[Primer/Deck] Burn

[yankeedave]

Just out of curiosity, do people still use sweepers? I'm finding it hard to race decks like Maverick or D&T and a good red sweeper might be my answer. I'm looking at Flamebreak or Anger of the Gods but I'd like to hear other opinions or options too.

[themtgzealot]

Volcanic fallout is probably the best

[Mr. Safety]

Just out of curiosity, do people still use sweepers? I'm finding it hard to race decks like Maverick or D&T and a good red sweeper might be my answer. I'm looking at Flamebreak or Anger of the Gods but I'd like to hear other opinions or options too.

I really like maindeck Searing Blaze and sideboarded Searing Blood as a way to deal with creature-centric strategies. Ensnaring Bridge should be in your sideboard to take care of Sneak/Show and big Knights/Batterskull. For D&T, and partially for Maverick, I would suggest Pyroclasm. It does what you want for less mana, considering the uncounterable clause of Volcanic Fallout isn't what you're looking for (or exiling for Anger of the Gods.) Pyroclasm is also faster against something like a big Empty the Warrens, which some storm decks will do so they don't die to Eidelon. Also, Grim Lavamancer does a ton of work against D&T, but it can be slow. Sideboarding Smash to Smithereens and maindeck a pair of Grims.

Flamebreak is interesting...because it also does damage to players.

[paeng4983]

http://deartiyopaeng.blogspot.com/2018/05/may-2018-legacy-burn.html

[Alex_UNLIMITED]

Nobody tried The Flame of Keld? A friend of mine plays it in two copies in the deck and finds it very strong.

[scaryrawr]

Nobody tried The Flame of Keld? A friend of mine plays it in two copies in the deck and finds it very strong.

I haven't gotten a chance to try it (couldn't find it in foil...). I'll try to pick up some copies and try it out, I just feel it's a better late game card where we try not to go to the late game most of the time.

[Hanni]

I really like maindeck Searing Blaze and sideboarded Searing Blood as a way to deal with creature-centric strategies. Ensnaring Bridge should be in your sideboard to take care of Sneak/Show and big Knights/Batterskull. For D&T, and partially for Maverick, I would suggest Pyroclasm. It does what you want for less mana, considering the uncounterable clause of Volcanic Fallout isn't what you're looking for (or exiling for Anger of the Gods.) Pyroclasm is also faster against something like a big Empty the Warrens, which some storm decks will do so they don't die to Eidelon. Also, Grim Lavamancer does a ton of work against D&T, but it can be slow. Sideboarding Smash to Smithereens and maindeck a pair of Grims.

Flamebreak is interesting...because it also does damage to players.

Volcanic Fallout also hits players. I wouldn't run a sweeper in Burn that doesn't. I think Volcanic Spray is the best sweeper option available for the deck though, because it doesn't kill your own Goblin Guides, but I'm not sure the deck needs sweepers.

[EronRelentless]

Can someone of you point to me what Pyroblast/Red Elemental Blast should be good for in the sideboard? After some thoughts about the Metagame and the Deck it feels very lose to board in such a low impact Card against most Decks but the only thing is Show and Tell where I think it's worth. But it doesn't help against Sneak Attack nor against the full grip of Counterspells these Players tend to have.
True Name Nemesis is surely not the Card we have to fear so much as we can race it simply. If we want to build against Sneak Show I think there are more viable options like Ensnaring Bridge or Ashen Rider but the latter seems to be a bit too narrow.

At the moment for the current Metagame I am playing this build:
4 Monastery Swiftspear
4 Goblin Guide
4 Eidolon of the Great Revel

4 Chain Lightning
4 Lava Spike
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Price of Progress
4 Searing Blaze
4 Rift Bolt
1 Sulfuric Vortex
4 Fireblast

19 Mountain

SB:
3 Exquisite Firecraft
3 Faerie Macabre
2 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Grim Lavamancer
3 Pyrostatic Pillar
3 Smash to Smithereens

Are there any actual sideboarding Guides for Legacy Burn Decks around here?

[scottpou]

Can someone of you point to me what Pyroblast/Red Elemental Blast should be good for in the sideboard?
Nope. I think you are spot on. I haven't touched this decklist in about a year. Still very, very happy with it.

4 Monastery Swiftspear
4 Goblin Guide
4 Eidolon of the Great Revel

4 Lightning Bolt
4 Chain Lightning
4 Lava Spike
4 Rift Bolt
4 Searing Blood
4 Price of Progress
4 Fireblast
2 Sulfuric Vortex

18 Mountain

//Sideboard
4 Grafdigger's Cage
2 Pyrostatic Pillar
2 Searing Blaze
4 Smash to Smithereens
3 Flame Rift

[EronRelentless]

Nope. I think you are spot on. I haven't touched this decklist in about a year. Still very, very happy with it.


4 Searing Blood


Yea, this List looks really similar to mine. What is the difference with Searing Blaze and Searing Blood here? Are there any honorable mentions with the 2 and 3 Damage to Creatures? I played some games against Leovold Decks and Searing Blaze was not that funny for me as opponent draws 2 Cards with it. Probably the Searing Blood is better in Fetchland less builds and even can target my own Swiftspear easier for more Prowess Damage. Should try this Card as well.

[scottpou]

...Searing Blood is better in Fetchland less builds and even can target my own Swiftspear easier for more Prowess Damage.
Yeahp, I have targeted my swiftspear several times to get that extra point of damage if its needed. It's a weird niche use, but I've used it. Also, I hate Thalia, Deathrite Shaman, and f@#$ing MoM. I really don't like mom.

[sunlith42]

Nobody tried The Flame of Keld? A friend of mine plays it in two copies in the deck and finds it very strong.

I tried flame of the keld last night. It worked very well in the 2 games I drew it. Around turn 4 or 5 I played it and discarded something irrelevant or nothing. The next turn I drew two extra cards and then I held them for the third turn where everything including my goblin guides get +2 damage. In both games it helped me win, one I wouldn't have won without it the other one would have dragged on longer and I can't be sure of the outcome.

[EronRelentless]

Yeahp, I have targeted my swiftspear several times to get that extra point of damage if its needed. It's a weird niche use, but I've used it. Also, I hate Thalia, Deathrite Shaman, and f@#$ing MoM. I really don't like mom.

Probably some Forked Bolts in the Sideboard (instead of Searing Blaze) could help against those Decks and Cards.

[scottpou]

Probably some Forked Bolts in the Sideboard (instead of Searing Blaze) could help against those Decks and Cards.

I actually think that could be a great swap. Definitely going to try that out today. (Play group meets today)

[jmeka]

I tried flame of the keld last night. It worked very well in the 2 games I drew it. Around turn 4 or 5 I played it and discarded something irrelevant or nothing. The next turn I drew two extra cards and then I held them for the third turn where everything including my goblin guides get +2 damage. In both games it helped me win, one I wouldn't have won without it the other one would have dragged on longer and I can't be sure of the outcome.

What did you swap out for the Flames? I've been volunteered to do a team constructed event but haven't touched legacy burn in a minute. I'd like to see some fresh ideas.

[EronRelentless]

Are there any ideas how to ideally fight Marit Lage? I tried out Dead//Gone as it's also a possible Card against Creature Strategies but I really don't like Ensnaring Bridges.

Played a couple of Games against Sneak&Show and the Matchup feels really awful and once lost a Game with a Bridge in play to Omniscience and Release the Ants Combo.

Lately I played 4 Flame Rift in the Maindeck moving the Searing Blood to the Sideboard and I really like Flame Rift against Control or Combo Strategies.

Here is my updated list where I played two 4-1s in MTGO Leagues but one 0-3 (against Reanimator and 2x Sneak & Show):

4 Chain Lightning
4 Goblin Guide
4 Monastery Swiftspear

4 Eidolon of the Great Revel
4 Fireblast
4 Flame Rift
4 Lava Spike
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Price of Progress
4 Rift Bolt
1 Sulfuric Vortex

19 Mountain

SB:
2 Dead // Gone (or 2 Forked Bolt)
4 Leyline of the Void
2 Pyrostatic Pillar
3 Searing Blood
3 Smash to Smithereens
1 Sulfuric Vortex

[yankeedave]

I like Chaos Warp - real surprise factor. Stingscourger could also be good.

[Mr. Safety]

Are there any ideas how to ideally fight Marit Lage? I tried out Dead//Gone as it's also a possible Card against Creature Strategies but I really don't like Ensnaring Bridges.

Played a couple of Games against Sneak&Show and the Matchup feels really awful and once lost a Game with a Bridge in play to Omniscience and Release the Ants Combo.

Dead//Gone is seeing maindeck play in Czech Pile lists. I would definitely use them alongside Stingscourger in the sideboard, probably a 2/2 split.

Ensnaring Bridge is still probably your best option against Show and Tell, and it has value outside of that particular matchup (Tarmogoyf, Knight of the Reliquary, etc.) As a Slow Depths player I didn't fear Bridge very much because I had maindeck Decays, and Turbo Depths plays sideboard decays. It's still a fairly big speedbump though, and usually enough to make the race go in the burn player's favor.

One option that hasn't been tried too often is Wasteland out of the Sideboard. Guaranteed Depths players will board out their Needles g2, because they are almost completely blank against burn (and they know that 99% of burn decks don't play wasteland.) Wasteland could be valuable against a few different strategies as well, especially ones where you need the tempo to gain enough time to burn them out (Lands, Dark Depths, mid-range decks.) It has tension with Price of Progress, but I think *not losing* to Marit Lage is probably better than the extra 2 damage from PoP. In that particular matchup I think Wasteland would be much better. Just some theoretical nonsense; could be good.

[Lyle Hopkins]

I took down a nineteen person tournament at my LGS this past weekend. Five rounds of Swiss, then cut to top eight.

Round 1: Matt on Punishing Jund (2/1)
Round 2: Gabe on Burn (2/1)
Round 3: Ed on BUG Leovold (2/0)
Round 4: Rowan on Storm (2/1)
Round 5: Shen on Manaless Dredge (0/2)

I was running hotter than the sun until I ran into Dredge in Round 5. :laugh: Fortunately, I still managed to hold onto top seed going into the top eight.

Quarterfinals: Philip on Grixis Tezzeret (2/0)
Semifinals: Dylan on Miracles (2/1)
Finals: Ed on BUG Leovold (2/1)

I've included my list below if anyone is interested. The numbers in the sideboard could use some work. I opted for five three-ofs as our metagame is fairly unpredictable. :rolleyes:


4 Eidolon of the Great Revel
4 Goblin Guide
4 Monastery Swiftspear
4 Fireblast
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Price of Progress
4 Searing Blaze
12 Mountain
2 Scalding Tarn
2 Arid Mesa
2 Wooded Foothills
2 Bloodstained Mire
4 Chain Lightning
4 Lava Spike
4 Rift Bolt

Sideboard
3 Pyrostatic Pillar
3 Sulfuric Vortex
3 Smash to Smithereens
3 Volcanic Fallout
3 Exquisite Firecraft


Of note, I've finally come around to Monastery Swiftspear. I also rediscovered my love for Sulfuric Vortex after a long hiatus. Finally, I feel like I'm starting to develop a fetish for spells that can't be countered. :tongue:

Thanks for reading.

[Bl4ckbird92]

I took down a nineteen person tournament at my LGS this past weekend. Five rounds of Swiss, then cut to top eight.

Round 1: Matt on Punishing Jund (2/1)
Round 2: Gabe on Burn (2/1)
Round 3: Ed on BUG Leovold (2/0)
Round 4: Rowan on Storm (2/1)
Round 5: Shen on Manaless Dredge (0/2)

I was running hotter than the sun until I ran into Dredge in Round 5. :laugh: Fortunately, I still managed to hold onto top seed going into the top eight.

Quarterfinals: Philip on Grixis Tezzeret (2/0)
Semifinals: Dylan on Miracles (2/1)
Finals: Ed on BUG Leovold (2/1)

I've included my list below if anyone is interested. The numbers in the sideboard could use some work. I opted for five three-ofs as our metagame is fairly unpredictable. :rolleyes:


4 Eidolon of the Great Revel
4 Goblin Guide
4 Monastery Swiftspear
4 Fireblast
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Price of Progress
4 Searing Blaze
12 Mountain
2 Scalding Tarn
2 Arid Mesa
2 Wooded Foothills
2 Bloodstained Mire
4 Chain Lightning
4 Lava Spike
4 Rift Bolt

Sideboard
3 Pyrostatic Pillar
3 Sulfuric Vortex
3 Smash to Smithereens
3 Volcanic Fallout
3 Exquisite Firecraft


Of note, I've finally come around to Monastery Swiftspear. I also rediscovered my love for Sulfuric Vortex after a long hiatus. Finally, I feel like I'm starting to develop a fetish for spells that can't be countered. :tongue:

Thanks for reading.



You are living on The Edge with so mamy three Drops ^^

[Bl4ckbird92]

what do You think of Goblin chainwhirler in burn ?

[scottpou]

what do You think of Goblin chainwhirler in burn ?

Ask yourself this, which match would you want to see Chainwhirler in your hand against? Now are those decks heavy in your meta?

[Bl4ckbird92]

Ask yourself this, which match would you want to see Chainwhirler in your hand against? Now are those decks heavy in your meta?



After The Ban Elves and DnT is comming..and a Main Board answer seems fine for me? But i can be wrong
Is is also an answer to EtW tokens? And some other Little cratures

[scaryrawr]

After The Ban Elves and DnT is comming..and a Main Board answer seems fine for me? But i can be wrong
Is is also an answer to EtW tokens? And some other Little cratures

EtW? Empty the Warrens?

Hmm... You shouldn't pack matchup specific cards in the mainboard unless those matchups make up the majority of your meta. A card in the main you should expect it to be great in the majority of matchups you expect to run into. Saying it's great against Elves and D&T, your meta should be mostly Elves and D&T then to justify it? If that makes sense.

The other thing is what are you cutting for it? Is it better than Searing Blaze in those matchups? Better than Sulfuric Vortex, Grim Lavamancer, etc? It can be depending on your list and your meta.

If it's something you feel is worth trying, I'd say try it then. Personally, I think the card is good, but it's not made for Burn, and I don't think it attacks the decks you listed as well as you would think.

[License2pill]

After The Ban Elves and DnT is comming..and a Main Board answer seems fine for me? But i can be wrong
Is is also an answer to EtW tokens? And some other Little cratures

We have grim Lavamancer it's better in almost every way than chainwhirler.

[Kanti]

After The Ban Elves and DnT is comming..and a Main Board answer seems fine for me? But i can be wrong
Is is also an answer to EtW tokens? And some other Little cratures

This was literally discussed on the last page, run some Volcanic Fallouts. Or test some Chainwhirlers.

[Ronald Deuce]

what do You think of Goblin chainwhirler in burn ?

Strikes me that Flamebreak is probably better in the 3-slot, but then again, wouldn't a 2-cmc card like Pyroclasm or Electrickery do the job better? As a guy who's played Empty the Warrens a lot of times, I wouldn't be comfortable facing it with anything that costs more than 2.

First Strike is pretty sweet, though. Show those triply-blinged-out Mirran Crusaders who's boss.

I hate white cards.

[mistercakes]

Thoughts on this new card? Potential sb for slower matchups where burn runs out of gas.

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/price/Commander+2018/Infinite+Atlas#paper

[Raizen884]

Thoughts on this new card? Potential sb for slower matchups where burn runs out of gas.

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/price/Commander+2018/Infinite+Atlas#paper

I think it competes directly with Sulfuric Vortex, with exactly 3 mana I think Vortex is better, with 4 mana this can be better if they are an Abrupt decay deck. People have used Top before, and I feel this is actually better than top in this specific deck since it actually draws card, but I'm not exactly sure if this is better than Vortex. I would say initially this isn't better in most scenarios, but its not a bad idea to test it out.

[scaryrawr]

Thoughts on this new card? Potential sb for slower matchups where burn runs out of gas.

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/price/Commander+2018/Infinite+Atlas#paper

No.

I mean... In these slower matchups, how is it better than a card that does burny things? There's vortex, firecraft, etc.

[Ohgeekayvee]

Just posted this on another major Magic site, but I know the players here are better and didn’t want to leave you guys out. Thinking about playing after a long hiatus. I don’t have a clue what metas look like now, but I suspect CFB will be the usual, so I went off of what I remember. Any new cards I should be looking at in terms of what people would bring in against us? I haven’t played since just before Top banning.

4 Goblin Guide
4 Monastery Swiftspear
4 Eidolon of the Great Revel

2 Sulfuric Vortex

4 Lightning Bolt
4 Chain Lightning
4 Lava Spike
4 Price of Progress
3 Searing Blaze
4 Rift Bolt
3 Fireblast

8 Mountain
1 Barbarian Ring
11 Fetches

Sideboard
3 Grim Lavamancer
1 Searing Blaze
3 Smash to Smithereens
3 Exquisite Firecraft
3 Faerie Macabre
2 Mindbreak Trap

I’m not expecting a lot of creatures in front of me and more combo and Miracles and big mana play decks, so I chose Vortex because my life total doesn’t really matter there and I want constant pressure. I also moved Lavamancer to the side because of this, but still want answers to creature decks in my 75, so that’s why Swiftspear is a 4-of. Reanimator is played here and I know it’s a terrible match up, but I don’t know if I should play Bridge to help answer Eldrazi (or that colorless stompy deck), zombie fish, or just replace the Traps with a Surgical Extraction and the fourth Smash, or just 2 Surgical Extraction. Surgical seems like a decent all around answer for everything, but also just in case I’m paired up with something like Storm, which I think has lost some popularity at CFB. Overall I am iffy about Mindbreak Trap. Suggestions are encouraged.

[josch6083]

Hi,

my first comment on burn. I was playing the "regular" burn list for a while now and looking for some new hits on burn.

I would love you to comment on my ideas and impressions

this is my actual list. as you can see, there are 4 spots missing. I´m looking for the best fill in

19 LANDS
3 Barbarian Ring
4 Bloodstained Mire
9 Mountain
3 Wooded Foothills

14 CREATURES
4 Eidolon of the Great Revel
4 Goblin Guide
2 Grim Lavamancer
4 Monastery Swiftspear

23 INSTANTS and SORC.
4 Chain Lightning
4 Fireblast
4 Lava Spike
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Price of Progress
4 Rift Bolt

4 ????


now to my experiences:

1. Barbarian Ring is nothing new, but I play 3 MD and it has been a killer in so many matches. Also I play 2-3 Grim Lavamancer. A card, I had to convince myself of. My question was: How is it possible to get enough cards in my graveyard to feed these two cards. Here are my ideas:

- fetchlands are the most obvious
- faithless looting: played it several times online. has been nice in some games and useless in other games, but I still got it on my list
- insolent neonate: you cycle your bad cards and it has menace. so it hits at least for 2-3 damage and then you just caycle it

fireblast and barbarian ring are a great combo. You tap for mana, cast fireblast and then use the mana to activate ring. 6 damage for 1 mana. and ring can´t be countered. I was really impressed, how often it came down on this

now what to do with the free spots. These are the cards I tried:

4x bomat courier: a card, your opponent HAS to handle! because of all the 1 mana spells in your deck, you empty your hand very quickly. so using it´s ability to draw cards is great. also it has haste and does 2-3 damage in the first rounds. I even thought about using simian spirit guide to empty my hand even faster, so bomat works better, but maybe that´s to greedy.

spark elemental: I know, old card, but most of the time, it is a 3 damage for 1 mana. even in the later rounds it does its work because of trample
hellspark elemental: it´s 6 damage for 4 mana, but it is stron against counter and you can cast it when you are out of gas. It´s waiting in your graveyard. did a good job for me. but it´s not working very well with lavamancer and ring because it´s removed after second attack
insolent neonate: you fill your graveyard with useless cards and deal some damage




I really want Barbarian Ring, Grim lavamancer and Bomat to work. What do you think. Thanks a lot for your feedback!

[Mr. Safety]

Depending on your expected meta-game, these are good cards to consider:

Exquisite Firecraft
Sulfuric Vortex
Searing Blaze
Forked Bolt

[josch6083]

Depending on your expected meta-game, these are good cards to consider:

Exquisite Firecraft
Sulfuric Vortex
Searing Blaze
Forked Bolt



of course I know the commonly used cards, but then I can use the standard list you can find everywhere. I want to give bomat courier or one of the other cards I mentioned a shot and look for ways to establish it. :-)

[Mr. Safety]

Courier just doesn't do enough I don't think. You want a much better return for 1 mana spent. Even your suggestion of Spark Elemental is probably better, although Hellspark Elemental is arguably better.

