Lol... I've been tossing and turning on Ensnaring Bridge for sometime. Ensaring Bridge is one of those cards that we seemed to need. And your right, most of the time we could play blasts in replace to bridge.
Yeah, I'm not sure what matchups Ensnaring Bridge is supposed to be a real all-star in outside of Sneaky Show. I suppose it turns off Craterhoof kills if it's on the field, but I question how regularly I'm going to get to three mana against Elves in addition to how stable this would be against that elf that destroys artifacts/enchantments.
It would be great against RUG if it resolved at a high enough life total to prevent Lightning Bolts from killing me, but I consider that to be a pretty long shot in a deck with so much countermagic and so few key spells to point it at. I always used to chalk it up to decent splash damage.
The Deck to Beat section on The Source lists Miracles, Omnitell, RUG, BUG, and DnT as the performers in the current meta, and I've come to respect that section (though it isn't perfect) as a guide to the metagame. Ensnaring Bridge doesn't look great against that field, with only modest utility against one deck in it. I definitely want a lot of blast effects against that field, and uncounterability just got a whole more relevant: both Miracles and Omnitell do not want uncounterable blasts thrown across the table.
I can't speak much about BUG, none of my usual playtest partners run the deck regularly. The guy who really should be a BUG player, in his heart, cannot stop tinkering with decks and always brings something different. He's good enough to win with whatever he brings. I shudder to think how he'd perform with a ham sandwich.
DnT, on the other hand, I deal with all the time, and as long as you keep a hand that can kill Mother of Runes on turn 1 with enough Searing effects on hand, the matchup is perfectly fine.
Thus, benefiting from the narrowness and splash damage of the combo deck du jour, I think we can handle the DTB section with just:
3 Vexing Shusher
4 Red Elemental Blast or Pyroblast
3 Searing Blaze / Searing Blood (three between MD and SB total, assuming 3 Grim Lavamancer)
3 Smash to Smithereens (not just for equipment and Aether Vial, also stops Chalice of the Void)
...I personally stash two of these Searing effects in the MD, along with 3 Sulfuric Vortex (20 land). The rest of the sideboard is 4 Leyline of the Void, which I have to make bad matchups go away. Running 4 of this particular (insanely powerful) card is a luxury that the metagame rarely affords, and it's only possible right now because Omnitell and Miracles respond to the same hate cards, the Shusher combined with heavy blasting.
Of course, the real over-the-top power in my Burn deck I only just applied today... when I got rid of the last three ugly draft-box Mountains and replaced them with Unhinged. I did a little dance in the store as the wince-inducing lands were discarded forever, replaced by pure red awesomeness.
This is my first post on this site, but I've been playing burn on and off for the last few years. Burn was the second legacy deck I've built, with Dredge being my first. This was a deck I was playing more casually, since sanctioned Legacy events are scarce in my area:
The reason I only ran 2 price in this build was because locally most casual players run little to no nonbasic lands, thus price is more often than not a dead card that does 0 damage. If I were to take my burn deck to a sanctioned tournament then yes, I would run 4 price, but if I was playing in a more casual setting, I would swap out 4 price for 4 magma jet.
A few days ago I heard that one of my local shops was starting to hold Legacy tournaments for FNM with 10 proxies allowed. I was overjoyed at hearing this, because I rarely get a chance to play sanctioned Legacy, despite it being my favorite format, and tuned my burn deck for the event, arriving at this list:
Notable changes here include the addition of searing blaze, since more often than not I would find myself losing speed (and losing games by 1-2 points) if I have to use a burn spell on my opponent's creature(s), since that was now damage I couldn't direct at their face. Searing Blaze solves this problem to an extent. I also cut one mountain, dropping my land count from 20 to 19, because as absurd as this sounds, I get flooded way too often at 20 land and lose games because of this. I remember one particular game I drew 6 lands in a row with 5 being fetches, which sounds crazy, but it's happened to me often enough to warrant dropping one land. I playtested the deck a little bit after making this adjustment and it felt much smoother, and way less clunky since I now don't topdeck unwanted land nearly as often. The last major change is turning 3 lavamancers into swiftspears. Lavamancers are, IMO, the worst nonland card to topdeck in the entire deck since it makes me wait a full turn to use it. It's also bad when I draw more than 1, and swiftspears are a better turn 1 play for when I don't have guide, not to mention a slightly better topdeck.
Anyway, the FNM event consisted of a 4 round swiss, with no cuts to top x players, since there were only 10 people playing at tonight's event. There were several tier decks, but also some rogue decks you wouldn't expect to find at an SCG event. Here were my matchups:
Round 1: 8-rack (2-0 win)
This is a bad matchup for me on paper, since their gameplan involves stripping away my hand then punishing me for having 0-1 cards in my hand. Very easy to get my hand to 0 when you consider I'm burn. Game 1: On the draw. He leads with thoughtseize and takes away my goblin guide. Luckily I have a swiftspear in hand which I can start the game off with, and several solid burn spells. I end up discaring land and sulfuric vortex to his Raven's Crime, and he also lands a Shrieking Affliction turn 2 as well, which I end up having to race. Thankfully, I just barely won the race, and possibly wouldn't have gotten there without Monastary's prowess triggers pumping itself up to a 3/4 on my turn 2. Game 2: On the play. I side in Pithing needles ,and relic of progenitus. My opponent had terrible luck this game and only had 1 land after mulling to 5.
Round 2: Leyline combo (2-1 win)
I doubt most people have heard about this deck, so I'll explain what it does. It attempts to aggressively mulligan with serum powder in order to get Serra's Sanctum in the opening hand, then starts the game with a bunch of leylines in play, and then play opalescence to win, potentially on turn 1 if they get it in their opener. Needless to say, this is a very bad matchup for me, more so because I don't have any sideboard cards that can handle enchantments. This was a matchup I had no business winning but end up lucking out. Game 1: On the play. I get lucky enough to win the roll and not die on his first turn. Game 2: On the draw. I switch out my Searing Blazes for Smash to Smithereens. My logic behind this is that Searing Blaze will always be a dead card until he combos off and I die, in which case I'm dead and the Blazes were useless anyway, whereas if my opponent happens to durdle and ends up playing a Serum Powder, I have a way to deal him more damage. This game was very bad for me, since he started the game with 3 leylines, including 2 Leyline of Sanctity, and proceeded to play a Suppression Field turn 1. All 3 lands in my hand happen to be fetches, so this is extremely bad as I'm now locked out of the game and can't generate any mana. I manage to eventually draw a mountain and land Swiftspear, but I also have to burn myself in order to get prowess triggers on swiftspear due to leyline. I fail to draw a second mountain before my opponent combos off, which is a shame because I was sandbagging 2 Smash to Smithereens and 2 Price of Progress, and he also happened to play 2 Serum Powders along the course of the game. Had I drawn a second mountain I could probably have won as I still got my opponent to around 8 life before he went off. Game 3: I'm on the play. I lucked out here, because despite my opponent having Leyline of Sanctity again, I have 3 Goblin Guides and 2 land in my opening hand, and I mercilessly beat him down in 4 turns. Again, I had no business winning this matchup, and if someone could suggest good enchantment removal that doesn't require me to splash another color, I would really appreciate it since this isn't the only deck I faced that night that runs problematic enchantments.
Round 3: Shardless Food Chain (0-2 loss)
This deck uses Food Chain and Misthollow Griffin to generate infinite mana to power out an Emrakul, the Aeons Torn. This particular build was a Sultai build with a Shardless Agent package as well. I feel like this particular matchup was a coin toss and I could have won if my opponent wasn't as lucky. Game 1: I'm on the draw. I get him down to 6, and then he combos off turn 4 while I have Rift Bolt suspended and Chain Lightning in hand. After the match I felt I made a mistake scooping to Emrakul since he only swings for 15 and I had a mountain in hand, but he reminds me he also has 3 Griffins he can attack with as well. Game 2: I'm on the play. I side in 2 pithing needles, since he runs deathrite shaman and I can at least shut that card off. I see a misdirection off a Guide trigger at some point during this round, I had 3 land out and 2 fireblast in hand, so I can't play both at the time. I just have to hope he spends his other blue cards later on. A few turns later after he casts Brainstorm and some other blue card I can't remember the name of (it exiles 3 cards from his deck and cantrips for 2 mana), he attempts to combo off, to which I try and respond to by double fireblasting him, since he's at 6 again. Unfortunately he does have another blue card for the Misdirection and so I can only get him to 2 before losing. However, I did make a mistake and forget to side in Smash to Smithereens, which was a mistake that probably cost me the game as he had Agents to chump block my dudes.
Round 3: Shardless Sultai (2-0 Win) Game 1:I'm on the draw. Watching my opponents face after leading off with a turn 1 swiftspear was priceless. Burning him out turn 4 despite him Cabal Therapying 2 Eidolons out of my hand turn 2 was even more priceless. Game 2:This time, I actually remember to side in Smashes. It didn't matter though, because I had 2 Prices that blew him out. (Side note: If you have the mana to play a Price but it's not enough to get lethal right away, hold your mountains up and sandbag price until the end of your opponent's turn. This maximizes Price's damage output because you give your opponent a chance to play a land without losing any tempo; if he plays a basic or fetch, you don't lose anything from not playing it on your turn, whereas if he plays a nonbasic or fetches into a dual, you can squeeze an extra 2 damage out of Price.) Afterwards he revealed that he only had one basic swamp in his entire deck, so he couldn't realistically play around my prices without having his manabase suffer.
