Red is the raw force of passion made manifest. Freedom, recklessness, and impulse define it. Red doesn’t think three turns ahead, it doesn’t want to plan out a precise strategy it wants to act now. Where blue values knowledge and calculation, red values emotion. Where black schemes and manipulates, red leaps into the fire, even if it burns.
This makes red one of the most exciting and polarizing colors in Commander. For some players, red feels like a reckless one-note joke, damage spells and angry goblins that burn out too quickly. For others, red is pure fun, unpredictable, chaotic, and dripping with flavor.
Look no further than the flavor text on onslaught Shock:
“I love lightning. It’s my best invention since the rock.”
That’s red in a nutshell — primal, unfiltered enthusiasm turned into a weapon.
But how does that philosophy actually translate into a four-player format like EDH? Can you really burn three opponents down the way you are in a 60 card formats? The answer is… yes, but with a twist. Red in Commander can’t just play the same one-for-one burn spells forever. Instead, it has to lean into what makes the color unique: passion, freedom, and chaos.
Let’s break those down.
Anger Made Flesh: Torbran and the Art of Burning Everyone
When people think of red, the first image is almost always burn. Lightning bolts, fireballs, direct damage that comes out fast and hot. Although a deck full of burn cards won’t win you many Commander games, red still has ways to turn that philosophy into a weapon.
Enter Torbran, Thane of Red Fell.
Torbran is simple, but deceptively powerful: he turns every little ping into a blast. Suddenly your Sulfuric Vortex isn’t just a slow bleed, it’s a clock. Your pingers aren’t just dealing chip damage anymore. Thermo-Alchemist or Scab-Clan Berserker start to chew through life totals at a terrifying pace. Even symmetrical effects, the ones that usually seem “fair”, become unfair when Torbran doubles down on your advantage.
What makes Torbran so satisfying is how he embodies red’s raw anger. There’s nothing subtle about it. Your opponents see exactly what’s happening and they will know the damage is coming. There’s very little they can do to slow it down once you’ve built your engine. Every upkeep, every trigger, every ping becomes a statement: “You’re going to burn, whether you like it or not.”
Small “pings” suddenly feels like a lightning bolt, just imagine how much your opponents would suffer when your commander is in play and you control a heavy pings like manabarbs or one of my all-time favorites Magebane lizard. Honestly, that’s red’s truest essence. It doesn’t negotiate, it doesn’t compromise. It just crash through.
mtgazone .com/user-decks/cvjah8kn7nmnpjtaxdou
Freedom Through Chaos: Etali, Primal Storm
Of course, not all red is just anger. Red is also about freedom — the joy of doing whatever you want in the moment, and the chaos that comes with it. If Torbran stands for rage and fire, then Etali, Primal Storm is the embodiment of red’s desire to break rules and laugh while doing it.
Etali is the kind of commander that makes the whole table groan and cheer at the same time. Every swing exiles a card from each opponent’s deck, and you get to play them for free. Sometimes you hit lands, sometimes you hit haymakers, sometimes you hit nothing useful at all. And that’s the point. Etali thrives on randomness, on the chaos of possibility.
What makes Etali so fun in Commander is how it shatters the usual rhythm of the game. Instead of carefully planning out your curve or protecting a combo, you’re throwing dice into the air and seeing what sticks. And in red fashion, the spectacle matters just as much as the result.The synergies with cards like Wild-Magic Sorcerer and Aurora Phoenix that have cascade or cards like Geological Appraiser and Chimil, the Inner Sun that have the discover ability only amplify that chaos. Red already loves to play spells off the top, and combining Etali with cards that chain into more spells just snowballs the absurdity. Before long, the boardstate looks like someone dropped an entire binder onto the table. And the best part? No two games ever look the same.
If Torbran is red at its most straightforward, Etali is red at its most free, no plan, no fear, just raw momentum.
mtgazone .com/user-decks/yfrto6mumii1qnoowy6o
Passion for Tinkering: Chiss-Goria and the Artifact Hoard
Red isn’t only about fire and chaos. Sometimes, its passion takes a different form: tinkering. Red has always been the color of artifacts, from goblins blowing things up to dragons hoarding shiny treasures. And in recent years, we’ve seen commanders that bring that passion front and center.
One of the most flavorful is Chiss-Goria, Forge Tyrant.
Chiss-Goria leans into red’s affinity with artifacts, letting you play big threats at absurd discounts while building a bunch of treasures. It’s a deck that feels like a dragon sitting on a pile of gold and every new artifact fuels the next, until you’re casting large threats with ease.
The synergies here are obvious but satisfying: artifact count via token-makers like
We will use artifact recursion, which will give us some very interesting options throughout the game, cards like goblin welder or goblin engineer will work wonders and bring all those tokens and scrap metal to life. .
and finally cards like hellkite tyrant or metalwork colossus to close games, nothing fits our commander as well as a giant robot or a massive dragon who wants to accomplish the same goal. Perhaps even have a dragon sneak away in the middle of an enemy’s combat phase and help eliminate a common threat (i’m looking at you Blast-furnace hellkite ).
Red do like to draw cards even if it doesn’t draw as many cards as blue, but with Chiss-Goria, it doesn’t need to. It just turns the battlefield into an assembly line of fire-breathing machines although a little help never hurts.
Let’s be honest, there’s something hilariously on-brand about red using big dumb dragons and shiny metals not just for emotion, but for sheer greed. Whether you’re slamming down threats or hoarding shiny trinkets, Chiss-Goria captures the dragon side of red’s identity perfectly. What do you think? Would you go down the path of greedy dragons, or would you prefer a deck that resembles entering a massive dragon roost where each dragon becomes more and more terrifying?
mtgazone .com/user-decks/yu2goj4izbvrulhxiiy
Wrapping It All Up
So, what’s it like to play red in Commander?
It’s messy. It’s reckless. It’s fun.
Red doesn’t always win in the cleanest way. Sometimes it burns out too quickly, sometimes the chaos turns against you, and sometimes your artifact hoard gets blown up before it really matters. But that’s the point. Playing red isn’t about inevitability like green, or structure like white. It’s about the ride.
Torbran shows us Red’s raw anger, charring everyone equally until the table is a pile of ash.
Etali embraces chaos, throwing curveballs that no one, not even you can predict. Chiss-Goria reminds us that passion isn’t just fire, it can just be hoarding for fun and turning piles of artifacts into momentum.
Red in Commander is the color that makes the table laugh, sigh, and sometimes rage-quit. It thrives on emotion, both yours and your opponents. And that’s the magic of it: whether you’re burning, storming, or hoarding, red never asks permission. It just acts.
So the next time you see a red commander flipped over, remember: you’re not in for a careful, calculated game, you’re in for fireworks.
