Lavamancer is only ever bad in two situations: either when the matchup is too fast for us to be able to reliably cast and then use it before we get put under pressure, or when the opponent has enough removal to make our chances of untapping with it very low. For instance, I don't like it against the newly popular Vengevine decks, because even though there are a lot of things to snipe, it's a matchup where being ahead on tempo is more important than being ahead on resources. Whereas with things like affinity, elves, and humans, we can take a more controlling role, which is where, as we all know, Lavamancer really shines.
I've also really liked it against UW Control, because outside of Path to Exile, they don't actually have a whole lot of ways to get rid of him. If they let him live and you get two or more activations off him, you start to get way ahead.
Over that we saw a new incredible deck called "Land Burn" on semi finals (https://bit.ly/2Hl86Bd from 9h27), that is a real pride to be able to switch to that strategy when needed...
I've been searching but can't find this 'Land burn' you mention anywhere. Could you point it out please? Or is it just mentioned in the stream?
Cheers
He was joking. The Burn player in the GP semi finals drew something like four or five lands in a row in his last game when any two spells would have won it for him.
You should xaltair over in the proven UW control thread. Telling control players not to play Glimmer of Genius. Now he is telling red players not to play burn.
When Casuals Strike: A Thread
Re: Monored List
Who else is testing Rekindling Phoenix?? The card is bonkers, a lot of stores are sold out (even online) and I could see it being a $40 card. Games you have it in play feel very favorable, even if the opponent contempts it — that’s one less contempt they use on Hazoret. It also plays well into the “gum up the ground and fly over” role that glorybringer used to thrive in, except a mana cheaper, built in recursion, and it’s a house against opposing Glorybringers and Chandras
Mirror (snipe a Magma Spray/Chandra’s Defeat, leave a 2/1 First Strike body behind - attrition!)
Grixis Energy (Fatal Push, their own vraskas contempt vs a scarab god)
UWx decks (target their counter spell, swing out and counter Settle the Wreckage)
BG Snek (Fatal Push again)
UG Merfolk (unsummon on a 2/x body for 3cmc got banned in Standard once)
I’m loving the card, I have 2 in board and I side it in so much that I’ve considered just playing two in the MB, likely over 3rd Kari Zev and the 2nd Pia Nalaar. Who else has tested with this card?
I feel like both of these cards have made Red so much more of a threat: Daredevil powers up our ability to interact with opponents, while Phoenix makes us way more resilient. I've been playing the deck online and currently have 2 Daredevils main and 2 in the side - which is probably too many, and I think I'll cut at least one - but getting to cast one for value in the mid- to late-game just puts you so far ahead. The fact that it's also a perfectly fine cheap beater makes it an excellent card for the deck.
I've got two Phoenix in my sideboard right now, and I'm thinking of replacing my two maindeck Chandras with them. The metagame is heavily slanted toward aggressive decks right now, and Phoenix is very hard to fight through for opposing aggro decks if they aren't already significantly ahead. I'm not as excited about it against the white-based control decks, though, since it often just feels slow and most of their answers take care of it cleanly.
Despite this, I'm happy with how I played these two matches. They were both tense for both players, a lot of that thanks to Eidolon of the Great Revel. Pretty much every case I had it, I'd hold my 2nd land, attack with Guide, let it die to removal, then play Eidolon 2nd main (or some other similar sequence). I very much enjoy making that play and think it's the right way to go about it.
This is also how I like to sequence against Storm post-board. If I have an Eidolon in hand on turn 2, I'll go to combat without playing my second land to try and bait them into bolting my one drop. If I don't have it, I'll play my land pre-combat to try and scare them into holding up mana to counter/kill a potential Eidolon, since now they know I'll have the mana to cast it. It doesn't always make a difference, but I think it's gotten me extra damage in at least a few games.
The real interesting decision is what to do when you hold the land and they let your first attacker through.
I don't think it's accurate to say that Eidolon "isn't as good as it used to be".
The two decks people talk about in regards to Eidolon are GDS and ETron. Eidolon is strong against GDS. If they remove it, you made them spend resources to deal with it and that disrupts the flow of their game to some degree. If they don't, it actively applies pressure to them and allows you to sandbag burn spells until you're able to finish them. I'll side out Eidolon against ETron all day, but it's not actually a new thing to have a tier 1 Tron deck that you side Eidolon out against. I sided it out against Gx Tron for the last 2 years. If Eidolon was great 2 years ago (and it was), it's still great today.
I also don't agree that if you're "looking for pro points" you cut Eidolon. Consistency is actually king for those people.
Eidolon is fantastic against GDS (I don't know what people are talking about when they say it isn't), so I have no argument there.
