Quote, "Good Lord, every Season a new incarnation of this thing rears its ugly head. What can I say? It still wins."
Buahahaha
Do you guys think Wasteland is still playable in burn? I know when I first started getting into the deck a few years ago there were some lists that ran wasteland but that seems to be less and less common now. I imagine if it is though, it wouldn't be as a 4 of.
Enchantress is practically impossible without a green splash and it is not Leyline that is the problem. It's Solitary Confinement which makes them hexproof and immune to damage. I played one at a GP side event last year and managed to steal one game because they somehow bricked off after drawing 15 cards and ended up having to sacrifice Confinement. Otherwise, unless they keep badly or mulligan into oblivion and don't manage to get Confinement out on time, we basically lose.
That being said. A green splash is likely more detrimintal to the rest of our matchups than beneficial. One of the best things about playing Burn is making Wasteland useless against us.
Yeah Enchantress does seem like a lost cause, but maybe SDT might actually work in our favor to help prevent us from getting taiga. nhan's suggested sideboarding taiga so we don't have a splash when we don't need it but I don't know if the consistency increase that SDT could potentially give us is worth freeing up a sideboard slot.
The only reason I'm actually seriously contemplating the splash is because the local meta is pretty diverse, but there's also been an RIP/Helm combo/control deck running around that as of now I also have to write off as unwinnable, and it's been putting up good results such as consistent top 8's. The guy playing the deck is the only person I can regularly play with and it's no fun playing burn against his deck because it's so unwinnable, so I usually end up playing Death and Taxes against him because that's the only other deck I have. I'm more than willing to test out these changes if it means my burn deck becomes playable against him again lmao
Make sure to start adding pithing needle to sideboard if you in DC metro area. Seems like COP:Red is popping up a lot. Especially since D&T is large part of meta here.
It's a sideboarded one-of (unless for some reason people in your area are deciding to board in more copies which doesn't make a lot of sense) in a deck with no library manipulation or card draw in a matchup that's otherwise even, and might even favor us after boarding. I think I'd rather just take my chances tbh. Absolute Law is worse btw.
I'm fairly sure we'll lose to Leyline no matter what - thankfully its not as common in legacy as it is in modern.
Really? I've NEVER lost a match to a deck playing Leyline (to be fair it's only been 3 matches and 2 of them were Leyline combo). As it is, burn has enough creatures and non-targeted burn to where we can ignore the leyline and win anyway, especially after we side out 4 Lava Spike and a Fireblast for 2 Lavamancer and 3 Shusher. If you go in with a plan it is very much winnable.
No I haven't played the enchantress matchup yet (and I don't expect to given how rarely played the deck is) but even without leyline I'd write off the matchup as extremely unfavorable for us anyway. They really don't need Leyline to beat us lmao.
Hmmmmm... I'm trying to decide if I prefer Swiftspear to extra lands, blaze and vortex MD or not.
I wouldn't dream of cutting them in Modern but in legacy we have so many good spells.
We do need a certain creature density in our main/side so we don't just auto-lose to Leyline of Sanctity. Aside from this the biggest strength of the creatures we run is that their damage is repeatable every turn if it's not removed/blocked by a bigger dude.
lots of talk about adding Sensei's Divining Top to the burn deck to help it being consistent. I've tested it and I do advocate the use of Top in burn more as a staple to bolt!
When I read a comment like the comment above - it make me think that the player shouldn't really be playing burn... (it more like comment for a blue x list).
Ideally all burns want is 2-3 lands and 7 bolt effects (because seven times three equals twenty one) - the only time burn wants something like Sensei's Divining Top is during the durdle like games (even then they would still prefer 7 bolt effects and 2-3 lands first) which is why most list with finishes running the card only has 1 max.
I haven't tested this yet but in theory top should solve all the problems burn faces late game where it loses to its own bad topdecks. 90% of the games I lose are to my own draw step. There's just a ton of games where I will fail to draw anything relevant and lose because of this.