Overall, I went 3-1 and unfortunately only got third place after tiebreakers (first and second place were also 3-1). It was an overall fun night, minus having to wait on the next round because there was a guy playing miracles that had never played the deck before, and almost all his matches went to time.
If anyone has suggestions in improving the deck, specifically the sideboard, that would be most welcome. There were decks like storm and omni-tell at the event and my deck is woefully unprepared for those matchups. Any enchantment removal suggestions that don't require me to splash another color would also be amazing as well, as there was more than 1 matchup where I found myself wishing I had a way to deal with problematic enchantments. A change I was thinking of making would be taking out Relic and 1 shusher and putting 2 Grafdigger's cage in the sideboard, since cage is useful against more decks than Relic is (namely Elves), while still hitting the same decks that Relic hits (Dredge and reanimator)
I realize this post is getting long so thanks for reading if you've stuck with me all the way.
Vs Combo like Storm/OmniTell I'd side in 1-2 Pyrostatic Pillar(s) and all the Pyroblast/REB you can, and throw all the burn to the face. The match up is quite bad anyway (until you resolve Eidolon); we just gotta hope for the best. With an alternate card that almost hard-locks storm means we don't lose to a Cabal Therapy.
As for enchantment removal, I prefer Destructive Revelery. It deals damage to them and means you're not auto-scooping vs Leyline of Sanctity.
I dislike Relic since you have to spend mana (losing tempo). Faerie Macabre is free, operates at instant speed, and hidden (unlike Tormod's Crypt, although that is an option as well, since it's also free).
Congrats on the finish and thanks for the report, it's rather excellent.
Regarding Grim Lavamancer, I went back and forth on him as well. Keep him in mind if you make adjustments to the deck. You noted that creatures could be a problem, and the three Searing Blaze in the MD guards against problems like these. Note, however, that Grim Lavamancer is generally the first line of defense against problems like that. Cutting the Lavaman necessarily led to an increase in Searing spells. You might try cutting some fetches and playing Searing Blood if you really don't like the Lavaman, which could (in turn) open up space for 1-2 Barbarian Ring. The card is played fairly often online but only rarely in paper. I wonder if it could be better than I thought.
Still on the subject of Lavamancer, cutting the land to 19 is another reason to reduce the numbers of this card. Lavamancer is a feature of Mana Sink burn builds (as opposed to Mana Curve). Your 19 land screams Mana Curve. Another Mana Sink card is Cursed Scroll, and though that's never played nowadays, perhaps its day could come again. It certainly would be a great card to have on the table before a Counterbalance comes down, wouldn't it?
Returning to the subject of Lavamancer (as I'd drifted away), I was deploying him incorrectly for the longest time. He's supposed to be played either 1) when he can pretty much win the game by himself (vs. DnT) or 2) when there's spare mana. He is not just to be trotted out as soon as possible. He's unlikely to survive in that case, and even if he does, his mana/damage conversion rate is far less favorable than that of any other card in the deck.
As for the other stuff, I don't think it's right to bring in Pithing Needle against Deathrite Shaman. Bring in whatever Blazes are around and kill the Shamans that way. Food Chain is actually a pretty tough matchup to win, they are a combo deck with Deathrite Shaman. You could try bringing in the Vexing Shushers and blasts to suppress his combo, which needs Misthollow Griffin and Manipulate Fate. Ensnaring Bridge could do work here.
Grafdigger's Cage is a good card, it does work in several matchups. I'm still on the Leyline train myself.
I'm not sure you should be tempted to cut down on Vexing Shusher. She's very important against Miracles, and you're light on Sulfuric Vortex with only 2 in the MD and no more in the board.
Vs Combo like Storm/OmniTell I'd side in 1-2 Pyrostatic Pillar(s) and all the Pyroblast/REB you can, and throw all the burn to the face. The match up is quite bad anyway (until you resolve Eidolon); we just gotta hope for the best. With an alternate card that almost hard-locks storm means we don't lose to a Cabal Therapy.
As for enchantment removal, I prefer Destructive Revelery. It deals damage to them and means you're not auto-scooping vs Leyline of Sanctity.
I dislike Relic since you have to spend mana (losing tempo). Faerie Macabre is free, operates at instant speed, and hidden (unlike Tormod's Crypt, although that is an option as well, since it's also free).
Regarding Pillar, I feel like both Pillar and Eidolon are too slow vs combo at 2cmc each. I've lost to turn 1 storm before with a Death and Taxes deck that had Thalia and Canonist in the opening hand, and I've also lost to turn 1 storm with burn as well. The added redundancy is a good idea, but I'm still not sure if it will be effective.
The problem with Revelry is that it requires me to splash green, and I don't want to splash a second color here. I wonder if there's an enchantment hate card I can play that still keeps me in mono-red.
I'm taking out relics for Grafdigger's Cage. It's just as effective against dredge/reanimator but it hits a few more decks, such as elves.
Congrats on the finish and thanks for the report, it's rather excellent.
Regarding Grim Lavamancer, I went back and forth on him as well. Keep him in mind if you make adjustments to the deck. You noted that creatures could be a problem, and the three Searing Blaze in the MD guards against problems like these. Note, however, that Grim Lavamancer is generally the first line of defense against problems like that. Cutting the Lavaman necessarily led to an increase in Searing spells. You might try cutting some fetches and playing Searing Blood if you really don't like the Lavaman, which could (in turn) open up space for 1-2 Barbarian Ring. The card is played fairly often online but only rarely in paper. I wonder if it could be better than I thought.
Still on the subject of Lavamancer, cutting the land to 19 is another reason to reduce the numbers of this card. Lavamancer is a feature of Mana Sink burn builds (as opposed to Mana Curve). Your 19 land screams Mana Curve. Another Mana Sink card is Cursed Scroll, and though that's never played nowadays, perhaps its day could come again. It certainly would be a great card to have on the table before a Counterbalance comes down, wouldn't it?
Returning to the subject of Lavamancer (as I'd drifted away), I was deploying him incorrectly for the longest time. He's supposed to be played either 1) when he can pretty much win the game by himself (vs. DnT) or 2) when there's spare mana. He is not just to be trotted out as soon as possible. He's unlikely to survive in that case, and even if he does, his mana/damage conversion rate is far less favorable than that of any other card in the deck.
As for the other stuff, I don't think it's right to bring in Pithing Needle against Deathrite Shaman. Bring in whatever Blazes are around and kill the Shamans that way. Food Chain is actually a pretty tough matchup to win, they are a combo deck with Deathrite Shaman. You could try bringing in the Vexing Shushers and blasts to suppress his combo, which needs Misthollow Griffin and Manipulate Fate. Ensnaring Bridge could do work here.
Grafdigger's Cage is a good card, it does work in several matchups. I'm still on the Leyline train myself.
I'm not sure you should be tempted to cut down on Vexing Shusher. She's very important against Miracles, and you're light on Sulfuric Vortex with only 2 in the MD and no more in the board.
You must really like Lavamancer a lot. I agree it's a good card to have and use, but like I said, it's the worst nonland card to topdeck in my list since it's not immediate damage. I do have another lavamancer sideboard in case I feel like I need to grind against a particular deck.
I made the cut to 19 land because I would get flooded way too often at 20, and my topdecks would be land for several turns in a row. At 19, there have been games where I still get flooded, but those games happen nowhere near as often as they did at 20. That wasn't a reason for me to cut lavamancer. Another reason besides the bad topdecks was to make room for Swiftspear, since I feel like she gets in for faster damage.
Looking back, you are completely right on my sideboard choices for the shardless food chain matchup. I wasn't exactly sure how to handle it and I did completely punt by forgetting to side in Smashes. In retrospect siding in Pyroblast would have been a much better call than Pithing needle. I blame this on me having zero knowledge on the matchup, but I'll be prepared for next time.
Shusher is very crucial against miracles, but that's also only one (admittedly bad) matchup that's also taking up 4 sideboard spaces. If I were to cut one shusher I still have 8 cards to bring in for that matchup (2x Needle, 3xpyroblast, 3x shusher). You might be completely right, however. Also, I personally wouldn't have more than 2 vortex in my 75 since I'm only at 19 land.
Vs Combo like Storm/OmniTell I'd side in 1-2 Pyrostatic Pillar(s) and all the Pyroblast/REB you can, and throw all the burn to the face. The match up is quite bad anyway (until you resolve Eidolon); we just gotta hope for the best. With an alternate card that almost hard-locks storm means we don't lose to a Cabal Therapy.
As for enchantment removal, I prefer Destructive Revelery. It deals damage to them and means you're not auto-scooping vs Leyline of Sanctity.
I dislike Relic since you have to spend mana (losing tempo). Faerie Macabre is free, operates at instant speed, and hidden (unlike Tormod's Crypt, although that is an option as well, since it's also free).
