A few months back, Huey, Aqua, and I got together in a voice call one day to make a meme deck to jam a few games into our latest creation, 4c Control, for the UOL Pioneer League. A mono-color midrange deck that leaned into a popular Pauper interaction (Cleansing Wildfire + indestructible lands) to gain value and access ramp in a color that doesn’t normally have access to it.
After playing four matches of 4c Control into this meme deck, we found that Control literally could not win. It lost in the early game and in the midgame, and could not reach an endgame because the pressure that this meme deck put out was simply too much for it. The three of us then decided to put 4c Control onto the sidelines and devote more energy to the funny mono-color midrange deck.
We played it into the more popular decks at the time and found that with some minor adjustments, we could have strong enough game plans against a wide chunk of the field, save for other mono-color decks. Thus, our team’s big new deck, Cleansing Red, was born.
This deck is a Red-Colorless midrange deck that utilizes Cleansing Wildfire as a modal spell to either ramp you into your powerful four mana cards like Karn, the Great Creator and Thought-Knot Seer, or to destroy your opponent’s lands in conjunction with Field of Ruin. This plan is effective due to a tendency for many decks to play very few basic lands, since Pioneer lacks a major way to punish non-basic lands like Blood Moon. We utilize our powerful Karn-focused sideboard to select either a piece of hate to slow down our opponent or a proactive piece to remain ahead of our opponent.
Individual Card Choices
Cleansing Wildfire + Darksteel Citadel / Cascading Cataracts: This synergy is the lynchpin for the entire deck. Cleansing Wildfire is a messed up Magic card. If you target an indestructible land you control with it, you put a basic land into play from your deck and then draw a card. Insane value.
It also happens to have the mode of destroying your opponent’s lands, too. If your opponent has no basic lands in their deck, it is 2 mana Stone Rain + draw a card. Even if they do have basic lands in their deck, you can often cut your opponent off of a color or destroy an important utility land.
Fable of the Mirror-Breaker and Bonecrusher Giant improve almost any Red deck in Pioneer. Bonecrusher is two spells rolled into one. Fable makes a creature that sometimes makes a mana, filters your hand, and also becomes a creature later. This transformation also has synergy with the cards in the next package of cards.
These spaghets are large and in charge. This deck’s strongest draws play a turn 3 Thought-Knot Seer, typically. The combination of a quick, large body and hand interaction is exceptional against combo and control, provided it resolves. Reality Smasher hits hard, hits fast, and is difficult to remove.
Karn, the Great Creator is yet another modal spell for the deck that plays a bunch of modal spells. This swiss army knife allows you to select the best tool for the opposing deck or board state at hand: removal, card draw, graveyard hate, combo hate, planeswalker hate, a land, or even a boat.
Ugin, the Ineffable is surprisingly solid as the top-end for this deck. It comes down and answers a problematic permanent and it makes 2/2s that die into cards. It also happens to synergize well with the cards that Karn is able to grab by making them cheaper with its static ability.
Chandra and Hearse are the most replaceable slots for the deck. Chandra, Torch of Defiance is yet another very flexible and powerful card. This deck is able to create long grinds with empty hands, so Chandra being able to “draw” an extra card each turn helps to keep us ahead of our opponent.
Unlicensed Hearse is one of the Magic cards of all time. In matchups where it’s more beneficial to be able to grab it with Karn, it can be swapped into the sideboard. With this said though, these cards aren’t specifically necessary and can be swapped out for other options in the maindeck.
and 
MDFCs are very strong. Spikefield Hazard is nice to deal with Elvish Mystic and Llanowar Elves, plus its inclusion is largely free as it’s also a land drop, but it enters tapped. Shatterskull Smashing enters untapped at a cost, but is more expensive to use as a removal spell. It scales very well into the late game and can kill up to two targets.
and 
Go-wide strategies are naturally good against single target removal, which this deck tends to rely on. In previous builds of this deck, we played Sweltering Suns as our modal board wipe to be able to cycle it away against decks where it doesn’t matter.
