I have 25 instants/sorceries, so it seems easy to get those in my graveyard. Plus I can target removal/counter spells my opponent's may have when they go to Snapcaster. Plus the ability to add mana can help us cast one last burn spell to the dome. Also he only exiles one card rather than two, so it can be used more. I see Shaman as a strict upgrade in my opinion.
I would not call him a strict upgrade.
In my list I play 8 Fetches, 1 Bloodcrypt and 4 Blackcleave Cliffs and it can still happen that I don't have a black mana source in my opener. With Deathrite Shaman you need the black source more often. It's a minor point against him, but it comes up.
I don't know how it really plays out, but I don't see myself using his ability to produce mana... Sure, I can play another burn spell, but the deathrite shaman does no damage, so it's not that useful, I think.
That Lavamancer needs two cards in your grave is not that much of a problem imho, because you are not restricted in what you want to remove, it can be any two cards.
What is strictly better about Lavamancer is that he can shot creatures, wich the shaman can not. And in some matchups you really want to take some guys down.
I think in the end it depends more on your metagame wich of the two is the more useful option. If you meta consists of storm and decks abusing snapcaster, then Deathrite Shaman's ability to hate the oponents graveyard is really welcome.
But if your meta consits of more creature heavy decks, like Affinity and Infect, then you really want the good old Lavamancer, because he can take care of their threats.
Also regarding your mana base, you should go:
-4 Dragonskull Summit
-3 Blood Crypt
+4 Blackcleave Cliffs
+2 Fetches
+1 Stomping Ground
Dragonskull Summit is a land that you just won't play on turn 1, or hands with 2 of them are also reaaaally bad. The drawback of Blackcleave Cliffs on the other hand is almost irrelevant.
Also more Fetches and a Stomping Ground make Deathrite more useful, like already mentioned by Lectrys and you should also take less damage from your lands on average.
I like this idea very much and I am definitely going to try it out.
When I started to play burn I got the one with the black splash for bump, I also used 1 sacred foundry for an oblivion ring, I had in my sideboard.
I wonder if there is a reason why not splash black AND white, since you can grab your sacred foundry and blood crypt with your fetchies
Yeah it's possible, but once we add a third colour we almost have to much going on you know? The main reason I added black was bump and rakdos charm for the sideboard. With helix replacing bump and much better sb options from white, it's hard to justify the third color.
In this case all the pretty white cards are open, while you can keep the Black Bolt
That's true, although I've really liked the helix's. Gaining 3 life can be big against some of the aggro decks in the format. Thing is though, if you side in 4 white cards lets say, you are only going to have 8 ways to get that mana, which can be kinda dicey (8 fetches and the 1 foundry).
That's true, although I've really liked the helix's. Gaining 3 life can be big against some of the aggro decks in the format. Thing is though, if you side in 4 white cards lets say, you are only going to have 8 ways to get that mana, which can be kinda dicey (8 fetches and the 1 foundry).
That would be 9 ways (8 fetches + 1 Foundry), but why not run 2x Foundry? In a deck with ~20 lands, about half of your mana base can get you the color you need. I've considered Lightning Helix in place of Incinerate and with stuff like Rest in Peace showing up for sideboards, it doesn't sound like too far of a stretch.
Nope. I will keep mine strictly r/b. White gives me one card I care about; RIP. But black gives me rakdos charm, which works just as well.
Rakdos charm is the single best sidecard for this deck. Period. It gives you grave hate and arti hate, so it condescends 8 slots in the side to 4-6. and it comes with the added bonus of hitting aggro decks for a crap ton, and pod/twin wins.
I played Mono-R Burn today, and finished 1st place.
Not much to say. My list wasn't very finetuned at all, but worked well enough and Rakdos Charm is the best card ever for this deck. Too bad that it has no "damage-mode" otherwise it would be a perfect Maindeck-candidate.
List:
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Rift Bolt
4 Lava Spike
4 Bump in the Night
4 Searing Blaze
I played Mono-R Burn today, and finished 1st place.
Not much to say. My list wasn't very finetuned at all, but worked well enough and Rakdos Charm is the best card ever for this deck. Too bad that it has no "damage-mode" otherwise it would be a perfect Maindeck-candidate.
List:
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Rift Bolt
4 Lava Spike
4 Bump in the Night
4 Searing Blaze
Nope. I will keep mine strictly r/b. White gives me one card I care about; RIP. But black gives me rakdos charm, which works just as well.
Rakdos charm is the single best sidecard for this deck. Period. It gives you grave hate and arti hate, so it condescends 8 slots in the side to 4-6. and it comes with the added bonus of hitting aggro decks for a crap ton, and pod/twin wins.
