Fanatical Firebrand was - I'm reasonably sure - just anti-Bridge from Below tech. In view of the banning, I'd say forget about the little guy.
I've been playing three Canopy-style lands in another deck and it has felt like one too many. Eight strikes me as nuts. Burn is different, but eight still seems like suicide.
I haven't tried LutS, so my opinion might not be worth much and I don't think I'm going to, but if I did, it would be a one-of or maybe a two-of.
Some of the side-board is obviously anti-Hogaak tech. It remains to be seen how much grave-hate is needed now.
- elconquistador1985
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Posted in: Aggro & TempoQuote from elconquistador1985 »me being an ******** (I've tried toning it down over time)
Just to hit this real quick, we definitely didn't get along well at all it seemed early on, but I would agree you have toned some things down and while there are still plenty of times we don't agree on things, things are way better than before
That said, I don't think that reddit is a good solution for things like primers. My vote would be keep it going on whatever new replacement they come up with, but yeah. You can't avoid the stupid people anywhere you go. I'm one of the mods in the Masters of Modern FB group and while most of the time it's fine, sometimes there are definitely folks who will get under your skin. Keep doing what you're doing man, the Burn primer is one of the best ones out here and it's a sad thing that this place is being written off. -
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BlueTronFTW posted a message on BurnHere's the thing with searing blood: it hoses humans. The only lord they have in the deck is thalia's lieutenant, so unless that comes down blood kills the following:Posted in: Aggro & Tempo
hierarch
kitesail
both thalias
champion of the parish on turn 2 vast majority of the time
meddling mage
sin collector
knight of autumn
this also means you can hold your searing blaze for mantis riders, reflector mages, etc. Path also matters still because of auriok champion, which is usually a 2 or 3-of in a humans SB. Champion slows the game down to a painful crawl, and I personally like having the out. I have contemplated splitting between path and ensnaring bridge or even engineered explosives. Never tried either, but they certainly have their uses. Then again, if you have a full playset of skullcrack in the 75 that helps too. I might be overthinking.
Think about the top decks in modern right now overall: tron, humans, uw, phoenix. Path is good in all of those matchups, as you have to contend with wurmcoil, various big humans, lyra or baneslayer out of the uw sideboard, and thing/drake. If you hate giving up the land and want to play chained to the rocks, fine I'll give you that. I just think there are too many creatures that have more than three points of toughness that spell "game over." Palm is nice, but my issue with palm is the extra mana plus narrower window of use. I think I've had one big swing from palm ever steal a game.
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You're the only one hellbent on beating Depths in this thread. Congrats on finding 3 other people in 20-40 person events that run Alpine Moon as well, though.Posted in: Aggro & Tempo
If you can't distinguish between a FoW deck (control/Miracles) and a deck that happens to be running blue and hence FoW (UB reanimator), I can't help you. Maybe that's the reason you can't win a 15 person event. All makes sense now.
Oh, just discovered the "Ignore User" option. Perfect. -
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I actually do own Island of Wak-Wak. It's in my cube where it belongs.Posted in: Aggro & Tempo
You have your solution in Alpine Moon. No more discussion needed. You can leave the thread now. -
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Interesting data points from GP Toronto: https://www.channelfireball.com/articles/modern-allegiances-fire-and-phoenix/Posted in: Aggro & Tempo
Excerpt from the article:
"A Skewed Stage
Ravnica Allegiance brought Burn two potential improvements: Skewer the Critics and Light Up the Stage. Let’s try to figure out whether these cards actually constitute an improvement or not, and if so, how big of an improvement.
Skewer the CriticsLight Up the Stage
The problem is that we don’t have a proper control group for one of the two cards. Virtually none of Toronto’s Burn players failed to update their decks with Skewer the Critics. A grand total of five players ran none, and all of them failed to get to Sunday. That may make Burn decks with Skewer better, but it could just as well mean that players who don’t keep up with trends are generally more prone to losing.
Across the GPs in Port- and Oakland, 17.9% of the then still Skewerless Burn players qualified for the second day. 20% is an improvement but falls within the range of natural fluctuation. I’m inclined to take the almost universal adoption of Skewer as evidence of the card’s merits. Though that is all we have to go by, really. The data tells us no more than that it wasn’t any kind of game changer.
