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[Gentry] Manial Pyromaniac (Rakdos B/R)

Standard* BR (Rakdos) Budget Burn Casual Discard

Michieltomme


Welcome fellow lunatics to my ludicrous idea for a Gentry deck. I have always been in love with and especially , and have thus decided to make most -if not all - of my decks in the Rakdos colours (). As you can imagine, I was happier than a pyromaniac with a matchbox with Shadows over Innistrad (SOI) and Eldritch Moon (EMN). Why do you ask? Because with it, my favourite mechanic of all times was released: Madness!

With some of the new cards from Amonkhet (AKH) that reward or enable discarding, I figured I had to just make a full Madness/Discard-deck. While running through the options in my head, a crazy plan came to me: a burn deck. No creatures, all madness, all lovely burn.

Now this is far, very far from being intended as a top tier deck. It's just amazing fun to play casually. The only problem is... I tend to lose. I just can't seem to burn fast enough. Additionally, this deck has quite some weaknesses. So here I am, looking for ways to improve my deck, and who better to ask than you guys?

Here's some more information on how I built my deck:

This is a budget format in which all standard legal cards may be played, but you are only allowed to include a combination of up to 4, unique rares and mythic rares. In addition you may also only have 15 uncommons in your deck.

If we're going to roll a madness deck, then we'd better have ways to discard cards, and get something for it in return. That's where the Tormenting Voices and Cathartic Reunions come into play. We 'discard' cards, in order to play them cheaper AND draw free cards to replace them. This in essence lets me keep up my hand size during the whole game, giving me many options, many burn spells and enabling some of my other spells. I also added in 3 Painful Lessons to help keep my hand size up when I run out of options, and even - if really necessary - to burn my opponent for the final 2 health he has.

Our win with this deck is reliant entirely on burning my opponent to a crisp. The two madness-cards that helped inspire this crazy idea are Fiery Temper and Alms of the Vein and these form the base of the deck. After some playtesting I realised I was still lacking some burn, and so I added 4 Incendiary Flows as well.

In addition to the Painful Lessons and the rares I'll talk about later, I tend to burn my opponent to death in an average of about 9 turns. This, in my opinion, is still much too slow. I'd preferably be winning (relatively consistently) in 6-7 turns, and was thus wondering if maybe the addition of something like Flame Lash would be good. This is, I think, the biggest problem in my deck so any help would be appreciated.

Lacking any creatures myself, I try not to get my face smashed in by an ogre or any of his friends. For this, I need removal to keep my life a little safe-ish. That is why I have those Alchemist's Greetings and Murderous Compulsions. I also prefer not to get poked to death by sharp goblin fingers, which is why I included Biting Rain. So together with the rares and the healing I get from Alms of the Vein, I hope I can survive long enough.

A little side note: I can use some of my burn spells to remove creatures as well, but then I often end up lacking too much player-damage to win the game.

And so we end up at the rares. You can only have 4, so which ones fit best in the deck? (Spoiler: Not rare dual-lands because they aren't worth the slot)

The first mythic rare I chose, is the whole reason I wanted to make a burn deck: Nahiri's Wrath. This is by far one of my favourite cards and is in itself a win-condition in my deck. Because my hand size almost always stays really high, it generally deals over 10 damage, without even madness-ing any additional burn spells, to just obliterate my opponent for the mere cost of . It suffices to say that if I draw this card, my average win time is 5 turns.

Then comes Cut which is good as a cheap removal. Its flip Ribbons is good as an end game finisher and it doesn't matter that much if I discard it, since I can still use the aftermath. Pretty simple.

Its brother is Insult / Injury. Now this can enable me to do a whole lot of damage in a turn. The only downside is that it's a semi-late-game card, and I'm trying to make my deck as fast as possible. The aftermath is still always useful as both removal and burn and can be discarded.

Finally there is Fateful Showdown. This is another card that works well with my large hand size. In addition, it enables some madness-effects and it lets me refresh my hand if I run out of options or burn spells.

Two other rares I've considered are Burn from Within and Harness the Storm but I've scrapped them mainly because they're too 'late'. However, I would love to hear your opinion on them, and/or other rares.

I came here for some advice on how to optimise my deck. So perhaps I should list everything wrong with it.

The biggest problem is that it's a little too slow. Against aggro-decks with lots of creatures, I don't have enough removal to survive 9 turns. Against big monsters with more than 4 toughness, I have even less removal. So my face tends to get clubbed a lot.

Another problem is that I have just enough - or perhaps just too little - burn. This is a big problem against control-decks that can counter some of my spells, and against life-gain-/lifelink-decks that heal too much for me to deal with.

Thank you all for reading this and possibly commenting. I'm looking forward to all your ideas and I hope you can help me! Any ideas for a sideboard would also really be appreciated.

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