Brotherhood’s End also condensed Abrade into it, which was another card previous builds of this list played. While it’s not a perfect swap/condensation of roles, it did open up slots for different tools to be added in such as
I am playing a 2-2 split of Obliterating Bolt and Roast as a nod to both UR Phoenix/Old-Growth Troll and to RB Midrange. Sheoldred, the Apocalypse is difficult for red decks to remove outside of Roast. Obliterating Bolt having the exile clause on it makes it a solid answer to Old-Growth Troll and Arclight Phoenix, though with the latter you’ll have to take a chunk of damage since your answer is sorcery speed. That said, you’re still able to recover your board state.
For the most part, the lands are self-explanatory. Field of Ruin backs up the land destruction mode of the deck. Mirrorpool enables draw-step Thought-Knot Seer, as well as copying the occasional spell. Ramunap Ruins is a dual C and R source and is late game reach.
Scavenger Grounds is tutorable graveyard hate thanks to the Karnboard Golos, Tireless Pilgrim, and also has the subtype Desert to be sacrificed to Ramunap Ruins. Den of the Bugbear helps pressure slower decks and is an untapped red source for the primary plan of turn 2 Cleansing Wildfire.
The deck currently has 22 lands + 4 MDFCs. In early turns, the number of lands that ETB tapped is two (Spikefield), in later turns, four (Shatterskull). Previous builds of the deck did not run Mirrorpool, had fewer copies of Ramunap Ruins, and ran an additional copy of Spikefield Hazard.
DOLT. found that as we had to cast our MDFCs, we would miss more of our land drops. Our previous 21+5 configuration with three lands that always entered tapped was not conducive to playing a longer game. We needed to retool the mana base slightly, so this was the end result.
Sideboard
In the sideboard, we have a Wishboard and 4 copies of Warping Wail. Warping Wail is a messed up card. It enables turn 3 Thought-Knot Seer which is very strong, especially in tough combo matchups.
The other primary mode used is to counter sorceries. Some popular ones are Pore Over the Pages, Treasure Cruise, and Farewell . The final mode on it doesn’t come up as often, but when it does it can be very powerful such as exiling Thing in the Ice, among other cards.
Wishboard/Karnboard
Damping Sphere is here to slow down Lotus Field while we beat down with our beefy creatures. There are other niches for it as well, but this is its primary purpose.
Grafdigger’s Cage is here to slow down graveyard decks like Dredge and Phoenix, and also decks like the new Vannifar Combo deck that search their libraries for creatures.
Reckoner Bankbuster helps us grind against slower midrange and control decks. In general, this isn’t the first card we will choose with Karn, but it is very helpful to have.
Shadowspear plays double duty as a repeatable source of lifegain while also being able to shut off hexproof from decks like Lotus Field and Auras.
Skysovereign, Consul Flagship is the mf boat. It’s extremely effective at picking off smaller creatures and weakened planeswalkers.
Sorcerous Spyglass is here as a way to not only deal with planeswalkers, but also to gain information at the same time, which is why we are playing it over Pithing Needle.
The Mightstone and Weakstone is a very flexible card. Serving as both single-target removal and as a draw spell, it allows us to recover a board position or surge ahead on cards. In addition, curving Karn into this allows us to plus our Karn onto it after removing a creature so we have a 5/5 as well, creating a huge board swing.
The Stone Brain is a very potent hate piece in this sideboard, allowing us to pick apart combos before they happen and forcing those decks to play a fair game of Magic that they weren’t prepared to play.
Tormod’s Crypt is here for graveyard decks like Greasefang, Dredge, and Phoenix. Simple effect, simple purpose.
Golos, Tireless Pilgrim is a strong value engine, allowing us to tutor for our powerful utility lands, or Cascading Cataracts in order to use Golos’s activated ability. Also, a 3/5 body is effective on defense against many decks in this format.
Treasure Vault allows us to guarantee a land drop after Karn, enabling us to cast Reality Smasher or Bonecrusher Giant and hold up Warping Wail.
This deck is extremely fun to play and has strong play patterns. I hope that my performance in this tournament outdoes my previous showing on this archetype, in which I went undefeated in swiss only to lose in top 8.
