Shrine all but fizzles against aggro decks (where Eidolon would shine outside of Affinity), and trying to go long against decks built for disruption plays right into what they want. I'll be honest, it feels like a no brainer.
Shrine is BETTER then Eidolon in the aggro MUs because we're in the control role.
- - -
If we ONLY care about reducing the opp. down into zero as quickly as possible then Mardu Burn would be the best burn deck (since it has the highest chances for goldfishes). I believe the rise of Boros burn shows that grinding out victories is a thing, we should hope for the best (T4 wins) but prepare for the worse (T5+ games due to discard, land denial, taxes, bad draws, counters, life-gain and critical creature kills).
Excellent/Epic freaking post!!!!!!!!!!
Boros gives me the most balance out of all the versions to do exactly what your saying. We're not usually out racing Affinity and for me Im in a more control role. 2 for 1 them in as many turns as possible.
I have to question the credentials of someone who didn't board out Shrines and boarded in Kor Firewalkers in against RG Ponza. If he was running Le Briand's list, he should have probably swapped the Shrines for PoE and Grim Lavamancer.
Shrine all but fizzles against aggro decks (where Eidolon would shine outside of Affinity), and trying to go long against decks built for disruption plays right into what they want. I'll be honest, it feels like a no brainer.
Shrine is BETTER then Eidolon in the aggro MUs because we're in the control role.
- - -
If we ONLY care about reducing the opp. down into zero as quickly as possible then Mardu Burn would be the best burn deck (since it has the highest chances for goldfishes). I believe the rise of Boros burn shows that grinding out victories is a thing, we should hope for the best (T4 wins) but prepare for the worse (T5+ games due to discard, land denial, taxes, bad draws, counters, life-gain and critical creature kills).
I do not by the assertion that a 2 mana do nothing artifact is what you want to play on t2 against any fast aggro deck. It's not providing inevitability when they beat you on t5 as it stays on the field.
I also don't buy that Mardu is so much faster that it's the only aggro version of Burn and that anything else is "grindy". You're picking up fractions of a turn on average by going to Mardu. I don't know if the numbers are right, but hypothetically comparing an average goldfish of t4 to t4.5 isn't the difference between aggro and "grindy". Jund and Abzan can grind because they topdeck better than everyone else. We don't. We topdeck bad creatures, lands, and bolts. The bolts are redundant and what we want and need, but it's worse than topdecking goyfs.
Edit: we would all play a faster version of that faster version had access to the sideboard cards that we need and didn't compromise mana fixing. In other words, we'd all drop Helix if we got Chain Lightning. It's incorrect to say that we play Boros because we want grindy instead of speed.
I've play many games (few uploaded (300 or so which you can watch) since shadow became a thing and more so before it) and from my experience the aggro MUs can go well over T6 esp. if your targeting creatures.
In regards with Boros I may have overstated the word 'grind' but I find with Mardu and Naya burn requirement for 3c fetches in this current meta can reduce your turns for survival greatly - its gets even worse when you factor in land denial.
Mardu is undeniably faster then the other variants with its Bump in the Night acting like that chain lightning you mention.
EDIT: Just to clarify - when I say 'grind' what I mean is extend the game longer then the other greedy 3C variants, I don't mean trade card for card all day like rock.dec... I'll try and use a different word.
EDIT2: I really don't understand the burst lightning brew... anyhow Mardu has a lower cc then other burn decks while still retaining the powerful cards like Boros Charm - lower cc means less chance for being clogged with 2cc spells which increases the chance for dropping your hand and winning by T3-4 (esp. when you factor in opp. fetch + shock). Boros & Naya burn can do the same but the odds are lower since you need to make more land drops and not hit as many 2cc spells.
I have to question the credentials of someone who didn't board out Shrines and boarded in Kor Firewalkers in against RG Ponza. If he was running Le Briand's list, he should have probably swapped the Shrines for PoE and Grim Lavamancer.
Yeah, I think that's just poor play. I have no idea why you would want to remove any 1cc spell against Ponza.
Between blowing up lands and Blood Moon, Ponza will rarely let you keep two white sources. And even if a Firewalker hits the board, half of Ponza's spells spells/threats are green, so you're not even getting full value.
Sure, dragons have pro-white. But you can't do much with his dragons short of double-bolting, and Paths work great against Titans and Thragtusks that can turn the game around quickly.