I feel like Price has too much value to cut a copy out though. There are just some matchups where that card becomes a complete blowout and you end up wanting every card you draw to be a price, goyf decks being one of them. Heck, even if your opponent plays around it by using wasteland/fetching basics, I feel like they're still getting the shaft anyway, especially if they're using wasteland to play around your prices. There's also way more matchups where price is good (literally any tricolor deck in the format, lands, 12post and MUD)than matches where price is bad or at least needs to be cut when it comes to sideboarding (so far I can only think of Burn, Belcher, oops all spells, high tide and possibly Merfolk and DNT off top).
I debated running pillars instead of Mindbreak trap, but after going over the pros and cons of each, I decided I'd rather have the card that lets me interact with combo on turn 1. Both can be duressed, and I've lost to turn 1 storm one too many times to not want the turn 0 interaction.
I felt the same way about price for a long time, but the issue here is that against wasteland decks, especially RUG, Price becomes a pseudo Vexing devil/Brow beat that reads : You may destroy two lands instead of taking 4 damage. In the words of Curby "It will always manifest itself in the weakest option" This has caused me many games while racing RUG/ any decks running wastelands. This is why I've changed my Price of progress timing, and numbers, if I can sneak it through for 4 damage I'll take that, cause if I get greedy it'll end up being 2 while the enemy has 2 less lands, unless this is the first few turns, their tempo loss has never helped me win. Don't get the wrong idea I'm not dissing Price, by far it has the most damage potential in burn, and the reason why you can sit back and play control, thats why there is still three in my deck, I'm just saying if you go up against a good opponent who knows to stop dropping lands, and keep an untapped wasteland, it can really mess up your damage count. Also reanimator, totally negates price, they can play their whole combo on two lands, so they just fetch for island and swamp. Again I agree that when price is good its wonderful, but like fireblast, I'm happy if I see 1 per game, cause thats usually all I need. If I see two price against decks that are soft to it, its usually overkill, cause the rest of may hand could have cleaned up any ways. This is why I feel we can afford to cut 1.
On Pillar/mindbreak. This is totally personal, I used to feel the same as you. I just changed my mind after noticing that pillars hit many more decks than just storm, land a pillar against miracles and watch them sweat, I find its great against elves as well since it stops their combo side, and you can usually beat their agro game.
I've come to realize that there are two types of burn players, those who play control, and those who play combo. Control burn gears their card choices towards consistency, combo burn only cares about explosiveness and ending the game as quick as possible. You can see the difference of these two play styles clash in the last page and a half or when ever Soilder talks about vexing devil. I'm a control kind of guy, I wonder which side of the fence you fall on BasedFuster? I choose not to play mindbreak because I accept that I will lose to combo's god hand. I accept that burn is a bad control deck(having no interaction with storm except for mindbreak), so I don't take the control route against combo, and I'd rather just embrace the bad combo deck that burn is, and try to race them instead, where I feel like I have a better chance. Which is also where pillar shines.
I don't want to change your mind, I just want to share my reasoning with you.
Honestly, I lean towards the combo side because I feel like games get worse for me the longer they go. You're probably right in replacing a copy of POP with top and hoping top will find you one of the 2 cards you cut though.
The thing with miracles and elves though is that while Pillar probably does put in work against both decks, both matchups are at least manageable game 1. I feel like Eidolon usually is enough in both cases. I guess my need to interact with a turn 1 combo comes from just losing to turn 1 combo with 2cmc hate cards in my hand too often, and not just with burn. I used to play DNT as my main deck for a while, and while playtesting against storm I'd find myself losing turn 1 much too often, which would piss me off because in most of those turn 1 losses, I'd have Thalia or Canonist in my hand as well. Plus last time I went to a Legacy IQ I got paired up against the only belcher player in the room first round and even though I won the match I just kinda freaked out lol.
I'll definitely test a 3x blast 3x pop list with 2x top for sure though!
I hate Goyf. Its the worse creature in every deck that plays it, and its usually the most expensive non land card. But lets not get into that.
I would cut 1 fireblast, and 1 price. Both are really powerful but you don't want to see more than 1 fb per game, and price can be played around. Top will increase your chances of seeing both of these cards, I would up the fetch count by two. I've been really happy with 3/3 fireblast/price of progress. Just food for thought.
