Thank you for that excellent crash course davius! I think you bring up several interesting points.
As a result, Keldon Maruaders (although a fine card) just doesn't have the same impact. The chances of doing 5 damage for your 2 mana is low. Lightning Helix at least gives you 3 life and can be pointed to creatures, all of which are pretty relevant.
Marauders rarely deal 5 in Legacy either. The card is good because it's a pretty good deal regardless of the outcome. Since Burn is usually a race, they can trade or chump, which basically makes it Searing Blood. Or, they could use removal which they should probably save for your more permanent threats, but it still means you're trading a card for a card and getting 2 free damage on top. It's not the best card, but it's an alternative at least.
The card I'd suggest would be Shrine of Burning Rage.
Very interesting! I think I'd like to run 3x Eidolon, 3x Shrine and 3x Magma Jet (with 20 land and another 3-of, or with 19 land and the rest 4-ofs). Late game Shrines and Eidolons are kinda awkward and Magma Jet would help smooth it out (apart from managing land/spell balance). I also like that Shrine can kill Kor Firewalker.
Ratchet Bomb is fine if you end up staying mono red (to try beat leyline of sanctity), but honestly you'll probably loose anyway with that approach
Indeed. It's a bad answer to LoS. I was thinking of simply scooping to t1 LoS, unless I can ride creatures and Searing Blood while using other burn as removal to clear a path. I guess I might need to splash anyway.
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WHOA! Just got back to magic after several years. Only playing online though. I´ve just sold almost my entire collection but decided to keep the good old burn archetype and guess what happened? yup, hooked to MTGO again. After a 10-0 on the tournament practice room I am ready for tournaments.
This is what I am packing on the sideboard:
Hand 1: Keep. I've got a Turn 1 guide, 2 more things to play if I don't draw my 2nd land right away--and an Eidolon which is the best card in the deck. Hand is puregas, got a couple of turns to draw a land.
Hand 2: I'm probably keeping this. Makes the scry a bit awkward, but when you've already mulliganed once, having a Guide and something else to you can do with 1 land is about a good a start as you can hope for.
Hand 3: Keep. Can't imagine ever mulliganing to 4.
Hand 4: It's close. You've got a Guide and a Rift bolt you can play on 1 land. Feels like the type of hand that gets me in trouble though. Mulligan.
Hand 5: Keep. It's a good 7. Maybe on the draw I'm more concerned about playing control. But this is a get there hand.
If I mulligan to 6, what's the best I can hope for? 4 Bolts, 1 Guide, and a land? I'll probably see a couple of two drops and want a 2nd land--so I ship 5 spells and 2 lands and hope for 4 and 2 or 5 and 1. Either option is inferior. We can race affinity.
Hand 1: 7 card hand, game 1, unknown opponent, you're on the play. Fetch, Goblin Guide, Eidolon, Rift Bolt, Lava Spike, Boros Charm, Skullcrack.
Keep: this has enough 1 drops and a guide, so I would try to ride it out. There's access to white as well.
Hand 2: 6 card hand, game 1, unknown opponent, you're on the play. Fetch, Goblin Guide, Eidolon, Rift Bolt, Lava Spike, Boros Charm.
Keep. I don't like 1 landers at 6, but I don't feel like I'm more likely to win with a 2 land 5 then this hand.
Hand 3: 5 card hand, game 1, unknown opponent, you're on the play. Fetch, Goblin Guide, Eidolon, Rift Bolt, Boros Charm.
Keep. Going to 4 is just punting.
Hand 4: 7 card hand, game 1, unknown opponent, you're on the play. Fetch, Goblin Guide, Eidolon, Searing Blaze, Rift Bolt, Boros Charm, Skullcrack.
Mulligan. This doesn't have enough 1 drops for me to try to ride it out for a second land. I feel like a mulligan with a scry is better.