Light Up the Stage is a more interesting case, if only because we find the perfect control group within our sample. Among the Burn players whose lists are available to me, 45 ran Light Up the Stage and 45 didn’t. This success story is one the card itself couldn’t live up to, unfortunately. Only six players who lit up the stage made it to the second stage of the tournament, whereas 12 of those without Light did.
Once there, light Burn players again fared way worse than heavy Burn players. None of the versions with Light Up the Stage placed anyone within the Top 100, whereas five of the versions without it did. For reference, here are the lists of the highest finisher with a full playset and of the highest finisher with zero copies:"
While not statistically significant, 45 decks with and 45 decks without Light Up the Stage is a convenient comparison, if nothing else.
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Renaud_256 posted a message on BurnGP Toronto ReportPosted in: Aggro & Tempo
Had not played in the past few months, so I decided to skip LutS but try Skewer
My List
DeckMagic OnlineOCTGN2ApprenticeBuy These Cards Creatures (12):
4 Eidolon of the Great Revel
4 Goblin Guide
4 Monastery Swiftspear
Spells (29):
4 Boros Charm
4 Lava Spike
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Lightning Helix
4 Rift Bolt
4 Searing Blaze
4 Skewer the Critics
1 SkullcrackLands (20):
2 Arid Mesa
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Inspiring Vantage
3 Mountain
2 Sacred Foundry
1 Stomping Ground
4 Wooded FoothillsSideboard (15):
2 Deflecting Palm
2 Destructive Revelry
1 Engineered Explosives
2 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Kor Firewalker
2 Relic of Progenitus
2 Risk Factor
3 Skullcrack
The Matches
Round 1: Bye
Round 2 (2-0) Iona / Storm / Monastary
Round 3 (2-0) Dredge
Round 4 (2-1) Death Shadow
Round 5 (2-1) UR Phoenix
Round 6 (1-2) Bring to light scape shift
Round 7 (2-0) Tron
Round 8 (2-0) UR Phoenix (Gained 17 life off of a dragon claw on game 2 >_<)
Round 9 (2-1) Sultai Control
Round 10 (2-1) Tron
Round 11 (0-2) Taking turn
Round 12 (0-2) Amulet Titan
Round 13 (2-1) Boggles
Round 14 (2-1) UR Phoenix
Round 15 (2-0) UR Phoenix
Ended with 12-3, which gave me 21st
Skewer was amazing, I might have had one or two time where it was akward, but the same could be said about rift bolt.
Don't regret skipping on Light up the Stage, most of my game 2-3 I was very reactive, and wanted to play at instant speed. Only reason I was able to win a lot of the matches was because I was holding back a Boros Charm to save my Eidolon, or a Skullcrack to prevent lifegain. Would not be possible if I was "forced" to use spell or lose them
The white was also amazing; won many games because of incidental helix life gain, boros charm making things indestructible, or having an opponent go down to 4 because I only had 1 card in hand (best moment was beating boggle with a double strike / indestructible eidolon ^_^)
Hard to say if the sideboard was correct since I did not play against everything (no burn, jeskai, human, spirit, etc etc etc). Would definitively need more testing.
The lost against Bring to light & Taking turn were very close; but the amulet titan felt like I could do very little. Will probably need to change my sideboard against it, or accept it as a very hard mu -
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Posted in: Aggro & TempoQuote from elconquistador1985 »We do not. That's a good suggestion and others' input on it would be great before I add something there.
In my opinion:
Turn 1: You want to open with Guide/Swift if you can. Otherwise, Rift Bolt or Lava Spike (though such hands are problematic, though no one can blame you for keeping 2 lands, 3 bolts, 2 Charms or something).
Turn 2(option a): Hold your land, swing with your creature to bait removal, land+Eidolon on second main (if available).
Turn 2(option b): Otherwise, I'll often try to remove excess 2CMC cards from my hand at this stage so that I can play 2CMC+1CMC next turn. Searing Blaze things if it matters. Hold Skullcrack for now. Holding a Charm until your opponent's EoT is fine.
Turn 2(option c): If I can set up something busted like Rift+Rift+Bolt+Charm for a big Swiftspear next turn, I probably will try (because that's our easiest T3 kill).
Turn 3: Continue removing 2CMC and 3CMC cards from your hand as appropriate.
