I've been tweaking a Modern Burn over the last 8 months or so, after a 5 year reprieve from MTG. After selling off my collection of Power 9 and 37 of 40 dual land set, I knew that Vintage and Legacy would be too pricey, and that this new format Modern seemed like the best place to get in without a catastrophic amount of money spent, Tarmogoyf notwithstanding. After a bunch of goldfishing, tweaking, and playing of bad cards, I've developed the following Burn list, which uses a familiar shell here, but doesn't play the typical creatures that most Burn decks use; call it my own personal touch, or use of "bad tech" if you will. I like the deck a lot and it has some powerful plays.
I realize some cards will feel like scrubby choices, but I do like the explosiveness the deck offers. Once card I particularly like is Tyrant's Choice, and I'm sure that will be a head scratcher to some; I think it pairs nicely with Bump In the Night, giving me another black "burn" spell. For, if I always call "torture," it's a guaranteed 4 life loss for 2 man, at least in a 2 person duel. I found that extra damage is useful, and this card also pairs nicely as another sort of sorcery speed Boros Charm, though admittedly less versatile. I've liked it so far, and kind of consider it one of my little tech cards.
Still working on the last few cards for the sideboard; thinking specific creature/planeswalker might be removal and shore up one deficiency against Tarmogoyfs and the like. Still pondering that choice.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong but I believe Tyrant's Choice isn't modern legal since it was only printed in Conspiracy Got beat to it
So I played at GP Van today with this list. I've never had any playtesting with the deck and depended on reading articles, browsing through the threads, and watching modern streams. Note that my list is suboptimal since I'm missing that playset of goblin guides and am using windswept heaths instead of arid mesas
For matches, I played in a single elimination GP Trial on Friday with these matchups:
Abzan 2-0
G1 Burning out his mana dorks with searing blaze/blood, Skullcrack/Flames for siege rhino
G2 mana dorked out a smiter, followed by a Sorin, Solemn Visitor +1. Luckily I had two Skullcracks with an Eidolon and Swiftspear out. I barely won this game
Inflect 2-1
G1 he got me good
G2 I deflecting palm-ed an 11/11 glistener elf to win. Feels so good
G3 he came out too slow
Scapeshift 2-1
G1 Burned him out quickly
G2 He found his ramp and I was too slow
G3 I was faster and he didn't find ramp
Affinity 1-2
G1 he ran me over with overloading the board with thoptors,memnites and signal pest. Oh, and vault skirge
G2 double swiftspears with lots of 1cmc burn along with a slow start for him
G3 I was stuck on 1 land after mulling to 6. Never saw another land all game so I could only play one spell a turn
As for the main event itself:
GU something [1-0]:
He never got his game plan together, all I saw were birds, hiearchs and some cheap counterspells. Won
Jeskai Control [1-1]:
I just folded to counterspells and helixes. I never got my creatures to stick. Death by Geist + Land screwed G3. Lost
RG Tron [2-1]
Easier match up for me, just burn him as fast as I can. He stumbled on his lands G2 to make it easy. Won
Abzan [3-1]
G1 I made it through pretty quickly. G2 I managed to skullcrack kitchen finks initially. He kept attacking while I had an Eidolon in play, kept trading attacks till I could burn him out since I didn't have another skullcrack/flames in hand. Won
BU Faeries control [3-2]
G1 he had a hand full of thoughseizes and couldn't do much.
G2 and G3 I got wrecked by sun droplet. I couldn't ever land my revelries on it. Lost
Scapeshift [4-2]
I won 2-0 cause he never found his ramp. Won
Jeskai Control [4-3] Dropped
Geist is the death of me. G3 was very weird. He mulled to 5 [he told me later he had no land in that 5] and drew three lands in a row. Landed a Geist. When I tried to deflecting palm the angel he pathed the angel for land. He did that twice. Ultimately lost to that.
I never ran into burn or twin. Burn was running amok from what I saw, there was a point where me, and the guys on either side of me were playing burn.
So that's my tourney report, hope it can be of some insight to people. Then again, I'm an amateur at piloting the deck and I was missing some key components.
Say, for example, my opponent has monster A and Spellskite on the field and attacks with monster A. If I cast Deflecting Palm naming the source as monster A can Spellskite redirect it to itself.
I guess the words I'm confused with is "source" and "target".
Pretty happy with what I got in my second box, I didnt see stormbreath,purphoros and ashiok till the bottom 5 rows
I opened my first box at release so i didnt mark down exactly what was there, I remember Elspeth, Purphoros, Stormbreath, and Thoughtseize being notable pulls.