Grim Lavamancer provides him with a clock that's not particularly mana intensive -- and if Ponza is blowing up lands, then they're actually fuelling the Lavamancer. Ponza also doesn't exactly have a ton of removal, so once Lavaman hits the board, he has a chance to do some damage.
I've play many games (few uploaded (300 or so which you can watch) since shadow became a thing and more so before it) and from my experience the aggro MUs can go well over T6 esp. if your targeting creatures.
In regards with Boros I may have overstated the word 'grind' but I find with Mardu and Naya burn requirement for 3c fetches in this current meta can reduce your turns for survival greatly - its gets even worse when you factor in land denial.
Mardu is undeniably faster then the other variants with its Bump in the Night acting like that chain lightning you mention.
The aggro matchups could go long occasionally, but you're going to run out of cards that kill creatures eventually. If you're spending all of your time turning Lightning Bolt into Lava Dart on Shrine, it's going to have to reach well beyond turn 6 before you're capable of winning. It's just nonsense that it's better to turn Bolts into Lava Dart than turning everything they play into a Shock while playing control as necessary.
There's another 2 mana card that is vastly superior to Shrine against things like Affinity: Satyr Firedancer. If you're seeing a lot of matches where you're forced to fire bolts at creatures all day, you should be playing Satyr Firedancer.
Mardu undeniably has a lower average CMC. Imagine you goldfish 1000 games and histogram the turn you won on. You won't see a delta function at some turn, but rather a distribution that spans several turns and there will be some uncertainty on the mean of that distribution. Those distributions for Mardu and for Boros will overlap significantly and may overlap to the point that the uncertainties in the means do not allow you to actually distinguish between them. I don't think it's correct to say that one is "undeniably faster" without having such numbers. The only thing you can claim is "undeniable" is that the average CMC is slightly lower.
If you define Rift Bolt to have cmc=1 and use my old creature damage model I've already talked about (which underestimates creatures) , the average CMC of Boros/Naya is about 1.5 and the average CMC of Mardu is about 1.25. The average damage per non-land is 2.76 for Boros/Naya (though I defined AC as 3 here) and 2.73 for Mardu. The damage is essentially the same, so it will cost you the same number of cards. I suspect that the CMC difference is not large enough to have a huge effect (ie. fractions of a turn). Furthermore, those Mardu decks make some sacrifices to get such a low CMC, by dropping Eidolon, Helix, and some Skullcracks and Blazes for 4 Shard Volley, 4 Bumps, and some Burst Lightning. You could construct a Boros deck with approximately the same CMC by shaving 2CMC cards to play 4 Shard and some Burst Lightning. Why don't you? Because it's not actually worth doing.
Boros/Naya needs 7.27 cards and 10.75 mana to deal 20 damage (note my old creature model is wrong, and that means the average damage number is too low). Mardu needs 9.1 mana to get there on the same number of cards. To deal 17 damage, Boros/Naya needs 9.15 mana and Mardu needs 7.75 mana.
If you get a land every turn, you can spend 10 mana through 4 turns. If you get 3 by T3, you can spend 10 by T4. If you get 3 by T4, you can spend 8. If you get stuck on 2 after T2, you can spend 7. You have to convolve both your mana distribution and your damage distribution in order to extract a goldfish turn, and it's also going to be a strong function of how much self damage the average deck takes. Needing 1 more mana doesn't necesarily mean that you need another turn. Your earliest goldfish is going to be T4 regardless of whether you need 7,8, or 9 mana, because you're never going to be able to spend that much until T4. My script could handle analyzing such things.
If you had said that Mardu and Naya are slightly less consistent due to color fixing, I'd agree with that. Calling Mardu fast and Boros "grindy" isn't grounded in reality. They're approximately the same speed, and no Burn deck "grinds" well at all. Jund and Junk can grind. You're up a creek without a paddle if you try to grind against a deck that can grind.
Turn 4
Opp: Urza’s Tower, TKS attacks (I sack Mesa for a Mountain), block with Guide and Helix TKS (draw Helix), Relic into exile and draw, Endbringer.
Moi: draw Guide. Guide.
Shrine: 5
20-22
Turn 5
Opp: Endbringer draws a card, Ballista (4/4), I play Boros Charm.
Moi: draw Spike. Spike, Endbringer damages Guide, Ballista kills Guide (3/3), Helix opp.
