[Primer/Deck] Burn

[Brael]

Regarding your spreadsheet: Looks very good! The only contentions I have is with the valuing of cards like Price of Progress and Grim Lavamancer (where the damage values assigned to these seem lower than experienced in gameplay), compared to Vexing Devil and Pyrostatic Pillar. (where the damage values assigned to these seem higher than experienced in gameplay) The main problem might just be that it's quite hard to accurately measure the value of damage these cards deal out, as they change values quite consistently based on the board state, and what deck you're playing against.

Pillar has the same value as Eidolon minus combat damage, or it should atleast. But that's the problem, a lot of these cards have a maximum and it changes based on deck, so I went with slightly more conservative values across the board. That approach skews things towards creatures, because the creatures we play all essentially have a minimum damage of 2 or more while the spells don't. It's possible I'm being too optimistic still in how many combat rounds each creature will get.

[Brael]

Played our Legacy night tonight, rather than a tournament though it seemed to devolve into people testing for Columbus so I only spent half the night playing Burn. On the other hand, I got some pretty good games in against Miracles going 5-1 winning both preboard and 3/4 postboard. Despite the performance though, I can't seem to convince anyone locally that SDT is amazing. Here's what I was playing, alongside the SB plan I had against Miracles. It's pretty similar to my default list on my spreadsheet.

Land 19
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Wooded Foothills
2 Arid Mesa
1 Taiga
1 Barbarian Ring
7 Mountain

Creatures 13
4 Goblin Guide
4 Monastery Swiftspear
4 Eidolon of the Great Revel
1 Grim Lavamancer

Spells 25
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Chain Lightning
4 Price of Progress
3 Searing Blaze
4 Fireblast
2 Sulfuric Vortex
2 Atarka's Command
2 Rift Bolt

Artifact 3
3 Sensei's Divining Top

Sideboard 15
2 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Grim Lavamancer
2 Faerie Macabre
2 Volcanic Fallout
4 Exquisite Firecraft
2 Red Elemental Blast
1 Destructive Revelry
1 Sulfuric Vortex

Out went
1 Grim Lavamancer
4 Price of Progress
3 Searing Blaze
2 Atarka's Command

In comes
2 Volcanic Fallout
4 Exquisite Firecraft
2 Red Elemental Blast
1 Destructive Revelry
1 Sulfuric Vortex

A couple things are going on with this plan. I'm trying to avoid the Wear // Tear lock by reducing my 2's and increasing my 3's. Also trying to go for fewer counterable cards and rely less on board presence. Spell Mastery actually gets a little difficult to turn on here with only 16 cards to do so (not counting Fireblast) but Miracles is more about a slow burn than flash frying them. If you can land a Top it becomes very difficult for them to win, to the point that I think it's correct to mulligan from 7 to 6 in search of one given the ability to scry another card, especially if you're on the draw.

[Krimson Viper]

I'm very interested in Sensei's Divining Top in the deck. Pros and cons? How's the mana, as in do you find its a sink sometimes? Any particular tricks?

[Brael]

I'm very interested in Sensei's Divining Top in the deck. Pros and cons? How's the mana, as in do you find its a sink sometimes? Any particular tricks?

The pro's are that it gets you more damage, you're less at the mercy of your top decks, every useless card you push out of the way represents 3-4 more damage you're getting in. You'll usually only activate Top a couple of times, outside of a slow game like Miracles I'm usually only activating it twice in a game (maybe once depending on curve), so it represents 2-3 total mana spent. As an upside though it's never a lost card because you can always tap it to cash it in for something. Sometimes if I have more mana than business I'll even tap it every turn just to generate prowess triggers. The final pro is that because you dig, you see more of your SB and that can change your SB numbers so the deck is a little less narrowly focused. Your games 2/3 improve across the board as a result.

