Constructed

Examining Extended Mono-Red Burn

By Russell Tassicker ⋅ January 6, 2010 ⋅ Post a comment ⋅

Hello dear reader, and welcome to my first article for ManaNation. My name is Russell and I’ve been playing Magic since 10th edition, after dabbling in high school many years ago. I caught our gracious host Trick’s eye on my blog, Gwafa’s Bazaar, where I’ve been investigating and explaining the financial side of the game. I am more of a commentator than a deck building genius or a skilled jedi on the bubble of Pro Tour qualification, but I have my occasional flashes of insight. Today I’d like to offer you a look at a popular budget deck for extended that the fiscally prudent gamer can use to great effect in the current PTQ season both online and off.

Mono-Red Burn is an archetype that gets a lot of stick. Some players turn their nose up at such a brainless deck: Isn’t it a newbie mistake to Lightning Bolt your opponent on turn 1? Burn is offensive to the palate of such players, who are more used to dining on tasty morsels of card advantage and the card-based joy that is a good Counterspell war. Burn is the McDonalds’ happy meal to Control’s filet mignon fire grilled steak – it’s quick, it’s not pretty, but it’s cheap and it gets the job done. That low price-tag is what makes it of interest to me, so before we get into a discussion of building or playing the deck let’s see just how cheap some recently successful builds are.

For a competitive deck taking no budget constraints into consideration, $100 is impressively inexpensive. I had better outline my theory on “budget” deckbuilding in a competitive sense briefly – if you are trying to win a pro tour qualifier, there is no point going in with a hamstrung build of your deck. Though you might be able to get by with Arcane Sanctum instead of Glacial Fortress in your UW deck doing so is one more obstacle in your path, and winning 7 or 8 rounds of swiss in a row followed by a top 8 is hard enough without extra obstacles. You are paying $25 or so, depending on location, to enter this event – if you are going in with an inferior version of your deck due to cost you should consider whether that $25 would be better spent on the cards needed to perfect your 75.

That is not to say you have to play the most expensive cards to succeed, just the best ones for your deck. This article is an attempt to show that you can play the best cards for a particular deck type without breaking the bank. Deck selection is the key here rather than ‘budgetizing’ a more expensive deck; a $100 burn deck will perform better than a $200 budget Zoo deck with an unreliable manabase and no ‘Goyfs.

Card Choices

These two decks are very similar – despite being spaced over 2 months apart, there is not much in the way of innovation in either the lands or the creatures. They were both successful though, so we can assume they are doing something right. The game plan of such a deck is very simple – deal as much damage as possible as directly as possible to the opponent until they fall over. This is not difficult to do with red spells, especially when your opponent is helping you out by taking damage from their own fetch lands and shock lands and lowering your target from 20 to perhaps 15. Let’s take a quick look at the cards selected.

Creatures

Goblin Guide – The latest fruit of Wizards efforts to push creatures to the forefront of the game, the drawback on this card becomes more and more irrelevant the earlier your deck can kill the opponent. There is no real danger of drawing your opponent out of manascrew if you plan to kill them on the third turn. That makes this little goblin essentially Ball Lightning for R, in that he deals 6 damage by turn 3. Definitely worth the investment.

Spark Elemental – Essentially a Lava Spike that requires an attack phase, I can see the argument for dropping this old standby especially considering his modern competition.

Mogg Fanatic – There aren’t many 1 toughness creatures going around extended tables these days and this little goblin is largely chosen as an anti-dredge card that isn’t dead elsewhere – sacrificing him will remove all your Dredge opponent’s Bridge From Belows from his graveyard, slowing him down considerably.

Keldon Marauders – Has the potential to do 5 damage, and is guaranteed to do 2 even if removed. If you’ve ever played with this guy you’ll know just how strong he is in aggressive decks.

Hellspark Elemental – A reusable Spark Elemental, this new version is a pretty big upgrade and gives you some crucial reach when you run out of spells in hand. My initial analysis of the deck tells me I don’t want to drop this card.

Spells

Lightning Bolt, Lava Spike, Rift Bolt – These are essentially the same spell and form the core of the deck, which has lead to it being nicknamed the Lava Spike deck or the Lightning Bolt deck in the past. I’d need a compelling reason to touch any of these.

Incinerate – When you really, really want to play more than 12 Lava Spikes. I would like to find a better burn spell than this, given the company.

Shrapnel Blast – The only reason to play the artifact lands in the deck but this spell is very desirable – 5 damage is a huge chunk of your opponent’s life. I think this package is what pushes the deck up to competitive status which makes it unfortunate that it requires the expensive Blinkmoth Nexus.

Magma Jet – Scrying is great in a deck like this, topdecked lands are almost worthless most of the time and skimming them off the top before you draw them keeps you drawing gas for the fire. This is certainly worth considering though it’s not an automatic choice.

Molten Rain – Great for dealing with troublesome lands while keeping the damage flowing. Can slow down Dark Depths, Zoo and Scapeshift decks amongst others, giving you time to finish them off. The value of this card will depend on your expected metagame.