Shrine: 9
10-25
From here you can see that the Shrine will finish the opp in turn 6 no matter what they do.
First of all, Goblin Guide should have been your T1 play and should be your T1 play in every game that you hold one in your opening hand. In this particular game, you missed out on 4 damage by holding it in your hand and you did it so that you could get 1 counter on a Shrine on T3. Why skip dealing 4 damage so you can get 1 counter worth 1 damage? Even if you play Shrine, that's a bad trade off to make.
T2, you should have played Charm to put them at 12. T3 TKS steals Rift Bolt. You then get 2 Helixes on them and play the other Guide to use as fogs. This puts your opponent at 6 and you're at 25. Had you had Eidolons, you would have had 2 more fogs against creatures and you have a boat load of life and plenty of time to draw cards to kill them. If this wasn't a first game, you wouldn't have had Eidolons but would instead have probably had Paths or Palms. In that case, they probably steal one of those with TKS and your Rift Bolt survives to deal 3 when they can't counter it.
Shrine only won you this game because you manufactured a situation where Shrine was your only way to win the game.
Edit: Had the Shrines been Lightning Strike, you would have won the game outright on T6.
E-Tron is my main consideration for switching from revel to shrine and I do like how shrine still triggers with chalice in play countering our other burns.
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The aggro matchups could go long occasionally, but you're going to run out of cards that kill creatures eventually. If you're spending all of your time turning Lightning Bolt into Lava Dart on Shrine, it's going to have to reach well beyond turn 6 before you're capable of winning. It's just nonsense that it's better to turn Bolts into Lava Dart than turning everything they play into a Shock while playing control as necessary
VS Aggro you point burns at creatures while pressuring with your own creatures. Shrine supports this plan better... do you just keep revel and race the aggro decks? Seem risky.
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The aggro matchups could go long occasionally, but you're going to run out of cards that kill creatures eventually. If you're spending all of your time turning Lightning Bolt into Lava Dart on Shrine, it's going to have to reach well beyond turn 6 before you're capable of winning. It's just nonsense that it's better to turn Bolts into Lava Dart than turning everything they play into a Shock while playing control as necessary
VS Aggro you point burns at creatures while pressuring with your own creatures. Shrine supports this plan better... do you just keep revel and race the aggro decks? Seem risky.
Is this a serious question? Did you always try to race Affinity until 2 weeks ago when Loic Le Briand reminded everyone that Shrine of Burning Rage exists? If you did, then I can see why you'd want to try a new card against them because you're destined to lose if you try to race Affinity. I play control and kill things when they need to be killed and I do just fine. I side out Eidolon against Affinity. The matchup isn't horrendous once you learn how to play against it. There's a well established strategy for playing against such decks, and Shrine is not an integral part of that. Quite frankly, Atarka's Command is a valuable card in that matchup because the pump mode becomes a kill spell for flying creatures.
Shrine doesn't actually support a control plan against aggro. It gives you a crutch that will provide you with your only avenue to win if you commit completely to the idea that you're going to get to the long game and pray that you actually get there. Considering Affinity can vomit creatures faster than you can vomit burn spells, I think that planning to keep up with their creatures with kill spells is not going to go well for you. They are still going to have a decent clock unless they kept a slow hand, in which case you were already in good shape. I also think it's a horrible decision to tap out on T2 for Shrine when you have a non-zero chance of getting domed for 8 by a Cranial Plating.
I havn't tested shrine yet (unless you count builds which I posted years ago) - its just your previous post made it seems like you race aggro. Heck I was under the impression that you never pointed burn at creatures.
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I don't know why you would think I'm so clueless in how to play Burn that I would try to race Affinity. I've said on more than one occasion in this thread that "you're control against Affinity". "You're control" is the opposite of "race them".
I would absolutely avoid a play like this:
Opp: Urza’s Tower, TKS attacks (I sack Mesa for a Mountain), block with Guide and Helix TKS (draw Helix), Relic into exile and draw, Endbringer.
I block them and fog them for a turn. You're just asking to lose if you waste two cards killing a big creature against a deck that will just play more big creatures that you still can't deal with. Incidentally, it didn't cost the game this particular time, but I've already outlined how the block to fog route without Shrine could have produced a win. I'd block and Blaze a TKS. I might block and Lavamancer a TKS. I won't block and Bolt one. It hardly buys you more time than just blocking would and it turns your Bolt into ~0.5 Bolts via the card draw.
