I've now lost to burn every match in the last few days regardless of whether I've had hate or not with a wide variety of decks (including many with 4x maindeck helix). I'm convinced the only reliable way to beat non-budget burn decks reliably is to play soul sisters or something similarly bad. Burn and Delver are already starting to warp the online metagame (look at the most played cards, and the sideboards for reference).
I've tried maindeck rhox war monks - they're 100% too slow (require an untap, a swing, and even then they only gain you 3). I've tried maindeck auriok champions, spellskites, oozes, and all combinations of the above. I've added leylines to my sideboards along with artifact lifegain and other anti-burn cards. Nope, they just play destructive revelry or wear // tear and then kill you with Eidolon.
I've just resigned myself to the fact that Burn is 10x more efficient than any other deck in the format except for UR delver, which is equally busted right now with treasure cruise. So you can either play an anti-burn hate deck and lose to UR delver, or you can just assume you're going to lose roughly 20% of your games. It's just way too powerful, has answers to every hate card against it, and there is almost no good way to interact with it.
It's a tier 1/2 legacy deck (sans fireblast) in a format where people need to deal 1-4 damage to themselves just to fix their mana. That isn't even remotely fair considering thopter foundry is somehow overpowered (which is absolutely ridiculous).
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I've now lost to burn every match regardless of whether I've had hate or not with a wide variety of decks (including many with 4x maindeck helix). I'm convinced the only reliable way to beat non-budget burn decks reliably is to play soul sisters or something similarly bad. Burn and Delver are already starting to warp the online metagame (look at the most played cards, and the sideboards for reference).
I don't think Soul Sisters is bad. A deck that can go 9-0 on Day 1 of a Grand Prix isn't a bad deck. I think it's really highly underrated, and that it's gotten even better with Burn being so big.
I've just resigned myself to the fact that Burn is 10x more efficient than any other deck in the format except for UR delver, which is equally busted right now with treasure cruise. So you can either play an anti-burn hate deck and lose to UR delver, or you can just assume you're going to lose roughly 20% of your games.
Actually, I think GR Tron is poised well against both as long as it's playing Leyline of Sanctity in the board. Pyroclasm and Oblivion Stone stop Delver in its tracks, and them dropping counterspells due to Monastery Swiftspear makes them even easier to resolve. Also, Tron cares surprisingly little about Treasure Cruise, because the game is generally decided one way or the other by the time it's cast. As for Burn, the issue people always point to about Leyline of Sanctity is that Burn can either win with creatures or destroy it. Thing is, either way it's slowed down, and that's all GR Tron needs to beat Burn. It seems every time that Burn has beaten me playing GR Tron, I was just one turn away from winning, and Leyline gives you that turn. Plus, even if they do try to take out Leyline, Tron has the fairly unique ability to Nature's Claim it in response, resulting in it still going away but they at least get 4 life out of it.
It's a tier 1/2 legacy deck (sans fireblast) in a format where people need to deal 1-4 damage to themselves just to fix their mana.
Whoa man. There's far more than Fireblast that separates Modern burn from Legacy Burn. Modern Burn also lacks Chain Lightning, Flame Rift, and Sulfuric Vortex. Chain Lightning is a lot better than Bump in the Night and lets you ditch the Black splash. Flame Rift is a Boros Charm that doesn't require a splash and bypasses Leyline of Sanctity. Sulfuric Vortex is astoundingly good against slower decks, and I've seen it singlehandedly win games for Burn in Legacy it would have lost without it.
But perhaps most importantly, it's missing Price of Progress. It's true the shocklands in Modern are more damaging than the dual lands in Legacy, but Price of Progress turns every single nonbasic land your opponents control into a shockland. Any extra damage that the shocklands deal you is more than made up for by the fact that Burn does not have access to Price of Progress.
People do know that Affinity is more consistent at killing on turn 4 than burn right?
The difference is Affinity just folds to hate. It does almost nothing against Burn. Even in the dream situations where you draw and can play all of your hate, unless you can kill them before they draw an answer they will just sandbag their hand full of burn and kill you as soon as they do get it. The difference is in the way burn interacts with its hate compared to Affinity. Against Affinity a single Creeping Corrosion or even Ancient Grudge often just shuts down the entire deck. That's not the case against burn; their answers are too strong.
