Thinking about building Burn, this is the list im looking at using. I know my SB is way over 15 cards, i just wanted to order extra options so that i can adjust based on the meta. Would love to hear some feedback!
Ensnaring Bridge is really not what Burn wants to be doing. You could drop a land (I'd say a Sacred Foundry) from your list without losing consistency. I'd also drop a Searing Blaze in the main because with only 10 fetches it's harder to trigger landfall. The freed-up slots can be used for 2x Lightning Helix, which does some real work in racing situations. You may also want to get yourself some Skullcracks, against decks that have lifegain options my experience is that the 4 Atarka's Command's are not enough. When it comes to graveyard hate, I'm becoming convinced that we want Rest in Peace over Grafdigger's Cage. Grafdigger's only 'pauses' the opponent's plan until they remove it, while Rest in Peace means they can't even start their plan until the card is gone. Not stopping the relevant decks from grabbing cards from their libraries is less of a concern since those decks are generally a good matchup and you don't want too many cards that don't deal damage against those decks anyways.
Ok the thing is I could play a more efficient creature shell i. e. Eschewing the entire Dragon package for somewhat more efficient creatures. But, I feel splashing W gives the archetype an answer to the decks U/R spells has issues with and one that fares far better in the mirror. The Dragon package allows for a more efficient spell package and difficult to remove top end finisher's., thus not having to completely rely upon Vision's and chips with Thermo's. I suppose if you don't want me to discuss this further I'll not bother you anymore.
Another thing that makes your deck vastly different from what this thread is currently discussing is 1) you're not running Thermo-Alchemist around which this deck was built, since it gives extra value to the deck's spells and 2) a lot of the key cards in your version will rotate out at the end of the month whereas "our" version just loses an easily replaceable creature-burn card (Fiery Impulse, replaced by Galvanic Bombardment) and baby-Jace for those who were running him.
To clarify, nobody is making a personal attack here. In Modern the different Abzan decks have their own threads because they work differently. In the same way your deck, although also U/R and with some spells in common, has such a different approach that at least personally I feel that the discussion for both decks should be separated.
Do you all advise bringing in Destructive Revelry versus Merfolk, for Spreading Seas? I find when I do, I'm land screwing myself in order to potentially destroy an enchantment that would land screw me. Like, it seems a self-fulfilling prophecy. Is this everyone else's experience or am I missing something here? Anyone competent with Merfolk that could assist me?
How are you land screwing yourself by bringing in Destructive Revelry? I hope you're not taking out land for it...so unless you mean you're fetching green options where you'd normally fetch white options first I don't see what you're talking about...
I would only play Viridian Corrupter if I was to play around Chalice Of The Void(and if I owned a copy :p). Thing is though, that you play 3 Spell Pierce after sideboard(at least you should!) for Chalice on 1, and this is the exact number that the decks are utilizing it have as well. By my experience, Red/Green Valakut/Titanshift should play 3 copies in the sb, and 3 Spell pierce in total( 2 MD + 1SD ) as a counter to their total 3 Chalice Of The Void(that is going to be used on 1) sounds good enough. Other than that, I have no Corrupter and I am very happy with it. You do not really need it other than getting out of weird Chalice situations(and in this case you could go for Unravel The Zther)- the "kills maindeck Spellskite argument do not cut it for me. I play 1 Twisted Image in the main but if you fear a lot of MD Skites, go for 2!
2 maindeck Spell pierce is something I was trying out for a long, but I decided to cut it. You really do not want to draw 2 Spell pierces as Owen is saying HERE. Having an extra pump that can occasionally protect you from Lightning Bolt in the form of Groundswell is really big! 2 more spell pierce in the sideboard is A MUST though if you cut Corrupter as it's the only out(most of the times, yay) against a resolved Chalice on 1.
Also, want to talk about something else. Lists usually run 2 Twisted Images + 1 Dismember main. I reversed it some time ago, and never looked back(unless main skites become a thing). I have even Dismembered a turn 1 Birds Of Paradise with success while being able slowing down significantly Jund via using it on opposing Tarmogoyf has upped my win rate vs Jund which is our worst matchup!