I was messing around with Black Vise and Shrapnel Blast (4/3) for a little while, including 4x Great Furnace to increase chances of having targets for Blast. It's a good return; even if Vise only does 3 damage in a game that's still the going rate for damage. If landed t1 it can do much more than that. Board it out on the draw for relevant sideboard cards. The argument against Shrapnel Blast is that you lose a land/permanent, but most of the time lands are an expendable resource (Fireblast) or Vise is no longer doing damage so converting it into 5 with Blast was good.

There's no way around it: there isn't really any way to improve Burn. You play the red cards that do the most damage for your mana investment. If you're bored with that, switch decks. That's what Burn will always be.

[PirateKing]

What about Bedlam Reveler? Has that been tested and found wanting already or is it still valid consideration?

[josch6083]

What about Bedlam Reveler? Has that been tested and found wanting already or is it still valid consideration?

thought about bedlam reveler. no way, you get this one on the board. if you got 4 instants in your gy, you still need 4 mana to cast it! Either you have won the game or you lost before you get to cast it.

[josch6083]

first of all. thanks Mr Safety for your feedback! :-)

I would love to get some more feedback on bomat courier https://www.mtgvault.com/card/bomat-courier/KLD/. I played about 15 matches with it. Opponents rather block him than a 3/4 swiftspear or a goblin guide :laugh: as I said before they have to handle it. and it DOES deal damage. average of 2-3 damage. and keep in mind that thay block it and other creatures you control deal more damage not being blocked. Won me 2 games so far. drew a hand of 2 or 3 new cards and had gas again. I really think this could be an serious option

[mistercakes]

i'd say give it a shot. you'll have to keep in mind what your good matchups are and your bad matchups. does this card increase your win % on the bad ones? if it doesn't, does it significantly increase the %'s on your currently positive matchups?

you'll need some more stats.

[josch6083]

here my first feedback after 25 matches with 4x bomat courier:

19 wins and 6 losses.

I have to say, bomat courier is absolutely fantastic! I thought it could be a nice gimmick, but it is just great. The cards I cut for Bomat: 1 price of progress, 1 exquisite firecarft, 2 sulforic vortex (=> sideboard)

here my impressions:

for example the last game I had on board 2 goblin guides, then play bomat. my opponent had thalia in play. I attack with all three creatures with him on 10 life. And he blocks bomat! :-) and this happenens in more than 90%. opponents always block bomat instead of swiftspear or guide. so you deal more damage with swiftspear and guide.

I had lots of starting hands with bomat and swiftspear. I always played bomat first. this means I get at least 2 cards underneath it and 2 damage. with swiftspear I could deal one more damage but that downside is absolutely ok. Turn 3 it depends on the opponents board and my hand if I attack another time. Most of the time I did. Normally I got 2-3 new cards with bomat. and it definetely deals at least 2 damage on the play. They don´t block with their insectile abberation or / mother of runes or noble hierach ... (cards they could play in their first turn)

Once I blocked batterskull, sacrificed it, got 3 new cards and opponent didn´t get 4 life. nice sideeffect of this card

another time I had turn 1 and turn 2 bomat. I had an empty hand on turn 4 and drew a hand of 5!!! new cards. You can hold priority and sacrifice the 2nd one in response to the first ability. As you pay costs before the ability resolves you will pay RR, then discard your hand, then discard your (now empty) hand. Then the abilities will resolve and you get all the cards

There is a great synergy between barbarian ring, fireblast an bomat. Barbarian ring is the other card that won me lot´s of games. bomat and fireblast fill the grave. and then fireblast and ring seal the deal.

and of course your hand doesn´t have to be empty to use bomat. Discarding a price of progress against certain decks or discarding a swiftspear against a goyf in play is no disadvantage

so all in all I´m a little bit in love with this little fellow. Maybe you got some other synergies that could be used with him.

[Poron]

Bomat is the card advantage this deck needed. A winning list with it? You can also go up to 3 Searing Blaze in order to clear the path for additional sweetness

[josch6083]

Bomat is the card advantage this deck needed. A winning list with it? You can also go up to 3 Searing Blaze in order to clear the path for additional sweetness

After (now) 30 matches I really believe in Bomat. This is the list I´m currently running:


19 LANDS
3 Barbarian Ring
4 Bloodstained Mire
9 Mountain
3 Wooded Foothills

18 CREATURES
4 Bomat Courier
4 Eidolon of the Great Revel
4 Goblin Guide
2 Grim Lavamancer
4 Monastery Swiftspear

23 INSTANTS and SORC.
4 Chain Lightning
4 Fireblast
4 Lava Spike
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Price of Progress
4 Rift Bolt

Sideboard:

(=> depends on your meta. I use this sideboard online. The 3 Sudden shock may seem strange, but so far I´m happy. But my sideboard is a work in progress)

3 Sudden shock
4 Faerie Macabre
2 Sulfuric Vortex
4 smash to Sm.
2 Pyrostatic Pillar


today I lost against reanimator. he killed and reanimated my bomat, attacked me and drew 2 fresh cards while he discarded his Iona and reanimated it with his drawn cards :laugh::laugh::laugh:

another side effect: if you have to mulligan (for example to 4), a bomat is even stronger, because you empty your hand turn 2 and can refill turn 3 with 3 new cards! :-)

[Hanni]

Bomat is the card advantage this deck needed. A winning list with it? You can also go up to 3 Searing Blaze in order to clear the path for additional sweetness

Card is awful. Burn doesn't need card advantage at all. The challenges this deck faces has nothing to do with card advantage. Bomat is the exact opposite of what this deck needs. The card may be good in some Grixis Delver lists, but it's not even close to what Burn wants to be doing.

[LOLWut]

Card is awful. Burn doesn't need card advantage at all. The challenges this deck faces has nothing to do with card advantage. Bomat is the exact opposite of what this deck needs. The card may be good in some Grixis Delver lists, but it's not even close to what Burn wants to be doing.

Burn needs

:r: or :1::r: or :r::r:
Instant
The next time a big dumb thing is pooped onto opponent's battlefield, a lot of damage goes to that player's dome

[mistercakes]

Card is awful. Burn doesn't need card advantage at all. The challenges this deck faces has nothing to do with card advantage. Bomat is the exact opposite of what this deck needs. The card may be good in some Grixis Delver lists, but it's not even close to what Burn wants to be doing.

why not? burn hasn't put up any serious results in a long long time. it can't hurt to try. if he says he's putting up some okay results then it merits some testing. otherwise people are just playing the same deck that has been going on for around 5 years. at the worst, it goes back to that same old boring list.

[Mr. Safety]

Card is awful. Burn doesn't need card advantage at all. The challenges this deck faces has nothing to do with card advantage. Bomat is the exact opposite of what this deck needs. The card may be good in some Grixis Delver lists, but it's not even close to what Burn wants to be doing.

This x1000. I was attempting to be gentle, but my post earlier said essentially the same thing. If you are bored with the most efficient damage-producing cards in mono-red burn, pick up another deck. That's what burn will always be.

[Mr. Safety]

why not? burn hasn't put up any serious results in a long long time. it can't hurt to try. if he says he's putting up some okay results then it merits some testing. otherwise people are just playing the same deck that has been going on for around 5 years. at the worst, it goes back to that same old boring list.

Burn will always be 'that boring old list'. If you want to try some synergies that have risk but also potentially better damage output (black vise, shrapnel blast, thunderous wrath) and a way to set them up, then go for it. But the principle is the same: the most damage for each mana/card you spend possible. Once you stray from that, no amount of outlier results will contradict it.

[josch6083]

Nice feedback! For everyone who is against Bomat: I am pretty sure you never tried it. I played over 50 matches so far and don´t want to miss this card anymore. And how openminded to say, that burn is what it is. Every type of deck changes. Look at all the decks over the last 5 years. And burn changed too. Figure of destiny, flame rift, hellspark elemental, keldon maurauders .... all cards, that rotated out of the deck, because other cards filled that spot better.

Yesterday I played a match, where I played Goblin guide, Swiftspear and Bomat in turn 3! my opponent killed Bomat right away and lost to a pumbed up swiftspear and guide. Bomat is always the card that gets countered, no matter what else you might play. Blocking Batterskull without getting them life and so on. There are soooo many advantages of this card. It always hits for at least 2 damage and in about 60-70% of the matches it draws me extra cards. and it´s great if you have to mulligan cause you get your cards "back". I´m really surprised that this community is so stubborn to be open for new things.

You really should try things before you prejudge new ideas.

[Mr. Safety]

You can posture all day long about this, it's not about trying new cards. If you mix shit and soap does it make the shit clean or the soap dirty? You need to ask yourself why you're mixing shit into soap in the first place.

I would never, in a damage race, kill Bomat instead of Guide or Swiftspear. I would evaluate which threat will do the most damage and treat it accordingly. Killing Bomat seems wrong to me, and bad players don't make cards good. Of course they lost to a pumped up Swiftspear and Goblin Guide...he killed the wrong creature. *Not* being dead is more important to me than Burn drawing extra cards, coming from both sides of the coin (as a long time burn player and having played against it many times.)

It's like Storm playing Concentrate. Yes you draw 3 extra cards. That's good for storm, right? Not when you could be actually killing the opponent with all that mana. Mana/damage ratio efficiency is so important to Burn because it's essentially a slow combo deck.

[mistercakes]

http://www.hareruyamtg.com/en/k/kD00618O/

top 4 in a 39 man event. i have no context, just the list:

1 Barbarian Ring
4 Bloodstained Mire
5 Mountain
5 Snow-Covered Mountain
4 Wooded Foothills
19 Lands
4 Bomat Courier
4 Eidolon of the Great Revel
3 Goblin Guide
1 Grim Lavamancer
1 Monastery Swiftspear
13 Creatures
4 Fireblast
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Price of Progress
4 Chain Lightning
2 Exquisite Firecraft
4 Lava Spike
4 Rift Bolt
2 Ensnaring Bridge
28 Spells

SB:
3 Faerie Macabre
2 Sulfur Elemental
1 Crash
2 Searing Blaze
2 Smash to Smithereens
1 Anarchy
2 Pyrostatic Pillar
2 Sulfuric Vortex
15 Sideboard Cards

keep testing this card :) . i'm sure it's fine, especially in the slower matchups where it really puts you over the top.

(was looking over this list a bit more, bomat is really cool with ensnaring bridge)

[Poron]

Bomat is just great. Couple of damages almost surely and 2-3 new cards when they are needed.

It needed some kind of evasion though

[compacta_d]

I think there is something to the Bomat Courier thing. You can check what's under it with fetches as well before cracking.

In regards to killing the thing with the most damage. What does more damage, a swiftspear, or the bomat courier with 2 bolts and a fireblast tucked under it? Both have potential in different situations.

I'll pick em up and test them next time I do Burn.

[Poron]

Swiftspear is not the alternative to Bomat. Searing Blaze or something else might be

[compacta_d]

Swiftspear is not the alternative to Bomat. Searing Blaze or something else might be

i was replying to people killing the bomat over a swiftspear in game

[josch6083]

Noah Walker plays 4x Bomat courier since the ban of DRS. Seems like the card is getting more attention lately. :laugh: Looking what´s under Bomat by fetching is just too nice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbX3J2-0kCU

[Chronatog]

Arclight Phoenix (https://www.mtgsalvation.com/cards/guilds-of-ravnica/35333-arclight-phoenix) 3R


Creature - Phoenix 3/2

Flying, haste

At the beginning of combat on your turn, if you cast three or more instant and/or sorcery spells this turn, return Arclight Phoenix from your graveyard to the battlefield.

This one can be good against control matchups.

[sunlith42]

Arclight Phoenix (https://www.mtgsalvation.com/cards/guilds-of-ravnica/35333-arclight-phoenix) 3R


Creature - Phoenix 3/2

Flying, haste

At the beginning of combat on your turn, if you cast three or more instant and/or sorcery spells this turn, return Arclight Phoenix from your graveyard to the battlefield.

This one can be good against control matchups.

This doesn't seem like it fits in the deck. Not castable until turn 4. After turn 4 its rare to cast 3+ cards in a single turn, so I think the ability would be hard to activate. Finally control decks main removal is StP, Terminus, and councils judgement, none of which put the card in the graveyard.

[Chronatog]

This doesn't seem like it fits in the deck. Not castable until turn 4. After turn 4 its rare to cast 3+ cards in a single turn, so I think the ability would be hard to activate. Finally control decks main removal is StP, Terminus, and councils judgement, none of which put the card in the graveyard.

Obviously, this is a sideboard card. And there are types of control other than white-mana driven. Also, red doesn't have many creatures with flying and Arclight Phoenix can help to deal a few more points of damage to close the game.

[LeoCop 90]

I've played burn for years, mostly in modern but also in legacy, and i think people who are arguing against bomat are being too close-minded. I'm well aware that burn lists seldom change because the best burn spells will probably always remain the same, but bomat courier is not a shitty card like browbeat or things like that. Burn doesn't need card advantage, but if this card advantage comes from a hasty one drop then it might be worth it. I think at least bomat deserves some testing to figure out if we should change our creature configuration, or just add more creatures. Trying cannot hurt.

[Mr. Safety]

I've played burn for years, mostly in modern but also in legacy, and i think people who are arguing against bomat are being too close-minded. I'm well aware that burn lists seldom change because the best burn spells will probably always remain the same, but bomat courier is not a shitty card like browbeat or things like that. Burn doesn't need card advantage, but if this card advantage comes from a hasty one drop then it might be worth it. I think at least bomat deserves some testing to figure out if we should change our creature configuration, or just add more creatures. Trying cannot hurt.

As a modern player you know that Bomat isn't even good enough for the modern burn deck, so why in the name of Chandra's left tit would you use it in Legacy? It's a more powerful format with an even greater need of efficiency. Modern also doesn't have: chain lightning, fireblast, price of progress, or sulfuric vortex. If you can cram the core cards of burn into a legacy deck and then have room after adding those cards then more power to you.

Honestly, Bomat seems like a trap card. It promises a long term gain at the cost of short term damage output. It might have application in some matchups, but overall it doesn't seem great to me.

[compacta_d]

As a modern player you know that Bomat isn't even good enough for the modern burn deck, so why in the name of Chandra's left tit would you use it in Legacy? It's a more powerful format with an even greater need of efficiency. Modern also doesn't have: chain lightning, fireblast, price of progress, or sulfuric vortex. If you can cram the core cards of burn into a legacy deck and then have room after adding those cards then more power to you.

Honestly, Bomat seems like a trap card. It promises a long term gain at the cost of short term damage output. It might have application in some matchups, but overall it doesn't seem great to me.


Legacy's needs are not modern's needs. Bomat is very efficient IMO. Worth testing.

[Mr. Safety]

Legacy's needs are not modern's needs. Bomat is very efficient IMO. Worth testing.

What is it replacing?

[mistercakes]

There are 2 lists on the last page with 4 bomat.

[IamHANDSOME]

What is it replacing?

in my list Rift Bolt, this is it:

4 Goblin Guide
4 Monastery Swiftspear
4 Bomat Courier
4 Eidolon of the Great Revel
2 Grim Lavamancer
4 Fireblast
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Price of Progress
4 Chain Lightning
4 Lava Spike
3 Sulfuric Vortex
8 Fetchlands
11 Mountain

4 Lightning Bolt and 4 Chain Lightning are allready 8 removal spells if we really need them plus 2 Grim Lavamancer so Rift Bolt is the worst card. Otherwise it would have been Lava Spike obviously. I like the list.

[Ronald Deuce]

I'm not a fan of Courier. Not that it's a bad card; I just don't think it really does anything to make it more useful than the other stuff in our deck.

Even if we cut our worst direct-damage card for it, we're going to be powering down our openers for a chance (a chance) at gaining long-term resilience—and that's assuming the Courier doesn't just get blocked the first/second time it attacks and that we have untapped lands when we need them. And we shouldn't be the ones holding back; it's our job to zero people as quickly as possible.

Reminds me a bit of when someone suggested running Volcanic Islands to add Brainstorm. (Also reminds me of why Brainstorm, powerful though it is, is overrated.) We're spending resources to do less damage in the hopes that maybe we'll find something better, and I don't think that's worth it when we're already running all the maximal sources of damage except Hidetsugu and/or his second rite.

Feel free to prove me wrong, though. I like spicy things.

[from Cairo]

I gave Bomat a run this week at a local as creatures 13-16 and had mixed results. I had the opportunity to draw 3 cards and 5 cards off of it in two longer games where other cards were presenting more immediate threats to life total. It not presenting much immediate damage is sort of the other side of examining the card. There were a lot of hands where I curved something like Bomat into Eidolon they answered the Eidolon and I'm starting turn 3 with them still at 16 life and starting to hit the turns mana wise where their average draws do more than our 3 damage to the face. I'm not a practiced Burn player though and I definitely did not play optimally.

For reference I was on

4 Goblin Guide
4 Monastery Swiftspear
4 Bomat Courier
4 Eidolon of Great Revel

4 Lightning Bolt
4 Chain Lightning
4 Lava Spike
4 Price of Progress
4 Rift Bolt
4 Fireblast
1 Sulfuric Vortex

3 Bloodstained Mire
3 Wooded Foothills
2 Scalding Tarn
2 Arid Mesa
9 Mountain

Sideboard:
3 Smash to Smitereens
3 Ensnaring Bridge
2 Faerie Macabre
2 Relic of Progenitus
2 Pyrostatic Pillar
2 Abrade
1 Sulfuric Vortex

[TheYoungPyromancer]

Hi, everyone.

It’s really nice to see so much activity in the thread! I believe it’s important that we keep an open mind for new ideas -otherwise there’s not much room for discussion, which is the whole point of any forum, isn’t it? Therefore, I’d like to address a few comments/ideas from earlier this week before sharing my experience with Bomat Courier:


Burn is essentially a slow combo deck.
Ever since Eidolon of the Great Revel was printed, Burn stopped being just a ‘slow combo deck’. Sure, it can sometimes kill as early as turn 3, but I believe experienced, constant Burn pilots have come to understand that the deck has become quite an interactive archetype. I love Burn, and it’s pretty much the only deck I’ve been piloting for the past four years or so (with GOOD results), and I must say: the least of the games I win are actually won in this ‘combo’ fashion.


Burn will always be ‘that boring old list’.
I don’t think this kind of reasoning helps at all. There is no reason why we should choose to keep our builds stagant. Burn (actually Magic: The Gathering) is not a binary game, not even when it comes to all-in decks such as Belcher. Every single game is different, and any given card will prove its worth differently in each of those games.
Also, I’d like to point out that there are at least three valid established builds for the Burn archetype:
- The pre Monastery Swiftspear build.
- The Patrick Sullivan’s ‘all mountains’ build (which runs 4 copies of Flame Rift and no Grim Lavamancer), and finally:
- The Fetch Lands + Monastery Swiftspear build. This is apparently the most common list.

Now, as to my experience and thoughts regarding Bomat Courier: Burn does not need card advantage in order to obtain consistent results. Burn is a powerful yet fragile deck: it requires us to have a more-than-adequate understanding of the opponent’s decklist and strategy in order to sequence properly, kill the right creatures, hold the damage until a window opens, and so on (I insist: this is not a ‘slow combo deck’ anymore). That said, once you master this deck, you will usually have a few cards in your hand by the time you win a game. However, this does not mean we should decline card advantage options just because they don’t ensure damage. I mean, most of us run at least 2 copies of Grim Lavamancer, right? The benefit of running such a powerful card is way greater than the risk it presents, which is JUST not dealing damage ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Could the same logic be applied to Bomat Courier?

I tried Bomat Courier last night at my LGS, and it performed better than I anticipated. To be honest, there were times when I drew cards and it felt like running after training with ankle weights. Also, the Bomat proved to be a very good topdeck during the mid-game -I was always happy to draw a Courier instead of any of the Rift Bolt copies I cut in order to make some space. Some of the valuable plays I was able to do with the Courier were:
- Fetching in order to figure out what cards were under the Courier, which translated into cracking it at the best possible moment.
- Being able to comfortably spend my burn spells as removal against Elves, knowing I still had fuel under the Bomat (6 cards!) to reach victory.
- Using it as bate (by the way, it got killed and countered quite often) in order to resolve Pyrostatic Pillar on turn 2.

I switched my only copy of Sulfuric Vortex with one of the copies of Searing Blaze from the Sideboard. Sulfuric Vortex is too heavy (CMC=3) to get rid of before cracking Bomat Courier, and Searing Blaze seems coherent with this ‘Red Deck Wins’ approach.