Flames of the Blood Hand – Similarly, this card could be great or only so-so depending on the metagame. Crazycow was obviously concerned about lifegain between these and the Everlasting Torment in the sideboard. Your mileage may vary.

Blood Moon – This is the only sideboard card I want to mention – Blood Moon does a similar job to Molten Rain against a lot of extended decks, slowing them down long enough for you to run them over with burn. It is expensive compared to the rest of the deck – both in terms of dollars and mana – but the effect is very difficult to answer in a timely fashion for most of your competition.

Lands

Mountain – An exceptionally powerful card across multiple formats, it gives you a red mana every turn which can be used to cast your spells.

Great Furnace – Nearly a strict upgrade in this deck, it’s a mountain you can sacrifice to Shrapnel Blast. Darksteel Citadel is just Furnace number 5 (and possibly 6).

Teetering Peaks – Same as above, but if you have an attacking creature – which you usually do – it gives you a virtually free 2 damage. Coming into play tapped is something of a drawback, but given that you were just going to use an untapped land to spend a card and deal burn your foe for 3 it is not so bad.

Blinkmoth Nexus – A land for the early game, an evasive creature & shrapnel fodder in the late game, this is a very handy card to have in your deck. Definitely earns its comparatively high wage.

Bolt You, Blast You, Game?

My, is it turn 3 already? That’s all we have time for this week, and we haven’t even touched on how to play the deck; nor how to make best use of the long gaps between rounds while those Thopter mirrors grind their way to an indecisive conclusion. I hope you’ve enjoyed this discussion of a popular, powerful and inexpensive deck that is frequently underestimated.

Please leave a comment letting me know your thoughts on the archetype and especially on the article – what you liked, what you didn’t like, what you want to see from me in the coming weeks. You can catch up with me in the meantime on twitter and on my blog and check out some of the other great articles on this very site. Thanks for reading!

Russell is a history student, avid gamer and MTG blogger from Perth, Western Australia who takes every chance he can get to sling some magical cards. Here he shares his occasional insights into the competitive and financial realms of Magic: the Gathering.

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1. Saying you don’t have a conclusion does not make up for not having a conclusion.

   Aside from your juxtaposition of the two lists in your introduction, there’s no contrast and comparison between the lists.

   What are the pros and cons of each? You mention a ‘fear of lifegain’ for torment/flames, what was the metagame like there? (Also, why not discuss other alternatives like Stigma Lasher.)

   redsai | January 6, 2010, 9:50 am | #

2. @redsai – thanks for the feedback, I’ll keep it in mind for next week’s article :)

   Russell Tassicker | January 6, 2010, 10:19 am | #

3. Why are there different prices for the same card?

   Joe | January 6, 2010, 8:54 pm | #

4. @Joe, the deck on the left is taken from a Magic Online event and the prices are in tickets (the MTGO currency). The deck on the right is from a paper event, and the prices are in US dollars.

   Russell Tassicker | January 6, 2010, 9:31 pm | #

5. Magma Jet is an auto-include; the scry is simply too valuable unless you are focusing on a T3 kill (which you shouldn’t be, see below).

   It is worth mentioning that while Teetering Peaks seems like a strange choice (being a CIPT land, and all), people have been running Ghitu Encampment and Keldon Megaliths in burn decks for years. If you’re running creatures, Teetering Peaks is arguably more useful than Encampment since the latter rarely attacks more than once anyway.

   Agree that Spark Elemental should be the first to go. Shard Volley is a similar bolt-with-drawback but sacrificing a land is a lot less conditional as opposed to “opponent is not playing creatures and doesn’t have otherwise-blanked removal”. If Shard Volley didn’t make the cut then Spark Elemental certainly shouldn’t.

   A T3 goldfish is not something you should base your gameplan around, hence the reason for including Magma Jet. A T3 goldfish requires a very particular starting hand and draws, not to mention an unanswered Goblin Guide. For example:
   T1: mountain, GG -> opponent on 18
   T2: mountain, two bolts, GG swings -> opponent on 10
   T3: mountain, three bolts or a bolt+shrapnelblast, GG swings for the win
   After all, if Burn had a consistent T3 goldfish, it would get played over Hexmage Depths.

   This article could have used some brief matchup descriptions, and some content outside of “here are two decklists and this is what the cards do” (it’s a burn deck, after all). What about the cards that didn’t make it, such as Shard Volley, Megalols, Encampment, Flamebreak, etc? What are your options should you go without creatures?

   I didn’t know you had a blog, by the way, it’s a good read.

   Cat-Gonk | January 6, 2010, 9:46 pm | #

6. Really good artice there Russ, hope to read more in the future!

   Mike | January 6, 2010, 11:07 pm | #

7. I’ve been playing a similar burn deck online for a while now, and I can only comment on what I’ve found so far.

   Spark Elemental – Quite often a consistent 3 damage as the opponent just won’t block if they have a one drop. I will often lead with this over Goblin Guide, since it’s one more damage and you don’t accidentally fix opening mana screw for your opponent.

