cEDH Ashling is a very powerful Mono Red commander. While it’s one of the more fragile decks in the format, it can run away with games quickly. It’s very fast and has a good bit of resilience. If you like playing unorthodox Mono-Colored deck options, Ashling, Flame Dancer is a solid deck choice. While this guide won’t go over a budget version, it’s one of the easier decks you can run a budget version of. The deck is less of a Storm deck, and more of a turbo combo deck.
Are you new to cEDH? Then you can check out our guide on how to transition from casual to competitive Commander over here.
Why cEDH Ashling?
Ashling, Flame Dancer is a very powerful commander in Mono Red’s arsenal. You have a way to keep generated mana in your pool throughout multiple turns, making it easier for you to turbo out wins early on. A benefit of Ashling is that the main combo of the deck is in the command zone. It can be done with a variety of different cards, and even if Ashling is removed, you have it back in the command zone to try again. Unlike other cEDH decks, Ashling doesn’t fold when your main combo gets interrupted.
Another benefit of Ashling is that it’s creature removal on a body. A lot of cEDH’s popular creatures have a low toughness, so triggering magecraft twice is enough to wipe a lot of your opponents’ low-toughness creatures. Ashling’s effect to loot triggers every time you cast or copy a spell, so you can dig through your deck quickly to get to your win conditions. Ashling’s biggest strength is that its card draw, removal and burn, and mana generation all on one card.
Mana Generation
While there isn’t a ton Mono Red is great at in cEDH, it’s great at making mana. The majority of the deck is made up of noncreature spells. As such, Birgi, God of Storytelling, Electro, Assaulting Battery, Runaway Steam-Kin, and Storm-Kiln Artist can all make a ton of mana you can use later or immediately. If you have your commander, all that mana is going to stick around too. Electro, Assaulting Battery also provides you with another way to store mana.
In addition to the above, you have rituals to provide you with more mana. These are important for infinite mana lines, so make note of them. Jeska's Will can make a ton of mana so long as an opponent has a lot of cards in their hand. Rite of Flame gives you two mana for the price of one, while Desperate Ritual and Pyretic Ritual are two for three mana. Lastly, Seething Song nets you five mana for just three.
Lastly, you have mana dorks and rock. Treasonous Ogre is the only dork, letting you pay three life to make a red mana. Bender's Waterskin is very good with Ashling, as you can add a red mana to your pool during everyone’s turn. The usual suspects are here such as Mana Vault and Sol Ring. Since you’re in Mono Red, Ruby Medallion helps to discount spells. This is especially strong with rituals, making it easier to make more mana faster.
Card Draw
Your commander can loot you cards, but you have plenty of other ways to draw cards. More traditional ones include Faithless Looting, Wheel of Fortune, and Demand Answers all draw you cards traditionally. You also have some one-mana cards with weak effects, but play them because they’re cheap and provide card draw. These are Crimson Wisps, Expedite, and Might of the Meek. These, combined with your commander, let you draw two cards when you play these (but have to discard one).
Mono Red also has access to impulse draws. These are cards that get exiled and let you play them until the end of either that turn or your next turn. The best ones you can run in cEDH Ashling are Jeska's Will, Zenith Festival, and You Find Some Prisoners, the last of which can be used as artifact removal in a pinch.
Free Spells
A very important kind of spell in cEDH Ashling are ones that can be cast for free. This helps you to consistency trigger magecraft even when you’re tapped out. Often, these do rely on you having to sacrifice a permanent of some kind, but the value is generally worth it.
Crash, Lava Dart, Mogg Salvage, and Thunderclap can all be cast by simply sacrificing a Mountain. Crowd's Favor only need an untapped Red creature to be used to convoke, and Deflecting Swat just needs your commander and offers protection (which is also very important since the deck is commander-reliant
Deflection Spells
As mentioned a few times, cEDH Ashling is heavily reliant on your commander. It’s what the deck is built around, and is a part of your primary win condition of the deck. As such, you want as many ways to ensure it stays on the battlefield as possible. Luckily, Mono Red has a good variety of spells that can change spell targets. This allows you to redirect any removal attempts on your commander to somewhere else. Then, you can direct it to any other problem creature or permanent on the battlefield that might slow you down.
Many redirect spells can be cast cheaply. Since your commander has four power, Bolt Bend can commonly be cast for just one red mana. And if you have your commander, Deflecting Swat is completely free. You can either get rid of five life or pay three mana for it, but you’re often paying life with Redirect Lightning. Untimely Malfunction can redirect a spell and has a variety of other utility effects in a pinch. Sometimes, you’ll have to use it for artifact removal, especially against Stax pieces, as that’s one thing the deck can struggle against.
Utility Cards
There is a handful of cards that don’t qutie fit into any of the above categories. For example, Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer is just a strong Red card that helps you ramp and has the potential to exile an opponents’ win condition. If there is a spell you want back in your hand. Pinnacle Monk has you covered, or can be played as a land if need be. To help control your top deck while spellslinging, Dragon's Rage Channeler is just that while being a decent body.
