Mono-Fire Gauntlet Grinder?

Hello again! A very new very different gauntlet deck for a new year!

So, disclaimer, this deck is an experiment and it's not amazing, but it has potential.


The way I approach gauntlet deckbuilding is I usually take a concept and push it to the extreme, then scale back to a workable deck. Here, the concept is: Charge is broken in gauntlet.

The AI NEVER plays around charge units or burn spells, so having a deck with a huge amount of reach like this is just automatically going to win you so many games where the AI over extends and makes terrible nonsensical attacks, leaving themselves wide open for you to crackback.

Origianlly, I had more charge units like Censari Dervish and Waystone Titan, and a much more aggressive early game with Oni Ronins and Rakano Outlaws, but it wasn't working out too well, deck was all over the place, and was really bad against aggro mirrors. Also the Titan was just too expensive, I really love that card in Flame Blast gauntlet decks, but it just didn't really work here without more ramp cards

I decided to play more defensive early game units. A bit of a strange concept for mono-fire, I admit, but with our big haste attackers and big persuader swings in the midgame, going full face early on is just not very important. So Grenadin Drone, Blurreechaser, Scale Seeker and Cozin Darkheart all fill this role very well. They provide you with some decently aggression early that can also work defence when needed, and they're also relevant in the mid-to-late game (making dragons and treasures), plus the 2-drops help fix your draws!

The 2 main cards that make this deck really powerful in gauntlet though are Yushkov, the Usurper and Ghodan, Undefeated.

In case you didn't know already, Yushkov is totally busted in gauntlet. The AI has no idea how his ability works, and he will constantly win you games off of their (extremely) bad attacks. For whatever reason, the AI always plays their units post combat, so they will always attack you with as much as they, not realizing their units come into play exhausted, then they play what they believe to be a blocker, and leave themselves wide open to certain doom.

Ghodan is a card I haven't played with a lot, but I've always wanted to play with him. I tried him once in a stonescar gauntlet deck, and I really liked him, he can generate so much value! In this list we try to maximize his potential, giving warp to literally half our deck. Playing 4 Seal of Devotion can sometimes impede him from coming down on turn 5, but I think it's totally worth it. Plus we're playing Shavka Evangel to compensate, which is kinda good in a Kaleb Persuader deck.

The only card I think I might change at this point I think is Galai, Shavka's Listener. I want it to be good, but I think it's just too weak stat wise. I think I'm going to put Censari Dervish back in in that spot, it was pretty good. The other card to consider is Groundbreaker, which I have not tried, but seems like it could be good.

So far I only have two 7-0 runs under my belt. But I'll keep messing with this deck because it's a lot of fun. Please let me know if you have any suggestions!