I tend to believe low cost (especially for 1 mana) high power fits into mono red. It's the key to make the deck successful. Sure haste is awesome but not every creature has haste. But *we are often limiting ours to haste bears (2/2 creatures), and sometimes get trampled over during the longer gameplay. *we as in burn players...
I think Icehide is a rotten creature compared to Goblin Guide and Swiftspear. Because it's power level is closer to those creatures and it has no haste. But on the other hand, I'm not sure if Icehide would suck if it's a 3/3 or a 3/x because it would offer additional point of attack for the lost cost of 1 mana. Sadly, the only creature that comes close to this is VD. I know most players don't like VD because of the browbeat clause, I feel that they don't understand how to make it work for their advantage. But I'm not getting into that argument because it's a bash your head against the wall battle. I get it that nobody on this form likes VD... I do see my self dropping VD if icehide was a 3/3 or a 3/x and the only thing I had to do to my deck was add snowlands.
Please note if Delver of Secrets was red, it would be a main burn creature in our burn deck! This is why I believe that RU Devler is a stronger burn deck
If your remark on Delver was true, we would have been playing copies of Zurgo Bellstriker back when that card was first released right alongside Monastery Swiftspear. Or better yet, we would have been splashing black to run Bump in the Night and possibly even Death's Shadow for a way better late game, Burn really wants to come out of the gate swinging and we like to start our opponents off at 18 or 17 when possible. Burn was never meant for the longer game. Sure, things like canopy lands and Grim Lavamancer give us extra reach later in the game, but you need to play this deck aware that your chances of winning drop dramatically for each subsequent turn beyond turn 5 no matter what. That's just how aggro has been set up and balanced throughout Magic's history. You either win fast or you don't win at all.
U/R delver is not a burn deck at all. It's a tempo deck that relies on blue to stay one step ahead of your opponent. Delver would be a no go in burn if it was mono red because not only is it not hasty, but the 1/1 body is way too easy to remove and we don't have library manipulation to make it flip. We can't protect delver with Daze or make Delver flip during our upkeep with Brainstorm; and thus there's no guarantee that Delver would give us the damage we paid our mana for. The point of the deck is that it uses blue cards to interfere with the opponent's gameplan just enough to stay ahead and win a damage race; while we try and win damage races through early brute force and sheer threat density. The blue cards in that deck are supposed to make up for it being slower than us (they're slower in exchange for consistency through library manipulation and so they can run Force of Will) and having less threat density than us. Thinking U/R Delver is a burn deck that just runs blue and not a full blown tempo strategy is a mistake, both as a pilot and as an opponent playing against the deck.
Agree... though if Icehide was a 3/3 or a 3/2 maybe...
I'm still not sure about the use of snow lands. I know my mono red EDH build has snow lands. Yeah, I have +30 snow mountains in the deck, but I'm doing it because of scrying sheets, but I wouldn't use scrying sheets in a legacy burn build because it's too damn slow.
I like running snow lands bc they look cool and sometimes I get the occasional opponent that gets thrown off for a bit and thinks I'm running some secret skred tech. Even the golem was a 3/x it still wouldn't be good enough without haste. For reference, not even creatures as efficient as tarmogoyf are worthy of inclusion in the deck. The creatures we do run just happen to be burn spells on a stick due to either their haste abilities, or in the case of Eidolon, immediately dealing damage to your opponent if they try to play anything. Without these abilities, it's too easy for a creature to get bolted/plowed/pathed/pushed/decayed before your next turn rolls around, and then you've just spent mana on a card that dealt zero damage.
I'm not sure about the Horizon land because you cannot fetch them. So you have no control in having them in play. And at worst it would suck if you have 3 lands in play, 1 mountain and 2 Horizon lands and your stuck with a fireblast in your hand.
in that situation, wouldn't you just sacc one of the horizon lands to draw into either more gas or a mountain? i don't really think it's going to be bad, per se, but being locked out by moons, or worse yet BTB seems pretty bad.
Makes splashing a second colour possibly worth it though. Not sure what the best would be. Blue for card draw, i guess? black for discard?