I like your sideboard, I run pillars for combo hate, and exquisite firecraft over vexing shusher.
I feel like Price has too much value to cut a copy out though. There are just some matchups where that card becomes a complete blowout and you end up wanting every card you draw to be a price, goyf decks being one of them. Heck, even if your opponent plays around it by using wasteland/fetching basics, I feel like they're still getting the shaft anyway, especially if they're using wasteland to play around your prices. There's also way more matchups where price is good (literally any tricolor deck in the format, lands, 12post and MUD)than matches where price is bad or at least needs to be cut when it comes to sideboarding (so far I can only think of Burn, Belcher, oops all spells, high tide and possibly Merfolk and DNT off top).
I debated running pillars instead of Mindbreak trap, but after going over the pros and cons of each, I decided I'd rather have the card that lets me interact with combo on turn 1. Both can be duressed, and I've lost to turn 1 storm one too many times to not want the turn 0 interaction.
I agree with your first paragraph, especially in the scenario you presented, I was kind of irritated that day(if you couldn't tell by the tone of the post) and i actually know people who suggest playing a certain card no matter the situation, so after reading your original post, that was where my response came from. We're on the same page as far as eidolon and swiftspear go. I side them out on the draw as well.
I should have clarified myself with my suggestion to play u/r burn, I really mean u/r delver as you said. I've tried my hand at it, but at that point I think I'd rather play rug if goyf wasn't such a bad creature that costed soo much.
I love burn I just can't stand the inconsistency of top decking. I think I might give sdt another go. Two copies won't hurt my clock very badly, and it's a step towards solving the top deck problem.
Goyf is actually pretty undercosted for its average stats, and it's a decent clock when backed up with control like the kind RUG or BUG present.
I advise against removing rift bolt, I would cut lavaspike first, rift bolt is slow, but there is alot of utility to be had. It dodges daze, and spell pierce but the two mana tax from spell pierce will often time be a time walk for your opponent, just wanted to point that out. Being cmc three its great against miracles, and dodges chalice on 1 and 2 which happens alot. It also targets a creature which is infintely awesome compared to lavaspike.
Three price of progress seems like the right number, I've learned that people are greedy when it comes to price and wait too long to try and net more damage, to me price is a 4 damage for 2 mana card, any more is icing on the cake, especially against wasteland decks. Don't wait too long to play this, and you'll be fine. I think three black vise is also the right number, its enough that you have a good chance to run into it on turn 1, when it is optimal. I suggest you test black vise some more before going with 4, turn 1 vise is amazing, turn two vise is dismal. Also like I said earlier, its a horrible top deck.
Basedfuster, so if your opponent has a goyf, or tasigur/angler/reanimated fatty on the board would you still play eidolon? What I'm getting at is that the eidolon play isn't just dependent on your board state, its very dependent on your opponent's boardstate as well. You play it when you have the advantage, on an empty boardstate you will have a 2/2 beatstick that will tax them for everyspell(this is why eidolons are 4 of main deck, while pillars are 1-2 sideboard) but if they have a bigger creature and can afford to not cast anything, while winning the race you've just put yourself in a very bad place.
Another pet peeve of mine is how everyone thinks Swiftspear encourages bad plays, the best way I've ever seen it put is that swiftspear gives all your spells a potential +1 damage through combat, if you cast it pre combat. This makes it very enticing to just dump your hand, but just because you could doesn't mean that you should, mastering burn, like any other legacy deck is about choosing the optimal time to play your spells, this is why burn isn't in the combo category. Swiftspear's advantage is viewed as a weakness because bad players can't control themselves. This is unacceptable.
On Swiftspear/eidolon interaction, I would rather have t 1 swiftspear into t2 eidolon(while opponents doesn't have anything that you need to kill) then nothing t1 into t2 eidolon. Why is this? because that is an awesome boardstate, putting more pressure on your opponent to remove eidolon. And since we can guarantee that they'll kill the eidolon first when they can, we'll be free to dump our hand for on swiftspear if the path is still clear.
