Burning-Rune Demon

Creature — Demon Berserker

Flying

When Burning-Rune Demon enters the battlefield, you may search your library for exactly two cards not named Burning-Rune Demon that have different names. If you do, reveal those cards. An opponent chooses one of them. Put the chosen card into your hand and the other into your graveyard, then shuffle your library.

Legality

Format	Legality
1v1 Commander	Legal
Alchemy	Legal
Archenemy	Legal
Arena	Legal
Block Constructed	Legal
Brawl	Legal
Canadian Highlander	Legal
Casual	Legal
Commander / EDH	Legal
Commander: Rule 0	Legal
Custom	Legal
Duel Commander	Legal
Gladiator	Legal
Highlander	Legal
Historic	Legal
Legacy	Legal
Leviathan	Legal
Limited	Legal
Modern	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Pioneer	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Pre-release	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Standard	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (38)

TheRevelator on ANCIENT DRAGON TEMPEST (KAALIA)

2 weeks ago

Azoth2099 I can totally understand the flavor reasons for wanting to use certain combos over others!

I decided to cut Burning-Rune Demon because I just couldn't figure out a recursion method to get back whatever my opponent binned. It never felt like I could make an optimal choice of two cards that made my opponent's choice irrelevant.

I guess with the printing of Hoarding Broodlord you can make the opponent choose between Broodlord or Rune-Scarred Demon... but I'm just not sure on it is all!

Azoth2099 on ANCIENT DRAGON TEMPEST (KAALIA)

2 weeks ago

TheRevelator Definitely liking the lines off of Rune-Scarred Demon and Hoarding Broodlord, classic Kaalia vibes. I think I was running Dualcaster Mage + Twinflame in my 1st iteration of the deck but ended up cutting it in favor of more flavor. Not necessarily the best choice as they're both just great cards on their own, especially Twinflame in this context, but there have been enough cards printed for Kaalia since then to where she hasn't lost much speed from the cut.

I saw that you're running Saw in Half in your build, and it seems like a banger. If I can manage to find space for the Recruiters again, I don't think I'll have a legitimate excuse to not run it myself.

Also, how do you feel about Burning-Rune Demon? I've seen a fair amount of Kaalia players cut it nonchalantly, but I've found that it basically acts as a pseudo Intuition depending on what you Tutor up with it, which is a big deal imo.

DemonDragonJ on Rune-Scarred Demon or Sidisi, Undead …

2 months ago

DreadKhan, the best answer that I can give is that I made those two decks before Burning-Rune Demon was printed, and, even after it was printed, I do not want my opponent to chose which card goes to my graveyard; if I could choose which card went where, I would definitely use that creature, but I usually make an effort to avoid giving my opponents a choice unless I am certain that all choices shall benefit me.

Also, you looked at Rune-Scarred Demon from the reverse perspective of how I looked at it; you looked at it first as a creature, then with a tutor ability added to it, whereas I looked at it first as a tutor, and then with a powerful flying creature after the tutor effect has resolved. Using that same logic, would you rather save one mana to cast Regrowth over Eternal Witness, or spend the additional mana for a creature that can very easily be sacrificed and reanimated or "flickered?"

DreadKhan on Rune-Scarred Demon or Sidisi, Undead …

2 months ago

DemonDragonJ honest question, but would you seriously play a 5 mana 6/6 Flyer with no other abilities in Commander? And it's got a subtype that doesn't have oodles of payoffs/synergies, it's not an Elf/Goblin/Zombie? Probably not, we want more than just a body usually, even if a cheap 6/6 would be worth 'a card' in an average meta, there are still much better cards. So, if that 5 mana card probably isn't worth it, does the card get better when you tack on a Demonic Tutor for full cost? 7 mana for both effects sounds like a bad card to me, one that I'd expect to pay under $1 for, not one that's closer to $10. As noted, it's hard to cast early (and most people want tutors in decks that are fairly competitive), while also being hard to follow up with another spell as it's 7 mana, so whatever you tutored could end up discarded depending on your meta, and if it's a 'has an effect next turn' type card then you're going to be waiting 2 turns to get actual value. Why wouldn't you just run something that actually changes the board state for 7 mana, like Necromantic Selection? You get a wipe and you get back the best body, that's usually better than a 6/6 flyer in my book, ymmv and if it does you can certainly run Rune-Scarred. I feel like it's a lot easier to build around board states happening where you care about a Wipe Plus vs care about a 6/6 Flyer.