Blood moon against us is useless even with the canopy lands. If your board is really just 2 canopy lands and a mountain, a blood moon would be a bad play because it lets us play fireblast, and if it doesn't, all it does is stop us from using the land to drawing cards. It doesn't keep us off mana like it would against Sultai. As for B2B, it doesn't prevent us from sacing the lands to let us draw cards. I don't think the hate would be as bad as you guys think. Worst that could happen is we play one early and it gets wastelanded, which isn't the worst thing when you're running a couple extra land cards anyway.
I'd personally rather not have control over when we have these lands in play than not have control over being flooded out with no possible way to convert excess land into extra cards. If we only run 4 of them I don't think we're going to end up in a situation where we can't fireblast someone very often.
Regarding the Horizon land, I think BasedFuster might be missing part of why the Horizon land are good.
This type of land allows land to be converted into spells.
Having the ability to convert land into spells, means more land than normal can be played. It allows more stability, less mana screw, and less mulligans.
I literally said you could go up from 18-19 lands to 20-21 lands in an earlier post. I didn't miss anything.
My Burn deck BEATS Dark Depths.
I just looked at a meta study of the latest big tournament, and burn is going about 1/3rd. Bad Times.
Against Dark Depths it went 0/6. (cant be arsed looking for it, besides, eh.)
ZERO wins from Six matches for the big boys, and My Burn Deck just beat it.
Okay, cool, you can beat turbo Depths (except for the times in your tournament reports where you didn't). How do you do against other decks in the format? Can you beat DNT? Delver? U/W/x variants? I've come across those decks way more often than turbo Depths and while my odds of beating those decks are better than beating turbo Depths, I still need help from my sideboard to win consistently. I am genuinely curious to know how well you do against other decks with your current sideboard configuration.
Because of the Fireblast clash, I think decks that play them wont play the full 4 Fireblasts.
Fueling Lavamancer is good, they also help Barbarian Ring .
They are a minor improvement, as always, but they will become a standard part of the deck in a level similar to the use of Barbarian Ring.
They are definitely good enough to be in basedeck.
I would go for about 2 of them basedeck, replacing a land and a spell.
They're untapped lands that give us red mana. I would just cut mountains, no spells. I also personally think 4 should be the minimum we use assuming a standard 20 land build, but I think it could be possible to run 5 or 6. It may actually be possible that the correct number is meta dependent and not static, where running more than 4 while cutting copies of Fireblast for Grim Lavamancer is correct if the meta favors longer games, while running 4 or less and retaining all 4 fireblast copies is correct if the meta favors shorter games.
I think red canopy lands are going to work with modern burn, unless there's a modern version of fireblast. If we really want free draws, we have Street Wraith and at one time we had Gitaxian Probe - and these cards were almost never used in burn. I think using a non-basic lands (unfetchable and unblastable) just to maybe draw a card (which cost mana to activate) is not a good idea in legacy burn.
I doubt it... Think of this, tap a land for mana and lose another land to draw a card... When are you going to play this on turn 4. Burn is mana sensitive, every mana is counted. why not play 4 Street Wraith all you need to do is pay 2 life and discard a Street Wraith to draw a card...
The reason we don't play Street Wraith is because it makes our mulligan decisions horrible. We either have to cut land or cut threat density to run that card, which is not what you want when presented with a sketchy hand that contains one or more copies of Wraith. With the canopy lands, since they are also lands that tap for red mana, we can straight up just cut mountains for them and not screw up our ratios.
You're also not looking at these lands with the right mindset. The vast majority of games I've lost with burn have been to mana flooding. I still remember a match in this local tournament I was in 2 years ago against Pox that I lost because I flooded hard all 3 games. On one of the games I ended up drawing 6 mountains in a row without seeing another spell before I got cursed scroll'd to death. Needless to say I'm still salty about losing what should have been an excellent matchup due to mana flood, especially since that was my only loss that night. The draw ability is meant for those situations. If you go past turn 4, you're out of gas, and you're starting to flood, you can use the ability to give yourself another chance to draw more gas. Running these lands also means we're most likely okay going up to 20-21 land from 18-19, reducing our odds of mana screw early on in the game as well. These lands are not meant to be used to draw cards early on; they're meant to be used in the late game as a way to address what is arguably Burn's biggest weakness as a deck.
Stage can be tutored/loamed for, Hexmage cannot so a depths player would have to draw her naturally. If you only have one needle, just hit the card that's more likely to show up.