I've been reading this thread a lot so I thought I'd finally contribute to it. This is the deck that I've been working with that I brought to FNM this past week.
2-0 vs Esper Control
Obzedat won me my games here, once it came down my opponent couldn't do anything to it. I kept killing his Lingering Souls with my hand full of removal till I got to an obzedat or Aetherling. At one point he attempted to land an Aetherling but luckily I had a dissipate in hand.
2-1 vs Selenya Tokens
Game 1 I lost fairly quickly to his onslaugh of tokens through Call of the Conclave, Gather the Townsfolk, Advent of the Wurm, and Voice of Resurgence. I sided in my Aetherize (Plus something else that I forgot)
and took out 2 Obzedats and an Aetherling.
Game 2 I was able to keep the board clear with my sweepers, and Aetherize on his tokens, eventually exhausting out his hand. Then it was pretty much drawing till I hit my Aetherling, which wasnt till I had like 15 cards left in my deck. Won with Aetherling
Game 3 I got lucky cause my opponent got mana screwed at 3 lands, I found my aetherling early and swung with it for the win
0-2 vs RDW
Both games I was able to get to 7 ish mana but I couldnt stem the burn compounded with the damage from the earlier turns. Skullcrack got me good in this matchup, he always left mana up for it. This was a first playing against a hyper aggro deck with my Esper. Mapcap Skills made me hit the panic button and use removal on his creatures.
1-0-1 vs Junk Midrange
This match was against a fairly close friend of mine so I knew what to expect. Smiters, Thragtusks, Resto Angels, Lingering Souls, and Advent of the Wurms. Luckily i drew a ton of sweepers and removal. Game one was a long game as I couldnt find a finisher for a long time. Eventually his hand was exhausted and his board state wasn't pressuring. Won with Aetherling
We started game 2 with 3 minutes, we went to turns and drew the game.
I'm fairly new to the game, only starting in January so I'm always open to learning bout different aspects so I can improve as a player. I haven't had issues with Obzedat dying to instant removal just yet at my LGS but I'll decide to move him when it get to that point.
The idea was to stall long enough to get assemble the legion out, with Jace,Memory Adept as a second win-con, or if the game stalls long enough, burn with devil's play
I haven't figured out entirely what my sideboard will look like, since my LGS has a variety of non meta decks. Any suggestions are much appreciated
I would say so. Not so much because Shocklands will come in Dragon's Maze packs at half the rate you'd get them in RTR and GTC, but because the draft format will be Dragon's Maze-Gatecrash-RTR, which means even more Shocklands will be opened than are already saturating the market. I can see Shocklands hitting as low as $6-8 a piece by a couple weeks after Dragon'z Maze goes on the shelf. You can already get the RTR Shocklands as low as $9 each on TCGplayer.
Thanks again!
I'll wait a bit to get the shocks, shipping costs to Canada counters the discount that I'd get on tcgplayer compared to my lgs =(
Thanks for all the great advice!
I'll get the singles I need to build the deck I had in mind(American control using assemble the legion as win con), along with the staples that Xenphire mentioned. Would it be advisable to wait for dragons maze to get shocklands?
I recently starting playing magic(only a month in) and I wanted to start a collection starting with the rtr set(Just playing standard). I'm wanting to have a playset of uncommons/commons and at least one of each for the rares and mythics(probably a playset of the staple ones).
I read that the price on rtr singles have dropped at the moment from market saturation. Would you guys suggest that it would be a good time to visit my lgs and get the singles now before the price rises? And also if I should get playsets for any particular rare/mythics?