I feel your pain when it comes to losing due to topdeck, but thats the nature of the beast, I would much rather be playing R/U burn but dropping a few pay checks to play a consistent burn deck does not fall under smart investments for me. volcs/snapcaster/brainstorm would make this deck alot better, but thats why burn is still semi budget legacy.
TL/DR? Go play combo.
If you're on the play then the odds of your opponent having one of the beaters you mentioned is nil. Obviously this changes when you're on the draw and I tend to actually side out some number of Eidolon against a fair deck if I'm on the draw. My statement assumes I'm on the play when turn 2 rolls around. I only really dump my hand to Swiftspears if it's loaded with Lava Spike or Searing Blaze.
There's actually 2 problems with playing U/R burn that don't involve budget. The first one is that the deck immediately loses its color consistency advantage and it is possible to actually get blown out by wasteland. Immunity to Wasteland is why the mono-red version is the most popular and the most successful burn variant in the format (excluding the U/R burn deck that just splashed blue to play Treasure Cruise before it got banned). The second problem is that even though the blue cards add to the deck somewhat, they also take away from the deck by not dealing damage to our opponents. That's a big reason why a lot of cards get excluded in the primer. If you want to go that route you might as well build U/R Delver instead because what that deck loses in speed it makes up for in Tempo and value since it gains access to many control options like Force of Will. U/R burn just loses speed but doesn't gain any tempo to make up for that loss.
I'm actually slowly working towards building storm right now as well, for the sake of comparison. I was gonna build omni-tell but DTT got banned. In any case, last time I played storm I lost game 3 despite having both of my hate cards so I'm kinda burnt out on the deck for the time being as well as wondering if it's still a powerful enough option to play. Locally the meta is skewed against burn as well, tons of combo, and some decks that can just naturally hate my deck out. There's some shardless BUG decks around but I dont think those good matchups are enough to justify burn.
I'm not playing Oops or Belcher specifically because I value consistency. Glad to know my gut feeling about Vise was apparently correct. Thanks!
If you read my post from last page I might actually give up playing burn because of consistency issues. It's a great deck when you're drawing what you need and its firing on all cylinders but at the same time the trough is pretty low when you AREN'T drawing what you need (I'll draw land when I need more burn, or I won't draw sideboard cards, or I'll draw spells when I really need a third land to land Vortex, etc.), and the trough only gets lower the more turns your draw step ****s you over. I feel like at least 90% of my losses come from this lack of consistency that you'd probably get with a deck that runs Brainstorm. I'm not sure if this is actually the problem that keeps burn from being tier 1 or if I'm just the unluckiest person in the world but either way I definitely want to try a brainstorm deck out in the future just for the sake of comparison.
FYI, I always slam Eidolon turn 2 if possible regardless of my board state or if my T1 play was swiftspear.
Legacy is a wide open format, so you don't have to be Tier 1 to be competitive. Burn is a bit meta specific though. We struggle a bit with some of the fast combo decks due to not having Force of Will. But I find that our matchup against the typical 3-color midrangy decks is pretty good. I've taken down plenty of LGS events and top 32 a 100 man side event at a GP. If you run hot and don't get paired with your bad matchups you can win.
On the money. I went to a team tournament my LGS had last month and played in the Legacy portion. I went 1-3 due to an unfavorable meta, since I lost to Death and Taxes, dredge, and storm, but won against shardless BUG. Most of the time though, I find that the topdecks are wild since we don't have brainstorm, and I feel like I lose more to variance than anything else. I lost the DNT and dredge matchups due to not drawing any sideboarded cards, and I lost against storm because I had to mull to 4 game 1, and I failed to draw my 1cmc burn late game for game 3. Overall the meta was pretty bad for burn because there were plenty of combo decks and an RIP/Helm deck that ended up winning.
In short, I feel like this deck's main weakness is that it doesn't and it can't run brainstorm. It loses to its own variance, despite it having the best topdecks in the format. I felt like every matchup could have been winnable had my deck not decided to just screw me over with poor topdecks.
