I have various things to say, and now I am going to say them. By typing. How novel. I am grumpy, deal with it.
First, it is embarrassing to humanity that after a year of getting beaten up by Squadron Hawk people didn’t instantly realize that Doomed Traveler was a gigantic bomb. I am among those people.
Now, Burning Vengeance. I am going to specifically address people who play this deck horribly, and people who play against this deck horribly. I am one of those people, but I do it a little less horribly than most. You may or may not be one of those people. If you aren’t it is probably because you are not trying.
The first thing to realize about Burning Vengeance is that it’s counterburn. It is not Burning Vengeance. Burning Vengeance is a card which deals two damage to things sometimes, counterburn is an archetype that has been pillaging villages by exploiting tiny amounts of marginal card advantage since approximately 1046 CE. All the card Burning Vengeance does is give the deck great inevitability and another good source of advantage.
This means a few things. The first thing it means is that if you are playing an aggro deck and putting Naturalize effects in your deck you are literally taking aggressive threats out of your aggro deck in order to try to play control against counterburn. Nice. Special exception for Silverchase Fox of course, what a giant hero.
If you are UG graveyard and you are putting Naturalize effects in your deck you’re not looking so hot either. Burning Vengeance does not do a great job of killing 14/14 creatures or millions of spiders. Congratulations on burning a draw step to defend your Avacyn’s Pilgrim from T4 onwards though. Oh it died to Geistflame.
The only deck that can convincingly play Naturalize effects against Burning Vengeance is Burning Vengeance. This is because Burning Vengeance is the only deck in this format that has any chance at all of outperforming Burning Vengeance in a late game. I would say it has a 50-50 shot.
In fact, the fact that both players have four Snapcasters and infinity card draw and tap out every turn means that with a couple of Naturalizes in the deck Burning Vengeance never ever stays on the table. This means you should board out your Burning Vengeances in the mirror. It does not mean you should board in Witchbane Orb, oh my god what are you thinking.
A second thing this means is that Burning Vengeance, which is actually counterburn, can kill you however the fuck it wants. It is the ultimate greifer deck. If I want I can board in Runic Repetition, Memory’s Journey, and Lost in the Mist, and counter every spell you cast until you deck yourself with your draw step. I can hit you ten times with a Snapcaster Mage. If you gain 120 life with Gnaw to the Bone I can hit you sixty times with a Snapcaster Mage. I can play one copy of Garruk and deal 90 damage to you with it in ten turns. Ninety. For four mana. I can deck you with Nephalia Drownyard while watching the Colbert Report.
If you are playing Burning Vengeance and you do not have diverse win conditions available to your deck you are sort of missing the point. Drownyard is almost free, Garruk is a straight up improvement, Memory’s Journey/Runic Repetition is almost never actually better than Memory’s Journey x2 but it is way cuter and everybody likes cute things.
If you are playing against Burning Vengeance and you are boarding in Witchbane Orbs and Naturalizes with no way to actually keep up in the lategame that you are attempting to set up by bringing in those cards you do not deserve the second half of this conditional. Enjoy losing games of Magic with your groundbreaking strategy.
I used to think Devil’s Play was really good too. It’s not. Take them out of your deck and enjoy winning more.
Yes, I managed to win that game anyway, then I put good cards in my deck.
Good cards in Burning Vengeance are cards which perform well for their manacost, because, being counterburn, the entire deck is about leveraging mana every turn to create and nurture a marginal advantage which eventually becomes absolutely insurmountable. These cards include Geistflame (x4) and Silent Departure (x4). They do not include Devil’s Play (x1???????? x0?... yeah, that).
Hit every land drop. Tap out to hit your land drop. Let your opponent hit you to one life instead of casting Blasphemous Act to hit your land drop. Eventually you will become a lot better at Magic and be able to correctly identify spots where it is not correct to cast Desperate Ravings frantically trying to play that precious precious land. Also take Blasphemous Act out of your deck.
