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Pojo's MTG
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BMoor's Magic
The
Gathering
Deck Garage
Which of the five
colors is the most frustrating to play against? A
lot of people say blue, because it counters all your
spells and you can't play anything. Others say
white, because a lot of people use it to prevent
damage, put up walls, and the game ends up dragging
out for an hour. Still others say red, because it
can win so darned fast. People also complain
about fast burn decks because they don't appear to
demand any real thought from the player-- you just
burn, burn, burn.
When a certain
style of play frustrates you because it outperforms
all your decks, you have two options. You can build
a deck that counteracts the offending strategy, or
you can adopt the strategy yourself.
Hey,
Okay, Socks,
let's see if I can get you out of the hamper and
into the winner's circle.
First of all, you
say this is a forty-card deck for legacy play? Are
you talking about the Legacy format, or just that
your playgroup adopts the Legacy banned/restricted
list to keep people from going nuts with Lotuses?
Because if you go to a Legacy tourney, they're going
to expect sixty-card decks. Let's bring this deck
up to sixty. It's easier for me that way-- I don't
have to make the difficult decisions about what to
cut. Sometimes it's obvious. Sometimes it's not.
A side note: a
lot of people have trouble cutting cards they like
in favor of better cards, or determining which card
is better. They then end up with 74-card decks that
perform poorly. Deciding what to cut is a
deckbuilder's hardest action, but the most necessary
in most cases. If you think you can get away with
playing more cards for the heck of it, you probably
can't.
Anyway, back to
the deck at hand. This one's gonna be trouble, I'm
afraid. You want to be able to pull off a 2- or
3-turn kill? Well, I keep going over the numbers in
my head, and it doesn't look good.
Here's how the
math breaks down. After three turns (ignoring the
two-turn scenario for now), you've had access to a
total of six mana (R on turn one, RR on turn two,
RRR on turn three). In that time, the goal is to do
20 damage. 20 damage/6 mana works out to 3.333
damage per mana. So, for every R you spend, you
have to do more than 3 damage.
See the problem
yet? Lightning Bolt is the holy grail of burn
spells in Magic simply because it can do 3 damage
for 1 mana. It stopped getting reprinted precisely
because it was too powerful for its cost. And for
your best-case scenario, even Lightning Bolt is too
slow? What?
Okay, so that's
unrealistic. But can it be made to work? Is there
any way? Well, if there is, then it's my job to
find it, and all my math leads to the same result:
mana acceleration.
The one card that
shines here-- or should I say burns brightly?-- is
Seething Song. Adding it to the equation, you now
get eight mana in your first three turns. 20
damage/8 mana works out to a more reasonable 2.5
damage per mana. Shock is still woefully behind the
curve, but now Lightning Bolt can take its rightful
place ahead of it. Better yet, if you cast
Lightning Bolt and Shock, then you've done 5 damage
for 2 mana, which works out to 2.5 damage per mana.
If you add four Seething Song, four Rite of Flame,
and four Desperate Ritual, you stand a good chance
of lowering your required DPM (damage per mana) to a
level the rest of your spells can deliver.
Desperate Ritual spliced onto a Lava Spike is 3
damage for free if we count it like this!
So, in order for
this to work, you'll need as many 3-for-1 burn
spells as you can get. Trouble is, they're hard to
come by. But they are indeed available. You've
already got Lightning Bolt and Lava Spike (you need
four Spikes, BTW), so to that we'll add two more
Rift Bolt. Any others? Of course there are--
Wizards of the Coast can't give us Lightning Bolt
back, but they keep making new cards that speak to
our desire to have it back. There's Spark
Elemental, which crashes through for 3. Brute Force
can give an attacking creature +3/+3, which is all
the more reason to add Spark Elemental-- to improve
the chances you'll have a creature to attack with
and turn this into another Lightning Bolt. You
could also add Jackal Pup-- it doesn't do any damage
the turn you play it, but if it lives to attack
twice it's 4 damage for one mana. This is precisely
why we're keeping Raging Goblin-- by turn three,
it's dealt three damage. Chain Lightning also does
a serviceable Bolt impression, if you don't mind the
possibility of taking 3 back. But if you do take 3
back, and have RR anyway, you could make it 6 damage
for RRR. But why would you want to?