If the argument you want to make is that Shrine is good against Affinity and should be maindecked because of the Affinity matchup, you should be arguing in favor of maindeck Satyr Firedancer so that every Bolt is Searing Blaze. If you're playing it to help the aggro matchup, there's an obvious better option. Since the suggestion isn't to play that better option, the reasoning behind playing Shrine isn't to make aggro better.
Part of Loic's argument is "the Affinity matchup is bad". It's really not. It's 40:60 or 45:55. Soul Sisters is bad, and you would typically have to do something extreme to beat them. That's not necessary with Affinity.
Shrine all but fizzles against aggro decks (where Eidolon would shine outside of Affinity), and trying to go long against decks built for disruption plays right into what they want. I'll be honest, it feels like a no brainer.
Shrine is BETTER then Eidolon in the aggro MUs because we're in the control role.
- - -
If we ONLY care about reducing the opp. down into zero as quickly as possible then Mardu Burn would be the best burn deck (since it has the highest chances for goldfishes). I believe the rise of Boros burn shows that grinding out victories is a thing, we should hope for the best (T4 wins) but prepare for the worse (T5+ games due to discard, land denial, taxes, bad draws, counters, life-gain and critical creature kills).
That's exactly why Eidolon is better. A turn 2 do nothing artifact is infinitely worse than a turn two card that hits them for 2 damage and trades with a creature.
I agree with you on Mardu burn though, that's what I play. I would play Boros if my meta was aggro heavy, but it's pretty slow.
Boros/Naya needs 7.27 cards and 10.75 mana to deal 20 damage (note my old creature model is wrong, and that means the average damage number is too low). Mardu needs 9.1 mana to get there on the same number of cards. To deal 17 damage, Boros/Naya needs 9.15 mana and Mardu needs 7.75 mana.
Would you explain how you calculated this, so I can better understand?
Boros/Naya needs 7.27 cards and 10.75 mana to deal 20 damage (note my old creature model is wrong, and that means the average damage number is too low). Mardu needs 9.1 mana to get there on the same number of cards. To deal 17 damage, Boros/Naya needs 9.15 mana and Mardu needs 7.75 mana.
Would you explain how you calculated this, so I can better understand?
The required number of cards was taken from dividing how much damage you need to deal by the average damage per non-land card in the deck list that I loaded into my python script(it's number of non-land cards needed, rather than number of cards). The Mardu deck I used is given below. Once you have the average number of cards you need, you can compute the average amount of mana you'd need to have to cast that many cards, and you can get that from the average CMC per card.
I just realized I had an error in the Mardu list that I used, where it was looking for "Lightning Bol". This changes the average CMC to 1.21 from 1.25 and the average damage to 2.75 from 2.73. None of that appreciably changes anything else.
I'm planning on adding a rudimentary goldfishing algorithm to the script, but it will take some time. Average mana needed is somewhat related to how many turns it will take, but you may get stuck on 2 for a few turns and that will prolong the game and the effect will be worse on a higher CMC deck. That doesn't affect how much mana you need, but does affect how quickly you reach that much mana.
thank u 4 giving good detail and explanation of ur view. if I agree or not I still respect the different opinion u give. this forum can have many view not just 1. my professor say it good 2 have different view open up thinking and creativity. i trying mardu now for fun because magic is fun. people forget that reason simple reason. u say mardu is fast yes I agree, u say boros can be better when game go longer yes I have the right to agree. if u ever find itself where u feel someone is frustrating u cause u have different view try this is a tip I learn in college this morning.
I've play many games (few uploaded (300 or so which you can watch) since shadow became a thing and more so before it) and from my experience the aggro MUs can go well over T6 esp. if your targeting creatures.
In regards with Boros I may have overstated the word 'grind' but I find with Mardu and Naya burn requirement for 3c fetches in this current meta can reduce your turns for survival greatly - its gets even worse when you factor in land denial.
Mardu is undeniably faster then the other variants with its Bump in the Night acting like that chain lightning you mention.
EDIT: Just to clarify - when I say 'grind' what I mean is extend the game longer then the other greedy 3C variants, I don't mean trade card for card all day like rock.dec... I'll try and use a different word.