So here’s the maindeck list I’m currently testing:

//18 CREATURES
4 Goblin Guide
4 Monastery Swiftspear
4 Bomat Courier
2 Grim Lavamancer
4 Eidolon of the Great Revel

//23 SPELLS
4 Lava Spike
4 Chain Lightning
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Price of Progress
3 Searing Blaze
4 Fireblast

//19 LANDS
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Wooded Foothills
1 Arid Mesa
10 Mountain

[Bithlord]

Thoughts on the new punisher card?

Three is a lot of mana, it never does what you want, but it doesn't do what you want twice, and at instant speed. Does that make up for it?

[Secretly.A.Bee]

It's pretty good. I think Browbeat was acceptable once, and this seems to take it's shortcomings into account. It's playable as a 2-of for sure.l

[IamHANDSOME]

Problem with Browbeat and the new card will always be: 1. Your opponent chooses whats best for him. That means against combo it will be either to slow to race or 4/5 damage for 3 not enough and 2. fair decks take the card for THEIR advantage. It had to be a super fair deck like D&T to make the card compensate, but once Miracles or something like Grixis Control have the upper hand these cards will be always dead somehow. So I see against D&T and like Delver decks the card actually working with a little luck and fun, but certain decks can take advantage of it and you want the save burn spell instead, especially something like Exquisite Firecraft which also costs 3 mana but comes for sure!

Here is my list without Bomat Courier which I think is the strongest build you can make out of Burn currently:

4 Goblin Guide
4 Monastery Swiftspear
4 Eidolon of the Great Revel
2 Grim Lavamancer
4 Fireblast
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Price of Progress
4 Chain Lightning
4 Lava Spike
4 Rift Bolt
3 Sulfuric Vortex
8 red Fetchlands
11 Mountain
//
3 GY Hate (Tormod's Crypt, Grafdigger's Cage, ...)
2 Ensnaring Bridge
2 Pyroblast
3 Smash to Smithereens
3 Searing Blaze
2 Pyrostatic Pillar

You have no dead card in your main 60, Vortex is preboard an anti lifegain card and also a clock if you dont have hand cards left (it even stacks when having 2 Vortex on the board so the 2. is not dead), Lavamancer can dominate certain matchups and the rest is the basic Burn stuff. You definitely want the Ensnaring Bridge against all the big creature matchups like Eldrazi, Sneak and Show, Reanimator since they are not really likely to handle it once resolved. Pyroblast can make sure to get handle certain cards like TNN, Energie Field, Jace, countering Show and Tell or make sure your Price or Fireblast resolves. Smash and Searing Blaze as artifact and creature removal and 2 Pyrostatic Pillar to make sure it lies T2 against Elves or Storm. If you have a lot of Stifle running around in your meta you could also think about taking out the fetchlands, 2 Grim Lavamancer and 1 Vortex for 3 Flame Rift. Definitely worse as a list but maybe better in certain metas, probably also against combo decks which need to be raced.

[Secretly.A.Bee]

Best for them does not translate to being good for them. It's definitely something to test since it's an instant, not a sorcery like Browbeat. It will translate differently, I'm pretty sure.

[PirateKing]

Best for them does not translate to being good for them. It's definitely something to test since it's an instant, not a sorcery like Browbeat. It will translate differently, I'm pretty sure.

Wouldn't the logic be if our default curve is 3 damage for R, if we can tap 3 for this and they let us draw 3 cards, they're taking 9 next turn. So then ignore that part; is 4 damage for 2R good enough?

[Ace/Homebrew]

Wouldn't the logic be if our default curve is 3 damage for R, if we can tap 3 for this and they let us draw 3 cards, they're taking 9 next turn. So then ignore that part; is 4 damage for 2R good enough?
The upside to the card, and what *might* make it playable is it's ability to convert land #4 into a spell. And at that point, it doesn't really matter what mode your opponent chooses...

[Bithlord]

Wouldn't the logic be if our default curve is 3 damage for R, if we can tap 3 for this and they let us draw 3 cards, they're taking 9 next turn. So then ignore that part; is 4 damage for 2R good enough?

On it's own, no. Is 4 damage for 2R, and then 4 damage for 2R again enough? In that sense... I don't know. Some shells pay 2 mana for 4 damage to each player, one time.


The upside to the card, and what *might* make it playable is it's ability to convert land #4 into a spell. And at that point, it doesn't really matter what mode your opponent chooses...

That is the primary point that makes me interested in it. barring it being lethal, I'm 90% sure that the "correct" play for my opponent is almost always "take 4 damage".

Being able to cast it on their endstep, before your turn, AND being able to recast it with a land card seems pretty enticing.

[PirateKing]

Just checking we're not entertaining getting our preferred outcome on the choice.
I agree that flashback is the spicy part, as long as that's what is being discussed.
As an opponent, unless I'm at 4 life or have Chalice on 1, there is no way you'd draw 3 cards.
But 8 damage over 2 turns for 2 cards is worth considering.

EDIT: I guess as a Fireblast-esque finisher it could be good. Casting it for damage EOT then tapping out to cast it again and forcing them to let you have cards, only to get a Fireblast to end it would be pretty day-making.

[Bithlord]

Yea, I like the idea of 8 damage from a single card a lot. Given the deck frame "draw 3" will almost always be *at least* 3 damage, usually at least 6, so "take 4" will always be better for my opponent.

[Eldariel]

Yea, I like the idea of 8 damage from a single card a lot. Given the deck frame "draw 3" will almost always be *at least* 3 damage, usually at least 6, so "take 4" will always be better for my opponent.

Depends on if they're racing or stabilizing. Tempo-wise letting you draw 3 can let a combo deck win or whatever, while a control deck will almost always be inclined to take 4. Of course, it's not actual card advantage but it can smooth out your draws by turning an excess land into a business spell so it's not entirely without merit. Still, we're not playing Browbeat so you'll have to weigh how much the ability to turn a land into a spell is worth vs. the disadvantage of letting the enemy take the more advantageous option.

[josch6083]

To be honest, there were times when I drew cards and it felt like running after training with ankle weights. Also, the Bomat proved to be a very good topdeck during the mid-game -I was always happy to draw a Courier instead of any of the Rift Bolt copies I cut in order to make some space. Some of the valuable plays I was able to do with the Courier were:
- Fetching in order to figure out what cards were under the Courier, which translated into cracking it at the best possible moment.
- Being able to comfortably spend my burn spells as removal against Elves, knowing I still had fuel under the Bomat (6 cards!) to reach victory.
- Using it as bate (by the way, it got killed and countered quite often) in order to resolve Pyrostatic Pillar on turn 2.

[/cards]


That is exactly what I experienced. There are so many situations where I want myself to draw a bomat, especially in the late midgame and late game when my Hand is empty and I´m in topdeck mode. Also if I got the choice beetween playing bomat or swiftspear first turn, I prefer Bomat. Played over 80 matches with Bomat and it was always very efficient. Either it dealt 2-3 damage for 1 mana or it dealt damage and you got some extra cards.

Mr Safety said, killing Bomat is bad and he would always kill swiftspear or Goblin Guide. Many of my opponents did this and lost to the 3-4 fresh cards I drew with Bomat. As an opponent you have to handle Bomat or it hits you really bad.

Although I wouldnt cut Rift Bolt. I cut 2 Vortex (=> SB), 1 Grim Lavamncer and 1 price of progress.

After all theese games I still say: Bomat is a weapon we needed. And I love it

[mistercakes]

Just a heads up that lejay went 5-0 with a bomat list. Keep in mind he's probably playing better than most people and his sb decisions are for a modo metagame.

[Mr. Safety]

I've been wrong before, nothing new lol. I'll keep an open mind.

[Ox411]

Ive been playing burn for a long time, i like trying new cards in my deck because sometimes they're good. And sometimes cards that werent good in the past become better as the meta changes.
I remember when chain lightning was a new card and i ditched all my earthquakes.....
Anyway...
Ive been playing exclusively online the past few years and lately I've been testing out 2 couriers. Ive had mixed results. Sometimes theyre really great. As in sac it and win the game immediately with the cards under it. However, a lot of the time it winds up not working out. I havent kept real results of when it's great and when its terrible, but im not really interested in it anymore, im replacing them with 2 risk factors as soon as i can.
Also....ill agree that burn doesnt NEED card advantage to be successful, but it never hurts. Having extra cards, or the ability to choose your next draw is really helpful with almost every magic deck ive ever played. Make yourself some pretend red brainstorm cards and see if a friend will let you play them....getting a choice of 3 cards for your next draw is super helpful.
Obviously such a card will likely never exist, but some kind of card draw/ selecting would be helpful to me in lots of the games i loose.
Something else ive been trying out are wastelands. Im running 18 mountains and 2 wastelands. Theyve been really helpful. Before i put them in some lands were just auto losses.....glacial chasm, dark depths.... Now theyre not. Its also useful against mishras factories and tabernacles. It sometimes holds off hymn to tourachs for a turn or 2, or takes away stp....
Theres lots of situations where its been helpful.
I mostly consider it a spell to take out trouble some lands, but its mana producing ability isnt wasted either. Some of our spells do take colorless mana, pop and all of the 3cc spells i use do. It also pays for daze and thalia....
Every card has ups and downs....and i know it doesny play great with pop, but i can decide when and how to use it before i cast the pop.
And sure there have been times that ive needed a mountain and got a wasteland instead, but what can you do? Sometimes Ive needed a mountain and drawn a lightning bolt too.
Overall ive been happy with the wastelands.
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

[PirateKing]

What is the game plan against Death's Shadow decks? I ran into 3 decks this weekend and tried to adjust the play tempo each time but still couldn't work it out. Going fast puts out a huge Death's Shadow and no way to deal with it. Going slow sees a Gurmag Angler and a well sculpted hand that sucks up and momentum we hope to gain. I thought Risk Factor was good but it ate a Surgical. I thought Exquisite Firecraft was good but it ate a Thoughtsieze.
Any ideas or roadmaps would be helpful.

[Ace/Homebrew]

What's your board look like? If you're already packing Ensnaring Bridge, they seem like what you'd need for either problem.

[JackaBo]

Also if your risk factor ate a surgical you either ancestraled or fireblasted for three, then made opponent discard a card. That’s a great pay off.

[PirateKing]

Ensaring Bridge saw Force of Will when it came up.
It's frustrating in that the answers are clear but getting them into play is just as much a challenge as finding them in a deck without card selection.
I get that it could be an unfavorable matchup, Burn will have them, I just want to make sure the plan is sound.

[Ace/Homebrew]

Yeah... That's rough. Only other advice is to sandbag a Price of Progress and hope it resolves...

[Hanni]

The Death's Shadow matchup shouldn't be a problem. They literally do 10+ damage to themselves. Apply aggressive pressure with your creatures while they self-inflict a bunch of damage to themselves. By the time Death's Shadow or Gurmag Angler hit the board, the opponent should easily be within burn range. Just hold onto your burn spells until you're ready to close it out.

[josch6083]

What is the game plan against Death's Shadow decks? I ran into 3 decks this weekend and tried to adjust the play tempo each time but still couldn't work it out. Going fast puts out a huge Death's Shadow and no way to deal with it. Going slow sees a Gurmag Angler and a well sculpted hand that sucks up and momentum we hope to gain. I thought Risk Factor was good but it ate a Surgical. I thought Exquisite Firecraft was good but it ate a Thoughtsieze.
Any ideas or roadmaps would be helpful.

Against Death Shadow you can´t play it slow! You need to hit him down as much as you can. I would say that the key is more blockers! You have to be able to block Death Shadow 2-3 times and kill your opponent in the meantime. I play more creatures:
4 Goblin Guide
4 monastery Swiftspear
4 Bomat Courier
1-2 Grim Lavamancer
4 Eidolon

That´s 17 creatures. With Bomat you can block, sac and refill your hand with new fuel. Bomat is also great with grim Lavamancer and Risk factor. Anyways, more creatures should help.

[PirateKing]

Problem with playing it fast is I'll end up hellbent with them almost dead, the Push a blocker and swing in with grossly beefy Death's Shadows, holding up Force for my topdeck to seal the deal.
Maybe I'm upselling the implied difficulty too much, I'm not confused how to win. It was just startling going from "this matchup is a bye :D" to "Wow they don't mind getting burned, and now the combat math is all wrong and wow I'm dead x_x"
The caution required to avoid half killing them and then die to the counterattack was unexpected is all. And the fact that one suggestion was to wait until you have lethal +1 spell before going for it and another is just go hog wild and empty your hand ASAP only adds to the notion that this isn't a match you can autopilot.

[Hanni]

Problem with playing it fast is I'll end up hellbent with them almost dead, the Push a blocker and swing in with grossly beefy Death's Shadows, holding up Force for my topdeck to seal the deal.
Maybe I'm upselling the implied difficulty too much, I'm not confused how to win. It was just startling going from "this matchup is a bye :D" to "Wow they don't mind getting burned, and now the combat math is all wrong and wow I'm dead x_x"
The caution required to avoid half killing them and then die to the counterattack was unexpected is all. And the fact that one suggestion was to wait until you have lethal +1 spell before going for it and another is just go hog wild and empty your hand ASAP only adds to the notion that this isn't a match you can autopilot.

But the matchup is basically a bye if you know what you're doing. It's not an auto-pilot bye though, and you can definitely lose if you approach it incorrectly.

[jimytuning]

Why Searing Blood and not Searing Blaze? :rolleyes:

[EronRelentless]

Why Searing Blood and not Searing Blaze? :rolleyes:

Many of the successful lists don't play any Fetchlands, so you can't rely on the Landfall Ability.

[Alex_UNLIMITED]

https://media.wizards.com/2018/rna/en_9a3gp0NJ74.png

Is this card incredibly good in this deck? It's almost like a 1 mana draw 2 spell, but:
- the two cards can't be discarded;
- you must cast them until the end of your next turn;
It says play, not cast, so you can play the lands you draw.

[mistercakes]

yes it's good. it also allows you play fireblast alternate cost as well. i would say easily merits testing 4x.

[Mr. Safety]

https://media.wizards.com/2018/rna/en_9a3gp0NJ74.png

Is this card incredibly good in this deck? It's almost like a 1 mana draw 2 spell, but:
- the two cards can't be discarded;
- you must cast them until the end of your next turn;
It says play, not cast, so you can play the lands you draw.

Just remember that playing the land is contingent on your 1 land a turn allowance; you don't get an extra land drop.

[Alex_UNLIMITED]

Just remember that playing the land is contingent on your 1 land a turn allowance; you don't get an extra land drop.
You can anyway play the exiled land during the following turn.

[Mr. Safety]

You can anyway play the exiled land during the following turn.

Sure thing, just wanted to make sure you understood that it doesn't give you a free land drop. I made that mistake with Act on Impulse once. :tongue:

Even if you flip 2 lands, as long as you haven't made a land drop yet you are guaranteed your next 2 land drops. It's pretty significant if you're looking to get up to 4 lands so you can double Fireblast (or just fireblast and still have 2 lands in play.)

[adrieng]

I have done some slight test with burn, and I think it is really well positionned right now. Except combo the control matchups miracle grixis are favored, the tempo decks (grixis tempo) and others aggroish decks(eldrazi death and taxes, gob), now that drs is gone are too slow to beat burn.

The problem remain the combo decks such as reanimator show and tell storm and depth, I think we can't beat all of them so we have to make choice foccusing either on storm (which the easiest to hate I have found). I like pyrostatic pillar and mindbreak trap in side. The problem with reanimator is that even with 4+ hate cards you will likely lose cause you have to mull into your hate pieces and so you will have no more clock same thing with show and tell and depth, while storm we have already 4 eidolon main. Maybe some karakas in side 3 off might do the trick against reanimator show and tell and depth.

I have found the elf matchup really winnable if we play carefuly blasting creatures is the way to go.

[Cire]

https://media-dominaria.cursecdn.com/attachments/170/363/636826431480868081.jpg

Spectacle Bolt. Does Burn even want to be a 40 Bolt 20 Land deck anymore?

[PirateKing]

I immediately went to do a pro/con for Rift Bolt

Both cost 3 if you want no hoops.

Rift Bolt is fine turn 1, this isn't
Skewer the Critics can be used post combat, but that doesn't play well with Swiftspear pumping
This seems easier to cast with no downside every time however.

[Cire]

Why not run both? Looking at the bolt cards, and trying to stay away from multicolor and the truly bad bolts, I think an updated list could be:


4 Goblin Guide
4 Eidolon of the Great Revel
4 Monastery Swiftspear

4 Lava Spike
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Chain Lightning
4 Rift Bolt
4 Skewer the Critics
4 Fireblast
3 Price of Progress
2 Open Spots for (Sulfuric Vortex, Searing Blaze, Forked Bolt, Grim Lavamancer)

19 Lands

[PirateKing]

Why not run both?

I'm already looking to cut cards to test stuff like Light up the Stage, and Rift Bolt is the weakest card in the deck outside of Searing Blaze with no opposing creatures.

[scaryrawr]

https://media-dominaria.cursecdn.com/attachments/170/363/636826431480868081.jpg

Spectacle Bolt. Does Burn even want to be a 40 Bolt 20 Land deck anymore?

I don't think Legacy/Modern Burn really wants this. I like Rift Bolt over this still. Spectacle doesn't change timing restrictions, and there will be some "AH HA GOT YOU!" Moments, but I don't think it's consistent enough for Burn.

[Cire]

From looking at all the lists there seems to be about 10 open spots all together that are fought between:

Sulfuric Vortex
Searing Blaze
Forked Bolt
Grim Lavamancer
Rift Bolt
Bomat Courier

The question for SKTC is whether it should be included in the above discussion, and I think it should. It seems better than Rift Bolt on each turn other than the 1st (you have about a 40% chance of drawing into 1 of 4 rift bolts turn 1, and by turn 3 you have a 49+% of drawing into 1 of 4 rift bolts, which means that while rift bolt would be better turn 1 (and to be honest you would rather play one of your creatures), by turn 3 SKTC would already seem to be better 9 out of every 100 games simply by drawing into it). How to order the above cards is up to metagame and player choice IMO, but also IMO SKTC > Rift Bolt, but as my list made clear I also think Rift Bolt is a better include that the other cards on that list, so in the 10 open spots, I would include them both).

[silly]

I did some math on the new card, Skewer the Critics. So I don't have to format the entire thing a second time, a link to what I've typed up is here: https://np.reddit.com/r/MTGLegacy/comments/aexrrm/how_awkward_is_rna_skewer_the_critics/

Overall, I definitely think that Skewer is worth testing. Probably in place of some of the flex slots at first. If it turns out to be really good, it can be a 4 of in the main deck. If it's sometimes awkward for you but still pretty good, consider cutting down to less than 4 copies, as multiple copies of Skewer in your hand aren't very good together.

[Ox411]

I've played burn a long time, although most recently only online. Latley I've been doing pretty well. I think some of the recent bannings have really helped burn.
When I have problems, it's usually because I'm flooded with mana or screwed out of it through bad draws, discard or whatever. When I loose games, it's generally not because I didn't have enough bolts. It's because they played something I couldn't answer....jitte, gristlebrand, some giant elderazi....
I think 16 bolts is enough. I even take some out post board sometimes for ensnaring bridge or graffdiggers cage. I'm going to be testing this card, but in place of my rift bolts or lava spikes. I think I need my flex spots to be competitive.
Just blasting away with damage to my opponent while ignoring the cards they play hasn't worked very well for me since like 1999.

[Ronald Deuce]

I've played burn a long time, although most recently only online. Latley I've been doing pretty well. I think some of the recent bannings have really helped burn.
When I have problems, it's usually because I'm flooded with mana or screwed out of it through bad draws, discard or whatever. When I loose games, it's generally not because I didn't have enough bolts. It's because they played something I couldn't answer....jitte, gristlebrand, some giant elderazi....
I think 16 bolts is enough. I even take some out post board sometimes for ensnaring bridge or graffdiggers cage. I'm going to be testing this card, but in place of my rift bolts or lava spikes. I think I need my flex spots to be competitive.
Just blasting away with damage to my opponent while ignoring the cards they play hasn't worked very well for me since like 1999.

I'm not hugely proficient with Burn, but I agree pretty much completely with this. I'm interested to try Light Up the Stage, but I don't really see any reason to double down on Bolts even further. With that said, I can see Skewer to be a good metagame choice or sideboard option against a lot of Chalices.

[mistercakes]

yea i think for burn decks attacking on turn 3 and getting light up the stage into eidolon would be pretty great.

[alvoi]

I think both Skewer and Light Up are really good additions to the deck, what do you think of something like this?

19x Mountain

4x Goblin Guide
4x Monastery Swiftspear
4x Eidolon of the Great Revel

4x Lightning Bolt
4x Chain Lightning
4x Lava Spike
4x Rift Bolt
4x Skewer the Critics
4x Fireblast
3x Price of Progress
2x Light Up the Stage

I would also like to play Risk Factor and Sulfuric Vortex but the flex slots aren't enough. What do you think? In my opinion playing 20x Bolt is too powerful to not do it.