Any thoughts on the new canopy lands and quantity we should run? That was the big meat and potatoes of my post actually and I think we should address it ASAP in order to further improve and evolve burn.
I'm surprised magic geek didn't consider Pithing Needle already. It works against a lot of other good decks that use activated abilities like DNT, and you can just plop it down turn 1 and name Thespian's Stage to stop the combo. Win-win in my book, but yeah anyway if you're a serious competitive player, getting attached to a pet deck is just bad and if you know your local meta is stacked against you, the best way to adapt is to play something else. You play burn because there's certain decks it's very good against and if the meta is mostly those certain decks, burn is the best deck to exploit those deck's weaknesses.
Anyway, the main thing I want to post about is the new canopy lands that got spoiled in Modern Horizons. We now have access to up to 8 lands that we can sacrifice to draw us cards (Sunbaked Canyon and Fiery Islet), which is huge for us, as using our lands to draw extra cards shores up a major weakness with this deck. However, since they're nonbasic, make Price of Progress and Fireblast worse, and using them for mana costs us life (Negligible at first but if you get 2-3 of them out early, it adds up), I don't feel like 8 canopy lands is the right number for us. I wonder what everyone else who plays this deck thinks the right number should be?
My gut feeling is telling me that 4-6 is the sweet spot for us, but maybe someone here with more experience with the deck or more experience number crunching can give me a better or more statistically sound answer. I'm not worried about them not being fetchable, firstly because my deck is built with 20 mountains anyway, and secondly if I decide I want to put Grim Lavamancer back in my deck again, these canopy lands fuel him just like fetches do.
Fetch Lands for Lavamancer and a Single Taiga for sideboard options that hit artifacts and enchantments. Have to have an out against Laylines.
In my experience, we don't need to care about leylines. No well-designed legacy deck (the ones that will do well at GP's and such) is actually running them. Even if we do come across some scrub that does run Leylines in the board, we can still probably get there with our creatures and non-targeted burn.
In conclusion, we lose more win % to decks that run Wasteland than we gain against decks that run Leyline of Sanctity.
Lol death's shadow. Seems pretty easy to wreck with burn if they're going out of the way to power out a big Death's Shadow. Miracles seems a lot easier to play against now that they can't countertop lock us. The only deck I've been having trouble with is DNT and it's mostly just because I can't draw enough answers for their threats most of the time despite running 4 Smash and 3 Searing Blood in the SB.
So I'm curious, how does burn now stack up in the current meta since Deathrite was banned? Since delver and elves have been neutered and I've already been stomped by DNT enough times, I guess the deck I'm most curious about is Mono red prison, but I'd still love a look at the overall field.
I came back into the game after a short hiatus to play in a local team tournament last Saturday. I decided to play Burn over Grixis Delver because I knew I'd be much less likely to make mistakes with burn. Despite going 1-3 with the rest of my team, I ended up only having 3 real misplays that day, and none of them really made a difference as to the outcome of the games. I changed up my list from usual, going completely fetchless, and consolidating my sideboard into 5 different cards under 4 distinct matchup categories.
Round 1: Lands (0-2)
This was an interesting round as I ended up playing against Jody Keith; a player who's top 8'd multiple GP's and Opens with Lands, and is probably one of the best Lands players in the world currently. Game 1, he attempts to Crop Rotate on turn 3, sacrificing a Tabernacle and leaving up a Taiga and Wasteland; I respond with a Price of Progress. After that resolves, he gets a Glacial Chasm and stabilizes at 10 life. The following turn, he follows up by manabonding the dark depths combo and I don't have enough instant speed burn to win before he attacks with Marit Lage. Game 2 is the same thing, he gets out a Marit Lage while at 8 life and I don't have enough burn to close the gap (double fireblast definitely would have gotten me there). I will say that after playing against him, I've realized that the Lands matchup is definitely less favorable than it looks on paper. Also I was surprised at his sideboard strategy; he only brought in 2 Krosan Grip against me just in case I brought in Blood Moon or Ensnaring Bridge. He's the first lands player I've seen not to board in Sphere of Resistance or other artifact-based hate against me.
Round 2: Elves (2-1)
This matchup was pretty straightforward. Game 1, I keep my opponent off of enough creatures to stop him from doing anything. Game 2, my opponent manages to Natural Order into Ruric Thar, the Unbowed. I manage to remove it, but at the cost of all my lands and going to 2 life. The end result is that my board is now 2 Eidolon and 0 land. My opponent manages to follow up with a Scavanging Ooze to recover. Game 3, my opponent stumbles and I hit multiple Searing cards.