Your logic on the Spell Pierces makes no sense at all. How many copies an opponent plays is far less relevant than 'how hard does it become to win the game if they play it'. If an opponent only has a singleton of a card, but if they play that card then you're guaranteed to lose the game, you need to dedicate a lot more hate to that card than you would need to dedicate to a card that hinders your play but you can play around.
In the case of a Chalice of the Void against infect, it seems about the same as against Burn (with which I am much more familiar): it's annoying, you want to remove or prevent it if you can, but you can still win through it if you draw well enough. This is the reason why relatively few ways to stop the Chalice is enough. Also, rather than Unravel the Aether, I'd imagine you generally want Nature's Claim since it's cheaper and the lifegain is largely irrelevant to you. If you want to hit a resolved Chalice, the Viridian Corrupter is required since the Chalice will be on either 1 or 2, so you can't use Nature's Claim or Naturalize/Unravel the Aether.
Finished my U/G infect list a couple of weeks ago and started with owen's list.
Something that i keep noticing is that people like kitchen finks for a burn match up. Are people seeing a lot of mono red burn in their meta's ?
I tried finks and found that naya burn is the burn in my area. They bring in path to exile game two and i bring in finks.
I play finks gain 2 life they path it and move on. It felt woefully inadequate paying 3 mana for 2 life.
With the rise of naya burn (did very well in the gp's on the weekend) is finks still the go to answer to it when they sinply path it ?
Ive decided to go with spellskites in my meta. It works well against burn. I can protect infect creatures and i can redirect spells in the mirror match. Im running one pulse in the sb to satisfy my desire for life gain against naya burn.
Thoughts comments ?
Speaking as a burn player who dabbles a little in infect, I think finks is really strong. I don't want to path your finks if I can help it, because that gives you access to extra mana which makes it easier for you to have protection for your creature at any given point. As the burn player, my goal is to keep your creatures off the table while grinding you down. I have to be the control deck because if I go aggro chances are you're gonna combo me to death.
Also, don't underestimate that 2 life, it usually means that I need an extra spell to kill you, which means you just bought yourself an extra turn where you can set up/draw into the kill.
So yeah, I can't speak for other match-ups, but against burn, finks is a house.
Rain of Gore seems like a pretty good way to stop Soul Sisters and infinite-life-combo's though. It's not mainboard material but I think it can be a decent sideboard card for Mardu burn?
The question as well is how you feel about Searing Blaze on conjunction with Wild Nacatl. Do you think it's more necessary to keep in a full playset to be able to clear a path for your cats more consistently? I see more and more lists lately cutting Blaze in the main to 2 or 3(or none). Personally I've never been a huge fan of the card being occasionally completely dead if your opponent doesn't have any creatures. But I figured the value proposition might be quite different when cats are involved.
This is very curious to see, personally I've actually moved up to 12 fetches so I could run the full set of 4 Searing Blazes since they have been performing so well for me in Naya Burn (without Nacatl).
I personally don't own the Jaces so my current list has 3 Bedlam Revelers in the main and still I feel like I could use the draw spells, so it seems that they are not the right answer here.
I really like Anticipate since you're not discarding so you run less of a risk of decking yourself. I'm already playing two Tormenting Voice and I feel like that's the right number. Pieces of the Puzzle might be what we want, but it does seem slow...
Personally I've felt like the deck has a lot of mana even without Fevered Visions out so I'll probably try dropping 2 land and 1 Bedlam Reveler for 3 Anticipates. I could just be experiencing variance and overcorrecting though. Dispel seems like another potential cut for me because I have yet to get a lot of value out of it, but that might be due to me not really having had opportunity to use it. I find myself either tapping out for sorceries or holding mana up for instants that my opponent then plays around...
How many instants do you have that you can play on their turn? Playing with the deck, I've noticed that I like a good mix of Instants and Sorceries. Most of the burn versions tend to more sorceries, but the instants allow for more tempo tricks.
Unsubstantiate is a very good card for tempo plays, especially since it resets creatures like Kalitas and deals with Ormendahl, Profane Prince quote nicely. (Watch them crumble after they sack their board to Abbey just to have their Prince returned to their hand.) If you can prevent those chunks of lifegain, then you can usually beat them. Unsubstantiate will also allow you to stop something like Collective Defiance.