You know how your opponent always whines about your lucky topdecks? Plan on that happening and make sure you have the mana available to accomplish it. This means that you should fire off cards so that you aren't bottlenecked on mana with your next topdeck (as in you want to be able to hardcast Rift Bolt to win if you draw it). If you're heavy on white cards in hand and have a fetch available but no other open mana, burn a fetch for a tapped Sacred Foundry so that you'll be able to Charm+Helix if you have one in hand and topdeck the other.
I’d like to add to Turn 1:
If on the draw, always bolt the bird. If they drop birds of paradise, noble hierarch, or any other mana dork then that needs to go! Also applies to turn 1 Glistener Elf don’t mess around with those one drops, kill them as quick as you can.
Regarding Skewer:
I love this card. I put Skullcrack in the side to make room for it and havn’t been disappointed once. Skewer is an amazing and powerful card! I’ve won games with it that only a 1 mana bolt to the face would have, so having 4 in the deck over any other 2 drop is wonderful -
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Hi guys, first time posting on this Burn thread.Posted in: Aggro & Tempo
Just went 3-0 at a modern FNM. I played against tiered decks. Round 1 vs Titanshift, Round 2 vs UW Control and Round 3 vs Izzet Phoenix.
I played Skewer main and dropped Skullcrack to the sideboard.
I know its an FNM, but Skewer looked really good.
Just thought I would add a data point to your guys' discussion. -
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Posted in: Aggro & TempoQuote from elconquistador1985 »Skewer the Critics testing update:
I've played 36 games since adding 4 Skewer the Critics. I've tried to log what happened when I saw them. Here's the casting turn:
- 0
- 8
- 10
- 3
- 2
- 0
- 2
- 1
Here's the count of ways I triggered it (or didn't):
- 3CMC - 2
- Boros Charm - 4
- Eidolon Trigger - 1
- Fetch - 1
- Goblin Guide - 3
- Lava Spike - 2
- Lightning Bolt - 2
- Not cast - 3
- Rift Bolt - 11
I've been able to play 20 test games on MTGO with 4 copies of Skewer, and it has seemed good enough to me. I've had minimal awkwardness with the card, and I'm fairly sold on 4 copies of it. Of note, I had 1 game where I started with 3 copies of Skewer in hand, and cast them all by turn 4.
Turn Cast:
- 0
- 4
- 4
- 5
- 1
- 1
- 0
- 0
Spectacle Triggers:
- 3CMC - 1
- Boros Charm - 0
- Eidolon Trigger - 0
- Fetch - 0
- Goblin Guide - 1
- Lava Spike - 4
- Lightning Bolt - 4
- Not cast - 0
- Rift Bolt - 4
- Swiftspear - 1
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I'm glad you found it useful. I don't get much time to do updates anymore, and it used to be much more active here but it fell off after they said MTGS was going to close.
I think it can replace a Kor Firewalker pretty easily if you play those. I'm not sure how much value I place on having a 3/2 Lifelink for 3 whenever you want it. Obviously it's an 8th card in your hand and that's something, but I'm not convinced it's as phenomenal as some people make it out to be. It's irrelevant in a lot of situations (ie. you cast it and lose anyway), but if you're on T6 and drawing for burn spells and draw a land, you can at least a 3/2 Lifelink and maybe buy a turn. I wouldn't place much value on the rest of the text and I wouldn't play Seal of Fire/Vexing Devil with the goal of re-casting them. Obviously you're guaranteed to have it available when you're at 4 lands, but I wouldn't want to play sub-par cards along the way.
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—Jaya Ballard, task mage
Burn
Overview of the Deck
Do you want to play with fire in a figurative sense with no risk to yourself or property? Burn might be for you! Burn decks have a long history going back to Sligh, where small efficient creatures are paired with efficient direct damage spells to construct a fast, mostly red aggro deck. Sligh is traditionally a heavier creature aggro "Red Deck Wins" build, while Burn uses direct damage instead. The more mileage you can get out of your creatures, the better shape you are in because you don't have to depend as strongly on drawing 7 burn spells. Burn can't afford to flood and is generally happy to run on 2-3 lands in play.
A Burn deck tries to optimize the conversion of cards into your opponent's life total; the Philosophy of Fire. Burn decks are highly redundant, with nearly half of the deck being cards that deal direct damage to our opponents. The relative card quality in a Burn goes down as a function of turn when compared to other decks. That's fine given that the game plan is to end the game before your opponent can stabilize. As a result, there's no late game plan involved and some games will inevitably come down to topdecking that last spell.
