Searing Blood not killing Leovold is probably relevant in a wide meta. You don't want to let them Ancestral off your burn spells. Not sure that Blaze does much better though as they draw two cards off it.
Searing Blood not killing Leovold is probably relevant in a wide meta. You don't want to let them Ancestral off your burn spells. Not sure that Blaze does much better though as they draw two cards off it.
My logic there is that they are probably using using Leovold to block and kill something. Getting rid of Leovold is the goal and I'm generally willing to make that trade. Lava Spike is what comes out when sideboarding tho, and every other burn spell that isn't Flame Rift or Price can target creatures, so usually having something to point at Leovold is a non-issue.
So I almost have my deck complete, just waiting for a few more cards to come in the mail. But in doing some test plays to get familiar with the deck, I realize I need some help with optimal sequencing. I know that this varies with what my opponent is playing, but speaking generally of the following two situations:
scenario 1: On the battlefield I have 1 mountain and 1 Swiftspear which I attacked with the previous turn. No land in hand (sidenote: do you keep 1-land hands if all or most spells are 1 cmc?). Turn 2 I can cast either Goblin Guide or a bolt variant. My gut says Goblin Guide in this case.
scenario 2: It's the 3rd turn, and I have 2 swiftspears out and 2 mountains. In my hand I have 2 Goblin guides and 2 bolt variants and no additional mountains. I think in this case I play the bolts, right? Because that's 12 damage, whereas playing the goblin guides is only 6.
Unless you are putting the opponent to zero with your spells, generally you want to lean with deploying your creatures first. The window in which your creatures will be effective and deal damage can often be very small, since your opponent will deploy blockers. A bolt will basically always be 3 damage, no matter the turn, but a Guide or Swiftspear might deal no damage at all if you wait a turn.
Unless you are putting the opponent to zero with your spells, generally you want to lean with deploying your creatures first. The window in which your creatures will be effective and deal damage can often be very small, since your opponent will deploy blockers. A bolt will basically always be 3 damage, no matter the turn, but a Guide or Swiftspear might deal no damage at all if you wait a turn.
I agree with this. I have a model that tries to estimate the amount of damage that a creature is worth that I was running with Modern in mind, but the gist of it is valid for Legacy as well. You can find it in my post history with some plots. If you think about it as your opponent starts off with only a few outs to invalidate a creature on T1 (say by StP) and that number grows with every turn, since they can start playing more expensive removal and playing creatures that nullify the ability of your creatures to do damage. So, you want to play your creatures first and ride them as long as you can. A T2 Goblin Guide is going to do more damage on average than a T3 Goblin Guide on average, but Lava Spike is going to deal 3 damage all day long.
Great, thanks! I will be playing Legacy tonight for the first time, turns out my local store has a weekly Thursday event. I have two more questions:
Eidolon of The Great Revel: Should this be played as early as possible to increase damage my opponents take from it, or after I've cast the other spells in my hand that would cause me to take damage from my own Eidolon? My instinct says, play it early against control or combo decks because damage to myself often isn't relevant until they get their combo, and then play it late in the mirror match because in that match any damage I take is very relevant to winning. Is that correct?
Fireblast and Force of Will: Generally speaking, how cautious should I be playing around Force of Will when it comes to the alternate cost of Fireblast? Should I delay casting it in the hopes to see my opponent play a FoW on a weaker spell, or is delaying damage a path to losing for this deck anyway?
For FoW in particular, feel free to ask how many cards they have in hand. FoW costs 2 cards and one of them has to be blue, so it can be worth it to just go for it and Force check them if they don't have many cards in hand. It's also possible that you can wait to go off until you don't care if they have one Force of Will because you'll be able to get them to -3 life with the cards in your hand.
Also, float mana before sacrificing for Fireblast so that you can play spells afterwards or pay for a Daze.
So my first time playing legacy tonight went not so great but about as expected for it being my first time. My first opponent was able to get Batterskull out both games fairly quickly and protect it with FoW. My second opponent was on reanimator and landed a turn-1 Griselbrand the first game, and second game he got it turn-2. I had the bye round 3. On the 4th and final round, I was paired against another Griselbrand-reanimating deck, but this one aimed to combo with some kind of white 1-drop that let him regain all life lost in the round so far, and go into Tendrils for a finish. I expected to lose but I managed to get my only real win of the night against this deck. For some reason it just ran out of steam and my opponent said he made some bad decisions about what to discard and stuff.