Someone correct me if I'm wrong but I believe Tyrant's Choice isn't modern legal since it was only printed in ConspiracyGot beat to it4 Monastery Swiftspear
4 Eidolon of the Great Revel
Instants:24
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Shard Volley
4 Skullcrack
2 Flame of the Blood Hand
1 Searing Blood
4 Searing Blaze
1 Magma Jet
4 Boros Charm
2 Lightning Helix
4 Lava Spike
4 Rift Bolt
Land: 20
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Wooded Foothills
2 Windswept Heath
3 Sacred Foundry
1 Stomping Ground
2 Deflecting Palm
4 Destructive Revelry
1 Lightning Helix
2 Molten Rain
3 Path to Exile
2 torpor Orb
1 Anger of the Gods
For matches, I played in a single elimination GP Trial on Friday with these matchups:
Abzan 2-0
G1 Burning out his mana dorks with searing blaze/blood, Skullcrack/Flames for siege rhino
G2 mana dorked out a smiter, followed by a Sorin, Solemn Visitor +1. Luckily I had two Skullcracks with an Eidolon and Swiftspear out. I barely won this game
Inflect 2-1
G1 he got me good
G2 I deflecting palm-ed an 11/11 glistener elf to win. Feels so good
G3 he came out too slow
Scapeshift 2-1
G1 Burned him out quickly
G2 He found his ramp and I was too slow
G3 I was faster and he didn't find ramp
Affinity 1-2
G1 he ran me over with overloading the board with thoptors,memnites and signal pest. Oh, and vault skirge
G2 double swiftspears with lots of 1cmc burn along with a slow start for him
G3 I was stuck on 1 land after mulling to 6. Never saw another land all game so I could only play one spell a turn
As for the main event itself:
GU something [1-0]:
He never got his game plan together, all I saw were birds, hiearchs and some cheap counterspells. Won
Jeskai Control [1-1]:
I just folded to counterspells and helixes. I never got my creatures to stick. Death by Geist + Land screwed G3. Lost
RG Tron [2-1]
Easier match up for me, just burn him as fast as I can. He stumbled on his lands G2 to make it easy. Won
Abzan [3-1]
G1 I made it through pretty quickly. G2 I managed to skullcrack kitchen finks initially. He kept attacking while I had an Eidolon in play, kept trading attacks till I could burn him out since I didn't have another skullcrack/flames in hand. Won
BU Faeries control [3-2]
G1 he had a hand full of thoughseizes and couldn't do much.
G2 and G3 I got wrecked by sun droplet. I couldn't ever land my revelries on it. Lost
Scapeshift [4-2]
I won 2-0 cause he never found his ramp. Won
Jeskai Control [4-3] Dropped
Geist is the death of me. G3 was very weird. He mulled to 5 [he told me later he had no land in that 5] and drew three lands in a row. Landed a Geist. When I tried to deflecting palm the angel he pathed the angel for land. He did that twice. Ultimately lost to that.
I never ran into burn or twin. Burn was running amok from what I saw, there was a point where me, and the guys on either side of me were playing burn.
So that's my tourney report, hope it can be of some insight to people. Then again, I'm an amateur at piloting the deck and I was missing some key components.
Say, for example, my opponent has monster A and Spellskite on the field and attacks with monster A. If I cast Deflecting Palm naming the source as monster A can Spellskite redirect it to itself.
I guess the words I'm confused with is "source" and "target".
2x Fleecemane Lion
anger of the gods
temple of abandon
pyxis of pandemonium
temple of silence
temple of triumph
abhorrent overlord
prognostic sphinx
Rageblood shaman
stormbreath dragon
Purphoros, God of the Forge
ShipBreaker Kraken
triad of fates
fabled hero
hammer of purphoros
akroan horse
anthousa
anax and cymede/legonna ban elder
spear of heliod
Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
daxos of meletis
reverent hunter
tymaret, the murder king
Firedrinker Satyr
elspeth, sun's champion
Soldier of the Pantheon
artisant of forms
curse of the swine/dark betrayal
underworld cerebus
nighthowler
ashiok, nightmare weaver
bow of nylea
temple of mystery
reaper of the wild
agent of the fates
Pretty happy with what I got in my second box, I didnt see stormbreath,purphoros and ashiok till the bottom 5 rows
I opened my first box at release so i didnt mark down exactly what was there, I remember Elspeth, Purphoros, Stormbreath, and Thoughtseize being notable pulls.
4x dryad militant
4x fleecemane lion
4x loxodon smiter
4x fiendslayer paladin
4x boon satyr
4x advent of the wurm
3x rootborn defense
2x garruk, caller of beast
8 plains
4 temple garden
I've only been playing for 8 months and I started out with esper control so what do i know bout deck building for aggro. Tear it apart guys
4x Hallowed Fountain
4x Godless Shrine
2x Watery Grave
4x Glacial Fortress
4x Drowned Catacomb
2x Island
2x Plains
2x Isolated Chapel
2x Nephalia Drownyard
Creatures: 6
2x Aetherling
2x Obzedat, Ghost Council
2x Snapcaster Mage
2x Jace, Architect of thought
Instants: 17
4x Azorius Charm
3x Think Twice
2x Sphinx's Revelation
2x Far // Away
1x Devour Flesh
2x Warped Physique
2x Disspate
1x Syncopate
Sorceries: 9
4x Supreme Verdict
2x Terminus
1x Merciless Eviction
2x Detention Sphere
4x Crypt Incursion
2x Dispel
1x Syncopate
2x Orzhov Charm
1x Psychic Spiral
1x Jace, Memory Adept
2x Oblivion Ring
2x Aetherize
2-0 vs Esper Control
Obzedat won me my games here, once it came down my opponent couldn't do anything to it. I kept killing his Lingering Souls with my hand full of removal till I got to an obzedat or Aetherling. At one point he attempted to land an Aetherling but luckily I had a dissipate in hand.