The cons are that it slows you down in the mirror or against other aggressive decks that just don't give you time. To cast and activate top once represents 2 mana, which means you're giving up some board control. It also means that you need to play fewer mana sink cards. I board some extra Lavamancers to bring in during these situations, and take my Tops out. I also sometimes board extra Searing effects (what I played last night used Bridges instead), again to bring in when Top comes out.

Top plays a bit different in Burn than in say Miracles. In Burn you have to evaluate your clock, you always want to cash the Top in for another card so you still get your damage from it plus the advantage (unless you're using it for Prowess triggers). So once the clock is established and I have things to do with my mana I'll frequently tap it and shuffle it away. When you do that remember to do it in the order of activate top, in response tap top (with something you want on top), after top taps and is on top, crack a fetch. Then when things resolve you'll get to stack your top 3.

Remember that it's only as much of a sink as you want it to be, if you can't use it due to the mana situation you can always cash it in and shuffle it away but I find it's usually pretty easy to get some advantage out of it. I like landing top on T1 because only FoW usually stops it, but I find that I usually don't activate it until T3 unless I have a Rift Bolt or something that I would like to suspend on 2. It's always better to land Eidolon on 2 than activate Top when you have that choice and if keeping a 1 lander (top makes this a bit more viable) I prefer to go T1 Top, T2 hope for a topdeck, and only on T3 upkeep dig for another land, but I'm not sure if that line is right... I just like getting a 1 drop creature down if I can.

Basically, the main trick is to just get used to the timing, most decks never cash their Top's in, but here that Top almost always represents additional damage for your clock. I would say that in the average game I'm spending 3 mana on Top to get around 10 damage (because it gets a 4 dmg) through better draws and then cashing it in. Of course that's 3 mana to find rather than to cast that damage, but you can get some of that mana back if Top gets you a land earlier than you would otherwise get it... particularly if it's the third land on turn 3. Don't under estimate the value of getting another land earlier, I won't know more until my simulator is done and I can look at millions of generated games, but experience is telling me SDT can get pretty close to mana neutral just in smoothing land drops.

[Krimson Viper]

Would you say three is the magical number? I know many players advocate lower lands in the deck, but I like having twenty. In my current build, I've been trying to squeeze in twenty-one, but I just can't seem to figure that out. I bring this up because I wouldn't mind trading in a land and a couple of Lavaman slots for three Tops.

[Brael]

Would you say three is the magical number? I know many players advocate lower lands in the deck, but I like having twenty. In my current build, I've been trying to squeeze in twenty-one, but I just can't seem to figure that out. I bring this up because I wouldn't mind trading in a land and a couple of Lavaman slots for three Tops.

I've been using 3, it's not particularly a line of logic I like that 3 of's are best when you want to see a card but not multiples of that card, but that's what I'm doing. I've found that the second top can always get cashed in, but that it takes long enough that it does cost you time if you draw it and I want to remain as fast as possible, so that's why I trimmed to 3. I always like having one though.

If you want a 21st land, maybe go for a Barbarian Ring over Fireblast #4? That way you're still getting some damage out of the slot.

[Sidneyious]

Blast

[Lord Darkview]

The pro's are that it gets you more damage, you're less at the mercy of your top decks, every useless card you push out of the way represents 3-4 more damage you're getting in. You'll usually only activate Top a couple of times, outside of a slow game like Miracles I'm usually only activating it twice in a game (maybe once depending on curve), so it represents 2-3 total mana spent. As an upside though it's never a lost card because you can always tap it to cash it in for something. Sometimes if I have more mana than business I'll even tap it every turn just to generate prowess triggers. The final pro is that because you dig, you see more of your SB and that can change your SB numbers so the deck is a little less narrowly focused. Your games 2/3 improve across the board as a result.

The cons are that it slows you down in the mirror or against other aggressive decks that just don't give you time. To cast and activate top once represents 2 mana, which means you're giving up some board control. It also means that you need to play fewer mana sink cards. I board some extra Lavamancers to bring in during these situations, and take my Tops out. I also sometimes board extra Searing effects (what I played last night used Bridges instead), again to bring in when Top comes out.

