[Primer] Boros Burn

[Tyrael]

I've tested the same list as you (but sans mutavaults), Keftenk and mono U was a joke. Deck absolutely kicks them in the shins

[Keftenk]

Yea, I actually got to play a few of them. It's definitely no contest lol. I like that...

[Tyrael]

As long as you play smart you should be able to beat mono B consistently, just be sure to do the math right though (I have lost more than once because I miscalculated the total damage my burn would do). If they get the nut draw (specter-DD/Whip-Gary) then you're in for a world of pain though.

I can't tell you how many times I've had those bastards thoughtseize the what would have been game-winning Spark Trooper out of my hand, so there's always that.

I know you're on the no one-drops list bandwagon but I can't tell you how useful Rakdos Cackler has been against mono B since it dodges most of their removal.

[Keftenk]

I've moved 4 YP into the SB instead of Assemble just for Mono B (at least, I'm trying it out), helped me a lot as long as I can get one YP online. Other then that, just haven't been facing them all too often. I see Mono U a lot, rarely losing to them. Usually when they can rip 3x Thassa or Master of Waves back to back to back is the only time they beat me lol

[Elricity]

I agree with Tyrael on the cacklers. They're usually about 4 damage or so.

Did anyone get around to testing Blind Obedience? I've been slacking and been fixing up the apartment. I'm going to the GP in Dallas this weekend and hoping to burn out some mono blue. Still waiting on two temples of silence to come in and I don't own any blind obedience so I may be making an overnight order if card shops don't have either and I don't get the temples in the mail tonight.

My current plan is still

[deck]
4 Rakdos Cackler
2 Young Pyromancer
4 Chandra's Phoenix

4 magma jet
4 lightning strike
4 shock
4 boros charm
4 skullcrack
2 toil // trouble
3 warleader's helix
4 chained to the rocks

4 temple of silence
4 temple of triumph
4 sacred foundry
9 mountain

Sideboard

4 Boros reckoner
2 peak eruption
2 toil // trouble
2 mizzium mortars
2 firedrinker satyr
2 spark trooper
1 young pyromancer[/deck]

[Purp]

Elec the list look solid. I have been testing a similar list on MODO but sometimes I think I am SB incorrectly. I should try out reckoners, currently running wierds instead.

Do you wish you had Anger at all?

[notap123]

I'm surprised this deck list isn't just running closer to mythic control. Play AotG and Baron/Stormbreath as the wincon (coupled with burn of course).

[Elricity]

@ Purp: Maybe one match in 15 or so when I see an opening of BTE plus a bunch of bte and/or mana dorks.

You *could* use it vs mono blue and hope to skullcrack away MoW and have all their judge's familiars not on the table to counterspell and they have no frostburns or 3/4 raptors that survive. And have no Thassa or jace to just draw back out of it...

Basically, against blue, I think Anger drags you deeper down the rabbit hole when you need to just kill them fast.

Outside Gx devotion nut draws, the card is entirely overkill or entirely useless in this deck.

That said, you're bringing in anger vs the same decks you bring in reckoner which means you can give anger reach, theoretically.

@NoTap: That's a deck on the opposite side of the speed spectrum. This is basically an all in type deck. Also, maybe I've only played bad big dega lists but so far, that deck doesn't impress me. Not sure why.

[TBuzzsaw]

This is what I'm testing that unfortunately, I won't be able to play at events for the next month or so thanks to work/family around the holidays.

[deck]
Creatures
4 Young Pyromancer
4 Chandra's Phoenix

Spells
4 Shock
4 Magma Jet
4 Lightning Strike
4 Skullcrack
2 Flames of the Firebrand
4 Boros Charm
2 Warleader's Helix
4 Chained to the Rocks

Land
4 Sacred Foundry
4 Temple of Triumph
2 Boros Guildgate
12 Mountain

Sideboard
4 Rakdos Cackler
2 Ash Zealot
4 Boros Reckoner
3 Anger of the Gods
2 Toil // Trouble[/deck]

- My meta recently is chalked full of devotion and green creature based decks, hence the choice of the full set of Chained in the MB.
- Mono B and U falls to the deck pretty badly, but B does have moments where they fall through the cracks and win. B Devo is fairly popular here so the full set of Skullcrack felt necessary.
- I love Reckoner against all the green decks since
they stop right in their tracks because they don't want to take five or more to the face when you're holding more burn. It's still easy to win without him, so he's placed in the sideboard.
- Esper just falls over and dies nearly all the time.
- Red decks are picking up steam here too, so I might side Sparktroopers in place of Ash Zealot. I feel that there may be better choices. Frostborn Weird is a possibility too. I'm treating WW the same way, but I feel it's tougher to deal with compared to red aggro.


Let me know what you guys think.

