Book Burning

Sorcery

Any player may have Book Burning deal 6 damage to him or her. If no one does, put the top six cards of target player's library into his or her graveyard.

Legality

Format	Legality
1v1 Commander	Legal
Archenemy	Legal
Big Apple Highlander	Legal
Block Constructed	Legal
Canadian Highlander	Legal
Casual	Legal
Commander / EDH	Legal
Commander: Rule 0	Legal
Custom	Legal
Duel Commander	Legal
Freeform	Legal
Highlander	Legal
Legacy	Legal
Leviathan	Legal
Limited	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Pauper	Legal
Pauper Duel Commander	Legal
Pauper EDH	Legal
Planar Constructed	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Premodern	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Tiny Leaders	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (36)

TheoryCrafter on "Valgavoth, Harrower of Souls" EDH …

8 months ago

Welcome Back to Magic. I broke my description down to the three deck types yer seeking.

Aristocrats: Take advantage of death triggers to hurt your opponent. Examples of cards are Blood Artist, Dreadhorde Butcher and Zulaport Cutthroat. Graveyard recursion cards like Disentomb, Gravedigger, Mortuary Mire and Valgavoth's Faithful should be considered.

Burn: Spells, instants and sorceries, and abilities of permanents that deal noncombat damage. Examples include, but are not limited to, Blightning, Bonfire of the Damned and Lightning Bolt. Cards you should add to any Rakdos burn deck include, but are not limited to, Pestilent Spirit, Soul-Scar Mage and Toralf, God of Fury  ^Flip.

Punisher: A Sophie's Choice in every spell. Examples include, but are not limited to, Book Burning, Dash Hopes, Killing Wave, Painful Quandary and Vexing Devil. I would also consider any creature with the Afflict ability, especially Wildfire Eternal to be punisher cards.

As for cards that will feed into your commander's static ability, I would recommend Burning Anger, Psychosis Crawler, Scrawling Crawler and Sheoldred, the Apocalypse.

Thank you for reading me out. I hope this helps give you a baseline of what you're looking for. Happy Hunting!

halanvaina on Mono Red Control/Mill (Premodern)

1 year ago

All right I updated the deck more over the past while.

Added Feldon's Cane to try to keep a grip on the late game. Took out Book Burning since it seemed to have too little impact on the game, at least compared to other things in the list. Took out Mogg Bombers for Lavaborn Muse for repeatable damage. Still going to keep the two beaters in the deck, but Took out Butcher Orgg for Kamahl, Pit Fighter. The fact he can tap to do a lighting bolt is better than the former. Another addition is Devastating Dreams as the finisher. Cards like Jayemdae Tome and (hopefully) Browbeat will draw me enough cards, and might even luck out & shuffle my graveyard into my libary afterward.

While I do agree with opponents choosing two different options a terrible idea most of the time, the thing is with damage and fairly low cmc means that eventually your opponent will just have to do what I want. It's not like Library of Lat-Nam, where its too expensive to play too much, and it's always going to be the far worse option. Least the way I see it. Also I'm going to replace Dwarven Ruins with Balduvian Trading Post when i can. Thing that sucks is I already ordered the cards before these recent revisions. So I guess I'll live with it until I see one. Same goes for the most of the other replacements.

wallisface on Mono Red Control/Mill (Premodern)

1 year ago

I’m not familiar in the premodern format, but this list seems to be doing a lot of things that feel weak/wrong.

Crumbling Sanctuary feels very weak, in that its basically saying to the opponent “hey you know how you had 20 life… now you effectively have around 45-50”. I get this impacts your own life total as well, but with no cards in your deck to profit from being in the graveyard, and no other cards that naturally mill (outside of Book Burning) before you drop this 5-mana arifact, i don’t see how this card helps you… it’s much more likely to benefit your opponent.

Cards that let your opponent choose an option are considered pretty-universally terrible. This is because the opponent will always choose the option that benefits you the least, meaning the card will always be doing the weakest of its effects.

Your mana curve feels excessively high. I don’t know the format well but it feels adjacent to modern/pioneer, and in that regard your mana curve is far too high. Your quantity of 4-5 mana spells is excessive, but also I see no way you’re ever realistically casting either Butcher Orgg or Avatar of Fury.

Delphen7 on How to Handle Multiple Players …

3 years ago

Say Player A cast Book Burning with some target.

Player B really wants to take the 6 damage because something of their will trigger if they do. Player C wants to take the damage so that Player B's card doesn't trigger.

Does the game specify a way for B and C to decide who takes the damage, or do they just resort to Rock, Paper, Scissors?

Fuzzy003 on Punisher: The Illusion of Choice

3 years ago

Kinda surprised not to see Breaking Point or Book Burning somewhere in the lists. I miss decks like this. :)

Balaam__ on Topdeck Manipulation

3 years ago

Thanks Chasmolinker, I saw some possibilities with the general idea here and wanted to see what I could do with the cards available. I’m in the same boat as you though, this certainly didn’t turn into a Tier 1 deck, ha. Although I hadn’t seen the card Book Burning before, that’s an interesting one.

Chasmolinker on Topdeck Manipulation

3 years ago

Cool deck idea. I used to sling Erratic Explosion along with Book Burning way back in the day. Not with any kind of success though. lol +1

TheoryCrafter on Gavi, The Mill Warden

4 years ago

Have you considered any combination of Maddening Cacophony , Ruin Crab and Jace's Archivist ? Both MC and RC can get around permanents that give your opponents hexproof and JA has an activated ability that works like windfall.

Also, I'd suggest considering Teferi's Ageless Insight . This enchantment combined with JA essentially increases the number of cards in your hand each time you activate the ability, increasing the size of your hand each turn if you have no maximum hand size.

With Drake Haven's activated ability and Gavi's static ability, may I suggest Altar of the Brood to add some extra mill for the deck?

Tibalt's Trickery and Book Burning do permit some red mill.

With all the cards in your deck offering damage, I'd recommend adding Mindcrank .

Happy Hunting!