I actually don't think Treasure Cruise is entirely to blame for how strong Burn has become. I think it's just been a slowly growing in power over time until the deck hit a critical mass of very powerful cards. The deck has potentially 8 strong maindeck answers to lifegain, potentially 8 strong answers to creatures that still go to the dome, 12 Lightning Bolts, and the same suite of creatures the Legacy version runs. It's the Modern equivalent of bringing hand grenades to a water balloon fight.
I initially didn't believe the hype and thought this was a passing phase; as soon as people started taking the deck seriously and playing the appropriate hate the phase would pass. The more I test against the deck however, the more I feel the deck is actually in a tier of its own. I hate to say it but I'm with BaddBusiness on this one. The previously tier one decks just cannot compete with Burn, whether it has Cruise or not.
As UWR control I used to find the match pretty easy pre-TC, running 3 Lightning Helix and a Batterskull in the main and 2 Timely Reinforcements in the side. I guess that it won't change much as even Remand works wonders against Treasure Cruise, and being a sorcery certainly makes it way worse in this match as instants tend to be more difficult to play around when you are playing counters. Spell Snare is a beast in this match too. It catches pretty much all the important cards. Running Restoration Angel was good too, as it's pretty hard for them to deal with and having some kind of clock is necessary against Burn. Sometimes you even get to block an Eidolon of the Great Revel or Goblin Guide and start swinging.
I can't beleive that Remands price has been slowly falling in the face of Treasure Cruise decks. My LGS has them for 11 a piece, but I remember when they were priced at 15. Against most decks returning a TC to their hand is basically a counter for three or more turns.
As UWR control I used to find the match pretty easy pre-TC, running 3 Lightning Helix and a Batterskull in the main and 2 Timely Reinforcements in the side. I guess that it won't change much as even Remand works wonders against Treasure Cruise, and being a sorcery certainly makes it way worse in this match as instants tend to be more difficult to play around when you are playing counters. Spell Snare is a beast in this match too. It catches pretty much all the important cards. Running Restoration Angel was good too, as it's pretty hard for them to deal with and having some kind of clock is necessary against Burn. Sometimes you even get to block an Eidolon of the Great Revel or Goblin Guide and start swinging.
Have you actually tested the matchup, and against competent pilots with non budget variants?
I did the same with a treasure cruise UWR control variant and just got killed regardless of resolving 2 helixes while trying to put a clock on. I wish I knew what I was doing wrong since I've tested most of the stuff in this thread, and most of it has either failed, or it's been effective against burn and terrible against everything else in the format.
I've now lost to burn every match regardless of whether I've had hate or not with a wide variety of decks (including many with 4x maindeck helix). I'm convinced the only reliable way to beat non-budget burn decks reliably is to play soul sisters or something similarly bad. Burn and Delver are already starting to warp the online metagame (look at the most played cards, and the sideboards for reference).
I don't think Soul Sisters is bad. A deck that can go 9-0 on Day 1 of a Grand Prix isn't a bad deck. I think it's really highly underrated, and that it's gotten even better with Burn being so big.
I've just resigned myself to the fact that Burn is 10x more efficient than any other deck in the format except for UR delver, which is equally busted right now with treasure cruise. So you can either play an anti-burn hate deck and lose to UR delver, or you can just assume you're going to lose roughly 20% of your games.
Actually, I think GR Tron is poised well against both as long as it's playing Leyline of Sanctity in the board. Pyroclasm and Oblivion Stone stop Delver in its tracks, and them dropping counterspells due to Monastery Swiftspear makes them even easier to resolve. Also, Tron cares surprisingly little about Treasure Cruise, because the game is generally decided one way or the other by the time it's cast. As for Burn, the issue people always point to about Leyline of Sanctity is that Burn can either win with creatures or destroy it. Thing is, either way it's slowed down, and that's all GR Tron needs to beat Burn. It seems every time that Burn has beaten me playing GR Tron, I was just one turn away from winning, and Leyline gives you that turn. Plus, even if they do try to take out Leyline, Tron has the fairly unique ability to Nature's Claim it in response, resulting in it still going away but they at least get 4 life out of it.
It's a tier 1/2 legacy deck (sans fireblast) in a format where people need to deal 1-4 damage to themselves just to fix their mana.
