So this is an overhaul of an Elemental deck I was working on in Modern. The original deck was designed to be a more casual deck using a few cards that I thought were cool, but were too slow for competitive use. After repeated playtesting, it was decided that with a few tweaks this deck could be made to be fairly fast and hard-hitting. With the ideal hand and draw it has turn 2 lethal potential, but the average kill-range of the deck is turn 3-5.
The deck centers around Nova Chaser. The goal is pretty straight forward: using numerous Haste conditions to guarantee value and damage from your Nova Chaser, and score hits as early and often as you can with him. Assault Strobe makes him a one-hit-kill against an unmodified life total.
The mana pool is fairly self-explanatory. There is no correction to hit, so basic lands can do the trick in most situations. Primal Beyond and Cavern of Souls have pretty obvious utility here, and Simian Spirit Guide helps to shave turns off of establishing the combo. Smokebraider is immensely helpful in boosting your mana pool for an early kill. The combo requires at least 6 mana to pull off, but that is easily doable very early in the game.
Flamekin Harbinger allows you to correct for any combo pieces you might be missing, as it can pull any piece of the combo except the double strike. It can also be exiled using Nova Chaser's Champion an Elemental ability, and re-enters the battlefield upon his death to ensure you can continue to pull combo pieces if you need to hit again.
The Nova Chaser's weak back makes him easy to remove, so you are hoping to kill in one swing to guarantee value, and ideally your opponent will be tapped out when he comes out. The minimum amount of mana for combo, as previously mentioned, is 6: 4 for Nova Chaser, 1 for Hammerhand and 1 for Assault Strobe. As you cannot fetch for Hammerhand, Sootstoke Kindler was added as a fetchable Haste clause. Generator Servant also functions in that role, and additionally helps to free up mana. Fling gives you a final large burst of damage to finish off their life total if they are still clinging. Lightning Bolt helps to either clear small blockers or to help push damage directly at their life total to ensure the early kill.
The sideboard features answers for decks with considerable lifegain in Stigma Lasher, artifact removal in Smelt, an instant alternative to Assault Strobe in Temur Battle Rage against slower decks, and Hell's Thunder to generate pressure against removal-heavy decks.Cheers!