[Ox411]

I think both Skewer and Light Up are really good additions to the deck, what do you think of something like this?

19x Mountain

4x Goblin Guide
4x Monastery Swiftspear
4x Eidolon of the Great Revel

4x Lightning Bolt
4x Chain Lightning
4x Lava Spike
4x Rift Bolt
4x Skewer the Critics
4x Fireblast
3x Price of Progress
2x Light Up the Stage

I would also like to play Risk Factor and Sulfuric Vortex but the flex slots aren't enough. What do you think? In my opinion playing 20x Bolt is too powerful to not do it.

I agree with almost all of your card choices. My deck looks a lot like yours. I run into so much discard and life gain when I play online, the risk factors and vortexes are really important to me.
I'm considering dropping the risk factors for some skewer the critics....but hymn...thoughtseize...duress.inquisition of whatshisname.....lianna....its great to be able to play something from the graveyard.

[alvoi]

Maybe you could move the prices to the sideboard? I don't know your meta, but in some matchups they are really dead cards. So without price and light up you have 5 flex slots, in which you can try 3 vortexes and 2 risk factors. What do you think?

[adrieng]

Did anyone tested light up the stage I have found the card to be very good it is a four off one mana draw 2 is so good don't forget the effect doesn't end at this turn but next turn !!

[Ralf]

Did anyone tested light up the stage I have found the card to be very good it is a four off one mana draw 2 is so good don't forget the effect doesn't end at this turn but next turn !!

What card did you cut ?

[adrieng]

Here is what I am testing, I cut two firebolt one grim lavamancer and one vortex


// 60 Maindeck
// 12 Creature
4 Eidolon of the Great Revel
4 Monastery Swiftspear
4 Goblin Guide

// 1 Enchantment
1 Sulfuric Vortex

// 14 Instant
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Price of Progress
4 Fireblast
2 Searing Blood

// 19 Land
19 Mountain

// 14 Sorcery
4 Chain Lightning
4 Lava Spike
2 Rift Bolt
4 Light Up the Stage


// 15 Sideboard
// 4 Enchantment
SB: 3 Pyrostatic Pillar
SB: 1 Sulfuric Vortex

// 8 Instant
SB: 4 Smash to Smithereens
SB: 2 Mindbreak Trap
SB: 2 Searing Blood

// 3 Land
SB: 3 Karakas

[alvoi]

Here is what I am testing, I cut two firebolt one grim lavamancer and one vortex


2 Searing Blood
2 Rift Bolt


Why are you splitting 2/2 instead of 0/4? Rift Bolt is better almost always

[Ox411]

Im all for card draw and card selection, but the thing that turns me off to light up the stage is that it cant possibly do any damage by itself.
Risk factor often does 4 damage, even magma jet does 2 damage and let's you fiddle with your deck.
It's a good effect, but I think the major thing that burn has going for it is that every single time I tap mana, my opponent either has to have an answer in hand or on the board in order to avoid damage.

[Mr. Safety]

I think the raw efficiency of how Burn enables LutS is what really tips the scales. Getting a draw 2 for R that lets you play both cards over 2 turns is incredible, making it so that drawing lands isn't even that bad. Because of that you can reliably start considering 3 mana cards without having to worry as much about hitting that 3rd land (I'm looking at you Sulfuric Vortex.) Multiple Fireblasts get significantly better, which is hands down the best burn spell in the deck based on raw efficiency. Then there's the sideboard implications; having a way to dig deeper for sideboard cards rather than 'hope I draw/topdeck it' is something Burn could really use, arguably the way to make it break through from tier 2.5-2 up to 1.5, maybe even tier 1 depending on how the metagame shapes up (spoiler: Burn has been doing well lately.) Spending the one mana and one card to potentially accelerate your plan, simply by sometimes giving up 3 damage for a turn, is perfectly reasonable given how slow the format is right now. Burn isn't about speed so much as raw consistency and power. Other decks are faster, other decks are better at controlling the board, and others are better at playing tempo. Take a deck like Burn with raw consistency and power (inevitability essentially) and give it a tool to leverage like Light up the Stage and it gets even better.


It's a good effect, but I think the major thing that burn has going for it is that every single time I tap mana, my opponent either has to have an answer in hand or on the board in order to avoid damage. Savvy blue players know which spells to counter and good burn players know you need to build up to a critical mass of plays in a single turn to break through that. Opponents know they can't avoid damage, so they use their life total as a resource knowing they just need to be at 1 while you are at 0 to win. If they don't know this rule then pretty much any burn list will steam roll them anyways. Better to make deckbuilding choices based on good players than bad ones

[square_two]

Light up the Stage also greatly enhances sideboard hate like Tormod's Crypt/Surgical and Mindbreak Trap. Dig two cards deeper, and even if you exhaust your mana (say doing a Bolt + LutS on T2) then you can still deploy what you find.

Edit: I guess there is a pro/con. Having Mindbreak/Surgical in exile means they are safe from discard. But there is then a time limit (by next turn) to use them if available this way. Hm.

[Mr. Safety]

+1

Good catch.

[Lyle Hopkins]

Glad to see some discussion on here. I, for one, am pretty excited to start testing these new cards. Since the banning, I've been pretty tempted to move Price of Progress to the sideboard, at least for my local meta-game. I'll be testing something similar to this moving forward:

4 Eidolon of the Great Revel
4 Goblin Guide
4 Monastery Swiftspear
4 Fireblast
4 Lightning Bolt
20 Mountain
4 Chain Lightning
4 Lava Spike
4 Rift Bolt
4 Skewer the Critics
4 Light Up the Stage

Sideboard:
3 Pyrostatic Pillar
4 Smash to Smithereens
4 Price of Progress
4 Exquisite Firecraft

[mistercakes]

Light up the Stage also greatly enhances sideboard hate like Tormod's Crypt/Surgical and Mindbreak Trap. Dig two cards deeper, and even if you exhaust your mana (say doing a Bolt + LutS on T2) then you can still deploy what you find.

Edit: I guess there is a pro/con. Having Mindbreak/Surgical in exile means they are safe from discard. But there is then a time limit (by next turn) to use them if available this way. Hm.

good catch. exiling mindbreak trap is a straight up time walk vs storm, and surgical can be close to that vs reanimator. really nice find.

interesting idea lyle moving the price of progress to the sb. i think it's a little risky as it is able to steal games. i'd consider only running 2 skewer (b/c it doesn't work super well with swiftspear) or 2 lava spike and keeping 2 PoP.

[SecondSunrise]

I am really excited about LutS, and have started testing 4 in my burn list, it is pretty much the standard configuration of 19 lands and all 4-ofs beside 2 Searing Blood (+2 Side), 2 Rift Bolt (which is VERY awkward with LutS since Suspend does not work from exile) and 1 Sulfuric Vortex, the reasoning being that LutS makes it easier to hit that 3rd Landdrop, as others have pointed out before.

So far it has been an amazing Topdeck, but in the early turns I have almost never found a good opportunity to deploy it, since it is almost always better to get some pressure going with creatures. This leads me to suspect that the correct number for LutS is porbably closer to 2-3, but more testing is recquired.

As for the SB, this is what I'm trying for the moment:

2 Tormod's Crypt
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Searing Blood
3 Smash to Smithereens
3 Exquisite Firecraft
3 Pyrostatic Pillar

This is very experimental and the numbers are not set in stone at all. Crypt might be better thatn Surgical since it can be put into play off LutS right away for example. Time will tell.

[Mr. Safety]

good catch. exiling mindbreak trap is a straight up time walk vs storm, and surgical can be close to that vs reanimator. really nice find.

interesting idea lyle moving the price of progress to the sb. i think it's a little risky as it is able to steal games. i'd consider only running 2 skewer (b/c it doesn't work super well with swiftspear) or 2 lava spike and keeping 2 PoP.

If PoP isn't doing 4+ damage consistently because of the metagame, it deserves to be in the sideboard.

[Ronald Deuce]

So far it has been an amazing Topdeck, but in the early turns I have almost never found a good opportunity to deploy it, since it is almost always better to get some pressure going with creatures. This leads me to suspect that the correct number for LutS is porbably closer to 2-3, but more testing is recquired.

I didn't want to be the first person to say it, but I think you're right that a full quad of Light Up the Stage is probably a bit too many. Feels a bit rough to draw in multiples. I was gonna try 3x when mine show up in the mail.

My plan is to replace maindeck anti-creature cards, of which I'm still running two (Searing Blaze). Might drop back to 19 lands to fit the third Light.

A couple of probably noob-ish questions I hope aren't taking things off track:

—Why Searing Blood over Searing Blaze? Does running fetches impact this decision?
—I've rarely ever connected with Price of Progress (though Eldrazi wasn't around much last time I was hitting tournaments regularly); much more often it's served as a Time Walk against Force decks. Am I just doing it wrong?

[scaryrawr]

I don't think Legacy/Modern Burn really wants this. I like Rift Bolt over this still. Spectacle doesn't change timing restrictions, and there will be some "AH HA GOT YOU!" Moments, but I don't think it's consistent enough for Burn.

I was wrong about Skewer the Critics. Tried it last night (4 Skewers), seems great. I'm trying out 3 Light up the Stage (LutS), I only drew 1, hit a bolt and land off of it. It didn't feel good or bad. I'm not sure how much I want to be trying LutS, there were games I had it but just held it the entire time since I was able to be going like crazy. My list was really weird though, but I already have a plan for those slots.

[Ox411]

I've also been enjoying the new cards.
I crammed in 4 light up the stage and 3 skewer the critics, by taking out 3 pop, 3 risk factor and dropping back to 19 lands.

Both cards were good by themselves, but I felt like having so many spectacle cards was messing with my plays.

I took the skewers back out to put the pop back in. 4 damage cards are huge for me, I can't even count the number of games I've lost with my opponent at 1 life.

The only downsides to light up the stage that I've run into so far are that you cant suspend rift bolt from exile, and it can make swiftspear less good.

Those 2 extra playable cards are awesome though.

I might drop down to 3 light up the stage, and I might try to replace a rift bolt or 2, but I highly recommended trying light up the stage.

[silinhateamtop]

I do not think Light Up the Stage (LutS) is good at Burn. You will often have to attack first with Monastery Swiftspear and you will lose your trigger. Imagine a situation where you have Monastery in play + Bolt and LutS in hand. You will only want to spend the Bolt if it is to hit lethal on your opponent. Otherwise you will hold for eventual removal, or to cast in response to something.
I think if you want to manipulate the top of the deck you must play UR Burn.

Already, Skewer the Critics is very good. I am running a list like that of Patrick Sullivan, with 4 of everything, 20 lands and 4 Flame Rift (in this case I use Skewer the Critics) the deck is very good against Chalice and contra combo Decks.

[alvoi]

Glad to see some discussion on here. I, for one, am pretty excited to start testing these new cards. Since the banning, I've been pretty tempted to move Price of Progress to the sideboard, at least for my local meta-game. I'll be testing something similar to this moving forward:

4 Eidolon of the Great Revel
4 Goblin Guide
4 Monastery Swiftspear
4 Fireblast
4 Lightning Bolt
20 Mountain
4 Chain Lightning
4 Lava Spike
4 Rift Bolt
4 Skewer the Critics
4 Light Up the Stage

Sideboard:
3 Pyrostatic Pillar
4 Smash to Smithereens
4 Price of Progress
4 Exquisite Firecraft

I love the maindeck, very solid, but I would consider to cut the 20th land to add another burn spell (like Flame Rift) or a copy of Risk Factor. The sideboard is nice but I would play one more Pyrostatic Pillar instead of the fourth Smash to Smithereens, but it could be a meta call

[DanzBorin]

I'm surprised so many of you aren't running Lavamancers and Fetches. Really helps the decks against control and makes it more consistent.

I also run a Taiga main deck for sideboard enchantment/artifact removal. Destructive Revelry is a great SB card that has helped me many times.

Are most of you running against decks with no creatures? We have so many decks with creatures of 2 or less power that Searing Blood is an all-star. I'm usually more glad to draw it than most other cards. Miracles, Delver, Stoneblade, D&T, and many others just crumble to it.

I do need to test LUTS. Looks very promising to help draw some extra cards when you are gassed.

[ThomasDowd]

Is the consensus on the combo matchups to just give up on them? Like Sneak, Depths variants, GY decks( BR reanimator, dredge). I was playing flame rifts for a bit to race them but it feels super tough. I am unsure how many sideboard slots even fight that cross section past 4 ish slots. my gut says give up and hope to dodge, but that never feels great.

Has anyone found certain cards/ styles to be more effective versus the combo slice of the meta?

[Ox411]

The decks just mentioned are hard to beat...here's what I do, but I still loose a lot.

Playing ensnaring bridge off my opponents show and tell is one of my favorite things to do in all of magic...but it doesnt always help. I run 3 ensnaring bridge in my side. They work for a bunch of decks...dark depths, some reanimation decks, elderazi...

I was running 2 wastelands for a little while to help with dark depths and glacial chasms. It usually worked the first time, but when people are expecting it they seem to be able to play around it. The wasteland were helpful against other decks pretty often, but not often enough, I took them out. I do miss them sometimes...

Grafdiffers cage is my card of choice for grave yard hate. I play 3 of them in my side and I'll mull down to 0 to try and get one, because if I don't play it on the first turn or 2 I'm going to loose anyway.

After they banned drs I took out my searing cards. I play volcanic fallout in the side, sometimes 2 sometimes 3. And for the few MUST kill creatures i see, theres still 12 bolts. And fire fireblasts if I have to.

I'm also interested in hearing other peoples sideboard strategy.

[B4t34u1vr3]

I've been messing around with this deck in MTGO for a few weeks:

19 Mountain

4 Goblin Guide
4 Vexing Devil

4 Lightning Bolt
4 Chain Lightning
4 Rift Bolt
4 Lava Spike
4 Price of Progress
3 Light Up the Stage
3 Skewer the Critics
3 Sulfuric Vortex
4 Fireblast

Side

4 Red Elemental Blast
4 Pyrostatic Pillar
4 Smash to Smithereens
3 Exquisite Firecraft

What do you think of it? I might switch Light Up The Stage/Skewer for Swiftspear (it feels kinda slow compared to Vexing for that turn 3 win) or something and eventually spend ~40$ on 4 Eidolons. I can win all matches except against Reanimator (they're online with Giselbrand or Iona usually on the 1st turn), Storm (might get Mindbreak Trap eventually) or Belcher (not going to spend ~40$ on Surgical Extraction)...

[Kriggy]

I dont think vexing devil is better than swiftspear. To me it looks like high risk - high reward card compared to swiftspear which might deal less damage but deals reliably 2-3 damage per game then it probably depends if you want to be more "all in" or more "slower and consistent". Can you describe more how it works for you?

Also, storm matchup should be OK with eidolons and pillar in SB (Im just building the deck in paper and while we have a storm player, I only played burn online on cockatrice and havent met storm yet).
Reanimator is bad but having some faerie macabre in SB could help BUT their nut draw is just unbeatable. THe question is if its wothy to decicate the SB for this mathcup or just ditch it and use the SB slots for other matchups

[Octopusman]

Is there a place for Dreadhorde Arcanist?

Dreadhorde Arcanist
1R
Creature - Zombie Wizard

Trample

Whenever Dreadhorde Arcanist attacks, you may cast target instant or sorcery card with converted mana cost less than or equal to Dreadhorde Arcanist's power from your graveyard without paying its mana cost. If that card would be put into your graveyard this turn, exile it instead."

illus. G-Most Lee # 125/264

SRC

1/3

[Glass House]

Unfortunately I don't think that Dreadhorde Arcanist is good enough. It is already weakened by being 2 mana and not immediately impacting the board. It hits for a feeble 1 damage. And then it can only cast Lightning Bolt, Lava Spike and Chain Lightning - compare this to Harness the Storm, which doesn't see any play (I know both cards have major differences, but I think that people would have flirted with Harness if Burn really wanted to recast its graveyard).

[PirateKing]

Harness the Storm is a wildly different card, the cards aren't free so your costs are doubled and you scope of spells to cast is very limited. Apples and Oranges.

Dreadhorde Arcanist fueled with Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Lava Spike is a 4/3 for 1R. That's how you have to value it.
If it had Haste it might be worth considering, but I don't think we can afford such a weak turn 2 play as this.
Eidolon "does nothing" the turn it comes down but casts such a wide net in the format he makes the cut.

[Ox411]

has anyone found anything good to do with iona shield of emeria?

after shes cast.

some kind of colorless spell? or an effective way to splash something with the sideboard?

i hate that card so much.

goblin recruiter is too powerful to be allowed, but iona is just fine?

[Glass House]

Maybe if Iona is the one specific card that is giving you trouble you could try splashing white for Path to Exile?
But Burn inherently has a weakness against combo, so if your meta has a lot of combo you are better off just playing some other deck. On the other hand there are many grave hate cards so if the only combo deck bothering you is Reanimator you should load up your sideboard with hate. But that will only get you so far because, again, Burn is just plain bad against combo.

[mistercakes]

has anyone found anything good to do with iona shield of emeria?

after shes cast.

some kind of colorless spell? or an effective way to splash something with the sideboard?

i hate that card so much.

goblin recruiter is too powerful to be allowed, but iona is just fine?

Karakas

[AmokPL]

has anyone found anything good to do with iona shield of emeria?

after shes cast.

some kind of colorless spell? or an effective way to splash something with the sideboard?

i hate that card so much.

goblin recruiter is too powerful to be allowed, but iona is just fine?

I doubt she has ever been cast so if you bounce her back you wont see her again. Karakas seems like a good answer.

[scaryrawr]

has anyone found anything good to do with iona shield of emeria?

after shes cast.

some kind of colorless spell? or an effective way to splash something with the sideboard?

i hate that card so much.

goblin recruiter is too powerful to be allowed, but iona is just fine?

Hmm... So, reanimator (only deck I know that has Iona), is just a bad matchup. Typically you want to stop or win before Iona, Shield of Emeria comes into play, there's not really a way to answer that deck once Iona or Griselbrand comes into play. Grim Lavamancer I've felt is pretty effective against Iona if you've had enough early game pressure being able to just start flinging your graveyard at face to finish them off.

If you're looking for specific splashes, I saw someone recommend Path to Exile, I kind of like Chained to the Rocks since it can hit Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, which Show and Tell is a pretty bad matchup as well. Some folks have found success with 4 Karakas in the side or Leyline of the Void.

The thing with Burn is that you just have a bunch of matchups you realistically can't beat without specifically packing hate for it, and even with the hate pieces, it's still a really bad matchup. Depending on your meta it could make sense or might not make sense to pack the sideboard hate, I tend to be on the side of just accepting that some matchups aren't worth worrying about (unless it's your weekly local meta, then definitely pack the hate).

[Unlif3]

Hello,
I'm considering playing the deck for a big upcoming tournament (MKM Paris) - not a budget choice as I do have other decks available, but a meta choice - no slot in the 75 dedicated to the unwinnable S&T/Depths/Belcher-esque MUs, let's just pray & dodge them.
I'm playing a MD that I want to be redundant (no weird 1-ofs here and there) : 19 lands, 12 creatures (0 Lavamancer), 4 Pop/3 FB, 20 Bolts, 2 Vortices. No Light Up the Stage, i'm really not fond of the card.

I, however, kind of fail to design a sideboard that's designed to beat especially what I think will be prevalent - i.e. Stoneforge / Karn-Lattice.dec without feeling that I'm overboarding in some MUs.

- I know that I want 4 graveyard-hates at least. I'm reluctant about the black Leylines, they're the basic expected grave-hate and, for instance, Reanimator will always side Reverent Silence in. I'm considering a 3/1 Surgical/Macabre split, for the 3 Surgical also come in handy vs. Loam strategies, despite being admittedly a "softer" hate.
- I think I want 4 copies of Smash.
- I want some number of Exquisite Firecraft, 2-3 seems correct. This card exactly does what I want it to do : beat blue, fair decks. It's also an okay card to side in in MUs where you have dead cards (like the mirror) because, well, it's damage to the face at least.
- I'm on the fence about Ensnaring Bridge. Siding it in vs cheat-a-dumb-fatty.dec (Sneak, DD) is okayish but won't magically make those good MUs. It's a good card vs. TNN, BSkull, Angler, Eldrazis. I'm wondering whether siding them in vs. UW Stoneblade is a sound choice (keeps TNN/Skull at bay), because in that precise MU I already want 4 Smash and the Exquisites, and I don't have a lot of things to sideboard out - Price of Progress, Goblin Guide on the draw (?). Isn't Ensnaring Bridge "too much" in a SB that's already deep in fighting fair decks?
- Last cards that round out my SB are 2 copies of Pyrostatic Pillar. I think those are good and here to stay.

