Actually the idea with burn is to run as few creatures and as much burn as possible.
This leaves your opponent with dead cards in the form of removal in game 1 which is the basic strategy.
@ The Black Guy: I have been tempted to run 2x Sacred Foundry and replace my Incinerate with Lightning Helix. You have the fetch lands so it should be easy to hit white when you need it. It also gives you the option to run things like Path to Exile in the board.
I saw a couple of burn decks go 4-0/3-1 recently in the Modern dailies on MTGO. The only notable thing about them is that they were running 3x Grafdigger's Cage main deck. I'm not sure if this is tech or not. I see it being a viable sideboard card but the meta game would have to be pretty warped to make it a main deck staple. Any idea what they were meta gaming against?
I saw a couple of burn decks go 4-0/3-1 recently in the Modern dailies on MTGO. The only notable thing about them is that they were running 3x Grafdigger's Cage main deck. I'm not sure if this is tech or not. I see it being a viable sideboard card but the meta game would have to be pretty warped to make it a main deck staple. Any idea what they were meta gaming against?
Probably Gifts. Turn four "win" is pretty threatening. It also shuts down things like Kitchen Finks and certain Loam incarnations.
Also, did you notice whether or not they were running Shrapnel Blast? It's probably a long shot thanks to the land-bans, but it's still a possibility.
----------------------
While I'm here, I'd might as well ask... Thoughts on a splash for black? With Stifle not in the format, fetch lands no longer pose a significant danger. And since life has never been an issue, neither do Shocklands. Running black would gain you access to Bump in the Night for the mainboard and a potential sideboard of Needlebite Trap.
No, these two decks didn't have any other artifacts in them. You maybe could pull it off with Darksteel Citadel, Blinkmoth Nexus and a few other random artifacts but it's probably just more efficient to just run straight up burn.
The Bump in the Night version does pretty well. It runs Dark Confidant, too.
I've tried the following as a "burn" deck in Modern. It's basically a Kuldotha Red style deck, but with better cards. I don't have fetches on MTGO, but I imagine it makes it a little smoother and opens up the option for Searing Blaze from the sideboard.
The idea is simple; cards like Chromatic Star, Terrarion and Ichor Wellspring all replace themselves when sacrificed. Ichor Wellspring replaces itself immediately, so you don't have to worry about it being a "dead" draw, and the other two can sac themselves for cards when you are drawing light (difficult to do in this deck due to the high amount of spells VS land -- I started with 16 land and was slowly working my way up to where it "felt right" for the number of games I was playing; I feel 18 or 19 will end up being the final number).
The reason there's only 2 Galv Blast is because it's going to be a shock most of the time. It's an extra card that can take out a Bob, etc. T1. Once you get used to playing the deck, you will occasionally find openings to get in there for four damage with it before doing the rest of your stuff, but it doesn't happen frequently.
Rebirth + Bushwhacker is very good. I wanted another 1-drop Goblin to increase the consistency of T1 drop T2 Bushwhacker, so I added 2 Arsonist. He makes the most sense as he can trade up when he blocks and works great with Goblin Grenade. If it weren't for the fact that I want to run 4 Goblin Grenade, this spot would just be more Grim Lavamancer most likely.
Only 2 Grim Lavamancer. Why? Because I don't like my burn being prone to removal. My creatures already do that, and most of them don't care that much (tokens come in 3's, Arsonist pings when he dies, Goblin Guide has Haste so rarely gets hit with a removal spell before he does some damage).
As with most Red decks, the biggest issue with this deck is consistency. Sometimes it can blow people out, sometimes it doesn't do that much. However, one benefit it has is that you can more easily mull when your hand doesn't offer a lot or doesn't seem very synergistic with the cards you have. The reason, of course, is that there are 8 cards that each do 25% of a player's starting life total.