   Shard Volley – I see this more of a finisher card than an opener card, and as such I tend to rank it lower. Burn plays with a very low land count, so this card is held in hand much longer than any other of your burn spells. I tend to favor Spark Elemental over this, since I don’t like holding onto cards or having to drop to two or fewer lands. If placed in an “all spell” Burn variant it is likely much better.

   Magma Jet – Pretty much a necessary evil for a fast, slightly underpowered deck like Burn. Paying 2 for 2 damage is pretty bland, but being able to cast this on turn 3 to sift out subpar creatures and lands is very handy.

   Mogg Fanatic – I’ve just found him to be way too slow to be efficient. For all the other 1cc options out there, he’s kind of weak. I would only consider him if Dredge and Burn is in abundance, which hasn’t been the case lately.

   Shrapnel Blast – Love the card, hate the math. This card often ends up being dead weight early in the game, which as a Burn player can often mean death. Great for finishing or topdecking, but my personal preference is towards greater consistency. I tend to run Ball Lightning and no artifacts instead. If you have lots of Zoo, Bant or Doran in your metagame I’d consider Shrapnel Blast or Flame Javelin as an alternative. (I also would prefer Shrapnel Blast in the “all spells” variant of Burn.)

   Molten Rain – I played with both this and Cryoclasm for a while just to see whether it was worth it. Basically Goblin Guide often counters any 1-land destruction card you play, so the tempo gain is often not enough to slow them down. I have found Blood Moon to be much better at buying you needed time to kill the opponent.

   Flames of the Blood Hand – Doing 4 damage is great, and stopping a life gain is a fun trick, but it’s never enough. Life gain wrecks Burn pretty bad, and the person usually will have multiple sources of it available. Kitchen Finks are rampant, and many people have been siding in (or maindecking) Pulse of the Fields.

   Everlasting Torment – Lets you deal with Kitchen Finks, Forge-Tenders (if they block), life gain (including vamps and thopters), and CoP: Red. I’ve found it the best anti-life gain sideboard option. It buys you time, which you’ll need for topdecking more burn to overcome the early life gains that slipped through.

   Ravenous Trap – Only really used for Dredge hate. A smart opponent will Duress or Thoughtseize you first, which makes it less useful. My preference is Tormod’s Crypt or Relic of Progenitus since you can get it out of your hand on turn 1.

   Enervata | January 7, 2010, 5:17 pm | #

8. @CatGonk & Enervata – Thanks for the input guys, very educational :) Have you noticed the online metagame shifting to account for Burn at all, Enervata?

   @Mike – Cheers, thanks for reading :)

   Russell Tassicker | January 7, 2010, 7:29 pm | #

9. Based on my personal experience over the past two-ish weeks:

   - Doran keeps making appearances in decks I play. (Hoses your tramplers.)
   - Kitchen Finks are becoming maindecked standard.
   - Pulse of the Fields is finding a place in sideboards and is pushing out borderline maindeck cards in white decks.
   - Forge-Tenders are sided in quite regularly now. (Although I think this is a poor SB choice.)
   - I am starting to see CoP: Red make an appearance. (Previously I’d never see it.)
   - Blood Moon is still very good in this environment. Nearly every deck I face plays an abundance of non-basics. (I don’t like Magus of the Moon since it’s very fragile.)
   - I have yet to see a single Baneslayer hit the table against me. (But I play a very aggressive variant.)
   - Combo decks are having a distinct resurgence. The two that seem to be doing well against Burn are Dark Depths and the Hive Mind combo. (Dark Depths has necessitated Threaten to be placed back in my SB.)
   - Affinity is showing up more and more. I think this is a fragile deck choice, but can manhandle an unprepared Burn player. (Shattering Spree is in my SB for Thopter and Affinity now.)
   - Discard based decks have started showing up. (I even saw Nyxathid once.) Discard hoses Burn, but I don’t think it’s strong enough to make for a good overall deck choice.

   These metagame shifts have essentially made the Geopede variant of Red Deck Wins too slow to be competative anymore. I recently opted to a variant of William Spaniel’s Burn deck: http://bit.ly/7LyZSe I have liked the results so far.

   Unfortunately I feel that red hate will be maindecked quite regularly over the next few weeks, so all but the most skilled players will likely get their butts handed to them. If red is as prevalent as I am feeling it is, I’d expect combo decks to make strong showings at upcoming PTQ’s.

   If this trend of hating red continues, I expect red to shift to creatureless variants to stay competitive. I also expect red decks to shift their mana curves downward to be speedier, often using subpar cards.

   If I had the money to spend, I’d be playing a combo deck in the coming weeks. (Dark Depths being the front runner.) But I don’t so I’m just honing my Burn game.

   Enervata | January 8, 2010, 5:27 pm | #