Chandra and Friends

4 Reckless Waif 3 Grim Lavamancer 4 Goblin Wardriver 4 Stormblood Berserker 4 Chandra's Phoenix 3 Moltensteel Dragon 2 Chandra, the Firebrand 2 Shock 2 Geistflame 3 Incinerate 3 Arc Trail 4 Brimstone Volley 22 Mountain

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EDIT 9/15 (list shows latest version):
-1 Moltensteel Dragon
-2 Kessig Wolf
-1 Grim Lavamancer
+4 Reckless Waif
I realized how important one drops are to enable the Berserker. Waif is really good.

My first deck of the new Standard season! I decided to build this deck when I realized I could pick up Chandra, the Firebrand for about six tickets and Chandra's Phoenix for one each. If you don't know, tickets are the de facto currency in MTGO and can be purchased for one dollar each.

A quick aside. I play Standard in the casual room online and like to build my own budget friendly, but "competitive" decks. Of course, budget decks rarely can compete with top tier tournament decks, so I don't mean competitive in that sense, but rather, competitive as possible given my budget restraints. It's almost like I play a "Budget Standard" format in which I build a deck that doesn't break the bank and try to win in the casual room. I enjoy doing this because it's cheaper, I see a much more diverse metagame as opposed only top tier decks, and I get to build my own decks since there are no decklists to copy for my imaginary format. Everybody has their own ideas of what the "casual" in "casual room" means and to me it's this.

Anyway, I put this deck together for about 25 tix. Half of that was for two copies of Chandra, and most of the rest was the Phoenixes and Lavamancers.

I think the heart of the deck consists of Stormblood Berserker and Chandra's Phoenix. Both are excellent aggressive creatures. The Wardrivers and Kessig Wolves provide some other decent attackers. The Lavamancer is interesting. As far as I'm concerned his first and most important role is to be a 1/1 one drop, and swing on turn two to enable bloodthirst on the berserker. Of course he also has the whole repeatable burn thing for which he is famous.

I actually picked up the dragon for a previous deck, which was a failed experiment, but I decided to throw him in at the top of the curve to see what happened. I was really impressed. For starters, I almost never pay six mana for him. He can come in as early as turn four. This means on turn five, assuming he survives until then, he swings for four plus however much mana you want to pay plus however much life you want to pay. His "phyrexian firebreathing" is extremely effective in a mono-red aggro deck since I have nothing but red mana to spend and don't care much about losing life. I've had games were absolutely nothing went right except I stuck this guy then attacked twice for about eight each and finished the game with a burn spell. He absolutely can win the game by himself and it doesn't take long to do so.

This brings us to Chandra herself. No, she doesn't bury your opponent under card advantage or crush him or her with endless beast tokens, but I really like her. Being able to pick off one toughness creatures, or provide an extra point of damage to a blocker, or just ping the opponent is nice, but copied burn spells is where it's at: Arc Trail can take down a Titan or take or take out four creatures. Even a Shock can deal with a major threat and a doubled Brimstone Volley targeting your opponent can win out of nowhere. She also has the threat to go ultimate. Like most plansewalkers she just provides you with a lot of good options. Also, the her synergy with her Phoenix and the Berserker is hard to ignore.

The suite of burns spells is pretty straightforward. At first I had Fireball instead of Arc Trail, with dreams of x=8 doubled fireballs, but I think Arc Trail is right. I never really like to see Fireball early and since this deck tries to end the game early I generally wasn't happy with it. I always seem to find an good use for Arc Trail however. I really like the newcomer Geistflame. It's my burn spell of choice to trigger a Phoenix or Berserker.

I think Chandra's Phoenix is the best card in the deck. A 2/2 hasty flier for three is good. The "rebirth" puts it over the top. Stormblood Berserker is a crusher too, however. Never cast it without bloodthirst.

I started tracking each of my deck's wins and losses. Remember this is the casual room with my arbitrary budget restriction so it doesn't mean a whole lot. It's mainly to give me an idea of my decks' releative strengths. That being said, this one is currently at 17-7.

If I wanted to put a little more money into this one I'd look at including Shrine of Burning Rage and maybe Slagstorm.

Try it out! Let me know how it goes, and remember The Philosophy of Fire.