Good Matchups: Slow decks and decks that hurt themselves (of course). Decks that have little interaction. This includes decks like Jund. A deck like Jund has to hit you with a lot of discard, and they have to do it early, or they will not ever have a life total that has them in a position of being able to attack you back and win.
Bad Matchups: Tempo/Lifegain decks. By lifegain, I do not mean decks simply playing Kitchen Finks. Most decks only run him as a recurring blocker who barely manages to recoup the life lost through fixing their mana via Fetchlands and Shocklands. By lifegain, I mean decks like Martyr Proc, etc. Things that can gain 6-12 life time and time again. Imagine two burn decks playing against each other, but one burn deck does twice as much damage as the other. That's basically how playing against Martyr Proc is; all of their good cards are twice as effective as your good cards.
By Tempo, I mean decks like Faeries. You'd think a blue controllish deck would get rocked by a really fast red deck, but occasionally they get hands where you can simply do almost nothing. If they start off with multiple Spell Pierce and/or Dispel followed up by Spellstutter Sprite, you are probably not winning that game unless you lucked into multiple Goblin Guides.
Anyway, I've been enjoying playing the deck. It originally started off as me trying to find a way to get value out of Crack the Earth and Chromatic Star, but without enough other Crack the Earth type effects being available in Modern, it wasn't able to get too far. I will probably shift into more of a typical burn deck that simply takes advantage of the Artifacts to get value out of Shrapnel Blast and Galvanic Blast.
^^ I think this is an interesting take on it. I like seeing both Goblin Grenade and Shrapnel Blast put to use. As some people above were discussing, Grafdigger's Cage seems pretty good in the current meta and a great target for Shrapnel Blast at only 1 cmc. Memnite seems solid too, especially as a t1 Kuldotha target for t2 Bushwhacker. Tuktuk the Explorer provides another hasty goblin that people wont want to block. Sac him for Goblin Grenade, then get a 5/5 that you can sac to either Shrapnel Blast or another Grenade. Panic Spellbomb can get you around pesky Goyf blockers and can also net you a card with the Shrapnel Blast.
Confidant is perfect for a deck chalk full of 1-2 cmc burn spells.
Confidant is perfect for a deck that doesn't aim to win strictly on turn 4-5 (via direct damage). When you play Confidant, you lose a turn. It's the same reason that every other creature that could be played isn't played.
Are you saying that drawing extra cards while swinging for 2 doesn't win games? I play exactly 3 creatures in my burn deck: Goblin Guide, Grim Lavamancer and Dark Confidant. Grim Lavamancer and Dark Confidant are my MVPs and I would never consider playing without them.
I find the people that don't like him are the people who don't play with him. I felt the same way and only started off with 2 in my deck. Eventually I went to 3 and then 4. Maybe you just can't justify spending $40 a pop on them, and that is a legitimate reason to not use it. Simply put, the card wins games and you should run it if you can.
I have been tempted to run 2x Sacred Foundry and replace my Incinerate with Lightning Helix. You have the fetch lands so it should be easy to hit white when you need it. It also gives you the option to run things like Path to Exile in the board.
I might try that. Running white out of the board also lets you destroy enchantments... the bane of our existence.
If Dark Confidant and Grim Lavamancer make Burn better, then that only means RDW is better than Burn.
Sorry if I muddied the waters there suggesting Dark Confidant. The bolt package is very similar between the two decks and there's a very fine line between RDW and Burn.
Anyway, based on what cards I have this is what I'm playing in a PTQ this weekend. I think it qualifies as Burn by any reasonable definition:
I haven't done any play testing and am just playing for fun. If I wind up 0.500 on the day that will probably be a success. In the sideboard I will probably just pick a couple of decks that I'd like to crush and load up on hate. Picking on affinity seems a reasonable thing to do as does packing a lot of graveyard hate. I'm not going to try to compensate for any problem match ups mono-red has. If I run up on Martyr then I just lose to it. C'est la vie. If I wanted to beat Martyr I'd play some kind of weird Blood Knight/Sulfur Elemental thing, I guess. Not really interesting in going that route.