This is counterburn, you trade 0.9 for 1 with all their threats. If Blasphemous Act costs less than eight you are losing. Probably you are losing because your deck is full of Blasphemous Acts and Devil’s Plays. The one time you want Blasphemous Act is when they have Geist-Honored Monk. Rolling Temblor is passable, but pretty bad too.
Don’t put Geist of Saint Traft in your deck. As Burning Vengeance or against it. Most of the times I see it getting boarded in as “tech” it’s into a manabase which casts it turn nine on average and the person boarding it in took out all their creature removal so it trades with a Snapcaster Mage. Don’t board in Geist and leave in your creature removal either, by the way.
Common Misconceptions:
“Burning Vengeance is the most fragile deck in the format” (boards in Naturalize and Witchbane Orb)
- No.
- I cast Garruk and you die.
“All you have to do is get out of Devil’s Play range”
- No.
- I cast Garruk and you die.
“Purify the Grave is good against you”
- It would be if you were not white red aggro. Like, maybe if you could put cards in your yard, or draw multiple cards per turn.
- “It removes two of your cards from your graveyard!”
- Uh… it removes one of your cards from your hand.
- “You cannot flashback cards so you OW MY FACE ONE HUNDRED WOOOOOLVES”.
The most important thing to realize:
To beat Burning Vengeance you simply don’t let it get to the lategame. This means you absolutely do not put Naturalize in your deck. Why would you want to take it to the lategame. Wr aggro preboard is the most fearsome matchup for Burning Vengeance, although it improves dramatically postboard because they make their deck much worse. Deal damage with creatures, then burn once they stabilize. Simple. All the other matchups are between 60 and 99% in Burning Vengeance’s favor (I don’t want to say UG is 100% in Burning Vengeance’s favor because it seems unrealistic but it actually is, so).
The next important thing to realize:
Burning Vengeance is very very hard to play correctly. If you’re not willing to think really hard and be extremely wrong a lot and fight correctly for tiny tiny advantages you are going to lose a lot to yourself. Not to yourself as in to your deck, to yourself as in to yourself. The person piloting the deck. If you want to have the highest possible winrate in this format get really good at magic, play counterburn (you barely even need to put Burning Vengeance in the deck, to be honest), and don’t get paired against Wr very often.
P.S. Wr is still 40%+ for you if you play well. Good luck!
P.P.S.
4 Hinterland Harbor
4 Sulfur Falls
4 Silent Departure
1 Woodland Cemetery
1 Nephalia Drownyard
7 Mountain
5 Island
4 Shimmering Grotto
2 Think Twice
2 Think Twice
2 Rolling Temblor
1 Garruk Relentless
4 Snapcaster Mage
4 Desperate Ravings
1 Harvest Pyre
4 Geistflame
2 Forbidden Alchemy
4 Burning Vengeance
4 Dissipate
Sideboard
1 Olivia Voldaren
3 Memory's Journey
1 Witchbane Orb
2 Garruk Relentless
1 Rolling Temblor
2 Blasphemous Act
3 Tree of Redemption
2 Naturalize
P.P.P.S. Don’t put Olivia main; half of the deck is blanking their creature removal.
P.P.P.P.S. I'm not going to add an entire sideboarding guide, but basically you want to lose Alchemy and Dissipate against fast decks in favor of removal. Against GW you want Olivia and against Wr you want Tree (and maaaaaybe Witchbane Orb, it might not be right at all). Against control decks you usually want to drop Geistflame before Silent Departure (even against UG, since you board into 3 Rolling Temblors to kill their mana dorks), and you want to bring in Garruk, Memory's Journey if they use their graveyard a ton, and Olivia if they cannot kill her. Naturalize comes in x2 for the mirror and x1 for decks which are going to board in Witchbane Orb and Nevermore unless you're okay with just killing them with Snapcasters and Garruk, which is fine too.