It was against Grixis/4c delver actually. Punishing Jund is a much better matchup though because it shares the same weaknesses as Grixis delver, but Game 1 Dark Confidant serves to help me more than them, they don't run counterspells, and they generally don't present a clock unless they drop a goyf (whereas every creature played in Grixis delver is a clock). To be honest though, Punishing Jund doesn't seem to be played that often and isn't really a high tier deck to begin with.
For what it's worth, I haven't yet lost to a deck playing Leyline of sanctity against me, although I've only had 3 matches against a deck playing this card, 2 of which was against a rogue Leyline enchantments deck that mained 4. The other was a Belcher deck that sided it in against me game 2. In any case, the best plan is to just side in more creatures and side out your worst targeted burn like Lava Spike. My board has about 5 extra creatures I can side in.
In any case, I've taken my burn deck to another Legacy FNM during the black friday weekend. I won't do a detailed report this time, but I went 3-1 beating Punishing Jund, Goblins, and RUG delver but losing to a MUD player that drew god hands that powered out early wurmcoils both games, and ended up third as the MUD player lost to a Miracles player that was 2-0-1 in the last round. I'm still very much sold on Burn being a good contender in Legacy.
Earlier tonight, I playtested matches against Belcher and Grixis (technically 4c but the green was just splashed for deathrite) delver with the new board. Belcher was straightforward, game 1 he combo'd off turn 1 and games 2 and 3 I had mindbreak trap. Playtesting Belcher seems pointless, but I do need to do some solid testing against storm. The Grixis matchup felt entirely stacked in my favor for the most part, as I won a good majority of the games, and all but one of the games I lost were to mana flood. There was one game where I had to mulligan to 5, and one game where he had a solid clock on the board, but was at 6 life with 4 duals on board. I topdecked price and in response he lightning bolts me and then uses deathrite to secure a rather ironic victory.
This Sunday, my LGS is having a team tournament, where each team will have a standard, modern, and Legacy player. My Modern teammate will be playing Living end (which is actually really good in the local meta right now). I have no idea what my standard teammate will be playing, but I'll keep you posted on how I do for the Legacy portion of the tournament.
I like 2 spikes as I like having 1 but don't like drawing two. Always want that second one to be something else. At the moment I have 1 Abbot and 1 top there to try it out. Previous to this I have been rotating through 2cmc cards (recently running 4 searing effects) in place of Lava Spike all together.
I'm less looking to attack the specific card, more asking what cards that may not be played much but have more flexibility than just counting to 20 if that makes sense.
Burn's goal is to count to 20. Lava spike is 4 of your 16 most efficient bolts, and I don't mind drawing multiples of it because I can just easily dump them early game (turn 1-2) if my hand is clogged with spikes. It works best with Swiftspear in play. The only way I'd ever be able to question Lava Spike's place in the deck is if Wizards prints another 3 damage for 1 mana spell that turns out to be more efficient, such as a Fiery Impulse that could hit players in addition to creatures.
Since I'm not familiar with the matchup, I'm guessing the best time(s) would be either in response to a Loam or in response to the Loam's dredge trigger, right?
Do you guys think Wasteland is still playable in burn? I know when I first started getting into the deck a few years ago there were some lists that ran wasteland but that seems to be less and less common now. I imagine if it is though, it wouldn't be as a 4 of.
Yeah Enchantress does seem like a lost cause, but maybe SDT might actually work in our favor to help prevent us from getting taiga. nhan's suggested sideboarding taiga so we don't have a splash when we don't need it but I don't know if the consistency increase that SDT could potentially give us is worth freeing up a sideboard slot.
The only reason I'm actually seriously contemplating the splash is because the local meta is pretty diverse, but there's also been an RIP/Helm combo/control deck running around that as of now I also have to write off as unwinnable, and it's been putting up good results such as consistent top 8's. The guy playing the deck is the only person I can regularly play with and it's no fun playing burn against his deck because it's so unwinnable, so I usually end up playing Death and Taxes against him because that's the only other deck I have. I'm more than willing to test out these changes if it means my burn deck becomes playable against him again lmao
It's a sideboarded one-of (unless for some reason people in your area are deciding to board in more copies which doesn't make a lot of sense) in a deck with no library manipulation or card draw in a matchup that's otherwise even, and might even favor us after boarding. I think I'd rather just take my chances tbh. Absolute Law is worse btw.