Hand 5: 7 card hand, game 2, Affinity, you're on the play. Fetch, Mountain, Goblin Guide, Spike, Spike, Boros Charm, Skullcrack.
Mulligan. There's no interaction and the game is over if they put plating on something, and interacting with affinity is the only way we win.
Hand 1: 7 card hand, game 1, unknown opponent, you're on the play. Fetch, Goblin Guide, Eidolon, Rift Bolt, Lava Spike, Boros Charm, Skullcrack.
Keep. 3 one drops and search for white.
Hand 2: 6 card hand, game 1, unknown opponent, you're on the play. Fetch, Goblin Guide, Eidolon, Rift Bolt, Lava Spike, Boros Charm.
Keep. Probably it wont get any better on the next mull. (3 one drops already and an GG) Luckyly the scry will be on your side.
Hand 3: 5 card hand, game 1, unknown opponent, you're on the play. Fetch, Goblin Guide, Eidolon, Rift Bolt, Boros Charm.
Keep: It wont get any better again.
Hand 4: 7 card hand, game 1, unknown opponent, you're on the play. Fetch, Goblin Guide, Eidolon, Searing Blaze, Rift Bolt, Boros Charm, Skullcrack.
Mull: To many 2 drops
Hand 5: 7 card hand, game 2, Affinity, you're on the play. Fetch, Mountain, Goblin Guide, Spike, Spike, Boros Charm, Skullcrack.
Keep: 15 damage on hand. I will give it a go.
Hand 1: 7 card hand, game 1, unknown opponent, you're on the play. Fetch, Goblin Guide, Eidolon, Rift Bolt, Lava Spike, Boros Charm, Skullcrack.
Keep: this has enough 1 drops and a guide, so I would try to ride it out. There's access to white as well.
Hand 2: 6 card hand, game 1, unknown opponent, you're on the play. Fetch, Goblin Guide, Eidolon, Rift Bolt, Lava Spike, Boros Charm.
Keep. I don't like 1 landers at 6, but I don't feel like I'm more likely to win with a 2 land 5 then this hand.
Hand 3: 5 card hand, game 1, unknown opponent, you're on the play. Fetch, Goblin Guide, Eidolon, Rift Bolt, Boros Charm.
Keep. Going to 4 is just punting.
Hand 4: 7 card hand, game 1, unknown opponent, you're on the play. Fetch, Goblin Guide, Eidolon, Searing Blaze, Rift Bolt, Boros Charm, Skullcrack.
Mulligan. This doesn't have enough 1 drops for me to try to ride it out for a second land. I feel like a mulligan with a scry is better.
Hand 5: 7 card hand, game 2, Affinity, you're on the play. Fetch, Mountain, Goblin Guide, Spike, Spike, Boros Charm, Skullcrack.
Mulligan. There's no interaction and the game is over if they put plating on something, and interacting with affinity is the only way we win.
Don´t you think that on hand 5 we were able to race them?
I've kept hands like it before, and you're up a creek without a paddle when they put plating on Skirge and hit you for 8 on T2 even though there's a Skullcrack here. You can only race them if they have a weak hand. If it were on the draw and I knew they're taking a mulligan to 6 at least, I'd keep it.
I'm an old Legacy burn player and just getting into Modern after a recent move. I have a slightly dated mono red Legacy burn that I intend to adapt to a Modern legal deck which will also be mono red for starters. I've been reading the primer and thread and have a few questions:
In Legacy, Pithing Needle and Ratchet Bomb can help mono-red burn fight enchantments, but they don't seem to be discussed much here. Is it just because the mono red variant is less common here or are there simply not many activated abilities or low cmc permanents that need be dealt with?
I was thinking about including mostly Magma Jet and Shard Volley instead of Lightning Helix and Boros Charm. I'm also thinking about Grim Lavamancer (though I go without fetches) and possibly Keldon Marauders. IMO, the Marauders often offer as much value as Lightning Helix, but they seem to be pretty unpopular in Modern?