So, to put it shortly, whenever I'm playing Ensnaring Bridge I feel that I have too many cards to side in. Does anyone have a proper sideboarding table - even with a slightly different 75, the idea is rather to see the rationale behind the ins and outs in every MU.
If not Bridge, what would you see in the sideboard instead ? Not fond of the idea of splashing, I think this comes at too high of a cost - I want Wasteland to read "nonbasic Wastes" and Stifle to read "uh, this could counter a Rift Bolt or a Sulfuric Vortex trigger, why am I playing this shit already" (no interest in playing fetches, I play 0 Lavamancer, 0 Searing Blaze and it's been mathematically proven that the "thinning" is negligible). I also don't like Pyroblast - that's not a card Burn should play. I also have no interest in playing Alpine Moon or *cough cough* Island of Wak-Wak.

Hf slinging bolts !

[Ox411]

I play a very similar deck to the one listed in the last post.
However,
- i play 4 luts, and 16 bolts.
- I play 3 pop, and 4 fireblast.

We could debate these differences forever, I suspect...

But sideboards...

My side is:
3 graffdiggers cage
3 ensnaring bridge
3 smash
1 vortex
2 pillars
3 "something else" right now its volcanic fallout.

If I'm siding in the cage, I probably lost the first game. So I'm on the play and i mull to the cage, and win. Or i dont get it and loose.

The bridge is helpful a lot. Reanimation, show and tell sometimes, elderazi, it even helps against small creature decks sometimes, theres lots of games I have 0 cards in hand.

Smashes are great, sometimes I play with 4 in the side and take out the vortex...

Vortexes are great. Life gain is such a pain in the ass. Think about it, if EVERY deck you played against Somehow got 25 or 30 life, racing gets so tough. And it helps in long games, or games you cant attack in. My 2 main deck ones are here to stay,but sometimes I think the 3rd is overkill and take it out for the 4th smash.

If I could play more eidolons I would. Not having a body makes the pillars less attractive so I don't main deck any, but it so effective against a lot of decks to have the extra. Blue decks, elves, monks....

The something else cards.....I play almost exclusively online. Right now I'm seeing a ton of elves and something with zillions of white monks....the volcanic fallouts are what I like right now.

The only deck I play against that I feel like is an almost sure loss is dark depths. Occasionally the bridge helps with that, but mostly not. I might get lucky and double fireblast early to win, but mostly not. Occasionally I've put 3 wasteland in my "something else" sideboard slot...they didnt help that much either...if I spend a day playing online,
I'm sure to play against dark depths 2 or 3 times out of 10. So .I am looking for ideas in this matchup, I might dedicate 3 sb slots to it, if the cards have some use in at least a few other matchups.

Good one about alpine Moon and island of wak wak ...

I'd like to hear other peoples side boarding strategies as well.

[mistercakes]

New leyline is pretty good. Not sure if it helps bad matchups but might make some matchups even better. Certainly helps the storm matchup, especially paired with eidolon. If it can deal 4 damage a game or more it should probably have some consideration.

[Bl4ckbird92]

I play a very similar deck to the one listed in the last post.
However,
- i play 4 luts, and 16 bolts.
- I play 3 pop, and 4 fireblast.

We could debate these differences forever, I suspect...

But sideboards...

My side is:
3 graffdiggers cage
3 ensnaring bridge
3 smash
1 vortex
2 pillars
3 "something else" right now its volcanic fallout.

If I'm siding in the cage, I probably lost the first game. So I'm on the play and i mull to the cage, and win. Or i dont get it and loose.

The bridge is helpful a lot. Reanimation, show and tell sometimes, elderazi, it even helps against small creature decks sometimes, theres lots of games I have 0 cards in hand.

Smashes are great, sometimes I play with 4 in the side and take out the vortex...

Vortexes are great. Life gain is such a pain in the ass. Think about it, if EVERY deck you played against Somehow got 25 or 30 life, racing gets so tough. And it helps in long games, or games you cant attack in. My 2 main deck ones are here to stay,but sometimes I think the 3rd is overkill and take it out for the 4th smash.

If I could play more eidolons I would. Not having a body makes the pillars less attractive so I don't main deck any, but it so effective against a lot of decks to have the extra. Blue decks, elves, monks....

The something else cards.....I play almost exclusively online. Right now I'm seeing a ton of elves and something with zillions of white monks....the volcanic fallouts are what I like right now.

The only deck I play against that I feel like is an almost sure loss is dark depths. Occasionally the bridge helps with that, but mostly not. I might get lucky and double fireblast early to win, but mostly not. Occasionally I've put 3 wasteland in my "something else" sideboard slot...they didnt help that much either...if I spend a day playing online,
I'm sure to play against dark depths 2 or 3 times out of 10. So .I am looking for ideas in this matchup, I might dedicate 3 sb slots to it, if the cards have some use in at least a few other matchups.

Good one about alpine Moon and island of wak wak ...

I'd like to hear other peoples side boarding strategies as well.

you Should bring 1-3 Pithing needles it helps also in various other matchups ;)

[jimytuning]

I am currently playing this list:

4 Eidolon of the Great Revel
4 Goblin Guide
4 Monastery Swiftspear
1 Sulfuric Vortex
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Price of Progress
4 Fireblast
4 Chain Lightning
4 Rift Bolt
4 Lava Spike
2 Skewer the Critics
2 Light Up the Stage
8 Mountain
4 Arid Mesa
2 Wooded Foothills
4 Bloodstained Mire
1 Scalding Tarn

SIDEBOARD
2 Ensnaring Bridge
2 Faerie Macabre
2 Pyrostatic Pillar
3 Smash to Smithereens
3 Searing Blaze
3 Exquisite Firecraft

Is it worth 2 Light Up the Stage or do I put the 4 Skewer the Critics?
Sulfuric Vortex main (d&t) or side?

[Ox411]

I'd like to talk about sunbaked canyon as well.

My list has been:
19 mountain
16 bolts
12 creatures (eidolon, guide, swiftspear)
3 pop
4 fireblast
4 light up the stage
2 vortex

I've been pretty happy with the list, but now that I have 4 sunbaked canyons, I'm interested in going up to 20 lands.
My first thought was to go down to 3 fireblast.
My 2 "fringe" cards, luts and vortex have been pretty helpful...
Luts gives me access to more cards, helps with mana screw, and protects cards from discard.
I run into alot of life gain when I play online. The vortexes are worth it to me for that alone, the damage is like a bonus.
I do want to see a fireblast every game, but usually not 2 and never early on.
Light up the stage and now sunbaked canyon let me see more of my deck in any given game then ever before.

Is it reasonable to drop a fireblast to fit in the 20th land?
Or do I stay at 19 lands?

Thanks for your thoughts.

[gRR!!]

Hey there folks,

I've been playing Burn this last months, since Ravnica Allegiance's spectacle cards came out, and I'm really satisfied with it. This last Saturday I finished 3rd at the June edition of the Catalan legacy League (41 players) with this list:

Maindeck:
2 Arid Mesa
2 Bloodstained Mire
10 Mountain
2 Scalding Tarn
2 Wooded Foothills
4 Eidolon of the Great Revel
4 Goblin Guide
4 Monastery Swiftspear
4 Chain Lightning
4 Fireblast
4 Lava Spike
4 Light Up the Stage
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Price of Progress
4 Rift Bolt
2 Skewer the Critics
Sideboard:
3 Karakas
3 Ensnaring Bridge
3 Searing Blaze
4 Smash to Smithereens
2 Surgical Extraction

I played against this matchups:
Round 1 vs Miracles, won 2-0 (WW), OTD G1
Round 2 vs Miracles, won 2-0 (WW), OTD G1
Round 3 vs Death and Taxes, lost 1-2 (WLL), OTP G1
Round 4 vs 4c Loam, won 2-1 (WLW), OTP G1
Round 5 vs Miracles, won 2-1 (WLW), OTP G1
Round 6 vs Stoneblade, won 2-0 (WW), OTP G1. I was paired down so I had to play last round. At least I was 1st seed thanks to that!
Top 8 vs 4c Loam (same player as Round 4), won 2-0 (WW), OTP G1
Top 4 vs Miracles (same player as Round 2), lost 0-2 (LL), OTP G1

I was lucky with my match-ups, not a single combo deck in all day. The rounds I lost was simply because deck stopped working during 2-3 turns (I was mana flooded vs Death and Taxes and in the 1st game vs Miracles in Top4, and in the 2nd one I kept a risky one lander after a mulligan and I never saw the 2nd land).

I'm really happy with my configuration; I don't think that there is any need to play Sulfuric Vortex maindeck, you should be faster that any life gain (Stoneforge Mystic should die just after hitting the battlefield, and by the time the opponent deploys any Batterskull, he should be already dead). Spectacle cards, especially LUtS, are exactly what the deck needed to keep pressing opponent's life total. Regarding the sideboard, I think right now we need 4 StS; there is a lot of Chalice decks, and they are also extra useful vs Death and Taxes. A lot of my opponents are aware of that I play Karakas sideboard, but you can always sneak a game against Sneak Show/Reanimator/Dark Depths with them (or at least buy a couple ot turns, which should be enough a lot of times). Bridges are also great against Sneak Show and migt be useful against a lot of other decks (even Canadian!). I'm always on the fence about playing 4 Minbdreak Trap or not; this time I decided not to play them and I was lucky (there was 5-6 Storm decks in the tournament). I replaced them with Blazes (I'm not really sold on them, getting landfall when we need it is not always easy) and Surgicals, that I had just sided in vs Loam but never saw them nor need them.

Now, with the infamous London Mulligan, I think there will be changes to be made, especially in sideboard. I'll play 4 Leyline of the Void for sure, and I'll keep playing 4 Smash to Smithereens, 3 Karakas and 3 Bridges. This left me with just one slot, and I'm not sure how to fill it (right now I'm thinking about 1 Exquisite Firecraft or 1 Surgical Extraction). What is sure is that I'll drop Searing Blaze, so there will no need to play Fetchlands. I'll switch to 18 Mountains and see what happens.

That's my two cents, thanks for reading!

[Secretly.A.Bee]

If you have problems with flooding occasionally, why do you believe that dropping fetches is a good idea?

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk

[gRR!!]

Well, I lost 6 games in the whole tournament and only was flooded in two of them, so this is not really worrying me right now. It concerns me more not to micro-mana-screwing myself if I have to fetch (and thus remove a land from the deck) when I'm low on mana. Anyway it is supposed tan the thinning effect of fetchlands is more or less negligible, and I prefer not to opening myself to random Stifles/life loss unnecessarily.

(I should also say that the idea of playing only 17 Mountains instead of 18 is appealing me)

[Ox411]

hows it going?

im seeing some burn decks that are running a mix of mountains and snow covered mountains.
there arent any cards in these decks that benefit from the inclusion of snow lands.

normally i run all the same art (non snow covered) mountains, to help disguise my hand a little when people are looking at it.

the only rational that ive come across for running a mix of snow and not snow covered is that it helps hedge against someone blindly casting predict targeting me and naming mountain. and since theres really no reason not to, why not use this tiny little bit of possible help?

does anyone here have any thoughts on this?

thanks

[Dowws]

hows it going?

im seeing some burn decks that are running a mix of mountains and snow covered mountains.
there arent any cards in these decks that benefit from the inclusion of snow lands.

normally i run all the same art (non snow covered) mountains, to help disguise my hand a little when people are looking at it.

the only rational that ive come across for running a mix of snow and not snow covered is that it helps hedge against someone blindly casting predict targeting me and naming mountain. and since theres really no reason not to, why not use this tiny little bit of possible help?

does anyone here have any thoughts on this?

thanks

Hello! The main reason for this (if you look back to DnT running 6 snow plains, and 6 plains, is for the miracles matchup mostly for the card predict. Since you’re running 18-20 lands, if they are all mountains, they have a higher probability to hit because of that.

[PirateKing]

Is Chaos Warp our only answer to things like Leyline of Sanctity or Circle of Protection: Red?
Looking for whatever catchall answers mono red has

[Stuart]

I haven't played Legacy for a while, but been testing Burn recently. List is inspired by gRR's, because the last time I played one of his lists (Vintage White Eldrazi) it felt great. For reference:

4 Swiftspear
4 Goblin Guide
4 Eidolon

4 Bolt
4 Chain Lightning
4 Lava Spike
4 Rift Bolt
2 Skewer the Critics
4 Light Up the Stage
4 Price of Progress
4 Fireblast

18 Mountain

4 Smash to Smithereens
2 Exquisite Firecraft
3 Faerie Macabre
3 Ensnaring Bridge
3 Karakas

A few questions for y'all:
- Do you bring in Ensnaring Bridge against Stoneblade and other equipment decks? I was assuming you try to win just by keeping Batterskull and Jitte off the board, but if you can't, you lose. (Sulfuric Vortex would be another answer, though I'm not currently playing it.)
- Are any of you guys cutting Price of Progress? Nonbasics seem like they're at an all-time low.
- How's everyone feeling about Skewer the Critics? It's felt pretty weak to me; wondering if I should turn it into a utility spell, like Sulfuric Vortex or a Searing effect.

[Eldariel]

I haven't run PoP main in a long time. I find it's too conditional. Yes, it's amazing when it does its thing but it can't clear the way for our creatures (something we care about way more nowadays than when the deck had Spark Elementals and 36 Bolt variants) and you can't cast it early. It's occasionally the only card that can win you the game and thus having some number can be valuable, but Miracles is all but immune, fast combo decks rarely have enough lands in play to make it worthwhile (and Depths-variants have a lot of resilience to it thanks to Crop Rotation, Thespian's Stage and company), and D&T-style decks can use their own Wastelands to great effect to lessen its utility and so on. It's obviously incredible against Lands and pretty great against Grixis control and quite playable vs. many Delver-variants, but it's not nearly reliably strong enough against Delver-decks, Depths-decks (save again Lands) nor Chalice-decks to warrant the MD slot. That said, all the currently performing Burn-lists run 3-4 PoP. It's still THE Get Out Of Jail For Free card and seems to be the only way for the deck to pack enough power to win so don't listen to me.

In a metagame this heavy on control I love Sulfuric and I've run two copies MD in the past with one more in the side. It's a great proactive threat that also doubles as an answer to some cards burn just can't deal with otherwise. It's pretty much the only "oops, I win" we have for many MUs. That said, SB slots seem better spent on Exquisite Firecraft so if you run some Sulfurics (with the amount of Stoneforges around, I think you should), they should probably be MD.

Bridge is not a bad plan in a very creature-heavy environment, but I don't like Bridges and 12 attacking (non-Grim) creatures in the same deck (and not playing them obviously makes Light up the Stage and Skewer the Critics nigh' unplayable). Thus if you run Bridge I'd shave some creatures (Swiftspear can always attack under Bridge though when you have Bridge down, enemy is generally in a position where you can't attack anyways) and rely more on burn to the face to finish the game. I actually like MD Bridges a fair bit right now. Depending on MU they allow you to just spend time playing control and then switch to burning face when the Bridge comes down and it's something people rarely expect out of burn G1 so they might not save their FoWs for it. It obviously has incredible value against Depths-, Reanimator- and SnT decks to the point that if you get it down they often can't win G1 (Br has the Tidespout occasionally and there's generally some number of Decays/Trophies in Turbo Depths but they don't reliably have access to those, certainly not before you kill 'em) and if you want it vs. Blade or Delver/Shadow decks, it's at its best G1 where they generally have nothing but counters or discard for dealing with it. Of course, white decks rarely have efficient answers available in their 75; generally that slot goes to something like Council's Judgment or whatever. Burning Bridges is thus not a bad plan there but it gets far worse when they know to save counters for it.


Sulfuric and Bridge really compete for slots; both are 3-mana "I win" effects for the same match-ups but the 3-mana part is a huge downside in this deck, all the more so with Light up the Stage taking an extra mana nowadays on many turns. You might need up to 4 mana to play 'em off it. Those cards really reward sleek deck design.

I don't think there's ever been this much unanimity on the correct Burn-list. 18-19 lands (including some number of Sunbaked Canyons and/or Barbarian Rings, fetches if Grim), 11-13 creatures (1 Grim), 14-16 Bolts (Rift/Chain/Spike/Bolt), 3-4 Fireblast, 3-4 LutS, 0-4 StC, 3-4 PoP, 0-1 Sulfuric. The addition of LutS has made the low land count much more reliable and enables playing some more expensive cards but at the same time, you want to cast both things you draw so you really don't want more than 1-2 three drops in the deck since hitting a 3-drop off it means one card is wasted. Some of the recent top lists have omitted Skewer the Critics but a clear majority plays 2-4. This doesn't mean it's correct. I don't like the card. But clearly it does something useful. Obviously it's useful as a tool past Chalice.


So yeah, going off this, your list seems to hit the consensus though your landbase could probably use 1-2 Barb Rings or some Sunbaked Canyons. I'm actually a bit surprised MD Blazes/Bloods aren't performing better when the new supercard is Dreadhorde Arcanist and Delver-decks appear to be at an all-time high. Searing Blaze obviously has issues due to the deck's low land count making it very restricted when you can use it while Searing Blood needs to kill the creature to Bolt the enemy. Still, you'd think they'd be getting plenty of value in this environment. I guess the sleek "all Bolts"-plan is just better though.

[gRR!!]

I haven't played Legacy for a while, but been testing Burn recently. List is inspired by gRR's, because the last time I played one of his lists (Vintage White Eldrazi) it felt great

Hey, thank you!

I haven't played Burn in the last months (I switched back to Omni-Tell), but a friend of mine that is still playing it told me after last tournament that he felt PoP pretty underwhelming, mainly for the reasons Eldariel stated above. And the list that made Top 8 in the last Catalan Legacy League played exactly zero copies in the 75. This was the list for reference:

Top 8 - Carles Benguerel - Burn
Maindeck:
17 Snow-Covered Mountain
4 Eidolon of the Great Revel
4 Goblin Guide
4 Monastery Swiftspear
4 Chain Lightning
4 Exquisite Firecraft
4 Fireblast
3 Flame Rift
4 Lava Spike
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Rift Bolt
4 Skewer the Critics
Sideboard:
4 Faerie Macabre
1 Ingot Chewer
4 Ensnaring Bridge
4 Smash to Smithereens
2 Sulfuric Vortex

Some pretty peculiar choices if you ask me (no PoP nor LotS, 4 skewer the critics, 3 flame rifts and only 17 mountains, although Carles' lists usually run very low on lands). Right now, I think I would try to cram some Sulfuric Vortex maindeck so we don't have to worry so much against equipments, and maybe move 2 PoP to sideboard (I don't feel ready to cut them off completely). If I had to sleeve the deck today, I think I'd play something like this:

18 Mountain
12 Guide+Eidolon+Monastery
16 LBolt+Chain+RBolt+Spike
4 Fireblast
4 LutS
2 PoP
2 Vortex
2 Skewer/Exquisite Firecraft

3 Karakas (great if opponent doesn't expect it; give us some time vs Depths, Reanimator playing Iona on red, etc)
2 PoP (it's so good vs Eldrazi or other Chalice decks that it doesn't feel right to cut them off IMHO)
3 Faerie Mac (self-explaining against Reanimator, can even help us vs ANT if opponent side off discard or is under pressure)
4 StS (too good against Chalice decks to play less than four)
3 Bridge (cost 3 is extremely expensive and slow, but is the better tool we have vs Sneak Show or even fair, slower decks like Canadian or BUG)

Generally, I hate playing cards with playing cost > 2 with Burn, I feel that they are slow and clunky (hence Stuart's list). It seems that I never see exactly three lands playing Burn; I see 1, 2, or 12 :rolleyes:. But this might be the time to dust off Vortexs and maybe Firecrafts.

Just my 2 cents!

EDIT to try to make the post legible, I suck at English

[Stuart]

This is awesome feedback! Thanks guys. Using my above list, I guess I'm inclined to go:
- Maindeck: -2 Price of Progress, -2 Skewer, +2 Flame Rift, +2 Sulfuric Vortex
- Sideboard: -1 Exquisite Firecracaft, +1 Price of Progress

[Scott]

Ben Stecher top 8'ed GP Atlanta with Burn today

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EFF9I1YXYAEEoeP.jpg

[PirateKing]

0 Light up the Stage & 4 Exquisite Firecraft main? Hymn to Tourach seems like a real threat. Also curious what the average damage done by Price of Progress was. I know Depths decks are at a high count right now, but so are Astrolabe basic heavy decks.
Either way congratulations to them, rare to see a deck get a prize worth more than itself.

