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Red creatures have plenty of powerful cards in Magic: The Gathering. Some of them need a little extra work to unlock their full potential, but this work is worth it for how good their effects are. Some are immediately known to be strong just by looking at them, but others need a little more information to understand what makes the card so good. These are the 13 best red creatures in Magic: The Gathering and how to use them.
What are the best Red Creatures in MTG?
Some of the best Red Creatures in MTG include Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer, Monastery Swiftspear, and Simian Spirit Guide.
13. Balefire Dragon
Balefire Dragon is very good if it ever connects for damage. With six power, odds are if it successfully deals combat damage, you are wiping most, if not all of your opponent’s creatures. It does cost seven mana, so it’s costly to get out, but once it’s out short of a removal spell it will be game-winning.
The best way to use Balefire Dragon is in decks that can cheat it out without having to cast it. There are multiple cards that can put Dragons on the battlefield for free and even creatures in general. Something like Sneak Attack can put it on the battlefield with haste, letting you take advantage of its effect right away.
12. Caves Of Chaos Adventurer
A creature that needs you to build your deck around it, Caves Of Chaos Adventurer is one of the best cards that can give the initiative. Although the mechanic was designed for Commander, it’s legal in eternal constructed formats where the initiative is one of the best mechanics there. Caves Of Chaos Adventurer is one of the cheapest ways to gain the initiative and gives you card advantage whenever it attacks by impulse drawing.
Decks that play Caves Of Chaos Adventurer are going all-in on the initiative and want to turbo through the Undercity dungeon it puts you in as fast as possible. Boros Initiative is one of the best decks in Legacy, where Caves Of Chaos Adventurer has a home.
11. Eidolon Of The Great Revel
A staple of mana burn decks, Eidolon Of The Great Revel turns most spells your opponent is casting into burn damage. It only does burn when spells with a mana value of three or less are cast, but most of the commonly played cards fall under this criteria. It does affect both yourself and your opponent, so you have to be careful to not burn yourself with Eidolon Of The Great Revel to the point it’s more harmful than beneficial.
Eidolon Of The Great Revel is primarily used in burn decks in Magic as a way to close out games quickly. The formats it’s legal in tend to keep a low mana curve which Eidolon punishes.
Playing With Eidolon:
Eidolon Of The Great Revel can take a while to get used to since it can harm you. Burn plays almost exclusively cards with mana value three or less, so it will almost always burn you too when you play a spell. However, your burn spells will do more damage, which can lead to you winning the game through grinding. When your life total is too low, you need to be careful and wait for your opponent to burn themselves out by casting their spells before going back to tossing burn spells their way.Â
10. Arclight Phoenix
The star of one of Pioneer’s best decks, Arclight Phoenix is one of the most explosive red cards. While on its own it’s nothing special, when you have multiple Arclight Phoenixes in the graveyard that are triggering their effects, you suddenly have a ton of power in the air that can attack right away. Even hard casting Arclight Phoenix isn’t bad, and if it ever gets removed it won’t stay removed for long unless it gets exiled.
Arclight Phoenix is used in spellslinging decks built around it. Decks playing Arclight Phoenix have multiple cards that put cards into the graveyard, generally by drawing and discarding them. These spells have a low mana value, making it trivial to cast multiple instant and sorcery spells in one turn so you can get all the Arclight Phoenixes in your graveyard on the field in one go.
9. Dreadhorde Arcanist
Dreadhorde Arcanist is a staple in all formats it’s legal in, and was so good it had to be banned out of Legacy, one of Magic’s most powerful formats. What makes Dreadhorde Arcanist so good is that it lets you re-use spells in your graveyard, many of which are powerful. While having Dreadhorde Arcanist stats boosted makes it even better, even casting spells with a mana value of one has a ton of powerful options.
The decks playing Dreadhorde Arcanist are often playing many instant and sorcery cards, many of which can pump the stats of a creature. This lets Dreadhorde Arcanist re-cast more powerful spells, and re-use them on other creatures to make them threatening in combat. It’s generally built into aggressive tempo strategies that play small creatures that they give giant stats to with instants and sorceries.
8. Terror Of The Peaks
Terror Of The Peaks turns any creature entering the battlefield into a giant threat. It has slight protection as well as targeting it requires paying three life, and with how much burn damage Terror Of The Peaks can do, this can be enough to close out a game. Once Terror Of The Peaks is on the battlefield, all creatures become a threat before they ever attack. Its effect is versatile as you can opt to deal damage directly to your opponent or deal damage to a creature they control.
Terror Of The Peaks is a great top-end for decks built around playing creatures. It is also a part of a combo deck utilizing Dragonstorm and looping two copies of Bladewing The Risen out from your graveyard to deal an infinite amount of burn damage.
