Dies to Removal

Start with the main...

Why not 12 fetches, and 1 more sacred foundry?
Why 4 skullcrack, but zero lightning helix?
Flame Javelin over Shard Volley? (isnt firecraft better )

1) Might be fine. I really only need WW for Firewalker and Burn won't typically be siding in ways to destroy our Foundry. Maybe just an extra fetch is enough?

2) Skullcrack represents more than three damage when its effect is used. Helix is good for the lifelink but underwhelming in non racing situations. I do like Helix though and it might be worth considering given the higher than average representation of Affinity here.

3) Flame Javelin kills Exarch at instant speed.

Your sb seems really geared towards beating affinity? If I had to guess a meta, I would say grixis control, delver and twin decks, affinity will be popular. I'll get more details tomorrow about what else I think I'll face.

I like no molten rains. Have you seen tech from modo sashing 1 blood crypt for self inflicted wound in the sb?

Do I mulligan most hands without a 1 drop?

Your sb seems really geared towards beating affinity? If I had to guess a meta, I would say grixis control, delver and twin decks, affinity will be popular. I'll get more details tomorrow about what else I think I'll face.

I like no molten rains. Have you seen tech from modo sashing 1 blood crypt for self inflicted wound in the sb?

Do I mulligan most hands without a 1 drop?

My board is definitely geared toward beating Affinity, the mirror, and small CoCo decks. I'm the only Grixis Control player I'm aware of at my LGS but I could be wrong given I show up once a month on average. If you expect a lot of Grixis control and Twin you may want Paths. As much as I hate playing cards that don't do damage, beating an early Tasigur or Angler can be difficult for Burn (speaking from my side of the matchup) and killing Exarch is a bit awkward due to the 4 butt. I think Path is better than Rending Volley since it's more robust.

I have seen the Wound tech (I considered it myself before it was a thing). It's a better Searing Blood against the bigger CoCo decks (ones running Smiter, KotR, etc) and Amulet so if that's popular around you it's worth considering.

When asking about one drops, are you referring to creatures? There are a wide range of hands without a one drop creature I'd keep. I can't imagine a hand with no turn one play whatsoever, but I'd keep one with multiple Searing effects postboard against small aggro (especially Affinity if I have a Revelry).

Just thought I'd throw my current list out there. I haven't been doing much playing, save for a few local paper matches against other R/x decks.

Vexing Devil has been performing about as well as Swiftspear was. I'd like to think that with the format speeding it up, it could be a better choice.

[deck]
Creatures 15
4 Goblin Guide
4 Vexing Devil
3 Grim Lavamancer
4 Eidolon of the Great Revel

Burn 26
2 Forked Bolt
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Lava Spike
4 Rift Bolt
1 Shard Volley
4 Boros Charm
2 Lightning Helix
3 Searing Blaze
2 Skullcrack

Land 19
3 Mountain
3 Sacred Foundry
1 Stomping Ground
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Wooded Foothills

Sideboard 15
3 Destructive Revelry
2 Lightning Helix
2 Deflecting Palm
2 Path to Exile
4 Kor Firewalker
2 Skullcrack

[/deck]

I'm coming around on maindeck Lightning Helix over Flame Javelin. Probably need to go to 12 fetches too.

All that said, I'll likely be on Grixis Control since I feel it gives me the best game against both fair and unfair decks.

went 1-2 tonight beating affinity and losing to grishoalbrand and grixis control. Played rw

SB was
4 Destructive Revelry
2 Rending Volley
2 Deflecting Palm
2 Path to Exile
3 Kor Firewalker
1 searing blood
1 firecraft


played firecraft cause I could think of another card...

Based on what ive been hearing, the big 4 decks I would like to gun for are grixis control/twin, affinity and jund. Would love some help crafting a 75.

It's possible that atarkas command is just too powerful to pass up?

something like:

[deck]
Creatures (14)

4 Goblin Guide
4 Monastery Swiftspear
2 Grim Lavamancer
4 Eidolon of the Great Revel

Spells (26)

4 Lightning Bolt
4 Lava Spike
4 Atarka’s Command
2 Skullcrack
4 Boros Charm
4 Searing Blaze
4 Rift Bolt

Land (20)

4 Wooded Foothills
4 Arid Mesa
4 Bloodstained Mire
3 Mountain
2 Stomping Ground
3 Sacred Foundry

Sideboard (15)

1 Searing Blood
2 Path to Exile
1 Skullcrack
4 Destructive Revelry
3 Kor Firewalker
2 Deflecting Palm
2 Rending Volley
[/deck]

If those are the big four, you really don't need six maindeck Skullcrack effects. Affinity, Grixis, and Twin won't be gaining life on you, and Jund will be the only deck doing it postboard with Feed the Clan. If you are worried about that, run a couple of Skullcrack in the board.