Round 3: Burn Mirror (0-2)
My opponent straight up drew way better than I did this round. Game 1, I stabilize at 8, and I have the lead in life total with double Eidolon out (he's at 4), but my opponent manages to come back and win with double Fireblast. Game 2, my opponent gets off a late game Swiftspear+2 bolts to put me at 3 life out of nowhere.
Round 4: Grixis Delver (1-2)
Game 1, I play around most of his counters and burn him out while he stumbles with ponders. Game 2, he counters my attempt to remove his turn 1 Deathrite Shaman and then proceeds to power out a turn 2 True-name Nemesis, which ends up beating me in a race. Game 3, we both have slow starts, but he manages to win after getting out a Gurmag Angler and double Flusterstorming my Price of Progress (It would have been for 10 if it had resolved) when I had 3 mana up.
Overall despite the bad record I had a lot of fun and I feel like I still haven't lost my touch actually playing the deck. The only real bummer was that I originally wanted to name our team the Crimson Tide (as all 3 of us were playing burn decks) just to get reactions out of people (I live in Louisiana), but the people running the tournament decided to rename our team as well as a few others. I was so close to living the dream.
Ok....i confess...i have no idea how to play eidolon in this deck. Really. Ive been playing magic since 1994 and i just dont get it.
So i play this card in my second turn? Then what? Every spell i cast for the rest of the game costs me 2 life? I play lightning bolt to do 3 damage to you and 2 damage to me?
Do i wait till later in the game to cast it?
Do i cast it then do nothing until i have lethal damage in my hand?
I get it, im wrong. Everyone who has ever played magic sees how awesome this card is in a burn deck but me.
Can someone tell me how to play this card?
As in:
When do i want to cast it in a ideal situation?
What am i trying to do before i cast it?
What am i trying to do after i cast it?
What 4 cards should i cut to fit it in?
Im really looking forward to your answers.
Thanks
I know I'm kind of late to this discussion, but I haven't noticed anyone bring this up so I thought I might mention it. The reason Eidolon is good is because of how Legacy is as a format: The vast majority of cards that are playable in Legacy are 3cmc or less, with most cards that cost more being either super value control cards (Jace, the Mind Sculptor), has a cost reduction clause (Gurmag Angler) or cheated onto the field (Batterskull, Emrakul, Griselbrand). So if you're on the play and jam this card turn 2 against most decks in the format and it resolves, literally anything your opponent will play effectively has "This card deals 2 damage to you" written on it. If they want to advance their gameplan or even just remove Eidolon, they have to help yours as well. Another benefit is that you can lock your opponents out of the game if they are are 2 or less life, so you only really need to deal 18 damage to win. The only real outs to Eidolon at such a low life total are JTMS, Murderous Cut, or Fireblast.
Sure you take damage playing your own spells, but between Eidolon being an attacker and your opponent taking damage from playing their spells, it usually turns out asymmetric most of the time. The only time I won't jam him out on turn 2 is if I'm against a blue deck and I suspect they have a Daze. Obviously don't play him if you're far behind in life total, but that's usually much later in the game.
I also feel like this may have been covered earlier, but don't run Flame Rift and Eidolon in the same list. Flame Rift was what burn mages ran before Eidolon was printed, and obviously now it's just not good to deal yourself 6 while dealing your opponent 4.
Only reason to really consider keeping in Firecraft is that it's great to kill off Batterskull. Of course, it's only D&T and *Blade decks that runs that card, so probably fine to let them go. The question is what to replace it with? Harsh Mentor, Pyroblast, Tormod's Crypt, Ashen Rider, Volcanic Fallout, Searing Blaze are the things I am considering for the Firecraft replacement.
Honestly, you'll probably want more copies of Smash to Smithereens. It's basically a Searing Blaze that kills Batterskull, and it can also hit their Vials early on if you think it will make them stumble. I used to run 3 but I'm about to go up to a full playset in my board because the effect is just that good against them. It's also good against Chalice decks like your Eldrazi matchup because those decks tend to play Chalice on one against you since it shuts out over 1/3 of your deck.
