Howdy all, I hope you’re staying safe and you came prepared to read some high octane red mage jibber jabber. Although I am eager to talk about Zada and mono-red glory, let’s get into a bit of backstory about myself and the deck beforehand.
I started playing magic at 6 years old with my dad's collection from ABUR with homemade, quite literally kitchen table decks. Many years of playing in that way with my family bred a sort of competitiveness versus “having fun” balance within me as a player and has carried through to today.
I rotated formats from Standard to Modern, Legacy and a brief stint in Vintage until the rat race felt overwhelming and a friend of mine recommended a new format called Commander in 2011.
I never looked back after picking up a Riku of Two Reflections precon and here we are 10 years later. In that time I have played nearly every archetype you could think of, in every power level there is, but since I played that Riku deck the first time my love for spell-slinging and storming out never relinquished its hold on my heart...or my wallet.
Fast forward to the beginning of 2016 and Battle for Zendikar had been in circulation for a bit, meanwhile I’m enjoying my Tasigur control deck that focuses on big mana and casting Villainous Wealth a whole bunch. Players in my playgroup are starting to wisen up to my shenanigans and I’m getting hated out of games fairly often, unless I was playing after the Chain-Veil Teferi player that is. I decided to get back into my groove and play something that felt “closer to home” but also under-the-radar unlike my banana boy Tasigur.

0. What does Zada do?

The best place to start for this deep dive is obviously with Zada herself. Zada, Hedron Grinder is an innocuous commander at face value, and at 4 cmc she’s easily castable in the early stages of the game, although that’s not often what we want to do but more on that later. Essentially, with any card you cast that has a single target, as long as that target is Zada you will create a copy of that spell for each creature you control as long as that creature is a legal target. Pretty straightforward ability right? We’ll explore that further in the article but the important thing to know is that Zada works for our spells with a single target.

Setting Up

Creatures matter here and they matter a lot, in mono red that basically means we need to lean into tokens to set up our board and make more bodies for Zada to copy spells with.
Krenko’s Command, Dragon Fodder, Krenko, Mob Boss all help us get tokens out early and present a board state when we’re ready to cast Zada and let the snowball roll. The more creatures you have in play the better, but that’s to be expected. These cards along with some 0 mana value creatures in the deck are truly the backbone that make the deck do the thing.
If we can find a 7 hand that includes one to two of these effects we’re in great shape for the next phase. Past versions of the deck have played more one-off token generators like Pia Nalaar or Goblin Offensive, but they’ve since been cut to make way for more efficient spells. We are mono red after all, we’ve gotta do all we can to get there.

2. Cantripping

Once we have Zada and a few creatures in play, ideally by turn 4 or 5, it’s time to start doing exactly what we came here to do. Crushing the stereotype that Mono Red has a difficult time drawing cards and maintaining card advantage.
Cards like Crimson Wisps, Expedite, Renegade Tactics, and Accelerate function as draw cards equal to the number of creatures you control as we don’t care about their initial line of text nine out of ten times. Crimson Wisps and Expedite have the added bonus of granting haste to the team as well which means if our Krenko just came into play, or any of our mana dorks just came down they’ll be able to propel us even further without having to wait a turn rotation.
This section of the game plan is where we draw into the meat of our deck and run cantrip into cantrip into ritual into ritual to close out the game quickly. Words truly can not describe the satisfaction that comes with playing against a new person, paying 1 red mana and drawing 15 cards and they say “oh” as the realization of what is to come washes over them. That brings me to the next phase of the game plan.

3. Keep the Snowball Rolling

Zada, a few creatures and a cantrip or two doesn’t just win the game on the spot so what do we do from here? We’re looking to use our cantrips to dig through the majority of our deck, finding rituals along the way and cantripping even more to find our path to victory of which there are many, more on that later.
We have quite a lot of enablers in the deck so we don’t run into our own mountain-shaped brick wall. This section has a lot to mention so bare with me.
For starters, rituals like Brightstone Ritual, Battle Hymn and Inner Fire are the big hitters for keeping us mana positive so we can churn through our deck in one turn and assemble a win.
Other cards serve as rituals in less conventional ways, such as Ruby Medallion which discounts nearly every card in the deck and can come out even before Zada as it's usually ignored until it's too late.
Jeska’s Will, another incredible addition to the deck which we only ever cast with Zada in play, serves as two of our most important effects baked into one card, a ritual and a cantrip of sorts. Seriously, this card is nuts.
Birgi, God of Storytelling is one of the greatest additions to the deck in recent sets as Birgi herself pseudo discounts spells but the mana doesn’t disappear as phases change which means if we absolutely have to go to combat for the win we will have some mana in the pool to use some of our combat based finishers. Not to mention Birgi’s flip side, Harnfel, Horn of Bounty can be played as an enabler itself if we happen to cantrip a few times but run into a bad draw of cards, we drop that artifact and just get to ditching stuff. Many times that side is what I cast as the utility and value it provides is ridiculous. Speaking of discarding, that brings us to the absolutely most powerful enabler which I’m sure comes as no surprise, Underworld Breach.
I’m not entirely sure what Wizards was thinking when they printed this card but it is a most welcome addition to the mono red family being one of the most powerful red cards ever printed and it fits into our deck like a hand in a glove. Each of these as well as other cards not mentioned provide us great discounts or advantages on the storm turn or in some cases provide us ramp throughout the game. That can be better for us than the one shot rituals in longer games or if we face a bunch of board wipes. Now that we have spent some time playing solitaire, we should have enough mana and cards drawn to wrap up the game.