The key to beating Grixis is that you need a one drop in your opener. This puts them in an awkward position where they either need to fetch and shock themselves to bolt (which means the creature would have effectively gotten its damage in) or, if they don't have bolt, lean on Terminate. If it's a Swiftspear they can't even reliably flash in a Snapcaster to block. Fast Tasigur/Gurmag can be a problem too, so you may want to board in a couple of Paths. Savvy Grixis players will not be playing Dragon's Claw or other cute cards and will instead try to beat you with Dispels out of the board. Try to force as much damage as you can early and get a read on what countermagic they are holding up. For instance, if they play a Tar Pit on turn two and pass, they may have Spell Snare and are leaning on it to counter your Eidolon. If the untapped source is a Steam Vents, they might just be holding a Bolt to play on your creature. In this position, play spells during your main phase that play around these cards.

Everything Val said is spot on.

I'd just like to add that running Forked Bolt for Affinity can be a beating against them.

Should I always jam eidolon on two if they have 1 blue up? The risk seems worth the reward

Depends on play vs draw and board state. If I've played a one drop, I'm definitely jamming Eidolon after attacks. If I have two in hand, I'm jamming. If I have two more one drop creatures to play, I'm doing that instead because swarming the board is more effective against them. This forces them to make a play the following turn or they just die to my board. Once they kill one of my creatures, I force out the Eidolon.

More often than not, running Eidolon out on T2 is the correct play.

Side in skullcrack vs the mirror?

With the 75 you posted, probably not. Definitely not on the draw.

Just curious: what is your postboard plan on the play and draw?

Not sure, might just take out eidolons for Firewalker on both play and draw. Some numbers of paths, I like that skullcrack can help counter helix if necessary

Basically have 1 extra sb slot. It could either be a 3rd path, 1 searing blood, 1 fire craft, 1 leyline of punishment, or 1 blood moon

Deciding on this

[deck]
4 des rev
3 path
2 skullcrack
2 deflecting Palm
4 Firewalker
[/deck]

Considering 1 dromokas command in the place of a palm

Might be too cute. I'd stick with what you have.

scrubbed because bloom is unwinnable

Everything Val said is spot on.

I'd just like to add that running Forked Bolt for Affinity can be a beating against them.

Yep - Fork Bolt is fantastic right now

Bloom is one of those MU which can answer everything we throw at them mainly due to counter backup, I just toss in PtE and Palm and just shake my rabbit feet and lucky clovers at the screen (Hey don't judge it sometimes works ).

Grishoal and Bloom + the faster meta can help justify running 4x PtE, this does weaken the 7-Card combo so it more viable in the 16 creature Nacatl list then the 14 more burn focused one.... hmmmmm this needs some number crunching.

You win Bloom when your opponent doesn't pay for his Pact trigger...

scrubbed because bloom is unwinnable

This is precisely why I didn't play Burn at my PPTQ and don't like it in general right now. I've gotten a lot more risk averse over the past year regarding my deck choices and I prefer piloting something that can interact with the unfair decks in a meaningful way, and Burn doesn't really have this option. It's still a good deck and the correct choice at times though.

Live by the sword, die by the sword.

I'm just salty I have all these foil Burn cards but can't bring myself to play them.

scrubbed because bloom is unwinnable

This is precisely why I didn't play Burn at my PPTQ and don't like it in general right now. I've gotten a lot more risk averse over the past year regarding my deck choices and I prefer piloting something that can interact with the unfair decks in a meaningful way, and Burn doesn't really have this option. It's still a good deck and the correct choice at times though.

Live by the sword, die by the sword.

The same is said to every deck in Modern, it really is Rock, Paper, Scissors - even decks like Grixis Control sport >40% winrate against other builds.

While its its true that with Modern's landbase its possible to splash colours to answer everything for anything, the meta is just to large to build the "All-Rounder" thus all decks are force to accept some poor MUs.

- - - -

That said according to Goldfish's SaffronOlive article - Robots/Affinity is the best bet for highest winrate:

"Affinity has the best overall winning percentage out of the 10 most played Modern decks coming in a bit over 55 percent. Better yet, it has a killer matchup against the two most played decks in our field coming in at 63 percent against Naya Burn and 59 percent against Grixis Control. This isn't even considering the positive matchups with R/G Tron, Amulet Bloom, Jund, and Merfolk. So we should all just follow Frank Karsten's lead and play Affinity right? Not so fast, there is one very big problem for Affinity: Splinter Twin.

