How is Red supposed to counter Blue?

Hi there, so overall opinion on discord is that red counters blue.

However, when playing my burn deck I usually got trouble with blue (I loss). How am I supposed to counter blue? Either Aurora, Colossus or Mirror Phantasms screw me up pretty bad.

Should I play like control, open lands boths sides to the orb and try to stop as much faeria gathering by blue as possible? Or get into blue face ASAP (don’t think it works).

Please, give me some clues. :smiley:

I would suggest the following:

Take control of the 2 faeria wells nearest to you ASAP. Blues have a lot of cards that give them extra faeria, but those are quite expensive to use. Generally, with any colour, control as many wells as possible.

Use your red cards to “burn” your opponent’s god from a distance. Flame spitter, sheldim brute, blood singer and similar cards are all good burners

It is also often a good idea to spam neutral lands whenever possible and convert some of them to mountains (in this example) later. This way, blue wouldn’t have enough space to move their lands (or place new ones, for that matter)

A well timed Garudan or Firestorm is also devastating against blue (particularly blue jump) because the mobile collectors it uses are generally killed or crippled.

If you have board initiative, you have a collector or two and they don’t, it’s important to focus on killing everything they play; blue has a lot of tricks for when they’re attacking you but are disadvantaged when it’s the other way around and burn can help with that reach. If they pre-frogify one of your combat creatures to avoid taking a hit rather than removing your creature, you’ve basically won.

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Thanks a lot for tips so far!

Should I burn events like FlameBurst on 2 HP creatures or rather save them? Or maybe get more Hellfires and Firestorms into deck?

I suppose Groundshaker (which I have no copies of yet unfortuantelly) are a must vs blue?

I usually save up 2 or 3 flamebursts until my opponent is down to 6 health and use them to attack the orb directly. Hellfire and firestorm are great, but expensive in faeria and land terms

Grim guard, sheldim brute and blood singer can attack repeatedly, especially if you buff them up. Groundshaker can be amazing in the right situation and has high stats, but his ability is a gift, so only works once. You might consider Battle Rager as well - expensive and squishy, but, due to it’s ability to reflect damage, often devastating!

Final tip - use Royal Judge and/or Safeguard to give the cards I mentioned in the previous paragraph one extra attack!

Yeah, I mostly agree with Nettlesoup. Flameburst and Seifer’s Wrath make 5 or 6 a VERY dangerous health total for your opponents because you can finish them from nowhere.

A lot of the play of a red deck, particularly a burn deck, is knowing when to use or save a flameburst or aoe event though, there isn’t a super straight forward answer. If there is an uncontested farm boy double collecting and I won’t be able to do anything about it for whatever reason, it could be worth flamebursting. Sometimes 1 or 2 Seifer’s Wrath on the second turn of the game can completely derail your opponent’s game plan by taking out their early harvester.

Additionally, as a tip for whatever side you end up on with red, Burn events let red really punish opponents that go to both sides to double collect from their own wells. If they invest land and cards in a low-health creature that is going to be just standing on an otherwise unused side of the board, killing it puts you in a great position (You’re at card parity, at a two land advantage, and probably only a faeria or two out; which is a savings compared to them collecting every turn forever).

Aquablad recently did a deck doctor/pilot on a red control deck that might help out a bunch too:
https://www.faeria.com/the-hub/guide/124-deck-doctor-red-combat-control