I also think it's still great in general - being "worse" is much different from being "bad." Maybe I'm just being overly subjective. I only started playing modern seriously about a year ago, and it feels like I want to see Eidolon less than I did back then. Like I said, though, I don't at all think we should be cutting it. I expect the hivemind to conclude that it's still one of the best things we can be doing as Burn.
To me, Eidolon is part of the reason the deck is as good as it is, which means cutting Eidolon is not something I'd do. It's almost (but not quite) like saying "I want to play Burn without Lightning Bolt".
I'd agree that Eidolon is the most individually powerful card in the deck, and a clear reason why Burn rose to Tier 1 in the first place. However, I also think Eidolon isn't as good as it used to be.
This isn't to say that I think it should be cut - I don't - but I do see why people might want to try experimenting without it.
I'm likely playing Burn in a PPTQ Saturday - my current mainboard has 3 Blazes, 3 Eidolons and 3 Satyr Firedancers (along with 19 lands and 4 ofs for the rest of the deck). I really like the firedancers in testing but I'm nervous about how they'll play out this weekend. Any opinions?
It depends largely on what you expect to play against. I don't like the idea of mainboarding the Firedancers. They can probably pull a lot of weight in matchups like Affinity, Merfolk, and Elves, so it's a decent sideboard card, but they're next to useless against stuff like UW Control, Shadow, or any Valakut and Tron variants. Also, they're one of your worst topdecks in almost any lategame situation, they can be removed in response to your spells, and they don't really deal any damage to players on their own, so be aware of those weaknesses while playing (though I'm sure you are if you've been testing). For those reasons, I personally wouldn't want more than two.
I remember people were testing it a couple of years ago, and it was determined to be a somewhat unreliable card with a powerful ceiling but a pretty low floor. Lavamancer is the more consistent option for most of the matches where you'd want Firedancer.
Skullcrack is also useful against things like Burrenton Forge-Tender and Gideon of the Trials (and, much more infrequently, Runed Halo).
That being said, Command obviously has much more powerful and versatile upsides. I stubbornly held onto it for over a month after Boros became the norm, and only switched off of it after MTGO got flooded with land denial strategies and the mirror to the point where maindeck green was more of a liability than it was worth. I've been experimenting with both versions, and the difference between having Command and not having it hasn't usually felt all that significant to me in the current meta.
Remember side boarding for your meta or a blind meta maybe drastically different. My buddy in another state sees graveyard type decks a lot but I dont so RIP is more a must for him then me in the local meta. If your meta is 50% of a certain deck you'd probably have more then 1 or 2 sideboard cards for it but in a blind meta you'd probably would side as heavy for that same deck.So there's not exactly a these 15 cards have to be this or else. If you look at the results from 1 GP or big event to another, lets look at Burn, its had very varying results the last few months anywhere from to 2 decks in the top 8 to 1 in the top 32.
Also its easy to say "If you do this I will do that"....its much harder in the moment when your about to make a move or not. Keep in mind no matter what strategy you use someone will do back to you the "If you do this I with do that". If I post a great tip someone will counter that then someone will counter the counter. Not all situations are created equal.
Example,
Im worried Grixis Shadow may have Stubborn Denial so
- Opponent attacking with Shadow, I Path the Shadow to force Denial out
- It works then I drop Palm
- Then he drops Snapcaster into Denial countering Palm
- Then I Lightning Bolt myself to drop to 0 before he can finish me......Im kidding
But seriously, these are interactions that picking up and play testing possible opponent decks can help you out with. This is a tip I picked up a long time ago and has served me well. Compare experiences with others and see how the can vastly differ yet still gain more knowledge/experience. Its also pretty cheap to do...use 75 land cards and a pad of sticky notes. Write down the general 75 card list 1 card per sticky, put sticky on card put cards in cheap sleeves and shuffle away. Or you could print out the card on paper and tape it to the land card for a more realistic feel. Heck you may find another fun deck to play.
This is kind of off point from what you're talking about, but I'd just like to point out that in the situation you described, it would be better to cast Deflecting Palm in response to Stubborn Denial. That way the counter will still be on the stack and they can't snap it back unless they already have another one in their graveyard.
A lot of you guys jumping back on main deck Atarka's Command--why?
Your observation is slightly off; a lot of people here never dropped it.
Regardless of the popularization of the straight Boros decks (which certainly do have certain advantages), Command is still a very strong card in Burn.
I normally would't advocate to bring in path vs a control based deck,
I'm positive that it's correct to bring in Path vs. Death's Shadow. They aren't really a control deck, and getting rid of even one of their threats is often huge, since it buys us so many draw steps to find a critical mass of burn.