Regarding Pillar, I feel like both Pillar and Eidolon are too slow vs combo at 2cmc each. I've lost to turn 1 storm before with a Death and Taxes deck that had Thalia and Canonist in the opening hand, and I've also lost to turn 1 storm with burn as well. The added redundancy is a good idea, but I'm still not sure if it will be effective.
The problem with Revelry is that it requires me to splash green, and I don't want to splash a second color here. I wonder if there's an enchantment hate card I can play that still keeps me in mono-red.
I'm taking out relics for Grafdigger's Cage. It's just as effective against dredge/reanimator but it hits a few more decks, such as elves.
Congrats on the finish and thanks for the report, it's rather excellent.
Regarding Grim Lavamancer, I went back and forth on him as well. Keep him in mind if you make adjustments to the deck. You noted that creatures could be a problem, and the three Searing Blaze in the MD guards against problems like these. Note, however, that Grim Lavamancer is generally the first line of defense against problems like that. Cutting the Lavaman necessarily led to an increase in Searing spells. You might try cutting some fetches and playing Searing Blood if you really don't like the Lavaman, which could (in turn) open up space for 1-2 Barbarian Ring. The card is played fairly often online but only rarely in paper. I wonder if it could be better than I thought.
Still on the subject of Lavamancer, cutting the land to 19 is another reason to reduce the numbers of this card. Lavamancer is a feature of Mana Sink burn builds (as opposed to Mana Curve). Your 19 land screams Mana Curve. Another Mana Sink card is Cursed Scroll, and though that's never played nowadays, perhaps its day could come again. It certainly would be a great card to have on the table before a Counterbalance comes down, wouldn't it?
Returning to the subject of Lavamancer (as I'd drifted away), I was deploying him incorrectly for the longest time. He's supposed to be played either 1) when he can pretty much win the game by himself (vs. DnT) or 2) when there's spare mana. He is not just to be trotted out as soon as possible. He's unlikely to survive in that case, and even if he does, his mana/damage conversion rate is far less favorable than that of any other card in the deck.
As for the other stuff, I don't think it's right to bring in Pithing Needle against Deathrite Shaman. Bring in whatever Blazes are around and kill the Shamans that way. Food Chain is actually a pretty tough matchup to win, they are a combo deck with Deathrite Shaman. You could try bringing in the Vexing Shushers and blasts to suppress his combo, which needs Misthollow Griffin and Manipulate Fate. Ensnaring Bridge could do work here.
Grafdigger's Cage is a good card, it does work in several matchups. I'm still on the Leyline train myself.
I'm not sure you should be tempted to cut down on Vexing Shusher. She's very important against Miracles, and you're light on Sulfuric Vortex with only 2 in the MD and no more in the board.
You must really like Lavamancer a lot. I agree it's a good card to have and use, but like I said, it's the worst nonland card to topdeck in my list since it's not immediate damage. I do have another lavamancer sideboard in case I feel like I need to grind against a particular deck.
I made the cut to 19 land because I would get flooded way too often at 20, and my topdecks would be land for several turns in a row. At 19, there have been games where I still get flooded, but those games happen nowhere near as often as they did at 20. That wasn't a reason for me to cut lavamancer. Another reason besides the bad topdecks was to make room for Swiftspear, since I feel like she gets in for faster damage.
Looking back, you are completely right on my sideboard choices for the shardless food chain matchup. I wasn't exactly sure how to handle it and I did completely punt by forgetting to side in Smashes. In retrospect siding in Pyroblast would have been a much better call than Pithing needle. I blame this on me having zero knowledge on the matchup, but I'll be prepared for next time.
Shusher is very crucial against miracles, but that's also only one (admittedly bad) matchup that's also taking up 4 sideboard spaces. If I were to cut one shusher I still have 8 cards to bring in for that matchup (2x Needle, 3xpyroblast, 3x shusher). You might be completely right, however. Also, I personally wouldn't have more than 2 vortex in my 75 since I'm only at 19 land.
Killing enchantments is not in red's part of the color pie. There aren't any feasible cards for red to use that kills enchantments besides Chaos Warp. I agree though, stay mono red. This is Legacy and there will be absolute miserable match ups that you can do anything about without bending your sideboard too much. Going down to nineteen lands was nice, but I recommend thinking about whether you should be running four Fireblasts as well. I ran nineteen as well and had several games where I would run across a second Fireblast that couldn't be used. I am actually in the process of possibly going up to twenty one lands and seeing how that goes. My first game in awhile will be the fourteenth.
Regarding side boarding, bringing in more than three cards kills your decks game plan. Four is pushing it, but eight is a terrible idea. Pithing Needle isn't something you want in your board unless your meta chooses to use CoP: Red, in which case it's now time for a different deck until that card goes away.
Grim has been discussed to death in this thread, along with which Searing effects are better suited, which grave hate to be used, and the use of Swiftspear a bit less so. I think this all comes to personal preference and meta calls. My mind has been closed to Swiftspear and open to using Leyline of the Void, which Lormador is currently testing. Blaze is my choice as I run eleven fetches and I like having two target when I have an abundance of Mom in both stores I attend. If you want to see my thoughts about Swiftspear, the last ten pages should have it.
You'll notice I have forgone the graveyard hate. It's because at this store the Dredge player hates his deck and has decided to move over to TES/Ant. There hasn't been a Reanimator deck here either, since I started playing there last year.
It's true that the topics of land, the Searing spells, and Grim Lavamanver have all been discussed at length several times within the 57 pages of this thread... and never with a conclusive result. Land always falls within a small margin, from 19-21 and influences the rest of the deck in the number of Fireblasts and Sulfuric Vortex that can be comfortably run. The differences between the Searing spells are fairly small too. I am an outspoken supporter of the Lavamancer so I'll spare you my Lavaman propaganda.
The jury is still out on Leylines, krimsonviper, I feel that they should be a strong choice but I really want to test them against a couple of live opponents. They win instantly vs. graveyard combo on Cockatrice: every Dredge and Reanimator player I've come across on there has scooped (and left the game) the moment they saw the Leyline. I got an ANT player with it also, he scooped as soon as he saw it because his initial 7 was set up for a Past In Flames kill. I took G3 of that series when the ANT player Ad Nauseamed himself to death from 12 life, but obviously that result was somewhat lucky. I feel that some of these opponents (not the ANT guy, he was great) were fickle and just didn't want to even try to deal with the bad situation they were in. Folks would play differently if the match were a win-and-in. My live partners will do their utmost to break my hate, even just in practice, but they take a longer time to get hold of.
What we haven't talked about that much is Vexing Shusher. Although she only costs 2 mana to cast, she really wants to see more Mountains in play than just that, so I'm not sure how consistently great she's going to be in a 19 land deck. She's useful in two main matchups, Miracles (primary) and Omnitell (secondary). Her utility against Omnitell is further dependent on the number of blasts run in the deck, and she wants to see a high number of these (I use 4). It's hard to pull off an uncounterable blast when light on either land or blasts.
Miracles is a pretty straightforward matchup, dump the CMC 1 spells ASAP and follow up with a steady barrage of CMC 3 Rift Bolts and Vortexes. I think this wins G1 more often than not. G2+3 are the same thing, but here we can get an uncounterable Sulfuric Vortex given enough land. A lot of my tricks require a lot of land, so I run 20 or 21.
It's true that the topics of land, the Searing spells, and Grim Lavamanver have all been discussed at length several times within the 57 pages of this thread... and never with a conclusive result. Land always falls within a small margin, from 19-21 and influences the rest of the deck in the number of Fireblasts and Sulfuric Vortex that can be comfortably run. The differences between the Searing spells are fairly small too. I am an outspoken supporter of the Lavamancer so I'll spare you my Lavaman propaganda.
The jury is still out on Leylines, krimsonviper, I feel that they should be a strong choice but I really want to test them against a couple of live opponents. They win instantly vs. graveyard combo on Cockatrice: every Dredge and Reanimator player I've come across on there has scooped (and left the game) the moment they saw the Leyline. I got an ANT player with it also, he scooped as soon as he saw it because his initial 7 was set up for a Past In Flames kill. I took G3 of that series when the ANT player Ad Nauseamed himself to death from 12 life, but obviously that result was somewhat lucky. I feel that some of these opponents (not the ANT guy, he was great) were fickle and just didn't want to even try to deal with the bad situation they were in. Folks would play differently if the match were a win-and-in. My live partners will do their utmost to break my hate, even just in practice, but they take a longer time to get hold of.
What we haven't talked about that much is Vexing Shusher. Although she only costs 2 mana to cast, she really wants to see more Mountains in play than just that, so I'm not sure how consistently great she's going to be in a 19 land deck. She's useful in two main matchups, Miracles (primary) and Omnitell (secondary). Her utility against Omnitell is further dependent on the number of blasts run in the deck, and she wants to see a high number of these (I use 4). It's hard to pull off an uncounterable blast when light on either land or blasts.
Miracles is a pretty straightforward matchup, dump the CMC 1 spells ASAP and follow up with a steady barrage of CMC 3 Rift Bolts and Vortexes. I think this wins G1 more often than not. G2+3 are the same thing, but here we can get an uncounterable Sulfuric Vortex given enough land. A lot of my tricks require a lot of land, so I run 20 or 21.