The problem with rakdos charm (which, don't get me wrong, I love the card) is that it's targeted. I've noticed increasing numbers of eggs and even some UR storm decks running the white leyline in the sideboard which turns off the charm. I'm flip flopping myself between r/b and r/w. Rest in Peace is really good, as is stony silence.
Nope. I will keep mine strictly r/b. White gives me one card I care about; RIP. But black gives me rakdos charm, which works just as well.
Rakdos charm is the single best sidecard for this deck. Period. It gives you grave hate and arti hate, so it condescends 8 slots in the side to 4-6. and it comes with the added bonus of hitting aggro decks for a crap ton, and pod/twin wins.
I was actually suggesting running RBW. Probably should have been a little more specific about that.
I would disagree when it comes to R/b because of how much you gain from splashing the color. The only thing you get with RWB that you don't get with black and red is relevant hate Sideboard cards that you can't find in those colors. RB burn is very good while still consistent. However I do agree that we need to splash white to get the very effective enchantment hate. I would only keep 1 sacred foundry on the main to splash for 2/3 enchantment hate.
I would not use lightning helix at all, if you want to break any mirror or aggro matches in half searing blaze already does that pretty well. And although I understand the thinking behind path to exile I cannot think of any matches were she is being cast instead of being cheated into play with reanimation spells, in which case rakdos charm already does the job and does it well. Even if there is a way in which she is not coming from the grave black already has a good amount of removal to deal with her. Exiling would be the only thing that would matter although it would seem irrelevant most of the time given our extremely fast clock.
Just a little idea to improve our matchups : I've added 3 Ghost Quarter to the main deck to improve a bunch of games that burn can have some trouble with, noticeably tron. While most stuff costs a single red or black, with 18 other sources, I haven't really had any issues with it. That said, the fear of 2 ghost quarter opening hand's is real. So it's a bit of a tough call.
I think that I would only take that risk if I wasn't running the black splash which also needs a lot more black mana sources given that we have charms on the sb now. This also matters for the purposes of adding white to complement the sb against leyline and the like(Btw adding hatebears for enchantment destruction is genius).
I absolutely hate colorless lands in my deck. I want RRRRRRRR to cast Searing Blaze, Lightning Bolt, Rift Bolt, Lava Spike, etc.... I always want colored mana. Incinerate is literally the only card in my main deck that I can cast with colorless mana. I never found blowing up an opponent's land to be very important since you will normally win the game before it's relevant.
One idea for Tron is sideboarding Molten Rain. Does the same thing as Ghost Quarter except it contributes to our overall plan by dealing 2 damage, actually reduces their land count (which can matter with counterspells and whatnot), and doesn't negatively impact our manabase. Still, even that might be a turn too slow to be effective :\
Also, this.
Molten Rain, while I like it and is good, is far to slow. On the draw, they can have already assembled urzatron and powered out a Karn if you are lucky, and if you aren't lucky, a wurmcoil engine. That's why I've been using a few ghost quarters. It doesn't cost 3, so you can still play your game on turn 2/3, but set's them back quite a bit if they don't have the destroyed land, giving you another 1-2 turns usually to finish them off. The bonus is that it hit's manlands and utility lands as well. I won the last game I played against B/W tokens because I was able to destroy there Vault of the Archangel before it was active and finish them off the following turn.
Or you could kill them before Vault was active because your deck can kill them by turn 5, like most burn decks.
Just because it CAN kill them by turn 5, doesn't mean it always does. Do you ALWAYS kill people turn 4/5 with burn? I highly doubt that, especially if you are running sub par burn spells like Incinerate. Why do people think that since burn can usually goldfish turn 4/5 kill's that that means any sort of additional interaction with other decks is useless/pointless? I've played many games with tron for example where they plop a turn 3 wurmcoil/karn. Sure maybe if you went first you can turn 4 kill them. But if you didnt, you just give up? In that scenario one ghost quarter would slow them down 1 turn (possibly more) giving you 2 turns to kill them.
In my experience, having played the deck for over a year, most people are in lethal range after turn 3. Usually at that point I have 2-3 burn spells in hand, and most games don't go past turn 4 (especially with how many shocks/fetches people play in this format). So what you are telling me is that there is one archtype in the format that can occasionally get a Wurmcoil on turn 3. You are telling me that you want to make your deck slower (worse) with a land you can't cast spells with because you might run into that deck, and it might be useful that one time? And then you want to tell me that my card choices are sub par because they don't live up to your standards? I don't think you should be the one giving advice on how to build and play this deck.
Took down 5 rounds of single elimination (Overdrive 73) with this list, after having not played it in months. I made some blind changes and just diced it; I didn't expect it to go the distance, but I just wanted to get my feet wet again.
