Help building Bloodbraid elf burn deck
Modern Deck Help forum
Posted on Feb. 14, 2018, 11:12 p.m. by vasarto77
This is basically a Landfall and burn with Bloodbraid elf. At least that is the idea so far.
Creatures:Bloodbraid Elf x4Turntimber Basilisk x3Groundbreaker x3Ball Lightning x3
Non Creature Spells:Explore x3Khalni Heart Expedition x2Searing Blaze x4Burst Lightning x3Magma Jet x3Magma Spray x3
Lands:Evolving Wilds x4Mountain x8Forest x8
I can't afford playsets of the expensive 20 dollar 50 dollar lands btw.
Anyway, I at least need another creature, but I don't know what. Maybe a planeswalker? No idea. I have not played in a while.
I am thinking of these at the moment.
Undergrowth Champion What do you guys think?
Turntimber Basilisk and Khalni Heart Expedition would be really disappointing to hit with cascade. OTOH you are probably on to something good with powerful creatures with haste.
Also, 4 Lightning Bolts are great for decks like this, and Lava Spike also do good things to your opponents life total.
February 15, 2018 2:19 a.m.
Yeah everything you can cascate i to should be impactfull so id cut turntimber an kalni heart.
Searing blaze can be a 4 ofLightning Bolt and Lava Spike as mentioned before are staples for burn. Monastery Swiftspear is an awesome creature for burn decks
February 15, 2018 6:59 a.m.
Don't try and bounce BBE or you're going to have a bad time. Cascade triggers on Cast not ETB.
February 15, 2018 9:13 a.m.
yeah you shouldnt try to use BBE multiple times, that wont work as good as you might thinkAtarka's Command is pretty good in the same deck as bbe.
Magma Jet should not be in any Burn deck, same is true for Magma Spray and Burst Lightning.
Combining burn with landfall seems odd and not very usefull so id drop this idea.
What about something like
4 BBE 4 Monastery Swiftspear 4 Ball Lightning
4 Lava Spike 4 Lightning Bolt 4 Rift Bolt 4 Atarka's Command 4 Searing Blood/ Searing Blaze (Searing Blood might be better because you cant guarantee the landfall trigger when you are cascading) 2 Exquisite Firecraft
22 lands
February 15, 2018 11 a.m.
Its either including Bloodbraid Elf or its burn.
(If you really want to stretch the metaphor and include "red deck wins" variants in "burn" then your statement may be true)
Burn only plays its 1 cmc hasty creatures because it can reasonably expect that they do 4 damage (aka. Boros Charm) before something stonewalls them.
Burn doesn't want to spend its burn spells to clear te way for its creature.
BBE needs you to have a clear board (since 3/2 are not exactly powerhouses in the format at the moment), as it comes down on turn 4 (at the same time (or later) as Thought-Knot Seer and the like.
If you can't attack with BBE its a 4 mana cascade spell, that does nothing else.
Which is pretty bad - since at best you can cast a 3 mana spell for 4 mana.
February 15, 2018 11:34 a.m.
This is probably a case of getting two decks mixed up with each other; one is R/g burn, the other is a midrangey RG deck, that wants to win on card advantage and perhaps an explosive finishing move (like Bloodbraid Elf into Ball Lightning).
Others have pointed out that burn only plays very cheap spells, and that is correct - and therefore, a good burn deck plays very few land, which in turn means that you draw more burn, and less land. And BBE is a 4 cmc creature... that's like turn 6 or 7 for a regular burn deck.
February 15, 2018 12:13 p.m.
No matter what, you also need better lands. Can't afford fetches and shocks? hmmm.... there's still shadowlands Game Trail, checklands Rootbound Crag, fastlands Copperline Gorge, painlands Karplusan Forest, cyclelands Sheltered Thicket, and whatever else you can find. Mostly, your lands should come into play untapped, since you want to play aggressively.
February 15, 2018 3:30 p.m.
I think I can afford some of those. I was going to think about using them anyway, but I didn't know what to pick exactly until my main deck was completed first.
February 15, 2018 5:16 p.m.
Having been back and look at bit at it, I think you can make a really funny RG deck which is all about your topdeck and card advantage.
4 Bloodbraid Elf (that's what it was all about from the start, right?)
4 Courser of Kruphix (normally I would be careful about playing more than 1, but since the top card is really important, 4 is ok)
2 Vizier of the Menagerie (topdecks matter)
2 Domri Rade (like I said, the topdeck is important)
X Temple of Abandon (to manipulate the topdeck)
X Tireless Tracker (that's the last echo of your landfall theme, would be better with fetches, though)
There's some 5 cmc creatures that could also be useful in a deck like this - Thragtusk, Glorybringer... anything else, that would give you some sort of semi-card advantage. But the main problem will most likely be the early turns of the game against fast decks, so a bit of Pyroclasm could also be necessary. Anyway, there's plenty of space left, so if you have anything particular, you'd like to cascade into, you can easily add that.
February 16, 2018 1:43 p.m.
hmmm, Maybe I will give that a shot. I am sure I can expand on that a bit pretty easily. I got another deck that also has Bloodbraid Elf in it as well. I got most of the cards for it, but for the expensive lands creatures I have some substitutes in it. It's basically another red green modern which is my favorite combo next to green white that relies on Primal Forcemage and things like Ground Breaker and Ball Lightning etc. But this will be really good to try out as well. Plus, I think I got most of the cards in this already.
February 17, 2018 4:32 a.m.
I also feel Oracle of Mul Daya would be great for that deck as well. Crown of Convergence and some mana chumps like Noble Hierarch or Birds of Paradise
February 17, 2018 4:37 a.m.
WAIT! ...I got an idea....Is there a way to maybe find a way to cast my top card of my deck for free...or maybe something like cast it for nothing like Elvish Piper it out from the top deck?
February 17, 2018 4:39 a.m.
In spite of having more effect, Oracle of Mul Daya is not as good as Courser of Kruphix. It has a lot smaller body (dies to Lightning Bolt) and higher casting cost (can't be cascaded by Bloodbraid Elf).
I'm not really believing in mana dorks either - imagine cascading for something with impact, and coming up with Elvish Mystic. Not really what you'd want. Noble Hierarch at least has the exalted ability going for it, but its mana is off-color. Also, it has a pretty heavy pricetag, more than most fetch or shock lands.
Groundbreaker and Ball Lightning are probably really good in this deck. Perhaps Atarka's Command too, although it interacts poorly with cascade (it would resolve before your bloodbraid elf).
I don't think there's any reasonable way to get to play your top-library card for free. But just to get more card advantage, you could perhaps play Dire Fleet Daredevil - a lot of match-ups could really turn around on that one. In others it would probably be rather irrelevant and just wait to be boarded out.
I don't think you should play a passive card like Crown of Convergence; a scenario with plenty of creatures on your side, working magic on your topdeck is nice, but drawing it and playing it on an empty table is bad.
Lands: I forgot a couple of useful lands. Kessig Wolf Run and Treetop Village.
vasarto77 says... #2
Also I am thinking of maybe throwing in Isochron Scepter and a white bounce spell of some kind to bounce my bloodbraid for two mana each turn. Would that be a good idea?
February 14, 2018 11:42 p.m.