Locations
As promised:
Boros Burn | Modern | Michael Flores
- Creatures (12)
- 4 Eidolon of the Great Revel
- 4 Goblin Guide
- 4 Monastery Swiftspear
- Instants (8)
- 4 Boros Charm
- 4 Lightning Helix
- Sorceries (20)
- 4 Lava Spike
- 4 Lightning Bolt
- 4 Rift Bolt
- 4 Searing Blaze
- 4 Skewer the Critics
- Lands (20)
- 2 Mountain
- 1 Stomping Ground
- 2 Sacred Foundry
- 3 Bloodstained Mire
- 4 Inspiring Vantage
- 4 Scalding Tarn
- 4 Sunbaked Canyon
- Sideboard (15)
- 2 Ensnaring Bridge
- 2 Searing Blood
- 3 Path to Exile
- 4 Destructive Revelry
- 4 Kor Firewalker
Major Changes:
Main deck:
- -1 Manamorphose
- +1 Stomping Ground
I haven't sleeved up a Stomping Ground since maybe 2017. It's there to accommodate the sideboard return of Destructive Revelry. See? I told you it was an imperfect solution for an imperfect world!
Sideboard:
Extensive
I texted my friend Lanny Huang Saturday morning and asked him what his sideboard looked like. He had one Ensnaring Bridge "But I'd play two if I could get a second one in time."
I didn't even talk to him. Lanny called me later but by then I was on the treadmill and wasn't going to pick up the phone.
After the brief text exchange I went to Artifact Box 1. One Ensnaring Bridge. Artifact Box 2. Kold. Unsorted Rares Binder 1. You have no idea what kinds of treasures can be found in Unsorted Rares Binder 1. You need a Twilight's Call? How about two Twilight's Calls? Lanny once bragged he was going to win an event because I couldn't complete the Sam Black deck that was built to beat his build. But you know what? Spontaneous Generation was waiting in Unsorted Rares Binder 1. If I needed four, I could have had them. If I needed five? UNSORTED RARES BINDER 1.
Kold.
Still only one Ensnaring Bridge.
There is no way I only own one Ensnaring Bridge. I racked the decrepit gray matter that passes for my brain.
I dashed to the closet and dug up a 2012 (or so) Legacy deck that was still in sleeves. Three Ensnaring Bridges!
So Lanny and I both had two. He obviously discarded his new-bordered version.
But is it good?
It's not just good. It's perfect. I mean it's part of an imperfect solution for an imperfect world... But it's kind of perfect if you think about it. Ensnaring Bridge reinforces both Gear 2 and Gear 3 plans. If you want to play a lockdown strategy that suppresses all the opponent's threats? Ensnaring Bridge is a widely card advantageous new member of the team. If you want to play an inevitable game where you get more and more likely to win as the turns go by? Ensnaring Bridge can put the opponent into a spot where if they don't have the right interplay, they can't win at all.
It was so obviously good I moved out some of my Sacred Cows!
I try to be flexible with Burn. You might not believe this, but I didn't think of myself as a Modern Burn player until about the time of The Chained to the Rocks Experiment. I wasn't actually very happy with my performances at the time, but Roman Fusco - probably the greatest avatar of the Flores School of Modern Burn - told me that, rather than adopting a limiting identity (poison if you want to be any good), being a "Modern Burn" player was the opposite for us. We were constantly innovating. Constantly challenging assumptions. I was the first person to play Inspiring Vantage! We were simultaneously the first people to play Chained to the Rocks.
So, in that vein I tried to be flexible around Sanctifier en-Vec. Did everyone know something I didn't know? I watched a bunch of leagues and came to what should be a very obvious conclusion: There is very little reason to play Sanctifier en-Vec.
Sanctifier en-Vec does two things, but only one of them well. If you are on the draw, the idea that it might break up a fast Scam is kind of a pipe dream. It's just an inferior card that doesn't actually keep the opponent from Grief'ing you if they have their draw. Grief has Menace and Dauthi Voidwalker has Shadow, so it's not like it's this great blocker relative to Kor Firewalker.
Sanctifier en-Vec is better if you're playing against someone you actually trained.
One more match and we draw in ?? pic.twitter.com/iKClR9nwTm
— Rebell, LGS Sales Person (@SonRebell) November 4, 2023
Rebell beat me in one game because she got five Sheoldreds. She didn't even try to Scam me, but rather just used her reanimation cards as "Counterspells" against my Gear 2 game plan. I played two Firewalkers into an Engineered Explosives I obviously didn't know she had; so, it's possible I was supposed to win anyway... But five Sheoldreds come on.
In almost every other case, Kor Firewalker is better. Which one would you rather have in play in the mirror? That's kind of obvious right? Kor Firewalker is also just better against Scam in play. Especially if you're playing for the Ensnaring Bridge plan, you can just milk life total and kill all their Sheoldreds (maybe with Path to Exile). Winning becomes inevitable.
Other people's Burn decks have been described as the least embarrassing they have been in years, so you just get a ton of free equity by having Kor Firewalker in your deck. Can you get to 4 life? Congratulations! It's almost impossible to lose, especially because the stupid opponent probably also doesn't have Eidolon of the Great Revel.
