Green seems to be out of style in my meta right now so there's not a whole lot of instant creature buffing going on out there. I can pretty much take whatever creatures I see at face value and not worry about a random 1/1 suddenly becoming something more than a chump blocker.
Creature kills are a bit of a concern but not something that overly concerns me. Black isn't played much in my meta, and when it is, they don't run many creature kills. White is very prevalent (i would say 75% of decks are white) so there's a good number of day of judgments and swords to plowshares going around, but as of right now the people with swords tend to misplay it and leave creatures alive until their damage will become lethal.
When it comes to day of judgment, I have the benefit of a well known meta. I know which white players are and aren't using the card, and the card doesn't see play until 4 mana, meaning in most situations it's a final turn play if the white player goes first.
Anyways, in my area we get between 20 and 30 people for tournaments every 2 weeks. Between 1/2 and 2/3 of those people are acquaintances and we work on our decks together. The end result is we're all pretty familiar with everyones decks. The majority of decks that get brought to tournaments, I can give complete decklists for off the top of my head. The result is a meta that's pretty well known, and that helps a lot when it comes to gauging various situations and figuring out if it's the right time to use a reckless abandon, or if I should wait a turn.
I'm running 4 reckless abandons and 11 creatures, but I think I'm going to drop 2 mountains for Kiln Fiends bringing the total to 13 creatures. Reckless abandon typically gets used on the turn I'm going for the kill, but not always. It's good to use on Hellsparks any time after they attack, and Keldon Marauders after they get their swing in on their second turn. Goblin Guides and Kiln Fiends it seems to me, need to be sacrificed after they get their final swing in. If they don't work out well, I'll change it to Searing Blaze.
Hmm, Slith Firewalker doesn't seem all that good to me. It's at best a turn 2 drop meaning that if unblocked each turn it does a maximum of 6-3-1 damage depending on when it hits play. Since chances are high it will be blocked once, if not twice, that's making it 2 mana for 3 damage, basically an incinerate that's vulnerable to removal.
You're right that Kiln Fiend is vulnerable to removal and is a potential 0 damage but the same could be said of almost all of our spells, which are vulnerable to counters, and thus a potential 0 damage. If the argument is that the creature is slow, I agree. It's a card that will get 2 and sometimes 1 round to attack, but when it does attack it attacks for a lot. If Kiln Fiend isn't the right card to add in though (probably as a 2 of, in place of 2 land), what is? Searing Blaze? Incinerate?
Dredge is strong in my meta, and as a result everyone is running 4 tormods basically. I've had some desperate opponents against me sideboard in tormods simply to stop my hellsparks from coming back. I'm thinking if I add in Lavamancer, I'll be even more vulnerable to graveyard hate. Plus it would require me to pickup fetchlands and have a tougher fight against a mirror match since they're not running fetchs. Lavamancer isn't a bad card, I'm just not convinced he's the right creature for me to be running.
I don't know what creature slits is.
So is 12 creatures the ideal? In that case, I can't figure out what I would cut. I'm not really unhappy with any of my creatures right now. My Hellsparks are great, and so far have been the MVP of my creatures. Goblin Guide is pretty good at any time, so I can't see myself cutting him. That just leaves Keldon Marauders, they've never really excelled for me but I can't justify cutting them when they're 5 damage for 2 mana (and a great reckless abandon target) while Hellsparks stay in and are a potential 6 (in practice 5 it seems) for 4 mana.
I read the previous discussion on it, and see in the primer that Kiln Fiend is a bad card, but can anyone tell me why? When I look at the card, what I see is a card that either doubles my bolts if the Kiln Fiend can get through unblocked, or in the worst case, a creature that's about equal to searing blaze.
First with the doubling bolts, all of the main spells hit for 3 damage, by adding a +3/0 to the creature, if it's unblocked it then contributes another 3 damage. Then, in the worst case scenario the creature is going to be blocked. In this situation you can bolt the opponents blocker before attacking, then use the powerup on the Kiln Fiend to do the 3 damage anyways. In this situation it's allowing you to do 3 to a creature and 3 to a player, just like Searing Blaze.
I realize the card does have a few weaknesses, namely not having haste or trample, but those can be mitigated. The lack of haste lets an opponent get a blocker out, but this is also true of Keldon Marauders which happens to be a highly ranked card. The other weakness, the lack of trample only applies when blockers are present, and you can bolt and then power up the kiln fiend to ensure blockers aren't present.
It seems to me, that at worst including it simply makes your deck move at the same speed, while it has the potential to do far more.