Most decks in Modern play Shocks and fetches and that means they'll often spot you some free damage just from playing out their gameplan. Burn can be an unforgiving deck where a single sequencing mistake can cost you the game. There are intricacies underlying the deck that make it more complicated than "tap mountains, cast bolts". You have to learn when to play control and when to be aggressive. You have to learn how to play around your opponent's counter spells and how to bottleneck their cards and mana. The primary weakness is lifegain, which is functionally the same as counter spells against us.
In the end, it's just fun lighting your opponent on fire, pouring magma on them, and zapping them from the sky until they've had enough.
Decklists
Maindeck card choices
Sideboard card choices
Playing guide and theorycrafting
Mulliganing
Creature damage model
Matchups and sideboard plans
Burn history
Burn hate card prevalence
Budget Burn
Articles
Streamers and Videos
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I'll start updating a handful per day after the holiday weekend. That should mean it's finished within a few weeks. I'll keep it at it is now, though, with a list of playables rather than a 15 card sideboard guide.
Hogaak probably has a slightly lowered meta presence because people don't want to sink money into something that everyone assumes is going to get banned.
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If you cut fetches, you're trading life loss for life loss. You open yourself up too the new life loss being heavier, but you buy yourself card draw in a place that doesn't require you to alter your game plan.
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It's a cool card and it might have a home in Modern casting things like Living End, but it's not a Burn card.
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The following is a lot of data that's tough to digest, but it might be helpful to you to know what kind of lifegain to expect at various times, what counterspells people are playing, and what discard spells people are playing. This analysis comes from MTGGoldfish data with some cleaning procedure applied to it to try to clean up any bad deck names. I then go through these deck lists and find instances of "counter target", "lifelink", and "gain N life"/"gains N life" in the card text. On top of that, I search for Leyline of Sanctity, Oketra's Last Mercy, Chalice of the Void, Phyrexian Unlife, and Spellskite. The deck population is 1131 decks. Cards that show up less than 0.5% of the time are not printed, and I've also removed some cards that don't affect us like Disdainful Stroke and Ceremonious Rejection.
Per card splits: Go here if you want to find a list of what decks play specific cards.
Maindeck: The top cards are Thoughtseize (15.30%), Inquisition of Kozilek (14.59%), Scavenging Ooze (11.85%), Cryptic Command (10.70%), Chalice of the Void (8.93%), Lightning Helix (8.05%), Remand (7.96%).
Compare to the top cards from last month Inquisition of Kozilek (17.20%), Thoughtseize (16.76%), Cryptic Command (10.98%), Lightning Helix (10.84%), Scavenging Ooze (9.97%), Remand (8.38%), Grove of the Burnwillows (7.23%).
Compare to the top cards from last month Dispel (18.64%), Negate (18.06%), Nature's Claim (14.60%), Collective Brutality (13.87%), Spell Pierce (13.29%), Knight of Autumn (9.39%), Thoughtseize (7.51%).
The first column is the average copies per deck of this archetype if the deck plays this card, so that this number is not affected by a deck that doesn't play the card. The second column is the fraction of decks of this archetype playing this card, and this number is affected by decks that don't play the card.
This is just a core dump of the fraction of decks out of the total for this month with each name.