There was a strange play at the very beginning of the first game. I really didn't know what I was doing, and afterward my opponent said I had made a wrong decision, and I had agreed with him, but now that I think about it I'm not so sure. Here's what happened:
He was on the play and cast Judge's Familiar. On my own turn, I had no 1-cmc creatures to play, but I did have a Chain Lightning. Not wanting to deal with the owl's ability later, I killed it with Chain Lightning. My opponent said I should have done it to him. I nodded and resolved not to make that mistake if it came up again.
Here's why I now think that I made the right play. If targeting him with Chain Lightning would have been more beneficial to me than killing the owl, he would have chosen to sacrifice the owl to counter the Chain Lightning, which would have achieved the same result as targeting the owl. By targeting the owl, I've taken the choice away from him and removed the small chance that some aspect of his hand that I don't know would have made the owl more valuable than the 3 life. Basically, what I'm saying is that targeting him meant he would get to choose whichever option was better for him, and targeting the owl meant there was a very tiny chance I was choosing the option that was worse for him.
We can struggle a bit against combo decks like reanimator. Best you can do there is come with a good sideboard plan.
Batterskull is an issue but it's usually too slow on its own. Main thing to keep in mind vs a deck with it is that killing Stoneforge MystiC before she can cheat it into play is important.
Regarding your play specifically, I would have not played the spell that turn at all. I will sometimes play around Daze on the draw T1 if I suspect my opponent has it. In your position, casting a creature or suspending Rift Bolt is your best plan.
Remember that the deck in some sense requires you to Combo 7 cards (I.e. Cast 7 bolts). We don't have card draw, so in some sense you are limited to a specific number of cards each game based on how much of a clock your opponent has. This means you really want to try to get damage out of every nonland card you draw.
You will learn sequencing and timing and other things with practice and experience.
Regarding your play specifically, I would have not played the spell that turn at all. I will sometimes play around Daze on the draw T1 if I suspect my opponent has it. In your position, casting a creature or suspending Rift Bolt is your best plan.
Neither of those were options. I had already mulliganed to 6 cards (because I had 5 land in the first hand), and if I remember right, I ended up keeping with 3 land, Eidolon, Chain Lightning, and Sulfuric Vortex. Scryed a 4th land to the bottom. Drew a Lightning Bolt.
What I suppose I mean is, if you didn't have those plays available, then you were better off doing nothing. Especially if you have mulliganed. That makes resolving each spell for damage that much more important. Running your spell into an onboard counter or killing an inconsequential creature is not a winning strategy in that circumstance.
Yeah, generally speaking you don't want to expend spells on creatures. If your meta is rife with creature decks though feel free to run maindeck Searing spells, or run more if that is warranted.
Hey so I'm working on getting a Legacy community set up at my LGS and figured my Burn deck should get looked at, something that hasn't been done since before Vegas, in preparation.
The meta's pretty blind at this point. We have W/U Stoneblade, 4c Leovold, Sultai Delver, RB Reanimator, Mono Red Storm, and probably Merfolk as decks that are possibilities to show up and beyond that idk so I tried to kind of cover as many bases as possible.
Good luck in building the deck and I hope you have lots of fun in the legacy format
Blood Moon seemed to work really good in the Modern Format because the format is slower than legacy. On the flip side, I never understood the milticolor burn decks in the modern format because mono red with blood moon in the main is freak'n awesome. Not to mention the modern mono red burn player would always have an advantage from the shock/fetch damage.
In legacy burn we seldom want to play 3cc or higher spells. And most players believe that dropping a blood moon won't speed up the deck for the win. And in come cases by the time you play blood moon the opponent has the advantage.
As an aside I mostly play modern so I figured I could clear that up. The basic answers to the mono-colour/multi-coloured question is a lack of Red sideboard tech and added explosiveness.
The in depth answer is that White has the best graveyard hate in the format, Wear // Tear which is super important because of Leyline of Sanctity, Kor Firewalker, Deflecting Palm,and most importantly Path for stuff like Wurmcoil Engine or Kor Firewalker and Green has the better way to deal with enchantments in Destructive Revelry. Green also gives access to Atarka's Command which in addition to being a straight upgrade to Skullcrack, combos with a Swiftspear or 2 (sometimes a Guide can sub for 1) and 3-4 Bolts depending on creature count to deal 20 damage by turn 3. Oh and white gives Boros Charm which is like a better Flame Rift, and Lightning Helix which offsets the life loss from the landbase.