Top plays a bit different in Burn than in say Miracles. In Burn you have to evaluate your clock, you always want to cash the Top in for another card so you still get your damage from it plus the advantage (unless you're using it for Prowess triggers). So once the clock is established and I have things to do with my mana I'll frequently tap it and shuffle it away. When you do that remember to do it in the order of activate top, in response tap top (with something you want on top), after top taps and is on top, crack a fetch. Then when things resolve you'll get to stack your top 3.

Remember that it's only as much of a sink as you want it to be, if you can't use it due to the mana situation you can always cash it in and shuffle it away but I find it's usually pretty easy to get some advantage out of it. I like landing top on T1 because only FoW usually stops it, but I find that I usually don't activate it until T3 unless I have a Rift Bolt or something that I would like to suspend on 2. It's always better to land Eidolon on 2 than activate Top when you have that choice and if keeping a 1 lander (top makes this a bit more viable) I prefer to go T1 Top, T2 hope for a topdeck, and only on T3 upkeep dig for another land, but I'm not sure if that line is right... I just like getting a 1 drop creature down if I can.

Basically, the main trick is to just get used to the timing, most decks never cash their Top's in, but here that Top almost always represents additional damage for your clock. I would say that in the average game I'm spending 3 mana on Top to get around 10 damage (because it gets a 4 dmg) through better draws and then cashing it in. Of course that's 3 mana to find rather than to cast that damage, but you can get some of that mana back if Top gets you a land earlier than you would otherwise get it... particularly if it's the third land on turn 3. Don't under estimate the value of getting another land earlier, I won't know more until my simulator is done and I can look at millions of generated games, but experience is telling me SDT can get pretty close to mana neutral just in smoothing land drops.

Greeting! I'm back to The Source since I was recently reminded why, compared to everywhere else, The Source was superior for Legacy discussion.

I want to discuss SDT a bit. It's inclusion confuses me, since I was always of the understanding that our philosophy was that things which aren't mana-for-damage, in as near a 1-for-3 ratio as possible, aren't for us. I think the SDT interaction is clever, but it just made mean uneasy. I remember Magma Jet was a staple way back when and played a similar role, so I did a more detailed analysis.

The analysis is here, but the gist is that once you hit the "only to-the-face" stage, a random nonland card plus a random draw is about 3.5 damage, a Magma Jet plus fixed draw is 4.7 damage (at a cost of basically 1 extra mana), and an SDT-swapped draw plus SDT-stacked draw is worth 5.5 damage (at a cost of 3 extra mana and 1 life).

Now, I'm not sure that analysis is right. If it is right, it seems that SDT is only marginally better than Jet, but at much higher mana cost. People on the other boards were adamant that SDT is good, but couldn't really explain why. I'm a very analytical person, and sort of like to have a good, logical reason for my card selection.

Can someone point out the flaw in my analysis? I'm sure there's one, or SDT wouldn't be so popular. Am I undervaluing the likely power of the card found with SDT? Do we really play so many games that run long enough that we're using SDT tons (all my analysis says getting to 20 is more of a mana-bottleneck than card-shortage, which SDT would make worse)?


Also, my decklist is here, and I'll take any feedback you're willing to offer. I'm considering -1 Mountain, -1 GLM, -2 Searing Blood, +4 Magma Jet.

[Sidneyious]

I'd love to run sdt but I want damage.

I have been looking at more 4 damage spells to replace sulfuric vortex, I run SV for obvious reasons but like creatures can be removed easy and at 3 mana I'd rather run skullcrack in the side if I face lifegain stuff.

Thoughts in
flame javelin
pulse of the forge
sonic burst

Now the sorcery speed cards that gained interest
Exquisite firecraft
Skull scorch

Now my list, many of you know I'm no fan of creature.

Sure that can deal 2-6 damage before removed but like most decks I play I'd rather their removal be useless.

