BOOM, Headshot (Wakeen EDH)

Commander / EDH Burn Goblins RW (Boros)

Jokulmorder1

Sorcery (18)

• 1x Arc Lightning
• 1x Arc Trail
• 1x Blazing Volley
• 1x Collective Defiance
• 1x Earthquake
• 1x Empty the Warrens
• 1x Fear, Fire, Foes!
• 1x Flame Slash
• 1x Hazardous Blast
• 1x Hurly-Burly
• 1x Jaya's Immolating Inferno
• 1x Mana Geyser
• 1x Mishra's Command
• 1x Pyroclasm
• 1x Rip Apart
• 1x Scouring Sands
• 1x Smash to Dust
• 1x Tectonic Hazard

Artifact (9)

• 1x Arcane Signet
• 1x Boros Signet
• 1x Decanter of Endless Water
• 1x Fire Diamond
• 1x Liquimetal Torque
• 1x Marble Diamond
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Sunforger
• 1x Talisman of Conviction

Land (40)

• 1x Ash Barrens
• 1x Barbarian Ring
• 1x Battlefield Forge
• 1x Boros Garrison
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Detection Tower
• 1x Furycalm Snarl
• 1x Inspiring Vantage
• 1x Lorehold Campus
• 14x Mountain
• 1x Needleverge Pathway  ^Flip
• 11x Plains
• 1x Rugged Prairie
• 1x Sacred Foundry
• 1x Sunscorched Divide
• 1x Temple of Triumph
• 1x Wind-Scarred Crag

Creature (8)

• 1x Gempalm Incinerator
• 1x Guttersnipe
• 1x Krenko, Mob Boss
• 1x Pashalik Mons
• 1x Sensation Gorger
• 1x Siege-Gang Commander
• 1x Skirk Fire Marshal
• 1x Skirk Prospector

Enchantment (7)

• 1x Circle of Flame
• 1x Goblin Bombardment
• 1x High Noon
• 1x Impact Tremors
• 1x Nahiri's Machinations
• 1x Pyrohemia
• 1x Raid Bombardment

Commander (1)

Instant (17)

• 1x Abrade
• 1x Apostle's Blessing
• 1x Aurelia's Fury
• 1x Benevolent Offering
• 1x Boros Charm
• 1x Boros Fury-Shield
• 1x Dawn Charm
• 1x Electrickery
• 1x Electrodominance
• 1x Ghostfire Slice
• 1x Gods Willing
• 1x Incinerate
• 1x Lightning Bolt
• 1x Lightning Helix
• 1x Mana Tithe
• 1x Smite the Deathless
• 1x Stoke the Flames

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Maybeboard

Creature (8)

• 1x Bloodmark Mentor
• 1x Dark-Dweller Oracle
• 1x Goblin Chirurgeon
• 1x Goblin Cratermaker
• 1x Goblin Warchief
• 1x Mogg War Marshal
• 1x Stingscourger
• 1x Zada, Hedron Grinder

Instant (5)

• 1x Burst Lightning
• 1x Ghostfire Slice
• 1x Lapse of Certainty
• 1x Release to Memory
• 1x Sheltering Light

Artifact (1)

• 1x Dowsing Dagger  ^Flip

Sorcery (1)

• 1x Goblin Offensive

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• Archetype: Burn
• Subthemes: Goblin typal
• Planar Flavor: Zendikar, Lorwyn, Dominaria
• Basic Land Art: Dusty, scrubby, arid

Background

In most 20-life constructed formats, "red deck wins" is a ubiquitous, accessible, and reasonably powerful archetype. You can almost always slap together a bunch of burn spells, aggressive creatures, and Mountains and expect to hold your own at FNM or in the Arena ladder.

But for many years, that was absolutely not the case in commander—funny how having tripling your opponents and doubling their life totals will change the balance of the game. That said, burn has recently been getting a boost to help it scale for the format.

Theory Corner

As of Thunder Junction there are two main varieties of burn commander, what I call "buffing" and "rewarding." Obosh and Imodane buff by raising your damage output or otherwise improving it to meet the format's higher life totals and larger creatures. On the flip side you have Neheb, the Eternal and Aegar, who reward you for cast direct damage spells by providing you other resources like cards and mana.

Whichever commander you choose, you of course can add whatever cards you need from the other type to keep the wheels a-turning. I won't say it builds itself because nailing the ratio of Column A and Column B is no simple matter (besides making room in your list for the other things a deck needs), but it remains a formulaic approach to the archetype.

Taii breaks the mold by both buffing and rewarding burn, and does so in a way that nudges you toward building a more offbeat deck. As an analogy, consider new Judith: Judy wants to proc the lifelink/deathtouch and Imp token abilities as much as possible, which requires a high volume of cheap 1-damage burn spells, and maybe a couple big flame waves like Blasphemous Act to gain a bunch of life. But the average mid-cost burn spell isn't optimal in Judith.

While many early Reddit impressions on Taii focused on her second ability (reminiscent of Ojer Axonil   and Ghyrson Starn), people do be sleeping on that first abil: Taii rewards you handsomely for dealing damage to your opponents' creatures equal to their toughness, exactly as much as it takes to kill them anyway. We don't necessarily want damage doublers to obliterate our opponents' creatures, we want to land headshots.

Game Plan

The goal in the early game is to get Taii down early and go to town headshotting creatures. We have cards that can deal any amount of damage to help you find the right tool for the job.

Once you get rolling and ramping, you can dig for a source of recurring damage Taii can buff to close out the game.

Sort by Custom to view burn spells by the base amount of damage they can deal creatures. I say base amount because Taii can buff your damage to land headshots, but can't reduce it. Spells that allow you to deal divided or variable damage are found at base 1 as that's the floor of what they're capable of.

The various 1-damage board clears can happily be cast at base value to pick off one or two small creatures and cantrip, or get buffed by Taii for a massive wipe.

We also have a lot of goblins that stay X/1 (no chieftains or trashmasters here), so 1 damage sweepers can farm cards off our own creatures as well.

Burn cards that can't headshot are tagged simply as Burn, because Taii can still boost these effects to lethal heights.

Rules Corner

Don't cast X=0 and think you can raise it with Taii. Zero damage is not an amount of damage.

Remember that you draw cards from headshotting indestructible creatures. The creature doesn't need to die to trigger Taii, you just need to do damage equal to toughness in one shot.

Date added	10 months
Last updated	6 days
Exclude colors	UBG
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	1 - 0 Mythic Rares 24 - 0 Rares 19 - 0 Uncommons 30 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.33
Tokens	Goblin 1/1 R, Spirit 1/1 W
Folders	EDH current decks