Whoa man. There's far more than Fireblast that separates Modern burn from Legacy Burn. Modern Burn also lacks Chain Lightning, Flame Rift, and Sulfuric Vortex. Chain Lightning is a lot better than Bump in the Night and lets you ditch the Black splash. Flame Rift is a Boros Charm that doesn't require a splash and bypasses Leyline of Sanctity. Sulfuric Vortex is astoundingly good against slower decks, and I've seen it singlehandedly win games for Burn in Legacy it would have lost without it.
But perhaps most importantly, it's missing Price of Progress. It's true the shocklands in Modern are more damaging than the dual lands in Legacy, but Price of Progress turns every single nonbasic land your opponents control into a shockland. Any extra damage that the shocklands deal you is more than made up for by the fact that Burn does not have access to Price of Progress.
Soul sisters has been a fringe tier 2 deck since the start of the format, and it has more or less stayed that way. It's good at beating aggro, but it doesn't have the versatility to be a worthwhile consideration in the competitive metagame outside being an effective hate deck against aggro.
As for burn vs. the Legacy variant, Flame rift and chain lightning are completely negligible since they're just replaced by bump in the night and Boros charm in most modern variants. These require a color splash, but that splash pretty much never matters, so the only relevant cards that vary from legacy to modern are vortex, fireblast, and price of progress which results in an extremely similar deck in terms of power level.
As for GR tron, GR tron is terrible against burn. Please, test the matchup against a competent burn pilot instead of expecting 4 leylines to randomly be able to pull 2 wins on game 2 and 3.
People do know that Affinity is more consistent at killing on turn 4 than burn right?
Affinity isn't more consistent at killing on turn 4 against disruption.
Burn kills on turn 4 extremely regularly, but unlike affinity, it doesn't give two craps about removal. It's an extremely important distinction that prevents players from interacting with burn, and is fundamentally why burn is a broken deck right now.
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People do know that Affinity is more consistent at killing on turn 4 than burn right?
Affinity isn't more consistent at killing on turn 4 against disruption.
Burn kills on turn 4 extremely regularly, but unlike affinity, it doesn't give two craps about removal. It's an extremely important distinction that prevents players from interacting with burn, and is fundamentally why burn is a broken deck right now.
That begs the question, why are you worrying about burn if Jeskai Ascendancy combo works in a similar way but wins a turn or two earlier?
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Modern: U Merfolk | GR Tron | WUR Jeskai Control | WBG Abzan Company
People do know that Affinity is more consistent at killing on turn 4 than burn right?
Affinity isn't more consistent at killing on turn 4 against disruption.
Burn kills on turn 4 extremely regularly, but unlike affinity, it doesn't give two craps about removal. It's an extremely important distinction that prevents players from interacting with burn, and is fundamentally why burn is a broken deck right now.
That begs the question, why are you worrying about burn if Jeskai Ascendancy combo works in a similar way but wins a turn or two earlier?
As I just said, I can interact with ascendancy combo via removal. You also can use discard or permission to remove a key piece of the combo and they will flounder at least for a few turns. Burn doesn't care too much if you discard or counter one of their spells since their entire deck is just redundant burn spells, it's just a small speedbump. For burn, you mostly just sit there and wait to die as your removal rots in your hand, or kills a goblin guide after it's already dealt 4 damage to you already.
It's really not that much about the speed. Burn wins turn 4 very consistently, but it's mostly the fact that you can't interact with it in any profitable manner without resorting to a hate deck such as soul sisters or RW lockdown to win g1, and then g2 you are just praying that your sideboard shows up so you have a shot.
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I think cards like Redirect, Imp's Mischief, Shunt, Wild Ricochet, Goblin Flectomancer, Commandeer and Swerve are essentially life gain that can play around Skullcrack, but are also good in the meta because they can hose all the spot removal, counters, and targeted discard, which there seems to be plenty of each of those in modern. They also provide Delver decks in particular with a way to answer Abrupt Decay, so these cards are by no means dead in other match ups. In fact they seem relevant against Splinter Twin, Jund, Jeskai Control, Pod, Delver, etc. So those are answers in 3 different colors that 2 for 1 burn, play around Skullcrack, and can be useful in other match ups like Jeskai Control, Splinter Twin, Pod, Jund, Junk, Delver, etc.