I did notice, but never noted the same thing about Shusher. Thanks!
My land use is more based on personal experience rather than the statistical analysis that may or may not have been covered in other pages of this thread, and since I personally find myself losing games to mana flood at 20 land (My luck is usually very poor lol) I dropped my count to 19 and flooding happens less often. I can still double fireblast reliably if need be. I'll definitely not side in 8 cards, I just have 8 cards to potentially side in (needle naming top really hurts miracles a lot BTW), if I cut 1 shusher from the board.
I have been considering chalice of the void since it works well against storm, preventing them from playing LED or lotus petals. However storm would be the only matchup Chalice works well against.
I prefer 19x land as well. I forget if it was this thread or the modern one where I did the numbers for screw and flood, but after mulligan, screw isn't that big a factor. However flood is very real, and the difference between 19-21 lands is stark. Besides, I figure this deck plays better screwed than it does flooded.
I don't know that it necessarily influences the deck choices as much as Lormador seems to let on. There's usually only about half a dozen slots that a flex after the core burn is accounted for so our curve shouldn't change much regardless of what we slot in. I get by alright with a full playset of Lavamancer and Fireblast as as well as 3x Blaze and 2x Sulfuric main. A lot of it has to do with how you sequence things. For example, leaving a fetch uncracked for a potential searing blaze draw if it doesn't effect your clock.
That being said, 20x seems to be the more common number among GP/Open level successful decklists.
Regarding some specific cards brought up in no particular order:
Chalice: It helps a matchup we have 4 mainboard hate for already. They certainly have a shot, but generally aggressively mulliganing to Eidolon is what you need to do. Shusher: Is awesome. Can't recommend it enough. I think it fights for Blast space though. Speaking of... Blasts: Overrated IMHO. Trading cards is not really a winning strategy long term. I can see it as an answer to countering T2 Counterbalance, but I'd rather have Shusher vs them. Leyline: Skeptical of these sorts of cards. They want you to mulligan which is generally pretty bad. We have a fast enough clock that Crypt or Relic should essentially do the same thing for us. Ensnaring: Admittedly I haven't had much occasion to use Bridge now that Sneak and Show is much less prevalent. I'm not a fan of siding it in against other decks, with the exception of Reanimator. Reanimator can be too fast sometimes, but not always. I think it's worth a slot in the SB still just so we have game against Griselbrand decks.
I haven't posted my list for a long time. I think I'll take a look at it. Burn lists are generally not very spicy (despite their flavor, hahaha) and mine is no exception.
I have to disagree somewhat about the Leyline mulligan problem, and regarding mulligans generally with Burn I think my opinion departs from the conventional wisdom in some respects. While mulligans are bad for this deck, it doesn't need to mull that much. It's sort of the opposite of LED Dredge, where you've got to mulligan a lot but can still represent full god-hand power even off of 5 cards. With Burn I'm really just looking for 1-3 lands, not a lot to ask. The spells all do pretty much the same thing.
In a Leyline game, against Reanimator or Dredge or ANT, I'm adding one card to the mix, I'm hunting for Leyline and some land. It's not a lot to ask. If I wind up going to 5 cards, that's ok, I'm betting the outcome of this traditionally awful matchup on the quality of my hate rather than the speed of my clock.
I'm also willing to board out a lot of cards for certain matchups. Omnitell, for instance, will get:
-4 Price of Progress
-1 Searing Blood
-2 Sulfuric Vortex
+3 Vexing Shusher
+4 blast effects
..whereas the general advice is not to switch around that much cardboard.
What I mean is that the Leyline strategy involves requiring the card to be in your starter. Even as a 4-of that's a less than 40% chance to be in your 7x, so in order for it to be worthwhile siding in, you have to commit to mulliganing hard into it. Otherwise you end up playing a normal game where you are liable to draw uncastable off color 4-drops.
So let's say you mulligan all the way to 1 card if you have to. You still miss 13.4% of the time, which is an auto lose under those circumstances. Let's say we only mull to 5 so we still have a shot if we don't get Leyline. Then we are only 72.8% to get it into play. The 27.2% we're down two cards and have 4 dead cards in our library. This doesn't factor in them drawing their Nature's Claim or Chain of Vapour to deal with it. They are probably a good 29/44% (depending on mulligans) to ruin our plans after accounting for the times we didn't get our hate.
Just doesn't seem worth the trouble. In the same spot Crypt or Relic is a live draw and while is technically a temporary solution, 2-3 turns reprieve is generally an entire game for us.
As far as shifting cardboard. I suppose that's a rule of thumb that's good to follow but not always correct. Generally sideboard cards are more reactive. The implication being that oversiding with Burn involves making your deck too reactive. If all the cards are good, and they are proactive enough to win the game even if their intended purpose doesn't present (aka Shusher), then it isn't necessarily wrong.
The numbers presented are accurate, but consider the wider context of the situation. I am sitting across from a graveyard combo deck: it might be Reanimator, Dredge, or ANT. In that situation, it's necessary to mulligan to whatever hate I've got in the deck. In my opinion, a hand that doesn't interact with the graveyard has a very low chance of victory against any of these graveyard combo strategies.
If I accept that principle (that I need to mulligan anyway), the question becomes one of the comparative advantages of the different cards that I could be mulling for. We all know the usual candidates: Relic of Progenitus, Tormod's Crypt, Faerie Macabre, Surgical Extraction, Grafdigger's Cage, and Leyline of the Void. We also know the usual countermeasures commonly played in those graveyard decks: a mixture of discard spells, counters, Nature's Claim, Chain of Vapor, Abrupt Decay, Show and Tell, maybe a few other oddball cards. I think there's a trend towards running more and more Abrupt Decay because it's such a great, flexible answer to the Counterbalance and Rest In Peace problems a lot of those decks are trying to deal with, and Chain of Vapor numbers have slipped somewhat due to the overlapping utility of these two cards. Leyline is naturally narrow anyway, demanding a specific solution (not general discard or countermagic)... that's why I like it.
I still feel that Grafdigger's Cage is a more effective hate card vs Reanimator and Dredge (if you don't have it in your opening hand you can still play it when you do draw it, and if you do have it you can play it turn 1). Sure it's not as absolute as Leyline, but it's not a dead draw if you don't have it t0 and it has the added bonus of hitting a few more decks, such as Elves.
Honestly, if I were going to an SCG tournament blind, I would pick cage as my grave hate choice for those reasons, especially the last one.
The thing I dislike about Cage is that it doesn't remove their graveyard. It can be blown up and then go off. I think WotC needs a strong hate card like Cage kept at one mans and actually removes the graveyard.
The thing I dislike about Cage is that it doesn't remove their graveyard. It can be blown up and then go off. I think WotC needs a strong hate card like Cage kept at one mans and actually removes the graveyard.
They won't know what kind of GY hate you have game 2 until you play it, then it's still bought you a few turns while you try to win before they find their anti-hate card. Besides, most of their anti-hate cards will hit graveyard hate equally (chain of vapor, nature's claim, etc). Abrupt decay will hit everything except leyline. Most dredge builds don't run decay due to it being 2 cmc and I think most reanimator builds don't run green.
Some Reanimator builds run show and tell sideboard to sidestep hate anyway so if that happens g2/3 you're screwed regardless of what hate you have in your sideboard.
Like I said, I feel like it's better to try and construct a sideboard for a variety of matchups and just practice more against matchups you feel like are very bad if you're going to a big tournament. Worrying about one or 2 particular matchups when we build our side may reduce our win percentages against other matchups that we could possibly otherwise handle.
The thing I dislike about Cage is that it doesn't remove their graveyard. It can be blown up and then go off. I think WotC needs a strong hate card like Cage kept at one mans and actually removes the graveyard.
This card is horrible because it isn't constant. When Reanimator goes off the third card that matter is on the stack and by the time it resolves the creature is in play.
They won't know what kind of GY hate you have game 2 until you play it, then it's still bought you a few turns while you try to win before they find their anti-hate card. Besides, most of their anti-hate cards will hit graveyard hate equally (chain of vapor, nature's claim, etc). Abrupt decay will hit everything except leyline. Most dredge builds don't run decay due to it being 2 cmc and I think most reanimator builds don't run green.
Some Reanimator builds run show and tell sideboard to sidestep hate anyway so if that happens g2/3 you're screwed regardless of what hate you have in your sideboard.
Like I said, I feel like it's better to try and construct a sideboard for a variety of matchups and just practice more against matchups you feel like are very bad if you're going to a big tournament. Worrying about one or 2 particular matchups when we build our side may reduce our win percentages against other matchups that we could possibly otherwise handle.
Reanimator builds are starting to turn into BUG colors for Abrupt Decay as adding green doesn't hurt their mana base because they are base black anyway. Dredge will run Nature's Claim because four life doesn't matter to them when there's a boat load of zombies in play. Leyline is being tested and I would love for it to be the hate card of choice for us.
I already mentioned that worrying about all match ups is impossible earlier in this page. I pretty much gave up on Reanimator and Show deck match ups unless I go to a big tournament. Then I use which cards have the biggest impact on the recent meta.
I ran a search on the SCG database of the Legacy Dredge (non-Manaless) who top 8ed their events in the past year to check gravehate countermeasures. I searched for card "Golgari Grave Troll" with dates 6/4/2014 to the present.