Isn't six
damage for three mana not enough? Come to think of
it, that's how much Ball Lightning does! Why is it
worth using when it averages out to Shock instead of
Bolt? Because, Ball Lightning is equivalent to
three Shocks in one card.
That's the other
half of the equation. Let's go back to our Seething
Scenario:
Turn One:
Mountain, Bolt*. (Total Damage = 3)
Turn Two:
Mountain, Bolt X2. (Total Damage = 9)
Turn Three:
Mountain, Seething Song, Bolt X5. (Total Damage =
24)
In this scenario,
a "Bolt" is shorthand for a card that will, for one
mana, do at least three damage by the end of Turn
Three. By this definition, Raging Goblin is a Bolt
if it comes down on Turn One. Where's the problem?
You've played 12 cards total, including Mountains.
After three turns, you've only drawn ten cards! And
that's if you played second and didn't have to
mulligan! A deck that was comprised of nothing but
Songs and Bolts still couldn't win on turn three,
because it would run out of cards! The most you
could hope for is to have drawn, by turn three,
exactly three mountains, one Seething Song, and six
Bolts, and that works out to only 18 damage!
That's why Ball
Lightning is so powerful-- by a red deck's way of
counting, it's three cards. Flame Rift also acts
like two Shocks, since we really don't care how much
we take-- this deck will almost always deal 20 to an
opponent faster than the opponent can dish out 16,
so the backlash from Flame Rift is inconsequential.
This is why
you'll also need some heavy hitters. Fiery
Conclusion would've been perfect if it could hit
players, since your Elementals will be dying after a
turn anyway. I think Shrapnel Blast would be
perfect, but you'd need artifacts to sacrifice and I
can't think of any that meet your DPM requirements.
If you were to switch out 4 Mountains for Great
Furnace, could you run 4 Shrapnel Blast? Probably
not-- you'd get stuck with t
 hem
in hand and no artifacts to sacrifice too often.
You could try Reckless Abandon, to use second main
phase with your Elementals. Or Goblin Grenade would
be excellent, but you'd need a Raging Goblin out
that had outlived its usefulness. If you could find
room for Mogg Fanatic (two attacks plus sacrificing
= 3 DPM by Turn Three), then he and Raging Goblin
would be support enough for a few Goblin Grenades.
But that might be pushing it.
Now, it's getting
to the point where you need to drop cards to make
room for all this. Remember, you'll want around 1/3
of your deck to lands, so 10 won't be enough (but
you could possibly get away with 18 in a deck with
so many one-drops). To make the cut, just calculate
the DPM of all you cards, and cut everything below
2. Volcanic Hammer? Incinerate? They're each
1.5's, so they can go. Kindle? Well, the last
Kindle is a 2.5, but the first one is a 1! And
since you need to draw and play a 1, a 1.5 to get to
the 2 and the 2.5, Kindle is out. Seismic Assault?
That's zero until you draw lands you don't need!
And at such a low land count, it isn't worth it.
Pulse of the Forge will never come back to your hand
because if your opponent can take four by turn
three, and still have a higher life total than you,
you've already lost. Therefore, its DPM is an
abysmal 0.75. I'll let you do the math for the
rest.
Hopefully this
will help you, Socks. I know I've dumbed down the
math quite a bit by not factoring in your opponent's
actions or the probability of drawing the right
proportion of lands to Bolts to Songs, but I've
approximated it enough to point you in the right
direction.
Hopefully all my
readers have learned something too. But if this is
making anyone's brain burn, all I can suggest is a
style of deck that requires less calculations. Like
a blue deck maybe?
Good luck!
~BMoor
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