3x Arid Mesa
4x Bloodstained Mire
4x Chain Lightning
4x Fireblast
4x Flame Rift
4x Goblin Guide
4x Grim Lavamancer
4x Lava Spike
4x Lightning Bolt
9x Mountain
4x Price of Progress
4x Rift Bolt
1x Scalding Tarn
3x Sulfuric Vortex
4x Wooded Foothills

[Lord Darkview]

I'd love to run sdt but I want damage.

I have been looking at more 4 damage spells to replace sulfuric vortex, I run SV for obvious reasons but like creatures can be removed easy and at 3 mana I'd rather run skullcrack in the side if I face lifegain stuff.

Thoughts in
flame javelin
pulse of the forge
sonic burst

Now the sorcery speed cards that gained interest
Exquisite firecraft
Skull scorch

Now my list, many of you know I'm no fan of creature.

Sure that can deal 2-6 damage before removed but like most decks I play I'd rather their removal be useless.

3x Arid Mesa
4x Bloodstained Mire
4x Chain Lightning
4x Fireblast
4x Flame Rift
4x Goblin Guide
4x Grim Lavamancer
4x Lava Spike
4x Lightning Bolt
9x Mountain
4x Price of Progress
4x Rift Bolt
1x Scalding Tarn
3x Sulfuric Vortex
4x Wooded Foothills

I've found that it is very unlikely that Vortex gets removed before it deals at least 2 points during game 1. That said, Skullcrack is certainly a possible alternative in this case, as it is more raw damage than the 1st turn and more mana efficient than the 2nd. The problem for Skullcrack has always been timing: a lot of our best spells are Sorcery speed, and always being forced to hold up mana as if I'm playing countermagic just feels wrong.

As for creatures, I notice you have 4x GG, 4x GLM, and 0x EotGR. I generally find the 4th GLM doesn't do much. EotGR pretty much always does at least 2, even if they immediately remove him, and more frequently does 4. This also dilutes their removal, so it won't be focused squarely on GLM.

In the 4-for-3 category, the only ones I'd seriously consider are Vortex (usually good for 4) and Exquisite Firecraft.

[SecondSunrise]

After scrubbing out of the main event with Eldrazi, I played Burn in the Enter the Arena event on Sunday at GP Prague. Ended up going 3-1, winning against RUG Delver, ANT and Reanimator (!) and loosing only in the burn mirror

The list I'm testing now runs 4 Swiftspears, 3 Searing Blaze and 0 Vortex MD, as well as a Barbarian Ring (that promptly lost me the game against the mirror ). Raised the Blaze count since it is better with Swiftspear than Vortex and there are many Deathrites running around right now. The Swiftspears especially have been really good for me, giving me ways to win games I had no business winning, for example beating a Turn 2 Griselbrand against Reanimator:

My opponent went to 8 in order to get Griselbrand with Reanimate after I passed the turn with 2 Swiftspears he attacked me to go back up to 15. On my turn I then went Lava Spike + Chain Lightning + Fireblast. My opp had FoW for the Fireblast, but still took exactly 14 since the Swiftspears attacked for a total of 8 dmg! This win was very satifying and left my opponent quite flabbergasted, who said he had (understandably) never lost to Burn.

I enjoyed playing the current configuration very much, although squeezing in a SDT could be awesome to get more Prowess triggers and filter away excessive creatures. Will try to find room for it.

