Menacing on a Budget

Magic Origins introduced a new creature ability called Menace which essentially makes the creature harder to block because it has to be blocked by more than 1 creature.

It may not be as powerful as Double Strike, nor as evasive as Flying but Menace is actually an ability that you can build a good deck around to fully maximize it. Basically if you can keep your opponents low on creatures, your creatures become unblockable. Today we have a lot of great creatures that have Menace.

I decided to build with Red Black because both colors have the most spot removal and low to the ground Menace creatures. The key of for a successful Menace deck is to keep your creatures as low to the ground, pack a good amount of instant removals, and chip away your opponent’s life total every turn.

Glint-Sleeve Siphoner has proven itself in BG Snake decks and she has been drawing people boatload of cards thanks to her “Phyrexian Arena” ability. She’s a great attacker early and fills up our hand, definitely worth including in our deck.

Kari Zev has been bringing her pet monkey to the battlefield thousands of times thanks to loyal fans of the Ramunap Red deck. She’s hard to block thanks to her 3 toughness and people are too concerned with taking 2 from Ragavan that her 1 damage often goes through, which in the long run piles up!

For our newest addition from Ixalan we have Fathom Fleet Captain. He is so freakishly good because he’s a 2/2 for 2 with Menace and can create more dudes like him. Actually his tokens are even better than him because of that additional 1 point of toughness which can be relevant at time. This card is great later in the game when we don’t have anything else to dump our mana into.

If we will be pressuring our opponents to play creatures in order to block our Menace creatures, he will first pay the price thanks to Rampaging Ferocidon. Apart from it having Menace, it’s a 3/3 for 3 mana, prevents people from gaining life which completely shuts down Gifted Aetherborn and Approach of the Second Suns. A great 3-drop in our deck and definitely painful in multiple copies.

Ruin Raider is perfect for this deck because he fills up our hand pretty good. We will most like be out of cards in hand by turn 5 or 6 so some card advantage is great. He also serves as a redundancy package for Glint Sleeve Siphoner. Raid is very easy to trigger since our creatures are never trained to block anyway.

So here’s my RB Menace deck!

Creatures: 27

4 Dread Wanderer
4 Glint-Sleeve Siphoner
4 Fathom Fleet Captain
3 Kazi Zev, Skyship Raider
4 Kitesail Freebooter
4 Rampaging Ferocidon
2 Headstrong Brute
2 Ruin Raider

Spells: 10

4 Lightning Strike
4 Shock
2 Abrade

Lands: 23

4 Ramunap Ruins
2 Ifnir Deadlands
4 Dragonskull Summit
1 Canyon Slough
7 Mountain
5 Swamp

Sideboard: 15

4 Duress
4 Claim // Fame
4 Gifted Aetherborn
3 Dreamstealer

Dread Wanderer is just an awesome 2/1 for 1 mana that comes back over and over again. We will be out of cards quickly so it won’t be difficult to bring him back. Kitesail Freebooter is evasive thanks to Flying, but he does a great job of fishing out possible hosers like Fumigate or Settle the Wreckage.

The deck is super aggressive and prevents the opponent from interacting effectively inside combat. Our spells work as both removal and reach before the opponent can recover from the early pressure.

We will play Ramunap Ruins in our mana base to provide more reach without taking cards lots from our deck too much. Ifnir Deadlands is there for added removal, or serve as additional deserts for Ramunap Ruins to throw out.

Our sideboard is simple and it’s only against control. We won’t aspire to catch all the decks we’re going to face but I wanted to be equipped against counter spell decks and Dreamstealer and Duress does this job well. We do have Kitesail Freebooter in the main so we’re not caught unprepared in game 1.

Spell mention goes out to Claim//Fame. Claim is awesome because it can reanimate half of our creature suite, while Fame can be relevant later on to beef up one of our creatures to take down a bigger creature or deal those last points of damage.

The deck is less than $50, and most you can find sitting inside people’s binders who will gladly sell/trade them for cheap.

If you like the deck, feel free to share your love on the comments below!

Cheers,
Vanson