Tolarian Academy's Burn Deck 101

Burn is a deck type that consists of mostly sorceries and instants capable of dealing direct damage to your opponent. Burn deck has always been a favourite for deck building, however many new players are having difficulties deciding which burn spells should be included to maximize the deck efficiency. Today's article is dedicated to building a cheap yet efficient mono Red Burn deck.

While many burn spells have been printed throughout Magic's history, only a few of them can be considered to be the core spells of a burn deck. 

Let us first take a look at the core spells that can maximize the burn efficiency in this type of deck.

Lightning Bolt, Rift Bolt, Chain Lightning and Lava Spike are the gold standards for burn spells as they have the most efficient damage per mana ratio. Fortunately the only expensive card that does not fit into a budget build is Chain Lightning, the rest of the gold standards are relatively cheap.

Flame Rift, although not as efficient as the gold standards, is the only 2 mana spell that is able to deal 4 damage to a player. The downside of Flame Rift is that it also deals damage to the caster, however it isn't really a problem since in general your opponents' life points will go down much quicker than yours.

Another powerful burn spell that should be auto-included in a burn deck is Fireblast. The fact that you are able to cast Fireblast for zero mana by sacrificing two already tapped mountains makes this spell extremely dangerous for your opponent as it can deal a significant amount of damage out of nowhere.

In addition to instants and sorceries, Grim Lavamancer is a creature that plays a critical role in a Burn deck. The most common problem for a Burn deck is running out of spells while your opponent is still alive. Simply relying on top decking a burn spell is often not enough. Grim Lavamancer allows you to "re-cycle" the cards in your graveyard into damage. This is extremely useful especially when you are running out of spells in hand; the extra damage output from Grim Lavamancer can push you one step closer to victory.

Here is a list of the core spells for a burn deck

4x Lightning Bolt

4x Rift Bolt

4x Lava Spike

4x Fireblast

4x Flame Rift

4x Grim Lavamancer

That is a total of 24 spells, normally a Burn deck only requires 19-20 lands due to the number of low mana cost spells. This gives you room to customize 16-17 cards.

The customization burn spells are selected based on personal preferences and/or the meta game. Using Flamebreak or Volcanic Fallout to deal with decks that have many small creatures can slow down these decks by wiping the board clean. For counter measures against a life gain deck, Sulfuric Vortex can stop the life gain while dropping your opponent's life total down with higher efficiency. Magma Jet is my personal favourite burn spell, the Scry ability lets you to have a higher chance of drawing a burn spell rather than drawing a land.

It is important to note that while some burn spells or creatures may seem to be suitable in a burn deck, they are actually a liability to your deck efficiency. Vexing Devil and Browbeat appear to be great, however they both provide your opponent the choice of which effect will be resolved. A seasoned player will never choose the option that will benefit you in a particular situation. Therefore rather than running these spells that give your opponent the power to choose it will be more beneficial to just run some generic burn spells such as Lightning Strike, or Incinerate.

Until next time, keep the fire pit burning!