[MTGeezy]

After scrubbing out of the main event with Eldrazi, I played Burn in the Enter the Arena event on Sunday at GP Prague. Ended up going 3-1, winning against RUG Delver, ANT and Reanimator (!) and loosing only in the burn mirror

The list I'm testing now runs 4 Swiftspears, 3 Searing Blaze and 0 Vortex MD, as well as a Barbarian Ring (that promptly lost me the game against the mirror ). Raised the Blaze count since it is better with Swiftspear than Vortex and there are many Deathrites running around right now. The Swiftspears especially have been really good for me, giving me ways to win games I had no business winning, for example beating a Turn 2 Griselbrand against Reanimator:

My opponent went to 8 in order to get Griselbrand with Reanimate after I passed the turn with 2 Swiftspears he attacked me to go back up to 15. On my turn I then went Lava Spike + Chain Lightning + Fireblast. My opp had FoW for the Fireblast, but still took exactly 14 since the Swiftspears attacked for a total of 8 dmg! This win was very satifying and left my opponent quite flabbergasted, who said he had (understandably) never lost to Burn.

I enjoyed playing the current configuration very much, although squeezing in a SDT could be awesome to get more Prowess triggers and filter away excessive creatures. Will try to find room for it.

You got a list by chance? curious to see what your layout is.

[Brael]

Greeting! I'm back to The Source since I was recently reminded why, compared to everywhere else, The Source was superior for Legacy discussion.

I want to discuss SDT a bit. It's inclusion confuses me, since I was always of the understanding that our philosophy was that things which aren't mana-for-damage, in as near a 1-for-3 ratio as possible, aren't for us. I think the SDT interaction is clever, but it just made mean uneasy. I remember Magma Jet was a staple way back when and played a similar role, so I did a more detailed analysis.

The analysis is here, but the gist is that once you hit the "only to-the-face" stage, a random nonland card plus a random draw is about 3.5 damage, a Magma Jet plus fixed draw is 4.7 damage (at a cost of basically 1 extra mana), and an SDT-swapped draw plus SDT-stacked draw is worth 5.5 damage (at a cost of 3 extra mana and 1 life).

Now, I'm not sure that analysis is right. If it is right, it seems that SDT is only marginally better than Jet, but at much higher mana cost. People on the other boards were adamant that SDT is good, but couldn't really explain why. I'm a very analytical person, and sort of like to have a good, logical reason for my card selection.

Can someone point out the flaw in my analysis? I'm sure there's one, or SDT wouldn't be so popular. Am I undervaluing the likely power of the card found with SDT? Do we really play so many games that run long enough that we're using SDT tons (all my analysis says getting to 20 is more of a mana-bottleneck than card-shortage, which SDT would make worse)?


Also, my decklist is here, and I'll take any feedback you're willing to offer. I'm considering -1 Mountain, -1 GLM, -2 Searing Blood, +4 Magma Jet.

I think your analysis is off. There's more good cards left than 24/60, using my list there would be 30/60 good cards on T4. Those 30 cards comprise about 114 damage so that's 3.8 damage/card on the good cards and 0 damage/card on the rest. Assuming we use your suggestion for playing Top you have an 87.5% chance of hitting on the first card so .875*3.8 or you get 3.325 damage. You have an 86.3% chance to hit on the second card or 3.279 damage on average. So that's 1 life and 3 to generate 0 damage but get 6.6 damage into your hand. Including the mana cost of the cards you hit (in my list this would be 39 total for 1.3 mana/card... this is all in my spreadsheet I uploaded before for my current list) you're looking at 5.6 mana for 6.6 damage. Not the greatest ratio but I did claim it was a mana sink. More importantly though, it's 6.6 damage in 2 cards.

If you just take a random draw it's 2.67 damage/card on average in my list so you'll get 5.34 damage in 2.6 mana. So with top you're paying an additional 3 mana for 1.3 damage. If you can stack it with an early prowess trigger though it's 3 mana for 2.3 damage.

I think this approach ignores the branching options though because the deck relies heavily on critical mass. If you miss on either spell you risk going below the critical mass and not killing your opponent. The SDT route will hit those 2 burn spells much more often than random chance will. In reality it looks more like 25% of the time you hit 2 burn spells, 50% of the time you hit 1 burn spell, and 25% of the time you hit 0 burn spells. In that scenario, there's a considerable overlap where Top gets you more damage than the 1 burn spell and 1 dead card will. So more than just being slightly more damage, it smooths the games.

