Today, we get to see Red’s wide array of 1-mana creature greatness, just as we’ve seen White, Blue, and Green earlier in this series. With lots of little Goblins and Orcs running around, Red, like Green, has quite a few options for cheap but useful creatures!
If your favorite 1-mana Red creature isn’t featured here, drop me a (nice) line in the comments! All card images came from MagicCards.info.
 Play this guy, then start targeting him with spells and watch your army assemble. |
 1/1 for 1, with Firebreathing for 1R. Nice! |
 Good way to get rid of 1/1 grounded token armies! (*cough*ELVES*cough*) |
 Great first-strike option for Goblins, and good creature all around. |
 ROARRRR. Now I suddenly need to build a deck around this guy. |
 Here’s one flavor of 1/1 Mountainwalking creatures: others include Goblin Mountaineer, Mountain Goat, and Zodiac Goat. |
 The “making another creature mostly unblockable” ability is great, especially when it comes into play for such a low mana investment! |
 With the 0/2 toughness, this little guy can withstand a bigger punch; with the 1-mana-per-point Firebreathing, he can pump up the power quicker. |
 Great way to get rid of one of the big-mama blockers in the way! |
 With this thing, you can deal potentially 4 damage to a player with one card! |
 The haste and bouncing-back-to-hand means this is one hard-to-pin-down creature annoyance for your opponent! |
 Since flight is so seldom seen at low mana costs in red, you’ve got to get it where you can! Yay for blocking a dragon with a bunch of goblins in a hot-air balloon! |
 A constant source of 1 damage, for 1 mana! |
 GREAT for putting out lots of Goblins in few turns. |
 If you need your Goblins (or Dragons, or Orcs, or Dwarves) to deal double damage, use this guy! Just make sure you have a Goblin to sack somehow, if you’re not completely reliant on the creature type. |
 Fiddle with your Artifact-wielding opponent’s combo strategy, for 1 mana. Hee hee! |
 Blocking a regen ability? Doesn’t sound that “durr hurr” to me! LOL |
 Play this guy and start laying out the cheap spells to keep your creatures from being blocked… |
 If Wolvie gets through, 1 damage to player. If he gets blocked, still 1 damage to player. No drawback! |
 Because sometimes you’ll be facing a Red-playing opponent with your Red deck. |
 A classic for Red/Green decks. |
 Since you have to ditch a card to make this work, this could be good for Madness decks! |
 If you’re attacking first turn with this guy, he’s pretty great. If you’ve got him and two or more buddies attacking…he’s SILLY. 😀 |
 One-upping Bloodfire Dwarf with a little more mana investment. |
 Another classic for most Red decks! |
 Great 1/1 for 1 Kinship creature for Goblins. |
 Fix your mana (especially in a Red/Green deck) with this guy! |
 Most of Sensei’s Divining Top’s ability, with legs! |
 The option to play this Unleashed is what sets this apart. |
 Play this, wait 4 turns, and you have a 3/3 flying Bird–in Red, no less! |
 Red gets Wither? Yep, through creatures like this! |
 The Multikicker option is great, but even if you can’t kick it, you’ve still got a 1/1 haste for 1. |
 Hilarious fun with Shatterstorm. |
 Smaug, much? LOL |
 The ability to shuffle your library–in Red–seems pretty rare, and very useful. |
 It’s like a baby Ball Lightning! Aww, what a cute little bundle of destruction! |
 Deal damage to a player, and then damage a creature to boot–for 1 mana! |
 The Soulbond option is what makes this simple little creature good. |
 Either your opponent takes 4 right away, or you get a 4/3 creature for 1 that’s going to smack them in the face every turn until they deal with it. Good options! |
 Great for those times when you just need ONE MORE RED MANA. |
Goblin Guide – One of the best one-drops ever
Awesome! Will add that ASAP!
What happened to Monastery Swiftspear?
I didn’t include that one because it had not come out at the time I wrote the article–I haven’t had time to update this article in a good while. But good looking out; that is a great 1-mana red creature to use! 😀
I agree with Goblin Guide and Monastery Swiftspear; very strong one drops! Some others I know from a wizard deck I built:
Soul-Scar Mage
Ghitu Lavarunner
Reckless Waif and Figure of Destiny are some favorites of mine, and I also like Spikeshot Elder. Morin the Wary is good if you can abuse the ETB triggers with something like Purphoros, God of the Forge. Finally, Akroan Crusader and Satyr Hoplite are good for decks with lots of pump spells
*NORIN the Wary. Autocorrect