Out of curiosity, why run Rune-Scarred Demon over Burning-Rune Demon? You get access to 2 cards, lots of decks care a bunch about the graveyard, it's quite possible to dig out two cards where both are good wherever they end up, and it's less mana for the same 6/6 Flyer, why run Rune-Scarred and have to wait yet another turn hoping for another land drop?

I will say, I often prefer 'do more' tutors like Primal Command (I literally play it in my Legacy Elves deck as a 'solve the problem' type card), but I'm not sure getting a 6/6 flyer for 5 more mana is really a great deal on that scale, especially when you could get either 2 cards or a Deathtouch creature for less mana. It might be overstating things to call Rune-Scarred a 'bad card', but I don't think it's an especially good one, and if I spend more than $2 for a card I expect some pretty impressive stuff at this point! What qualifies as impressive varies by format obviously, but even in Legacy there are budget cards that make the cut. What doesn't make the cut though, even in Reanimator decks, is Rune-Scarred Demon, there are wildly better things you can be doing, and Commander has almost all of them in it's card pool.

DreadKhan on Rune-Scarred Demon or Sidisi, Undead …

2 months ago

I love Black Sidisi in Meren, I have never wanted to run Rune-Scarred. I ran Burning-Rune Demon over Rune-Scarred, but even that has been removed. 7 mana is a heck of a lot of mana if you ever want to just cast it later game, a thing you can do with Sidisi or Burning. FWIW Burning also gets two things, as long as you get the right two things it doesn't matter where they end up.

CrystalQuarry on Liesa, Forgotten Archangel (Budget EDH, Combo)

5 months ago

Hey, thank you so much for commenting and taking the time to read through the deck description!

While this is intended to be a budget deck, I personally just really like foils and original printings of cards. The versions of each card listed in the deck here are what I actually have for it in paper.

Activated Sleeper is a card I have been looking at and considering adding to the deck, but it seems highly conditional given that it can only copy a creature that left the battlefield the same turn. I agree it can go infinite with Karmic Guide and Karmic Guide even helps set it up given that Echo would often force you to sacrifice it on your upkeep anyway. That said, I'm a bit worried about how effective the card is when you DON'T have access to Karmic Guide. I guess depending on the pod it could still be quite good at stealing an opponent's creature. I will have to test it a bit and see how it performs in practice.

Kaya's Ghostform is a card I've considered as well but what concerns me with it is the Sorcery speed nature of it and that it is a bit more telegraphed what the intention is. That said, the ability to bring back the creature even if it gets targeted with something like Swords to Plowshares is very cool! In the pods I've played this deck and where people have gotten to learn more or less how it works, they tend to try and remove Liesa, Forgotten Archangel very quickly, so I've found cards like Undying Evil to be essential for keeping Liesa in play. I've found the instant speed to be extremely relevant in many situations as well. That said, Legion's Landing  ^Flip is a particularly weak card in the deck and I could definitely see cutting that for testing Kaya's Ghostform.

Thran Vigil is a cool new card that I must have missed in the BRO spoilers. However, this deck isn't really all in on persist type effects. Twilight Shepherd is pretty much the only card it would strongly interact with. I would say it's pretty rare for this deck to win through combat and as such the value of the +1/+1 counters in it (even an arbitrarily large number of them) is a bit questionable. If the deck has assembled one of the infinite death engines, then it should be winning outright without the need to even go to combat. I like the interaction with Tortured Existence but it's such a shame that it only works on your turn! If you could suddenly pump up Liesa on an opponent's turn after they've already declared attackers at you, then that would make it a lot better.

