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BMoor's Magic The Gathering Deck Garage
 Burn Baby Burn!
(well, not so much burning as sizzling)

03.29.06

Hiya! Sean from NY again, this time I'm trying to create a casual mono-red burn/land destruction deck with what I've got to work with in my collection.  This deck loves the idea of dropping a blizzard-herder then cracking the earth to lose the herder and one land while hopefully your opponent loses two land.  I've got a lot of Kamigawa and 9th Edition cards at my disposal as well as a plethora of older cards, none of which are on target for what I'm trying to do here.  This deck isn't supposed to win consistantly, it's more like an amusing/annoying red deck, kind of like how newer players like to build mono-blue decks made up of mostly counters :P  Anyway, So far I've got the list trimmed down to 96 cards, the goal being to get to 60 cards with a possible sideboard.  Oh, and some things to take into consideration: my rare count isn't terribly high, so the most I can do for my Zo-Zu the Punisher and Thoughts of Ruin is 2 each, but if you think they're truly important I can try to get more.  And spells really shouldn't go over 3cc (except for a few choice 4cc spells), this deck isn't a fan of land LOL.   And lastly, I didn't include Pyroclasm because while its a lovely universal sweeper, it kills everything in my deck with ease.  Okies, here's the decklist:
 
Who Needs More Than Four Land?
 
Creatures:
4  Akki Blizzard-Herder
4  Akki Raider
4  Frostling
4  Goblin Brigand
4  Hearth Kami
4  Raging Goblin
2  Zo-Zu the Punisher
 
Other Spells:
4  Bolt
4  Crack the Earth
4  Deperate Ritual
4  Glacial Ray
4  Lava Spike
4  Seething Song
4  Shock
4  Stone Rain
4  Sunder from Within
2  Thoughts of Ruin
4  Volcanic Hammer
4  Fellwar Stone
 
Land:
24 Mountain
 
So, what's your opinion? Thanks!
Okay Sean, let's play with fire.  First of all, if this deck is 94 cards, you definitely want to cut it down.  Let's go through and see what we can remove. 

Raging Goblin is nice on the first few turns, but gets old fast. 

Sunder from Within is strictly worse than Demolish (or Pillage, if you can wrangle that). 

Crack the Earth is too symmetrical and results in card disadvantage. 

Desperate Ritual and Seething Song seem excessive, especially in a deck that doesn't want high-cost spells. 
 
And I know of Lightning Bolt, Firebolt, Energy Bolt, Electrostatic Bolt, Prophetic Bolt, Thunderbolt, and Feedback Bolt, but I know of no Magic card simply called "Bolt".  That's twenty-four cards we've dropped right there.
 
I like that you've got Fellwar Stone, since with it you can Thoughts away your lands and still have mana.  That gives us 28 mana sources in a 70-card deck, so drop about two Mountains.
You've also got Glacial Ray, which explains why you had Sunder from Within and Crack the Earth.  Sunder can come back, then, in exchange for Goblin Brigand.  Crack the Earth still isn't good enough.  And if we're gonna try for an Arcane/Splice subtheme, drop Volcanic Hammer.  Non-Arcane burn spells need to live up to a higher standard for this deck.  Shock is okay, but dropping it would bring us down to the magic number 60.
 
If we leave Shock in, that gets us down to 64 cards, the cream of the crop.  I just can't decide what else to drop, though.  And I don't really want to add anything after we worked so hard to lower the card count, but if I did, I'd suggest Stoneshaker Shaman, Ore Gorger, Adamaro and his Gaze (since all that land destruction means some cards will be stuck in your opponent's hand), or maybe Ire of Kaminari- all things to consider.
 
As for a sideboard-- Land destruction/burn decks do one thing and do it well, but they really struggle against some types of decks.  My advice for a sideboard would be four of a Signet that produces Red- Boros, Izzet, Gruul, or Rakdos.  Not only does this help you more in recovering from your Thoughts, but then the rest of your sideboard can be a secondary color- cards that do things Red typically can't.  If you go white, you could use Lightning Helix or Quiet Purity.  Green gives you access to Uproot, Elder Pine of Jukai, and such.  Blue lets you draw cards and bounce, while Black lets you use Waking Nightmare and other nasty tricks.  It's a thought, anyway.


 

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