[Elricity]

I personally have been finding YP not as amazing against the jace/verdict decks so some of them went sb for cacklers but if you are seeig lots of green, then you are probably making the right call.

Spark trooper is better than ash zealot for the life swings, especially with Boros charm.

If you have any temple of silence and are already running toil, then I would try them out in place of gates. I rarely cast toil but I like the option.

After dealing with blind obedience tonight, I want to try this out. I'll put up a game report tomorrow some time.

[Tyrael]

Any idea of how to deal with the U/W matchup? That deck feels like my worst nightmare

[Aodh]

Tyrael, you're declaring UW a bad MU based on bad draws. From the others' reports, Esper's a joke; so taking away the BBOV lock seems to push the MU even more in your favor.

[magicdownunder]

Tyrael, you're declaring UW a bad MU based on bad draws. From the others' reports, Esper's a joke; so taking away the BBOV lock seems to push the MU even more in your favor.

UW has Paladin and Elixir of life sometime when they feel like being more jerky they also run Trading Post, so you'll need to get rather lucky with your Skullcrack draws to crush them.

[Aodh]

Oh that deck. Okay thanks. Well, Esper's way more popular and better designed TBH, so I'm not that worried about it.

[Elricity]

Actually, like the other pyrored builds, I think UW is only slightly favorable as opposed to really favorable vs esper because UW has a much better mana base and far less dead cards against us. It's actually the one deck last night I lost to because they weren't stumbling through their turns. BBV is easily dealt with by using 2 burn or skullcrack to seal it since they have the slower start with all the tapped lands.

Tyrael, what's your deck and sideboard? What specifically in the matchup are you having problem with? How are you sideboarding currently?

The plan isn't any different than esper, you just don't have the guaranteed free win. Save your big spells when he's tapped down. Try to always cast instants on his turn to force him to tap down to counter or take it. Get damage in early with creatures but be patient with your spells until you're sure you have him. Don't overextend into verdict or d-sphere'ing
multiple phoenixes. Shock/jet one of your phoenixes in response to the d-sphere trigger so you can get him back and save the others. Only worry about Jace if his life total is still decently high and you have creatures on board. Otherwise, he's drawing more cards for you to trouble him with anyway or he's +1'ing which is usually low impact. Once you get him low, be patient and hold off burning him out until he's tapped down enough or you have enough cards in hand that you can push through counter spells or prevent a high sphinx's rev in response from saving him. UW has no way of killing you without investing a lot of mana and no way of saving itself without rev once it's at 4 or less life so you can let it be draw/go for several turns if you have to at that point. Game 2, board out low impact spells like shock and dead cards like chained for bigger damage and any extra one drops you might have.

That's about it unless I'm missing something important.

[Elricity]

Tyrael, you're declaring UW a bad MU based on bad draws. From the others' reports, Esper's a joke; so taking away the BBOV lock seems to push the MU even more in your favor.

UW has Paladin and Elixir of life sometime when they feel like being more jerky they also run Trading Post, so you'll need to get rather lucky with your Skullcrack draws to crush them.

Off topic but against what decks does Esper have a better percentage than UW? I'm guessing just the control mirror. The black splash is normally quite powerful but with no dead weight or tragic slip for 1 CC
removal, I'm just not seeing it right now for anything other than one of the various see hand + discard spells.

[Aodh]

Esper's probably a big favorite against UW, with a little better midrange MU and little worse aggro MU.

Playing in an SCG IQ and one of the employees at the store says that there're many MU- and MBD decks, as well as a few of the other meta decks like Esper, GR Monsters, Rw Devotion. So, my meta's pretty much caught up with the paper meta in general. That being said, you guys think I should burn it up? Say 3 MBD, 3 MUD, 3 Esper, 2 GR Monsters, 2 Rw Devotion, 2 LKS, 1 AIR, 1 WW ratio. I think the deck's in a good position, but I've been magic less for a few weeks so don't have any evidence for myself. I've read everything in this thread, but how would YOU feel in this meta?

[Purp]

LKS?

[Elricity]

Little Kangaroo Stomping?

[Aodh]

Little Kid Selesnya

[Elricity]

Huh, had to look it up. Never heard that one before.

[Aodh]

GW Aggro--super linear and no reach; has access to Armadillo Cloak though.

[Tyrael]

Tyrael, what's your deck and sideboard? What specifically in the matchup are you having problem with? How are you sideboarding currently?