[Alex_UNLIMITED]

Ben Stecher top 8'ed GP Atlanta with Burn today

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EFF9I1YXYAEEoeP.jpg

I don't understand the sideboard. Is Alpine Moon good against Depths? I think it's really bad. Why there is a Skewer the Critics in the sideboard?

[Dowws]

I don't understand the sideboard. Is Alpine Moon good against Depths? I think it's really bad. Why there is a Skewer the Critics in the sideboard?

So let’s address each question individually. “Is alpine moon good against depths?” Your answer is “I think it’s very bad.” I think your answer is semi-correct. I don’t think it’s amazing, but what better option do you have? This allows for t1 swift spear, t2 alpine moon +bolt. Therefore, it keeps tempo pretty well. Blood moon is too slow. And you’re really just trying to buy enough time to burn your opponent out. 2nd question “why there is a skewer the critics in the sideboard?” I think this is for when it’s about tempo, or racing. Let’s say storm, you want as many bolt affects as possible because you’re trying to turn 3 them, so cut he 2 mana spells, for a lean 1 mana 3 dmg spell as possible.

[Eldariel]

OTOH I really understand 4xExquisite in this meta; much of the control-decks rely on countering your last burn spells while finishing you off and 4 Exquisites makes that all but impossible. All in all, this seems like an excellent topdecking list in that almost all the spells bolt the face with no fuss. Light up the Stage has the simple issue that it needs an enabler and forces you to thus play a tad differently - and when you're running 4 three-drops, it becomes much worse with you not being consistently able to cast all your spells. Light up the Stage is also mana that goes into not burninating the opponent. Against Control and Delver-variants as well as Depths, that list seems fine overall though again, yeah, I disagree with 4 MD PoPs. Though they probably did their part for him over the tournament.

Alpine Moon seems fine, to be honest. I don't think Depths are like to keep enchantment removal in vs. you and it's a one-mana way to turn off their combo. Extremely niche but I guess with how much Depths we have running around, you could do worse. Honestly, considering he only lost to ANT in the semis I think his run was more than fair; that MU is nigh' unwinnable vs. good ANT players anyways, certainly with no SB hate. I think his philosophy for building the deck is solid TBH: just build to beat the top decks and pray to dodge or luck out vs. the rest. Burn isn't strong enough to have good MUs across the board but it can be built in a way that makes it good vs. particular decks, especially controlling ones that give it a lot of time to topdeck the final points. His approach to deciding that he beats control, Depths and graveyard decks seems to have paid off quite handsomely.


I can kinda understand the Skewer too; he wants to SB out some number of Exquisites or Prices depending on the match-up but he needs to maintain the critical number of burn spells so an extra burn spell to bring in kinda helps with the consistency. Not how I'd use my SB plan but given his deck is "preboarded" vs. control, it's kinda logical at least.

EDIT: From Jarvis Yu's tournament report (http://llarack.blogspot.com/2019/09/grand-prix-atlanta.html), it becomes pretty obvious that Exquisite Firecraft was instrumental against him.

[Eldariel]

Just a heads-up, Gooch trying his hands on the Top 8 Burn-list from GP: Atlanta (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oA79Gqls3Y). I see all the traditional issues with losing to flood and screw but doing really well when you draw the right mix of lands and spells; I can't but feel that some number of utility lands, be they Barbies or Drawlands, would've helped out here.

[alec]

This thread is, not unsurprisingly, kind of dead in the water. But I just got back into Legacy after not routinely playing for ~5 years or so, and Burn is the only full deck that I could make out of my collection after losing a bunch of blue cards recently.

I've been taking this list to a local meta that has blue-based control, Infect Stompy, and the occasional combo deck, and I've been finding success and having fun with it:


4 Monastery Swiftspear
4 Goblin Guide
4 Eidolon of the Great Revel

4 Lightning Bolt
4 Fireblast
4 Price of Progress

3 Light Up the Stage
2 Skewer the Critics
4 Chain Lightning
4 Lava Spike
4 Rift Bolt

19 Mountain


Sideboard changes from week to week, and is kind of just made of whatever the hell I bring that evening. But it's pretty consistently something like:

2 Grafdigger's Cage
2 Pyrostatic Pillar (on most days; if I'm expecting even more graveyard stuff, I'll bring some Tormod's Crypts)
3 Smash to Smithereens
3 Alpine Moon (we have one 12-Post player with Glacial Chasm, lol)
2 Red Elemental Blast
2 Pyroblast


This deck takes a more sorcery-speed approach to things what with all the Spectacle costs, yet Spectacle spells and Swiftspears lead to extremely explosive lines of play. Chaining Bolts into Skewers and Light Up the Stages with Swiftspears in play have allowed me to pull off clean turn 3-4 kills.

I'd like to ask, if anyone's listening, how people feel about the correct number of maindeck Sulfuric Vortexes in larger metas. I'm trying to pick up a few to battle the spare Batterskulls and Jittes that sometimes pass through the shop, but I feel like they'd be practically required against Oko if I were to go to a bigger tournament -- and I'd certainly like to do so, given my confidence in piloting Burn builds.

I'm also looking to swap Price of Progress for Flame Rift soon, though the former is stellar in a meta with Cloudposts and Blinkmoths. :)

I won't be attending LGS Legacy this week but hope to keep this thread updated soon. Thanks.

[PirateKing]

You're going to want some number of Exquisite Firecraft in your list.
Too many decks or on parity with Burn's damage output that you'll be 1 spell away only to have it countered and they land the killing blow.
For this reason also I think Flame Rift might be a trap.

Bonecrusher Giant has been something I've been meaning to try out, since you can cast Stomp early and then if you lose steam in the third act you have something to maintain that forward momentum.

[alec]

It's funny: a friend of mine plays Burn in the same meta with four Exquisite Firecrafts and has not seen the results I've had without them. They feel really clunky.

That being said, I haven't tried them yet. I'd probably take out the Spectacle cards for them and add a Mountain, unless four is too many? I'd like other's opinions on numbers.

EDIT: On Bonecrusher: I definitely like him in other formats (I have regrettably been having fun playing pulled into Pioneer and a few Standard matches recently). I feel like two mana for two damage is simply a little much for Legacy, but he at least has an Eidolon effect when bolted. I wouldn't play four - nor would I play him in my meta - but he's strong.

[Mr. Safety]

It's funny: a friend of mine plays Burn in the same meta with four Exquisite Firecrafts and has not seen the results I've had without them. They feel really clunky.

That being said, I haven't tried them yet. I'd probably take out the Spectacle cards for them and add a Mountain, unless four is too many? I'd like other's opinions on numbers.

EDIT: On Bonecrusher: I definitely like him in other formats (I have regrettably been having fun playing pulled into Pioneer and a few Standard matches recently). I feel like two mana for two damage is simply a little much for Legacy, but he at least has an Eidolon effect when bolted. I wouldn't play four - nor would I play him in my meta - but he's strong.

Damage not being prevented means you can attack into a TNN and deal with it. I don't know if that pushes it into playability, but its an interaction that will be fairly common. Sulfuric Vortex is a massive beating against a lot of decks right now as well.

[mulletsss]

I've played this past weekend with my burn deck on my LGS Tournament with 60+ players.
I had the "pleasure" of playing against 3 Snowko, BANT Miracles, whatever you wanna call it.

Oko is there, exists, and I don't want to discuss whether it is going to be banned or not.
But the combination of Oko, Teferi and Jace plus FoWs, FoN, Flusterstorm, Dovin's Veto and even Counterspell makes the matches so f**ing boring.
My main deck had 2 Exquisite Firecraft (deckbox.org/mtg/Exquisite Firecraft) and 1 Sulfuric Vortex (deckbox.org/mtg/Sulfuric Vortex), and on the SB one copy of those two and extra 2 REB's. But I've felt that I should have gone with 4 Exquisite MB and maybe Red Leylines (deckbox.org/mtg/Leyline of Punishment), Skullcrack (deckbox.org/mtg/Skullcrack) and Bonecrusher Giant (deckbox.org/mtg/Bonecrusher Giant) on the SB, because the meta was abusing of life gaining and counterspells and I'm tired of letting my opponent down to 3 life just to see him/her ramping up life again and slowly loosing to him.

I've played 5 rounds and made a ridiculous 0-1-4.
The match that ended up as a draw was against a Snowko and we reached the time limit and extra 5 turns.

At the end, I had fun because even though I lost almost every round, I did 1-2 in all of those matches, so I kinda lost gracefully.
But yeah, burn is burn. It has seen better days and I hope those come back soon. (and I seriously hope that lists that run white DO NOT start to appear with Kor Firewalker and Leyline of Sanctity)

[alec]

Oko is there, exists, and I don't want to discuss whether it is going to be banned or not.
But the combination of Oko, Teferi and Jace plus FoWs, FoN, Flusterstorm, Dovin's Veto and even Counterspell makes the matches so f**ing boring.

I've played 5 rounds and made a ridiculous 0-1-4.
The match that ended up as a draw was against a Snowko and we reached the time limit and extra 5 turns.

At the end, I had fun because even though I lost almost every round, I did 1-2 in all of those matches, so I kinda lost gracefully.
But yeah, burn is burn. It has seen better days and I hope those come back soon. (and I seriously hope that lists that run white DO NOT start to appear with Kor Firewalker and Leyline of Sanctity)


I really feel you on this. Each match plays exactly the same more or less. When I pilot burn I'm always looking to aggressive mulligan into the most threat-diverse hands I can manage (two Swiftspears and 3 burn spells? Sure. A single Goblin Guide? Ehhhh...), depending on what flavor they're running. But Oko piles have a really flavor-light base, that's for sure ...

My partner in fiery crime put two Skullcrack in their sideboard for Oko and it seems to be doing some work. I'll probably borrow some myself. I never leave for the weekly without four Blasts to be honest, though, and I'm a little tight for slots given that graveyard decks are picking up steam here.

Anyway, time to get some Anarchy in there! :cool:

[mistercakes]

I really feel you on this. Each match plays exactly the same more or less. When I pilot burn I'm always looking to aggressive mulligan into the most threat-diverse hands I can manage (two Swiftspears and 3 burn spells? Sure. A single Goblin Guide? Ehhhh...), depending on what flavor they're running. But Oko piles have a really flavor-light base, that's for sure ...

My partner in fiery crime put two Skullcrack in their sideboard for Oko and it seems to be doing some work. I'll probably borrow some myself. I never leave for the weekly without four Blasts to be honest, though, and I'm a little tight for slots given that graveyard decks are picking up steam here.

Anyway, time to get some Anarchy in there! :cool:

fun list popped up:


4 Wooded Foothills
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Volcanic Island
1 Barbarian Ring
6 Mountain
4 Monastery Swiftspear
4 Goblin Guide
4 Eidolon of the Great Revel
2 Snapcaster Mage
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Chain Lightning
2 Lava Spike
4 Ponder
3 Price of Progress
3 Rift Bolt
2 Exquisite Firecraft
4 Fireblast
1 The Royal Scions

Sideboard
2 Pyroblast
2 Vapor Snag
2 Surgical Extraction
3 Smash to Smithereens
2 Alpine Moon
2 Pyrostatic Pillar
1 Tormod's Crypt


snapcaster is a great reach effect and i really like royal scions. can filter bad draws, pump attackers and random ultimate. access to a blue board is also really cool. 4 ponder is also interesting. with fetches i think it really helps a lot more than brainstorm in this deck. i like the approach.

[mulletsss]

My partner in fiery crime put two Skullcrack in their sideboard for Oko and it seems to be doing some work. I'll probably borrow some myself. I never leave for the weekly without four Blasts to be honest, though, and I'm a little tight for slots given that graveyard decks are picking up steam here.

Anyway, time to get some Anarchy in there! :cool:

It's funny that I already have 4 Anarchys, that I bought when I got completely locked after playing against a white Leyline. But again, with this BUG lists, it's sure that it's going to get countered :mad:
Maybe the new SB must be: 3 Smash to Smithereens (deckbox.org/mtg/Smash to Smithereens), 3 Red Leyline (deckbox.org/mtg/Leyline of Punishment), 3 Skullcrack (deckbox.org/mtg/Skullcrack), 1 Rampaging Ferocidon (deckbox.org/mtg/Rampaging Ferocidon), 1 Vortex (deckbox.org/mtg/Sulfuric Vortex) , 2 REBs (deckbox.org/mtg/Red Elemental Blast) and 2 Graveyard hate.


snapcaster is a great reach effect and i really like royal scions. can filter bad draws, pump attackers and random ultimate. access to a blue board is also really cool. 4 ponder is also interesting. with fetches i think it really helps a lot more than brainstorm in this deck. i like the approach.

Burn is by nature monored and full of spells that mimic at the best way they can Lightning Bolt.
But I'll ignore that and assume that you're proposing a more consistent list by adding blue. BUT if you are adding blue, with a bunch of sorcery and instants, there's no sense of not adding Delver of Secrets. UR Delver decklists are better than this one and you can even throw in the Planeswalker (that is indeed really great). Also, it's not very smart to have nonbasic lands and PoP on the same deck, even though we are playing burn and we don't care that much about our life total, it's just not that good to rebound that damage back to you.
I don't want to extend myself with this reply, since this is a burn primer (a deck that "fights" against blue), but I couldn't miss to answer this.

[jafar]

Instead of blue, why just not adding:


light up the stage
skewer the critics


Bye

[H]

I actually played against Burn last week at FNM. Skewer sure seemed awkward for him, but LUtS seemed pretty good.

I'd think you want to be weary of too many Spectacle cards in general and so it might be the case that LUtS is just the better one to go with.

Obvious testing needed, obviously.

[alec]

I actually played against Burn last week at FNM. Skewer sure seemed awkward for him, but LUtS seemed pretty good.

I'd think you want to be weary of too many Spectacle cards in general and so it might be the case that LUtS is just the better one to go with.

Obvious testing needed, obviously.

I've shared my weekly Legacy Burn list a few posts back that uses 3 Light Up the Stage and 2 Skewer the Critics.

Skewer the Critics is probably the weakest/most awkward spell in the entire deck and I'll likely remove them for some mainboard Sulfuric Vortexes or Exquisite Firecrafts.

That being said, Light Up the Stage is phenomenal. It's basically a must-counter that can easily play around Daze after a successful combat -- and because the cards are playable until next turn, you can set up huge LUtS stacks for extra Prowess triggers the next turn, which often gets around Spell Pierce and other soft counters (because you'll have more mana available next turn instead of running out the turn of). Also, you can play the lands you exile off of it because the card says "play," not "cast." It requires quite a bit of paradigm shifting to maximize Spectacle triggers, but overall, Light Up the Stage is really, really good.

[bruizar]

I've played this past weekend with my burn deck on my LGS Tournament with 60+ players.
I had the "pleasure" of playing against 3 Snowko, BANT Miracles, whatever you wanna call it.

Oko is there, exists, and I don't want to discuss whether it is going to be banned or not.
But the combination of Oko, Teferi and Jace plus FoWs, FoN, Flusterstorm, Dovin's Veto and even Counterspell makes the matches so f**ing boring.
My main deck had 2 Exquisite Firecraft (deckbox.org/mtg/Exquisite Firecraft) and 1 Sulfuric Vortex (deckbox.org/mtg/Sulfuric Vortex), and on the SB one copy of those two and extra 2 REB's. But I've felt that I should have gone with 4 Exquisite MB and maybe Red Leylines (deckbox.org/mtg/Leyline of Punishment), Skullcrack (deckbox.org/mtg/Skullcrack) and Bonecrusher Giant (deckbox.org/mtg/Bonecrusher Giant) on the SB, because the meta was abusing of life gaining and counterspells and I'm tired of letting my opponent down to 3 life just to see him/her ramping up life again and slowly loosing to him.

I've played 5 rounds and made a ridiculous 0-1-4.
The match that ended up as a draw was against a Snowko and we reached the time limit and extra 5 turns.

At the end, I had fun because even though I lost almost every round, I did 1-2 in all of those matches, so I kinda lost gracefully.
But yeah, burn is burn. It has seen better days and I hope those come back soon. (and I seriously hope that lists that run white DO NOT start to appear with Kor Firewalker and Leyline of Sanctity)

If you want to beat Oko,you need non-artifact, non-creature solutions. The most resilient answer is Karn the Great Creator, but that's also tough mana wise for a deck like burn. Your best bet is a cheap enchantment, or a black splash for discard effects and hope to dodge veil of summer. Of course, this is only incase REBs and/or Pithing Needle arent enough.

[alec]

If you want to beat Oko,you need non-artifact, non-creature solutions.

Thankfully, Burn has a lot of those. The rest of those mentioned solutions aren't that great in Burn because they deviate from the actual plan, and they already have a cheap enchantment that handles Oko in the form of Sulfuric Vortex (it shuts off life gain from food and generates passive pressure that will eventually end them after a few more burn spells).

B/R mid-range builds are pretty cool by themselves, though. Hymn to Tourach is a surprisingly good card. :cool:

[mulletsss]

If you want to beat Oko,you need non-artifact, non-creature solutions. The most resilient answer is Karn the Great Creator, but that's also tough mana wise for a deck like burn. Your best bet is a cheap enchantment, or a black splash for discard effects and hope to dodge veil of summer. Of course, this is only incase REBs and/or Pithing Needle arent enough.

Just like alec said above, it's good, but it deviates a little bit off the plan.
The thing is: burn is like a combo/glass canon deck. You go all-in, as fast as you can using the most of your resources. What doesn't happen when you deviate that much
Oko + Teferi on the field things get ugly. Because Vortex can deal with the Oko bullshit, but Teferi can bounce Vortex back to your hand (and your opponent draws a card) so they you do the necessary to counter it back.

I am just spreading my hate against those planeswalkers, but it seems that burn will need some new cards to be able to handle this nonsense (I am not even going to mention Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath). Light Up the Stage is a terrific tool, like said above, but by itself is not a huge threat to the opponents.

Anyways, as another subject, remembered this list yesterday, decided to share here:

http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/wintervise-burn-a-song-of-ice-and-fire-1/

[mistercakes]

Instead of blue, why just not adding:


light up the stage
skewer the critics


Bye

Cya

[Seymour_Asses]

Why is everyone leaving, it's only midnight!

[alec]

Why is everyone leaving, it's only midnight!

Hitting the hay early: I've got a stage to light up tomorrow. :wink:

...Actually, I'll be missing my weekly Legacy night in favor of a family dinner. A shame 'cause my friend is playing Death's Shadow tomorrow ... that round would have been a bye. :(

In other news, I've been playing two maindeck Sulfuric Vortex and Exquisite Firecraft again, just like Oko intended. I haven't played Vortex since like 2010 ... it's so good. Still rocking four maindeck Price of Progress though because 12-Post deserves the respective kick in the dick.

Have we thought about updating the primer at all by the way? I feel like it could use an update and I'd gladly volunteer to do it (or simply give my two cents to anyone with more authority/experience).

[Kriggy]

20 mountains

4 golin guide
4 monastery swiftspear
4 eidolon of great revel

4 lightning bolt
4 chain lightning
4 lava spike
4 rift bolt
4 fireblast
1 skewer the critics
3 price of progress
2 sulfuric vortex
2 exquisite firecraft

SB:
2 tormods crypt
2 surgical extraction
1 sulfuric vortex
1 exquisite firecraft
1 price of progress
1 pyrostatic pillar
2 pyroblast
3 smash to smithereens
2 karakas

went 3-1-2 in 15 player tournament.
Beat UW show and tell, bomberman and burn mirror, draw with aluren into top4, then lost to 4c phyrexian dreadgnouth deck (cant really beat 12/12 on turn 2/3 with counter backup). Screwed up in top 4 vs grixis reanimator losing pretty much already won game due to huge missplays for 1-2 score in the end. Maindeck felt pretty good, didnt play vs oko decks or at least they didnt have them in game.

[mistercakes]

20 mountains

4 golin guide
4 monastery swiftspear
4 eidolon of great revel

4 lightning bolt
4 chain lightning
4 lava spike
4 rift bolt
4 fireblast
1 skewer the critics
3 price of progress
2 sulfuric vortex
2 exquisite firecraft

SB:
2 tormods crypt
2 surgical extraction
1 sulfuric vortex
1 exquisite firecraft
1 price of progress
1 pyrostatic pillar
2 pyroblast
3 smash to smithereens
2 karakas

went 3-1-2 in 15 player tournament.
Beat UW show and tell, bomberman and burn mirror, draw with aluren into top4, then lost to 4c phyrexian dreadgnouth deck (cant really beat 12/12 on turn 2/3 with counter backup). Screwed up in top 4 vs grixis reanimator losing pretty much already won game due to huge missplays for 1-2 score in the end. Maindeck felt pretty good, didnt play vs oko decks or at least they didnt have them in game.

https://www.magicspoiler.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Claim-the-Firstborn-Throne-of-Eldraine-Spoiler-265x370.png?x96163 on that phyrexian dreadnought!