Why Arid Mesa? You're only running one color, and no Grim Lavamancer. What's that going to do for you, besides cost you 1-2 life? Sure, the life loss isn't much, but it's enough to potentially cost you a turn, and every turn is precious for Burn. Fetches are great when you're using them for mana fixing, graveyard fodder, or shuffling effects, but here they do nothing. Cut the four fetches, and run 19-20 Mountain with an extra burn spell or two to fill out your 60.
For anyone splashing black for anything, bump in the night or bob for example, if you are having trouble with martyrs or kitchen finks, etc, try out rain of gore. this simple little 2 drop enchantment can effectively kill an opponent with their own creatures. Finks becomes a suicidal geralfs messenger and martyr will outright NOT activate.
yeah, but those decks arent a big enough presence to worry about running sideboard hate for. A good burn deck can still work through 1-2 finks without much of a problem and unless you expect to see a large % of the field running Martyr, you can pretty much ignore the match up completely. I have played in 3 PTQs this season, and not me nor any of my friends have seen a single Martyr deck.
Why Arid Mesa? You're only running one color, and no Grim Lavamancer. What's that going to do for you, besides cost you 1-2 life? Sure, the life loss isn't much, but it's enough to potentially cost you a turn, and every turn is precious for Burn. Fetches are great when you're using them for mana fixing, graveyard fodder, or shuffling effects, but here they do nothing. Cut the four fetches, and run 19-20 Mountain with an extra burn spell or two to fill out your 60.
With no Stifle in the format, +4 fetchlands, in theory, makes a 60 card deck into a 56-ish card deck.
I might try that. Running white out of the board also lets you destroy enchantments... the bane of our existence.
Just be sure that if you run white, that you aren't running white solely for Lightning Helix. Any life gained is negated by the life lost to get there. Not to mention the potential unlucky hazard of not having a source of white.
With no Stifle in the format, +4 fetchlands, in theory, makes a 60 card deck into a 56-ish card deck.
And that alone is not worth the life loss. "Thinning" the deck by 4 cards, or even by 8 cards if you add another four fetches, isn't going to help much. Each time you fetch, you're removing one card from your remaining library, which will have about 50 cards. So, you're paying 5% of your life to thin out 2% of your deck. This has almost no effect on your topdecks. And again, every few matches, the life loss will cost you a turn. Losing even one turn will often mean losing the game, because your opponent is of course wailing away at your unprotected life total the whole time!
Bottom line, even with no Stifle around, "deck thinning" doesn't work. Either run fetches for Grim Lavamancer, or do not run fetches in Burn. There's no gray area.
Searing Blaze is another good reason to run fetches. Its not in his list, but it could be.
I dont see a problem with paying life fetching for a land to helix if you are gonna gain that life right back, and possibly net life with a second helix. There is always the option for Sacred Foundry to EtB tapped as well. Personally I never worried about paying life when I play a deck like this. Killing an enemy more quickly is a valid reason to hurt yourself. That is why cards like Goblin Guide see play.
Also RDW is RDW, whether its creature based or not. You are playing a deck that is primarily red and trying to kill your opponent as quickly as possible. Its pretty much the same strategy, with the only difference being certain card selection.
This leaves your opponent with dead cards in the form of removal in game 1 which is the basic strategy.
@ The Black Guy: I have been tempted to run 2x Sacred Foundry and replace my Incinerate with Lightning Helix. You have the fetch lands so it should be easy to hit white when you need it. It also gives you the option to run things like Path to Exile in the board.
FREE BLOODBRAID ELF
Probably Gifts. Turn four "win" is pretty threatening. It also shuts down things like Kitchen Finks and certain Loam incarnations.
Also, did you notice whether or not they were running Shrapnel Blast? It's probably a long shot thanks to the land-bans, but it's still a possibility.