To make it harder for your combos to be interacted with, Hexing Squelcher prevents all your spells from being able to get countered. With how common Blue is in cEDH, it’s a handy tool to have. A lot of your deck consists of either Shaman or Wizards, so Harmonic Prodigy is a very good include for the deck. A very important card is Kozilek, Butcher of Truth. You’re never actually casting it, instead, using it for its effect to shuffle your graveyard back into the library.
The Main Event: Ashling Combo
So, the main combo of the deck involves Ashling, Flame Dancer. All you need is any two spells that can copy a spell. Alternatively, you can use Fury Storm to make for a two-card combo. The combo itself is simple, with one copy spell (in this example, we’ll use Fork) to copy a spell on the stack. Then, holding priority, cast your second copy spell (we’ll use Reverberate here). Then, with the copy of Fork, copy Reverberate again. Keep doing this to make an infinite number of magecraft triggers.
In doing this loop, you’ll be able to draw and discard your entire deck with Ashling, Flame Dancer. To ensure you don’t deck yourself out, Kozilek, Butcher of Truth is discarded before you draw your last card to shuffle your graveyard back into your library. To actually win the game, you can use Simian Spirit Guide to make red mana for free, and cast a Lightning Bolt in every loop. If you have enough mana, you can use rituals too for infinite red mana. You can also close out games quicker with Grapeshot once you hvae a high enough storm count.
Making Infinite Mana
In addition to the main combo, you also want a way to make infinite mana. This helps you to cast your commander if it gets removed, and lets you store a ton of red mana to take players out of the game at their upkeep with Electrodominance to win through protection spells like The One Ring. This is quite easy, and just needs Reiterate and Seething Song, as well as any two cards that give you mana when you cast a spell. In this example, we’ll use Birgi, God of Storytelling and Electro, Assaulting Battery (Ruby Medallion also works).
Cast Seething Song, letting the Electro, Assaulting Battery and Birgi, God of Storytelling triggers resolve, making two floating Red mana. Before Seething Song resolves, cast Reiterate, targeting Seething Song with buyback. Once Reiterate returns to your hand and the two mana generators trigger, cast Reiterate again, targeting Seething Song. This will net you infinite mana, as well as infinite magecraft and storm count. You can win the game this way if Grapeshot is in your hand.
Piloting the Deck
cEDH Ashling wants Ashling down on the battlefield as soon as you can so you can start getting value out of it. Once there, you’ll always want to get red mana into your mana pool to use at your leisure (or to push for a victory). With how easily the deck can loot thanks to Ashling, Flame Dancer, you can draw into your win conditions quite quickly. Casting just two spells can potentially stall out your opponents, slowing them down by getting rid of mana dorks and other utility creatures with low toughness.
A benefit of running so many copy spells is that you can take advantage of spells your opponents are playing too. If someone is casting a Demonic Tutor, you can respond by casting Fork in response to copy it and get a tutor too. Doing this also nets you two magecraft triggers with Ashling, Flame Dancer too, one for the copy spell and one for the spell you copied.
The best aspect of the deck is being able to use your combos at instant speed. Outside of any Stax pieces that might lock you into playing spells on your turn, you can attempt a win at just about any point in the game. Thanks to all being at instant speed, you can sometimes play around any responses an opponent might have since there is so much rudancy in the deck.
However, the deck struggles to keep its commander alive. If someone knows what Ashling can do, often, it’ll be the target of any removal spell, as keeping it alive is a death sentence for the table. You can mitigate this somewhat with redirect spells, but you aren’t always going to have them. Another downside is Chaos Warp is your only way to deal with enchantments that aren’t Blue (you have Red Elemental Blast and Pyroblast for that. So, the deck can fold pretty hard to Stax pieces, especially ones that limit the number of spells you can cast. As with those on the battlefield, you can’t really assamble a win condition.
Conclusion and Decklist
cEDH Ashling is a very strong deck, if not without its flaws. Its strengths are very good, but its flaws are also very noticeable. Despite the downsides, the pure speed of the deck on top of so many routes for its main combo makes it quite consistent in spite of this. You just have to hope you dodge White decks! cEDH Ashling is the deck that draws the most that isn’t a Blue deck, and has a lot of different routes and decisions to make until you reach your win conditions.
The decklist can be viewed below. Though not advised if you want an optimal deck, you can cut down on the more expensive mana rocks and Reserved List cards in favor of cheaper options if you want to play cEDH but don’t want to proxy.
Commander
Creatures (14)
Instants (38)
Sorceries (12)
Artifacts (9)
Lands (25)
100 Cards
$4267.98
Interested in more Mono-Colored cEDH decks? Then check out our Mono-Color cEDH Showcase, showing off five different options.