Anyways, here's the deck list I'm running right now (it came in first at a local tournament this weekend, so it's not all bad... even if I'm not playing in the most competitive meta around)
I was thinking of expanding the number of creatures to include Kiln Fiend and reducing the number of lands. The result would be slightly more mulligans but no need to run Magma Jet to avoid mana flooding. The deck would look something like:
Currently, the Sulfuric Vortexes are in my sideboard but I use them in many games since life gain is rather popular in my meta. For the same reason Price of Progress sits in my sideboard, most of my opponents use basics. By being able to get rid of those 4 mountains, I can then include more situational use cards in my sideboard as well.
Thoughts? Am I completely misguided on my thinking here? Am I adding too many creatures, and I should look at removing a creature for the Kiln Fiend rather than land?
Have you read the primer on the first page of the thread? I'd recommend it, as it talks specifically about sideboards and Reckless Abandon.
In general, the best thing to do before posting in a thread is to read the first post and the most recent page or two of posts. This gives you both a fundamental understanding as well as an idea of what folks have been talking about recently. Reading the entire thread is best of course, but who has the time? =) Just a friendly 2c!
Yep, I read it, I think I stated so in my post. I've also read roughly the first and last 50 pages of this thread (I did skip a few posts here and there though). I'll try to read the middle of the thread soon.
When it comes to Reckless Abandon it seemed to me that the big negative against it is it means using cards that aren't the best damage sources in order to make use of one very efficient card. Using the list of creatures that aren't bad, very few have synergy with the card, if it's being run the obvious choice is to run creatures that die at the end of a turn and/or have an additional effect when they die. Hellsparks and Marauders both fit that criteria (and hellsparks can come back after death so you can play it on turn two, then unearth on turn 3 or 4 without issue) though hellspark is inefficient in terms of damage:mana.
However if it's a bad card, then it's a bad card and needs to go. The question I have is, what's better taking into consideration the game environment around here (hence the reason I tried to give lots of information on the meta)?
When it comes to the primers sideboard information, it's a great starting place but general information tends to be generalized and a sideboard is something that gets tailored for whatever meta you're going to be up against. It's not designed to give specific information to every possible scenario, and in this scenario it's less than helpful since most decks aren't well developed.
Usually I bring Ratchet Bomb against Dredge, Countertop and Zoo, and it's useful to get rid of COP: Red, Chill, Chalice of the Voids ect... Which you don't have in your meta. So I'd suggest to take something else that works. After all, sideboard is something that you should make according to your meta. Primer's sideboard is general sideboard, perfect for unknown meta. And like you said, price is more like a sideboard card if you never see developed meta decks.
I actually hadn't thought about Ratchet Bomb against Dredge, I was thinking of my creatures having some built in Dredge hate since most of them goto the graveyard after a turn or two (or after a Reckless Abandon), them dying allows me to also take out an opponents bridges which I figured would be sufficient to slow Dredge down long enough to get a win. Maybe I'm wrong on that though, I've never played against Dredge when using burn so it's all just theory and experience with how long it takes the Dredge players around me to go off.
CoP: Red is a good point, and one I didn't think of. White is the most common color here and after thinking about it, I can pinpoint a couple of players that do use CoP, and there's probably some using it that I'm not thinking of. Fortunately, it's in the SB already so I don't need to find room for it. That leaves the question though of how to work Sulfuric Vortex in. The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced I need that in the SB.
So I'm just getting back into playing magic after a break of about 12 years, and I've been trying a few various decks. Myself and a few friends have started up our own tournaments in our area and are getting a fairly decent turnout I think considering it's not a long established thing (20-30 people each). Our local meta is pretty much undeveloped. It consists mainly of random creature decks that wouldn't be considered competitive (saporling, kithkin, goblin, etc), a life gain deck or two, and a small handful of dredge and merfolk decks. With the top two decks so far (first and second in all 4 tournaments so far) being a goblin/burn hybrid deck and a blue/green polymorph deck. Currently, it's totally devoid of chill, chalice, FoW, and probably (about 85% sure) hymn and mental misstep. However, I expect it to develop a bit over time although it will probably develop slowly (about 1 legacy tournament every 6 weeks).
So, with that in mind I was thinking about playing a burn deck based on the idea that I have access to some good board sweepers for all the creature decks, can race just about any deck in the meta, and don't have to spend a fortune on a good deck.
I've read the primer and a lot of the posts in this thread, plus some of the other discussions on burn. Here's what I'm planning to run right now:
I decided to go with Hellspark Elemental because I'm running Reckless Abandon, the unearth ability on the Hellspark gives me a few more targets for Abandon without making me go past 11 creatures in the deck. I'm not sure if this is the best choice or not since Hellspark is at best a 3 for 2 spell, but in play testing on MWS so far, I've had the extra point of mana often enough.