Decks that can't answer Leyline: 4 out of 15
Decks with 4+ answers to Leyline: 4 out of 15
Decks with 4+ answers to Grafdigger's Cage: 10 out of 15 if you count Thoughtseize as an answer, 8 if you don't
This was fun, so I'll make a similar evaluation of Reanimator decks. There are 22 decks in SCG event top 8s in the past year, and of that field...
Decks that can't answer Leyline: 6
Decks with 4+ answers to Leyline: 10
Most of these decks run a configuration of 2 Show and Tell in the MD, with 2 more in the board along with a single Echoing Truth. Those decks constitute the vast majority of "4+ answers to Leyline" decks.
Very interesting to read, and does sway the argument towards leyline a bit. I wonder if you could make the same list for other GY hate cards like Crypt and Relic.
Has the fact that you need to use 4 of the leyline in your SB for it to be effective been brought up yet? That's still quite a bit of sideboard space for one answer card, but looking at your sideboard it might actually work well. If I were to make a sideboard using that card, it would probably look something like this:
There's not really any room for sideboarding for the storm matchup but Leyline could I guess still cut off any Past In Flames kills.
For what it's worth though, I've faced more painter and dark depths decks than graveyard based decks like reanimator and dredge, so I still prefer running 2x pithing needle and some other hate package, but that's probably just me and my local meta.
It would be a lot trickier to make a list for other graveyard hate cards, but maybe it's possible. The reason it's trickier is that the others are generally vulnerable to counterspells, discard spells, fall to Abrupt Decay, etc. Leyline, on the other hand, is so extremely narrow that only a few cards get through it. I suspect we'd find that every Dredge and Reanimator deck within the search parameters has 5+ answers to a CMC 1 artifact, to take as an example what's probably the best alternative to Leyline of the Void: Grafdigger's Cage.
I absolutely respect the choice of Cage as a hate card, and folks that play it are simply valuing breadth of application over stability. We only have 15 slots, Elves is a very powerful deck, and if I personally knew Elves was coming to my LGS I might not bring my Leylines. (I'd bring Miracles, cough cough.)
You're right about one thing though, nongraveyard, non-Omnitell combo is left rather in the lurch with this approach. Against Storm, I would board out Sulfuric Vortex and any Blazes, and 4 Price of Progress, for 9 cards: 4 Leylines, 3 blasts, and 2 Shushers (just because it's a permanent source of damage faster than a Vortex). Hope for the Leyline and snipe cantrips with the blast. This is not a great plan, but it might get there if an Eidolon were thrown in there. The only difference with Cage here is that you can cast Cage if it's draw later, potentially destroying something they've been cantripping into, whereas with Leyline they'll know to be on the Ad Nauseaum plan from the beginning.
Mindbreak Trap is the other option, and I've tried to use and like that card so, so much... but it just doesn't win very many games. Storm Duresses it and Omnitell counters it.
I'm getting results entirely different than all of you.
Last month I beat Goblins and Stoneblade with a list almost entirely like Lormador's latest. But lost to two Miracles, Infect and Canadian Delver thanks to flooding and flooding and flooding some more.
And went on to beat Burn, UWR Delver, Dredge, Miracles, ANT and then Lands and Miracles again to finally lose at finals to Enchantress to multiple turn 0 and consecutive hardcast Leylines G2 and G3 respectively.
My meta is rowdy as **** and has a very open and even spread of tier 1's and rogues, combo, aggro and tempo are the mayority, Miracles is there but it being at the first or last tables seem to change every week. I cannot afford to gift a turn by flooding, am finding the mainboard Blazes an inconvenience and Swifty dances so much between amazing and terrible that I'm becoming toroughly confused about what to expect next tournament.
But it's probably the most fun I've had with Burn in years.
I'm getting results entirely different than all of you.
Last month I beat Goblins and Stoneblade with a list almost entirely like Lormador's latest. But lost to two Miracles, Infect and Canadian Delver thanks to flooding and flooding and flooding some more.
And went on to beat Burn, UWR Delver, Dredge, Miracles, ANT and then Lands and Miracles again to finally lose at finals to Enchantress to multiple turn 0 and consecutive hardcast Leylines G2 and G3 respectively.
My meta is rowdy as **** and has a very open and even spread of tier 1's and rogues, combo, aggro and tempo are the mayority, Miracles is there but it being at the first or last tables seem to change every week. I cannot afford to gift a turn by flooding, am finding the mainboard Blazes an inconvenience and Swifty dances so much between amazing and terrible that I'm becoming toroughly confused about what to expect next tournament.
But it's probably the most fun I've had with Burn in years.
I noticed you have 4 Monastery Swiftspear in your deck. I'm curious, when is better to have these guys and when is it better to pack more spells (as in what matchups and what metas?).
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Modern: U Merfolk | GR Tron | WUR Jeskai Control | WBG Abzan Company
Well, Swifty has been a very useful creature vs Miracles since even countered spells trigger prowess, vs Burn mirrors where she can dodge removal and sometimes just explodes with value, and vs combos like ANT, S&T, Dredge, because it's constant damage you don't have to pay for, can grow much bigger with what you do play and they don't often have creatures to chumpblock. She also is the only creature that can kill Thalia in combat.
She's terrible in combos with dudes like Enchantress, doesn't kill Deathrite if you're in topdeck mode, and just doesn't cut it against big dude decks like Maverick.
At least that is in my experience. I keep her around because even 1 T1 constant combat damage is good in my local meta.
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Latina, Oedipus, loquituri id?
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In his Second 100 days - Yawgmoth's Bargain is unrestricted in Vintage.
What is going to happen in the Next 100 days!!!
It would be great against RUG if it resolved at a high enough life total to prevent Lightning Bolts from killing me, but I consider that to be a pretty long shot in a deck with so much countermagic and so few key spells to point it at. I always used to chalk it up to decent splash damage.
The Deck to Beat section on The Source lists Miracles, Omnitell, RUG, BUG, and DnT as the performers in the current meta, and I've come to respect that section (though it isn't perfect) as a guide to the metagame. Ensnaring Bridge doesn't look great against that field, with only modest utility against one deck in it. I definitely want a lot of blast effects against that field, and uncounterability just got a whole more relevant: both Miracles and Omnitell do not want uncounterable blasts thrown across the table.
I can't speak much about BUG, none of my usual playtest partners run the deck regularly. The guy who really should be a BUG player, in his heart, cannot stop tinkering with decks and always brings something different. He's good enough to win with whatever he brings. I shudder to think how he'd perform with a ham sandwich.
DnT, on the other hand, I deal with all the time, and as long as you keep a hand that can kill Mother of Runes on turn 1 with enough Searing effects on hand, the matchup is perfectly fine.
Thus, benefiting from the narrowness and splash damage of the combo deck du jour, I think we can handle the DTB section with just:
3 Vexing Shusher
4 Red Elemental Blast or Pyroblast
3 Searing Blaze / Searing Blood (three between MD and SB total, assuming 3 Grim Lavamancer)
3 Smash to Smithereens (not just for equipment and Aether Vial, also stops Chalice of the Void)
...I personally stash two of these Searing effects in the MD, along with 3 Sulfuric Vortex (20 land). The rest of the sideboard is 4 Leyline of the Void, which I have to make bad matchups go away. Running 4 of this particular (insanely powerful) card is a luxury that the metagame rarely affords, and it's only possible right now because Omnitell and Miracles respond to the same hate cards, the Shusher combined with heavy blasting.
Of course, the real over-the-top power in my Burn deck I only just applied today... when I got rid of the last three ugly draft-box Mountains and replaced them with Unhinged. I did a little dance in the store as the wince-inducing lands were discarded forever, replaced by pure red awesomeness.
Overall record: 139-98-15
Total number of matches: 252
Win percentage ignoring draws: 58.649789
Win percentage including draws: 55.158730
This is my first post on this site, but I've been playing burn on and off for the last few years. Burn was the second legacy deck I've built, with Dredge being my first. This was a deck I was playing more casually, since sanctioned Legacy events are scarce in my area:
12 Mountain
3 Bloodstained Mire
3 Arid Mesa
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Wooded Foothills
4 Goblin Guide
4 Grim Lavamancer
4 Eidolon of the Great Revel
Spells:
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Chain Lightning
4 Lava Spike
4 Rift Bolt
4 Fireblast
2 Price of Progress
3 Magma Jet
2 Sulfuric Vortex
1 Shard Volley
The reason I only ran 2 price in this build was because locally most casual players run little to no nonbasic lands, thus price is more often than not a dead card that does 0 damage. If I were to take my burn deck to a sanctioned tournament then yes, I would run 4 price, but if I was playing in a more casual setting, I would swap out 4 price for 4 magma jet.
