Over the past few years of Limited, red has been one of the most consistently powerful colors, only competing with white for the title. It’s an older beneficiary of Magic’s Commanderfication than white, but the impacts are felt today nonetheless. While it’s not always on top — DMU and MOM were too anemic in the creature department — it’s a rare set indeed when red should be avoided altogether. The reason is simple: under current design, red has no clear, intentional weakness. We’ve seen this in fits and starts across many powerful red cards and mechanics in many sets, but MKM feels like the culmination. There are so many eye-rolling, head-rolling designs here that I just have to start breaking them down so others can hopefully see the issues. It’s no longer okay.
Zero-effort Clues
Red has a laundry list of card advantage methods at this point, but one rule is consistent: it cannot get extra cards with no strings attached. In fact, this matter is where red gets to demonstrate its oft-overlooked elements of creativity and craftiness, with creatures that trade cards or various permanents for new cards (Grabby Giant is the latest and greatest example). Red should struggle in the long term, with much of the color’s nuance for skilled players coming from finding ways to stay in the game if initial aggression is curbed. That makes the investigate and Clue designs pretty egregious.
I consider Red Herring to be the most insulting. Red is supposed to have creatures that throw themselves into the fray, consequences be damned. The option to draw a card for a new threat as soon as there are consequences is antithetical to the color. I’m not even sure “attacks if able” is a meaningful downside on a 2/2 with haste; it encourages weaker players to properly execute aggressive plans.
Innocent Bystander isn’t problematic in power level (I have yet to see it trigger), but red is the last color it should be. Red has no business punishing the opponent for playing its game of throwing damage around or attacking with high-power creatures. White would make sense as the (allegedly) conflict-adverse color, black is a perfect fit for encouraging chump blocking, and blue and green draw off death all the time. In the future, I’d love to see this kind of design in a color that wants to play defense.
Historically, red’s tricks only cantrip if they provide an incredibly small effect, such as Crash Through only granting trample. There’s just no reason for one as impactful as The Chase is On to draw a card aside from loose set themes. Sure, red needs some number of Clues for its artifact sacrifice theme, but surely we can be more elegant and appropriate than this. Red could makes Clues just fine if they came at the expense of other resources, but tricks like this mean that aggression is also the long-term winner, and that’s messed up.
Dog Walker and Gadget Technician
For aggressive strategies to be strong, they need answers to strings of 1-for-1 removal. To that end, I’m perfectly fine with red’s ability to make tokens, but they take it too far too often nowadays. Dog Walker is the epitome of current-day color design disparity: because it’s red and white, the two colors always roped into offense, they get 5 power and 3 toughness across three bodies as soon as turn four. When green only gets to play with disguise costs of 5 or 6 for one, easy-to-punish body, half of which are below-rate, it feels like a sick joke. That’s not even mentioning Dog Walker having the only explicit hybrid break of the gold disguise cycle in granting vigilance, perhaps the most un-red evergreen keyword. White can be the best at tokens, but green, as the color that’s supposed to live and die by creatures, deserves to outclass red here. While I’m not fond of WOE’s Rat token theme for similar reasons, at least they have the honor to not block, making Ratcatcher Trainee perfectly punishable when red falls behind. As the color should play.
Gadget Technician isn’t as egregiously powerful, but again, it’s laughable how blue and red, the colors explicitly meant to have the lowest creature density, get the second best rate when it comes to battlefield presence. Red doesn’t care about defense, and blue is flimsy; don’t give them the luxury of multiple blockers in one card for trivial costs.
Felonious Rage
Make Your Mark was a perfectly respectable hybrid design. It played into STX’s magecraft and mascot token themes, asked for a type of sacrificial combat that felt both white and red, and only granted +1/+0, meaning your creature needed respectable base power to use it. However, I vehemently disagree with a stronger version in Felonious Rage being mono-red. Not only does an extra power point make it exponentially easier to use, the token creation on death is a kind of defensive, long-term assurance that makes no sense for the color. Red’s tricks should be about forcing terrifying amounts of damage at the expense of the creature, not exhausting the opponent’s resources with one-mana 2/2s that only ask you to attack. The token being white only makes the dissonance even stronger. Why is red even getting a bit of Detective synergy!? Because it’s butt buddies with white at the top of every color ranking!? This effect is fine in white, power level aside, and I wouldn’t mind seeing it in green or black, but it certainly isn’t a red card.
Gearbane Orangutan
It’s an Ape, it has reach, it hates artifacts, and it can be a 3-mana 4/4. How is Gearbane Orangutan not green? The card has panned out to be unremarkable in Limited, as sacrificing an artifact on 3 is too difficult, but we saw the damage this kind of modality could do in AFR with Plundering Barbarian. Red doesn’t need any of this; it can zap artifact creatures with standard removal just fine, its aggression is a natural counter to small fliers, and its threats don’t need raw stats to do work. Green could be a lot more interesting at common with modal, high-ceiling creatures.
High-damage Removal
Commander may influence design a lot, but that doesn’t mean red shouldn’t struggle with big creatures in Limited. The beautiful thing about Shock is that while it dominates the early-game and can savagely finish you off, it gets outclassed. Establishing your own creatures and turning the tables on the little guys harassing you is a satisfying and essential dynamic of the game, especially for green. To that end, Galvanize and Torch the Witness are not okay. Galvanize’s very possible (the best red 2-drop draws a card on demand!) 5 damage for 2 mana covers way too many creatures. It treads on one of black’s core appeals, efficient and unconditional removal. When Murder’s cost is 1 greater and requires BB, black begins to look like a joke. Torch the Witness is gross from multiple angles; not only does doubling X disrespect X removal’s inherent mana efficiency balancing, it investigates if you go overboard! Consistently efficient removal that draws a card should be reserved for multicolor, it’s just that obviously good.
Ultimately, I just want to see red dialed back a bit. None of these effects are too much in theory, but they’re pushed to the extent where it’s hard for red to die hard.
