Dies to Removal

[deck=MDU's PyroWhite]Lands 22
12x Mountain
04x Sacred Foundry
04x Temple of Triumph
02x Mutavault

Creatures 21
04x Ash Zealot
04x Chandra's Phoenix
04x Firedrinker Satyr
04x Rakdos Cackler
03x Young Pyromancer
02x Pyrewild Shaman

Planeswalkers 02
02x Chandra, Pyromaster

Enchantments 02
02x Chained to the Rocks

Instants 12
04x Lightning Strike
04x Magma Jet
04x Shock

Sorceries 01
01x Flame of the Firebrand

Sideboard 15
04x Boros Reckoner
02x Skullcrack
02x Chained to the Rocks
02x Mizzium Mortars
02x Fanatic of Mogis
01x Flame of the Firebrand
01x
Mutavault
01x Assemble the Legion[/deck]

I look at Pyrewild Shaman like [card]Chandra's Phoenix[/card] v0.2 except he can be relevant without over-committing the board (which is huge in a AoG meta).

The extra burn MD over Young Pyromancer is my nod to MonoU and the lack of B/x/x as of late, the SB are meta tuned so it may or may not make sense.

I didn't find time to upload the set yesterday, so I'll upload two sets today running the list above.

Music for this set is done by Morusque, its quite different to what I've been using for other sets but it has its own charm.

Video report set 1/2: Standard Daily Event 6210803 (3-1)

G1: GWB Junk
G2: Esper Control
G3: GU Devotion
nG4: MonoBlack Devotion

I'm still refining the list, so any explanation or SB plans I may have used here is most likely different now. I like how the RW variant has the ability to stand toe-to-toe with Red's worst MU (though these replays may not be the best example of that).

Video Set (2/2) Standard Daily Event 6210827 score (3-1)

Here is the next set, music by Christopher Drake the master of epic BGM

G1: MonoBlue Devotion
G2: GU Devotion
G3: Big Boros
G4: RDW(?)

Small update, new deck tested well with 4-0, but got slammed by variance and lost a very good MU
0-2 drop . Still working on that tweaking .

Current 75.

[deck]PyroRed Sligh v3.02[/deck]
Creatures
4 Burning Tree Emissary
4 Chandra's Phoenix
4 Firedrinker Satyr
4 Firefist Striker
4 Rakdos Cackler
4 Young Pyromancer

Planeswalkers
2 Chandra, Pyromaster

Burn
1 Flames of the Firebrand
4 Lightning Strike
4 Magma Jet
3 Shock

Lands
18 Mountain
4 Mutavault

Sideboard
2 Act of Treason
2 Burning Earth
2 Flames of the Firebrand
2 Frostburn Weird
1 Hammer of Purphoros
3 Mizzium Mortars
3 Skullcrack
[/deck]

Another week, another round of slight meta adaptations.

Inb4 5+ people thank z just for posting a list.

I really like this one, though. If I ever still playing mono red, I'd totally have Weird SB against this meta. I'm unsure on Burning Earth, though. I've really just moved away from that card.

My local has a lot of 3-colour midrange / control.

Mine does too, but I feel that we don't need it against Esper and against Dega (for whatever reason, the most prominent three color midrange deck in my meta), Peak Eruption seems to be the better card.

I like that Burning Earth hits both, as well as random stuff like Naya / Junk. If you can get out ahead and then land Burning Earth they've got to kill it in their next turn or they're toast.

It's a bit win-more vs. Esper sure.

Current 75.

[deck]PyroRed Sligh v3.02[/deck]
Creatures
4 Burning Tree Emissary
4 Chandra's Phoenix
4 Firedrinker Satyr
4 Firefist Striker
4 Rakdos Cackler
4 Young Pyromancer

Planeswalkers
2 Chandra, Pyromaster

Burn
1 Flames of the Firebrand
4 Lightning Strike
4 Magma Jet
3 Shock

Lands
18 Mountain
4 Mutavault

Sideboard
2 Act of Treason
2 Burning Earth
2 Flames of the Firebrand
2 Frostburn Weird
1 Hammer of Purphoros
3 Mizzium Mortars
3 Skullcrack
[/deck]

Another week, another round of slight meta adaptations.

I've upped the Flames of the Firebrand into two MD,
cutting into one creature and Shock.

