Well it finally happened. The last league release of the month and burn finally made the list.

https://decks.tcgplayer.com/magic/legacy/genemachine/burn/1323223

Congrats to Gene Machine on the finish. The sideboard is one I would definitely not use in a large tournament, but with the variance of leagues it’s feasible. He brought back some old tech that hasn’t been used in a while.

If you expect a lot of storm and belcher I could justify 4 of these and perhaps that’s what he ran into.

In modern, burn has had a very generous last 2 weeks. Looking at mtgtop8 data is makes up 7% of top 8 finishes right up there with humans (8%), Jeskai control (9%), and tron (7%). Burn tier 1 confirmed? I think going forward exquisite firecraft may be a sideboard staple as jeskai continues to soar in popularity thanks to Teferi.

There were two big finishes with burn both at SCG events this week. Each deck was a little different too.

Ryan Ferries made 7th with his burn list which was pretty standard. Focusing on our grindier creature based matchups but including blood and bridge in teh side. You can see his decklist here: http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=19333&d=322803&f=MO

John Phillip Whetstone also made 7th with what I believe was an interesting anti control package (which coincidentally made up a bulk of the top 8). He’s our red hot spice of the week.

Red Hot Spice

Couple of things to note. This deck has no anti life gain. But I guess it doesn’t matter if they are dead before they have a chance to gain life. 4 shard volley’s attempts to give burn a higher rate of turn 3 kills. If every card in your deck is 1 mana does 3 damage, and you curve out, then by the end of turn 3 you would have dealt 18 damage enough to probably kill most opponents given shock and fetch lands. This is also very good against control. Often you are waiting for them to tap out some mana so you can fire off of a flurry of burn spells that they won’t be able to counter all of. If you have a bunch of 2 mana burn spells like boros charm and lightning helix this becomes harder to do. If they completely tap out you have a greater chance of sending multiple bolts to the face. Imagine being able to do 9 dmg turn 3 or 4 after they tap out for Teferi. That’s probably enough to finish them off at that point or at least be in range of a firecraft as long as you got some early damage in.

Which brings me to the sideboard. Covers a lot of match ups but is built around control. You could even morph into a control deck yourself if you put down a bridge and a dragon claw you can just burn them to before they burn you. Jeskai typically doesn’t have much in terms of artifact removal and they simply don’t have enough counters for all our spells.

I did not like this list at first but after thinking about it I believe it deserves a try. 2 mana burn spells are clunky and being able to burn out non-interactive decks with shard volley helps that. It’s certainly a list I believe warrants additional testing.

What I will be playing this week.

Aside from the above list I had an epiphany in legacy that I will wright about this week but here a preview.

Break up album pending.