Naya Burn Mail Bag

This one is going to be more or less a mail bag related to my Naya Burn deck. I will be repeating some stuff from the comments for those of you who don’t follow those closely and answer new reader questions as well.

• DavePetterson thinks it’s okay that I didn’t qualify because then you guys get to read posts like Kind of a PTQ Report. To this I say… Greedy!
• wills wonders — if “Lash Out is the best burn spell in this deck after Tarfire and Seal of Fire. Yes, better in most cases than Lightning Helix” why we don’t run it main. The answer here is that Lash Out is so effective because it is only featured in games where it will matter. Sure in the PTQ I played in that was all eight rounds, but it would be silly to play main deck in a Red Deck with so many options… Path to Exile might make the cut in Naya Burn but I wouldn’t play it main under any forseeable circumstances.
• schwarzott ran this version of Naya Burn to a 5-2 finish in Detroit. He has been having problems with Bant Aggro-Control.4 Lightning Helix

  4 Tarmogoyf
  4 Wild Nacatl

  4 Incinerate
  4 Keldon Marauders
  4 Kird Ape
  4 Mogg Fanatic
  4 Puncture Blast
  4 Seal of Fire
  2 Sulfuric Vortex

  2 Bloodstained Mire
  2 Forest
  3 Mountain
  2 Mutavault
  2 Sacred Foundry
  2 Stomping Ground
  1 Temple Garden
  4 Windswept Heath
  4 Wooded Foothills

  sb:
  2 Mystic Enforcer
  4 Pyrostatic Pillar
  4 Shattering Spree
  3 Volcanic Fallout
  2 Kataki, War’s Wage

  My analysis is…

  1. Only two Sulfurous Vortex in the main. I have found that Bant Aggro-Control is pretty easy to beat as long as they are not blowing you out with defensive Jitte counters and Spirit Linked Rhinos. Sulfurous Vortex is very effective against them, especially since they have to deal a little damage to themselves with lands.
  2. When I beat Bant Aggro-Control, I used two two damage spells to take out Rhox War Monk in all the games I won. This deck only has “one set” of Seal of Fire (no Tarfires). While you can theoretically play Incinerate + Seal of Fire or even just a Puncture Blast to hold down the War Monk, the subtle issue is that especially on turn two (or turn three or four for a deck with only 22 lands) you can find yourself with insufficient mana to respond.
  3. Subtly, the sideboard is an issue. Bant Aggro-Control really needs to beat you with equipment (other than games where you get blown out by Troll + Worship… No outs against that presently). The schwarzott version simply has the wrong reactive cards. Shattering Spree is sometimes more devastating against Affinity (and sometimes not), but Ancient Grudge is so much better than equipment-reliant Blue decks like Fae or Bant Aggro-Control because most of the time Shattering Spree will not give you any card advantage. When the card you are advantaging is as vital to the opponent’s strategy as Umezawa’s Jitte… etc. etc. I have won a fair amount of the time by letting the opponent commit 4-5 lands only to use instant speed artifact hate mid-combat to fart in their direction. In fact most of my wins have been based on Vortex, killing their Jitte, or good old Jitte advantage… and this version has no Jitte of its own! (Jitte has been pretty good in a lot of matchups, including Bant).
• DAisaka09 makes a good point about 8 “Shocks” and the mirror which is full of three toughness creatures. I have been lucky to have won most or all of my mirror matches, and for sure I have drawn the three damage creature kill spells to deal with Apes and Nacatls. I can see maybe 1-2 Rift Bolt being better than the main deck Jittes I proposed in the previous post, or Incinerate again, as a two-of.I don’t think I would consider Puncture Blast, but I have heard good things about it from various directions, actually.
• Dear zsievers,Pyrostatic Pillar is quite good against Storm.

  When you are ahead, it basically makes “every matchup into the Zoo matchup” … That is, a matchup where the opponent is taking lots of collateral damage and therefore falls into burn range.

  I have come around due to my loss in the second Faeries bout that maybe main deck Pyrostatic Pillar is not optimal… Overvaluing it probably cost me the match.

• TheAmericanNightmare doesn’t like Keldon Marauders very much.Personally, I thought it was good. I sided it out against decks like Faerie Wizards, but I like the card very much when the opponent is the beatdown. It does a lot of damage in a hurry against a Storm, and I love the card against opposing attack decks. I was pretty sure Luis Neiman (Luis Not Vargas) had Blistering Firecat in our match and tapped for the Marauders anyway, and just soaked up three while he committed four mana (I already had Tarmogoyf on board as well as another Marauders in hand). At this stage I would not cut it.

  I think the mana base is pretty good. I like the Mountains because this deck is not Zoo. I don’t particularly like taking 100 damage from my lands. I would consider adding more Plains in order to run Duergar Hedge-Mage… lots of decent players are suggesting I add that card.

• thewachman wanted to hear about Osyp’s Slide deck… We already covered that here.
• ReAnimator wanted to know why I didn’t run Magma Jet (long time readers know I love a Magma Jet and even played it in Legacy). I wanted a card that could deal three damage in Lash Out is the simple answer, Magma Jet being not really good enough for the main here.
• mpace started reading Dune thanks to one of my previous articles. This is inspiring for me! Thanks! I think I am going to spend more time on book and comics recommendations (especially as Osyp has no knowledge of obscure graphic novels).

LOVE
MIKE