I hate the card's casting cost and speed but I feel like I really feel like I need 3 dmg on table more often now.

p.s. MonoU everywhere....

I'm playing 3/1 shock/flames split in ash zealot/ 3 Chandra Walter white. It feels fine to me. I don't miss the extra shock and the Flames is always nice to see.

After I got a turnabout against me when my opponent survived the pain with a Whip of Erebos, I'm not too keen on having Burning Earth. The rest of the sideboard seems identical to the usual.

Edit: The lone Flames of the Firebrand in the mainboard helped me once, but I don't think I want to cut any more Shock for them. 2-1 (Sometimes 3-1) is great, but I'd rather have a burn that can roast a turn-1 elf with.

Going to competetive shop where I will face:

Mono black
Mono red
Mono u
GW/x
Esper
RB/x

From top biggest field.

Looking for type of deck right now. Playing walter white.

What would be best to combat this field? BTE + striker or ash zealot walTer white? I think BTE is better in this field?

Going to competetive shop where I will face:

Mono black
Mono red
Mono u
GW/x
Esper
RB/x

From top biggest field.

Looking for type of deck right now. Playing walter white.

What would be best to combat this field? BTE + striker or ash zealot walTer white? I think BTE is better in this field?

That's a diverse field, BtE would serve you better in more of the MUs then Ash would.

@Pedros
i would play walter white with bte/ffs
playing any pyro list is good vs mono black, mono red, GW, esper, and RB and chained to the rocks helps a ton vs mono u.
If you're talking about 3 color decks with GW/x and RB/x, then maybe you want monored to play burning earths or just find space for them in walter white

GL

I'll chime in for the BTE/FFS walter white build. As much as I hate BTE, if you're comfortable enough sequencing your plays, she'll probably serve you better in that meta. And WW because I never leave home without Chained.

I wanted to point out that Ash isn't bad, I'm actually running her again simply because AoG.deck seems to be a thing on modo. Deck which don't have quick sweepers fall prey to T2 BtE chain quite badly, but those which do can really make those chains hurt you...

They're both good, just against slightly different decks.

I used to hate BTE but in pyrored/Walter White she's necessary in metas with lots of doomblade decks. I personally prefer Ash Zealot as a card in a vacuum but you can't evaluate cards in a vacuum, everything is relative (in MtG and IRL). As soon as my meta starts going away from doomblade decks I'm going back to ash zealot and testing pyrewild shaman as a one or two of.

I think part of my BTE hate is the fact that it was a lynchpin in those brainless naya blitz decks last season.

Here's an interesting question...
I've got 2 mainboard slots that could either have 2 mortars, or 2 FoTF.
Which to use?

My meta has a good amount of both aggro and midrange, with there being a lot of 3-color control/midrange decks floating around recently as well

Not sure how many WW decks are gonna be there, and the only known Mono-U devo deck tends to draft instead of tourney.

Whatcha think?

Something I learned while playing big red was how to just sandbag BTE. Once you've gotten 4 power on board, it's pretty easy to just force them to react and once they deal with your threats, you just play 2 more for the low, low cost of 2 mana, rinse repeat.

This is particularly devastating when Mogis are thrown in the mix. And if you have a hammer? LOLOLOL.

Yeah I've been doing that as well. The mana accel can be surprisingly valuable going long.

Yeah vs esper on a draw not worth to dump more than 6 power - as it still needs verdict even after removal, wins quite fast vs no verdict but spot removal hand. Also worth noting it is better to just pump satyr than droping more creatures most of the times - even hasty one (if they dont have mana for spot removal). Why lose phoenix to verdict when you can just pump and play scry land?

Multiple bte into hammer after verdict is sweet.

Post Mid Week Magic report with PyroRed with black splash after 3 months hiatus. New meta! Basically it was the non BTE version with 1 UF, Tymaret and Dreadbore + some black stuff in SB.

Ended up 5/18 with losses vs. (B)UW Control. In a nutshell Hammer sucked b*lls against Sphinxes. I debated Slaughter Games before, but ended up testing Hammer. Had the hammers been Games I´d owned the field. Lesson learned.