Reckless Abandon seems to work well with most creatures being sacrificial in the first place. The only one I really don't want to sacrifice other than for a kill shot is the goblin guide.
Keldon Marauders I decided to only put in 3 of rather than 4 because it's slower. Maybe I'm not thinking about this right however. When I look at the card I see 5 damage for 2 mana which is great, but at the same time that 5 damage is spread over 3 turns (2 if I sac him to a reckless abandon). The problem with that to me is this deck should be winning no later than turn 5 and in testing it's pretty typical to be a turn 4 win. Since the damage is spread over 3 turns and the marauders don't have haste, in a 4 turn game on turn 2 he's a 5 for 2, turn 3 he's a 4 for 2, and turn 4 he's a 1 for 2. In a 5 turn game he's a 5 for 2 on turns 2 and 3, 4 for 2 on turn 4, and 1 for 2 on turn 5. In a 3 turn game which the deck does occasionally get he's never better than a 4 for 2 and potentially a 1 for 2. Basically, it just screams bad top deck to me since I really don't want to see it on turns 3 or 4 (especially 4), so I reduced it a little.
Magma Jet is my other questionable card. I don't like the idea of paying 2 for 2 but at the same time a turn 2 or 3 scry holds damage value as well by getting rid of mountains when they're not needed. The deck has an average damage/card of 3.46 when excluding mountains and 2.25 when including the land. Using some probability, I can use scry on turn 2 and find a mountain 58.13% of the time (assuming 3 mountains between the opening hand and turn 2 draw). About half the time that extra land isn't actually desireable (a 1-2-3-3 set of land drops provides 9 mana through turn 4 which is plenty) so I could say that 29.07% of the time removing a land adds damage. With an average non land card damage of 3.46 that would mean the scry 2 is worth 1.01 damage on average I think (.2907*3.46) which means magma jet is really a 3 for 2 which isn't optimal but is still better than a 2 for 2.
Now for the sideboard
Price of Progress - I chose to put this in the sideboard rather than main because of the meta. The majority of people here don't play with a large number of non basics, The decks running the largest numbers of non basics are the dredge decks at ~12-16, and a couple of assorted decks which run ~10 each. So I felt this would be a dead card too often in the main as too many decks, even the dual color decks stick to mostly basics and cards like terramorphic expanse to fix their mana. Sideboarding it for games 2 and 3 against the appropriate decks seems like a perfectly valid idea however.
Phyrexian Metamorph - As mentioned above one of the strongest decks in my meta is a green/blue polymorph deck, and it happens to run ~20 counters. Fortunately it doesn't run chill or chalice so I don't have to worry about those, but the counters and ample 0/1 chump blockers it has can slow the deck down enough that it can bring out a big creature. I'm thinking metamorph is perfect in this situation as it can copy whatever creature is brought out and then kill it due to the legendary rule. Being off color, it's not something that would be called out by Iona (one of the creatures in the deck) either.
Flamebreak - There's a lot of assorted creature decks, this takes care of them.
Ratchet Bomb - I'm most skeptical of this as a sideboard card. Right now I have it listed because it's strongly recommended as a card, but I can't really think of many situations where it's going to help. I'm thinking I may want to replace it with Sulfuric Vortex instead since I know for a fact that some people run life gain decks.
Anyways, if anyone has some comments on my deck and can suggest an improvement for it, I would be happy to read it.
Creature kills are a bit of a concern but not something that overly concerns me. Black isn't played much in my meta, and when it is, they don't run many creature kills. White is very prevalent (i would say 75% of decks are white) so there's a good number of day of judgments and swords to plowshares going around, but as of right now the people with swords tend to misplay it and leave creatures alive until their damage will become lethal.
When it comes to day of judgment, I have the benefit of a well known meta. I know which white players are and aren't using the card, and the card doesn't see play until 4 mana, meaning in most situations it's a final turn play if the white player goes first.
Anyways, in my area we get between 20 and 30 people for tournaments every 2 weeks. Between 1/2 and 2/3 of those people are acquaintances and we work on our decks together. The end result is we're all pretty familiar with everyones decks. The majority of decks that get brought to tournaments, I can give complete decklists for off the top of my head. The result is a meta that's pretty well known, and that helps a lot when it comes to gauging various situations and figuring out if it's the right time to use a reckless abandon, or if I should wait a turn.