----------------------
While I'm here, I'd might as well ask... Thoughts on a splash for black? With Stifle not in the format, fetch lands no longer pose a significant danger. And since life has never been an issue, neither do Shocklands. Running black would gain you access to Bump in the Night for the mainboard and a potential sideboard of Needlebite Trap.
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
The Bump in the Night version does pretty well. It runs Dark Confidant, too.
Eww... Confidant? That sounds more along the lines of Satanic Sligh than burn.
As far as your original question, my answer settles on a great fear of Gifts. CoP:R 2.0 apparently?
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
Anyway, here was the list I was running:
4 Chromatic Star
4 Ichor Wellspring
4 Terrarion
Creatures
2 Goblin Arsonist
4 Goblin Bushwhacker
4 Goblin Guide
2 Grim Lavamancer
2 Galvanic Blast
4 Goblin Grenade
4 Kuldotha Rebirth
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Shrapnel Blast
2 Darksteel Citadel
16 Mountain
The idea is simple; cards like Chromatic Star, Terrarion and Ichor Wellspring all replace themselves when sacrificed. Ichor Wellspring replaces itself immediately, so you don't have to worry about it being a "dead" draw, and the other two can sac themselves for cards when you are drawing light (difficult to do in this deck due to the high amount of spells VS land -- I started with 16 land and was slowly working my way up to where it "felt right" for the number of games I was playing; I feel 18 or 19 will end up being the final number).
The reason there's only 2 Galv Blast is because it's going to be a shock most of the time. It's an extra card that can take out a Bob, etc. T1. Once you get used to playing the deck, you will occasionally find openings to get in there for four damage with it before doing the rest of your stuff, but it doesn't happen frequently.
Rebirth + Bushwhacker is very good. I wanted another 1-drop Goblin to increase the consistency of T1 drop T2 Bushwhacker, so I added 2 Arsonist. He makes the most sense as he can trade up when he blocks and works great with Goblin Grenade. If it weren't for the fact that I want to run 4 Goblin Grenade, this spot would just be more Grim Lavamancer most likely.
Only 2 Grim Lavamancer. Why? Because I don't like my burn being prone to removal. My creatures already do that, and most of them don't care that much (tokens come in 3's, Arsonist pings when he dies, Goblin Guide has Haste so rarely gets hit with a removal spell before he does some damage).
As with most Red decks, the biggest issue with this deck is consistency. Sometimes it can blow people out, sometimes it doesn't do that much. However, one benefit it has is that you can more easily mull when your hand doesn't offer a lot or doesn't seem very synergistic with the cards you have. The reason, of course, is that there are 8 cards that each do 25% of a player's starting life total.
Good Matchups: Slow decks and decks that hurt themselves (of course). Decks that have little interaction. This includes decks like Jund. A deck like Jund has to hit you with a lot of discard, and they have to do it early, or they will not ever have a life total that has them in a position of being able to attack you back and win.
Bad Matchups: Tempo/Lifegain decks. By lifegain, I do not mean decks simply playing Kitchen Finks. Most decks only run him as a recurring blocker who barely manages to recoup the life lost through fixing their mana via Fetchlands and Shocklands. By lifegain, I mean decks like Martyr Proc, etc. Things that can gain 6-12 life time and time again. Imagine two burn decks playing against each other, but one burn deck does twice as much damage as the other. That's basically how playing against Martyr Proc is; all of their good cards are twice as effective as your good cards.
By Tempo, I mean decks like Faeries. You'd think a blue controllish deck would get rocked by a really fast red deck, but occasionally they get hands where you can simply do almost nothing. If they start off with multiple Spell Pierce and/or Dispel followed up by Spellstutter Sprite, you are probably not winning that game unless you lucked into multiple Goblin Guides.
Anyway, I've been enjoying playing the deck. It originally started off as me trying to find a way to get value out of Crack the Earth and Chromatic Star, but without enough other Crack the Earth type effects being available in Modern, it wasn't able to get too far. I will probably shift into more of a typical burn deck that simply takes advantage of the Artifacts to get value out of Shrapnel Blast and Galvanic Blast.