6.10% Burn
6.01% Dredge
4.16% Izzet Phoenix
4.07% UBR Death's Shadow
3.45% Humans
3.09% BGx Midrange
3.01% G Tron
3.01% Jund
2.92% WU Control
2.92% Affinity
2.74% Goodstuff 3c
2.56% Hollow One
2.21% Mono-Red Phoenix
2.12% Amulet Titan
1.95% Eldrazi Aggro
1.95% Ad Nauseam
1.86% RG Titanshift
1.77% Living End
1.68% Bogles
1.50% Eldrazi Tron
1.50% Hardened Scales
1.41% UR Gifts Storm
1.33% Four-Color Prison
1.24% Vizier Company
1.24% WG Tron
1.15% Kiki Chord
1.06% WUR Control
1.06% Mardu Pyromancer
1.06% Lantern Control
0.88% Merfolk
0.88% Azorius Spirits
0.88% Jeskai
0.88% UR Ascension
0.80% Grishoalbrand
0.80% Mono Red Phoenix
0.80% Mono U Tron
0.71% UBG Control
0.71% Free-Win Red
0.71% UR Control
0.62% URG Ascension
0.53% Titan Breach
0.53% Eldrazi and Taxes
0.53% Orzhov Eldrazi
0.44% Selesnya Company
0.44% WBRG Death's Shadow
0.44% Junk Hatebears
0.44% Gruul Aggro
0.35% Elves
0.35% UR Delver
0.35% 8-Whack
0.35% Goryo's Phoenix
0.35% Bant Spirits
0.35% Sultai Midrange
0.35% UBR Control
0.35% Mono-Red Prison
0.35% UG Infect
0.35% BRG Death's Shadow
0.27% Death and Taxes
0.27% Restore Balance
0.27% Gruul Land Destruction
0.27% Mill
0.27% Jund Shamans
0.27% 8-Rack
0.27% WUB Death's Shadow
0.27% Pyro Prison
0.27% Hardened Modular
0.27% Lanternless
0.27% WURG Kiki-Resto
0.27% Taking Turns
0.27% URG Control
0.18% Dimir Whir
0.18% WURG Gifts Storm
0.18% WUG Knightfall
0.18% Grixis Whir
0.18% WUBR Control
0.18% WUG Infect
0.18% Enduring Ideal
0.18% Izzet Phoenix
0.18% Bant Turbofog
0.18% Mardu Human Aristocrats
0.18% WRG Titanshift
0.18% WG Hatebears
0.18% Abzan
0.18% WURG Scapeshift
0.18% Bant Devoted Company
0.18% Jeskai Spirits
0.18% URG Scapeshift
0.18% Walks
0.18% WUG Control
0.18% Boros Prison
0.18% UW Miracles
0.18% Red-White Three Drops
0.09% Goblins
0.09% Temur Tooth and Nail
0.09% WUB Control
0.09% Martyr Proc
0.09% Temur Phoenix
0.09% Izzet Spells
0.09% Grixis Twinless
0.09% Gifts 4c
0.09% UG Hatebears
0.09% Jeskai Control
0.09% Hardenes Scales
0.09% Uw Spirits
0.09% U/w Spirits
0.09% UrzaTron
0.09% UBG Death's Shadow
0.09% URG Delver
0.09% Madcap Awakener
0.09% WUBG Control
0.09% Grisoalbrand
0.09% Esper Spirits
0.09% Abzan Midrange
0.09% UB Control
0.09% Sultai Artifact Prison
0.09% Faeries
0.09% Black-Green Ramp
0.09% Mono-Green Midrange
0.09% WR Control
0.09% Uw Miracle
0.09% Untitled
0.09% WRG Hatebears
0.09% Ur Phoenix
0.09% Phoenix Ascendancy
0.09% WUR Kiki-Resto
0.09% Smallpox
0.09% Rakdos Blood Veil
0.09% Titan Experiment
0.09% Sultai Whir
0.09% WUR Delver
0.09% Through the Breach
0.09% WUR Ascension
0.09% URG Gifts Storm
0.09% Provinzial
0.09% UR Storm
0.09% Narset Combo
0.09% 4vengevine
0.09% Phoenix Deck Wins
0.09% WURG Ascension
0.09% Mardu Midrange
0.09% WUBRG Death's Shadow
0.09% Whir Prison
0.09% Izzet Drakes
0.09% Goryo's Vengeance
0.09% Mono Green Devotion
0.09% U/r Phoenix
0.09% Orzhov Tokens
0.09% WURG Control
0.09% Simic Nexus Reclamation
0.09% Ironworksless Ironworks
0.09% Jeskai Breach
0.09% Instant Reanimator
0.09% The Rock
0.09% Mike Heup
0.09% URG Titanshift
0.09% Tezzerator
0.09% Monored Phoenix
0.09% Bridgevine
0.09% UBRG Death's Shadow
0.09% Boros Burn
0.09% Bant Spirit
0.09% Mono-White Walkers
0.09% UW Spirits
0.09% Grixis Pile
0.09% Blue-White Tempo
0.09% WUG Hatebears
0.09% Risky Biscuits
0.09% Temur Moon
0.09% Naya Nahiri
0.09% Artifact Charge Ramp
0.09% Slivers
Enchantments:
The first column is the average copies per deck of this archetype if the deck plays this card, so that this number is not affected by a deck that doesn't play the card. The second column is the fraction of decks of this archetype playing this card, and this number is affected by decks that don't play the card.
Link to previous month: January (apologies if it goes to the wrong spot on the page, it's post 2143).