[Deck] Burn

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Originally Posted by kirbysdl

You're pretty much never going to hardcast Cave-In, the alternate casting cost (ACC) sucks, and its effect sucks for either casting cost. Cave-in costs 5, but Earthquake for 2 damage costs 3. It's still a Sorcery, so you can't sweep a bunch of hasty Bridge tokens or play it in response to the second Imperious Perfect/Muscle Sliver/Mad Auntie/Merrow Reejery. Pretty much any flier in Legacy is huge (Tombstalker, Exalted Angel) or tiny and boltable (Birds of Paradise, Hypnotic Specter) and never comes in swarms, so the ability to hit fliers is negligible.

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Flamebreak deals 3 damage for 3 mana, and can't regenerate. Rolling Earthquake affects all creatures except creatures with Horsemanship. However, 1 Rolling Earthquake usually cost more than the entire Burn Deck themselves...

@kirbysd:

Ok, I'll expound on my short statement a little then... two can ramble :P

I was merely comparing Cave-In to Pyroclasm, a card you brought up and one I believe to be simply horrible.
To get one thing out of the way: Both are save-my-ass cards that will suck when they aren't, in fact, saving your ass. I assumed you have a reason to run either: there are concerns that are best solved with a sweeper but for which Flamebreak - usually the best choice because it also deals 3 for 3 and a single card - is dangerously slow.

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Most of your points against Cave-In are not relevant to a direct comparison:
The sweeper effects of the cards are identical, 2 damage to everything including flyers, at sorcery speed. Neither will save you from fat, combo creatures that win the game immediately or sufficient quantities of hasty stuff.

Your disaffection with the alternate casting cost is understandable, but you seem to ignore the 'drawback' of Pyroclasm. Pitching a precious Burn spell might cause you to run out of gas, but so might running a spell that doesn't hurt the opponent in the first place; if you truly count Cave-In as a 1-for-2 you would have to count Pyroclasm as a dead card.

Assuming you need creature control early on, the card you pitched turned into half a Flame Rift that cost -2 mana. If it was a Bolt, you dealt 1 damage less in total (and 2 more to yourself) and spent 3 mana less - in my opinion a good trade-off in any Burn deck that doesn't run too much mana in the first place (remember, if we're running either of these as a playset chances are we have no spells that need 3 mana -> low land count).
Pitching a card for Cave-In *feels* like a larger sacrifice than spending mana and a card that sweeps but doesn't deal damage. This isn't really the case outside very specific circumstances (You need the sweeper early on, burn cards are a more important consideration than mana in the long run, and they counter it. And even then, Cave-In wins if the counter in question is Daze.)

If you don't need a sweeper, Cave-In gives you either the opportunity to deal 2 eventually if the game lasts that long (in which case both cards suck, Cave-In slightly less so. This is a realistic scenario against mono-anything control) or speed up your win in a hand with efficient burn spells but little land (likelyhood depending on your deck; quite high if you favour efficiency over soft benefits).

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Should Cave-In be considered a staple in Burn? No. Outside builds that can directly abuse its lack of a mana cost (for example Not-Quite-Sligh variants with Sparks/Balls/Marauders) or a metagame pressure to have your sweepers online quickly, I'd rather rely on Flamebreak.

If the major problem is a bunch of Goblin tokens, Rolling Earthquake is a 2-mana answer that can also damage the opponent (doesn't always prevent them from swinging once though; only Cave-In or VERY narrow cards do that.) but that's as slow as Flamebreak in the face of Zombie hordes.
There are also a variety of useful sideboard cards to stop token hordes in time (Powder Keg is a 2-mana answer that also destroys morphs and chalices efficiently and has a trillion other applications; it shares the problem of not dealing damage to the opponent though).