A few days ago I heard that one of my local shops was starting to hold Legacy tournaments for FNM with 10 proxies allowed. I was overjoyed at hearing this, because I rarely get a chance to play sanctioned Legacy, despite it being my favorite format, and tuned my burn deck for the event, arriving at this list:
11 mountain
3 bloodstained mire
3 arid mesa
1 scalding tarn
1 wooded foothills
Creatures:
4 Goblin Guide
3 Monastery Swiftspear
1 Grim Lavamancer
4 Eidolon of the Great Revel
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Chain Lightning
4 Lava Spike
4 Rift Bolt
4 Fireblast
4 Price of Progress
3 Searing Blaze
2 Sulfuric Vortex
1 Ensnaring bridge
1 Grim Lavamancer
1 Relic of Progenitus
2 Pithing Needle
3 Pyroblast
3 Smash to Smithereens
4 Vexing shusher
Notable changes here include the addition of searing blaze, since more often than not I would find myself losing speed (and losing games by 1-2 points) if I have to use a burn spell on my opponent's creature(s), since that was now damage I couldn't direct at their face. Searing Blaze solves this problem to an extent. I also cut one mountain, dropping my land count from 20 to 19, because as absurd as this sounds, I get flooded way too often at 20 land and lose games because of this. I remember one particular game I drew 6 lands in a row with 5 being fetches, which sounds crazy, but it's happened to me often enough to warrant dropping one land. I playtested the deck a little bit after making this adjustment and it felt much smoother, and way less clunky since I now don't topdeck unwanted land nearly as often. The last major change is turning 3 lavamancers into swiftspears. Lavamancers are, IMO, the worst nonland card to topdeck in the entire deck since it makes me wait a full turn to use it. It's also bad when I draw more than 1, and swiftspears are a better turn 1 play for when I don't have guide, not to mention a slightly better topdeck.
Anyway, the FNM event consisted of a 4 round swiss, with no cuts to top x players, since there were only 10 people playing at tonight's event. There were several tier decks, but also some rogue decks you wouldn't expect to find at an SCG event. Here were my matchups:
Round 1: 8-rack (2-0 win)
This is a bad matchup for me on paper, since their gameplan involves stripping away my hand then punishing me for having 0-1 cards in my hand. Very easy to get my hand to 0 when you consider I'm burn.
Game 1: On the draw. He leads with thoughtseize and takes away my goblin guide. Luckily I have a swiftspear in hand which I can start the game off with, and several solid burn spells. I end up discaring land and sulfuric vortex to his Raven's Crime, and he also lands a Shrieking Affliction turn 2 as well, which I end up having to race. Thankfully, I just barely won the race, and possibly wouldn't have gotten there without Monastary's prowess triggers pumping itself up to a 3/4 on my turn 2.
Game 2: On the play. I side in Pithing needles ,and relic of progenitus. My opponent had terrible luck this game and only had 1 land after mulling to 5.
Round 2: Leyline combo (2-1 win)
I doubt most people have heard about this deck, so I'll explain what it does. It attempts to aggressively mulligan with serum powder in order to get Serra's Sanctum in the opening hand, then starts the game with a bunch of leylines in play, and then play opalescence to win, potentially on turn 1 if they get it in their opener. Needless to say, this is a very bad matchup for me, more so because I don't have any sideboard cards that can handle enchantments. This was a matchup I had no business winning but end up lucking out.
Game 1: On the play. I get lucky enough to win the roll and not die on his first turn.
Game 2: On the draw. I switch out my Searing Blazes for Smash to Smithereens. My logic behind this is that Searing Blaze will always be a dead card until he combos off and I die, in which case I'm dead and the Blazes were useless anyway, whereas if my opponent happens to durdle and ends up playing a Serum Powder, I have a way to deal him more damage. This game was very bad for me, since he started the game with 3 leylines, including 2 Leyline of Sanctity, and proceeded to play a Suppression Field turn 1. All 3 lands in my hand happen to be fetches, so this is extremely bad as I'm now locked out of the game and can't generate any mana. I manage to eventually draw a mountain and land Swiftspear, but I also have to burn myself in order to get prowess triggers on swiftspear due to leyline. I fail to draw a second mountain before my opponent combos off, which is a shame because I was sandbagging 2 Smash to Smithereens and 2 Price of Progress, and he also happened to play 2 Serum Powders along the course of the game. Had I drawn a second mountain I could probably have won as I still got my opponent to around 8 life before he went off.
Game 3: I'm on the play. I lucked out here, because despite my opponent having Leyline of Sanctity again, I have 3 Goblin Guides and 2 land in my opening hand, and I mercilessly beat him down in 4 turns. Again, I had no business winning this matchup, and if someone could suggest good enchantment removal that doesn't require me to splash another color, I would really appreciate it since this isn't the only deck I faced that night that runs problematic enchantments.
Round 3: Shardless Food Chain (0-2 loss)
This deck uses Food Chain and Misthollow Griffin to generate infinite mana to power out an Emrakul, the Aeons Torn. This particular build was a Sultai build with a Shardless Agent package as well. I feel like this particular matchup was a coin toss and I could have won if my opponent wasn't as lucky.
Game 1: I'm on the draw. I get him down to 6, and then he combos off turn 4 while I have Rift Bolt suspended and Chain Lightning in hand. After the match I felt I made a mistake scooping to Emrakul since he only swings for 15 and I had a mountain in hand, but he reminds me he also has 3 Griffins he can attack with as well.
Game 2: I'm on the play. I side in 2 pithing needles, since he runs deathrite shaman and I can at least shut that card off. I see a misdirection off a Guide trigger at some point during this round, I had 3 land out and 2 fireblast in hand, so I can't play both at the time. I just have to hope he spends his other blue cards later on. A few turns later after he casts Brainstorm and some other blue card I can't remember the name of (it exiles 3 cards from his deck and cantrips for 2 mana), he attempts to combo off, to which I try and respond to by double fireblasting him, since he's at 6 again. Unfortunately he does have another blue card for the Misdirection and so I can only get him to 2 before losing. However, I did make a mistake and forget to side in Smash to Smithereens, which was a mistake that probably cost me the game as he had Agents to chump block my dudes.
Round 3: Shardless Sultai (2-0 Win)
Game 1:I'm on the draw. Watching my opponents face after leading off with a turn 1 swiftspear was priceless. Burning him out turn 4 despite him Cabal Therapying 2 Eidolons out of my hand turn 2 was even more priceless.
Game 2:This time, I actually remember to side in Smashes. It didn't matter though, because I had 2 Prices that blew him out. (Side note: If you have the mana to play a Price but it's not enough to get lethal right away, hold your mountains up and sandbag price until the end of your opponent's turn. This maximizes Price's damage output because you give your opponent a chance to play a land without losing any tempo; if he plays a basic or fetch, you don't lose anything from not playing it on your turn, whereas if he plays a nonbasic or fetches into a dual, you can squeeze an extra 2 damage out of Price.) Afterwards he revealed that he only had one basic swamp in his entire deck, so he couldn't realistically play around my prices without having his manabase suffer.
Overall, I went 3-1 and unfortunately only got third place after tiebreakers (first and second place were also 3-1). It was an overall fun night, minus having to wait on the next round because there was a guy playing miracles that had never played the deck before, and almost all his matches went to time.
If anyone has suggestions in improving the deck, specifically the sideboard, that would be most welcome. There were decks like storm and omni-tell at the event and my deck is woefully unprepared for those matchups. Any enchantment removal suggestions that don't require me to splash another color would also be amazing as well, as there was more than 1 matchup where I found myself wishing I had a way to deal with problematic enchantments. A change I was thinking of making would be taking out Relic and 1 shusher and putting 2 Grafdigger's cage in the sideboard, since cage is useful against more decks than Relic is (namely Elves), while still hitting the same decks that Relic hits (Dredge and reanimator)
I realize this post is getting long so thanks for reading if you've stuck with me all the way.
As for enchantment removal, I prefer Destructive Revelery. It deals damage to them and means you're not auto-scooping vs Leyline of Sanctity.
I dislike Relic since you have to spend mana (losing tempo). Faerie Macabre is free, operates at instant speed, and hidden (unlike Tormod's Crypt, although that is an option as well, since it's also free).
Pithing Needle is dope. Naming Thespian's Stage vs lands is nearly an auto-win.
Regarding Grim Lavamancer, I went back and forth on him as well. Keep him in mind if you make adjustments to the deck. You noted that creatures could be a problem, and the three Searing Blaze in the MD guards against problems like these. Note, however, that Grim Lavamancer is generally the first line of defense against problems like that. Cutting the Lavaman necessarily led to an increase in Searing spells. You might try cutting some fetches and playing Searing Blood if you really don't like the Lavaman, which could (in turn) open up space for 1-2 Barbarian Ring. The card is played fairly often online but only rarely in paper. I wonder if it could be better than I thought.
Still on the subject of Lavamancer, cutting the land to 19 is another reason to reduce the numbers of this card. Lavamancer is a feature of Mana Sink burn builds (as opposed to Mana Curve). Your 19 land screams Mana Curve. Another Mana Sink card is Cursed Scroll, and though that's never played nowadays, perhaps its day could come again. It certainly would be a great card to have on the table before a Counterbalance comes down, wouldn't it?
Returning to the subject of Lavamancer (as I'd drifted away), I was deploying him incorrectly for the longest time. He's supposed to be played either 1) when he can pretty much win the game by himself (vs. DnT) or 2) when there's spare mana. He is not just to be trotted out as soon as possible. He's unlikely to survive in that case, and even if he does, his mana/damage conversion rate is far less favorable than that of any other card in the deck.