Beyond Smash I feel like Red Elemental Blast might also be good in your sideboard considering the meta. There's better things to run than Sudden Shock.
This is currently the board I'm considering running:
I might play around with the numbers just to try and squeeze a third blast but I feel like it's our best option against Show and Tell. Alternatively I could just run 2 copies of Pyroclasm in that slot if I feel like Elves or DNT is more dominant in my local meta. However, I feel Searing Blood might actually be enough against those decks given my build. If that's the case, I could run 3 Blood and 4 Smash and have the last slot reserved for Grafdigger's Cage. It would look like this:
Also this note isn't really directed at you but it's more of a general observation. Harsh Mentor is actually pretty useless as a SB card. Whenever I'd play him, my opponent would simply just cast a removal spell, then proceed to crack the fetch or activate the ability Harsh Mentor was supposed to punish without taking any damage.
Your one of Fallout, 2 of Ashen Rider, and 2 of Tormod's Crypt are really 2-ofs though in your list which is what I was focusing on. I prefer Mindbreak Trap over Pillar because it prevents turn 1 combo from beating us before we can play Eidolon, which is what I'm really worried about with this matchup. Sure, they can duress the trap out of our hand, but if they play a turn 1 Duress, they're not comboing off on turn 1 anyway.
I have been digging a bit into older tournament results and top decklists. Seems like the Omnitell player does well fairly regularly and there are 1-2 ANT Storm players.
Fallout seems like a somewhat decent card considering the D&T decks and Shardless BUG so i would like to keep it as a 1-of. I do not have access to a 4th Exquisite Firecraft unfortunately, if i had i would play it in that slot....
DNT can play around Fallout with Mother of Runes and Flickerwisp, and Smashes are better in that matchup anyway. I'd probably suggest siding in 1-2 Smashes or Searing Blaze against Shardless BUG to remove blockers to be honest. Again, you have a lot of 2 of's in your board which isn't ideal given that you have no library manipulation. Given the information you've given me about your meta (namely that there's only one Show and Tell player, you have DNT/shardless BUG/Storm, and you don't seem to have any decks that rely on graveyards), I'd suggest a sideboard like this:
I've given you 2 flex slots that can be 2 copies of any one card based on your needs. For example, if you really want to keep Ashen Rider, run 2 of him and also board in 4 Red Blast, so you can bring in a total of 6 cards against the Show and Tell player instead of 2. I feel like this board gives you the most coverage (these cards can almost always be brought in against multiple matchups except maybe Mindbreak Trap), and gives you these cards in enough quantities so you have the best chance of drawing your sideboard cards in games 2 and 3. Nothing sucks more than boarding in answers for a deck and losing game 2 anyway because you didn't draw your answer. I'm also surprised you have access to records like these on a local level, most local stores don't keep records like this unless it's a GP trial, PTQ, or SCG IQ.
Keep in mind, this board is created on the premise that there aren't any graveyard decks in your meta. If this isn't the case or GY decks start cropping up later, I would adjust the board so you can run 4 copies of Tormod's Crypt.
If your remark on Delver was true, we would have been playing copies of Zurgo Bellstriker back when that card was first released right alongside Monastery Swiftspear. Or better yet, we would have been splashing black to run Bump in the Night and possibly even Death's Shadow for a way better late game, Burn really wants to come out of the gate swinging and we like to start our opponents off at 18 or 17 when possible. Burn was never meant for the longer game. Sure, things like canopy lands and Grim Lavamancer give us extra reach later in the game, but you need to play this deck aware that your chances of winning drop dramatically for each subsequent turn beyond turn 5 no matter what. That's just how aggro has been set up and balanced throughout Magic's history. You either win fast or you don't win at all.
U/R delver is not a burn deck at all. It's a tempo deck that relies on blue to stay one step ahead of your opponent. Delver would be a no go in burn if it was mono red because not only is it not hasty, but the 1/1 body is way too easy to remove and we don't have library manipulation to make it flip. We can't protect delver with Daze or make Delver flip during our upkeep with Brainstorm; and thus there's no guarantee that Delver would give us the damage we paid our mana for. The point of the deck is that it uses blue cards to interfere with the opponent's gameplan just enough to stay ahead and win a damage race; while we try and win damage races through early brute force and sheer threat density. The blue cards in that deck are supposed to make up for it being slower than us (they're slower in exchange for consistency through library manipulation and so they can run Force of Will) and having less threat density than us. Thinking U/R Delver is a burn deck that just runs blue and not a full blown tempo strategy is a mistake, both as a pilot and as an opponent playing against the deck.