Your main looks fine, though I'd switch Blaze for Blood if you are not running fetches. Your sideboard is definitely different. Not sure that I've ever seen Chaos Warp run before.
Are you sure that not killing Leovold is worth it? I could just jam in the fetches. I've got access to all the Red fetches I need, I just don't like the idea of getting Stifled.
Chaos Warp is weird yes. It's basically anti reanimator/Sneak and Show(might show up too)/Depths tech that doubles as enchantment removal and land destruction. I honestly haven't played with it much, it might be too out of left field and I might be leaning too much on my modern sensibilities, but it feels like Path, Disenchant, and Ghost Quarter all rolled into one to me. Now those cards don't see much play in legacy, especially at 3cmc, but it might be a good 1-card catchall for stuff that Red doesn't deal with well.
Chaos Warp used to be considered against Leyline of Sanctity, but generally speaking it's probably not worth the slot(s). I agree that if you're gonna run Blaze, you should probably run fetches.
What about splashing Plateaus for white and throwing in fetches? Someone was talking about Palm in the board and white can do everything Chaos Warp does for cheaper and I can turn on Blaze. I know Karakas is better than Palm usually, but a land that can't cast bolt bugs me and that's white anyway.
Splashing is pretty costly, given the prevalence of Wasteland. You will get manascrewed (or be short on a Fireblast) a percentage of games where you naturally draw your dual.
I've seen decks that do splash though. Just not very common. Generally the best answer to something is to put your opponent to zero.
I have been playing with a single Plateau and a 2-3 Deflecting Palm in the side
I have yet to be mana screwed because of it & waste land (I had 1 game where my out was him killing it so that he could not kill his own dual in response to PoP)
I'm not sure if it's worth it in a blind meta, but for a few weeks almost half of my store was either playing reanimator, lands or some variance of show and tell. Deflecting their big threat felt great
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"What's your plan?" Gideon asked.
"Are you serious?" Chandra replied.
I have been playing with a single Plateau and a 2-3 Deflecting Palm in the side
I have yet to be mana screwed because of it & waste land (I had 1 game where my out was him killing it so that he could not kill his own dual in response to PoP)
I'm not sure if it's worth it in a blind meta, but for a few weeks almost half of my store was either playing reanimator, lands or some variance of show and tell. Deflecting their big threat felt great
I've been finding out that splashing a dual land might be a good thing for Legacy burn. I know most players like to believe that mono red is the best, and it can be the best, but there are way way too many cards that reanimator/show puts into play that beats burn.
I wonder if any one ever considered Stingscourger against reanimator? It seems pretty good against Depths combo as well.
I'd rather do that than palm any ways, Iona still locks you out with palm.
Doesn't seem that good against depths combo. They usually make the token at your end of turn. Unless you can get Stingscourger into play as an instant, it's going to be too slow.
2) Use the right number of each card.
3) Know your probabilities.
4) Print your deck lists; make yourself and your judges happier.
My logic there is that they are probably using using Leovold to block and kill something. Getting rid of Leovold is the goal and I'm generally willing to make that trade. Lava Spike is what comes out when sideboarding tho, and every other burn spell that isn't Flame Rift or Price can target creatures, so usually having something to point at Leovold is a non-issue.
scenario 1: On the battlefield I have 1 mountain and 1 Swiftspear which I attacked with the previous turn. No land in hand (sidenote: do you keep 1-land hands if all or most spells are 1 cmc?). Turn 2 I can cast either Goblin Guide or a bolt variant. My gut says Goblin Guide in this case.
scenario 2: It's the 3rd turn, and I have 2 swiftspears out and 2 mountains. In my hand I have 2 Goblin guides and 2 bolt variants and no additional mountains. I think in this case I play the bolts, right? Because that's 12 damage, whereas playing the goblin guides is only 6.
