Is Skred Red a Prison Deck?
When recording this episode, Patrick and Mike didn’t even know Skred Red was going to win the GP.
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Patrick is in NYC this week, so the Top Level Podcast boys have the rare opportunity to podcast IRL, sitting next to one another.
For our (almost) two year anniversary, Chapin and Flores chat about the Grand Prix Dallas Modern Top 8 as it happens. Spoilers! They don’t know who wins (yet). Patrick loves Grixis (surprise surprise); Mike cheers for longtime friend Phil Napoli (to no avail); and both love-hate the Skred Red deck [that ends up winning it all].
So how about those twenty Snow-Covered Mountains?
Skred Red in the Modern Metagame
Kevin Mackie’s Skred Red deck is ultimately a really nicely positioned metagame deck. Going into Grand Prix Dallas, Dredge was considered one of the top decks. What was Mackie’s response? Four — count ’em four — copies of Relic of Progenitus main. How do you like that, Dredge opponent? Well even if Dredge manages to go off prior to (or through) a Relic of Progenitus, he has Anger of the Gods main, too!
Anger of the Gods exiles creatures as it sweeps them. That means that no matter how many Prized Amalgams you get, Mackie’s sorcery kills them all, dead, forever. Exile!
The combination of Relic of Progenitus and Anger of the Gods really suppress the Dredge deck’s plan.
But what about people who actually want to cast their cards? Mackie has Blood Moon for them!
Eternal Scourge in Skred Red
Spoilers! Mike doesn’t know what Eternal Scourge does.
“This is the best Skred Red deck I’ve ever seen.”
-Patrick
Aside from the Prison-esque elements, Mackie innovates the Skred Red archetype by adding Eternal Scourge. Not only is Eternal Scourge great against point removal (you can almost always buy it back easily), you can “make your own Call of the Herd”.
Like, imagine your Eternal Scourge dies in combat rather than being exiled by being targeted by removal… The fact that this deck plays Relic of Progenitus means Mackie can set it up to buy back even when it goes to the graveyard per normal!
The card is actually just great against almost anything that relies on point removal to control the board. A Blood Moon board control deck will often play many, many turns. Eternal Scourge helps Skred Red stall into those long games and gives it a reasonably large — even inevitable — threat that can actually win the game, given sufficient time.
Check out our take on even more of the Dallas Modern metagame in “Is Skred Red a Prison Deck?”:
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