Points noted:
-Tymaret is not bad. The small ca or damage with saccing your own guys in response to removal or a sweep felt nice. He´ll stay around a while longer.
-Ash Zealot goes for Spike Jester and acceptance of shakier mana. Caryatids are a pest.
-I´d hated to be mono-red and stumble into Elspeth. Black splash = Dreadbore. Goodbye PW annoyance.
-Never tried howler and wont yet as suggested.
-Glad Thragtusk is gone, but if they buy time Sphinx is still annoying.
-The deck is Fun, fun fun! No longer T4+...I
hope I don't stumble and lose now. Great job in developing it all you here.

Today's article from channelfireball about red, I see some James there...

http://www.channelfireball.com/articles ... red-rules/

So, I know that sideboarding with pyrewild shaman was discussed a bit earlier as something that kinda threw some people off...

Since I'm going into fnm with a mono-red pyrored build, using pyrewilds, I just wanted to get some other people's thoughts on when he should be sideboarded out, and for what.

3-1 today with standard YP Walter White build.

-Beat all in red heroic, game 1 he god drew me, but games 2 + 3 Chandra + Shocks annihilated all his guys.
-beat RG ramp 2-1, nothing much to say, fine aggro starts in both games I won.
-lost to B/W 2-1, was very human-heavy with plenty of Soldiers, Captains and Sin Collectors (with Necromancer postboard), ended up falling behind game 3 after he Pithing Needled Mutavaults and I failed to draw much gas. Still with all the Thoughtseizes and RtBs I feel fairly happy, especially with main Flames of the Firebrand.
-beat R/B midrange: he did very little relevant, killed a couple of guys but died to my burn; g2 aggressive start with CttR for his Demon and Assemble the Legion which he was cold to.

Assemble was definitely an all star and I will be playing them at a large tournament this Sunday.

For Sunday I will be trimming a couple of Pyromancers and a LS for Firefist
Strikers, I think I definitely need them.

Enjoying the non-linearity of the deck and the feeling I can leverage playskill well against my opponents.

The other mono red player I recall had BtEs and Purphoroses lost pretty handily.

Nice work!

For those of you who haven't read it, read Josh Silvestri's latest article on red decks in the current meta: http://www.channelfireball.com/articles ... red-rules/

Being non-linear is ideal because it allows thou to fight through resistance. There will be weeks where that isn't important, but when people want to beat aggro, only having a single gear puts your fate too heavily in the luck of the cards.

Gawd I hate Sin collector. Our resident Junk player dropped them from his list (for whatever reason) but the one time he played the little fucker against me, I got 2-for-1'd so hard it hurt.

Yeah, when I was on BWR I had great success with the Collector, but being on the other end is much less fun.

And yeah I was chatting to the BR player after (who was on our WMC team) and he was going on a lot about not being able to find things like Anger of the Gods (he did g1) and I made it clear that there's no need for me to walk into that Anger too much. Same with Dreadbore/HD, often they have to burn them out on your crew at which point you slam Chandra and laugh.

I will post report with deck tomorow after I get some sleep. However check this out:

https://www.wizards.com/Magic/Digital/M ... rn/6210894

Mezzel and Trog3r with exact same 75. We have standard burn right now!

@zemanjaski

In CFB article he is suggesting to play 4 mutavaults in walter white with 4 mutavaults. Is this madness?

No, he wouldn't have Reckoner in the SB.

@Raida: I haven't played a game where I don't want a recurrable Lightning Strike. It's great to remove that overconfident Jace/Caryatid/Polukranos.

Of course, you don't really want too much of him in your hand, so a 2-of is ideal.

@zemanjaski
i keep losing to monored FoM. got any tips? I've tried being both on the play and the draw, i've tried both trading aggressively + trying to race

i'm playing your mono red list atm. i usually side out 1 fotf and 4 firedrinkers for 3 mortar 2 weird

The Cackler won't do you much when you're playing control, so side them out in favor of more burns, if available.

Also, after a few game where I chose to draw and got Peak Eruption, I'm not too keen on playing control when your opponent has the chance to cripple your manabase.