EDIT2: I really don't understand the burst lightning brew... anyhow Mardu has a lower cc then other burn decks while still retaining the powerful cards like Boros Charm - lower cc means less chance for being clogged with 2cc spells which increases the chance for dropping your hand and winning by T3-4 (esp. when you factor in opp. fetch + shock). Boros & Naya burn can do the same but the odds are lower since you need to make more land drops and not hit as many 2cc spells.
I will note that I expect that a Mardu list that only makes a 4 card swap of 2CMC cards for 4 Bump in the Night would not have a significantly faster goldfish. However, I had forgotten that some of these Mardu lists are very heavily skewed towards 1CMC and replace up to 10-ish 2CMC cards. That could have a significant effect.
Edit: by "not have a significantly faster goldfish", I mean that I don't expect the effect to be large. It will certainly not be zero, though.
My instinct would tell me to always play the hasty creature first, but Shrine seems like the kind of card that should also be played asap
"Are you serious?" Chandra replied.
Excellent/Epic freaking post!!!!!!!!!!
Boros gives me the most balance out of all the versions to do exactly what your saying. We're not usually out racing Affinity and for me Im in a more control role. 2 for 1 them in as many turns as possible.
I do not by the assertion that a 2 mana do nothing artifact is what you want to play on t2 against any fast aggro deck. It's not providing inevitability when they beat you on t5 as it stays on the field.
I also don't buy that Mardu is so much faster that it's the only aggro version of Burn and that anything else is "grindy". You're picking up fractions of a turn on average by going to Mardu. I don't know if the numbers are right, but hypothetically comparing an average goldfish of t4 to t4.5 isn't the difference between aggro and "grindy". Jund and Abzan can grind because they topdeck better than everyone else. We don't. We topdeck bad creatures, lands, and bolts. The bolts are redundant and what we want and need, but it's worse than topdecking goyfs.
Edit: we would all play a faster version of that faster version had access to the sideboard cards that we need and didn't compromise mana fixing. In other words, we'd all drop Helix if we got Chain Lightning. It's incorrect to say that we play Boros because we want grindy instead of speed.
In regards with Boros I may have overstated the word 'grind' but I find with Mardu and Naya burn requirement for 3c fetches in this current meta can reduce your turns for survival greatly - its gets even worse when you factor in land denial.
Mardu is undeniably faster then the other variants with its Bump in the Night acting like that chain lightning you mention.
EDIT: Just to clarify - when I say 'grind' what I mean is extend the game longer then the other greedy 3C variants, I don't mean trade card for card all day like rock.dec... I'll try and use a different word.
EDIT2: I really don't understand the burst lightning brew... anyhow Mardu has a lower cc then other burn decks while still retaining the powerful cards like Boros Charm - lower cc means less chance for being clogged with 2cc spells which increases the chance for dropping your hand and winning by T3-4 (esp. when you factor in opp. fetch + shock). Boros & Naya burn can do the same but the odds are lower since you need to make more land drops and not hit as many 2cc spells.
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Yeah, I think that's just poor play. I have no idea why you would want to remove any 1cc spell against Ponza.
Between blowing up lands and Blood Moon, Ponza will rarely let you keep two white sources. And even if a Firewalker hits the board, half of Ponza's spells spells/threats are green, so you're not even getting full value.
Sure, dragons have pro-white. But you can't do much with his dragons short of double-bolting, and Paths work great against Titans and Thragtusks that can turn the game around quickly.
Grim Lavamancer provides him with a clock that's not particularly mana intensive -- and if Ponza is blowing up lands, then they're actually fuelling the Lavamancer. Ponza also doesn't exactly have a ton of removal, so once Lavaman hits the board, he has a chance to do some damage.
The aggro matchups could go long occasionally, but you're going to run out of cards that kill creatures eventually. If you're spending all of your time turning Lightning Bolt into Lava Dart on Shrine, it's going to have to reach well beyond turn 6 before you're capable of winning. It's just nonsense that it's better to turn Bolts into Lava Dart than turning everything they play into a Shock while playing control as necessary.
There's another 2 mana card that is vastly superior to Shrine against things like Affinity: Satyr Firedancer. If you're seeing a lot of matches where you're forced to fire bolts at creatures all day, you should be playing Satyr Firedancer.
Mardu undeniably has a lower average CMC. Imagine you goldfish 1000 games and histogram the turn you won on. You won't see a delta function at some turn, but rather a distribution that spans several turns and there will be some uncertainty on the mean of that distribution. Those distributions for Mardu and for Boros will overlap significantly and may overlap to the point that the uncertainties in the means do not allow you to actually distinguish between them. I don't think it's correct to say that one is "undeniably faster" without having such numbers. The only thing you can claim is "undeniable" is that the average CMC is slightly lower.
