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Rem Karolus Radient Burn

Commander / EDH Aggro Burn Flying Haste Primer RW (Boros) Theme/Gimmick

DayjobDracula

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Land (37)

Planeswalker (1)

Instant (18)

Creature (13)

Enchantment (4)

Commander (1)

Commander: foil Rem Karolus, Stalwart Slayer

Artifact (14)

Sorcery (12)

Sideboard

Instant (5)

Artifact (1)

Sorcery (3)

Land (1)

Creature (2)

Enchantment (1)

Preface

This deck is based on the very first D&D character I ever built, a multiclass Draconic-Sorcerer/Paladin. It is an amalgamation of strategic cards and pet cards themed after the character. It's a fairly effective mid-power burn deck that hangs out on the table dinking people with commander damage until it delivers a huge burn out of nowhere like a critical smite. The idea is to survive long enough to kill people in a single turn. Like the mechanics of running a spellslinging Paladin, it's not perfect but it sure is fun.

Key Lands

The land base is pretty straightforward Boros, but I want to highlight a few key cards. First, Boseiju, Who Shelters All will be an important strategic card against control decks, allowing you to make your burn spells uncounterable. The last thing we want is to spend all our mana on a huge X spell only to have it fizzle against a Counterspell.

The other key lands in here are War Room and Valakut Stoneforge  . Neither of them are wildly efficient card draw but they can come in really handy in a pinch, and in land slots they've both more than pulled their weight in games.

Rainy Day Fuel Storage

A lot of the mana rocks in this deck serve a dual purpose of tapping for mana and storing it up for a rainy day (i.e. a big spell late game). Storage rocks like Glittering Stockpile and Elementalist's Palette prove their worth by adding a li'l extra mana over time. They're especially useful if you have a high-cost instant like Fault Line that you're waiting to drop.

Pyromancer's Goggles is a very costly mana rock, but if it sticks for a single turn it's a massive advantage. It's also a pretty, fun card that I adore and will probably never take out even if a better option comes along because it brings me joy.

We also have some one-turn mana dumps like Seething Song and Jeska's Will to help those X spells along.

Card Advantage

Okay so Boros has been getting better. Boros burn is especially hard when it comes to card advantage because burn spells rely on instants and sorceries rather than churning out small critters, which is arguably the best way to get card draw in White. A lot of your card advantage will allow some card draw from your opponents (just maybe a little less than you). Cut a Deal falls into this category. In a two-player game it's a bummer, but in any other setting it's pretty solid.

Most card advantage comes in the form of exile. Syr Carah, the Bold is a God-send in this category because even if you have no cards in hand she'll tap herself to get you a card off the top of your library. In combination with Virtue of Courage you can get two or three cards exiled each turn. In sorcery form, we also have Light Up the Stage, which is a step up because it gives you until the end of your following turn to use the resources that it exiles.

Wedding Ring and Welcoming Vampire aren't the best card draw in the world, especially in a burn deck, but they're here for thematic reasons. I.E. my greatest life accomplishment in D&D was the six months I spent in 2020 trying to seduce a vampire NPC into a long, drawn-out Jane Austen romance. These are pet cards through and through.

KILL IT WITH FIRE

All right, so we got our cheap burn and our expensive burn. On the cheap side you have some easy spells like Play with Fire and Sacred Fire. Two or three drops that you can either toss out for some early-game damage or use to remove smaller threats.

Even more fun are cards like Price of Progress or Acidic Soil which cost very little and do massive amounts of damage. Rem Karolus makes you immune, so suddenly two-sided damage becomes one-sided damage. These are my favorite cards in the deck. They are mean, and Price can be tutored with a Sunforger, making it even more disgusting.

Our high cost burn is almost all X spells. Earthquake, Fault Line, and Molten Disaster are all cards that synergize brilliantly with your commander's protection, and don't hit him either. Bonus points if you can make Molten Disaster uncounterable.

Other notable X spells include Fireball (another pet card and impossible to exclude from a D&D themed deck) and Crackle with Power. There are more, but these are the prettiest, the most thematic, and arguably the most damaging.

Why Have Any Creatures in a Deck Like This?

Because if I don't have any creatures I'll die in combat, so here's some fun creatures that make our spells scarier and give us goodies. Chandra's Incinerator and Satyr Firedancer turn your burn into board control, which is especially helpful when someone dares to move to combat.

Solphim, Mayhem Dominus and Fire Servant serve as damage doublers. Two of them, for redundancy, because someone will probably remove one.

Heartflame Duelist is a new add that I adore, because it comes stapled to a little damage spell AND gives my burn spells lifelink. And she's a Boros knight! How thematic! I love her, she's perfect.

Managara, the Diplomat is here to give us cards and to discourage people from hitting us while we have so few blockers.

Neheb, the Eternal turns our damage into mana, so we can theoretically cast two large burn spells in a single turn. Disgusting. He's never survived more than two rounds in a game, and for good reason.

Adult Gold Dragon and Velomachus Lorehold serve the double purpose of being thematic (gold draconic sorcerer, anyone?) and being big and scary flyers who are good at dealing with threats, and the latter even tutors spells.

Other Cards of Note

Fiery Emancipation is just fun, if you can make it stick. Big burn, much damage.

Sword of the Animist and Tome of Legends wouldn't normally be God-send cards in a burn deck, but because Rem Karolus is a cheap, hasty, flyer they're extremely useful for mana and card advantage.

Sunforger is just Sunforger. 'nuff said.

Blasphemous Act is gross because your commander protects your board.

Mithril Coat comes in super handy to protect your commander from board wipes, or to protect your big threats from removal.

Notable Exclusions

Mana Geyser would be a great add, but I play a lot of two and three-player games, so it's just not the best setting for this card. I've had it fizzle too many times to trust it, and if you're playing against a blue deck it backfires.

Pyroblast is also just highly situational.

Leonin Lightscribe used to be in here, but he got out-competed by Heartflame Duelist.

Radient Scrollwielder also got out-competed recently, because the randomness of his effect is difficult to work around, and I'd rather just have another card advantage spell.

Twinferno can be fun, but I've discovered it's hard to work with because you have to play it before you play the spell you want to copy, so you can never respond to or copy opponents' spells with it.

Cheerio

Anyway, I call upon more people to play burn decks. I know they're finnicky, but they're also really fun. Highly recommend. Seduce vampires, raze your enemies, and always invoke Divine Smite.

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