4. You’ve arrived at Card Advantage Central

By now we’ve probably had a long turn, maybe even two long turns and for our own sanity and the people we’re playing with it’s probably time to end the game. All through the course of this hypothetical game, as discussed we’ve amassed a board state of plenty of creatures and drawn a ton of cards, so how do we win?
Fists of Flame is a sleeper hit for this deck as by the time we’re ready to go to combat on the winning turn we’ve drawn typically 40-50 cards.
Temur Battle Rage coupled with any of the several combat buffs like Invigorated Rampage also spell certain doom for our foes.
Alternatively, we’re packing Dualcaster Mage, Heat Shimmer, and Twinflame to make an arbitrarily large number of hasty Dualcaster Mages to kill the table, or if we have Purphoros, God of the Forge in play we just kill everyone on the spot.
I also include Past in Flames here as I have literally never cast this spell in a game and lost. It’s also a sick target for our Gamble as we don’t care where it goes as long as there’s other stuff in the graveyard to cast. Despite all the fun of casting cantrips and rituals, closing out the game is my favorite part of playing the deck and it's not just because I get to shuffle up and play again, it’s because at this point the deck has so much to do and is so versatile in how we win that even though the main game plan stays the same, each win feels unique. The game ends and we feel so happy having gone off with card advantage and our opponents don’t even know what hit them.

5. Do we really have to interact?

Yes, yes we do.
You always have to interact. Unfortunately, this is an area where mono red still has a hard time, but here’s hoping that continues to improve as it has in the last few years. For now we’re packing Deflecting Swat, Pyroblast, and Red Elemental Blast mainly to protect against counters or removal targeting Zada or the ever-looming Cyclonic Rift, board wipes are brutal and C-rift is what I see the most on PlayEDH. Weird right? It’s almost like that card is really good.
We also play Otherworldly Outburst as our pseudo protection against board-wide destruction, although it doesn’t save any of our dudes it at least prevents us from falling behind as much. Since we’re playing in mid we are also playing both Blood Moon and Magus of the Moon to punish the greedy multi-color decks of the world. I mean, it’s not my fault they haven’t tried mono-red right?

Looking towards the shimmering red horizon

(Strixhaven and beyond)

Apart from more interaction, there’s not much more we want for the deck from future sets, although new toys are always appreciated. At the time I’m writing this we haven’t seen the Strixhaven commander spoilers yet so maybe more goodies await us there, but currently there are two absolute auto includes spoiled which I already have on preorder in foil to maintain the shiny, pringleness of my already totally foil deck.
The first one being Sudden Breakthrough. For 1 colorless and 1 red we get an instant speed, single target spell that gives our dudes +2/+0, first strike and says create a treasure token. A combat trick, with relevant combat keywords, and a ritual that makes mana that sticks around? YES. PLEASE. This spell just straight replaces one of our combat tricks already and is more flexible as it can be used as an end of turn ritual before we untap if we need an extra bit of mana to go off.
Secondly, the card which I am most excited about so far is Storm-Kiln Artist. For 3 colorless and 1 red this 2/2 dwarf shaman has Magecraft - every cantrip in your deck is also a ritual which makes treasures. I’m paraphrasing obviously but it might as well say that for us. He also gets bigger for each artifact we control but I imagine that will rarely play a factor in games we aren’t already winning. There are some other cards in Strixhaven which are single target spells with Learn tacked on to the card. I will likely test with one or two of those spells to see if the mass-loot potential is worth the slot over some of our other combat tricks.

Conclusion

If you’ve made it this far it’s either because you enjoy the idea of mono red storm in EDH or I’ve made a mockery of myself with sub-par writing skills. I'm hoping it's the former. Nevertheless I appreciate you reading to this point and hope that I conveyed my love for Zada and all the power held within her hedrons to a point where you too might consider slinging a few rituals or innocuous red spells. I could go on for hours about the deck in its entirety and the various nuances it has, but it may be easier to check out the list itself by clicking here, as well as on the new PlayEDH Mid Power Hub on Moxfield by clicking here.

If you ever want to chat about Zada or various other off-the-beaten-path commanders you can find me on the discord server in various channels. From one 6-year old at heart who used to keep track of his lifetotal with tarnished pennies, thanks for reading.

“This article is unofficial Fan Content permitted under the Fan Content Policy. Not approved/endorsed by Wizards. Portions of the materials used are property of Wizards of the Coast. ©Wizards of the Coast LLC.”

Explosive Engineering - Zada, Hedron Grinder - Mid Power