Redirect effects are the one area where I sense burn is vulnerable, and I think they are underplayed in modern in general. Redirect and Swerve should probably see more modern play. Imp's Mischief should as well. Personally, I think these cards could lead to blow outs against burn. The targets are endless... if you redirect Searing Blaze or Searing Blood that is devastating for a burn deck. You can even redirect Destructive Revelry protecting your Leyline and destroy Eidolon of the Great Revel. That is a blow out as well.
If you're talking about just straight up lava spike burn, then you would need some dedicated hate or just play splinter twin to combo them out with. But if they're on the cruise and swift spear plan, then dimir charm is a good friend to have.
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And on that day, Garfield said unto the world "Go ye forth and durdle!"
I still think dredgevine is a more stable way to answer this burn problem, with gnaw to the bone you can answer burn as well as help against any aggresive deck for that matter like affinity, it also helps against the few grindy midrange decks in the format. Overall it feels like a better, less janky and broader answer then those random cards that hate specifically nothing but damage from red sources, while in a vacuum they may handle the job better, there not really proactive, synergistic, and you might not even draw one to begin with. At least with dredgevine, assuming your deck is running on all cylinders, you can dredge a good portion of your entire deck within the first 3-4 turns, especially if your running the blue variants with hedron crab, doing this statistically will make you find your answer much faster then just having a couple copies of a different hate card in a non dredge deck. And again, all or most of your creatures are either burn resistant or recur themselves anyways so you have the perfect board presence for handling burn outside of something extreme like soul sisters.
Delver is slower than burn, so you have a bit more time to get your big threats online, and out card-advantage them. Oust you can use on your own creatures to stay afloat in the early game, and it combos pretty well with ETB effects. It's a tempo loss, but that's not a big deal if you can reliably out-card-advantage your opponents.
That deck would do well vs. Burn. The problem is that it auto-loses to most Combo decks. But you have given players an option if they want to beat Burn, which the title of this thread is.
In some ways, the deck you posted is similar to Pod without the Pod. However, I see the redundancy and specifically Kor Firewalker doing really heavy lifting vs. Burn. At my LGS in the 2nd to the last round last FNM, I noticed a Soul Sisters deck vs. a Mono White Soldier deck at Table 2, which surprised me. The guy with Champion of the Parish prevailed and most likely split the finals with our BG player. I was at Table 3 and actually pretty scared to play either deck, but luckily got paired against a UR Delver instead (I was on Cruise Burn) the next round.
Legacy - Sneak Show, BR Reanimator, Miracles, UW Stoneblade
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/ Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander - Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build) (dead format for me)
I'm kind of surprised no one has mentioned the big one yet. Play lands where you can fetch basics and conserve your life total. That can be worth a good 4-6 points of life per game.
Tricks involving a blocking kor firewalker and Skullcrack makes it so that he can't really block if there are two mana open. Unless the interaction is missed it only mitigates his effectiveness, however. It is still a great hoser card. Burn might run a black removal spell (i.e. dismember) in it's sideboard, but that would be fairly rare as Combust hits all other relevant targets. Kor firewalker can still end the game.
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Modern Decks
KnightfallGWUR
Azorius Control UW
Burn RBG
That deck would do well vs. Burn. The problem is that it auto-loses to most Combo decks. But you have given players an option if they want to beat Burn, which the title of this thread is.
In some ways, the deck you posted is similar to Pod without the Pod. However, I see the redundancy and specifically Kor Firewalker doing really heavy lifting vs. Burn. At my LGS in the 2nd to the last round last FNM, I noticed a Soul Sisters deck vs. a Mono White Soldier deck at Table 2, which surprised me. The guy with Champion of the Parish prevailed and most likely split the finals with our BG player. I was at Table 3 and actually pretty scared to play either deck, but luckily got paired against a UR Delver instead (I was on Cruise Burn) the next round.