[alec]

$1K this weekend. I don't really know the meta but I'd expect a lot of Oko (unless Astrolabe gets banned tomorrow or something -- inb4?).

This is what I'm thinking of taking:



4 Monastery Swiftspear
4 Goblin Guide
4 Eidolon of the Great Revel
2 Sulfuric Vortex
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Fireblast
4 Price of Progress
4 Chain Lightning
4 Lava Spike
4 Rift Bolt
2 Exquisite Firecraft
20 Mountain

3 Ensnaring Bridge
3 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Tormod's Crypt
3 Alpine Moon
2 Pyrostatic Pillar
3 Smash to Smithereens


It's a standard list, but it deviates greatly from the Spectacle strategy that I'm used to. I feel like this will be better against an unknown meta but I'm still kind of unsure: do I go with what I'm better at playing, or what might give me an edge against control decks?

It's been about eight years since I've played a tournament beyond a weekly, so I'm open to thoughts.

[mulletsss]

$1K this weekend. I don't really know the meta but I'd expect a lot of Oko (unless Astrolabe gets banned tomorrow or something -- inb4?).

This is what I'm thinking of taking:



4 Monastery Swiftspear
4 Goblin Guide
4 Eidolon of the Great Revel
2 Sulfuric Vortex
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Fireblast
4 Price of Progress
4 Chain Lightning
4 Lava Spike
4 Rift Bolt
2 Exquisite Firecraft
20 Mountain

3 Ensnaring Bridge
3 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Tormod's Crypt
3 Alpine Moon
2 Pyrostatic Pillar
3 Smash to Smithereens


It's a standard list, but it deviates greatly from the Spectacle strategy that I'm used to. I feel like this will be better against an unknown meta but I'm still kind of unsure: do I go with what I'm better at playing, or what might give me an edge against control decks?

It's been about eight years since I've played a tournament beyond a weekly, so I'm open to thoughts.

Great list!
I think that it's better to have some edge against control decks only due to the meta right now. Your list seems really perfect, I run a very similar one with a few differences but the major one being: 3 Fireblasts and 3 Exquisite Firecrafts (and 19 Mountains).
My goal with this is not getting so "flooded" with Fireblasts in hand that are going to get countered when I cast them (considering that the meta is full of control decks and you're playing against one). I also run some Flame Rifts on the maindeck and 2 REBs on the sideboard, but your sideboard is really very precise and neat.

[alec]

So ... Rest in Peace to a real one! Won't be playing against Breach this weekend ... not surprised but a bit sad. That deck was pretty fun (though monstrous).

With Breach dead in the ground, likely never to escape its B&R prison, how much Hogaak can we expect moving forward? And is it a bad matchup for Burn? I've never actually played against Hogaak and want to know more about it, especially if there's the possibility of it appearing on Saturday.

Would 3 Grafdigger's Cages and 1 Tormod's Crypt be enough?

[mulletsss]

Well, I think its enough for a SB.
From mtgtop8 a deck playing with Hogaak had this SB:

2 Abrupt Decay
1 Assassin's Trophy
4 Force of Vigor
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Leyline of the Void

Which completely destroys 3 Cages and 1 Tormod, IF they manage to draw everything, but their manabase is very vulnerable to Price of Progress and they don't have lifelink or much board interaction on the main deck.
So your strategy should be: burn to the face, and hold your resources to deal a huge amount at once, so they won't have time to cast the big boys like Hogaak or Vengevine.

Ideally with three mana you can: Bolt, PoP (for 4 or more), Fireblast, 11 damage by turn 3. Considering that you Spiked or Goblin Guided on T1 and T2+ fetch lands from your opponent, that should do it.
It's not easy of course, but with the right hand, you can manage to win. If you are going with this sideboard, I would also add the Ensnaring Bridges on G2 and G3 just to make sure you lock him even more.

[alec]

Ideally with three mana you can: Bolt, PoP (for 4 or more), Fireblast, 11 damage by turn 3. Considering that you Spiked or Goblin Guided on T1 and T2+ fetch lands from your opponent, that should do it.
It's not easy of course, but with the right hand, you can manage to win. If you are going with this sideboard, I would also add the Ensnaring Bridges on G2 and G3 just to make sure you lock him even more.

This is really helpful; thank you! :smile:

How differently does Hogaak pilot from, say, Dredge? I know that Eidolon of the Great Revel isn't amazing against Dredge for instance, so that's probably sideboard bait against Hogaak too (though I think Hogaak actually "casts" more spells on average?). Just trying to gauge my approach to these decks because I wouldn't be surprised if they return in wider metas.

If anyone wants to boot up ye olde Cockatrice so I can see it in practice, let me know. :smile:

[mulletsss]

This is really helpful; thank you! :smile:

How differently does Hogaak pilot from, say, Dredge? I know that Eidolon of the Great Revel isn't amazing against Dredge for instance, so that's probably sideboard bait against Hogaak too (though I think Hogaak actually "casts" more spells on average?). Just trying to gauge my approach to these decks because I wouldn't be surprised if they return in wider metas.

If anyone wants to boot up ye olde Cockatrice so I can see it in practice, let me know. :smile:

About Cockatrice, I really would like to play with you, but currently I've been struggling to find time even to relax.

Hogaak is more of a combo deck, based on creatures. The decklist has its 1 and 2 drops that Eidolon of the Great Revel would work, but I guess you should probably try to board it out for more graveyard hate and burn spells. Not saying that its not great, it's great indeed. But you have to know when to play. Ideally, on turn 2 so it can work its way up on your opponents life total

https://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=24710&d=372864&f=LE

Check this for example. Of course, Gravecrawler, Hedron Crab and other stuff that enable discarding and the deck engine to work are going to trigger Eidolon, but once those fatties are on the field, Eidolon will be playing against you, but it'll also be a blocker.
So, again, ideally, what you have to do is drop Eidolon on the field and hold your spells to go all-in to the face :cool::r:

[alec]

So ... as you can expect, that $1k did not happen. Well, it didn't get cancelled, but my teammates got sick so we made the executive decision to call it.

My city is in quarantine, I'm living with my family, and the future is looking ... hazy. So two things:

1) Let me know if any of y'all wanna playtest sometime. I'm using Cockatrice daily nowadays.

2) I'm unsure if a full new thread for Burn would be premature, but I'd love to channel this restless home-bound energy into a primer-writing project, and would be down to revitalize the Burn primer if anyone is interested in a rewrite.

Anyway, nothing new to report -- though I have been contemplating pimping out my Burn build when all is said and done. (Call it a post-apocalypse project.) The addition of so many new-bordered cards (a la Exquisite Firecraft) makes adherence to the old border kind of a pain, though . . . Suggestions? :smile:

Stay safe and well.

[mulletsss]

1) I don't promise that I am going to be playing there, it's more likely I won't be there, but PM me with your ID on chickatrice

2) I am not quite sure about if this is premature or not, but it seems like the burn players are all vanishing.


. . . Suggestions?

If you want to pimp your burn you have some cool options and like everything in Magic, some way more expensive than the others:

• Kamigawa's Lava Spike (if you already don't have those)
• Grand Prix Goblin Guide
• Legends Chain Lightning
• Textless Searing Blaze
• Ice Age Snow-Covered Mountain
And if you want to make things really interesting:
• Lightning Bolt either textless or fourth edition black border or even Alpha/Beta if you will
• Arabian Nights Mountain (this one is expensive as shit)

https://static.cardmarket.com/img/122e5220b8f42f862d45b09f1ae678cd/items/1/ARN/6870.jpg

[MightyPenguin007]

I recently played in a 6-man King of the Hill Style invite tournament after hours at my LGS. So long as you kept winning you stayed up. I rolled high enough that I led off the tournament. I played against GB Nic Fit (2-0), Omni-Tell (2-1), and Death & Taxes (1-2) before exiting the tournament. Overall Burn is very strong in small tournaments. The D & T player that knocked me out was taken out by a Burn player who ended up winning. It's definitely a lot of fun, and it's optimal for anyone who doesn't have a ton of patience and just wants to sling old cardboard.

Anyhow, my list is below. I'm not sure how to do the tags to link the cards, but I figure most people viewing this probably have a good sense of what the cards do already considering how little the deck has changed over the last few years.

Main Deck
18 x Mountain

2 x Exquisite Firecraft
3 x Flame Rift
4 x Lava Spike
4 x Lightning Bolt
4 x Rift Bolt
4 x Chain Lightning
4 x Price of Progress
4 x Fireblast

1 x Sulfuric Vortex

4 x Goblin Guide
4 x Monastery Swiftspear
4 x Eidolon of the Great Revel

Sideboard
1 x Pyrostatic Pillar
1 x Take Possession
1 x Angel of Despair
1 x Dead // Gone
4 x Leyline of the Void
3 x Searing Blood
4 x Smash to Smithereens

The matchup against Nic Fit was fairly straightforward. So long as you draw enough gas you can outrun their Gitrog Monster or whatever other beater they play. I was Cabal Therapy'ed three times and still managed to win - I'm really not sure how. The Show n' Tell/Omni-Tell matchup probably calls for Agent of Treachery over Take Possession, I just didn't have any on-hand to take with me. The amount of lifegain that Batterskull presents is problematic, obviously. Every meta is a little different. Mine has a Death & Taxes player that relies more heavily on Recruiter of the Guard to search for answers such as Paladin en-Vec. I was considering a sideboard more like so:

3 x Smash to Smithereeens
4 x Leyline of Punishment
4 x Agent of Treachery
2 x Red Elemental Blast
2 x Pyroblast

The rest of my local meta consists of another Burn deck and a Sultai Control deck. Occasionally we see Eldrazi Stompy, Tin Fins, or another Omni-Tell. Let me know what your thoughts are. I appreciate the feedback in advance.

[ahg113]

I'm not sure how to do the tags to link the cards

[ cards ] Lightning Bolt [ /cards ]
without spaces
Lightning Bolt

Cool deck list.

[MightyPenguin007]

Can you use the tags around the entire deck list or can you use it only on individual cards?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[ahg113]

whole list can be tagged with a pair of brackets.

[PirateKing]

If you want to pimp your burn you have some cool options and like everything in Magic, some way more expensive than the others:

Beta Bolts and Arabian Nights Mountains will made your 75 cost more then the average Legacy pile without a doubt.
Any time my opponent shows up with nonsense like that I know they're intimately familiar with ever corner case of every match-up, no missed triggers from them!

Regarding the overarching problem of permanent removal, I've been jamming Chaos Warp as a sideboard option if I'm facing an unhealthy meta of truly degenerate decks. It's proved useful 50% of the time, which is better than other sideboard options, but even then, it's very specific to your 3-round weekly. Kudos to those that sleeve up against a GP but I'm not sure it;s that swell.
Just posting for information sake. Since Burn is the champion of the local Meta is most instances, seems fitting to mention here.

[alec]

Regarding the overarching problem of permanent removal, I've been jamming Chaos Warp as a sideboard option if I'm facing an unhealthy meta of truly degenerate decks. It's proved useful 50% of the time, which is better than other sideboard options, but even then, it's very specific to your 3-round weekly. Kudos to those that sleeve up against a GP but I'm not sure it;s that swell.
Just posting for information sake. Since Burn is the champion of the local Meta is most instances, seems fitting to mention here.

Chaos Warp is one of my favorite sideboard wild cards. I've been playing it on and off for a few years on MWS/Cockatrice; never picked up any copies on paper though, haha. It doesn't feel all that usable right now when so many problematic permanents can flip into others ( Omniscience into Emrakul?! Hahaha), but to me it's always been one of the most flavorful and fitting red cards of all time, so I condone its use on principle. :wink:


Beta Bolts and Arabian Nights Mountains will made your 75 cost more then the average Legacy pile without a doubt.
Any time my opponent shows up with nonsense like that I know they're intimately familiar with ever corner case of every match-up, no missed triggers from them!

After performing some Deep Analysis over the last few weeks, I think this would be my dream pimp deck:

Regular foils:
4 Monastery Swiftspear
4 Eidolon of the Great Revel
4 Goblin Guide (I deeply adore the Masters art, even more so than the Grand Prix foil.)
4 Lava Spike (My Burn-playing playtest partner has a few Kamigawa foil copies of this card and they're gorgeous.)
2 Exquisite Firecraft (Promo of this when? Hahaha.)

Promo foils:
3 Light Up the Stage (The above friend also has four borderless copies of these. They're really lovely.)
4 Rift Bolt (Time Spiral is my favorite set of all time, so I might go for regular Time Spiral foils of this. But I actually really like the FNM foils of this card and I, contrary to most "pimp" opinions, find the FNM logo to be rather homely.)
4 Fireblast (Old border > new border. Old border foil with the little shooting star is literally >>>>> all.)
4 Lightning Bolt (Yes, the Judge foils. See the Fireblast parenthetical.)

Four black-bordered Legends Chain Lightnings are practically a requirement, and I'd probably pick some regular old Exodus Price of Progress as well. That just leaves the Mountains...

These are my favorite Mountains of all time. (https://scryfall.com/card/mmq/346/mountain) There are a few that come close, but for some reason the 346es are just gorgeous to me. To that end I could get either the basic foils of these ... or the Arena promos! (https://shop.tcgplayer.com/magic/arena-promos/mountain-2000?partner=mtgtcg) There isn't that much difference between the two, though, other than a slightly smaller shooting star. So I'll probably just go with the regular ones.

Anyway, that's what I've come up with over the last few weeks. :)


I recently played in a 6-man King of the Hill Style invite tournament after hours at my LGS. So long as you kept winning you stayed up. I rolled high enough that I led off the tournament. I played against GB Nic Fit (2-0), Omni-Tell (2-1), and Death & Taxes (1-2) before exiting the tournament.


This is such a cool tournament idea; congrats on the satisfying finish! I've literally never thought to use Take Possession/Agent of Treachery before. I'd be a little wary of using Take Possession given that it can't target Emrakul, but if they're going to be showing off Omniscience first I guess it's a decent casual choice -- and I have some just lying around from Time Spiral Standard. Cool!

How did you like the Flame Rifts? I feel like they're a little lackluster with the required Eidolons and in more aggro-oriented metagames, but I'd like to hear your thoughts and experiences. :)

[mulletsss]

Regarding the overarching problem of permanent removal, I've been jamming Chaos Warp as a sideboard option if I'm facing an unhealthy meta of truly degenerate decks. It's proved useful 50% of the time, which is better than other sideboard options, but even then, it's very specific to your 3-round weekly.

I really like Chaos Warp but one of the most complicated board issue that I've faced when playing with burn is the white Leyline.
Chaos Warp sadly can't handle that as well. Luckily, you dont see white Leyline on sideboards that much, so Chaos still is a great card, but the drawback sometimes might hit you hard, that's why we don't see it that often as SB plans.

EDIT: I was wrong about Chaos Warp, misread and thought it targeted the player



How did you like the Flame Rifts? I feel like they're a little lackluster with the required Eidolons and in more aggro-oriented metagames, but I'd like to hear your thoughts and experiences. :)

I am going to share my experience with Flame Rifts also: there was a time that I played with 4. The idea was that Flame Rift + Fireblast was a 8 damage bomb with only 2 mana. Then I started to loose a lot because of the life loss that it deals to you, specially against aggro decks, it's like cutting your own throat, and gets even worse with Eidolon on the battlefield (funny fact that I've tied 2 matches against 2 burn decks because Flame Rift was the last spell on the stack). After a lot of testing, I am happy with 2 on my mainboard. It's very good as a finisher combined with Fireblast. Even though the best scenario is Exquisite + Fireblast, Flame Rift sometimes does the trick. Heck, even Vexing Devil would do it.

The master Patrick Sullivan still plays with 4 if I am not mistaken (but the dude knows all about it, so he understands when to play). Overall, I like it (and I can't cut it of my main deck :laugh: )

[PirateKing]

I really like Chaos Warp but one of the most complicated board issue that I've faced when playing with burn is the white Leyline.
Chaos Warp sadly can't handle that as well. Luckily, you dont see white Leyline on sideboards that much, so Chaos still is a great card, but the drawback sometimes might hit you hard, that's why we don't see it that often as SB plans.

Do you mean Leyline of Sanctity? Chaos Warp can absolutely turn Leyline of Sanctity into a maybe-somethine-else. It targets the permanent, not the player, so they don't interact at all.

[alec]

Do you mean Leyline of Sanctity? Chaos Warp can absolutely turn Leyline of Sanctity into a maybe-somethine-else. It targets the permanent, not the player, so they don't interact at all.

Yeah, can confirm for mullets: Chaos Warp is one of my favorite SB cards specifically because it can deal with Leyline.

It's just kind of a shame that it can flip into something so much more problematic nowadays! :laugh:

[mulletsss]

Do you mean Leyline of Sanctity? Chaos Warp can absolutely turn Leyline of Sanctity into a maybe-somethine-else. It targets the permanent, not the player, so they don't interact at all.

You are 100% right. I read it wrong and thought it targeted the player.
After all, seems like a good option depending on your meta.

[MightyPenguin007]

This is such a cool tournament idea; congrats on the satisfying finish! I've literally never thought to use Take Possession/Agent of Treachery before. I'd be a little wary of using Take Possession given that it can't target Emrakul, but if they're going to be showing off Omniscience first I guess it's a decent casual choice -- and I have some just lying around from Time Spiral Standard. Cool!

How did you like the Flame Rifts? I feel like they're a little lackluster with the required Eidolons and in more aggro-oriented metagames, but I'd like to hear your thoughts and experiences. :)

Flame Rift generally didn’t hurt too bad. I am honestly considering bringing in Skullcrack instead (meta choice). I typically use Flame Rift as a quasi-finisher.

I hadn’t considered Chaos Warp. That’s some tech.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Jofiel]

Flame Rift generally didn’t hurt too bad. I am honestly considering bringing in Skullcrack instead (meta choice). I typically use Flame Rift as a quasi-finisher.

I hadn’t considered Chaos Warp. That’s some tech.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

1. Chaos Warp (https://deckbox.org/mtg/Chaos%20Warp?fromqs=true) has a sense for me, but how to find thee slots for three copies? :)
2. I agreed that 3 copies of Light Up the Stage (https://deckbox.org/mtg/Light%20Up%20the%20Stage?fromqs=true) are cool. :D

By the way... I don't like Monastery Swiftspear (https://deckbox.org/mtg/Monastery%20Swiftspear?fromqs=true) and I don't want to give my opponents drawback using Goblin Guide (https://deckbox.org/mtg/Goblin%20Guide?fromqs=true)

But I love synery of Vexing Devil (https://deckbox.org/mtg/Vexing%20Devil?fromqs=true), Soul-Scar Mage (https://deckbox.org/mtg/Soul-Scar%20Mage?fromqs=true) & Volcanic Fallout (https://deckbox.org/mtg/Volcanic%20Fallout?fromqs=true). :D

Lands:
13x Mountain (https://deckbox.org/mtg/Mountain?fromqs=true)
4x Bloodstaine Mire (https://deckbox.org/mtg/Bloodstained%20Mire?fromqs=true)
1x Barbarian Ring (https://deckbox.org/mtg/Barbarian%20Ring?fromqs=true)

Creatures:
4x Vexing Devil (https://deckbox.org/mtg/Vexing%20Devil?fromqs=true) - almost all people pays 4 lifes.
4x Soul-Scar Mage (https://deckbox.org/mtg/Soul-Scar%20Mage?fromqs=true)
4x Eidolon of the Great Revel (https://deckbox.org/mtg/Eidolon%20of%20the%20Great%20Revel?fromqs=true)
1x Grim Lavamancer (https://deckbox.org/mtg/Grim%20Lavamancer?fromqs=true)

Spells:
4x Lightning Bolt (https://deckbox.org/mtg/Lightning%20Bolt?fromqs=true)
4x Chain Lightning (https://deckbox.org/mtg/Chain%20Lightning?fromqs=true)
4x Lava Spike (https://deckbox.org/mtg/Lava%20Spike?fromqs=true)
3x Light Up the Stage (https://deckbox.org/mtg/Light%20Up%20the%20Stage?fromqs=true)
4x Rift Bolt (https://deckbox.org/mtg/Rift%20Bolt?fromqs=true)
4x Skewer the Critics (https://deckbox.org/mtg/Skewer%20the%20Critics?fromqs=true&printing=43655)
3x Fireblast (https://deckbox.org/mtg/Fireblast?fromqs=true)
3x Price of Progress (https://deckbox.org/mtg/Price%20of%20Progress?fromqs=true)

Sideboard:
2x Grafdigger's Cage (https://deckbox.org/mtg/Grafdigger%27s%20Cage?fromqs=true)
2x Pyrostatic Pillar (https://deckbox.org/mtg/Pyrostatic%20Pillar?fromqs=true&printing=11704)
3x Sulfuric Vortex (https://deckbox.org/mtg/Sulfuric%20Vortex?fromqs=true)
3x Smash to Smithereness (https://deckbox.org/mtg/Smash%20to%20Smithereens?fromqs=true)
3x Volcanic Fallout (https://deckbox.org/mtg/Volcanic%20Fallout?fromqs=true)
2x Exquisite Firecrat (https://deckbox.org/mtg/Exquisite%20Firecraft?fromqs=true)

Do you have some idea to add Alpine Moon (https://deckbox.org/mtg/Alpine%20Moon?fromqs=true) or something other against LANDS? :)

[Kriggy]

How do you like LUTS and skewer? I found both of them not great in high numbers because skewer is often fairly bad topdeck. I think soul scar mage is not that good, its slow in my opinion guide is just better because almost always its 2 damage often 4 and sometimes 6.
I like that you are trying vexing devil, I remember it was always dismissed but on paper it seems like its good or at least not worse than monastery swiftspeaer on average. Although, Its not as reliable as swiftspear or guide.

