I’m not familiar in the premodern format, but this list seems to be doing a lot of things that feel weak/wrong.

Crumbling Sanctuary feels very weak, in that its basically saying to the opponent “hey you know how you had 20 life… now you effectively have around 45-50”. I get this impacts your own life total as well, but with no cards in your deck to profit from being in the graveyard, and no other cards that naturally mill (outside of Book Burning) before you drop this 5-mana arifact, i don���t see how this card helps you… it’s much more likely to benefit your opponent.

Cards that let your opponent choose an option are considered pretty-universally terrible. This is because the opponent will always choose the option that benefits you the least, meaning the card will always be doing the weakest of its effects.

Your mana curve feels excessively high. I don’t know the format well but it feels adjacent to modern/pioneer, and in that regard your mana curve is far too high. Your quantity of 4-5 mana spells is excessive, but also I see no way you’re ever realistically casting either Butcher Orgg or Avatar of Fury.

Lemme go through one thing at a time. First thing is knowing premodern in the first place. It's a nostalgia format, which the card pool is from fourth edition to scourge. 1995 to 2003 to make things a bit more clear. Most big creatures have a downside, at least enough to not play em most of the time. I just like the format since I like the card design and illustrations. Second thing: I don't think you really looked at the deck very much and skimmed through it. A good chunk of my deck has 6 1 drops, 13 2 drops, and 6 3 drops. 12 cards are above 3 drops. Mana curve is not an issue. Another thing is that I run full playsets of Dwarven Ruins and Sandstone Needle. Both are tapped lands that can tap for two, but can only be done once or twice. Another thing is the alternative casting cost for Avatar of Fury. If an opponent has seven or more lands, I can just pay two red for it. To be fair, Butcher Orgg is on the chopping block. Guy is a bit too expensive to make it worthwhile. Third is one thing I forgot to talk about. I originally wanted to make a unique deck. I looked at the card pool and decided on mono red mill after looking at Book Burning and Crumbling Scantuary. But who cares. Fourth is that I don't think your looking at this as a control deck, and instead as a mono red aggro deck. Sure, in aggro, what's the point of all of these cards that make the opponent choose things? Just go straight to damage. But in terms of control, I don't find it half bad. Looking at it as a control perspective, then just make Mono Red Control, which is already a deck archetype. But I want to make a deck that tries something new.

Again, i’m not familiar with premodern, but to reply to your comment:

• I did look through the deck and check the mana-costs. 6 one-mana cards is on the low side and means a decent chunk of time (46%) you’ll have nothing to do turn 1, meaning you’re effectively starting a full turn behind your opponent. Having 12 cards above 3 mana seems like a LOT - that’s 20% of your deck! In both the formats i’m familiar with (pioneer and modern) I wouldn’t dare run even half this number of high-costing cards.

• yes Dwarven Ruins and Sandstone Needle add a little more mana, but at a pretty high cost of not sticking around. You need whatever they cast to be extremely high-impact, or you’ll end up losing the grind. Personally, having 8 of your 23 lands being extremely temporary makes me skeptical the deck could survive any game that goes long.

• Avatar of Fury’s cost reduction might as well not exist. How often will an opponent have 7 lands? Assuming an average deck runs around 22, it’s not until sometime after turn 11… I don’t know any format that goes that long.

• i’m not sure how letting your opponents choose modes on cards is anything other than them controlling you… you have no say in how your cards resolve and they have all the power. That feels like the opposite of control.

I get you’re trying to make something new. I am only offering an unbiased opinion - which is something you can take-and-build-on, or ignore (or something in-between). I will say, as someone who does a lot of brewing myself, that any brew typically has to go through a LOT of iterations, playtesting, and feedback, before it’ll be in a state where it can reliably compete with the meta. Good luck on your journey!

All right I updated the deck more over the past while.

Added Feldon's Cane to try to keep a grip on the late game. Took out Book Burning since it seemed to have too little impact on the game, at least compared to other things in the list. Took out Mogg Bombers for Lavaborn Muse for repeatable damage. Still going to keep the two beaters in the deck, but Took out Butcher Orgg for Kamahl, Pit Fighter. The fact he can tap to do a lighting bolt is better than the former. Another addition is Devastating Dreams as the finisher. Cards like Jayemdae Tome and (hopefully) Browbeat will draw me enough cards, and might even luck out & shuffle my graveyard into my libary afterward.