As for the other stuff, I don't think it's right to bring in Pithing Needle against Deathrite Shaman. Bring in whatever Blazes are around and kill the Shamans that way. Food Chain is actually a pretty tough matchup to win, they are a combo deck with Deathrite Shaman. You could try bringing in the Vexing Shushers and blasts to suppress his combo, which needs Misthollow Griffin and Manipulate Fate. Ensnaring Bridge could do work here.
Grafdigger's Cage is a good card, it does work in several matchups. I'm still on the Leyline train myself.
I'm not sure you should be tempted to cut down on Vexing Shusher. She's very important against Miracles, and you're light on Sulfuric Vortex with only 2 in the MD and no more in the board.
Overall record: 139-98-15
Total number of matches: 252
Win percentage ignoring draws: 58.649789
Win percentage including draws: 55.158730
Regarding Pillar, I feel like both Pillar and Eidolon are too slow vs combo at 2cmc each. I've lost to turn 1 storm before with a Death and Taxes deck that had Thalia and Canonist in the opening hand, and I've also lost to turn 1 storm with burn as well. The added redundancy is a good idea, but I'm still not sure if it will be effective.
The problem with Revelry is that it requires me to splash green, and I don't want to splash a second color here. I wonder if there's an enchantment hate card I can play that still keeps me in mono-red.
I'm taking out relics for Grafdigger's Cage. It's just as effective against dredge/reanimator but it hits a few more decks, such as elves.
You must really like Lavamancer a lot. I agree it's a good card to have and use, but like I said, it's the worst nonland card to topdeck in my list since it's not immediate damage. I do have another lavamancer sideboard in case I feel like I need to grind against a particular deck.
I made the cut to 19 land because I would get flooded way too often at 20, and my topdecks would be land for several turns in a row. At 19, there have been games where I still get flooded, but those games happen nowhere near as often as they did at 20. That wasn't a reason for me to cut lavamancer. Another reason besides the bad topdecks was to make room for Swiftspear, since I feel like she gets in for faster damage.
Looking back, you are completely right on my sideboard choices for the shardless food chain matchup. I wasn't exactly sure how to handle it and I did completely punt by forgetting to side in Smashes. In retrospect siding in Pyroblast would have been a much better call than Pithing needle. I blame this on me having zero knowledge on the matchup, but I'll be prepared for next time.
Shusher is very crucial against miracles, but that's also only one (admittedly bad) matchup that's also taking up 4 sideboard spaces. If I were to cut one shusher I still have 8 cards to bring in for that matchup (2x Needle, 3xpyroblast, 3x shusher). You might be completely right, however. Also, I personally wouldn't have more than 2 vortex in my 75 since I'm only at 19 land.
Killing enchantments is not in red's part of the color pie. There aren't any feasible cards for red to use that kills enchantments besides Chaos Warp. I agree though, stay mono red. This is Legacy and there will be absolute miserable match ups that you can do anything about without bending your sideboard too much. Going down to nineteen lands was nice, but I recommend thinking about whether you should be running four Fireblasts as well. I ran nineteen as well and had several games where I would run across a second Fireblast that couldn't be used. I am actually in the process of possibly going up to twenty one lands and seeing how that goes. My first game in awhile will be the fourteenth.
Regarding side boarding, bringing in more than three cards kills your decks game plan. Four is pushing it, but eight is a terrible idea. Pithing Needle isn't something you want in your board unless your meta chooses to use CoP: Red, in which case it's now time for a different deck until that card goes away.
Grim has been discussed to death in this thread, along with which Searing effects are better suited, which grave hate to be used, and the use of Swiftspear a bit less so. I think this all comes to personal preference and meta calls. My mind has been closed to Swiftspear and open to using Leyline of the Void, which Lormador is currently testing. Blaze is my choice as I run eleven fetches and I like having two target when I have an abundance of Mom in both stores I attend. If you want to see my thoughts about Swiftspear, the last ten pages should have it.
As for my deck I'll be using:
3 Grim Lavamancer
4 Eidolon of the Great Revel
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Chain Lightning
4 Lava Spike
4 Price of Progress
3 Searing Blaze
4 Rift Bolt
2 Sulfuric Vortex
11 Red Fetches
3 Pyroblast
3 Vexing Shusher
1 Searing Blaze
3 Sudden Shock
3 Smash to Smithereens
1 Flame Rift
1 Sulfuric Vortex
You'll notice I have forgone the graveyard hate. It's because at this store the Dredge player hates his deck and has decided to move over to TES/Ant. There hasn't been a Reanimator deck here either, since I started playing there last year.
The jury is still out on Leylines, krimsonviper, I feel that they should be a strong choice but I really want to test them against a couple of live opponents. They win instantly vs. graveyard combo on Cockatrice: every Dredge and Reanimator player I've come across on there has scooped (and left the game) the moment they saw the Leyline. I got an ANT player with it also, he scooped as soon as he saw it because his initial 7 was set up for a Past In Flames kill. I took G3 of that series when the ANT player Ad Nauseamed himself to death from 12 life, but obviously that result was somewhat lucky. I feel that some of these opponents (not the ANT guy, he was great) were fickle and just didn't want to even try to deal with the bad situation they were in. Folks would play differently if the match were a win-and-in. My live partners will do their utmost to break my hate, even just in practice, but they take a longer time to get hold of.
What we haven't talked about that much is Vexing Shusher. Although she only costs 2 mana to cast, she really wants to see more Mountains in play than just that, so I'm not sure how consistently great she's going to be in a 19 land deck. She's useful in two main matchups, Miracles (primary) and Omnitell (secondary). Her utility against Omnitell is further dependent on the number of blasts run in the deck, and she wants to see a high number of these (I use 4). It's hard to pull off an uncounterable blast when light on either land or blasts.
Miracles is a pretty straightforward matchup, dump the CMC 1 spells ASAP and follow up with a steady barrage of CMC 3 Rift Bolts and Vortexes. I think this wins G1 more often than not. G2+3 are the same thing, but here we can get an uncounterable Sulfuric Vortex given enough land. A lot of my tricks require a lot of land, so I run 20 or 21.
Overall record: 139-98-15
Total number of matches: 252
Win percentage ignoring draws: 58.649789
Win percentage including draws: 55.158730
I did notice, but never noted the same thing about Shusher. Thanks!
I have been considering chalice of the void since it works well against storm, preventing them from playing LED or lotus petals. However storm would be the only matchup Chalice works well against.
I don't know that it necessarily influences the deck choices as much as Lormador seems to let on. There's usually only about half a dozen slots that a flex after the core burn is accounted for so our curve shouldn't change much regardless of what we slot in. I get by alright with a full playset of Lavamancer and Fireblast as as well as 3x Blaze and 2x Sulfuric main. A lot of it has to do with how you sequence things. For example, leaving a fetch uncracked for a potential searing blaze draw if it doesn't effect your clock.
That being said, 20x seems to be the more common number among GP/Open level successful decklists.
Regarding some specific cards brought up in no particular order:
Chalice: It helps a matchup we have 4 mainboard hate for already. They certainly have a shot, but generally aggressively mulliganing to Eidolon is what you need to do.
Shusher: Is awesome. Can't recommend it enough. I think it fights for Blast space though. Speaking of...
Blasts: Overrated IMHO. Trading cards is not really a winning strategy long term. I can see it as an answer to countering T2 Counterbalance, but I'd rather have Shusher vs them.
Leyline: Skeptical of these sorts of cards. They want you to mulligan which is generally pretty bad. We have a fast enough clock that Crypt or Relic should essentially do the same thing for us.
Ensnaring: Admittedly I haven't had much occasion to use Bridge now that Sneak and Show is much less prevalent. I'm not a fan of siding it in against other decks, with the exception of Reanimator. Reanimator can be too fast sometimes, but not always. I think it's worth a slot in the SB still just so we have game against Griselbrand decks.
Modern: R Skred -- WBG Melira Co -- URW Nahiri Control
Legacy: R Mono Red Burn -- UWB Stoneblade
Commander: R Krenko, Mob Boss -- WUBRG Scion of the Ur-Dragon -- WUBRG Maze’s End
Other: R No Rares Red (Standard) -- URC Izzet Tron (Pauper)
12 Mountain
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Bloodstained Mire
Creatures (11)
4 Goblin Guide
4 Eidolon of the Great Revel
3 Grim Lavamancer
Fire Magic (29)
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Lava Spike
4 Chain Lightning
1 Searing Blood
4 Price of Progress
4 Rift Bolt
4 Sulfuric Vortex
4 Fireblast
4 Leyline of the Void
1 Searing Blaze
3 Smash to Smithereens
3 Vexing Shusher
2 Red Elemental Blast
2 Pyroblast
I have to disagree somewhat about the Leyline mulligan problem, and regarding mulligans generally with Burn I think my opinion departs from the conventional wisdom in some respects. While mulligans are bad for this deck, it doesn't need to mull that much. It's sort of the opposite of LED Dredge, where you've got to mulligan a lot but can still represent full god-hand power even off of 5 cards. With Burn I'm really just looking for 1-3 lands, not a lot to ask. The spells all do pretty much the same thing.
