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Burstless Fires

         Azlin sent me yet another fires deck to redo, but we have another challenge to overcome.  He also has limited rares, so his fires is one of those unique versions WITHOUT SAPROLING BURSTS.  You heard that right sports fans!  So lets see how we can help the deck overcome this handicap.  Here it is:

>4x Birds of Paradise
>4x Blastoderm
>4x Fires of Y.
>4x River Boa
>4x Flametongue Kavu
>4x Giant Growth
>4x Wild Might
>2x Breath of Darigaaz
>1x Ghitu Fire
>3x Thunderscape Familiar
>4x scorching lava
>8x Mountains
>1x Shivan oasis
>11x Forest

>My sideboard:-
>3x Kavu Chameleon
>1x Thunderscape Familiar
>1x Skizzik
>3x Ancient Hydra
>2x kavu Titan
>3x Gaea's Herald
>2x Hull Breach


         So, first things first, lets tackle the bulk of this deck; the creatures.  Its what fires does best, and what this deck seems to be struggling with.  With all of the mass removal and excellent spot removal these days, you have to have lots of creatures throwing themselves at your opponent, or you run the risk of running out of gas awfully quick.  We're left with two interesting choices here.  We can drop the fires and go a la Brian Kibler and just use better quality creatures than your opponent, or we can keep the fires, and try to find a way to make those giant growth and giant growth-type spells become fatties that can do away with your opponent hastily.  I'm going to opt for the second option, because I like haste.
         Now, even though I like haste, I'm one of those people that feels like drawing the second fires of yavimaya really sucks, so we'll drop that down to three, especially since we're not worried about not drawing it with the saproling bursts that we don't have.  Did that sentence mess you up?  Don't worry, me too.  So, Now that we're keeping fires, how does this affect the main deck?  Well for starters, we're going to cut all of the giant growth spells, and we're going to add 3 llanowar elves to help get our guys out earlier.  Only three because drawing too many sucks, and the fact that the birds give us red or green mana is more important than the elves' higher power.  We'll also bring a lot of cards in from our "sideboard"(meant to defend against perish by siding in red creatures), because we need to make this deck fast.  We'll bring in the ancient hydra, kavu titan, and kavu chameleons.  The kavu are not only big, but we're trying to take advantage of their green-ness, so that they can come out swinging faster.  Since we now have a lot of little guys on the floor, we'll drop breath of darigaaz and replace it with simoon, a card that I think is superb in many, many matchups.  So, where are we now?

3 Thunderscape familiar
4 birds of paradise
3 llanowar elves
2 kavu titan
4 kavu chameleon
2 ancient hydra
2 Simoon
3 fires of yavimaya
4 blastoderm
4 river boa
4 flametongue kavu
1 Ghitu Fire

Look good?  Good.  Now onto the land:
1 Shivan Oasis
4 Terminal Moraine
6 mountains
13 forests
         Azlin hasn't left me with a whole lot of options for the land, so take this with a grain of salt.  If it doesn't work for you, tweak it carefully until it does.  Never pull or switch more than one land at a time when you're testing.  You'll find its best configuration as you play.
         Last but not least, the sideboard.  I'll gice you the average fires sideboard, and you can adjust numbers to fit your area:
2 Simoon
4 Flashfires
2 Boil
4 Hull breach
3 Tangle

Hope that helps Azlin!  See you in a Flash!
-Wally West


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