Depending on your metagame, you migt want 4 sulfuric wortexes in your 75. While often you can race OKO with decent hand, URO is different beast and its very hard to beat.

[mulletsss]

I've tested Vexing Devil, 4, 3, 2 and even 1 on the maindeck.
Just like you said, most people pay 4 life. The only 'drawback' is when you top deck him in a close/late game, it's really disappointing.
But I really like the card on early stages, it's indeed a Fireblast for 1 mana. If you get t1 and t2 Vexing Devil you just race your way to finish the game. I don't use them regularly anymore, but I still like to play with it once in a while.

But Goblin Guide are also good. Of course, you can give your opponent a land card, but you can also get information about the card that they're going to draw.
There are some tricky ways to play it, for example: I remember when I was playing against a UW Miracle or something like that, it was my turn and I had a Guide and a Swiftspear on the battlefield, my opponent Brainstormed putting a land on the top. I didn't attack with him that turn, he drew a land on his following turn and I managed to win the game mostly because of that (it was not a super extravagant smart play but it's something that you have to have in your mind when playing with guides).

LUTS and Skewer are good, but I don't use 4. I've won matches because I had LUTS (I personally use 2) but Skewer sometimes felt a little situational.

My local metagame is full of Dark Depths decks so I go with 2 Alpine Moon and 2 Pithing Needle on my SB. I like Alpine Moons due to the low cmc and to the fact that you can name Gaea's Craddle, Rishadan Port and other lands that appear on legacy lists out there (of course Blood Moon is better to lock the games, but most of the decks are slower than us).

[Kriggy]

yeah, most ppl pay 4 which means its better bolt in that regard. It seems like a card to test. I remember it being hyped and then dismissed on the basis that letting your oponent choose is bad but the upside might be worth it. Also, on the discord channel, ppl are discussing lurrus because the deck only loses sulfuric wortex from maindeck - if you even play them - but the upside might be well worth

[Jofiel]

I've tested Vexing Devil, 4, 3, 2 and even 1 on the maindeck.
Just like you said, most people pay 4 life. The only 'drawback' is when you top deck him in a close/late game, it's really disappointing.
But I really like the card on early stages, it's indeed a Fireblast for 1 mana. If you get t1 and t2 Vexing Devil you just race your way to finish the game. I don't use them regularly anymore, but I still like to play with it once in a while.

But Goblin Guide are also good. Of course, you can give your opponent a land card, but you can also get information about the card that they're going to draw.
There are some tricky ways to play it, for example: I remember when I was playing against a UW Miracle or something like that, it was my turn and I had a Guide and a Swiftspear on the battlefield, my opponent Brainstormed putting a land on the top. I didn't attack with him that turn, he drew a land on his following turn and I managed to win the game mostly because of that (it was not a super extravagant smart play but it's something that you have to have in your mind when playing with guides).

LUTS and Skewer are good, but I don't use 4. I've won matches because I had LUTS (I personally use 2) but Skewer sometimes felt a little situational.

My local metagame is full of Dark Depths decks so I go with 2 Alpine Moon and 2 Pithing Needle on my SB. I like Alpine Moons due to the low cmc and to the fact that you can name Gaea's Craddle, Rishadan Port and other lands that appear on legacy lists out there (of course Blood Moon is better to lock the games, but most of the decks are slower than us).

Yes, I think with LUTS & Skewer you have right. I exchanged 1 Skewer to additional Fireblast. I dedited to remove 2 Firecrafts for 2 Alpine Moons, but it is good to have 3 copies of something in the sideboard (to stable changes in deck for situtation) so I'm thinking to exchange 2x Pyrostatic Pillar for 1 additional Moon and 1 additional Cage of something against the graveyard.

Lands:
13x Mountain
4x Bloodstaine Mire
1x Barbarian Ring

Creatures:
4x Vexing Devil / Goblin Guide
4x Soul-Scar Mage / Monastery Swiftspear
4x Eidolon of the Great Revel
1x Grim Lavamancer

Spells:
4x Lightning Bolt
4x Chain Lightning
4x Lava Spike
3x Light Up the Stage
4x Rift Bolt
4x Skewer the Critics
3x Fireblast
3x Price of Progress

Sideboard:
2x Grafdigger's Cage
2x Pyrostatic Pillar
3x Sulfuric Vortex
3x Smash to Smithereness
3x Volcanic Fallout
2x Alpine Moon

[mulletsss]

Yes, I think with LUTS & Skewer you have right. I exchanged 1 Skewer to additional Fireblast. I dedited to remove 2 Firecrafts for 2 Alpine Moons, but it is good to have 3 copies of something in the sideboard (to stable changes in deck for situtation) so I'm thinking to exchange 2x Pyrostatic Pillar for 1 additional Moon and 1 additional Cage of something against the graveyard.

Yeah I totally agree with the idea of having 3 of something to make it more consistent depending on your opponent. Personally, I've been playing with this list, due to my local meta and some preferences/tests (for example 3 Fireblasts, after a lot of time struggling and not being in favor of this idea, when I finally accepted it, the results seemed a little better and the Pithing Needle against Okos and stuff).

Lands:
19x Mountain

Creatures:
4x Goblin Guide
4x Eidolon of the Great Revel
1x Ash Zealot
1x Grim Lavamancer

Spells:
4x Lightning Bolt
4x Chain Lightning
4x Lava Spike
4x Rift Bolt
3x Flame Rift
3x Fireblast
3x Exquisite Firecraft
2x Light Up the Stage
2x Skewer the Critics
2x Sulfuric Vortex
2x Searing Blaze

Sideboard:
1x Grafdigger's Cage
1x Pithing Needle
1x Faerie Macabre
1x Ensnaring Bridge
2x Tormod's Crypt
2x Red Elemental Blast
3x Smash to Smithereens
2x Searing Blood
2x Alpine Moon

Recently I've thinking about maindecking some fecth lands, maybe 4 or less, just to see if there's any difference on the draws - sometimes after the game ends, I check my deck and see a bunch of lands together even after shuffling like crazy, so I guess fetches would 'reset' the probabilities or make it even worse :laugh:

[jethstriker]

Recently I've thinking about maindecking some fecth lands, maybe 4 or less, just to see if there's any difference on the draws - sometimes after the game ends, I check my deck and see a bunch of lands together even after shuffling like crazy, so I guess fetches would 'reset' the probabilities or make it even worse :laugh:


Play fetches. I see you're playing lavamancers and blazes.

[Seymour_Asses]

decklist etc

Ash Zealot in the main?

[mistercakes]

Ash Zealot in the main?

does this punish the cat companion?

[ahg113]

does this punish the cat companion?

Cat and any flashback deck, splash against Snappy, PiF, dredge, etc.

[Jofiel]

Cat and any flashback deck, splash against Snappy, PiF, dredge, etc.

But only one without possibility to find it? Is it enoguh?

[mulletsss]

Ash Zealot in the main?

I knew that this would be a matter of discussion and I understand that most people don't see why bother with such a "normal" powered creature.
But like I said, my choices are solely based on my local meta where you find 80% of the players playing with Snapcaster Mages, Dreadhorde Arcanists, etc. Also it is a good body to trade against Thalias.

That's the reason why I play with one, it was before this companion thing (I really hope that they ban some of those cards). It's sort of a curve ball, even though it doesn't hurt that much, I like it.

[Rood]

Came up with a list to abuse the new 6/6 guy Chandra's Incinerator

4 Lightning Bolt
4 Chain Lightning
4 Rift Bolt
4 Fireblast
4 Seal of Fire
4 Lava Spike
4 Skewer the Critics

4 Goblin Guide
4 Eidolon
4 Chandra's Incinerator
1 Grim Lavamancer

13x Mountain
3x Bloodstained Mire
3x Wooded Foothills

Was wondering how OP you guys think this guy will be in the deck. I definitely think he has a home here. Black Vice is another option to combo with him. But Seal of Fire and Rift bolt work very good with him.

[Kriggy]

The one thing burn has is consistency with all the cards doing pretty much the same, you end up with good topdecking compared to other decks. In that regard, I think the Chandra's Incinerator reduces the consisntecy since its terrible topdeck in my opinion unless you kept a bolt in your hand and doent function on its own. On the other hand, burn is not in good position now as it seems so we might need to experiment with various options.

What is your sideboard? How are you planning to beat Oko/Uro decks?

[the resurrection]

Chandra‘s Incinerator is THE MD answer against URO/OKO.
T2 Incinerator races Uro/Oko.
T3 Incinerator trades with Uro.
T3 Incinerator becomes a 3/3 Elk against loyality 5 Oko
And we have the Fireblast option...
Incinerator is also great against other problematic cards such as Tarmogoyf, Coatl/Strix (because of Trample) Grieselbrand (Show and Tell).

@Rood
I don‘t like Seal of Fire. I think Cave-In should be better for useless Fireblast, Incinerator and LutS copies. Cave-In showed up in some 5-0 MTGO lists as a sideboard option recently. Black Vise does not work with Incinerator.

Found this video on youtube. This guy is doing a 5-0 in Modern with monoR and playset Incinerator. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNQTQlB9XU8

[Tobitzki]

@Rood
I came up with a list v close to yours. The variance introduced by Incinerator is offset by shaving the clunkier & conditional spells (PoP, Firecraft) for more Bolts (Skewer). Seal for Swifty is the key here, of course, our 2nd best T1 play after Guide.

Since we're running Fetches for Lavamancer anyways, I'm considering a mini green splash (no more than 1-2 Taigas) just for SB Klothys to battle Snow: i.e. Vortex that enables topdecked Incinerator and spectacle.

[the resurrection]

5-0 MTGO

https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mtgo-standings/legacy-league-2020-08-01#phil__-

Phil_1987

20 Mountain

4 Goblin Guide
4 Swiftspear
2 Vexing Devil
2 Chandra‘s Incinerator

16 Bolt
4 Fireblast
4 Exquisite Firecraft
4 Price of Progress

//Sideboard
2 Volcanic Fallout
3 Skewer the critics
2 Sulfuric Vortex
4 Crypt
4 Smash

[jethstriker]

Guys, what do we think of this:

Roiling Vortex

1R

Enchantment

At the beginning of each player's upkeep, vortex deals 1 damage to them.

Whenever a player casts a spell, if no mana was spent on it, vortex deals 5 damage to them.

R: Each opponent can't gain life this turn.

Can we see this being run along, if not straight replacing sulfuric vortex? I think this has potential. Although much slower in damage, this is cheaper, plus the added bonus of blasting diamonds, petals, FoW, and Daze players.

[Fox]

Don't think this ends well for you when you try to finish people with Fireblast. This enchant would be more consistent with a Delver deck that wanted to both not play Dreadhorde and simultaneously punishing Dreadhorde users. This however won't happen b/c this enchant isn't exactly maindeck playable.

For Burn vs the card SnT, it's maybe marginally more reliable than E-Bridge vs Omniscience.

[jethstriker]

Don't think this ends well for you when you try to finish people with Fireblast.

Yeah you got a point there. Maybe cut 1 or 2 Fireblast if you want to try this. Although more often than not, burn players usually are above their opponent's life totals during a game.

[mistercakes]

someone mentioned burn on facebook with regard to the new wheel.

it's probably maindeckable.

pros:
can find fireblast
possibly deal damage
helps find sb cards like mindbreak trap, tormod's crypt, surgical

cons:
costs 3 mana
doesn't help early game vs fast combo
doesn't impact the board state

any thoughts?

[jethstriker]

I've also been thinking about this new wheel. My concern is that won't it probably end up as another punisher card in burn (like Browbeat), not actually getting the desired result you want? However I realized that you can almost always draw seven with this in the right scenario. Consider this: you get your opponent in low life total while you are comfortably way above his or hers. Then cast this as your last card in hand. Assuming this resolves, set your number equal to your opponent's life total to draw your seven cards (hopefully 1 or 2 of them is Fireblast). One thing I cant't figure out is to how can you make this deal damage to your opponent consistently if you want that result.

On another note, what happens when you and your opponent chose the same number (in a 2 player game)? Would that number be considered maximum or minimum (or both)?

[mistercakes]

each player who didn't choose the lowest number wheels. so if both people say 15, they both take 15 damage and wheel.

[gRR!!]

If both people says 15, didn't have both chosen the lowest number? In this case, both players take 15 damage and no-one wheels, I think.

[Reeplcheep]

If both people says 15, didn't have both chosen the lowest number? In this case, both players take 15 damage and no-one wheels, I think.

Grr is correct that if both people name the same number it is just a super flame-rift. I think that in most cases that is favourable for burn.

[mistercakes]

yea looking at it again looks like if both people choose 19, then both are taking 19 damage and not wheeling. given how often burn has more life prior to 3 mana in play, i don't think this will come up THAT often.

[the resurrection]

Hello,
I got a N00b question about Roiling Vortex and Rift Bolt.

If I am reading Vortex correctly, we get 5 DMG when casting a suspended Rift Bolt. However today I watched a video on youtube, where a burn player cast a suspended Rift Bolt on MTGO and got no damage form vortex. Here is the link (minute 14:06): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vn4bhSnPNJ8

Is there some ruling, that Vortex does no damage because of suspend or is it a bug on MTGO?

Thank you! :)

[Reeplcheep]

Hello,
I got a N00b question about Roiling Vortex and Rift Bolt.

If I am reading Vortex correctly, we get 5 DMG when casting a suspended Rift Bolt. However today I watched a video on youtube, where a burn player cast a suspended Rift Bolt on MTGO and got no damage form vortex. Here is the link (minute 14:06): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vn4bhSnPNJ8

Is there some ruling, that Vortex does no damage because of suspend or is it a bug on MTGO?

Thank you! :)

This is a neat rules interaction. The rift bolt wasn't free, it cost 1 because of Sphere of Resistance. If there was no sphere or thalia effect it would indeed hit the burn player for 5.

[indomitable]

someone mentioned burn on facebook with regard to the new wheel.

it's probably maindeckable.

pros:
can find fireblast
possibly deal damage
helps find sb cards like mindbreak trap, tormod's crypt, surgical

cons:
costs 3 mana
doesn't help early game vs fast combo
doesn't impact the board state

any thoughts?

Hiya! Someone over on reddit's r/lavaspike mentioned the new commander card in AFR: maddening hex (https://media.wizards.com/2021/afr/en_gptrtIo4Wf.png). How do we feel about this in the three mana slot instead?

Pros:
Enchantments are more difficult to remove pre-SB
High damage potential
Better version of curse of the pierced heart
Does help against combo somewhat

Cons
Same as wheel of misfortune

Edit: PVDH thinks it has potential -
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E7THRHOXoAQTXh5?format=jpg&name=4096x4096

[PirateKing]

https://mythicspoiler.com/mid/cards/curseofshakenfaith.jpg

This is good right?

Like, not Eidolon of the Great Revel good, but Pyrostatic Pillar good?

Seems good...

[Mr. Safety]

Its one sided, which i imagine really helps burn race combo decks, especially Storm. Its really hard for Ur delver to remove as well as an enchantment. It seems really good, but probably not as good as Eidolon as you say.

[Fox]

Edit: PVDH thinks it has potential -
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E7THRHOXoAQTXh5?format=jpg&name=4096x4096

Ragavan is a C+ card...

[indomitable]

Speaking of new cards for burn, crimson vow just brought us reckless impulse, which reads the same as light up the stage except it costs 1R with no spectacle.

I already play LutS in my deck, and I feel like I can either activate spectacle - or I don't care about the cost reduction so much because I'm already a bit flooded. It seems like the window when reckless impulse is straight better is pretty narrow? I'll definitely try this out, but I'm not sure if it's better or worse on average. The big thing you miss with reckless impulse is chaining LutS into another LutS with mana left to do something useful...

Edit: having thought more about it, I would say that LutS is just better

[Kriggy]

Mind sharing your list?

I tried LutS but was not really impressed because it led to weird sequencing

[indomitable]

Mind sharing your list?

I tried LutS but was not really impressed because it led to weird sequencing

Sure:
*Maindeck*
12 creatures - standard package of Eidolon, Goblin Guide, Monastery Swiftspear
12 instants - Bolt (4), Fireblast (3), Price of Progress (3), Searing Blood (2)
17 sorceries - Chain Lightning (4), Lava Spike (4), Rift Bolt (4), Skewer the Critics (3), Light up the Stage (2)
19 lands - Mountain (18), Fiery Islet (1)

Some notes:
- I only run 3 Fireblast because of 18 mountains
- I run the Fiery Islet because I like it in my modern burn deck (usually just cycles itself for another card)
- Despite being atypical in main, Searing Blood is not usually a dead card for me, and there is often a "C+ card" to kill with it
- Two Light up the Stage seems like a good number. I went down to 3 Skewer the Critics so as to not have too much spectacle burden.

That's 19 bolts, but I've had (and seen) success with going down to 18; any less than that and I think burn has trouble finishing the game. In terms of the play patterns, you'll note that sorceries are the most common type, so if you have to play in a main phase anyway - you'd might as well play in the first main phase in case you hit a haste creature off the LutS (or, if the board is empty play LutS after combat). I usually try to "burst" my spells in game 1 against blue decks anyway so I play the burn spells out until one goes through, and then LutS for more gas.

*Sideboard*
4 GY hate - usually Faerie Macabre because I hate drawing Leyline with no way to cast it
4 artifact hate - Smash to Smithereens
2 creature hate - I use Dead // Gone here since I MD 2 Searing effects. Dead kills Ragavan and Gone removes Marit Lage / other cheated fatty
2 blue "hate" - Red Elemental Blast right now (kills Murktide), but I've also used Exquisite Firecraft
3 other - Roiling Vortex is what I'm currently using, but this is a flex spot

[Zbynda]

So the latest lists have full set of Cemetery Gatekeeper instead of Goblin Guide as some sort of eidolon 5-8 (+ accidental grave hate).
Do you think it sticks, or it's just a trend and players trying new cards??

[PirateKing]

fyi, you need to tag CARDS to make the links work.

I'm not sure Burn is playable as long as Ragavan in legal. No card solves the problem of them accelerating their clock by 2~3 turns for free, without hampering their original tempo plan.

[Zbynda]

@PirateKing:
Thanks, edited the tags

Gatekeeper can block ragavan favorably and the grave hate part seems okay against murktide?
On mtgtop8 there are diverse top8s with delver decks not always taking the trophy.

[PirateKing]

You're not wrong, but it's just a compounding gamble to risk bringing a deck that has an nigh unwinnable matchup with the most popular deck, and chancing you'll just never get paired with.
All on curve answers open up Daze opportunities and it takes just one or two hits before the tempo is insurmountable.
It's just really, really rough going.

[indomitable]

You're not wrong, but it's just a compounding gamble to risk bringing a deck that has an nigh unwinnable matchup with the most popular deck, and chancing you'll just never get paired with.
All on curve answers open up Daze opportunities and it takes just one or two hits before the tempo is insurmountable.
It's just really, really rough going.

I think things are looking up after the ragaban. I took burn to a top 8 finish at SCG CON Indy this month. The only rough match up was 8 Cast, but red can shore that up.

Here's a tournament report if anyone is interested:
https://www.reddit.com/r/LavaSpike/comments/tk9xmc/legacy_top_8_in_scg_con_indy_legacy_5k_tournament/