New guy here, so forgive me for my intrusion, but I'd like to share my opinion.Well he's going to side in Deicide to take care of that pesky Thassa which is apparently a big problem for Burn.He surely must've been running hot in order to get 1 of 2 Charms to win Game 2 and/or Game 3 against those decks.
People in the /r/spikes thread are upset that zem didn't give his blessing to the deck like some sort of RW Burn Pope.
I've tried
DRS before but back then I was running a very aggressive shell. The mana was atrocious. I'm hesitant to but I might give it another shot without all the junk and just DRS.
I am currently trying out the Shouta's list and well, it did adapt well to my play style honestly. I do think that Z's list was/is better suited for my current meta and for modo in general, but hey, that's another story.
One of the changes I made was trade in Wear//Tear for Deicide. Artifacts haven't been a problem yet, and yes, Wear//Tear does take care of 90% or the problem, but the reason for my Deicide change was for the extra peek at my opponents hand. Thassa really isn't much of a problem in the Mono Blue Devotion match up, since 99% of my burn goes for their creatures, to keep the devotion low and I usually win with YP's and Phoenix. However, the chance to look at my opponents hand has been wonderful for me, since it
allows me to know my restrictions or when to just burn them out. That is the main reason for the change I made (which I'm certainly not the only one). Also still takes care of problematic stuff, such as Primeval Bounty and Bow of Nylia. Another one was the Boros Reckoner. Nothing wrong with it, just wasn't my play style. In it's place I put a 4th Flamespeaker, 1 Fated Conflagration and 2 Mizzium Mortars. Weird enough, G/R Monsters is my easiest match up, with my hardest being Mono Blue Devotion on their nut draws and well, Naya Hexproof (which is possible to win thanks to YP and Flamespeaker).
Out of curiosity though, from my experience control hasn't been much of a problem, specially now with their new deck tech without Banishing Light and Detention Sphere, but Mindspaker seems really interesting. Do we not use him, because would be 4 dead cards on the SB against every other deck or there's just much better options out there?
And one last thing, if you wouldn't mind: That mana base looks horrible.
As it currently is I'm already thinking of adding a second Mana Confluence, I can only imagine with 3 colors. In my humble opinion he'd be better of going aggro instead of burn, with his spells to clear the field instead. If he wants to kill every little thing that the opponent has, instead of burning him out and not giving time to react, he might as well play black devotion. The idea is nice, but if planeswalkers are giving that much trouble, well, we're probably already so far behind that would need a miracle top deck draw to change something.
I don't have any glamorous titles to show, only casual FNM and modo, I'm also a returning player after 7 years away (yeah, has been a while...), but this topic has been very constructive and helpful for not only me (which I was referred by someone who beat me in a mirror and guided through the match, great guy), but for every red mage out there. Just for the record, took me 8 days to read through the 148 pages at the time, trying out every single deck list
and change made throughout the topic. But Z really is a great inspiration and doesn't surprise me that a lot of people look up to him, like well, a pope.