-Maindeck Grim was neat in a few matches, but I think he's side material. I also feel Deathrite is worth side material, and I've yet to try out Vexing Devil.
-The lone Miracle was a mistake. I never cast it, and I really only ended up eating a spot with it.
-I like the idea of Rakdos Charm compressing Grip and Relic into less SB slots, but it's just not good enough. Yes, hitting enchantments matters. Sometimes Split Second does, too. And extra Relics become card draw when not needed for anything else; Rakdos Charm has the option for conditional damage. I may try it out, but I'm not quite sold on it.
-Leyline of Sanctity is going into the SB at some point. Once I, you know, figure what the hell I'm doing with it.
Just to pee on the fire a bit, I was watching semi-finals and noticed a Living End deck running Ghost Quarters. Even though it ended up folding to a Tron deck, the Ghost Quarters gave it some legs in that fight and held off the Tron player for quite a long while. That being said, Living End (a favorite of mine) has almost no problem with a few Ghost Quarters because it can still cast almost all of its spells off of it. Burn, however, has to have that colored mana. In the list above, only the Keldons would be cast off them (well, technically Rift Bolt and Wrath, but if you are hardcasting these spells you are doing it wrong). I don't doubt their capability at the right moments, but I don't think it warrants running them main.
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I would not call him a strict upgrade.
In my list I play 8 Fetches, 1 Bloodcrypt and 4 Blackcleave Cliffs and it can still happen that I don't have a black mana source in my opener. With Deathrite Shaman you need the black source more often. It's a minor point against him, but it comes up.
I don't know how it really plays out, but I don't see myself using his ability to produce mana... Sure, I can play another burn spell, but the deathrite shaman does no damage, so it's not that useful, I think.
That Lavamancer needs two cards in your grave is not that much of a problem imho, because you are not restricted in what you want to remove, it can be any two cards.
What is strictly better about Lavamancer is that he can shot creatures, wich the shaman can not. And in some matchups you really want to take some guys down.
I think in the end it depends more on your metagame wich of the two is the more useful option. If you meta consists of storm and decks abusing snapcaster, then Deathrite Shaman's ability to hate the oponents graveyard is really welcome.
But if your meta consits of more creature heavy decks, like Affinity and Infect, then you really want the good old Lavamancer, because he can take care of their threats.
Also regarding your mana base, you should go:
-4 Dragonskull Summit
-3 Blood Crypt
+4 Blackcleave Cliffs
+2 Fetches
+1 Stomping Ground
Dragonskull Summit is a land that you just won't play on turn 1, or hands with 2 of them are also reaaaally bad. The drawback of Blackcleave Cliffs on the other hand is almost irrelevant.
Also more Fetches and a Stomping Ground make Deathrite more useful, like already mentioned by Lectrys and you should also take less damage from your lands on average.
4 goblin guide
4 vexing devil
burn
4 lightning bolt
4 rift bolt
4 shard volly
4 bump in the night
4 lava spike
4 incinerate
4 searing blaze
7 mountain
4 blackcleave cliffs
4 scalding tarn
4 arid mesa
1 blood crypt
4 rakdos charm
4 molten rain
4 combust
3 smash to smithereens
My idea was +3 grim lavamancer and +1 magma jet OR
+2 grim lavamancer +2 hellspark elemental
Thoughts?
Yeah it's possible, but once we add a third colour we almost have to much going on you know? The main reason I added black was bump and rakdos charm for the sideboard. With helix replacing bump and much better sb options from white, it's hard to justify the third color.
That's true, although I've really liked the helix's. Gaining 3 life can be big against some of the aggro decks in the format. Thing is though, if you side in 4 white cards lets say, you are only going to have 8 ways to get that mana, which can be kinda dicey (8 fetches and the 1 foundry).
That would be 9 ways (8 fetches + 1 Foundry), but why not run 2x Foundry? In a deck with ~20 lands, about half of your mana base can get you the color you need. I've considered Lightning Helix in place of Incinerate and with stuff like Rest in Peace showing up for sideboards, it doesn't sound like too far of a stretch.
FREE BLOODBRAID ELF
Rakdos charm is the single best sidecard for this deck. Period. It gives you grave hate and arti hate, so it condescends 8 slots in the side to 4-6. and it comes with the added bonus of hitting aggro decks for a crap ton, and pod/twin wins.
Not much to say. My list wasn't very finetuned at all, but worked well enough and Rakdos Charm is the best card ever for this deck. Too bad that it has no "damage-mode" otherwise it would be a perfect Maindeck-candidate.
