Boros Charm!

Boros Charm now has a little silver star in its right-hand corner; so with Magic Foundations... It is in Standard for the first time in a long time. And not for nothing, for the first time ever at the same time as Lightning Helix.

Foundations also just gave us Boltwave (a kind of improved* Lava Spike) so many of the Staples of the Modern Burn deck are all kind of begging to be played together. This is a godsend for longtime Modern Burn players because in that format... Well... Even Yours Truly has kind of tucked away the tinder box. Can the onetime strongest deck in Modern, largely ported to Standard, compete in the present metagame?

I'm certainly not the only person to want to explore this idea.

*Aside: Why is Boltwave an "improved" Lava Spike?

I once wrote an entire article about how just having Lava Spike in your deck would help you win more. I probably made a lot of assumptions with that article about how intuitive Burn is, but the general point still stands: Lava Spike can't do a lot of things, so it narrows your focus, and - assuming the deck is viable - reduces your chances of error.

Boltwave is even narrower (it can't accidentally point at Planeswalkers). In group games it will deal damage to more than one opponent. But most importantly? It gets around cards like Leyline of Sanctity because it does not target.

Lava Spike - and now Boltwave - These are not "good" cards. But if the shell they're in makes sense, they can help you win more than you would have with other strategies.

End aside.

My friend Roman Fusco was the first person to present me a Burn list to start testing. Roman had won his first Arena game and was full of ideas. He was sold after that one game.

Most of my testing came from the germ of Roman's list. I mostly screwed around with the numbers on Screaming Nemesis and the mana base.

"Roman Candle"

Roman Candle Burn | FDN Standard | Mike Flores

• Creatures (16)
• 4 Ghitu Lavarunner
• 4 Monastery Swiftspear
• 4 Slickshot Show-Off
• 4 Screaming Nemesis

• Instants (20)
• 4 Burst Lightning
• 4 Monstrous Rage
• 4 Lightning Strike
• 4 Boros Charm
• 4 Lightning Helix

• Sorceries (4)
• 4 Boltwave

• Lands (20)
• 2 Abraded Bluffs
• 4 Battlefield Forge
• 4 Elegant Parlor
• 4 Inspiring Vantage
• 6 Mountain

• Sideboard (15)
• 2 Lithomantic Barrage
• 4 Get Lost
• 3 Exorcise
• 2 Slagstorm
• 4 Urabrask's Forge

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Okay let's talk about this mana base.

It sucks.

I put a lot of work into it, but it does kind of suck. There are the Chapin 14 lands that enter the battlefield untapped (if you count Inspiring Vantage)... But that also means that there are 10 lands that might enter the battlefield tapped. This can be tricky, especially if you need to topdeck to finish the game with a kicked Burst Lightning.

But I wanted to have at least 14 sources of White mana, and the pickings got slim quickly.

Some notes on the mana:

1. Abraded Bluffs is cute in this deck. You really do appreciate the one point of damage in a deck with finite damage sources like this one.
2. Elegant Parlor is not a land that I suspected I would have in my starting sixty, but here we are. It is a good card late, where it can mitigate mana flood or find you the final fireball you need to end the game. There is one additional play pattern that might come up (again I'm as surprised to be writing this as you are to be reading it)... But Elegant Parlor can power up Ghitu Lavarunner by burying an instant or sorcery early to give it haste and a little more offensive oomph.

This is not exactly the best sideboard I've ever made. I'm not even sure that it adequately solves the biggest problem that the deck has. But it does give you a lot of coverage.

Slagstorm is a cool new one from Foundations. If you're used to playing the mouse aggro or Auras style of Monastery Swiftspear decks you have probably forgotten that Convoke used to be a tough matchup. Now you just fly over them or trample over them and deal 1,000 damage. While this deck has both Monstrous Rage and Slickshot Show-Off, it's not nearly as good as the incumbent decks at invalidating Convoke straight up. So if your opponent is going wide, a card like Slagstorm actually does a lot of work. The fact that it can just got to the face makes it the perfect kind of "answer" for a threat deck.

On that note, the one card I wish were in the sideboard but I couldn't find room for is Blooming Blast. AKA a Standard Searing, if an imperfect one.

Lithomantic Barrage is at least fast. It also cuts through Ward abilities, which is the biggest bonus besides its perfect mana cost. The problem is that the Warded creature you want to hit isn't always White or Blue, which is why you need Get Lost and Exorcise also. These cards are effective against Sheoldred, the Apocalypse, which is poison to this strategy in every way (huge butt generally demanding multiple burn spells, great tap-out- blocker for the same reason, built-in life gain is card advantage against half your deck). Perhaps more importantly they can answer what I perceive to be the single biggest problem with Burn in Standard.

But first...

How does this deck work?

From a spells standpoint, this is an attempted port of the Modern Burn deck. Your creatures are clunkier. Ghitu Lavarunner is not as good on turn one as Goblin Guide offensively. You have kind of a lot of two mana spells, and an unprecedented (i.e. more than "zero") number of three mana spells.

But the center is there.

Count to 10. If you can get off ten spells your opponent is probably dead. Seven if they're the right ones. You start with seven cards, so if you play with focus and a plan your offense will be impossible to stop unless the opponent has specialty answers. That, or they can effectively race you.

Here's the problem:

Sheltered by Ghosts is the best card in Duskmourn: House of Horror.

I think that the Burn deck has a relatively wide game. There are lots of decks that just can't beat its core strategy. They're not good at stopping Lightning Strike to the jaw. They've never seen some of the applications of Boros Charm (try something other than the most obvious mode with Slickshot Show-Off and you'll quickly see what I mean). But on the other hand...

If the Black discard decks were good against the incumbent Red ("mouse") aggro decks, they're great here. The mouse aggro decks could get card advantage with Emberheart Challenger. They built bigger and bigger Heartfire Heroes that punished the opponent for answering a one-drop. This deck is a lot of one-for-one packets of damage, meaning any double discard card is like gaining six life. Ouch. Or I guess the opposite of "ouch" from the opponent's perspective.

More importantly there is already a r-w aggressive deck in the format and it plays Sheltered by Ghosts.

I said that the main holes in this strategy are people who can race you and people who have specialty answer cards. Sheltered is both problems in one card.

And it's not just r-w. I've actually managed to beat opposing Boros decks with help from Screaming Nemesis. One of the key skills in Standard for the next couple of years is going to be how players manage incoming Nemesis damage. Basically I think you should take the three for as long as you can. Any kind of profitable block is going to deal more damage to you than three (probably) and then losing the ability to gain life just upends the usual strategies against red, especially after sideboarding.

Anyway, Azorius has Sheltered by Ghosts. I got two-for-one'd 100x by a b-w deck. And then they're the Standard "Bogles" wannabe. Their guys already have Ward BEFORE they get more Ward (and lifelink) (and take out your best permanent). At some point the sheer volume of possible Sheltered by Ghosts decks is just too much.

I think you can probably grind ladder with this deck if you're into playing Burn. It has not been reliable in Events for me. I win more than I lose, but not at an exciting rate, and I haven't picked up any Play-In Points with Burn yet.

But if you're preparing for a Standard RCQ or other Swiss tournament with a variety of possible opponents (and you care about winning?)

I don't think the Roman Candle is going to produce fireworks for you. I know it sucks. I'm sadder than you are about this development and I wish I were wrong. Sheltered by Ghosts is just too good, too commonly played, and too hard to beat for a deck that wants to stop on three lands most of the time.

Maybe there is just a better Burn build and I can change my tune, soon.

Nothing would make me happier about Standard than being wrong about this one; but for now? I can't co-sign Burn.

LOVE

MIKE