I feel like your sideboard is a little heavy on Firewalkers and you also don't have anything to deal with graveyards. I also like Blaze better than Blood, and 5 Searing effects in the 75 is a lot. The sideboard looks more like a meta tuned one than a blind one. I think a blind one would have 2 Firewalkers max and the 4th Blaze instead of Blood, which opens 2 slots for Relic/RiP/Cage for graveyard hate.
I can't really think of a deck outside of Dredge fast enough to race us, where the graveyard is that important. Is graveyard hate really relevant to our sideboard? Also, I've been considering 2x Molten Rain, would land destruction be better than graveyard hate?
Living End, Storm, and Death's Shadow are all weak to graveyard hate in various ways. Usually these decks will bring in pretty effective hate cards against us, so postboard games aren't generally a matter of straight-up racing. As for Molten Rain, I've never really thought it was good in Burn. Most of the times when it would be beneficial to kill an opponent's land, I'd rather just be winning the game. Not to mention the fact that three mana for only two damage is a pretty significant loss of tempo unless it slows the opponent down a LOT, which won't always be the case.
Getting through with Blaze when you can't kill the creature is a valid point. As far as Helix, what would I cut for the 4th? Also, if I go up to 8 fetches for Blaze, would players of Vantage and Foundry still be good, or more basic mountains? Is 8 fetches, 4 Vantage, 4 foundry, 3 Mountains a good mana base?
If you add the 4th Helix (which I'd support doing), I'd personally recommend replacing either the second lavamancer or one of the mainboard Searing effects. There are a few popular matchups where Blaze can be mediocre to bad, like UW Control and Eldrazi Tron, and Lavamancer doesn't have a terribly long life expectancy in most matchups while also being a pretty bad topdeck. I do like having a couple of lavamancers in the 75 right now though, since they're bonkers against decks like Affinity and Company.
I agree with this. Move either a Blaze or a Lavamancer to the side to make room for a 4th Helix. I'm also ok with dropping one Grim and playing only 1 in the 75. I've generally had 2 in the main, personally, but one is ok. It's huge in creature matchups.
I also think that your new mana base is vastly superior to the old one.
I've seen a lot of lists that run 3 Helix and 4 Searing effects. With 4 Vantage mainboard, life gain seems even less important now. What warrants 3 Searing and 4 Helix over the traditional ratio?
Helix is just a more reliable card in general. You can't cast Blaze if your opponent doesn't have a creature (or if they have a Leyline out), and Helix is always 3 damage even if you can't trigger landfall. The lifegain from Helix can also make a significant difference when racing, even in matchups against creatures with more than three toughness. I currently play four of each in my maindeck, and I do think Blaze is a more objectively powerful card, so it's not like one is clearly better than the other - adjust the numbers to what you think will serve you best in the meta. I think, though, that versatility is worth a lot when deciding which cards to maindeck, which is why I'd default to cutting Blaze before I cut Helix unless I had a specific and compelling reason to do otherwise.
Getting through with Blaze when you can't kill the creature is a valid point. As far as Helix, what would I cut for the 4th? Also, if I go up to 8 fetches for Blaze, would players of Vantage and Foundry still be good, or more basic mountains? Is 8 fetches, 4 Vantage, 4 foundry, 3 Mountains a good mana base?
If you add the 4th Helix (which I'd support doing), I'd personally recommend replacing either the second lavamancer or one of the mainboard Searing effects. There are a few popular matchups where Blaze can be mediocre to bad, like UW Control and Eldrazi Tron, and Lavamancer doesn't have a terribly long life expectancy in most matchups while also being a pretty bad topdeck. I do like having a couple of lavamancers in the 75 right now though, since they're bonkers against decks like Affinity and Company.
It`s always fun when your opponents tell you how mindless and unskilled you must be for playing Baby's First Deck (all things that I have been told on MTGO), right before those same opponents demonstrate their own lack of rules knowledge.
I've also really liked it against UW Control, because outside of Path to Exile, they don't actually have a whole lot of ways to get rid of him. If they let him live and you get two or more activations off him, you start to get way ahead.
He was joking. The Burn player in the GP semi finals drew something like four or five lands in a row in his last game when any two spells would have won it for him.
I feel like both of these cards have made Red so much more of a threat: Daredevil powers up our ability to interact with opponents, while Phoenix makes us way more resilient. I've been playing the deck online and currently have 2 Daredevils main and 2 in the side - which is probably too many, and I think I'll cut at least one - but getting to cast one for value in the mid- to late-game just puts you so far ahead. The fact that it's also a perfectly fine cheap beater makes it an excellent card for the deck.