I like running snow lands bc they look cool and sometimes I get the occasional opponent that gets thrown off for a bit and thinks I'm running some secret skred tech. Even the golem was a 3/x it still wouldn't be good enough without haste. For reference, not even creatures as efficient as tarmogoyf are worthy of inclusion in the deck. The creatures we do run just happen to be burn spells on a stick due to either their haste abilities, or in the case of Eidolon, immediately dealing damage to your opponent if they try to play anything. Without these abilities, it's too easy for a creature to get bolted/plowed/pathed/pushed/decayed before your next turn rolls around, and then you've just spent mana on a card that dealt zero damage.
It's not worth playing unfortunately. No haste means it is easily removed before it has a chance to deal damage.
Blood moon against us is useless even with the canopy lands. If your board is really just 2 canopy lands and a mountain, a blood moon would be a bad play because it lets us play fireblast, and if it doesn't, all it does is stop us from using the land to drawing cards. It doesn't keep us off mana like it would against Sultai. As for B2B, it doesn't prevent us from sacing the lands to let us draw cards. I don't think the hate would be as bad as you guys think. Worst that could happen is we play one early and it gets wastelanded, which isn't the worst thing when you're running a couple extra land cards anyway.
I'd personally rather not have control over when we have these lands in play than not have control over being flooded out with no possible way to convert excess land into extra cards. If we only run 4 of them I don't think we're going to end up in a situation where we can't fireblast someone very often.
I literally said you could go up from 18-19 lands to 20-21 lands in an earlier post. I didn't miss anything.
Okay, cool, you can beat turbo Depths (except for the times in your tournament reports where you didn't). How do you do against other decks in the format? Can you beat DNT? Delver? U/W/x variants? I've come across those decks way more often than turbo Depths and while my odds of beating those decks are better than beating turbo Depths, I still need help from my sideboard to win consistently. I am genuinely curious to know how well you do against other decks with your current sideboard configuration.
They're untapped lands that give us red mana. I would just cut mountains, no spells. I also personally think 4 should be the minimum we use assuming a standard 20 land build, but I think it could be possible to run 5 or 6. It may actually be possible that the correct number is meta dependent and not static, where running more than 4 while cutting copies of Fireblast for Grim Lavamancer is correct if the meta favors longer games, while running 4 or less and retaining all 4 fireblast copies is correct if the meta favors shorter games.
The reason we don't play Street Wraith is because it makes our mulligan decisions horrible. We either have to cut land or cut threat density to run that card, which is not what you want when presented with a sketchy hand that contains one or more copies of Wraith. With the canopy lands, since they are also lands that tap for red mana, we can straight up just cut mountains for them and not screw up our ratios.
You're also not looking at these lands with the right mindset. The vast majority of games I've lost with burn have been to mana flooding. I still remember a match in this local tournament I was in 2 years ago against Pox that I lost because I flooded hard all 3 games. On one of the games I ended up drawing 6 mountains in a row without seeing another spell before I got cursed scroll'd to death. Needless to say I'm still salty about losing what should have been an excellent matchup due to mana flood, especially since that was my only loss that night. The draw ability is meant for those situations. If you go past turn 4, you're out of gas, and you're starting to flood, you can use the ability to give yourself another chance to draw more gas. Running these lands also means we're most likely okay going up to 20-21 land from 18-19, reducing our odds of mana screw early on in the game as well. These lands are not meant to be used to draw cards early on; they're meant to be used in the late game as a way to address what is arguably Burn's biggest weakness as a deck.
Any thoughts on the new canopy lands and quantity we should run? That was the big meat and potatoes of my post actually and I think we should address it ASAP in order to further improve and evolve burn.
Anyway, the main thing I want to post about is the new canopy lands that got spoiled in Modern Horizons. We now have access to up to 8 lands that we can sacrifice to draw us cards (Sunbaked Canyon and Fiery Islet), which is huge for us, as using our lands to draw extra cards shores up a major weakness with this deck. However, since they're nonbasic, make Price of Progress and Fireblast worse, and using them for mana costs us life (Negligible at first but if you get 2-3 of them out early, it adds up), I don't feel like 8 canopy lands is the right number for us. I wonder what everyone else who plays this deck thinks the right number should be?
