Ravnica Allegiance brought Burn two potential improvements: Skewer the Critics and Light Up the Stage. Let’s try to figure out whether these cards actually constitute an improvement or not, and if so, how big of an improvement.
Skewer the CriticsLight Up the Stage
The problem is that we don’t have a proper control group for one of the two cards. Virtually none of Toronto’s Burn players failed to update their decks with Skewer the Critics. A grand total of five players ran none, and all of them failed to get to Sunday. That may make Burn decks with Skewer better, but it could just as well mean that players who don’t keep up with trends are generally more prone to losing.
Across the GPs in Port- and Oakland, 17.9% of the then still Skewerless Burn players qualified for the second day. 20% is an improvement but falls within the range of natural fluctuation. I’m inclined to take the almost universal adoption of Skewer as evidence of the card’s merits. Though that is all we have to go by, really. The data tells us no more than that it wasn’t any kind of game changer.
Light Up the Stage is a more interesting case, if only because we find the perfect control group within our sample. Among the Burn players whose lists are available to me, 45 ran Light Up the Stage and 45 didn’t. This success story is one the card itself couldn’t live up to, unfortunately. Only six players who lit up the stage made it to the second stage of the tournament, whereas 12 of those without Light did.
Once there, light Burn players again fared way worse than heavy Burn players. None of the versions with Light Up the Stage placed anyone within the Top 100, whereas five of the versions without it did. For reference, here are the lists of the highest finisher with a full playset and of the highest finisher with zero copies:"
While not statistically significant, 45 decks with and 45 decks without Light Up the Stage is a convenient comparison, if nothing else.
As the saying goes, "the proof is in the pudding." LUtS didn't do as well as when it wasn't ran. Draw isn't what we want unless there's dmg attached to it. It's been proven over and over again through the yrs that unless it's a crazy draw spell, like T. Cruise, or it deals dmg and draws us a card(s) then it really should be in our lists. I really wish we'd stop jumping on red draw until it does dmg and draws. Til then, we don't want it tbh imo. Even Tobi said that LUtS burn win % is less is a fact from statistics. That's from 2 GPS. I'm good. No LUtS for me.
So any mono red lists out there? I'm interested to see if anyone is revisiting thunderous wrath or thinking about it now in a mono red or possibly rakdos list. We have enough bolts that I could see running magma jet with t. wrath.
How can you compare the two? That's Ludacris. One is 4 dmg every time. The other is draw 2 and 2/3 of the outcomes makes this card worse than charm the third option means you deal 6 damage but you pay one for spectacle and then two more for the bolts. If you draw boros charm and something and have the Mana to play both then you still end up paying way too much Mana compared to just playing boros charm in the first place and nine times out of 10 if you're casting stage you're probably at the point in the game where your hand is empty which means your opponent should be within one bolt range of being dead and instead you drew a card that gives them an extra turn to do something so that you can draw two cards that you might get value out of or just blank. I'd rather take the hundred percent chance of dealing for damage over the 33 and a third percent chance that I'll deal more damage than charm for more Mana
Rix Madi isn't something I feel we want. If you're doing spectacle, he's slow as can be to draw 3 cards. lutS would be better imo. confidant is too much pain in my book as well and I'm not a huge fan of bite. The only black cards we want tbh are rakdos charm in SB and bump in the main. Maybe Gontis M. but it's dependent on use loving life on n 2 separate turns which isn't that hard. Bite is ok but I think we could get away with just "bolts" and searing blaze with the usual 12-14 creatures and 18-20 lands
Ok. I get ya but even then, we can just not run LutS since it isn't something we HAVE to run. Eidolon is sorta an auto include due to it's ability to just deal tons of damage in certain mus and others it can deal 2 minimally. Personally I won't be taking out eidolons and def won't be running any kind of draw spell unless it deals dmg as well or is a better version of magma jet I think they should have done some kind of deal "x" dmg and surveil "x"
Maybe I'm crazy but the wording on eidolon hasn't changed and it says anything with converted Mana cost 3 or less so tell me how the spectacle cards has changed the fact that every spell in our deck that we play hurts us if eidolon is in play. From what I'm understanding you're making it seem like the fact that we have two additional one drops means that eidolon is hurting us more when it shouldn't be considering that if you're taking out two drops those two drops would be hurting us as well from eidolon. And even with eidolon hurting us you should still be winning the race since it's only doing to to us while we are doing three to them. Tumi skewer should work in just about any build of burn as a for of because our deck is designed to deal them damage not to mention it will make them do stuff on their turn as far as paying life two things such as shock lands. It is essentially another one Mana 3 damage spell in our Deck. The questionable card should be staged as it doesn't necessarily help us count to 20 and that may be a better card suited for mono red or rakdos burn in my opinion. As far as shrine is concerned it may fit in a mono red but I probably won't play it in mine due to it not impacting the board the turn it comes into play and yes it is inevitability but I I think it is more of a metagame choice
6th place in Indy had 4 LutS in the main... I still don't think it's correct. Especially as a 4 of. I'm looking at mono red ATM and theroy crafting a list and you shouldn't need it imo. Honestly... I'm gonna build mono red with t wrath as a 2-of and sb my splash
Mono red is 6th. Nice. And I've advocated that we play our splash lands in the side a long time ago but we didn't rly have a choice then. We needed the main deck splash at that time
So idt we should give up enchant hate. All other players know theres a new bolt in town. I think ppl know how good burn was to begin with and how we rly needed only 1 more decent bolt. I'm sure people know burn is coming. Statistics show the past not the future. What do you guys think?
As the saying goes, "the proof is in the pudding." LUtS didn't do as well as when it wasn't ran. Draw isn't what we want unless there's dmg attached to it. It's been proven over and over again through the yrs that unless it's a crazy draw spell, like T. Cruise, or it deals dmg and draws us a card(s) then it really should be in our lists. I really wish we'd stop jumping on red draw until it does dmg and draws. Til then, we don't want it tbh imo. Even Tobi said that LUtS burn win % is less is a fact from statistics. That's from 2 GPS. I'm good. No LUtS for me.
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