7. Bonecrusher Giant
One of the many amazing cards out of Throne Of Eldraine, Bonecrusher Giant is a versatile creature on many levels. Its adventure side can deal two damage to anything target which is a decent effect. What makes the Stomp side so good is that it prevents damage from being prevented. This gets around various forms of protection, including that given by the widely played card The One Ring. On the battlefield, it has a solid statline that punishes your opponent for targeting it by burning them. Bonecrusher Giant is both a solid removal spell and creature, and that combination makes it so good.
Bonecrusher Giant is best used in most red decks, as it’s an efficient way to get around what would normally stop you. Thanks to its low casting cost and solid stats, it finds a home in many Stompy decks that play a lot of creatures and play them as soon as they can.
6. Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker is a big part of plenty of combo decks. By tapping it you can create a copy of any non-legendary creature, although it’s sacrificed at the end step. However, there are plenty of creatures that untap a creature when it enters the battlefield, so Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker creatures a token copy of that creature that then untaps Kiki-Jiki to make infinite copies to win through combat.
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker isn’t too special on its own in most decks, so it tends to be built with combo in mind. It does have haste, meaning you can start the combo as soon as it hits the battlefield. Although its primary home is in decks making the infinite mana combo, Kiki-Jiki is also great in Goblin decks as they have plenty of effects that are great to double up on.
Kiki-Jiki’s Combo Pieces:
Kiki-Jiki wants to copy specific creatures to make an infinite number of tokens. Two of the best examples include Zealous Conscripts and Coercive Recruiter as they don’t require any extra work. Combat Celebrant also works, but you need to attack and exert a Combat Celebrant copy before-hand. This does however give you infinite combat phases if needed.Â
5. Dragon’s Rage Channeler
Dragon’s Rage Channeler can turn from a small 1/1 into a 3/3 with flying very easily. The ability to surveil for every cast of a noncreature spell feeds into Dragon’s Rage Channeler’s delirium to turn it on easier. Since it only costs one mana, it can start impacting the game state right away.
Dragon’s Rage Channeler is very common in tempo decks playing a lot of cheap instant and sorcery spells to gain card advantage and set up your graveyard. It makes for a powerful card with little investment, letting you slowly chip away at your opponent’s life while denying their resources with counterspells and removal.
4. Simian Spirit Guide
If a card can generate mana without needing to play it, it’s going to be amazing. Simian Spirit Guide falls inside of this, able to give you one red mana by simply exiling it from your hand. While you do go down in card advantage, the extra mana generation lets you play ahead of your curve to play powerful spells without needing a land or artifact to do so. Very little cards can counter the effect as well, making it almost guaranteed.
Simian Spirit Guide is used in decks that want to create as much mana as possible. This is mostly done in Storm decks which cast as many spells as they can for a payoff to win the game with. Even outside of this, if you want to turbo out specific cards, Simian Spirit Guide is great for that as well.
3. Monastery Swiftspear
A creature so good it was banned from Pauper, Monastery Swiftspear is one of the best aggro cards ever printed. For just one mana you get a 1/2, making it annoying to block at the start of the game. This would already be a good statline, but its prowess makes it even better when combined with stat-boosting cards and burn spells to deal explosive amounts of damage.
Any deck that wants to win the game as quickly as possible wants the full number of Monastery Swiftspears inside them. It’s the best burn-enabler in the game, and for good reason. Stacking on multiple burn spells on an unblocked Swiftspear can lead to the loss of over half your opponent’s life.
2. Dockside Extortionist
Although Dockside Extortionist is only good in Commander, it’s one of, if not the best card in the entire format. In Commander, so many artifacts are played in every deck at all power levels thanks to the prevalence of mana rocks. This means that Dockisde Extortionist gives you a ton of Treasure tokens when it hits the battlefield for an excess amount of mana. If you can blink Dockside Extortionist, it becomes even stronger.
If a deck can run red cards, there’s no reason for a Commander deck to not be playing Dockside Extortionist unless you’re purposefully building a lower-power deck. It almost always gives the two mana you need to cast it back in the form of Treasure tokens, and with three other players in the game, you’ll be making much more than two.
1. Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer
Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer is such a strong card it was banned from Legacy and pre-banned in Historic and is a menace in all the other formats it’s legal in (except Commander). For just one mana you get a creature with a solid statline that gives you a Treasure token to ramp you and the ability to cast a card from the top of your opponent’s library. Its dash ability comes up frequently, especially after a board wipe to make sure it doesn’t get removed through traditional means and you can keep taking advantage of its effects.
The decks playing Ragavan tend to lean on the tempo and aggressive side, ones that want to keep a low mana curve to win the game as fast as possible or stick cheap creatures on the battlefield and deny your opponent resources.
Those were the 13 best red creatures in Magic: The Gathering and how to use them. Red is the colour of aggro, with many of the best red creatures falling into aggro decks. The best red creatures tend to be easy to cast and play into their nature of being explosive if they stick around. If red creatures seem appealing, aggro is the playstyle for you where they shine the most.