For combo you would have to include some number of counterspells. You get sideboard erase and the new disenchant from Theros block, and swansong is probably quite strong in this type of deck since you don't particularly care about the 2/2 bird (and they certainly aren't racing your lifegain with it). It would need some testing to determine how much ground needs to be given up to burn in order to compensate for the poor combo matchup, but anything with blue and white should theoretically be strong against most combo decks. The other factor to think about is that burn is quite strong against most modern combo decks, and tends to push them out of the meta (ad nauseum combos notwithstanding, but are they actually a force in the meta?). Storm and Griselbanned both pay a lot of life, which is dangerous against burn, and JA storm stumbles out of the gate against eidolon. In a burn heavy meta, you probably aren't facing a lot of combo to begin with, and can really focus on producing degenerate card advantage.
Tron is likely unwinnable though, since you don't get access to sowing salt the same way Jund does. You would have to survive a hit from emrakul to be able to O-ring it, and Karn probably does a number on your board and hand. Pod and Twin you would need to bring in additional removal, but you probably beat them if you can keep them off their combos, since your card quality is much, much higher.
Hmmm... I still haven't see anyone mention how burn could beat kor firewalker.
Sandbag Skullcrack and a bunch of burn spells, then fire them all off on one turn.
You can also attack with Swiftspear and Skullcrack in hand into Kor Firewalker, and if they block, cast Skullcrack to eat the Firewalker. It works like it does against True-Name Nemesis in Legacy; protection prevents all damage, and Skullcrack says damage can't be prevented, so the Firewalker takes 2 from Swiftspear and dies.
Assuming this list actually has a favorable matchup against Burn (which remains to be tested, I assume), then the ideal scenario would be coming up with a deck that is good against the field as a whole, and then arrives at this 60 after sideboarding for the Burn match.
I'm almost positive Kor Firewalker and, to a lesser extent, Obstinate Baloth are not maindeck cards by any means.
Looks like it absolutely canes Burn, Delver, and Affinity, Zoo, or any aggro deck really. Also it looks good against Pod. But with no remands, mana leaks, or ways to kill Deceiver Exarch in the main it has the problem of automatically losing against any combo deck like Scapeshift, Splinter Twin, Tron, Jeskai Ascendancy, etc
Both Bahra (the player of this deck) and Jacob, two famous streamers, are playing RUG midrange lately in the DE, with decent success.
Looking at the actual MODO meta the problem could be Shift actually, but both huge lifegainers and Flux from the SB could do the job.
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I've tried maindeck rhox war monks - they're 100% too slow (require an untap, a swing, and even then they only gain you 3). I've tried maindeck auriok champions, spellskites, oozes, and all combinations of the above. I've added leylines to my sideboards along with artifact lifegain and other anti-burn cards. Nope, they just play destructive revelry or wear // tear and then kill you with Eidolon.
I've just resigned myself to the fact that Burn is 10x more efficient than any other deck in the format except for UR delver, which is equally busted right now with treasure cruise. So you can either play an anti-burn hate deck and lose to UR delver, or you can just assume you're going to lose roughly 20% of your games. It's just way too powerful, has answers to every hate card against it, and there is almost no good way to interact with it.
It's a tier 1/2 legacy deck (sans fireblast) in a format where people need to deal 1-4 damage to themselves just to fix their mana. That isn't even remotely fair considering thopter foundry is somehow overpowered (which is absolutely ridiculous).
Actually, I think GR Tron is poised well against both as long as it's playing Leyline of Sanctity in the board. Pyroclasm and Oblivion Stone stop Delver in its tracks, and them dropping counterspells due to Monastery Swiftspear makes them even easier to resolve. Also, Tron cares surprisingly little about Treasure Cruise, because the game is generally decided one way or the other by the time it's cast. As for Burn, the issue people always point to about Leyline of Sanctity is that Burn can either win with creatures or destroy it. Thing is, either way it's slowed down, and that's all GR Tron needs to beat Burn. It seems every time that Burn has beaten me playing GR Tron, I was just one turn away from winning, and Leyline gives you that turn. Plus, even if they do try to take out Leyline, Tron has the fairly unique ability to Nature's Claim it in response, resulting in it still going away but they at least get 4 life out of it.
Whoa man. There's far more than Fireblast that separates Modern burn from Legacy Burn. Modern Burn also lacks Chain Lightning, Flame Rift, and Sulfuric Vortex. Chain Lightning is a lot better than Bump in the Night and lets you ditch the Black splash. Flame Rift is a Boros Charm that doesn't require a splash and bypasses Leyline of Sanctity. Sulfuric Vortex is astoundingly good against slower decks, and I've seen it singlehandedly win games for Burn in Legacy it would have lost without it.