My gut feeling is telling me that 4-6 is the sweet spot for us, but maybe someone here with more experience with the deck or more experience number crunching can give me a better or more statistically sound answer. I'm not worried about them not being fetchable, firstly because my deck is built with 20 mountains anyway, and secondly if I decide I want to put Grim Lavamancer back in my deck again, these canopy lands fuel him just like fetches do.
In my experience, we don't need to care about leylines. No well-designed legacy deck (the ones that will do well at GP's and such) is actually running them. Even if we do come across some scrub that does run Leylines in the board, we can still probably get there with our creatures and non-targeted burn.
In conclusion, we lose more win % to decks that run Wasteland than we gain against decks that run Leyline of Sanctity.
This is the 75 I chose to run:
4x Chain Lightning
4x Fireblast
4x Lava Spike
4x Lightning Bolt
4x Price of Progress
4x Rift Bolt
2x Searing Blaze
2x Sulfuric Vortex
4x Eidolon of the Great Revel
4x Goblin Guide
4x Monastery Swiftspear
Land
20x Mountain
3x Mindbreak Trap
1x Relic of Progenitus
3x Searing Blood
4x Smash to Smithereens
4x Tormod's Crypt
Round 1: Lands (0-2)
This was an interesting round as I ended up playing against Jody Keith; a player who's top 8'd multiple GP's and Opens with Lands, and is probably one of the best Lands players in the world currently. Game 1, he attempts to Crop Rotate on turn 3, sacrificing a Tabernacle and leaving up a Taiga and Wasteland; I respond with a Price of Progress. After that resolves, he gets a Glacial Chasm and stabilizes at 10 life. The following turn, he follows up by manabonding the dark depths combo and I don't have enough instant speed burn to win before he attacks with Marit Lage. Game 2 is the same thing, he gets out a Marit Lage while at 8 life and I don't have enough burn to close the gap (double fireblast definitely would have gotten me there). I will say that after playing against him, I've realized that the Lands matchup is definitely less favorable than it looks on paper. Also I was surprised at his sideboard strategy; he only brought in 2 Krosan Grip against me just in case I brought in Blood Moon or Ensnaring Bridge. He's the first lands player I've seen not to board in Sphere of Resistance or other artifact-based hate against me.
Round 2: Elves (2-1)
This matchup was pretty straightforward. Game 1, I keep my opponent off of enough creatures to stop him from doing anything. Game 2, my opponent manages to Natural Order into Ruric Thar, the Unbowed. I manage to remove it, but at the cost of all my lands and going to 2 life. The end result is that my board is now 2 Eidolon and 0 land. My opponent manages to follow up with a Scavanging Ooze to recover. Game 3, my opponent stumbles and I hit multiple Searing cards.
Round 3: Burn Mirror (0-2)
My opponent straight up drew way better than I did this round. Game 1, I stabilize at 8, and I have the lead in life total with double Eidolon out (he's at 4), but my opponent manages to come back and win with double Fireblast. Game 2, my opponent gets off a late game Swiftspear+2 bolts to put me at 3 life out of nowhere.
Round 4: Grixis Delver (1-2)
Game 1, I play around most of his counters and burn him out while he stumbles with ponders. Game 2, he counters my attempt to remove his turn 1 Deathrite Shaman and then proceeds to power out a turn 2 True-name Nemesis, which ends up beating me in a race. Game 3, we both have slow starts, but he manages to win after getting out a Gurmag Angler and double Flusterstorming my Price of Progress (It would have been for 10 if it had resolved) when I had 3 mana up.
Overall despite the bad record I had a lot of fun and I feel like I still haven't lost my touch actually playing the deck. The only real bummer was that I originally wanted to name our team the Crimson Tide (as all 3 of us were playing burn decks) just to get reactions out of people (I live in Louisiana), but the people running the tournament decided to rename our team as well as a few others. I was so close to living the dream.