What do you guys think about trying the 3x FFS + 3x YP strategy with Ash Zealot over BTE? Obviously Zealot in 'classic' PyroWhite (3x Chandra, 23 Land) vs. Emily+FFS in 'new' PyroWhite is debatable and a meta call. I've found that I really miss having more hasty guys, especially when I need one more creature to support FFS (say I miss a one-drop, or just go one-drop into Striker) and don't get a Phoenix. With the BTE build, I never got much use out of her really. I'd either use the extra mana to chain into nothing too useful, or I'd topdeck one lategame after my only t2 option being a Striker, the exact opposite of what I'd rather have. While BTE+Striker is good, I think that using the 3/3 FFS/YP split with Zealots to back up earlier Strikers isn't too shabby.

Plus I want to change up the 'classic' PyroWhite list a bit anyway. I found with 3 Chandra, I'd 0 into a Chandra or have a fairly useless second one in
hand a little too often. And with 23 lands, I'd flood out more than anything. I got a bit screwed on 22, but after testing a few hands against my gf playing white weenie, it seems like it was just bad luck that night. So I definitely want to cut a Chandra and go to 22 land, I just don't know what two cards to add in from there, and cutting a YP for three Striker seems like a good idea. I'm probably gonna test this tomorrow night, unless someone points out to me this is a terrible idea (which I doubt).

I found that 12 2-drops led to too many clunky keeps. This was my main motivation to switching to BTE actually. In the version with Zeakot, I found I had a low win % with no 1 drop then 2 drop turn 2-4; BTE makes those hands substantially better.

What do you guys think about trying the 3x FFS + 3x YP strategy with Ash Zealot over BTE? Obviously Zealot in 'classic' PyroWhite (3x Chandra, 23 Land) vs. Emily+FFS in 'new' PyroWhite is debatable and a meta call. I've found that I really miss having more hasty guys, especially when I need one more creature to support FFS (say I miss a one-drop, or just go one-drop into Striker) and don't get a Phoenix. With the BTE build, I never got much use out of her really. I'd either use the extra mana to chain into nothing too useful, or I'd topdeck one lategame after my only t2 option being a Striker, the exact opposite of what I'd rather have. While BTE+Striker is good, I think that using the 3/3 FFS/YP split with Zealots to back up earlier Strikers isn't too
shabby.

Plus I want to change up the 'classic' PyroWhite list a bit anyway. I found with 3 Chandra, I'd 0 into a Chandra or have a fairly useless second one in hand a little too often. And with 23 lands, I'd flood out more than anything. I got a bit screwed on 22, but after testing a few hands against my gf playing white weenie, it seems like it was just bad luck that night. So I definitely want to cut a Chandra and go to 22 land, I just don't know what two cards to add in from there, and cutting a YP for three Striker seems like a good idea. I'm probably gonna test this tomorrow night, unless someone points out to me this is a terrible idea (which I doubt).

Its not horrible, I've ran a list like that before - with the PyroWhite list you do have a very strong 1cc play in the form of Chained to the Rocks so on T3 or T4 playing your 2cc drop with chains is a regular occurrence.

I really wouldn't push your 2cc drops any further then 10 without BtE
though....

@z: Well, it'd be 10 2-drops. Creature curve would be 8-10-4-0, spells would be 5-8-1-2 (using one Flames over a Shock), total curve would be 13-18-5-2. Little heavy on the two-mana stuff, but I dunno if it's too much worse than 16 two-mana stuff (dropping one Chandra/land for a FFS and switching a YP for a FFS, so it's only +2 to the 2cmc curve).

The only way I could see this getting awkward is getting stuck on three mana, which can happen with 22 land. Not often, but definitely more often than 23, obviously. But then again, you have more hasty things with Zealots, so at least if you're stuck playing one two-drop per turn it actually does something immediately most cases.

[edit] if anything it'd be worse after sideboarding in the aggro matchup. 7-20-9-2 total curve (-8 one drops +2 chained/2 mortars/4 reck). Ew. But still not [i:2eho5mp9]terrible[/i:2eho5mp9].

I think it's worth testing, sure

Shoot me a list, I can test a bunch tonight. Stayed home from work, so I'm just messing around.

Btw, this is a little off topic; anyone able to answer me some questions I have about a Platinum Qualifier? I've done nothing outside of the FNM scene, so I'm assuming this is a pretty big step up and I'm really curious about how the atmosphere is, how strict rules are, nutrition (for reals...), etc. I don't think it needs to be discussed in this topic, so if I can PM someone. That'd be outstanding!