Modern: R Skred -- WBG Melira Co -- URW Nahiri Control
Legacy: R Mono Red Burn -- UWB Stoneblade
Commander: R Krenko, Mob Boss -- WUBRG Scion of the Ur-Dragon -- WUBRG Maze’s End
Other: R No Rares Red (Standard) -- URC Izzet Tron (Pauper)
I agree with this. I have a model that tries to estimate the amount of damage that a creature is worth that I was running with Modern in mind, but the gist of it is valid for Legacy as well. You can find it in my post history with some plots. If you think about it as your opponent starts off with only a few outs to invalidate a creature on T1 (say by StP) and that number grows with every turn, since they can start playing more expensive removal and playing creatures that nullify the ability of your creatures to do damage. So, you want to play your creatures first and ride them as long as you can. A T2 Goblin Guide is going to do more damage on average than a T3 Goblin Guide on average, but Lava Spike is going to deal 3 damage all day long.
Eidolon of The Great Revel: Should this be played as early as possible to increase damage my opponents take from it, or after I've cast the other spells in my hand that would cause me to take damage from my own Eidolon? My instinct says, play it early against control or combo decks because damage to myself often isn't relevant until they get their combo, and then play it late in the mirror match because in that match any damage I take is very relevant to winning. Is that correct?
Fireblast and Force of Will: Generally speaking, how cautious should I be playing around Force of Will when it comes to the alternate cost of Fireblast? Should I delay casting it in the hopes to see my opponent play a FoW on a weaker spell, or is delaying damage a path to losing for this deck anyway?
As far as the second question, read this Patrick Sullivan article: http://www.starcitygames.com/article/27944_Burn-vs-Counters.html
For FoW in particular, feel free to ask how many cards they have in hand. FoW costs 2 cards and one of them has to be blue, so it can be worth it to just go for it and Force check them if they don't have many cards in hand. It's also possible that you can wait to go off until you don't care if they have one Force of Will because you'll be able to get them to -3 life with the cards in your hand.
Also, float mana before sacrificing for Fireblast so that you can play spells afterwards or pay for a Daze.
There was a strange play at the very beginning of the first game. I really didn't know what I was doing, and afterward my opponent said I had made a wrong decision, and I had agreed with him, but now that I think about it I'm not so sure. Here's what happened:
He was on the play and cast Judge's Familiar. On my own turn, I had no 1-cmc creatures to play, but I did have a Chain Lightning. Not wanting to deal with the owl's ability later, I killed it with Chain Lightning. My opponent said I should have done it to him. I nodded and resolved not to make that mistake if it came up again.
Here's why I now think that I made the right play. If targeting him with Chain Lightning would have been more beneficial to me than killing the owl, he would have chosen to sacrifice the owl to counter the Chain Lightning, which would have achieved the same result as targeting the owl. By targeting the owl, I've taken the choice away from him and removed the small chance that some aspect of his hand that I don't know would have made the owl more valuable than the 3 life. Basically, what I'm saying is that targeting him meant he would get to choose whichever option was better for him, and targeting the owl meant there was a very tiny chance I was choosing the option that was worse for him.
Batterskull is an issue but it's usually too slow on its own. Main thing to keep in mind vs a deck with it is that killing Stoneforge MystiC before she can cheat it into play is important.
Regarding your play specifically, I would have not played the spell that turn at all. I will sometimes play around Daze on the draw T1 if I suspect my opponent has it. In your position, casting a creature or suspending Rift Bolt is your best plan.
Remember that the deck in some sense requires you to Combo 7 cards (I.e. Cast 7 bolts). We don't have card draw, so in some sense you are limited to a specific number of cards each game based on how much of a clock your opponent has. This means you really want to try to get damage out of every nonland card you draw.
You will learn sequencing and timing and other things with practice and experience.
Modern: R Skred -- WBG Melira Co -- URW Nahiri Control
Legacy: R Mono Red Burn -- UWB Stoneblade
Commander: R Krenko, Mob Boss -- WUBRG Scion of the Ur-Dragon -- WUBRG Maze’s End
Other: R No Rares Red (Standard) -- URC Izzet Tron (Pauper)
Neither of those were options. I had already mulliganed to 6 cards (because I had 5 land in the first hand), and if I remember right, I ended up keeping with 3 land, Eidolon, Chain Lightning, and Sulfuric Vortex. Scryed a 4th land to the bottom. Drew a Lightning Bolt.
Modern: R Skred -- WBG Melira Co -- URW Nahiri Control
Legacy: R Mono Red Burn -- UWB Stoneblade
Commander: R Krenko, Mob Boss -- WUBRG Scion of the Ur-Dragon -- WUBRG Maze’s End
Other: R No Rares Red (Standard) -- URC Izzet Tron (Pauper)
2) Use the right number of each card.
3) Know your probabilities.