If you define Rift Bolt to have cmc=1 and use my old creature damage model I've already talked about (which underestimates creatures) , the average CMC of Boros/Naya is about 1.5 and the average CMC of Mardu is about 1.25. The average damage per non-land is 2.76 for Boros/Naya (though I defined AC as 3 here) and 2.73 for Mardu. The damage is essentially the same, so it will cost you the same number of cards. I suspect that the CMC difference is not large enough to have a huge effect (ie. fractions of a turn). Furthermore, those Mardu decks make some sacrifices to get such a low CMC, by dropping Eidolon, Helix, and some Skullcracks and Blazes for 4 Shard Volley, 4 Bumps, and some Burst Lightning. You could construct a Boros deck with approximately the same CMC by shaving 2CMC cards to play 4 Shard and some Burst Lightning. Why don't you? Because it's not actually worth doing.
Boros/Naya needs 7.27 cards and 10.75 mana to deal 20 damage (note my old creature model is wrong, and that means the average damage number is too low). Mardu needs 9.1 mana to get there on the same number of cards. To deal 17 damage, Boros/Naya needs 9.15 mana and Mardu needs 7.75 mana.
If you get a land every turn, you can spend 10 mana through 4 turns. If you get 3 by T3, you can spend 10 by T4. If you get 3 by T4, you can spend 8. If you get stuck on 2 after T2, you can spend 7. You have to convolve both your mana distribution and your damage distribution in order to extract a goldfish turn, and it's also going to be a strong function of how much self damage the average deck takes. Needing 1 more mana doesn't necesarily mean that you need another turn. Your earliest goldfish is going to be T4 regardless of whether you need 7,8, or 9 mana, because you're never going to be able to spend that much until T4. My script could handle analyzing such things.
If you had said that Mardu and Naya are slightly less consistent due to color fixing, I'd agree with that. Calling Mardu fast and Boros "grindy" isn't grounded in reality. They're approximately the same speed, and no Burn deck "grinds" well at all. Jund and Junk can grind. You're up a creek without a paddle if you try to grind against a deck that can grind.
Here is the log of the game against Eldrazi Tron…
Opening Hand
Rift Bolt, Shrine x2, Boros Charm, Arid Mesa, Vantage, Mountain
Turn 1
Opp: Eldrazi Temple.
Moi: draw Goblin Guide. Vantage, suspend Rift Bolt.
Turn 2
Opp: Urza’s Mine.
Moi: Rift Bolt face->countered by Warping Wail. Draw Boros Charm. Mountain, Shrine.
Turn 3
Opp: Urza’s Power Plant, TKS (steal Boros Charm).
Moi: draw Helix. Mesa, Guide.
Shrine: 2
Turn 4
Opp: Urza’s Tower, TKS attacks (I sack Mesa for a Mountain), block with Guide and Helix TKS (draw Helix), Relic into exile and draw, Endbringer.
Moi: draw Guide. Guide.
Shrine: 5
20-22
Turn 5
Opp: Endbringer draws a card, Ballista (4/4), I play Boros Charm.
Moi: draw Spike. Spike, Endbringer damages Guide, Ballista kills Guide (3/3), Helix opp.
Shrine: 9
10-25
From here you can see that the Shrine will finish the opp in turn 6 no matter what they do.
T2, you should have played Charm to put them at 12. T3 TKS steals Rift Bolt. You then get 2 Helixes on them and play the other Guide to use as fogs. This puts your opponent at 6 and you're at 25. Had you had Eidolons, you would have had 2 more fogs against creatures and you have a boat load of life and plenty of time to draw cards to kill them. If this wasn't a first game, you wouldn't have had Eidolons but would instead have probably had Paths or Palms. In that case, they probably steal one of those with TKS and your Rift Bolt survives to deal 3 when they can't counter it.
Shrine only won you this game because you manufactured a situation where Shrine was your only way to win the game.
Edit: Had the Shrines been Lightning Strike, you would have won the game outright on T6.
E-Tron is my main consideration for switching from revel to shrine and I do like how shrine still triggers with chalice in play countering our other burns.