You're right that Kiln Fiend is vulnerable to removal and is a potential 0 damage but the same could be said of almost all of our spells, which are vulnerable to counters, and thus a potential 0 damage. If the argument is that the creature is slow, I agree. It's a card that will get 2 and sometimes 1 round to attack, but when it does attack it attacks for a lot. If Kiln Fiend isn't the right card to add in though (probably as a 2 of, in place of 2 land), what is? Searing Blaze? Incinerate?
I don't know what creature slits is.
So is 12 creatures the ideal? In that case, I can't figure out what I would cut. I'm not really unhappy with any of my creatures right now. My Hellsparks are great, and so far have been the MVP of my creatures. Goblin Guide is pretty good at any time, so I can't see myself cutting him. That just leaves Keldon Marauders, they've never really excelled for me but I can't justify cutting them when they're 5 damage for 2 mana (and a great reckless abandon target) while Hellsparks stay in and are a potential 6 (in practice 5 it seems) for 4 mana.
First with the doubling bolts, all of the main spells hit for 3 damage, by adding a +3/0 to the creature, if it's unblocked it then contributes another 3 damage. Then, in the worst case scenario the creature is going to be blocked. In this situation you can bolt the opponents blocker before attacking, then use the powerup on the Kiln Fiend to do the 3 damage anyways. In this situation it's allowing you to do 3 to a creature and 3 to a player, just like Searing Blaze.
I realize the card does have a few weaknesses, namely not having haste or trample, but those can be mitigated. The lack of haste lets an opponent get a blocker out, but this is also true of Keldon Marauders which happens to be a highly ranked card. The other weakness, the lack of trample only applies when blockers are present, and you can bolt and then power up the kiln fiend to ensure blockers aren't present.
It seems to me, that at worst including it simply makes your deck move at the same speed, while it has the potential to do far more.
Anyways, here's the deck list I'm running right now (it came in first at a local tournament this weekend, so it's not all bad... even if I'm not playing in the most competitive meta around)
4 Goblin Guide
4 Hellspark Elemental
4 Magma Jet
4 Lava Spike
4 Rift Bolt
4 Chain Lightning
4 Reckless Abandon
4 Fireblast
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Keldon Marauders
I was thinking of expanding the number of creatures to include Kiln Fiend and reducing the number of lands. The result would be slightly more mulligans but no need to run Magma Jet to avoid mana flooding. The deck would look something like:
4 Kiln Fiend
4 Goblin Guide
4 Hellspark Elemental
4 Sulfuric Vortex
4 Lava Spike
4 Rift Bolt
4 Chain Lightning
4 Reckless Abandon
4 Fireblast
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Keldon Marauders
Currently, the Sulfuric Vortexes are in my sideboard but I use them in many games since life gain is rather popular in my meta. For the same reason Price of Progress sits in my sideboard, most of my opponents use basics. By being able to get rid of those 4 mountains, I can then include more situational use cards in my sideboard as well.
Thoughts? Am I completely misguided on my thinking here? Am I adding too many creatures, and I should look at removing a creature for the Kiln Fiend rather than land?
Yep, I read it, I think I stated so in my post. I've also read roughly the first and last 50 pages of this thread (I did skip a few posts here and there though). I'll try to read the middle of the thread soon.
When it comes to Reckless Abandon it seemed to me that the big negative against it is it means using cards that aren't the best damage sources in order to make use of one very efficient card. Using the list of creatures that aren't bad, very few have synergy with the card, if it's being run the obvious choice is to run creatures that die at the end of a turn and/or have an additional effect when they die. Hellsparks and Marauders both fit that criteria (and hellsparks can come back after death so you can play it on turn two, then unearth on turn 3 or 4 without issue) though hellspark is inefficient in terms of damage:mana.
However if it's a bad card, then it's a bad card and needs to go. The question I have is, what's better taking into consideration the game environment around here (hence the reason I tried to give lots of information on the meta)?
When it comes to the primers sideboard information, it's a great starting place but general information tends to be generalized and a sideboard is something that gets tailored for whatever meta you're going to be up against. It's not designed to give specific information to every possible scenario, and in this scenario it's less than helpful since most decks aren't well developed.
I actually hadn't thought about Ratchet Bomb against Dredge, I was thinking of my creatures having some built in Dredge hate since most of them goto the graveyard after a turn or two (or after a Reckless Abandon), them dying allows me to also take out an opponents bridges which I figured would be sufficient to slow Dredge down long enough to get a win. Maybe I'm wrong on that though, I've never played against Dredge when using burn so it's all just theory and experience with how long it takes the Dredge players around me to go off.