In Legacy, being mono-R is a bonus because you're Wasteland-proof unless you play Barbarian Ring. There's no Wasteland in Modern, so that's not a very important feature of Modern Burn. Modern also loses Fireblast, Price of Progress, and Chain Lightning and has to make up the slack somewhere, and it turns out the easiest place to make up the slack is to look to other colors and those colors bring enchantment hate to the table.
Of the three budget creatures, Spark Elemental, Hellspark Elemental, and Keldon Marauders, Hellspark is probably the best. If you go back to the Theros era and earlier (there's some stuff about it in the primer), mono-R and RB Burn were played more often and I think Hellspark was the most common of those that saw play. Vexing Devil is a trap card that isn't as good as it looks, but often gets mentioned in the context of being a budget Burn creature.
So I just started playing modern literally tonight. I went ahead and picked up a pretty standard burn list. Can anybody tell me why Searing Blaze is good? It was a dead card every single time I drew it. I went 1-2 at the tournament tonight and when I lost it was because I had one to two Searing Blaze in hand and he was under five life so had I had anything else, I would have won it.
I lost to Burn - which from what I understand Searing Blaze is supposed to be good so I didn't side it out.
I beat Delver. Then I lost to a zombie deck that used several lilianas, a lot of kill spells, and a lot of hand discarding.
Searing Blaze is an amazing card against creature decks (stuff like Elves, Collected Company decks, Infect), because it says "RR: Lightning Bolt a player and Lightning Bolt a creature that player controls", but it's going to be dead against decks without many creatures (and would get sideboarded out). It gets worse in multiples, but you should be able to trigger landfall enough times to deal 3 with it.
If the Liliana Zombie deck had creatures in play, Searing Blaze is a live card. If they have a Bloodghast, it might feel bad using it as a fog, but it still deals damage.
Blaze should be good against Delver decks, and Burn is strong against Delver decks. The Burn mirror is something you just have to learn. The player who wins is generally the one who gets recurring damage from creatures through, and Blaze keeps your gameplan going by dealing damage to the player while it kills one of their recurring damage sources.
Searing Blaze is an amazing card against creature decks (stuff like Elves, Collected Company decks, Infect), because it says "RR: Lightning Bolt a player and Lightning Bolt a creature that player controls", but it's going to be dead against decks without many creatures (and would get sideboarded out). It gets worse in multiples, but you should be able to trigger landfall enough times to deal 3 with it.
If the Liliana Zombie deck had creatures in play, Searing Blaze is a live card. If they have a Bloodghast, it might feel bad using it as a fog, but it still deals damage.
Blaze should be good against Delver decks, and Burn is strong against Delver decks. The Burn mirror is something you just have to learn. The player who wins is generally the one who gets recurring damage from creatures through, and Blaze keeps your gameplan going by dealing damage to the player while it kills one of their recurring damage sources.
I was running 2 Skullcrack and 4 Searing Blaze I may go up to 4 Skullcrack and 2 Searing Blaze.
I won game one in the mirror. He got game two because he dropped a Swiftspear turn 3. I Searing Blazed it and he double bolted me. It survived and I took 9. Couldn't come back.
Game three he won because he stuck a Kor Firewalker. Nothing I could do after that - thus 4 Skullcracks might be better.
Shard volley is terrible in multiples, but I have found that the extra 1 cmc copies of lightning bolt help me end games quicker than hitting land drops with 19 lands.
Not sure on your list, but are you running fetch lands? Searing blaze tends to lose it's effectiveness if you are not running fetches. otherwise it pretty much turns into a "sorcery" speed removal spell as it's only at it's best with a landfall trigger. Depending on what cards are in your hand it may be necessary to hold an uncracked fetch in order to generate a landfall trigger for your blazes.