Profane Tutor is a great budget tutor, but having to wait two entire turns is a major detriment to how useful of a card it is, especially as a mid to late game draw. The decks I've seen take the biggest advantage of Profane Tutor are the ones that somehow exile and cast a copy from exile or copy it from graveyard and cast the copy immediately, rather than having to wait the two turns. Mid to late game I would much rather pay a little extra mana to guarantee getting a card immediately rather than having to wait. If you get Profane Tutor in the early game, then yes it's definitely better than Diabolic Tutor or Mastermind's Acquisition for the lower mana cost. If I had a means of cheating on the suspend part of the card in Orzhov then it would warrant an inclusion over one of the other tutors in my opinion.

Vile Entomber is another card I considered and even in an earlier iteration of the deck I ran for a while. The issue I often found with it was that it only grabbed ONE card to put to the graveyard. Burning-Rune Demon and Final Parting are in the deck because they find TWO cards. With Vile Entomber I could find Karmic Guide but not another card to combo with it. With Burning-Rune Demon I can find Karmic Guide and another card to combo with it and often times whichever piece the opponent gives me is irrelevant. Blinking or reanimating Burning-Rune Demon is also significantly more value and helps assemble combos much faster than Vile Entomber can.

Bolas's Citadel is extremely powerful, but it is at least right now (12/17/2022) more than $5 which is where the line in the sand has been drawn for whether or not a card can be added to the deck. That said, even if it was a bit cheaper Bolas's Citadel would require leaning much harder into a life gain theme. While life gain is another very popular and powerful strategy, I feel it is a bit orthogonal to the direction of this deck which is more heavily focused on creature ETB/LTB triggers and the graveyard.

I've been working on a Liesa, Shroud of Dusk deck which leans very heavily into life gain/life loss shenanigans and in that deck I do run stuff like Children of Korlis. That's not to say that Children of Korlis isn't a good card in Liesa, Forgotten Archangel, but I feel like you have to already be on the life gain game plan to get the most out of it.

Plumb the Forbidden is a great card, but you need sufficiently many throw away bodies and a sufficiently high life total to manage it. Without sufficient life gain or creature token generators it runs the risk of being a dead draw. Body Count can also be a completely dead draw at times, but it has a much higher ceiling in this deck specifically than Plumb the Forbidden does. Body Count can literally draw the entire deck for 1 black mana with a death engine assembled. Plumb the Forbidden could never draw more than the greatest number of creatures in play at one moment and I must have the life available to pay for it plus 2 mana. If the deck was more of an aristocrats style build spewing creature tokens left and right and running things like Soul Warden then Plumb the Forbidden would be a much more natural inclusion I feel.

Fanatical Devotion is a really cool sacrifice outlet that can do relevant things like protect Liesa which is very important. That said, thanks to BRO another arguably much better sacrifice outlet just became budget (<$5). And that's Ashnod's Altar. I will be adding this to the deck shortly as a third sacrifice outlet.

Thanks again for reading the long description and commenting!

TheOfficialCreator on Kaalia

7 months ago

Burning-Rune Demon and Rune-Scarred Demon both seem very powerful. Razaketh, the Foulblooded to a lesser extent.

legendofa on Ziatora Calls Upon the Demons

9 months ago

Okay, let's take a look at some of these. First note is, budget isn't really a concern, because pretty much all of my games are online these days, through servers like Cockatrice.

Master of Cruelty, Demonlord Belzenlok, and Burning-Rune Demon were all on my short list. Master of Cruelty is a little too build-around for my preference in this deck, but it's a great card. Belzenlok and B-R Demon would help to give it consistency, and Belzenlok in particular has a good chance of finding its way back in.

I had overlooked Dragon Tempest, so that's definitely going in.

I'll play around with Raphael, Fiendish Savior, Ob Nixilis, Unshackled, and Rakshasa Debaser and see what they do for this deck. I especially like the lifelink, since this deck plays more recklessly than my usual style.

This is my first Demon tribal deck, so I'm still working out the details. The 6-8 mana slots fill up fast. Incidentally, how do you submit a deck to EDHrec?

Once again, thanks for the suggestions!