I've got two Phoenix in my sideboard right now, and I'm thinking of replacing my two maindeck Chandras with them. The metagame is heavily slanted toward aggressive decks right now, and Phoenix is very hard to fight through for opposing aggro decks if they aren't already significantly ahead. I'm not as excited about it against the white-based control decks, though, since it often just feels slow and most of their answers take care of it cleanly.
This is also how I like to sequence against Storm post-board. If I have an Eidolon in hand on turn 2, I'll go to combat without playing my second land to try and bait them into bolting my one drop. If I don't have it, I'll play my land pre-combat to try and scare them into holding up mana to counter/kill a potential Eidolon, since now they know I'll have the mana to cast it. It doesn't always make a difference, but I think it's gotten me extra damage in at least a few games.
The real interesting decision is what to do when you hold the land and they let your first attacker through.
Eidolon is fantastic against GDS (I don't know what people are talking about when they say it isn't), so I have no argument there.
I also think it's still great in general - being "worse" is much different from being "bad." Maybe I'm just being overly subjective. I only started playing modern seriously about a year ago, and it feels like I want to see Eidolon less than I did back then. Like I said, though, I don't at all think we should be cutting it. I expect the hivemind to conclude that it's still one of the best things we can be doing as Burn.
I'd agree that Eidolon is the most individually powerful card in the deck, and a clear reason why Burn rose to Tier 1 in the first place. However, I also think Eidolon isn't as good as it used to be.
This isn't to say that I think it should be cut - I don't - but I do see why people might want to try experimenting without it.
It depends largely on what you expect to play against. I don't like the idea of mainboarding the Firedancers. They can probably pull a lot of weight in matchups like Affinity, Merfolk, and Elves, so it's a decent sideboard card, but they're next to useless against stuff like UW Control, Shadow, or any Valakut and Tron variants. Also, they're one of your worst topdecks in almost any lategame situation, they can be removed in response to your spells, and they don't really deal any damage to players on their own, so be aware of those weaknesses while playing (though I'm sure you are if you've been testing). For those reasons, I personally wouldn't want more than two.
I remember people were testing it a couple of years ago, and it was determined to be a somewhat unreliable card with a powerful ceiling but a pretty low floor. Lavamancer is the more consistent option for most of the matches where you'd want Firedancer.
That being said, Command obviously has much more powerful and versatile upsides. I stubbornly held onto it for over a month after Boros became the norm, and only switched off of it after MTGO got flooded with land denial strategies and the mirror to the point where maindeck green was more of a liability than it was worth. I've been experimenting with both versions, and the difference between having Command and not having it hasn't usually felt all that significant to me in the current meta.
This is kind of off point from what you're talking about, but I'd just like to point out that in the situation you described, it would be better to cast Deflecting Palm in response to Stubborn Denial. That way the counter will still be on the stack and they can't snap it back unless they already have another one in their graveyard.
Your observation is slightly off; a lot of people here never dropped it.
Regardless of the popularization of the straight Boros decks (which certainly do have certain advantages), Command is still a very strong card in Burn.
I'm positive that it's correct to bring in Path vs. Death's Shadow. They aren't really a control deck, and getting rid of even one of their threats is often huge, since it buys us so many draw steps to find a critical mass of burn.
Living End, Storm, and Death's Shadow are all weak to graveyard hate in various ways. Usually these decks will bring in pretty effective hate cards against us, so postboard games aren't generally a matter of straight-up racing. As for Molten Rain, I've never really thought it was good in Burn. Most of the times when it would be beneficial to kill an opponent's land, I'd rather just be winning the game. Not to mention the fact that three mana for only two damage is a pretty significant loss of tempo unless it slows the opponent down a LOT, which won't always be the case.
Helix is just a more reliable card in general. You can't cast Blaze if your opponent doesn't have a creature (or if they have a Leyline out), and Helix is always 3 damage even if you can't trigger landfall. The lifegain from Helix can also make a significant difference when racing, even in matchups against creatures with more than three toughness. I currently play four of each in my maindeck, and I do think Blaze is a more objectively powerful card, so it's not like one is clearly better than the other - adjust the numbers to what you think will serve you best in the meta. I think, though, that versatility is worth a lot when deciding which cards to maindeck, which is why I'd default to cutting Blaze before I cut Helix unless I had a specific and compelling reason to do otherwise.
If you add the 4th Helix (which I'd support doing), I'd personally recommend replacing either the second lavamancer or one of the mainboard Searing effects. There are a few popular matchups where Blaze can be mediocre to bad, like UW Control and Eldrazi Tron, and Lavamancer doesn't have a terribly long life expectancy in most matchups while also being a pretty bad topdeck. I do like having a couple of lavamancers in the 75 right now though, since they're bonkers against decks like Affinity and Company.