But perhaps most importantly, it's missing Price of Progress. It's true the shocklands in Modern are more damaging than the dual lands in Legacy, but Price of Progress turns every single nonbasic land your opponents control into a shockland. Any extra damage that the shocklands deal you is more than made up for by the fact that Burn does not have access to Price of Progress.
U Merfolk | GR Tron | WUR Jeskai Control | WBG Abzan Company
EDH:
G Ezuri, Renegade Leader, Fighting for Rivendell
WU Brago, King Eternal, Long Live the King
WUBRG Scion of the Ur-Dragon, Worship the Dragon
The difference is Affinity just folds to hate. It does almost nothing against Burn. Even in the dream situations where you draw and can play all of your hate, unless you can kill them before they draw an answer they will just sandbag their hand full of burn and kill you as soon as they do get it. The difference is in the way burn interacts with its hate compared to Affinity. Against Affinity a single Creeping Corrosion or even Ancient Grudge often just shuts down the entire deck. That's not the case against burn; their answers are too strong.
I actually don't think Treasure Cruise is entirely to blame for how strong Burn has become. I think it's just been a slowly growing in power over time until the deck hit a critical mass of very powerful cards. The deck has potentially 8 strong maindeck answers to lifegain, potentially 8 strong answers to creatures that still go to the dome, 12 Lightning Bolts, and the same suite of creatures the Legacy version runs. It's the Modern equivalent of bringing hand grenades to a water balloon fight.
I initially didn't believe the hype and thought this was a passing phase; as soon as people started taking the deck seriously and playing the appropriate hate the phase would pass. The more I test against the deck however, the more I feel the deck is actually in a tier of its own. I hate to say it but I'm with BaddBusiness on this one. The previously tier one decks just cannot compete with Burn, whether it has Cruise or not.
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Have you actually tested the matchup, and against competent pilots with non budget variants?
I did the same with a treasure cruise UWR control variant and just got killed regardless of resolving 2 helixes while trying to put a clock on. I wish I knew what I was doing wrong since I've tested most of the stuff in this thread, and most of it has either failed, or it's been effective against burn and terrible against everything else in the format.
Soul sisters has been a fringe tier 2 deck since the start of the format, and it has more or less stayed that way. It's good at beating aggro, but it doesn't have the versatility to be a worthwhile consideration in the competitive metagame outside being an effective hate deck against aggro.
As for burn vs. the Legacy variant, Flame rift and chain lightning are completely negligible since they're just replaced by bump in the night and Boros charm in most modern variants. These require a color splash, but that splash pretty much never matters, so the only relevant cards that vary from legacy to modern are vortex, fireblast, and price of progress which results in an extremely similar deck in terms of power level.
As for GR tron, GR tron is terrible against burn. Please, test the matchup against a competent burn pilot instead of expecting 4 leylines to randomly be able to pull 2 wins on game 2 and 3.
Affinity isn't more consistent at killing on turn 4 against disruption.
Burn kills on turn 4 extremely regularly, but unlike affinity, it doesn't give two craps about removal. It's an extremely important distinction that prevents players from interacting with burn, and is fundamentally why burn is a broken deck right now.
That begs the question, why are you worrying about burn if Jeskai Ascendancy combo works in a similar way but wins a turn or two earlier?
U Merfolk | GR Tron | WUR Jeskai Control | WBG Abzan Company
EDH:
G Ezuri, Renegade Leader, Fighting for Rivendell
WU Brago, King Eternal, Long Live the King
WUBRG Scion of the Ur-Dragon, Worship the Dragon
As I just said, I can interact with ascendancy combo via removal. You also can use discard or permission to remove a key piece of the combo and they will flounder at least for a few turns. Burn doesn't care too much if you discard or counter one of their spells since their entire deck is just redundant burn spells, it's just a small speedbump. For burn, you mostly just sit there and wait to die as your removal rots in your hand, or kills a goblin guide after it's already dealt 4 damage to you already.
