What's your reasoning for Vexing Devil being bad? Only does 4 damage?Originally Posted by TeenieBopper
The same reason Browbeat and Book Burning are bad. Letting your opponent control which mode you get is never a good idea. They're always going to choose whichever mode is best for them.
Ok, but both of those cards are bad for many other reasons.
For burn, 1 for a 4/3 or 4 damage sounds fine regardless of what they choose.
Being a strictly worse 4/3 OR 4 dmg for 1 doesn't really mean much by itself since both effects are so undercosted by themselves. It will need testing, but it wouldn't surprise me in the least to see this in sligh.
Browbeat is bad because 3 cards for 3 mana is bad in burn, not because the opponent can choose to have it deal damage instead (which is usually the worse choice by far for the opponent). Book burning is bad becasue it's a mill spell.
So when you play Vexing Devil on turn 1, everyone is going to look at their hand and ask themselves a question: Do I have a Swords/Bolt/removal spell? If yes, let it resolve. If no, they'll take the 4 damage. That's only marginally better than Chain Lightning.
Most decks probably have somewhere on the order of 4-7 dead cards against burn (removal). When you play Vexing Devil, you're doing two things: making those cards live again, and making it so your opponent chooses which is best for them/worse for you.
Exept removal hasn't been dead against burn since Goblin Guide.
I´m a Derek, and Derek's don't run...
So what's the difference here between Goblin Guide or Hellspark Elemental or Grim Lavamancer? Goblin Guide actually gives them a card ~30% of the time.
Contrary to popular belief burn isn't always on the play. If they don't have removal, it did it's job, if they do have removal, it wouldn't have mattered. Unlike Goblin Guide who's small enough to chump out / if they don't have removal they'll find it.
As Suneloon mentioned, removal is far from dead against Burn. In fact, removal is generally the most important of your cards against burn as the creatures burn runs has potential to do 6-8 damage for 1 mana, vastly superior to a single bolt.
This. Burn has turned into a Burn/RDW hybrid as of late since pure burn is trash and isn't fast enough, while too many creatures is bad since other decks do it better. A mix of hasty creatures and/or creatures with reach + burn seems to be the wining combination.
This isn't a problem. Its at best a speed-bump. Leyline is a problem, CB w/ Top is a problem. Active Jitt/Batterskull/SoFI are problems. Even Kitchen Finks are problems, just smaller problems. Thalia is a speed-bump. Play around like you would daze or use 1 of the 30ish cards in your deck to kill it if you really need to.
And that I would say is the mistake of the person running GGuide.
And for the 1,000,000th time the answer can not be "go faster" (because you can't) and shouldn't be give up one of the few advantages you had to start with ("dead" card advantage) by adding creatures because the opponent will almost always have removal for it. That only leaves 1 real option, which i have covered plenty in previous posts so I will stop here before I type 3 pages again.
You might want to try out RogueBuild's configuration using sweepers such as Flamerift and Volcanic Fallout in the main deck.
Thalia, GUardian of Thraben should indeed be cause some setbacks, but it seems to me that you can always throw removal towards her direction if it really becomes a problem.
Cheers,
jares
Everyone is entitled to their opinion.
Unfortunately, the comment above is also an example of the type that we shouldn't be too concerned about, as it obviously does not merit a meaningful discussion - we would all be better-off ignoring statements that are made without the proper reasoning.
Let me try making such a statement:
- "Lightning Bolt and Fireblast suck. Lava Dart is stupid good."
-jares
I'm not sure running lots of sweepers is the answer, but it's an avenue worth trying. I'm not fond of the list you sent me however and I think it could be tweaked to be something superior. I do like your concept of (nearly) creatureless burn and sweep.
Hey man don't diss Lava Dart. ¬_¬
Haha I wrote something similar but realized it started to go way too deep into nostalgia-mode.
I've won more games off the back of lava darts than I can count! Granted, I was.. what.. 14 at the time or something? Lava Dart was a 4-of auto-include in every red deck I built haha.
I started playing in Judgment, and it's still by far my favorite set to this day. I just miss the way cards were built back then, even a lot of the commons and uncommons you can say "Wow, they suck", but they were all designed pretty well or were flavorful enough. Nowadays? I don't know, most of these cards I'm seeing are so mundane and uninteresting. I miss things like Hunting Grounds, Anurid Brushhopper, Mirari, madness cards, Commander Eesha... T_T;;
*Nostalgia Mode engaged* Currently, the most memorable / best day of my life is when I got 6 teeth pulled and my mom bought me 6 packs of judgment per tooth. I. Shit. Bricks. [/nostalgiamode]
The above statement is a fallacy, and believe that this is the fallacy that creates misconceptions about why cards like Browbeat and Vexing Devil are good or bad. Let me prove my point:
- Card Name: someImaginaryCard
- Casting Cost: someFairValue
- Type: Sorcery
- Text: Your opponent chooses: You win the game, or your opponent losses the game.