4) Print your deck lists; make yourself and your judges happier.
19 Mountain
Creatures(12)
4 Eidolon of the Great Revel
4 Goblin Guide
4 Monastery Swiftspear
Instants(15)
4 Fireblast
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Price of Progress
3 Searing Blaze
4 Chain Lightning
4 Rift Bolt
4 Lava Spike
Enchantments (2)
2 Sulfuric Vortex
2 Pyroblast
2 Red Elemental Blast
3 Chaos Warp
2 Smash to Smithereens
2 Harsh Mentor
2 Pyrostatic Pillar
2 Relic of Progenitus
The meta's pretty blind at this point. We have W/U Stoneblade, 4c Leovold, Sultai Delver, RB Reanimator, Mono Red Storm, and probably Merfolk as decks that are possibilities to show up and beyond that idk so I tried to kind of cover as many bases as possible.
As an aside I mostly play modern so I figured I could clear that up. The basic answers to the mono-colour/multi-coloured question is a lack of Red sideboard tech and added explosiveness.
The in depth answer is that White has the best graveyard hate in the format, Wear // Tear which is super important because of Leyline of Sanctity, Kor Firewalker, Deflecting Palm,and most importantly Path for stuff like Wurmcoil Engine or Kor Firewalker and Green has the better way to deal with enchantments in Destructive Revelry. Green also gives access to Atarka's Command which in addition to being a straight upgrade to Skullcrack, combos with a Swiftspear or 2 (sometimes a Guide can sub for 1) and 3-4 Bolts depending on creature count to deal 20 damage by turn 3. Oh and white gives Boros Charm which is like a better Flame Rift, and Lightning Helix which offsets the life loss from the landbase.
Modern: R Skred -- WBG Melira Co -- URW Nahiri Control
Legacy: R Mono Red Burn -- UWB Stoneblade
Commander: R Krenko, Mob Boss -- WUBRG Scion of the Ur-Dragon -- WUBRG Maze’s End
Other: R No Rares Red (Standard) -- URC Izzet Tron (Pauper)
Chaos Warp is weird yes. It's basically anti reanimator/Sneak and Show(might show up too)/Depths tech that doubles as enchantment removal and land destruction. I honestly haven't played with it much, it might be too out of left field and I might be leaning too much on my modern sensibilities, but it feels like Path, Disenchant, and Ghost Quarter all rolled into one to me. Now those cards don't see much play in legacy, especially at 3cmc, but it might be a good 1-card catchall for stuff that Red doesn't deal with well.
Modern: R Skred -- WBG Melira Co -- URW Nahiri Control
Legacy: R Mono Red Burn -- UWB Stoneblade
Commander: R Krenko, Mob Boss -- WUBRG Scion of the Ur-Dragon -- WUBRG Maze’s End
Other: R No Rares Red (Standard) -- URC Izzet Tron (Pauper)
2) Use the right number of each card.
3) Know your probabilities.
4) Print your deck lists; make yourself and your judges happier.
2) Use the right number of each card.
3) Know your probabilities.
4) Print your deck lists; make yourself and your judges happier.
I've seen decks that do splash though. Just not very common. Generally the best answer to something is to put your opponent to zero.
Modern: R Skred -- WBG Melira Co -- URW Nahiri Control
Legacy: R Mono Red Burn -- UWB Stoneblade
Commander: R Krenko, Mob Boss -- WUBRG Scion of the Ur-Dragon -- WUBRG Maze’s End
Other: R No Rares Red (Standard) -- URC Izzet Tron (Pauper)
I have yet to be mana screwed because of it & waste land (I had 1 game where my out was him killing it so that he could not kill his own dual in response to PoP)
I'm not sure if it's worth it in a blind meta, but for a few weeks almost half of my store was either playing reanimator, lands or some variance of show and tell. Deflecting their big threat felt great
"Are you serious?" Chandra replied.
I've been finding out that splashing a dual land might be a good thing for Legacy burn. I know most players like to believe that mono red is the best, and it can be the best, but there are way way too many cards that reanimator/show puts into play that beats burn.
In his Second 100 days - Yawgmoth's Bargain is unrestricted in Vintage.
What is going to happen in the Next 100 days!!!
I'd rather do that than palm any ways, Iona still locks you out with palm.
RIP Karn EDH
2) Use the right number of each card.
3) Know your probabilities.
4) Print your deck lists; make yourself and your judges happier.