With such widespread interest in the Legacy format; and with newer players struggling to afford their "dream deck" soon enough to get to Friday Night Magic at their local comic shop, I just wanted to remind everyone that this format isn't as inaccessible or forbidding or expensive as you might think it is.
Now Burn (or Red Deck Wins) is by no means a tier 1/top Legacy strategy, but at the same time it's one of the most fun & gratifying decks in the format. It has an unbelievably high skill ceiling, can play as combo, control or aggro depending on the pilot's decisions, and it's basically the definition of "easy to understand, hard to master." Your losses may be more numerous, but your victories will surely be more epic, your games more exciting.
Best of all, you can basically get into legacy burn for JUST OVER A HUNDRED BUCKS.
It's all made possible by cutting
Searing Blaze
for the hip new
Searing Blood
, cutting a few Grim Lavamancers for Eidolon of the Great Revel. These slight changes enable us to cut all fetch lands and save something insane like $450 on the build (about 80% of the overall price). Categorically, the deck will remain as competitive as ever.
Cutting down to 2 Grim Lavamancer shouldn't be a problem since he's not perfect in the early game and often bad to draw in multiples. Adding three Eidolon of the Great Revel gives us mainboard
Pyrostatic Pillar
s with legs.
This card's effect is criminally under-rated in Legacy, a format defined largely by combo and tempo threshold decks, and it can often end the game all by itself. The idea of having your opponent Shock himself to remove the creature is pretty telling of its overall potential. He breaks with the "philosophy of fire" that wants all of your cards to be lightning bolts, but at the same time he's an incredible source of recurring damage and an explosive, must-answer haymaker that can KO an opponent. Including the Eidolon has; in my testing, seemed to give me a kind of critical mass of haymaker kill spells. If they counter the Eidolon, they won't have the resources left to block both the price of progress and the fireblast that will soon be headed straight to their dome.
Anyway, this is the build. As you'll see, the only other noticeable change is just 2
Chain Lightning
instead of the full boat. At ten bucks a pop, it's basically the deck's most expensive burn spell cash-wise. And with so many other bolts, I felt like balancing out with lava spikes doesn't really hurt your ability to answer creatures. The only omissions I don't like are the lack of Phyrexian Revoker or Ensnaring Bridge in the sideboard. Again; these were budgetary considerations. Revoker on Deathrite or Jitte can swing the tide in your favor, and Ensnaring Bridge is fine when Eidolon shocks them every time they cast a spell.
Our maybeboard is there for new players who really like the deck and decide to play it. If your meta is lean on creature removal and heavy on combo; or if you just want to try a different, more creature-heavy configuration, then I'd try
Hellspark Elemental
or
Keldon Marauders
before turning to things like Vexing Devil or Kiln Fiend. The short explanation = Hellspark is a hasted 3 on an empty board, or he's a removal spell for their pesky creature by forcing them into an inopportune block. Keldon; even if removed, can still do a point of damage, and can potentially swing for five damage off a single card. That's a massive amount of burn for the price--the only cost is exposing a single creature for a turn.
Vexing Devil is bad because it gives them a choice, like
Browbeat
, and they'll always take the choice that's better for them. Kiln Fiend is bad because he's win-more. You should already be burning opponents out on turn 3, even without the fiend. Satyr Firedancer is as yet untested, but definitely still interesting. I think he's sideboard at best. And then Shattering Spree is in the maybeboard for being able to kill a chalice with replicate or just blow up a board full of equipment, revokers and vials. I personally like it more than
Smash to Smithereens
for its ability to play around counters. Vexing Shusher is old tech that remains fun nonetheless.