2-1 vs Selenya Tokens
Game 1 I lost fairly quickly to his onslaugh of tokens through Call of the Conclave, Gather the Townsfolk, Advent of the Wurm, and Voice of Resurgence. I sided in my Aetherize (Plus something else that I forgot)
and took out 2 Obzedats and an Aetherling.
Game 2 I was able to keep the board clear with my sweepers, and Aetherize on his tokens, eventually exhausting out his hand. Then it was pretty much drawing till I hit my Aetherling, which wasnt till I had like 15 cards left in my deck. Won with Aetherling
Game 3 I got lucky cause my opponent got mana screwed at 3 lands, I found my aetherling early and swung with it for the win
0-2 vs RDW
Both games I was able to get to 7 ish mana but I couldnt stem the burn compounded with the damage from the earlier turns. Skullcrack got me good in this matchup, he always left mana up for it. This was a first playing against a hyper aggro deck with my Esper. Mapcap Skills made me hit the panic button and use removal on his creatures.
1-0-1 vs Junk Midrange
This match was against a fairly close friend of mine so I knew what to expect. Smiters, Thragtusks, Resto Angels, Lingering Souls, and Advent of the Wurms. Luckily i drew a ton of sweepers and removal. Game one was a long game as I couldnt find a finisher for a long time. Eventually his hand was exhausted and his board state wasn't pressuring. Won with Aetherling
We started game 2 with 3 minutes, we went to turns and drew the game.
I'm fairly new to the game, only starting in January so I'm always open to learning bout different aspects so I can improve as a player. I haven't had issues with Obzedat dying to instant removal just yet at my LGS but I'll decide to move him when it get to that point.
2 tamiyo, the moon sage
2 jace, architect of thought
1 jace, memory adept
Instants(16)
4 azorius Charm
2 feeling of dread
3 syncopate
2 dissipate
2 think twice
2 sphinx's revelation
1 aurelia's fury
4 supreme verdict
2 terminus
2 mizzium mortars
2 talrand's invocation
2 detention sphere
1 entreat the angels
Enchancements(2)
2 assemble the legion
4 hallowed fountain
4 steam vents
4 clifftop retreat
4 glacial fortress
6 island
2 plains
I'm torn between adding copies of geist of saint traft or getting something like boros reckoners since the innistrad block is rotating out this fall.
What would you suggest to strengthen this deck in the early game?
Thanks:)
I'm a relatively new player and I'm trying to build a deck around Assemble The Legion. Here's what I'm planning to take to FNM this week.
1 Jace, Memory Adept
2 Tamiyo, the Moon Sage
4 Assemble the Legion
1 Aurelia's Fury
3 Azorius Charm
2 Blind Obedience
2 Detention Sphere
1 Devil's Play
3 Dissipate
2 Sphinx's Revelation
4 Supreme Verdict
3 Syncopate
2 Terminus
3 Think Twice
4 Glacial Fortress
4 Hallowed Fountain
6 Island
3 Plains
4 Steam Vents
5 ?
2 Cyclonic Rift
1 Detention Sphere
1 Devil's Play
2 Mizzium Mortars
2 Negate
2 Rest in Peace
The idea was to stall long enough to get assemble the legion out, with Jace,Memory Adept as a second win-con, or if the game stalls long enough, burn with devil's play
I haven't figured out entirely what my sideboard will look like, since my LGS has a variety of non meta decks. Any suggestions are much appreciated
Thanks again!
I'll wait a bit to get the shocks, shipping costs to Canada counters the discount that I'd get on tcgplayer compared to my lgs =(
I'll get the singles I need to build the deck I had in mind(American control using assemble the legion as win con), along with the staples that Xenphire mentioned. Would it be advisable to wait for dragons maze to get shocklands?
I recently starting playing magic(only a month in) and I wanted to start a collection starting with the rtr set(Just playing standard). I'm wanting to have a playset of uncommons/commons and at least one of each for the rares and mythics(probably a playset of the staple ones).
I read that the price on rtr singles have dropped at the moment from market saturation. Would you guys suggest that it would be a good time to visit my lgs and get the singles now before the price rises? And also if I should get playsets for any particular rare/mythics?
Many thanks