[Deck]
Creatures (9)
4 Rakdos Cackler
4 Chandra's Phoenix
1 Young Pyromancer

Lands (22)
10 Mountain
4 Sacred Foundry
4 Temple of Silence
4 Temple of Triumph

Instants (23)
4 Boros Charm
4 Lightning Strike
4 Magma Jet
4 Shock
4 Skullcrack
3 Warleader's Helix

Others (6)
4 Chained to the Rocks
2 Toil // Trouble

Sideboard (15
3 Anger of the Gods
2 Toil // Trouble
4 Boros Reckoner
2 Young Pyromancer
2 Mizzium Mortars
2 Spark Trooper[/deck]

out: 1 YP$, 4 shock
in: 2 spark trooper, 2 Toil // Trouble, 1 Anger (you can call me an idiot because of this but this card is the only
reason I managed to draw instead of getting my ass beat by Elspeth)

My main issue was him never tapping out (I knew he was running at least 8 counterspells, I counted them) unless it was for an Elspeth or a D-Sphere and I never drew the burn I needed to finish her of when he did. Extremely frustrating. Also, he brought in 3 Yoked Oxes to stonewall my cacklers. Maybe I should have sided them out.

I probably just misplayed the matchup as it was the first time I have ever played against U/W control. I'm a bit too used to Esper just falling over due to their horrible mana base I guess.

[TBuzzsaw]

My only concern in siding in Sparktrooper against R/x aggro is they would be holding a burn spell, but I guess that's the risk in running it.

[Elricity]

Tyrael, same experience last night. I worked a bit for game 1 but game 2 he brought in blind obedience and elixir of immortality and I started making bad math mistakes.

I wouldn't side out cackler unless you actually see yoked ox. Realistically, you're probably just flipping a shock/jet at it after blocks and moving on with your plan. But yes, the whole deck is about making as many of your opponent's cards dead in hand so if he boards in ox, so if you can board out the ground critters for something that hurts him, he's now at 3 dead draws. The problem is you had nothing left to bring in.

This is kind of the reason I don't like sideboard anger in this deck. You know you have 5-6 bad cards to side out but run out of great things to side in. My answer, in addition to +2 spark and t/t was to bring in two firedrinkers to push in some early damage which put him more on his heels. In your case, I would have kept the single
shock just to have a cheap recursion or dsphere counter but I understand the choice. If you really wanted the board wipe, mortars was the better call because it could deal with ox.

Basically though, your sideboard leaves you weaker to esper/azorius with a questionably better game against mono blue. After running the deck for probably 12+ hours now, I'm supremely convinced you can cut a mountain. You have plenty of things you can do if you get stuck at 3 mana, you have little to do if you top deck land 5-6. Toil and mortar are the only flood protection that the deck has and that's not that great.

I'm going to try blind obedience vs midrange/control as it's a more versitile card and better top deck. Satyr is easier to remove too vs black which makes me less enthused.

@ Buzz: So what? Make them need it. Besides, you're guaranteed to pull out at least 10 cards (cackler/toil/skullcrack) so make sure you have 10 to bring in. You're probably bringing it in every match that doesn't have fiendslayer
or 1500 removal spells. The only reason it's not mainboard is you don't know exactly which cards you need game 1 so you want them all. Game 2/3, at least 6 cards are coming out.

[Tyrael]

@ El, my local meta is infested with G/x ramp decks

If I don't run anger I'm playing russian roulette vs them

[Elricity]

I always feel like it's them playing russian roulette because so often their draws can be totally awful and you just faceroll them with your targeted removal. At least enough that I'm confident they won't do it twice in a match.

Given anger stays, you have two options:

1) Remove something from your 75 that is weak in both matchups for something that is at least favorable against U/W. I still propose a land and 1 other card. Probably a YP? Or do you bring them in vs G/x? YP is great but if your meta is hostile to it, trim it back.

2) Work with what you have and bring in mortars instead of anger if this guy brings in yoked ox. You have a plan A of drawing an early mortars for ox and a plan B for overloading vs tokens if you top deck it later. Let's be honest, if he's resolving elspeth and your only viable answer to survive is sweeping his tokens, you're probably already screwed. He should be fairly low by late game
so that resolving Elspeth actually kills him. Was he running a lifegain sideboard package as well? Either way, it's a match you have to work to win.

[Tyrael]

Well, considering that out of the 19 players in the last FNM only two people were playing Esper and there was only one U/W player (there was also a rakdos control player but um yea) I wouldn't really consider my meta 'hostile' to YP$

I'll try changing it up a bit though, thanks

what do you think about dragons btw, are they workable?

[Elricity]

I haven't been liking YP vs green lately if they're running Nylea since it stops being damage prevention. I like dragons a lot if you're meta is heavy green. At that point, you only have to worry about Arbor Colossus. It would help your U/W match too.

MDU has been on the dragon plan so you should probably check the other thread for his advice. I'm pretty certain you would need to go to 23 land to play 2 dragons.

If only 1 guy is U/W and two esper, I'd just not worry about it and play through the match as best you can and get a little more practice in on it.

[Tyrael]

Don't wanna turn this into Pyroburn but I'm gonna do some experiments with mutavaults/dragons and see if that helps the deck or not

Thanks for all your help Elricity!