While I do agree with opponents choosing two different options a terrible idea most of the time, the thing is with damage and fairly low cmc means that eventually your opponent will just have to do what I want. It's not like Library of Lat-Nam, where its too expensive to play too much, and it's always going to be the far worse option. Least the way I see it. Also I'm going to replace Dwarven Ruins with Balduvian Trading Post when i can. Thing that sucks is I already ordered the cards before these recent revisions. So I guess I'll live with it until I see one. Same goes for the most of the other replacements.

Forgot about other stuff and sideboard updates.

I see the problem with the 5 mana stuff, so I added a couple Helm of Awakening to try and reduce the cost a little. Has to be colorless since almost all of my 5 drops are artifacts. Speaking of 5 drops, i added a single Mangara's Tome as a way to kind of tutor with a added risk. More tweaking foreseeable in the future. I know it's jank, no need to tell me.

As for the sideboard I took out Black Vise for Red Elemental Blast. Forgot what I took out, but I put 3 Burnout in there. Added a couple Tangle Wire, leave the creature hate alone and I think it's fine.

Also as for the whole Dwarven Ruins thing, I'm actually debating if I should replace those, or take out two mountains for the Balduvian Trading Posts. Again I'm very much in debate over this.

halanvaina just to play devils-advocate to your latest comment, I've posted replies to some of the mentioned cards and ideas. I hope this doesn't come across too rude - I just really feel like your deck is lacking some really fundamental deckbuilding guidelines and feels very non-functional because of this.

• I don't see the point at-all of Feldon's Cane. You have absolutely no way to mill yourself unless you've played Crumbling Sanctuary and then failed to kill your opponent before they've killed you... the entire plan here feels flawed if that's the case. Crumbling Sanctuary itself is already faar too expensive mana-wise, and there's very-good odds you won't even be able to cast it before the game ends.

• swapping one overcosted card for another doesn't really solve any problems... Kamahl, Pit Fighter is still too high a mana cost to be useful imo. I agree it is a very-strong improvement over Butcher Orgg, but that doesn't mean either should be played.

• I'm not sure what you're hoping to achieve from Devastating Dreams? This looks like it hurts you much more than your opponent, especially considering your mana curve is so egregiously high.

• You seem to be relying a lot on Jayemdae Tome but I really can't see how the card is playable. Yes it lets you draw 4 cards but at the expense of effectively doing nothing for two full turns - i'm not sure how any deck doesn't just automatically lose when they're taking two turns off doing nothing impactful.

• I get that Helm of Awakening is there to try and accelerate your mana curve, and that will help, but even then you've only included 2 of them, and your curve is still massively high. You need a LOT more mana acceleration, or to severely reduce your mana curve - and ideally you would do both.

• I'm not sure what problem you're trying to solve with Mangara's Tome, presumably card selection, but this really isn't the answer. Your mana resources are too limited already and either triggering or casting this thing likely means doing very little else in your turn. You're better-off drawing blindly from your deck than paying 2 mana to draw sudo-blindly anyway.

My biggest concern is your statement "While I do agree with opponents choosing two different options a terrible idea most of the time, the thing is with damage and fairly low cmc means that eventually your opponent will just have to do what I want."... the problem is that your deck doesn't have low cmc - I've checked other premodern decks and none of them are even remotely this slow. I don't believe the opponent will have to "choose what you want" because firstly if they're switching to the other choice, that means the first option would be hurting them more, so they're still taking the best path for their own survival, and making your life harder. And secondly, because I don't believe your deck is remotely fast enough to apply any pressure... your opponent will win long-before you put them into any kind of a bind.

I had a look at a bunch of competitive premodern decks here and there is a big gap between these decks and what you're currently running - namely that these decks can enact their plans much more quickly, and run a much lower mana-curve. I see premodern has archetypes like burn, which is effectively what you're doing but without all the extra steps and self-induced complications.

Look dude, I'm really trying my best here to make a somewhat competitive mono red deck that's not one of the three deck archetypes. It really feels that I'm never going to win you over with this deck. I did take out Avatar of Fury, but I know even with all of the attempts at mana reductions and technically ramp it's still going to be slow. There's no ritual effects since that's not in the card pool, and we all know mono red can't do land ramp. Mono red can't draw cards good either, yet I feel like your acting like there's infinity better options in the card pool. Instead, can you suggest new cards instead of saying every change I make doesn't matter and is way too slow? Mono red is a difficult color to work with outside of aggro. There is a couple control cards, like Stranglehold(which is not even in the card pool), but it's not much. I know you're trying to help, but at this point it feels irritating and not really helping. Also I'll admit that Kamahl, Pit Fighter is kind of a pet card. But I could switch it out with a different card.

