April 2007

A Blaze in Montreal
If you haven't already guessed, this is an article about burn decks. I have been looking around and no-one seems to be concerned with the top 8's at Shonen Jump Montreal. well you should be concerned. I built a burn deck similar to the one that made it to the finals ( I am missing some of the cards) and compared it with a netdeck of the Champion's deck. 9 times out of 10 burn wins the first round. this is because of the inability of many decks to cope with it. Who main decks Royal Decree and Des Wombat in a Monarch deck? As I see, very few hands went up. It is when all the other decks get to side that burn has a lot of trouble. Des Wombat and Royal Decree almost kill the deck outright. However, using quickplay based monster and Decree destruction evens the odds. Since both players would side in three of each of the counters, then it becomes who is able to draw the counters first while still making a win out of it.
 
How to Beat the Burn
This seems to be an easy question, as most burn decks are 40% or so traps. Royal Decree and Horus the Black Flame Dragon LV 8 make even the most hardcore burn player scoop up their cards. Then there is Des Wombat, a continuous absorber of damage inflicted to your lifepoints. In order to counter burn in a big event, you should use
 
3x Royal Decree
1-2x Des Wombat
 
You can adjust those numbers fairly easily if burn becomes more viable in the coming months. For a local you should also take your metagame into consideration. I have no burn decks in my metagame at all, so everyone just sides the decrees as they are also helpful against Gadget decks. If your metagame plays more burn, increase your responses to it.
 
How to Fuel the Fire
People seem to be preoccupied with burn trap cards. Since it is so easy to counter the traps, the smart burn player will make use of these cards as well as the standard burn traps of Ring of Destruction, Secret Barrel, Just Desserts, Ojama Trio and Magic Cylinder
 
Des Koala
Ookazi
Misfortune
Tremendous Fire
Lava Golem
Restructer Revolution
Stealth Bird
 
These cards are far harder to counter and negate than the traps because there must be multiple counters to each cards. Nobleman and Exiled as well as Zaborg work well against the monsters, but it is sooo hard to counter the deck when you are worried about the traps, spells AND monster cards. A Horus deck does match up well to this deck in theory. But if you read the little card text on the Horus monsters, they have to destroy a monster in order to level up to their most vicious form. With hardly any monsters to speak of a burn deck actually has little to fear from Horus.
 
The Last Ember
Burn decks are not only viable they are dangerous, and if you are not running one or side or maining counters to it, you are indeed foolish and should look for a new game to play. Expect burn card prices to rise slightly as people purchase the cards that they need in order to playtest as well as try out the burn deck.