Surely this imaginary card will not get printed, but it serves as a counterexample for the statement above, as the effect of "allowing your opponent to choose the outcome" is negligible.
The entire point of these cards that allow your opponent to "choose" is that the "choosing part" is part of the cost of playing the card - this is why Vexing Devil is undercosted as either a 4/3 creature or a 4-damage effect. The question we have to ask when evaluating these cards is "will I be getting good value for the cost that I'll be paying, including the cost of allowing my opponent to choose the resulting effect?".
As I have stated ever since Vexing Devil got spoiled, I find no benefit in over-thinking the details of this card, and we should all just go on and test it for ourselves and provide the results when we're done. Arguing in circles will not get us anywhere.
-jares
Oh, sorry, I meant Lava Axe.
Too much lava going around (Spikes, Darts, Hounds, etc.).
Cheers,
jares
followed by...
While I agree with Jares in general, if ever there is going to be printed a playable draw card for a Burn, I think this is it.
I had to go find it because I had not seen anything about it until Teenietiny mentioned it:
Risky Bet: 1R
Instant, discard hand, draw 2 cards.
Its cheap so it doesn't break our curve. Its an instant so you can play it at the end of their turn. We are not going to cast it until we are otherwise out of gas anyway so the discard part shouldn't be an issue. Really, if we cant make this draw card work then the only thing left to try is:
Zeus's Bolt: R
Instant: 3 damage target player, draw a card.
But that will never be printed... Point being I don't think we can ask for much better in a Burn playable draw card.
Oh, 1 other note... playing it would put an end to the idea of playing TWrath.
I actually like Risky Bet as a card too, especially considering that this will probably be as good as it gets when it comes to card-drawing from red.
I'm unsure, though, if this card will be a good fit for Burn.
These are my initial considerations for Risky Bet:
- You only want to play this card if you don't have anything valuable in hand anyway, which can happen fairly quickly.
- Paying 2 mana to draw 2 cards will likely still be a tempo loss unless you have more mana to spare for the turn. This probably means that we will need access to at least 3 Mountains to be able to maintain some degree of tempo with the available mana (with the exception of Fireblast of course); we could always draw into more Mountains that would give us the necessary mana to use the spell/ability we want to play.
- Based on point #2, it would probably be a good idea to maximize the number of 1-cost cards that we can cast after playing Risky Bet. Cards that come into mind are Shard Volley (which I've experimented with in the past as a singleton) and Spark Elemental (which won't really be a reliable mid/late game option anyway), though neither would be ideal inclusions.
- The inclusion of this card would have some positive impact on fueling Grim Lavamancer or activating Threshold for Barbarian Ring.
- This card does have dis-synergy with Thunderous Wrath (considering that Miracle cards already induce their own set of inconsistencies).
- It might be worth considering for 2-3 slots in the deck. Having too many Risky Bets is... risky, as you don't really want to draw into additional Risky Bets on the same turn.
- Risky Bet somewhat increases your exposure to conditional counterspells like Spell Snare, Spell Pierce, and Daze.
- Based on point #2, Risky Bet will also be able to make good use of mana floods.
Do let me know if there's anything else that could be added to the list.
Cheers,
jares
Here's what my testing have been telling me.
Vexing Devil is good. If you play 4 Goblin Chesus and 4 Mancer (and i think you should), making removal live isn't an issue. The card play better than i tought, and will do 4 damage OR blank a removal that would have gone toward your guide/mancer most of the time.
I never felt bad playing risky bet for now. Being an instant make it so much better, keep mana open and casting things EoT is what you want anyway because of PoP, bolts and mancer activations. Yes, it's tempo loss, but imho it's better than the worst 3, and maybe 4, card of burn. So far i've never been disappointed by it. A card i've dropped is marauder. With Risky Bet and Devil, optimizing your mana development is even more important than usual.
Will post some more later since now i'm at work.
Actually, Risky Bet could possibly not cause any tempo loss if you have enough mana to cast the cards that you would draw into, though the chances of that happening might not be too reliable.
Regards,
jares
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