Also remember, that if your Top gets you your third land drop, it breaks even on mana because the mana to fuel it is something that you wouldn't have otherwise had.

I'm hoping to get my simulations for this running soon, it ended up being a bit more bug ridden than I thought, so I've been tracking all those down. The idea is that it can give a lot of games worth of info once it's all done.

[Meester Roboto]

Figured I would post a short recap of my GP Columbus Experience.

I ended up 9-6, a big solid average.

Day 1:
Round 1: Grixis Delver
Round 2: Lands
Round 3: RUG Delver
Round 4: Infect (L)
Round 5: Infect
Round 6: Jund
Round 7: RUG Delver (L)
Round 8: BUG Thing in the Ice
Round 9: TES- Bryant Cook (L)

Day 2:
Round 10: Grixis Delver
Round 11: Sneak and Show (L)
Round 12: Infect
Round 13: Red Stompy (L)
Round 14: Miracles
Round 15: BUG Delver (L)

Overall I feel that my losses were to variance rather than misplays. The only exception was keeping a sketchy hand game 3 against SnT instead of mulling to Bridge.

Here is the list I ran. I used every card in the SB except the cages as I never ran up against a matchup needing them. Will be happy to answer questions about any of my numbers, card choices, or matches.

Lands:
10 Mountain
4 Bloodstaind Mire
4 Wooded Foothills
1 Barbarian Ring

Creatures:
4 Goblin Guide
4 Eidolon of the Great Revel
2 Monastery Swiftspear
1 Grim Lavamancer

Spells:
4 Fireblast
4 Price of Progress
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Chain Lightning
4 Lava Spike
4 Rift Bolt
3 Searing Blaze
2 Sulfuric Vortex
1 Exquisite Firecraft

Sideboard
1 Pyrostatic Pillar
2 Grafdiggers Cage
2 Ensnaring Bridge
2 Pithing Needle
3 Exquisite Firecraft
1 Grim Lavamancer
1 Searing Blood
3 Smash To Smithereens

[MTGeezy]

Figured I would post a short recap of my GP Columbus Experience.

I ended up 9-6, a big solid average.

Day 1:
Round 1: Grixis Delver
Round 2: Lands
Round 3: RUG Delver
Round 4: Infect (L)
Round 5: Infect
Round 6: Jund
Round 7: RUG Delver (L)
Round 8: BUG Thing in the Ice
Round 9: TES- Bryant Cook (L)

Day 2:
Round 10: Grixis Delver
Round 11: Sneak and Show (L)
Round 12: Infect
Round 13: Red Stompy (L)
Round 14: Miracles
Round 15: BUG Delver (L)

Overall I feel that my losses were to variance rather than misplays. The only exception was keeping a sketchy hand game 3 against SnT instead of mulling to Bridge.

Here is the list I ran. I used every card in the SB except the cages as I never ran up against a matchup needing them. Will be happy to answer questions about any of my numbers, card choices, or matches.

Lands:
10 Mountain
4 Bloodstaind Mire
4 Wooded Foothills
1 Barbarian Ring

Creatures:
4 Goblin Guide
4 Eidolon of the Great Revel
2 Monastery Swiftspear
1 Grim Lavamancer

Spells:
4 Fireblast
4 Price of Progress
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Chain Lightning
4 Lava Spike
4 Rift Bolt
3 Searing Blaze
2 Sulfuric Vortex
1 Exquisite Firecraft

Sideboard
1 Pyrostatic Pillar
2 Grafdiggers Cage
2 Ensnaring Bridge
2 Pithing Needle
3 Exquisite Firecraft
1 Grim Lavamancer
1 Searing Blood
3 Smash To Smithereens

Would you make any changes to your list or did it feel pretty solid? Got a legacy fnm tonight so I'm trying to decide on a final decklist.

[SecondSunrise]

You got a list by chance? curious to see what your layout is.