I think it's a mistake to not be running some kind of card draw or filtering since you can often just start chaining spells together for more Alchemist triggers / Prowess triggers / or Thing counters. I like Anticipate to dig for more stuff. For that reason, I'll almost always put lands into play when I have them. More lands = more spells to be cast.
Having played a few MTGO leagues with the deck over the last weekend, I agree with your sentiment. With the current incarnation I feel like the deck isn't consistent enough. Sometimes I'm winning big, but most of the time I'm trying not to die. In the absence of more instant-speed removal that can go to the face, I think a version with more card-draw and possibly less land is likely to work better. Although the risk of having to drop a Fevered Visions in the graveyard seems very real...
I think we can agree that burn has room for some cards that are "meant to simply exist" - which is a fancy way of saying that they lack an ETB effect and/or haste.Tasigur is one of those cards. Simply by existing he earns value and is a threat. Same as Lavamancer. The difference is the resources required to generate value from them, their cost and efficacy.
I really don't see the point in continuing to condemn Wild Nacatl. There is more than ample evidence to suggest that the card is an option for Naya burn. I think one important qualifier here is that we acknowledge that as the metagame shifts, whatever an optimal build might be shifts with it. While Nacatl might be good in one metagame, maxing searing blaze maindeck might be correct in another. Trying to parse exactly what is best at any moment is valuable, but in the long run many more cards are options which may not fit in the present "Best 75". Whether Nacatl is the best-in-slot presently in location xyz is besides the point - he is proven to be a workhorse when the environment is right.
Nobody is condemning Wild Nacatl, I think everyone agrees the card is a valid option for burn, your opponent in this discussion is merely trying to make the point that it's not automatically the best option just because there are high-finishing lists that use it.
With any deck, but especially with Burn, you have to base your decisions on all of the variables, not just one or some. Tournament results are valid, but are only a single variable amongst many. Blindly trusting in them and playing the exact list that "did well last time" is potentially setting yourself up for failure. You seem to be making roughly the same point so I don't understand why you're placing such special importance on Wild Nacatl.
I main dredge and I wouldn't board in grafdiggers cage specifically for it, if dredge is an issue for you run leyline of the void, or use rakdos charms, rakdos hoses the yard and its useful against other match ups. Cage is actually really bad grave yard hate it does nothing against living end and its minimally annoying to dredge.
I don't run Black and I also run Rest in Peace. I don't quite understand why Grafdigger's Cage is bad if it prevents creatures from entering the field from the yard.
If your running rest in peace then don't even have cage in your 75 whole point of burn is consistency to many sideboards that don't focus on killing your opponent and burn becomes a very bad deck.
I don't think anyone is thinking of running both, the question is which of the two we want. With the new resurgence of Dredge, I think the answer is Rest in Peace rather than Grafdigger's Cage but that may be dependant on one's local meta.
How has 3 color burn been doing against 2 color burn? I have someone who says you rly want to stay 2 color bc i run 3 kinda 4 color burn but ran 3 color for awhile.
I tell u one thing, as a mono red burn player, I'd much rather see Naya running Nyan Nyan Cat than Red White burn when the spells start flinging. We had about 3 other burn players besides myself, and they all went 2-2 or 1-3, all Naya. I went 3-1 with mono red.
Naya is just too greedy with the mana. Red white is the sweet spot. Boros charm is the bees knees. That and lightning helix in the mirror.
I just flat out don't agree with the assertion that Naya is too greedy on the mana...Most games, my mana base deals me 4-5 damage but in a Boros build I would have taken just as much. The tradeoff is getting a very strong toolbox (atarka's) and a strictly better way to deal with enchantments and artifacts (destructive revelry). With all the people playing Burn, if Naya mana was too greedy then people would have shifted away from it ages ago. Mono-red burn may seem more consistent, but Naya burn is achieving far more consistent results.
So in your guys' opinions, what is the best creature to put in place of guide until i get 3 more? I used 3 of my 4 guides as trade fodder when they were high to help a friend out who was in need of stuff his LGS didnt and would never have.
