Breaking Modern is a series where I make fun decks that seem legit but aren't actually competitive (a.k.a. Tier 1). You can still play with them though and have high chances of winning, however running them in any sort of tournament environment is probably going to mean you won't end up first (or second, or third...).
In this first rendition of Breaking Modern we take a look at a five-coloured burn deck, we'll examine how to play it and why it could work in a perfect world.
Mana: What we want from our manabase is to be able to play our multicoloured cards, so we run all of the mountain shocklands with an emphasis on the UR and WR, because we want to use Electrolyze as much as possible and cast Lightning Helix and Ajani Vengeant as soon as we get them.
Next up in the priority list is green with Stomping grounds for the Prismatic Omen fix, which is great to have but not such a priority until we can stabilize with some additional card draw, life gain and threat removal.
Last but not least comes in the Blood Crypt to give us that Bump in the Night in case we don't already have the Omen set up. It's lesser numbers mean we don't want to draw them too often and prefer to fetch it if need be.
Which leads to the next point, the fetchlands. Arid Mesa searches for (arguably) the most important land and Scalding Tarn get's those Vents. However, what's truly important, is that both fetch Mountans, which means any other land except Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle.
Ah, speaking of Vakalut... it's actually not terrible in here. What I wanted to do with it is explore additional angles of dealing 3 damage to the opponent, yet there are only two copies of them because I didn't want to reduce the number of Mountains even more. It's basically an alternate win condition, albeit not quite as powerful as it is in a deck like Scapeshift.
Spells: There are three different types of spells in this deck.
Burn spells. Deal damage (in most cases 3) to your opponent. With most of them you can target creatures as well. It's really simple and straightforward. The total ammount of burn damage you can cause to an opponent with this deck is 88 (without the flashback of Bump in the Night). So no need to worry about running out of damage. Running out of steam is a real possibility though, that's why we have Steam Vents in the deck. Ha-ha! Also card draw.
Card draw spells. With this deck you are most likely to find yourself topdecking after the first couple of turns (why this is good we'll examine in a second). The extremely low mana cost of your spells let's you empty your hand unlike any other deck. So you will naturally need a couple of draw spells to help you finish you accelerate the process. While the initial tool to do that was Dark Confidant, I quickly found out he gets instagibbed by the opponents since they simply won't let you have something that powerful. So I transferred the draw on instants and ended up with Electrolyze, which is both a burn and a draw spell, and Manamorphose, which cycles itself while fixing you for the turn so you can cast a Lightning Helix off of 2 red sources.
Permanent spells. Ajani Vengeant is a great planeswalker, he has a Lightning Helix on his -2 ability and he can stop a dude from attacking you. Ensnaring Bridge, on the other hand, is what keeps you alive against those heavy creature decks that just want to swing at you. Most of the time your hand will be emptied out, so you have nothing to worry. The low mana cost of your spells means you can ditch whatever you get each turn so you won't have to worry about 1/1s and 2/2s sneaking in.
Sideboard: The sideboard is a little bit weird. Grafdigger's Cage is a must-have in any Modern deck (that's a bit exaggerated but it stops entire decks from functioning and is overall a great card). Anger of the Gods is the go-to board clear, that's pretty straightforward. Now, I was originally hesitating between running efficient dedicated removal for artifacts/enchantments or a more versatile less efficient spell in the form of Krosan Grip(which is a great answer for the stuff control decks can put out, because of that Split Second). However, since this is meant to be fun, I decided to go with Smash to Smithereens for artifacts because it also burns the opponent, and then, once I knew I had to run dedicated enchantment removal, there was only one card I could put in. Mindbreak Trap is very interesting in here. Basically you side it in against stuff like Storm/Assault Loam/Living End/Ad Nauseam and use it to delay when they go off, giving you the necessary one or two turns to burn them to death (it can also counter a lot of spells, if you possess the knowledge how to use it).
How to play: This is one of the most straightforward decks out there. You play a land, whatever burn spell you have, then F6 (pass priority until end-of-turn). Dump your entire hand on the opponent, establish a lock for his creatures, draw a couple of cards and then dump everything you have drawn on the opponent once again.