The Affinity vs Splinter Twin matchup is the single most lopsided matchup among all tier one decks. It is basically the Miracles vs 12-Post of the Modern format. In fact, Affinity only managed to beat Splinter Twin 36.8 percent of the time over the course of more than 150 matches. Considering that Twin makes up somewhere between 4.7 and 8.4 percent of the field (for some reason Twin is underrepresented in our sample compared to the Modern Metagame Page), if you choose to play Affinity at a big 15 round event you are almost starting off with 0-1, since you are likely to run into Twin at least once and probably more often at the top tables since Splinter Twin also has a solid overall MWP at 53.6 percent. "

I like the meta analysis they did, but I wouldn't take it as gospel. For instance, Grixis Control is actually highly favored against Affinity, and high level pilots of both decks would agree with that statement. Some of the data gets a little shaky because Twin and Delver sometimes get thrown into the "Grixis Control" bin.

Modern is definitely rock paper scissors, but to me the difference is that Burn has a few 30/70 matchups where I'd say a deck like Grixis Control has maybe one or two of those. Other matchups that may be unfavorable won't be by much, and as a bonus a deck like Grixis offers a lot more play to it.

Yeah, in the same article he says - Grixis Control is actually highly favored against Affinity ROFL.

I agree that Grixis has more game then Burn overall - I just don't think it worth giving up on Burn due to some poor MUs since every deck has poor MUs was the point I was trying to make.

Yeah, you have to take your lumps as a Burn player and just concede that some matchups will be borderline hopeless. It's still a great deck.

This should most likely go into the MTGO Clan Thread but Meh...

I LOVE the payout changes, it seemed to have encourage many of the top200 players to focus on 8M/SE for the positive EV and with the low supply of boosters - consistence players can make a raking. Here is a link for the "real effects"of the payout change - except change the 3.5 ticket forecast into a whooping 3.8/3.9 (link).

If you never recorded your games or don't keep track of your win percent - just look at your account details is the rating is >1710 you should be inf. level player if you farm 8M/SE.

Anyhow here is my current list:

[deck=MDU's Naya Burn]Lands 19
2 Scalding Tarn
2 Stomping Ground
3 Mountain
4 Sacred Foundry
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Wooded Foothills

Targeted Burn 16
1 Shard Volley
2 Forked Bolt
2 Lighting Helix
3 Searing Blaze
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Rift Bolt

Direct Burn 11
3 Skullcrack
4 Lava Spike
4 Boros Charm

Creatures 14
4 Eidolon of the Great Revel
4 Goblin Guide
4 Monastery Swiftspear
2 Grim Lavamancer

Sideboard 15
1 Skullcrack
1 Deflecting Palm
1 Ancient Grudge
1 Rending Volley
2 Atarka's Command
3 Destructive Revelry
3 Path to Exile
3 Kor Firewalker[/deck]

I tried to make the deck a board as possible which is why I'm on the 16 targeted burn path plus the Eidolon, SB also been adjusted to be board but not overbearing. Anyhow I entered two 8M/SE and went 3-0 and 3-0 beating:

Mirror x2
Grixis Control x2
Grixis Delver x1
Grixis Twin x1

Yep, dodging Bloom, Grishoalbrand, Soul Sisters, Ad Nauseam, Merfolk and Auras all day everyday.

Yeah, the new changes have pushed everyone out of the DEs and into the 8 mans, along with the fact that boosters are a lot more scarce currently given that fewer are being passed out as prizes.

Not sure how I feel about Fork Bolt, in theory it seemed great - but even in the MUs where I like it in - it usually ends up being a bad Shock.

Also thoughts on MD Blaze and Helix is 3/3 or 4/2 better? I think with 19 lands 4 Blazes may just be pushing it too far.

I went down to 3 Blazes once I changed to 19 lands. Seems fine at this point, especially with the addition of Forked Bolt. Speaking of Forked Bolt, it's pretty bad against non-creature decks, or decks with few but large creatures (obviously), but it's easily boarded out for something else after Game 1.

Gah~

Its kinda frustrating, I shifted my MD and SD to help deal with Aggressive MUs but I end up facing extincted (Scapeshift) - ended up going 2-1.

Getting this balance is quite hard.

sounds like you're having my luck from a couple months ago

Had another rough SE tonight

G1: Jund
G2: Martyr Life <-- not as bad as soul sister but still very painful, the matches went the horrible distance
G3: Ad Nauseam

I still manage to pull a 3-0 of the back of Eidolon of the Great Revel, but these last two night have been rough compared with the awesome Grixis, Jund and Mirror every single game experience I was having the previous week.

P.S. I've been tossing in PtE against Jund over Grims and Fork Bolt (I don't really have many SB spots for the MU since its already favorable) not entirely sure this is the correct choice - but fork and grim are fairly lacking in that MU imo.

What are your thoughts on PtE vs Jund?

