Burn

[crimhead]

Originally Posted by TRAMD

New cards need to do one of three things (without significantly negatively affecting the others) to be considered for burn (md or sb):

1. Speed up our clock
2. Increase consistency
3. Stop one of our worst enemies (life gain, faster combo, Leyline, Iona)

Reforge can help 1 or 2 but can just as easily hurt either. It might actually hurt 3 too by letting them find an answer. You won't always want to cast this...

The fastest you can cast this is t3; you should have played two lands and two or three spells, so you should usually have only three or four other cards in hand. if I'm not mistaken, you can even drop a land and cast bolt in response to Reforge; so you should usually be happy to cast it.

Drawing a new seven helps dig for answers like Vortex or Chaos Warp. The inconsistency of opening with Reforge can be offset by top decking another and replacing the first with a new card.

i plan to at least test it.

[markino]

Aegis of Honor is autoscoop, unless you have Needle in hand. Most people don't run it in the SB though.

[-spooky-]

Originally Posted by markino

Aegis of Honor is autoscoop, unless you have Needle in hand. Most people don't run it in the SB though.

its not entirely. ive played through the card before. you just have to wait for a tap out or provide more burn than they can handle. (of course you life must be higher than theirs.) like all hate it sucks to play against, but its not an auto lose.

[Viridian]

Originally Posted by -spooky-

its not entirely. ive played through the card before. you just have to wait for a tap out or provide more burn than they can handle. (of course you life must be higher than theirs.) like all hate it sucks to play against, but its not an auto lose.

But this one's really a pain. Since we do not run a lot of lands, we will stick at 3-4 lands while theirs can go much higher, leaving them a lot of mana to play while keeping us in check.

The only option you have is to burst out creatures, but even with that, if you fail to do it fast, you're dead

It's much more annoying than leyline to me, hopefully not a lot of people play them (it's also much more dedicated as a hate card).

[kirbysdl]

Yeah, CoP: Red is much more likely to be played since it has additional benefits against things like Progenitus. Also, Leylines are good against discard spells, Grindstone, and Tendrils. If you're facing an Aegis, more than likely you're playing in a burn-happy meta.

[Viridian]

Originally Posted by kirbysdl

Yeah, CoP: Red is much more likely to be played since it has additional benefits against things like Progenitus. Also, Leylines are good against discard spells, Grindstone, and Tendrils. If you're facing an Aegis, more than likely you're playing in a burn-happy meta.

In fact, i'm the only burn in my meta

The fact is the guy who made this deck (a pox alternate version) tested it versus almost all tier 1 and tier 1.5, and concluded that burn was his strongest adversary, so he included this one in his sideboard. You could imagine the look on my face when he got to me with this on the second game on turn 1 (i was prepared for a leyline, but i got this one instead). The more raging thing in this is that i could have done almost 14 damages with a single PoP, and i couldn't

Pretty dumb story but yeah, **** happens and my story on this card is really random

But in a burn heavy meta, this card could be played.

[crimhead]

Originally Posted by markino

Aegis of Honor is autoscoop, unless you have Needle in hand. Most people don't run it in the SB though.

Am I missing why Chaos Warp doesn't answer this?

[Viridian]

Originally Posted by crimhead

Am I missing why Chaos Warp doesn't answer this?

you don't miss it, it's just that chaos warp is pretty rare in burn sideboards (although it tends to be included more and more)

[crimhead]

Another thought on Reforge - if it turns out this is worth running (still dubious) we might want to run fetch lands for deck thinning alone. The more cards we draw the more significant that small increase in spell to land proportion becomes.

More intuitively, if we get a fresh seven on t3 or t4 we don't want to see as many lands as we do on our opening seven. I'd think twelve to fourteen fetches would be right in a Reforge-heavy build.

In the spirit of kirbysdl's sig, take out Mountains and or Barbarian Rings.

[TRAMD]

Originally Posted by Yamikiri

Why would you run Reckless Abandon with Vexing Devil? It is inconsistent, since most of your creatures naturally kill themselves.

It has good synergy with hellspark and I just like the card and have had it win me more games than I've lost due to it being dead as long as I run only 2.

Originally Posted by Viridian

you don't miss it, it's just that chaos warp is pretty rare in burn sideboards (although it tends to be included more and more)

I've been running it in my sideboard since it was printed and I got my playset, I actually have 6.

[PhyrexianAngel]

All the introductory info is helpful. Most of the hate seems to come from enchantments and artifacts. I've run into Batterskull a few times in my limited testing online. I haven't seen anything too unusual yet. I still wonder about splashing another color, maybe white. Disenchant kills about every hate card while Swords to Plowshares is a broader answer than Phyrexian Metamorph. I don't know how tough it would be with Wastelands everywhere but, it certainly provides easier answers. Maybe some of the problem cards aren't common enough to need another color.

[Valkyries]

Originally Posted by crimhead

Another thought on Reforge - if it turns out this is worth running (still dubious) we might want to run fetch lands for deck thinning alone. The more cards we draw the more significant that small increase in spell to land proportion becomes.

More intuitively, if we get a fresh seven on t3 or t4 we don't want to see as many lands as we do on our opening seven. I'd think twelve to fourteen fetches would be right in a Reforge-heavy build.

In the spirit of kirbysdl's sig, take out Mountains and or Barbarian Rings.

Deck thinning has been proven to be more or less a myth. Really don't make much difference to be honest....

As for the hate, there's hate against pretty much every single deck. It's just the way the game is designed IMO - I obviously do my best to try and minimize the damage but building a sideboard (or deck) to ONLY deal with potential hate is really not a very good way to build.

[5damage1mana?!?!]

I really don't think we want to be running that many answers for an answer because lots of times people arn't going to dedicate enough of their board to the specific hosers, and if they do dedicate the 4+ slots and feel comfortable mulligan down for them all that means is they prepared for the MU and respect the decks power and they more or less deserve the W.

IF your board is just an answer for their potential answers you lose your decks focus and risk not having answers for some of the more unfair decks in the format

[markino]

Aegis of Honor is really the most ridiculous hatecard against Burn; much more painful than Leyline, especially now that creature-heavy decks are seeing more popularity than spell-heavy ones.

But if you see cards like Aegis, CoP:Red and Leyline in your meta SBs, then by all means run Chaos Warp or even Anarchy in your SB.

Anyone been testing the Devil? Any results?

[Valkyries]

Originally Posted by markino

Aegis of Honor is really the most ridiculous hatecard against Burn; much more painful than Leyline, especially now that creature-heavy decks are seeing more popularity than spell-heavy ones.

But if you see cards like Aegis, CoP:Red and Leyline in your meta SBs, then by all means run Chaos Warp or even Anarchy in your SB.

Anyone been testing the Devil? Any results?

I agree that Aegis of Honor is pretty devastating, though I've seen very few people use it. If it starts to become a problem, Anarchy seems like the best choice - despite it's high casting cost. Could also take care of other problem enchantments at the same time, similar to the ones you mentioned above.

As for the Vexing Devil, definitely so far so good... but to be honest I haven't tested him enough yet to adequately determine if he's worth the slot or not. I really need to test him more in large scale, a few games using him as a proxy with some friends isn't quite enough. That said, I have a feeling he'll become a staple once people realize how good he can be.