic Slip in most lists, Drown in Sorrow in roughly half, and in some lists extra free removal in Snuff Out plus the lifegain of Spinning Darkness and Vampiric Link.

Tighten the plan to two or three deployed threats and hold the rest. End the Festivities is the payoff for patience: wait until their board is committed, then sweep. Feeding bodies to Carrion Feeder in response does not save them - the tokens those deaths create arrive before the sweep resolves and die with everything else, leaving one grown Carrion Feeder for a saved Galvanic Blast. A kicked Goblin Bushwhacker right after the sweep is the cleanest kill line in the matchup. Crack Relic of Progenitus in response to Unearth or to a Supernatural Stamina return trigger so the body is exiled and the return finds nothing; until then it stays in play adding to our artifact count.

Commit in waves against open black mana rather than presenting the full swarm. Tragic Slip kills anything we field in games where a creature dies every turn, and Drown in Sorrow clears our whole board while their death triggers leave tokens to rebuild theirs, so lean on the cards that bank value through removal. Clockwork Percussionist banks us a card when it dies, and sacrificing Experimental Synthesizer rebuilds a 2/2 Samurai after a sweep. If Vampiric Link lands on one of our attackers, that creature's combat damage cancels out of the race - count it out of the damage math and finish with the rest of the swarm plus burn.