List:
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Rift Bolt
4 Lava Spike
4 Bump in the Night
4 Searing Blaze
4 Goblin Guide
4 Vexing Devil
4 Grim Lavamancer
4 Ash Zealot
4 Hellspark Elemental
4 Arid Mesa
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Blackcleave Cliffs
1 Blood Crypt
7 Mountain
//////
4 Molten Rain
4 Smash to Smithereens
4 Rakdos Charm
3 Rain of Gore
cheers
A simple list. I like it. What decks did you play against?
Did Ash Zealot really pull it's weight or would you have rather had Keldon Marauders?
The problem with rakdos charm (which, don't get me wrong, I love the card) is that it's targeted. I've noticed increasing numbers of eggs and even some UR storm decks running the white leyline in the sideboard which turns off the charm. I'm flip flopping myself between r/b and r/w. Rest in Peace is really good, as is stony silence.
I was actually suggesting running RBW. Probably should have been a little more specific about that.
FREE BLOODBRAID ELF
I would not use lightning helix at all, if you want to break any mirror or aggro matches in half searing blaze already does that pretty well. And although I understand the thinking behind path to exile I cannot think of any matches were she is being cast instead of being cheated into play with reanimation spells, in which case rakdos charm already does the job and does it well. Even if there is a way in which she is not coming from the grave black already has a good amount of removal to deal with her. Exiling would be the only thing that would matter although it would seem irrelevant most of the time given our extremely fast clock.
URBURB
URBURB
FREE BLOODBRAID ELF
Molten Rain, while I like it and is good, is far to slow. On the draw, they can have already assembled urzatron and powered out a Karn if you are lucky, and if you aren't lucky, a wurmcoil engine. That's why I've been using a few ghost quarters. It doesn't cost 3, so you can still play your game on turn 2/3, but set's them back quite a bit if they don't have the destroyed land, giving you another 1-2 turns usually to finish them off. The bonus is that it hit's manlands and utility lands as well. I won the last game I played against B/W tokens because I was able to destroy there Vault of the Archangel before it was active and finish them off the following turn.
FREE BLOODBRAID ELF
Just because it CAN kill them by turn 5, doesn't mean it always does. Do you ALWAYS kill people turn 4/5 with burn? I highly doubt that, especially if you are running sub par burn spells like Incinerate. Why do people think that since burn can usually goldfish turn 4/5 kill's that that means any sort of additional interaction with other decks is useless/pointless? I've played many games with tron for example where they plop a turn 3 wurmcoil/karn. Sure maybe if you went first you can turn 4 kill them. But if you didnt, you just give up? In that scenario one ghost quarter would slow them down 1 turn (possibly more) giving you 2 turns to kill them.
FREE BLOODBRAID ELF
2 Grim Lavamancer
4 Magma Jet
4 Lava Spike
1 Stomping Ground
1 Blood Crypt
4 Rift Bolt
4 Keldon Marauders
4 Shard Volley
4 Flame Javelin
4 Goblin Guide
4 Arid Mesa
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Searing Blaze
4 Bump in the Night
1 Thunderous Wrath
9 Mountain
3 Flamebreak
4 Rain of Gore
4 Krosan Grip
3 Relic of Progenitus
1 Searing Blaze
Took down 5 rounds of single elimination (Overdrive 73) with this list, after having not played it in months. I made some blind changes and just diced it; I didn't expect it to go the distance, but I just wanted to get my feet wet again.
-Maindeck Grim was neat in a few matches, but I think he's side material. I also feel Deathrite is worth side material, and I've yet to try out Vexing Devil.
-The lone Miracle was a mistake. I never cast it, and I really only ended up eating a spot with it.
-I like the idea of Rakdos Charm compressing Grip and Relic into less SB slots, but it's just not good enough. Yes, hitting enchantments matters. Sometimes Split Second does, too. And extra Relics become card draw when not needed for anything else; Rakdos Charm has the option for conditional damage. I may try it out, but I'm not quite sold on it.
-Leyline of Sanctity is going into the SB at some point. Once I, you know, figure what the hell I'm doing with it.
Just to pee on the fire a bit, I was watching semi-finals and noticed a Living End deck running Ghost Quarters. Even though it ended up folding to a Tron deck, the Ghost Quarters gave it some legs in that fight and held off the Tron player for quite a long while. That being said, Living End (a favorite of mine) has almost no problem with a few Ghost Quarters because it can still cast almost all of its spells off of it. Burn, however, has to have that colored mana. In the list above, only the Keldons would be cast off them (well, technically Rift Bolt and Wrath, but if you are hardcasting these spells you are doing it wrong). I don't doubt their capability at the right moments, but I don't think it warrants running them main.