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VS Aggro you point burns at creatures while pressuring with your own creatures. Shrine supports this plan better... do you just keep revel and race the aggro decks? Seem risky.
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Is this a serious question? Did you always try to race Affinity until 2 weeks ago when Loic Le Briand reminded everyone that Shrine of Burning Rage exists? If you did, then I can see why you'd want to try a new card against them because you're destined to lose if you try to race Affinity. I play control and kill things when they need to be killed and I do just fine. I side out Eidolon against Affinity. The matchup isn't horrendous once you learn how to play against it. There's a well established strategy for playing against such decks, and Shrine is not an integral part of that. Quite frankly, Atarka's Command is a valuable card in that matchup because the pump mode becomes a kill spell for flying creatures.
Shrine doesn't actually support a control plan against aggro. It gives you a crutch that will provide you with your only avenue to win if you commit completely to the idea that you're going to get to the long game and pray that you actually get there. Considering Affinity can vomit creatures faster than you can vomit burn spells, I think that planning to keep up with their creatures with kill spells is not going to go well for you. They are still going to have a decent clock unless they kept a slow hand, in which case you were already in good shape. I also think it's a horrible decision to tap out on T2 for Shrine when you have a non-zero chance of getting domed for 8 by a Cranial Plating.
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I would absolutely avoid a play like this:
I block them and fog them for a turn. You're just asking to lose if you waste two cards killing a big creature against a deck that will just play more big creatures that you still can't deal with. Incidentally, it didn't cost the game this particular time, but I've already outlined how the block to fog route without Shrine could have produced a win. I'd block and Blaze a TKS. I might block and Lavamancer a TKS. I won't block and Bolt one. It hardly buys you more time than just blocking would and it turns your Bolt into ~0.5 Bolts via the card draw.
If the argument you want to make is that Shrine is good against Affinity and should be maindecked because of the Affinity matchup, you should be arguing in favor of maindeck Satyr Firedancer so that every Bolt is Searing Blaze. If you're playing it to help the aggro matchup, there's an obvious better option. Since the suggestion isn't to play that better option, the reasoning behind playing Shrine isn't to make aggro better.
Part of Loic's argument is "the Affinity matchup is bad". It's really not. It's 40:60 or 45:55. Soul Sisters is bad, and you would typically have to do something extreme to beat them. That's not necessary with Affinity.
That's exactly why Eidolon is better. A turn 2 do nothing artifact is infinitely worse than a turn two card that hits them for 2 damage and trades with a creature.
I agree with you on Mardu burn though, that's what I play. I would play Boros if my meta was aggro heavy, but it's pretty slow.
Mardu Burn
Monogreen Stompy
Legacy
Burn
Pauper
Dimir Flicker
Monowhite Tokens
Would you explain how you calculated this, so I can better understand?
Mardu Burn
Monogreen Stompy
Legacy
Burn
Pauper
Dimir Flicker
Monowhite Tokens
The required number of cards was taken from dividing how much damage you need to deal by the average damage per non-land card in the deck list that I loaded into my python script(it's number of non-land cards needed, rather than number of cards). The Mardu deck I used is given below. Once you have the average number of cards you need, you can compute the average amount of mana you'd need to have to cast that many cards, and you can get that from the average CMC per card.
2 Grim Lavamancer
4 Monastery Swiftspear
4 Bump in the Night
2 Burst Lightning
4 Lava Spike
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Shard Volley
4 Boros Charm
2 Searing Blaze
3 Skullcrack
4 Rift Bolt
2 Blood Crypt
4 Bloodstained Mire
2 Mountain
2 Sacred Foundry
1 Scalding Tarn
4 Wooded Foothills
I just realized I had an error in the Mardu list that I used, where it was looking for "Lightning Bol". This changes the average CMC to 1.21 from 1.25 and the average damage to 2.75 from 2.73. None of that appreciably changes anything else.
I'm planning on adding a rudimentary goldfishing algorithm to the script, but it will take some time. Average mana needed is somewhat related to how many turns it will take, but you may get stuck on 2 for a few turns and that will prolong the game and the effect will be worse on a higher CMC deck. That doesn't affect how much mana you need, but does affect how quickly you reach that much mana.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-couch/201312/what-s-the-best-way-handle-know-it-all?amp
Infraction issued for trolling. -- CavalryWolfPack
Edit: by "not have a significantly faster goldfish", I mean that I don't expect the effect to be large. It will certainly not be zero, though.