Really? I've NEVER lost a match to a deck playing Leyline (to be fair it's only been 3 matches and 2 of them were Leyline combo). As it is, burn has enough creatures and non-targeted burn to where we can ignore the leyline and win anyway, especially after we side out 4 Lava Spike and a Fireblast for 2 Lavamancer and 3 Shusher. If you go in with a plan it is very much winnable.
No I haven't played the enchantress matchup yet (and I don't expect to given how rarely played the deck is) but even without leyline I'd write off the matchup as extremely unfavorable for us anyway. They really don't need Leyline to beat us lmao.
We do need a certain creature density in our main/side so we don't just auto-lose to Leyline of Sanctity. Aside from this the biggest strength of the creatures we run is that their damage is repeatable every turn if it's not removed/blocked by a bigger dude.
I haven't tested this yet but in theory top should solve all the problems burn faces late game where it loses to its own bad topdecks. 90% of the games I lose are to my own draw step. There's just a ton of games where I will fail to draw anything relevant and lose because of this.
Honestly, I lean towards the combo side because I feel like games get worse for me the longer they go. You're probably right in replacing a copy of POP with top and hoping top will find you one of the 2 cards you cut though.
The thing with miracles and elves though is that while Pillar probably does put in work against both decks, both matchups are at least manageable game 1. I feel like Eidolon usually is enough in both cases. I guess my need to interact with a turn 1 combo comes from just losing to turn 1 combo with 2cmc hate cards in my hand too often, and not just with burn. I used to play DNT as my main deck for a while, and while playtesting against storm I'd find myself losing turn 1 much too often, which would piss me off because in most of those turn 1 losses, I'd have Thalia or Canonist in my hand as well. Plus last time I went to a Legacy IQ I got paired up against the only belcher player in the room first round and even though I won the match I just kinda freaked out lol.
I'll definitely test a 3x blast 3x pop list with 2x top for sure though!
I feel like Price has too much value to cut a copy out though. There are just some matchups where that card becomes a complete blowout and you end up wanting every card you draw to be a price, goyf decks being one of them. Heck, even if your opponent plays around it by using wasteland/fetching basics, I feel like they're still getting the shaft anyway, especially if they're using wasteland to play around your prices. There's also way more matchups where price is good (literally any tricolor deck in the format, lands, 12post and MUD)than matches where price is bad or at least needs to be cut when it comes to sideboarding (so far I can only think of Burn, Belcher, oops all spells, high tide and possibly Merfolk and DNT off top).
I debated running pillars instead of Mindbreak trap, but after going over the pros and cons of each, I decided I'd rather have the card that lets me interact with combo on turn 1. Both can be duressed, and I've lost to turn 1 storm one too many times to not want the turn 0 interaction.
Goyf is actually pretty undercosted for its average stats, and it's a decent clock when backed up with control like the kind RUG or BUG present.
I might try 2 SDT actually, I just don't know what I'd cut for it. Here's my list: http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/11-06-15-0-to-100-real-quick/
If you're on the play then the odds of your opponent having one of the beaters you mentioned is nil. Obviously this changes when you're on the draw and I tend to actually side out some number of Eidolon against a fair deck if I'm on the draw. My statement assumes I'm on the play when turn 2 rolls around. I only really dump my hand to Swiftspears if it's loaded with Lava Spike or Searing Blaze.
There's actually 2 problems with playing U/R burn that don't involve budget. The first one is that the deck immediately loses its color consistency advantage and it is possible to actually get blown out by wasteland. Immunity to Wasteland is why the mono-red version is the most popular and the most successful burn variant in the format (excluding the U/R burn deck that just splashed blue to play Treasure Cruise before it got banned). The second problem is that even though the blue cards add to the deck somewhat, they also take away from the deck by not dealing damage to our opponents. That's a big reason why a lot of cards get excluded in the primer. If you want to go that route you might as well build U/R Delver instead because what that deck loses in speed it makes up for in Tempo and value since it gains access to many control options like Force of Will. U/R burn just loses speed but doesn't gain any tempo to make up for that loss.