I just bring in one because you almost never want to draw two. I lost too many games by drawing both, but having one is a good tool imo

I don't bring in path against abzan/jund. My hand is likely to get significantly reduced by inquisitions of kozilek and liliana, so i want every card i have to deal damage. Exiling a goyf is nice, but we want to just kill them rather then deal with their creatures, because this approach will just give them time to turn the corner and draw into lifegain cards (thragtusk, huntmaster, feed the clan). Yes, sometimes goyf will be their only threat and killing him will buy us a lot of drawsteps, but this is not very likely because they're not so threat-light (goyf, ooze, manlands, big random creatures). Sometimes path to exile will let our creatures attack and deal damage, but typically they just kill all our creatures with their million removals. So overall i just prefer to have any of my non land cards deal damage, i bring in from sideboard just molten rains and extra anti life gain spells. Some time ago i cut my searing blazes, but i think they should stay in because ooze has usually to be killed and goyf, though he will not usually die, is a target anyway.

regarding the balance between sideboard cards against aggro and control decks, well, i just overload with anti aggro cards. I think we are already favored against slower decks (GBx, scapeshift, tron....), while things like robots and zoo can cause serious problems. Furthermore, cards against aggressive decks are way more impactful than cards against control decks (things like searing blood and volcanic fallout are a beating for robots, while molten rain is good but it is a 3 mana sorcery that is extremely likely to get countered). My current sideboard is :

-3 destructive revelry
-2 searing blood
-2 volcanic fallout
-2 path to exile
-2 deflecting palm
-2 molten rain
-2 atarka's command

Seems like we're all on the same page, avoid non-damaging spells if possible.

My SB sadly aren't as flexible as your GoblinWarchief, so unless I want cards like Fork and Grim I have to toss in some PtE (though like Whole I won't run them all since multiple draws won't be doing me any favors).

- - - -

In regards to Molten Rain - I know how it works in theory but it always seems to be to little to late for me, I'll rather just play Flames of the Blood Hand over it most of the time (or additional Skulls/Commands if possible).

Also regarding Bloom, I'm on the 4x PtE and holding back targeted burn spells plan for the MU - I finding that they bank purely on fat lifegain creatures and titans to win vs burn, so playing it slightly more conservatively seem possible.

I've been playing this with a bit of success on MTGO. I think if you're wanting to play Atarka's Command, this is the kind of shell you want to play it in.

[deck]
Creatures (21)
4 Goblin Guide
4 Wild Nacatl
4 Monastery Swiftspear
4 Kird Ape
2 Grim Lavamancer
3 Young Pyromancer

Spells (19)
2 Mutagenic Growth
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Atarka's Command
4 Boros Charm
2 Lightning Helix
3 Searing Blaze

Lands (20)
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Arid Mesa
3 Stomping Ground
3 Sacred Foundry
2 Mountain

Sideboard (15)
3 Path to Exile
2 Pyrite Spellbomb
1 Forked Bolt
4 Destructive Revelry
2 Deflecting Palm
3 Molten Rain
[/deck]

This is pretty close to what made the top 8 of SCG Charlotte and also close to what Patrick Sullivan has been running on MTGO. I know it's bordering on a Small Zoo list but I do think it's close enough to pure Burn that it's worth discussing here. I initially had it exactly like his list but noticed I was losing quite a bit to my own Eidolon of the Great Revel due to having to fetch shocks the vast majority of the time. I tried Abbot of Keral Keep but was not impressed so now I'm giving Young Pyromancer a go with decent results. He's particularly good with Atarka's Command and I have lived the dream of going battle cry mode with multiple Elemental tokens on the field.

I must admit that I have underestimated the versatility of Atarka's Command. I've won a few games vs Affinity where the reach mode turned into a total blowout. I didn't realize just how good it was against that deck, but then again my opponents could just be bad walking into it with me having mana open.

The nice thing about going more creature heavy is that you aren't quite as soft to Dragon's Claw and Kor Firewalker. Going wide against these cards is a legitimate strategy and I have pushed through both of these cards in testing rather easily.

I wish I could get Patrick Sullivan's opinions on the list and his testing results thusfar. Might be time to create a Twitter account...

You could message him on Facebook, he's been pretty responsive to me before. Also his modo name is Big Dan Teague, so you could probably catch him on there as well.

I'll shoot him a message on Twitter and see if he adds anything.

I too have the list together since he posted it and I liked it so far in my testing. Mutagenic growth is pretty sweet

I shared PSulli's post about it on FB when I saw it. I think it's the best Atarka's Command deck I've seen yet. Dunno how well it stands up to the meta right now - it's pretty hostile to Burn-centric decks. Hell, Burn was the second (or third? but tied with Jund) placing deck for Day 2 at the last Open and the only list to crack the Top 32 was a Nacatyl Burn list.

IHowever, I think that if you're an aggressive Mountain player, I firmly believe that this is the best time right now to play Skullcrack over Command (even though I've been saying it for awhile).