It sounds like that's a product of the matchups you played. You did make a mistake in blazing swiftspear, though. Don't try killing it when they have open mana unless you're responding to something they did and trying to kill it before it gets too big. Had it been bolt-prowess-blaze-bolt-prowess on the stack, swiftspear dies.
Had you run into elves, humans, and fish, Blaze would have been the most important card in your hand.
That said, it's ok to shave some from your maindeck, but you should probably have all 4 in the 75.
Hey guys! I'm fairly new to MTG Salvation and was hoping I could get some advice on my Naya Burn deck. As far as I can tell it's a fairly standard build except for the 3 Rampaging Ferocidon main deck and the pair of Harsh Mentor in the sideboard.
As far as playing the Ferocidons, I was curious to try it. So far I've been fairly happy with it. It's good paired with the other creatures because menace makes it a little harder to block when swinging in with several creatures at once. It's also a very solid body that goes well with both Atarka's Command and Boros Charm. The main reason I added them was for the Command as I wanted to up my creature count a little bit. I've had a few games won because of these guys. The main drawback is that I can't play Lightning Helix very effectively in the deck because I can't gain life, and it sits a little higher on the curve than our other cards.
When it comes to the Mentors, I'm really just trying them out. So far I've only used it once against a Sultai Thopter Foundry deck, but it was great. I think it might also be good against Hatebearers by taxing Vial/GQs, and hurting Affinity's manlands and maybe taxing Death's Shadows' fetches a little more than they can handle.
Do you think these are good innovations, or should I try to cut it down to a more typical Burn list? So far it seems solid with most of my losses being a matter of me messing up my sequencing or just making dumb plays.
Another question: why do we play Destructive Revelry over Shattering Spree? Yes Revelry hits enchantments an deals 2 but doesn't a Chalice of the Void shut us DOWN? Wouldn't it be better to have a playset of Shattering Spree to potentially destroy Chalices? Also Spree seems better against Affinity too, just blow up their whole board.
@poll, keep all hands except for the last to try and mull to something that targets creatures.
Every hand despite just having one land have a guide and 2 1cmc spells to get recurring damage and the ability to play something turn 2 and even turn 3 if you fail to find the second land.
@poll, keep all hands except for the last to try and mull to something that targets creatures.
Every hand despite just having one land have a guide and 2 1cmc spells to get recurring damage and the ability to play something turn 2 and even turn 3 if you fail to find the second land.
Seem really reasonable hands to me
Every time I keep a 1-lander I get screwed, doesnt matter how many 1 CMC spells I have, I will just never see that second land
Marauders rarely deal 5 in Legacy either. The card is good because it's a pretty good deal regardless of the outcome. Since Burn is usually a race, they can trade or chump, which basically makes it Searing Blood. Or, they could use removal which they should probably save for your more permanent threats, but it still means you're trading a card for a card and getting 2 free damage on top. It's not the best card, but it's an alternative at least.
Very interesting! I think I'd like to run 3x Eidolon, 3x Shrine and 3x Magma Jet (with 20 land and another 3-of, or with 19 land and the rest 4-ofs). Late game Shrines and Eidolons are kinda awkward and Magma Jet would help smooth it out (apart from managing land/spell balance). I also like that Shrine can kill Kor Firewalker.
Indeed. It's a bad answer to LoS. I was thinking of simply scooping to t1 LoS, unless I can ride creatures and Searing Blood while using other burn as removal to clear a path. I guess I might need to splash anyway.
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This is what I am packing on the sideboard:
4 Destructive Revelry
2 Kor Firewalker
1 Relic of Progenitus
2 Deflecting Palm
3 Path to Exile
3 Skullcrack
Kind of happy with the manabase right now and running 13 creatures (4 GG, 4 MS, 4 Eidolon, 1 Grim Lavamancer.
This deck is soooooo fun to play.
Hand 2: I'm probably keeping this. Makes the scry a bit awkward, but when you've already mulliganed once, having a Guide and something else to you can do with 1 land is about a good a start as you can hope for.