I know I'm kind of late to this discussion, but I haven't noticed anyone bring this up so I thought I might mention it. The reason Eidolon is good is because of how Legacy is as a format: The vast majority of cards that are playable in Legacy are 3cmc or less, with most cards that cost more being either super value control cards (Jace, the Mind Sculptor), has a cost reduction clause (Gurmag Angler) or cheated onto the field (Batterskull, Emrakul, Griselbrand). So if you're on the play and jam this card turn 2 against most decks in the format and it resolves, literally anything your opponent will play effectively has "This card deals 2 damage to you" written on it. If they want to advance their gameplan or even just remove Eidolon, they have to help yours as well. Another benefit is that you can lock your opponents out of the game if they are are 2 or less life, so you only really need to deal 18 damage to win. The only real outs to Eidolon at such a low life total are JTMS, Murderous Cut, or Fireblast.
Sure you take damage playing your own spells, but between Eidolon being an attacker and your opponent taking damage from playing their spells, it usually turns out asymmetric most of the time. The only time I won't jam him out on turn 2 is if I'm against a blue deck and I suspect they have a Daze. Obviously don't play him if you're far behind in life total, but that's usually much later in the game.
I also feel like this may have been covered earlier, but don't run Flame Rift and Eidolon in the same list. Flame Rift was what burn mages ran before Eidolon was printed, and obviously now it's just not good to deal yourself 6 while dealing your opponent 4.
Honestly, you'll probably want more copies of Smash to Smithereens. It's basically a Searing Blaze that kills Batterskull, and it can also hit their Vials early on if you think it will make them stumble. I used to run 3 but I'm about to go up to a full playset in my board because the effect is just that good against them. It's also good against Chalice decks like your Eldrazi matchup because those decks tend to play Chalice on one against you since it shuts out over 1/3 of your deck.
Beyond Smash I feel like Red Elemental Blast might also be good in your sideboard considering the meta. There's better things to run than Sudden Shock.
This is currently the board I'm considering running:
2 Red Elemental Blast
3 Mindbreak Trap
4 Smash to Smithereens
2 Searing Blood
4 Tormod's Crypt
I might play around with the numbers just to try and squeeze a third blast but I feel like it's our best option against Show and Tell. Alternatively I could just run 2 copies of Pyroclasm in that slot if I feel like Elves or DNT is more dominant in my local meta. However, I feel Searing Blood might actually be enough against those decks given my build. If that's the case, I could run 3 Blood and 4 Smash and have the last slot reserved for Grafdigger's Cage. It would look like this:
1 Grafdigger's Cage
3 Searing Blood
3 Mindbreak Trap
4 Smash to Smithereens
4 Tormod's Crypt
Also this note isn't really directed at you but it's more of a general observation. Harsh Mentor is actually pretty useless as a SB card. Whenever I'd play him, my opponent would simply just cast a removal spell, then proceed to crack the fetch or activate the ability Harsh Mentor was supposed to punish without taking any damage.
DNT can play around Fallout with Mother of Runes and Flickerwisp, and Smashes are better in that matchup anyway. I'd probably suggest siding in 1-2 Smashes or Searing Blaze against Shardless BUG to remove blockers to be honest. Again, you have a lot of 2 of's in your board which isn't ideal given that you have no library manipulation. Given the information you've given me about your meta (namely that there's only one Show and Tell player, you have DNT/shardless BUG/Storm, and you don't seem to have any decks that rely on graveyards), I'd suggest a sideboard like this:
3 Mindbreak Trap
3 Exquisite Firecraft
4 Red Elemental Blast
2 flex slots of your choosing
I've given you 2 flex slots that can be 2 copies of any one card based on your needs. For example, if you really want to keep Ashen Rider, run 2 of him and also board in 4 Red Blast, so you can bring in a total of 6 cards against the Show and Tell player instead of 2. I feel like this board gives you the most coverage (these cards can almost always be brought in against multiple matchups except maybe Mindbreak Trap), and gives you these cards in enough quantities so you have the best chance of drawing your sideboard cards in games 2 and 3. Nothing sucks more than boarding in answers for a deck and losing game 2 anyway because you didn't draw your answer. I'm also surprised you have access to records like these on a local level, most local stores don't keep records like this unless it's a GP trial, PTQ, or SCG IQ.
Keep in mind, this board is created on the premise that there aren't any graveyard decks in your meta. If this isn't the case or GY decks start cropping up later, I would adjust the board so you can run 4 copies of Tormod's Crypt.