I know that I could put Gamble in the deck, but I feel that the list is tight enough. What I find odd about your arguments is that you note the use of sac lands, yet say that using Feldons Cane is no use. The point of Devastating Dreams is to draw cards to use it well. You also say that opponents will typically never get to seven lands, yet say it will hurt me more somehow. It does damage to each creature, and makes the both of us sac ideally all of our lands. Its also two red, which doesn't mess with the mana curve much. There is also a combo with that card and Mogg Maniac, but i already know you're going to say its not significant enough to do anything since theres no winning with you. It really feels like I'm talking to a brick wall. I know it's a flawed deck and I'm trying to do my best with it. With no ritual effects for red, no ramp, no decent card draw most of the time, I'm doing what I can. But I don't see you helping much other than saying how the mana curve sucks (which I know and trying to fix, yet you don't like it anyway.)

halanvaina My main suggestion is to stop trying to build a deck around Crumbling Sanctuary... 5 mana is far too high for a card that only lets you begin to enact a plan. It also undoes any work you've done towards defeating your opponent before its cast.

Good red cards i'm seeing in the meta include:

• Grim Lavamancer

• Cursed Scroll (late game damage when you're at 1 card)

• Fireblast

• Lava Dart

• Lightning Bolt

• Sulfuric Vortex

• Incinerate

• Jackal Pup

• Various goblins though seems to be typal-specific

^ all of the above seem to be fairly frequently used within the meta, as seen from the links already provided in my last post.

From your statement "Mono red is a difficult color to work with outside of aggro" - yes this is true. But one thing worth noting is that your deck isn't doing any of the typical things a non-aggro deck would be doing... so your current build is kindof aggro, just extremely slow. If you're wanting to build towards Midrange or Control, you need a LOT more interaction with the opponent to slow them down. If you're wanting your deck to be more geared towards Combo, then you need to have reliable ways to win the game extremely quickly. In any case you can't decide to be both a slow deck and a non-interactive deck - your deck needs to either be very fast, or very interactive (that is the case for all decks generally speaking).

From your other comments:

• What specifically do you think Feldon's Cane is helping you with? You keep defending it in a super vague way but I'm seeing absolutely zero reason to be running it (I also just re-read Crumbling Sanctuary and realised Feldon's Cane doesn't even help with that, so I honestly have no idea what value you think this artifact is bringing).

• The problem with Devastating Dreams is that it costs you and your opponent the same amount of lands and creatures - your deck includes both of these so you're unlikely to make any big advantages in this area (especially as your deck needs a LOT of lands to function). But then, it additionally costs you (and only you) a bunch of cards from your hand. I don't see how that every advantages you.

• On your comment "It does damage to each creature, and makes the both of us sac ideally all of our lands". What do you gain from losing all your lands? As the opponent almost-assuredly has a lower mana-curve than you, won't they just get back into the game quicker? Especially as they'll still have a hand of cards. Yes it can work with Mogg Maniac but your deck isn't geared around pulling off this combo so it feels unlikely to give you a payoff high enough to warrant this interaction.

My suggestions would be as follows:

• What archetype are you wanting this deck to slot into? If its aggro, you need to drastically lower the mana-curve (i.e, have nothing over 3 mana. You need to be able to reliably apply enough pressure to deal lethal by turn 4-5). If it's midrange, you still need to lower the mana-curve a bunch, but additionally you need a bunch of cards that interact with your opponents boardstate and slow them down. If it's control, you need to have the vast majority of your deck as interactive pieces and game-controlling effects. If its combo, you need to reliably be able to win the game by turn 4-5.

• Once you know what archetype you're wanting to build, you need to decide what strategy you're wanting to enact here... so far it feels like there's no clear direction going on - I can assume by the name of the deck you're wanting to base this around Crumbling Sanctuary, which I can't ever see working unless you're building some form of control-shell, which will likely need more than just red as a colour-base. But in any case, you need to ditch all cards that aren't either enacting your plan, or strengthening the archetype you're in.

If you'd like I can try and build you some kind of example list, though i'd need to have a clear indicator to the answers of the above 2 questions on archetype and strategy.