Hammer Time: Spicy Brew
Hammer Time is a mono-red control deck with 26 lands and only three creature cards, and it wants the game to go long because of Hammer of Bogardan. As a burn spell it's fair, three damage for three mana, but during your upkeep you can pay 2RRR to return it from your graveyard to your hand and then cast it again for 1RR. With eight mana, five of it red, you get a Hammer every turn for the rest of the game, and the opponent has to exile it to make it stop. Two Thawing Glaciers keep the lands coming: Glaciers enters tapped, fetches a tapped basic Mountain on a later turn, goes back to your hand at the cleanup step and gets played again, so it puts a Mountain onto the battlefield every other turn and thins the deck a little each time.
To get there the deck has to clear the board again and again without running out of answers, so it plays five different sweepers. Powder Keg can take a fuse counter in each of your upkeeps, and when you sacrifice it, it destroys every artifact and creature with mana value equal to the number of counters. At one that's Goblin Lackey, Phyrexian Dreadnought, Carnophage and Mother of Runes, at two Meddling Mage, Wild Mongrel and Withered Wretch. Nevinyrral's Disk destroys every artifact, creature and enchantment, your own Kegs and Furnaces included. Your creature-lands survive it because they're only creatures while animated, and Shard Phoenix doesn't care about dying: for RRR in your upkeep it returns from your graveyard to your hand, and sacrificing it deals 2 damage to each creature without flying whenever the board fills up again. Slice and Dice deals 4 damage to each creature for six mana, or cycles for 2R and still deals 1, which is enough for Goblin tokens, Elves and Lackeys. Starstorm deals X to each creature at instant speed, though its cycling deals no damage. Lightning Bolt, Incinerate and Firebolt (flashback 4R) trade one for one with whatever gets through, and Rorix Bladewing, a 6/5 flier with haste, finishes the games the Hammers haven't.
Pillage, Wasteland and Dust Bowl go after the opponent's mana. Pillage destroys an artifact or a land and stops regeneration, so it handles Phyrexian Dreadnought, a Powder Keg in the mirror, Gaea's Cradle, Rishadan Port or an opposing Factory. Wasteland and Dust Bowl do the same to nonbasic lands, and Dust Bowl can do it every turn as long as you have spare lands to feed it, which 26 lands and Glaciers make easy. Three Phyrexian Furnace can tap once a turn to exile the bottom card of a graveyard, or be sacrificed for one mana to exile one specific card and draw. Against Reanimator, Replenish, Cephalid Breakfast and Madness that's a fine turn-one play, and later it replaces itself. A lot of the damage comes from lands, too: Ghitu Encampment becomes a 2/1 first striker for 1R, Mishra's Factory a 2/2, and all eight of them can attack after your own sweepers because they're just lands the rest of the time.
After sideboarding the deck gets what mono-red can't do in game one. Red Elemental Blast and Pyroblast counter Counterspell, Fact or Fiction and a Standstill that's being cast; aimed at a Standstill already on the table, a Blast triggers it and hands the opponent three cards. Pyroclasm is the cheap sweeper for Goblins and Elves, and Ensnaring Bridge stops big attackers once your hand is small; keep in mind that every Hammer you return makes your hand bigger. Dwarven Miner destroys a nonbasic land every turn, Mogg Salvage kills a Dreadnought or a Keg for free against Islands, Black Vise punishes draw-go, and Jeweled Torque naming red gains you 2 life for 2 mana whenever Sligh or Burn casts a spell. Nicholas Bach called the deck Mono Red Control and took this 75 to the top 4 of Mogg Monthly: Phyrexian Colaugust at Delta Beer Lab in Madison, Wisconsin on 8 August 2026 (32 players, 5-2). The shell is older: Richard Duijzer's Raging Glaciers, a similar 26-land build with four Kegs, four Disks and four Pillage, finished fifth of 19 at Bolt the Bird in Laren on 25 January 2025.
Mainboard
- 2× Shard Phoenix
- 1× Rorix Bladewing
- 4× Lightning Bolt
- 3× Incinerate
- 2× Starstorm
- 4× Pillage
- 3× Firebolt
- 3× Slice and Dice
- 2× Hammer of Bogardan
- 4× Powder Keg
- 3× Nevinyrral's Disk
- 3× Phyrexian Furnace
- 12× Mountain
- 4× Ghitu Encampment
- 4× Mishra's Factory
- 3× Wasteland
- 2× Thawing Glaciers
- 1× Dust Bowl