My experience playing with and without guide is that he can't really be replaced. Most people will agree that after guide/eidolon/swiftspear/possibly nacatl, either Hellspark Elemental or Keldon Marauders is the next best thing. Some people value the various lightning elementals higher but in real-world scenario's Hellspark Elemental and Keldon Marauders outperform those. I tried Vexing Devil but he only works against decks that you're strong against anyways. Decks that have good removal will just let you resolve him and then kill him off.
So here is a Wr Humans list that i have been play testing, it is extremely fast and usually wins by turn 5 or 6 vs the eldrazi ramp and emerge decks the only time i really have a bad match-up is vs the BG delirium decks when they have back to back languish to wipe the board. i would like some input for possible tweeks and suggestions.
**snip decklist**
This is pedantic, but a deck that plays only 4 1-drops and has 3 and even 4 CMC spells is not going to be "extremely fast". The version that plays mainly 1-drops with a few 2-drops is extremely fast. It has turn 4 kill possibilities.
On a more practical note, since you're playing red already, you could try Reckless Bushwhacker, but since you've cut almost all the 1-drops I'm not sure how good that will be.
This is exactly what I am looking at right now. The W/g Humans deck I am building and testing isn't as low to the ground as W/r, but it offers an alternative to recovering from a board wipe, but with a similar outlook of not overextending your hand due to the reality of board wipes.
I can sideboard in bigger creatures for my 1-drops if I need to go long.
I can sideboard in more removal against creature heavy decks.
I probably need to add Hallowed Moonlight to my SB for CoCo instead of Gideon
If I am playing the mirror or a creature heavy deck I want to try a lifelink strategy of Lone Rider, Gisela, and Heron's Grace Champion to keep them from being able to kill me. This is also good in combatting a wipe, having 25+ life gives me time to recover.
I am a little concerned about curving out at 4CMC and only having 20 Lands, but I haven't had issues yet.
That looks like an interesting list, have you done any testing with it yet? It looks like you can't really attack with Lambholt Pacifist all that often since getting your creatures to 4+ will require at least 2 cards in that deck, so I'm thinking another creature might fill the slot better.
Ensnaring Bridge is really not what Burn wants to be doing. You could drop a land (I'd say a Sacred Foundry) from your list without losing consistency. I'd also drop a Searing Blaze in the main because with only 10 fetches it's harder to trigger landfall. The freed-up slots can be used for 2x Lightning Helix, which does some real work in racing situations. You may also want to get yourself some Skullcracks, against decks that have lifegain options my experience is that the 4 Atarka's Command's are not enough. When it comes to graveyard hate, I'm becoming convinced that we want Rest in Peace over Grafdigger's Cage. Grafdigger's only 'pauses' the opponent's plan until they remove it, while Rest in Peace means they can't even start their plan until the card is gone. Not stopping the relevant decks from grabbing cards from their libraries is less of a concern since those decks are generally a good matchup and you don't want too many cards that don't deal damage against those decks anyways.
Another thing that makes your deck vastly different from what this thread is currently discussing is 1) you're not running Thermo-Alchemist around which this deck was built, since it gives extra value to the deck's spells and 2) a lot of the key cards in your version will rotate out at the end of the month whereas "our" version just loses an easily replaceable creature-burn card (Fiery Impulse, replaced by Galvanic Bombardment) and baby-Jace for those who were running him.
To clarify, nobody is making a personal attack here. In Modern the different Abzan decks have their own threads because they work differently. In the same way your deck, although also U/R and with some spells in common, has such a different approach that at least personally I feel that the discussion for both decks should be separated.
How are you land screwing yourself by bringing in Destructive Revelry? I hope you're not taking out land for it...so unless you mean you're fetching green options where you'd normally fetch white options first I don't see what you're talking about...
Your logic on the Spell Pierces makes no sense at all. How many copies an opponent plays is far less relevant than 'how hard does it become to win the game if they play it'. If an opponent only has a singleton of a card, but if they play that card then you're guaranteed to lose the game, you need to dedicate a lot more hate to that card than you would need to dedicate to a card that hinders your play but you can play around.
In the case of a Chalice of the Void against infect, it seems about the same as against Burn (with which I am much more familiar): it's annoying, you want to remove or prevent it if you can, but you can still win through it if you draw well enough. This is the reason why relatively few ways to stop the Chalice is enough. Also, rather than Unravel the Aether, I'd imagine you generally want Nature's Claim since it's cheaper and the lifegain is largely irrelevant to you. If you want to hit a resolved Chalice, the Viridian Corrupter is required since the Chalice will be on either 1 or 2, so you can't use Nature's Claim or Naturalize/Unravel the Aether.