Hand 3: Keep. Can't imagine ever mulliganing to 4.
Hand 4: It's close. You've got a Guide and a Rift bolt you can play on 1 land. Feels like the type of hand that gets me in trouble though. Mulligan.
Hand 5: Keep. It's a good 7. Maybe on the draw I'm more concerned about playing control. But this is a get there hand.
If I mulligan to 6, what's the best I can hope for? 4 Bolts, 1 Guide, and a land? I'll probably see a couple of two drops and want a 2nd land--so I ship 5 spells and 2 lands and hope for 4 and 2 or 5 and 1. Either option is inferior. We can race affinity.
Keep: this has enough 1 drops and a guide, so I would try to ride it out. There's access to white as well.
Hand 2: 6 card hand, game 1, unknown opponent, you're on the play. Fetch, Goblin Guide, Eidolon, Rift Bolt, Lava Spike, Boros Charm.
Keep. I don't like 1 landers at 6, but I don't feel like I'm more likely to win with a 2 land 5 then this hand.
Hand 3: 5 card hand, game 1, unknown opponent, you're on the play. Fetch, Goblin Guide, Eidolon, Rift Bolt, Boros Charm.
Keep. Going to 4 is just punting.
Hand 4: 7 card hand, game 1, unknown opponent, you're on the play. Fetch, Goblin Guide, Eidolon, Searing Blaze, Rift Bolt, Boros Charm, Skullcrack.
Mulligan. This doesn't have enough 1 drops for me to try to ride it out for a second land. I feel like a mulligan with a scry is better.
Hand 5: 7 card hand, game 2, Affinity, you're on the play. Fetch, Mountain, Goblin Guide, Spike, Spike, Boros Charm, Skullcrack.
Mulligan. There's no interaction and the game is over if they put plating on something, and interacting with affinity is the only way we win.
Keep. 3 one drops and search for white.
Hand 2: 6 card hand, game 1, unknown opponent, you're on the play. Fetch, Goblin Guide, Eidolon, Rift Bolt, Lava Spike, Boros Charm.
Keep. Probably it wont get any better on the next mull. (3 one drops already and an GG) Luckyly the scry will be on your side.
Hand 3: 5 card hand, game 1, unknown opponent, you're on the play. Fetch, Goblin Guide, Eidolon, Rift Bolt, Boros Charm.
Keep: It wont get any better again.
Hand 4: 7 card hand, game 1, unknown opponent, you're on the play. Fetch, Goblin Guide, Eidolon, Searing Blaze, Rift Bolt, Boros Charm, Skullcrack.
Mull: To many 2 drops
Hand 5: 7 card hand, game 2, Affinity, you're on the play. Fetch, Mountain, Goblin Guide, Spike, Spike, Boros Charm, Skullcrack.
Keep: 15 damage on hand. I will give it a go.
Don´t you think that on hand 5 we were able to race them?
In Legacy, being mono-R is a bonus because you're Wasteland-proof unless you play Barbarian Ring. There's no Wasteland in Modern, so that's not a very important feature of Modern Burn. Modern also loses Fireblast, Price of Progress, and Chain Lightning and has to make up the slack somewhere, and it turns out the easiest place to make up the slack is to look to other colors and those colors bring enchantment hate to the table.
Of the three budget creatures, Spark Elemental, Hellspark Elemental, and Keldon Marauders, Hellspark is probably the best. If you go back to the Theros era and earlier (there's some stuff about it in the primer), mono-R and RB Burn were played more often and I think Hellspark was the most common of those that saw play. Vexing Devil is a trap card that isn't as good as it looks, but often gets mentioned in the context of being a budget Burn creature.
So I just started playing modern literally tonight. I went ahead and picked up a pretty standard burn list. Can anybody tell me why Searing Blaze is good? It was a dead card every single time I drew it. I went 1-2 at the tournament tonight and when I lost it was because I had one to two Searing Blaze in hand and he was under five life so had I had anything else, I would have won it.