I'm actually slowly working towards building storm right now as well, for the sake of comparison. I was gonna build omni-tell but DTT got banned. In any case, last time I played storm I lost game 3 despite having both of my hate cards so I'm kinda burnt out on the deck for the time being as well as wondering if it's still a powerful enough option to play. Locally the meta is skewed against burn as well, tons of combo, and some decks that can just naturally hate my deck out. There's some shardless BUG decks around but I dont think those good matchups are enough to justify burn.
If you read my post from last page I might actually give up playing burn because of consistency issues. It's a great deck when you're drawing what you need and its firing on all cylinders but at the same time the trough is pretty low when you AREN'T drawing what you need (I'll draw land when I need more burn, or I won't draw sideboard cards, or I'll draw spells when I really need a third land to land Vortex, etc.), and the trough only gets lower the more turns your draw step ****s you over. I feel like at least 90% of my losses come from this lack of consistency that you'd probably get with a deck that runs Brainstorm. I'm not sure if this is actually the problem that keeps burn from being tier 1 or if I'm just the unluckiest person in the world but either way I definitely want to try a brainstorm deck out in the future just for the sake of comparison.
FYI, I always slam Eidolon turn 2 if possible regardless of my board state or if my T1 play was swiftspear.
On the money. I went to a team tournament my LGS had last month and played in the Legacy portion. I went 1-3 due to an unfavorable meta, since I lost to Death and Taxes, dredge, and storm, but won against shardless BUG. Most of the time though, I find that the topdecks are wild since we don't have brainstorm, and I feel like I lose more to variance than anything else. I lost the DNT and dredge matchups due to not drawing any sideboarded cards, and I lost against storm because I had to mull to 4 game 1, and I failed to draw my 1cmc burn late game for game 3. Overall the meta was pretty bad for burn because there were plenty of combo decks and an RIP/Helm deck that ended up winning.
In short, I feel like this deck's main weakness is that it doesn't and it can't run brainstorm. It loses to its own variance, despite it having the best topdecks in the format. I felt like every matchup could have been winnable had my deck not decided to just screw me over with poor topdecks.
My current sideboard has just 2 Lavamancers and 3 Shushers but here's my full decklist: http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/11-06-15-0-to-100-real-quick/#c2441032
In any case, I've taken my burn deck to another Legacy FNM during the black friday weekend. I won't do a detailed report this time, but I went 3-1 beating Punishing Jund, Goblins, and RUG delver but losing to a MUD player that drew god hands that powered out early wurmcoils both games, and ended up third as the MUD player lost to a Miracles player that was 2-0-1 in the last round. I'm still very much sold on Burn being a good contender in Legacy.
Earlier tonight, I playtested matches against Belcher and Grixis (technically 4c but the green was just splashed for deathrite) delver with the new board. Belcher was straightforward, game 1 he combo'd off turn 1 and games 2 and 3 I had mindbreak trap. Playtesting Belcher seems pointless, but I do need to do some solid testing against storm. The Grixis matchup felt entirely stacked in my favor for the most part, as I won a good majority of the games, and all but one of the games I lost were to mana flood. There was one game where I had to mulligan to 5, and one game where he had a solid clock on the board, but was at 6 life with 4 duals on board. I topdecked price and in response he lightning bolts me and then uses deathrite to secure a rather ironic victory.
This Sunday, my LGS is having a team tournament, where each team will have a standard, modern, and Legacy player. My Modern teammate will be playing Living end (which is actually really good in the local meta right now). I have no idea what my standard teammate will be playing, but I'll keep you posted on how I do for the Legacy portion of the tournament.
Burn's goal is to count to 20. Lava spike is 4 of your 16 most efficient bolts, and I don't mind drawing multiples of it because I can just easily dump them early game (turn 1-2) if my hand is clogged with spikes. It works best with Swiftspear in play. The only way I'd ever be able to question Lava Spike's place in the deck is if Wizards prints another 3 damage for 1 mana spell that turns out to be more efficient, such as a Fiery Impulse that could hit players in addition to creatures.