Speaking as a burn player who dabbles a little in infect, I think finks is really strong. I don't want to path your finks if I can help it, because that gives you access to extra mana which makes it easier for you to have protection for your creature at any given point. As the burn player, my goal is to keep your creatures off the table while grinding you down. I have to be the control deck because if I go aggro chances are you're gonna combo me to death.
Also, don't underestimate that 2 life, it usually means that I need an extra spell to kill you, which means you just bought yourself an extra turn where you can set up/draw into the kill.
So yeah, I can't speak for other match-ups, but against burn, finks is a house.
This is very curious to see, personally I've actually moved up to 12 fetches so I could run the full set of 4 Searing Blazes since they have been performing so well for me in Naya Burn (without Nacatl).
I really like Anticipate since you're not discarding so you run less of a risk of decking yourself. I'm already playing two Tormenting Voice and I feel like that's the right number. Pieces of the Puzzle might be what we want, but it does seem slow...
Personally I've felt like the deck has a lot of mana even without Fevered Visions out so I'll probably try dropping 2 land and 1 Bedlam Reveler for 3 Anticipates. I could just be experiencing variance and overcorrecting though. Dispel seems like another potential cut for me because I have yet to get a lot of value out of it, but that might be due to me not really having had opportunity to use it. I find myself either tapping out for sorceries or holding mana up for instants that my opponent then plays around...
Having played a few MTGO leagues with the deck over the last weekend, I agree with your sentiment. With the current incarnation I feel like the deck isn't consistent enough. Sometimes I'm winning big, but most of the time I'm trying not to die. In the absence of more instant-speed removal that can go to the face, I think a version with more card-draw and possibly less land is likely to work better. Although the risk of having to drop a Fevered Visions in the graveyard seems very real...
Nobody is condemning Wild Nacatl, I think everyone agrees the card is a valid option for burn, your opponent in this discussion is merely trying to make the point that it's not automatically the best option just because there are high-finishing lists that use it.
With any deck, but especially with Burn, you have to base your decisions on all of the variables, not just one or some. Tournament results are valid, but are only a single variable amongst many. Blindly trusting in them and playing the exact list that "did well last time" is potentially setting yourself up for failure. You seem to be making roughly the same point so I don't understand why you're placing such special importance on Wild Nacatl.
I don't think anyone is thinking of running both, the question is which of the two we want. With the new resurgence of Dredge, I think the answer is Rest in Peace rather than Grafdigger's Cage but that may be dependant on one's local meta.
I just flat out don't agree with the assertion that Naya is too greedy on the mana...Most games, my mana base deals me 4-5 damage but in a Boros build I would have taken just as much. The tradeoff is getting a very strong toolbox (atarka's) and a strictly better way to deal with enchantments and artifacts (destructive revelry). With all the people playing Burn, if Naya mana was too greedy then people would have shifted away from it ages ago. Mono-red burn may seem more consistent, but Naya burn is achieving far more consistent results.
My experience playing with and without guide is that he can't really be replaced. Most people will agree that after guide/eidolon/swiftspear/possibly nacatl, either Hellspark Elemental or Keldon Marauders is the next best thing. Some people value the various lightning elementals higher but in real-world scenario's Hellspark Elemental and Keldon Marauders outperform those. I tried Vexing Devil but he only works against decks that you're strong against anyways. Decks that have good removal will just let you resolve him and then kill him off.
This is pedantic, but a deck that plays only 4 1-drops and has 3 and even 4 CMC spells is not going to be "extremely fast". The version that plays mainly 1-drops with a few 2-drops is extremely fast. It has turn 4 kill possibilities.
On a more practical note, since you're playing red already, you could try Reckless Bushwhacker, but since you've cut almost all the 1-drops I'm not sure how good that will be.
That looks like an interesting list, have you done any testing with it yet? It looks like you can't really attack with Lambholt Pacifist all that often since getting your creatures to 4+ will require at least 2 cards in that deck, so I'm thinking another creature might fill the slot better.