I lost to Burn - which from what I understand Searing Blaze is supposed to be good so I didn't side it out.
I beat Delver. Then I lost to a zombie deck that used several lilianas, a lot of kill spells, and a lot of hand discarding.
If the Liliana Zombie deck had creatures in play, Searing Blaze is a live card. If they have a Bloodghast, it might feel bad using it as a fog, but it still deals damage.
Blaze should be good against Delver decks, and Burn is strong against Delver decks. The Burn mirror is something you just have to learn. The player who wins is generally the one who gets recurring damage from creatures through, and Blaze keeps your gameplan going by dealing damage to the player while it kills one of their recurring damage sources.
I was running 2 Skullcrack and 4 Searing Blaze I may go up to 4 Skullcrack and 2 Searing Blaze.
I won game one in the mirror. He got game two because he dropped a Swiftspear turn 3. I Searing Blazed it and he double bolted me. It survived and I took 9. Couldn't come back.
Game three he won because he stuck a Kor Firewalker. Nothing I could do after that - thus 4 Skullcracks might be better.
Shard volley is terrible in multiples, but I have found that the extra 1 cmc copies of lightning bolt help me end games quicker than hitting land drops with 19 lands.
Had you run into elves, humans, and fish, Blaze would have been the most important card in your hand.
That said, it's ok to shave some from your maindeck, but you should probably have all 4 in the 75.
4x Goblin Guide
4x Eidolon of the Great Revel
4x Monastery Swiftspear
3x Rampaging Ferocidon
Spells:
4x Lightning Bolt
4x Lava Spike
4x Atarka's Command
4x Boros Charm
4x Searing Blaze
4x Rift Bolt
3x Copperline Gorge
1x Forest
3x Inspiring Vantage
1x Mountain
1x Plains
2x Sacred Foundry
2x Stomping Ground
4x Wooded Foothills
4x Arid Mesa
1x Path to Exile
2x Deflecting Palm
4x Destructive Revelry
2x Kor Firewalker
2x Rest in Peace
2x Harsh Mentor
2x Molten Rain
Hey guys! I'm fairly new to MTG Salvation and was hoping I could get some advice on my Naya Burn deck. As far as I can tell it's a fairly standard build except for the 3 Rampaging Ferocidon main deck and the pair of Harsh Mentor in the sideboard.
As far as playing the Ferocidons, I was curious to try it. So far I've been fairly happy with it. It's good paired with the other creatures because menace makes it a little harder to block when swinging in with several creatures at once. It's also a very solid body that goes well with both Atarka's Command and Boros Charm. The main reason I added them was for the Command as I wanted to up my creature count a little bit. I've had a few games won because of these guys. The main drawback is that I can't play Lightning Helix very effectively in the deck because I can't gain life, and it sits a little higher on the curve than our other cards.
When it comes to the Mentors, I'm really just trying them out. So far I've only used it once against a Sultai Thopter Foundry deck, but it was great. I think it might also be good against Hatebearers by taxing Vial/GQs, and hurting Affinity's manlands and maybe taxing Death's Shadows' fetches a little more than they can handle.
Do you think these are good innovations, or should I try to cut it down to a more typical Burn list? So far it seems solid with most of my losses being a matter of me messing up my sequencing or just making dumb plays.
BW BW Tokens
RG Dredgeplendid Reclamation
RW Boros Burn
GB Elves
RB Dark Goblins
WU Azorius' Relic
Every hand despite just having one land have a guide and 2 1cmc spells to get recurring damage and the ability to play something turn 2 and even turn 3 if you fail to find the second land.
Seem really reasonable hands to me
Every time I keep a 1-lander I get screwed, doesnt matter how many 1 CMC spells I have, I will just never see that second land
RWG Burn
GW Abzan Company