Have Your Opponents Seeing Red

There is not a single card out there that has more nostalgia for me than Shivan Dragon.  Let's get take some time to get to know what red has to offer.  

Red is known for being chaotic and impulsive.  With that, red has recently started the very on flavor "impulsive draw" where you do gain card advantage but usually requires you playing cards from exile before losing it forever at the end of a turn.  Unfortunately, most of these cards have not yet made it into retro frame reprints.  Unfortunately, for us, that means red tends to be a little weak as a mono-colored deck but still has it's strengths.

Sow Some Discord

One of my absolute favorite parts of red cards are the enchantments.  I don't think you hear that very often but I love how painful you can make a board state.  I think these cards a lot to a game of commander and make your opponents (and yourself) really think through the decisions they make when playing.  Ideas for a card in the future, an enchantress that is mono-red but impulse draws.  Cool right? 

Removal Of All

Red is great at damage based board wipes.  When deck building, if you can give your creatures protection from red or prevent non-combat damage, you can have a one sided board wipe.  There are a lot of great "destroy everything" cards such as jokulhaups, but just be sure and run it by your playgroup first.  As a fun note, if you do build a red enchantments deck, Jokulhaups will leave your enchantments in play.  Meltdown is one of my favorite cards now that artifact tokens are so easy to spam. 

Here Be Dragons!

No matter what, big fliers are tough to beat.  I do believe that flying is the single best magic keyword. Pair Worldgorger Dragon with an Animate Dead and something that does damage on ETB and you have yourself a wincon.  

Artifact Synergy

Goblin Welder is good enough to put in any commander deck, even if the deck does not have strong artifact synergies.  One thing to remember is that Goblin Welder can be used on your opponents as well as your own cards.  The Mishra preconstructed deck came with Blast-Furnace hellkite and hellkite Igniter, both of which do a great job in that deck.  I recommend casting this after your opponents attack someone else to give double strike.  This can be a great political tool.  

Finishers

I hate that Price of Progress is so good, it makes you want to play mono red but the color just isn't quite there if you're limiting yourself to retro cards.  That does not stop you from playing any of these other cards though.  I never knew about Mercadia's Downfall until Joey Schultz from edhrecast spoke about it.  That card is a fantastic finisher and I'm happy to share it with you.  Aggravated Assault will go infinite with Sword of Feast and Famine if you are running that card.  Insurrection used to be one of the big "boogyman" of format type cards.  It has certainly fallen out of favor but it will absolutely still win games.  Make sure you have a good enough mana-base to cover the three red mana pips.  The card is even better if you pair it up with a card from the next group, Goblin Bombardment.

"Good Stuff"

In my mind, mono-red and Snow-Covered Mountains always go hand in hand.  The reason for this is one card and one card only... Glacial Crevasses.  This card is on the reserved list but does not command a steep price, it can usually be found for less than $5 and serves as a repeatable fog.  If you're going Dragon heavy, Mudslide is another fantastic addition from the reserved list.  Faithless Looting, Light Up the Stage, and Wheel of Potential offer some great card draw/selection when we are typically pretty limited here.  Young Pyromancer, Guttersnipe, and Mizzix's Mastery provide a big boost for spellslinger decks.  

Legends

If you're into playing typal decks, Krenko is probably the best commander for an extremely powerful creature type in goblins with tons of support.  Ashling provides an interesting spellslinger build.  Ragavan provides ramp and card advantage and I think is an auto include in any deck including red.  I've found myself forgetting more often than not forgetting about the Dash ability but I want to try using that a little more.  Kiki-Jiki is part of many two card combos but also makes a fun commander by just copying things for value.  I've never sat across from a Kiki-Jiki commander but I'm sure it would entail a lot of "it's not that kind of deck" comments, for that reason.. I wouldn't build it.  I'd have to imagine you would be enemy number 1 before a single card is played.  Marton Stromgald is a really cool commander but you better be able to protect it!  Fortunately, Swiftfoot Boots are now printed in retro frames and there exist plenty of ways to give creatures haste in red.  If I was going to build any of these decks, it would be Marton Stromgald and it save it for an alpha strike.