[magicdownunder]

You most likely thinking about the older variant of UW, the current UW (the list which came 2nd during MOCS11 and should had won it assuming the he drew islands...) is many times worst then Esper (its also one of the reason why people are opting for dragons).

I think the reason why we don't see UW take GP is because its almost an MODO exclusive deck due to its 'clocking' nature, here is a old article about UW on CFB.

I do agree with Elricity, if your running burn just treat UW as an oddity (much the same as you would with hexproof) take the loss and win the rest (if they become more common switch to dragons).

[Tyrael]

[deck]
Spells
4 Boros Charm
3 Skullcrack
4 Chained to the Rocks
4 Lightning Strike
4 Magma Jet
4 Shock
3 Warleader's Helix

Land
10 Mountain
4 Sacred Foundry
1 Temple of Abandon
4 Temple of Silence
4 Temple of Triumph

Monsters
4 Rakdos Cackler
4 Chandra's Phoenix
3 Stormbreath Dragon


Sideboard
3 Anger of The Gods
4 Boros Reckoner
2 Mizzium Mortars
4 Toil // Trouble
1 Skullcrack
1 Spark Trooper[/deck]

Trying to work Demestrio's deck into something universally awesome. posting this here for future brainstorming sessions.

[Elricity]

Yeah I had a healthy respect for the UW deck I saw last night. I thought it was cute that people complained he didn't have enough win conditions in his deck while he's in the process of chewing through it with card draw. He played it quickly which was something I was grateful for. Honestly, the game's probably only going to time if your opponent is slow responding. Otherwise, game maintainence is fairly simple.

Tyrael, why temple of abandon over mutavault? Also, 4 skullcrack mb, 1 charm sideboard. Demestrio himself said boros charm was more clunky here.

[Tyrael]

Good call, think we'd be able to get away with running 2 Mutavaults instead of the extra temple/mountain? Seems like a rather volatile mana base to me

[Elricity]

18 R sources for double red spells, 21 sources for reckoner. That's textbook mana base.

[Tyrael]

I feel sad about letting YP$ go but it might be for the best

I think I might have found my new deck

[Aodh]

How have the dragons been in testing? As I mentioned when his list first popped up, they seem contrary to this deck's objective: mulligan for your opponents by weakening their removal. Without this, how is this deck any better than a creature deck? It's not. Creatures do more damage than burn spells over the course of the game almost always. The only difference is that instead of letting them use other resources to stem the bleeding (i.e., removal spells and bigger guys), you force them to absorb all of the beating with their life total. Getting them to four, then jamming a five-mana dragon into their two-mana removal spell seems fucking terrible.

[Tyrael]

The only matchup where I expect that to happen is mono B and Esper (doom blade etc) and both of them should be a favorable either way

[Valdarith]

I'm actually considering a more ~20/20/20 version.

[deck]
Creatures (20)
4 Firedrinker Satyr
4 Rakdos Cackler
4 Ash Zealot
4 Chandra's Phoenix
4 Viashino Firstblade

Spells (18)
3 Chained to the Rocks
4 Lightning Strike
4 Magma Jet
4 Boros Charm
3 Chandra, Pyromaster

Lands (22)
4 Sacred Foundry
4 Temple of Triumph
2 Boros Guildgate
1 Plains
10 Mountain
[/deck]

It's similar to a RB list I was running at the beginning of THS Standard except with a few creatures dropped for burn spells. I've been brewing many various iterations of RW and haven't settled on a winner yet. Brews have ranged from true 20/20/20 without Chandra to all-haste builds with Spark Trooper. I need to do a lot of testing to find the optimal build. Some things to think about:

1) Spark Trooper - I've tried him as a two-of and liked him in the limited time I played with him. Six damage for four mana is pretty strong in
Standard. In a more burn-oriented list I can see him being played, but the downside is that you turn on your opponent's removal when you play him. Warleader's Helix doesn't have this problem.

2) Boros Charm - I like that Boros Charm has multiple modes in the 20/20/20 build. In the burn list it only really doubles as protection for Chained to the Rocks. Four mana for two damage is good for sure, but I really enjoy the flexibility in decks with more creatures.

3) Chandra - I feel like you really ought to be running at least 20 creatures if you want to run Chandra. I've played with her a lot and her +1 is her best ability. In burn decks she's so vulnerable and I feel like I'd rather just play another burn spell in her place.

[Elricity]

In the burn list, boros charm has a couple other upsides in that it lets your creatures punch through carytid, double as more lifegain for spark, and let YP live to continue the swarm. It also counters first strike if that matters.

I got a chance to try blind obedience and it was ok. As always, sucky vs aggro unless it's a lot of haste junk. Felt more durable than firedrinker which is a plus since we don't have redundant threats. I want something better though but haven't found it yet.