I'm sure that most of you will continue to play Sanctifier en-Vec. But I wish you'd just think about it for a second. Has it ever occurred to you that Scam doesn't even have Fatal Push any more?
I'm really proud of bringing this one back. It won me my first two matches at the Sunday RCQ, picking off a variety of targets including Liquimetal Coating and even The One Ring ("take two"). I 2-0'd a Tron player by pointing Revelry at a Wurmcoil Engine he really, really needed to connect with. Playing Destructive Revelry just makes it easier to sideboard against Tron (which is of course one of the format's top non-Scam decks).
In terms of the main deck.
- Skullcrack is not a playable card. It's not just not good, it's incredibly bad. Before you ask, I played Skullcrack when I won my first PPTQ with Burn in another decade. It's shocking to me that it has not only displaced Lightning Helix (a very good card) but managed to fool so many into four-of. There are two strikes against Skullcrack. First, it is the most inefficient card anyone plays. You probably can't even get a third turn kill with this deck if one of your cards is Skullcrack (unless the opponent is very, very aggressive with their lands for some reason). More importantly, because Skullcrack doesn't target creatures, it interferes with your ability to play Gear 2. Most importantly IT ALMOST NEVER WORKS. I've watched countless leagues just to get more data. I saw exactly one game where Skullcrack would have been better than Lightning Helix... And the Burn player was tapped out so it didn't matter. There are relatively few relevant life gain effects in Modern. Against 2/3 of them, the ability to deal 3 damage to a creature is generally preferable to just preventing life gain. The third case is Omnath. I think it's probably just better to point two burn cards at Omnath than prevent life gain one time, given they can gain life multiple times per turn cycle, using basically zero mana. "But what about The One Ring?" I suppose there are cases where you have a bunch of creatures and are willing to Skullcrack yourself where it might matter, but I've never lost a match to a The One Ring deck (haven't played against Amulet Titan with The One Ring yet!), so I'm not sure that that means the difference between winning and losing.
- Bloodstained Mire and especially Scalding Tarn remain correct. There is just no reason to play Arid Mesa; your opponents are much more likely to read especially a Scalding Tarn in a way where you can get free life points. Why would you give as many as seven first turn points while losing literally no deck function? Personally, I once again got a game where I could have played a first turn Inspiring Vantage (to do nothing), soul read my opponent; played a Scalding Tarn, and bought a Thoughtseize. The opponent cursed himself immediately. Heroes of course won that one.
- Roiling Vortex - Good card. Can't have everything. This is an imperfect solution for an imperfect world. Macro I'd just say that it usually isn't enough to beat Rhinos, whereas Ensnaring Bridge may well be. I wouldn't mind having this card against Beans; but it's not like my Eidolons didn't draw immediate fire every time I played against Beans.
What I Could Have Done Better
I lost Round Three to the great Jeff Jao, on the deck he used to make Top 4 of the MTG Vegas Modern GP: Sultai Infect
The first game was easy. I drew two copies of Eidolon of the Great Revel!
The second game I had an Ensnaring Bridge in hand and four lands in play. I would win on any two-mana card that wasn't an Eidolon, any one-mana card, or a land. Instead I drew the best card in the matchup (Eidolon of the Great Revel)... Which would not save me from an Inkmoth Nexus the next turn.
In Game 3 I found myself on two Poison. Jeff played Scale Up on his Inkmoth Nexus (plenty of backup Nexuses)... With a Venerated Rotpriest in play. I had Destructive Revelry, but if I used it, I ran a very serious risk of dying on the spot... From 2 poison!
I had a lot of live draws to win the next one, but didn't get any of them.
In the fourth round I had one of the most interesting losses of my life.
I got the first game against Scam, like you do.
In the second, I got my opponent to the low single digits (let's call it 2) and played Ensnaring Bridge. I could tell my opponent didn't have Kolaghan's Command in his deck. I was on 17.
He had Mount Doom. But it was basically 17 activations of Mount Doom against... My deck.
He followed up with a Chalice of the Void for 2; which sucked. I played a ton of cards into the Chalice just to prevent him from being able to attack. I had 2 Lighting Bolts, 4 Skewers, and a Rift Bolt in my deck... But as you can probably guess, I lost to 13 Mount Doom activations and a Lightning Bolt before drawing any of my live killers.
Got the third, luckily.
In the last round of Swiss I got paired 3 versus 2. I figured if we drew he'd fall to 3 and I'd go up to 2. My opponent was playing Temur Tempo (the Questing Druid deck)... Which is as close to a bye for Burn as there is in the Modern format. I wanted this deck in the Top 8 - but more importantly, thought I'd go up to 2 - meaning I'd have play throughout the Top 8.
Instead, my opponent did indeed fall to 3; but I somehow went all the way down to 5. On the draw, I lost a narrow set of games in the Quarterfinals. My Beans opponent defeated me soundly, but pointed out that I did draw nine lands in Game 1. He was on 2 for a long time, and I never didn't have a Lightning Bolt back. Drawing sucks. I don't recommend it for anyone. I went home kicking myself for not playing the last round of Swiss. A different Temur deck won the slot to the Regional Championship.
Do you plan on changing your Burn deck again this season?
This season? Probably not.
LOVE
MIKE