CoP: Red is a good point, and one I didn't think of. White is the most common color here and after thinking about it, I can pinpoint a couple of players that do use CoP, and there's probably some using it that I'm not thinking of. Fortunately, it's in the SB already so I don't need to find room for it. That leaves the question though of how to work Sulfuric Vortex in. The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced I need that in the SB.
So, with that in mind I was thinking about playing a burn deck based on the idea that I have access to some good board sweepers for all the creature decks, can race just about any deck in the meta, and don't have to spend a fortune on a good deck.
I've read the primer and a lot of the posts in this thread, plus some of the other discussions on burn. Here's what I'm planning to run right now:
4 Goblin Guide
3 Keldon Maurauders
4 Hellspark Elemental
Spells:
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Chain Lightning
4 Rift Bolt
4 Lava Spike
4 Fireblast
4 Magma Jet
4 Reckless Abandon
21 Moutain
3 Price of Progress
4 Ratchet Bomb
4 Phyrexian Metamorph
4 Flamebreak
I decided to go with Hellspark Elemental because I'm running Reckless Abandon, the unearth ability on the Hellspark gives me a few more targets for Abandon without making me go past 11 creatures in the deck. I'm not sure if this is the best choice or not since Hellspark is at best a 3 for 2 spell, but in play testing on MWS so far, I've had the extra point of mana often enough.
Reckless Abandon seems to work well with most creatures being sacrificial in the first place. The only one I really don't want to sacrifice other than for a kill shot is the goblin guide.
Keldon Marauders I decided to only put in 3 of rather than 4 because it's slower. Maybe I'm not thinking about this right however. When I look at the card I see 5 damage for 2 mana which is great, but at the same time that 5 damage is spread over 3 turns (2 if I sac him to a reckless abandon). The problem with that to me is this deck should be winning no later than turn 5 and in testing it's pretty typical to be a turn 4 win. Since the damage is spread over 3 turns and the marauders don't have haste, in a 4 turn game on turn 2 he's a 5 for 2, turn 3 he's a 4 for 2, and turn 4 he's a 1 for 2. In a 5 turn game he's a 5 for 2 on turns 2 and 3, 4 for 2 on turn 4, and 1 for 2 on turn 5. In a 3 turn game which the deck does occasionally get he's never better than a 4 for 2 and potentially a 1 for 2. Basically, it just screams bad top deck to me since I really don't want to see it on turns 3 or 4 (especially 4), so I reduced it a little.
Magma Jet is my other questionable card. I don't like the idea of paying 2 for 2 but at the same time a turn 2 or 3 scry holds damage value as well by getting rid of mountains when they're not needed. The deck has an average damage/card of 3.46 when excluding mountains and 2.25 when including the land. Using some probability, I can use scry on turn 2 and find a mountain 58.13% of the time (assuming 3 mountains between the opening hand and turn 2 draw). About half the time that extra land isn't actually desireable (a 1-2-3-3 set of land drops provides 9 mana through turn 4 which is plenty) so I could say that 29.07% of the time removing a land adds damage. With an average non land card damage of 3.46 that would mean the scry 2 is worth 1.01 damage on average I think (.2907*3.46) which means magma jet is really a 3 for 2 which isn't optimal but is still better than a 2 for 2.
Now for the sideboard
Price of Progress - I chose to put this in the sideboard rather than main because of the meta. The majority of people here don't play with a large number of non basics, The decks running the largest numbers of non basics are the dredge decks at ~12-16, and a couple of assorted decks which run ~10 each. So I felt this would be a dead card too often in the main as too many decks, even the dual color decks stick to mostly basics and cards like terramorphic expanse to fix their mana. Sideboarding it for games 2 and 3 against the appropriate decks seems like a perfectly valid idea however.
Phyrexian Metamorph - As mentioned above one of the strongest decks in my meta is a green/blue polymorph deck, and it happens to run ~20 counters. Fortunately it doesn't run chill or chalice so I don't have to worry about those, but the counters and ample 0/1 chump blockers it has can slow the deck down enough that it can bring out a big creature. I'm thinking metamorph is perfect in this situation as it can copy whatever creature is brought out and then kill it due to the legendary rule. Being off color, it's not something that would be called out by Iona (one of the creatures in the deck) either.
Flamebreak - There's a lot of assorted creature decks, this takes care of them.
Ratchet Bomb - I'm most skeptical of this as a sideboard card. Right now I have it listed because it's strongly recommended as a card, but I can't really think of many situations where it's going to help. I'm thinking I may want to replace it with Sulfuric Vortex instead since I know for a fact that some people run life gain decks.
Anyways, if anyone has some comments on my deck and can suggest an improvement for it, I would be happy to read it.