It's really not that much about the speed. Burn wins turn 4 very consistently, but it's mostly the fact that you can't interact with it in any profitable manner without resorting to a hate deck such as soul sisters or RW lockdown to win g1, and then g2 you are just praying that your sideboard shows up so you have a shot.
You can also add Ricochet Trap to the list since burn is splashing blue for Treasure Cruise, and control decks are responding with Remand. Ricochet Trap is very good against Remand.
Redirect effects are the one area where I sense burn is vulnerable, and I think they are underplayed in modern in general. Redirect and Swerve should probably see more modern play. Imp's Mischief should as well. Personally, I think these cards could lead to blow outs against burn. The targets are endless... if you redirect Searing Blaze or Searing Blood that is devastating for a burn deck. You can even redirect Destructive Revelry protecting your Leyline and destroy Eidolon of the Great Revel. That is a blow out as well.
Will it BEAT burn? Nah.
Will it stall it a bit? Yup, and it's uncounterable life gain against other decks.
As a quick draft:
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Kor Firewalker
2 Scavenging Ooze
4 Kitchen Finks
2 Obstinate Baloth
3 Restoration Angel
2 Thragtusk
3 Oust
3 Treasure Cruise
4 Radiant Fountain
4 Windswept Heath
4 Flooded Strand
2 Breeding Pool
2 Hallowed Fountain
2 Temple Garden
3 Forest
2 Island
2 Plains
Delver is slower than burn, so you have a bit more time to get your big threats online, and out card-advantage them. Oust you can use on your own creatures to stay afloat in the early game, and it combos pretty well with ETB effects. It's a tempo loss, but that's not a big deal if you can reliably out-card-advantage your opponents.
In some ways, the deck you posted is similar to Pod without the Pod. However, I see the redundancy and specifically Kor Firewalker doing really heavy lifting vs. Burn. At my LGS in the 2nd to the last round last FNM, I noticed a Soul Sisters deck vs. a Mono White Soldier deck at Table 2, which surprised me. The guy with Champion of the Parish prevailed and most likely split the finals with our BG player. I was at Table 3 and actually pretty scared to play either deck, but luckily got paired against a UR Delver instead (I was on Cruise Burn) the next round.
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/
Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander -
Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build)(dead format for me)KnightfallGWUR
Azorius Control UW
Burn RBG
For combo you would have to include some number of counterspells. You get sideboard erase and the new disenchant from Theros block, and swansong is probably quite strong in this type of deck since you don't particularly care about the 2/2 bird (and they certainly aren't racing your lifegain with it). It would need some testing to determine how much ground needs to be given up to burn in order to compensate for the poor combo matchup, but anything with blue and white should theoretically be strong against most combo decks. The other factor to think about is that burn is quite strong against most modern combo decks, and tends to push them out of the meta (ad nauseum combos notwithstanding, but are they actually a force in the meta?). Storm and Griselbanned both pay a lot of life, which is dangerous against burn, and JA storm stumbles out of the gate against eidolon. In a burn heavy meta, you probably aren't facing a lot of combo to begin with, and can really focus on producing degenerate card advantage.
Tron is likely unwinnable though, since you don't get access to sowing salt the same way Jund does. You would have to survive a hit from emrakul to be able to O-ring it, and Karn probably does a number on your board and hand. Pod and Twin you would need to bring in additional removal, but you probably beat them if you can keep them off their combos, since your card quality is much, much higher.
Sandbag Skullcrack and a bunch of burn spells, then fire them all off on one turn.
You can also attack with Swiftspear and Skullcrack in hand into Kor Firewalker, and if they block, cast Skullcrack to eat the Firewalker. It works like it does against True-Name Nemesis in Legacy; protection prevents all damage, and Skullcrack says damage can't be prevented, so the Firewalker takes 2 from Swiftspear and dies.
| Ad Nauseam
| Infect
Big Johnny.
I'm almost positive Kor Firewalker and, to a lesser extent, Obstinate Baloth are not maindeck cards by any means.
Both Bahra (the player of this deck) and Jacob, two famous streamers, are playing RUG midrange lately in the DE, with decent success.
Looking at the actual MODO meta the problem could be Shift actually, but both huge lifegainers and Flux from the SB could do the job.
- L
"The problem isn't when Scissors says Rock is overpowered, it's when Paper says it is."
-Mark Rosewater