In a Leyline game, against Reanimator or Dredge or ANT, I'm adding one card to the mix, I'm hunting for Leyline and some land. It's not a lot to ask. If I wind up going to 5 cards, that's ok, I'm betting the outcome of this traditionally awful matchup on the quality of my hate rather than the speed of my clock.
I'm also willing to board out a lot of cards for certain matchups. Omnitell, for instance, will get:
-4 Price of Progress
-1 Searing Blood
-2 Sulfuric Vortex
+3 Vexing Shusher
+4 blast effects
..whereas the general advice is not to switch around that much cardboard.
Overall record: 139-98-15
Total number of matches: 252
Win percentage ignoring draws: 58.649789
Win percentage including draws: 55.158730
So let's say you mulligan all the way to 1 card if you have to. You still miss 13.4% of the time, which is an auto lose under those circumstances. Let's say we only mull to 5 so we still have a shot if we don't get Leyline. Then we are only 72.8% to get it into play. The 27.2% we're down two cards and have 4 dead cards in our library. This doesn't factor in them drawing their Nature's Claim or Chain of Vapour to deal with it. They are probably a good 29/44% (depending on mulligans) to ruin our plans after accounting for the times we didn't get our hate.
Just doesn't seem worth the trouble. In the same spot Crypt or Relic is a live draw and while is technically a temporary solution, 2-3 turns reprieve is generally an entire game for us.
As far as shifting cardboard. I suppose that's a rule of thumb that's good to follow but not always correct. Generally sideboard cards are more reactive. The implication being that oversiding with Burn involves making your deck too reactive. If all the cards are good, and they are proactive enough to win the game even if their intended purpose doesn't present (aka Shusher), then it isn't necessarily wrong.
Modern: R Skred -- WBG Melira Co -- URW Nahiri Control
Legacy: R Mono Red Burn -- UWB Stoneblade
Commander: R Krenko, Mob Boss -- WUBRG Scion of the Ur-Dragon -- WUBRG Maze’s End
Other: R No Rares Red (Standard) -- URC Izzet Tron (Pauper)
If I accept that principle (that I need to mulligan anyway), the question becomes one of the comparative advantages of the different cards that I could be mulling for. We all know the usual candidates: Relic of Progenitus, Tormod's Crypt, Faerie Macabre, Surgical Extraction, Grafdigger's Cage, and Leyline of the Void. We also know the usual countermeasures commonly played in those graveyard decks: a mixture of discard spells, counters, Nature's Claim, Chain of Vapor, Abrupt Decay, Show and Tell, maybe a few other oddball cards. I think there's a trend towards running more and more Abrupt Decay because it's such a great, flexible answer to the Counterbalance and Rest In Peace problems a lot of those decks are trying to deal with, and Chain of Vapor numbers have slipped somewhat due to the overlapping utility of these two cards. Leyline is naturally narrow anyway, demanding a specific solution (not general discard or countermagic)... that's why I like it.
Overall record: 139-98-15
Total number of matches: 252
Win percentage ignoring draws: 58.649789
Win percentage including draws: 55.158730
Honestly, if I were going to an SCG tournament blind, I would pick cage as my grave hate choice for those reasons, especially the last one.
Ravenous Trap?
Some Reanimator builds run show and tell sideboard to sidestep hate anyway so if that happens g2/3 you're screwed regardless of what hate you have in your sideboard.
Like I said, I feel like it's better to try and construct a sideboard for a variety of matchups and just practice more against matchups you feel like are very bad if you're going to a big tournament. Worrying about one or 2 particular matchups when we build our side may reduce our win percentages against other matchups that we could possibly otherwise handle.
This card is horrible because it isn't constant. When Reanimator goes off the third card that matter is on the stack and by the time it resolves the creature is in play.
Reanimator builds are starting to turn into BUG colors for Abrupt Decay as adding green doesn't hurt their mana base because they are base black anyway. Dredge will run Nature's Claim because four life doesn't matter to them when there's a boat load of zombies in play. Leyline is being tested and I would love for it to be the hate card of choice for us.
I already mentioned that worrying about all match ups is impossible earlier in this page. I pretty much gave up on Reanimator and Show deck match ups unless I go to a big tournament. Then I use which cards have the biggest impact on the recent meta.
12 decks fit the criterion (and weren't Manaless) with the following combined numbers.
Abrupt Decay: 18 copies
Nature's Claim: 21 copies
Chain of Vapor: 7 copies
Ray of Revelation: 2 copies
Decks that can't answer Leyline: 4 out of 15
Decks with 4+ answers to Leyline: 4 out of 15
Decks with 4+ answers to Grafdigger's Cage: 10 out of 15 if you count Thoughtseize as an answer, 8 if you don't
This was fun, so I'll make a similar evaluation of Reanimator decks. There are 22 decks in SCG event top 8s in the past year, and of that field...
Show and Tell: 51 copies
Abrupt Decay: 35 copies
Echoing Truth: 16 copies
Chain of Vapor: 4 copies
Serenity: 2 copies
Decks that can't answer Leyline: 6
Decks with 4+ answers to Leyline: 10
Most of these decks run a configuration of 2 Show and Tell in the MD, with 2 more in the board along with a single Echoing Truth. Those decks constitute the vast majority of "4+ answers to Leyline" decks.
Overall record: 139-98-15
Total number of matches: 252
Win percentage ignoring draws: 58.649789
Win percentage including draws: 55.158730
Has the fact that you need to use 4 of the leyline in your SB for it to be effective been brought up yet? That's still quite a bit of sideboard space for one answer card, but looking at your sideboard it might actually work well. If I were to make a sideboard using that card, it would probably look something like this:
3 Pyroblast
3 Smash to Smithereens
3 Vexing Shusher
2 Ensnaring Bridge
There's not really any room for sideboarding for the storm matchup but Leyline could I guess still cut off any Past In Flames kills.
For what it's worth though, I've faced more painter and dark depths decks than graveyard based decks like reanimator and dredge, so I still prefer running 2x pithing needle and some other hate package, but that's probably just me and my local meta.
I absolutely respect the choice of Cage as a hate card, and folks that play it are simply valuing breadth of application over stability. We only have 15 slots, Elves is a very powerful deck, and if I personally knew Elves was coming to my LGS I might not bring my Leylines. (I'd bring Miracles, cough cough.)
You're right about one thing though, nongraveyard, non-Omnitell combo is left rather in the lurch with this approach. Against Storm, I would board out Sulfuric Vortex and any Blazes, and 4 Price of Progress, for 9 cards: 4 Leylines, 3 blasts, and 2 Shushers (just because it's a permanent source of damage faster than a Vortex). Hope for the Leyline and snipe cantrips with the blast. This is not a great plan, but it might get there if an Eidolon were thrown in there. The only difference with Cage here is that you can cast Cage if it's draw later, potentially destroying something they've been cantripping into, whereas with Leyline they'll know to be on the Ad Nauseaum plan from the beginning.
Mindbreak Trap is the other option, and I've tried to use and like that card so, so much... but it just doesn't win very many games. Storm Duresses it and Omnitell counters it.
Overall record: 139-98-15
Total number of matches: 252
Win percentage ignoring draws: 58.649789
Win percentage including draws: 55.158730
Last month I beat Goblins and Stoneblade with a list almost entirely like Lormador's latest. But lost to two Miracles, Infect and Canadian Delver thanks to flooding and flooding and flooding some more.
Today I played this
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Plateau
4 Goblin Guide
4 Eidolon of the Great Revel
4 Monastery Swiftspear
2 Grim Lavamancer
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Chain Lightning
4 Lava Spike
4 Rift Bolt
4 Price of Progress
4 Fireblast
3 Sulfuric Vortex
2 Searing Blaze
3 Pyrostatic Pillar
3 Wear // Tear
3 Tormod's Crypt
2 Searing Blaze
2 Smash to Smithereens
2 Oblivion Ring
And went on to beat Burn, UWR Delver, Dredge, Miracles, ANT and then Lands and Miracles again to finally lose at finals to Enchantress to multiple turn 0 and consecutive hardcast Leylines G2 and G3 respectively.
My meta is rowdy as **** and has a very open and even spread of tier 1's and rogues, combo, aggro and tempo are the mayority, Miracles is there but it being at the first or last tables seem to change every week. I cannot afford to gift a turn by flooding, am finding the mainboard Blazes an inconvenience and Swifty dances so much between amazing and terrible that I'm becoming toroughly confused about what to expect next tournament.
But it's probably the most fun I've had with Burn in years.
I noticed you have 4 Monastery Swiftspear in your deck. I'm curious, when is better to have these guys and when is it better to pack more spells (as in what matchups and what metas?).
U Merfolk | GR Tron | WUR Jeskai Control | WBG Abzan Company
EDH:
G Ezuri, Renegade Leader, Fighting for Rivendell
WU Brago, King Eternal, Long Live the King
WUBRG Scion of the Ur-Dragon, Worship the Dragon
She's terrible in combos with dudes like Enchantress, doesn't kill Deathrite if you're in topdeck mode, and just doesn't cut it against big dude decks like Maverick.
At least that is in my experience. I keep her around because even 1 T1 constant combat damage is good in my local meta.