Sorry for answering so late; this is the list I'currently running:

10 Mountain
8 Fetches
1 Barbarian Ring

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

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

SB

4 Exquisite Firecraft
4 Pyrostatic Pillar
3 Smash to Smithereens
2 Sulfuric Vortex
2 Ensnaring Bridge

I notice that my MD is almost identical to Meester Roboto's, 57/60 MD! The SB is notably different, how was your experience with Needle? I have stopped bothering with putting in GY hate for the moment, as I just don't feel like the small increase in win% those 1-2 cards give us are worth the SB slots. Running 4 Pillars might be slightly excessive, but I just like having 8 of that effect against the various storm decks; furthermore, they can do work against decks like Miracles where my list has lots of dead MD cards (even if we maybe dont need more help after the printing of EF).

[Sidneyious]

I think your analysis is off. There's more good cards left than 24/60, using my list there would be 30/60 good cards on T4. Those 30 cards comprise about 114 damage so that's 3.8 damage/card on the good cards and 0 damage/card on the rest. Assuming we use your suggestion for playing Top you have an 87.5% chance of hitting on the first card so .875*3.8 or you get 3.325 damage. You have an 86.3% chance to hit on the second card or 3.279 damage on average. So that's 1 life and 3 to generate 0 damage but get 6.6 damage into your hand. Including the mana cost of the cards you hit (in my list this would be 39 total for 1.3 mana/card... this is all in my spreadsheet I uploaded before for my current list) you're looking at 5.6 mana for 6.6 damage. Not the greatest ratio but I did claim it was a mana sink. More importantly though, it's 6.6 damage in 2 cards.

If you just take a random draw it's 2.67 damage/card on average in my list so you'll get 5.34 damage in 2.6 mana. So with top you're paying an additional 3 mana for 1.3 damage. If you can stack it with an early prowess trigger though it's 3 mana for 2.3 damage.

I think this approach ignores the branching options though because the deck relies heavily on critical mass. If you miss on either spell you risk going below the critical mass and not killing your opponent. The SDT route will hit those 2 burn spells much more often than random chance will. In reality it looks more like 25% of the time you hit 2 burn spells, 50% of the time you hit 1 burn spell, and 25% of the time you hit 0 burn spells. In that scenario, there's a considerable overlap where Top gets you more damage than the 1 burn spell and 1 dead card will. So more than just being slightly more damage, it smooths the games.

Also remember, that if your Top gets you your third land drop, it breaks even on mana because the mana to fuel it is something that you wouldn't have otherwise had.

I'm hoping to get my simulations for this running soon, it ended up being a bit more bug ridden than I thought, so I've been tracking all those down. The idea is that it can give a lot of games worth of info once it's all done.

If I ran my list with top (4) I'd drop 2 GLM and 2 lands(basic and the 1 ring), I can see swiftspear doing more for me than EotGR will.

I'd rather run him in a sideboard against cantrip heavy decks.

[Brael]

If I ran my list with top (4) I'd drop 2 GLM and 2 lands(basic and the 1 ring), I can see swiftspear doing more for me than EotGR will.

I'd rather run him in a sideboard against cantrip heavy decks.

I would drop Lava Spike for creature space long before Eidolon. Lava Spike is the worst card in the deck that frequently sees play.

[Dio]

What do you guys think about replacing Barbarian Ring with Keldon Megaliths? I don't have much experience with burn and I know Barbarian Ring can deal the final damage, but I was wondering if it would be better to deal 1 damage each turn after emptying our hand.

[Speedbump]

What do you guys think about replacing Barbarian Ring with Keldon Megaliths? I don't have much experience with burn and I know Barbarian Ring can deal the final damage, but I was wondering if it would be better to deal 1 damage each turn after emptying our hand.

Too slow, too mana intensive, just not good enough.

Burn can't afford lands entering the battlefield tapped, let alone one that requires two other lands just to activate.