Confidant is perfect for a deck chalk full of 1-2 cmc burn spells.
FREE BLOODBRAID ELF
Confidant is perfect for a deck that doesn't aim to win strictly on turn 4-5 (via direct damage). When you play Confidant, you lose a turn. It's the same reason that every other creature that could be played isn't played.
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
I find the people that don't like him are the people who don't play with him. I felt the same way and only started off with 2 in my deck. Eventually I went to 3 and then 4. Maybe you just can't justify spending $40 a pop on them, and that is a legitimate reason to not use it. Simply put, the card wins games and you should run it if you can.
FREE BLOODBRAID ELF
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
I might try that. Running white out of the board also lets you destroy enchantments... the bane of our existence.
Currently trying to discover the quickest way to get the opponent from 20 to 0.
Sorry if I muddied the waters there suggesting Dark Confidant. The bolt package is very similar between the two decks and there's a very fine line between RDW and Burn.
Anyway, based on what cards I have this is what I'm playing in a PTQ this weekend. I think it qualifies as Burn by any reasonable definition:
4 Goblin Guide
4 Spark Elemental
4 Hellspark Elemental
4 Keldon Marauders
3 Ball Lightning
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Lava Spike
4 Shard Volley
4 Rift Bolt
4 Magma Jet
4 Arid Mesa
17 Mountains
I haven't done any play testing and am just playing for fun. If I wind up 0.500 on the day that will probably be a success. In the sideboard I will probably just pick a couple of decks that I'd like to crush and load up on hate. Picking on affinity seems a reasonable thing to do as does packing a lot of graveyard hate. I'm not going to try to compensate for any problem match ups mono-red has. If I run up on Martyr then I just lose to it. C'est la vie. If I wanted to beat Martyr I'd play some kind of weird Blood Knight/Sulfur Elemental thing, I guess. Not really interesting in going that route.
TL;DR Rain of Gore OP
My decks
Top 4 (4th) SCG IQ 11/4/12
But creature based RDW doesn't place in top 8, at least not nearly as consistently as burn based RDW.
FREE BLOODBRAID ELF
With no Stifle in the format, +4 fetchlands, in theory, makes a 60 card deck into a 56-ish card deck.
Just be sure that if you run white, that you aren't running white solely for Lightning Helix. Any life gained is negated by the life lost to get there. Not to mention the potential unlucky hazard of not having a source of white.
Burn != RDW/Sligh
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
And that alone is not worth the life loss. "Thinning" the deck by 4 cards, or even by 8 cards if you add another four fetches, isn't going to help much. Each time you fetch, you're removing one card from your remaining library, which will have about 50 cards. So, you're paying 5% of your life to thin out 2% of your deck. This has almost no effect on your topdecks. And again, every few matches, the life loss will cost you a turn. Losing even one turn will often mean losing the game, because your opponent is of course wailing away at your unprotected life total the whole time!
Bottom line, even with no Stifle around, "deck thinning" doesn't work. Either run fetches for Grim Lavamancer, or do not run fetches in Burn. There's no gray area.
I dont see a problem with paying life fetching for a land to helix if you are gonna gain that life right back, and possibly net life with a second helix. There is always the option for Sacred Foundry to EtB tapped as well. Personally I never worried about paying life when I play a deck like this. Killing an enemy more quickly is a valid reason to hurt yourself. That is why cards like Goblin Guide see play.
Also RDW is RDW, whether its creature based or not. You are playing a deck that is primarily red and trying to kill your opponent as quickly as possible. Its pretty much the same strategy, with the only difference being certain card selection.
FREE BLOODBRAID ELF
Decks I am playing:
taking suggestions (Legacy)
Elf Company GW (Modern)
Abbot Aggro R (Standard)
Maralen of the Mornsong B(Commander)