Arena Creatureless Punisher Burn
Standard Deck Help forum
Posted on Jan. 23, 2019, 4:50 a.m. by Boza
I play exclusively on arena for standard (best of 1 games) and recently crafted a bunch of new allegience cards. Rakdos impressed me a lot and I decided to make a punisher burn deck, featuring Sword-Point Diplomacy and Risk Factor as the punisher cards.
There are several new cards that enable the deck:
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Skewer the Critics is the obvious new card - 3 damage for 1 mana is awesome.
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Light Up the Stage - 2 cards that you may use this turn and the next and play lands from there? Sign me up!
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Carnival / Carnage - both sides are useful - the 1 mana spell is the cheapest way we have to enable spectacle, while carnage is useful versus control decks.
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Theater of Horrors - the best new card for sure. It is just a better Experimental Frenzy for burn decks and works very well with the punisher aspect of the deck, unlike frenzy. Amazing in multiples.
Now the issue I am having trouble with is that the deck has a glaring omission, making it slower - Wizard's Lightning , which is not playable without 8 wizards at least.
So this is the choice:
1/ Include Wizard's Lightning , Viashino Pyromancer and Ghitu Lavarunner , but relinquish the creatureless aspect. Which 12 cards to cut to make room?
2/ Keep as is.
Flooremoji says... #3
I have found that standerd rakdos burn decks need creatures to get early damage that burn spells can't do.
January 23, 2019 10:30 a.m.
Currently, I have played 10 games with the deck with 70% win rate, losing to 2 aggro decks where I did not draw any Sovereign's Bite and one deck that deployed two Fountain of Renewal s on the first two turns.
Any deck that aims to be a slower midrange build like golgari or even slower jeskai/bant control, falls prey to this deck. Aggro decks like burn will fall, as long as I draw 2 or more copies of Sovereign's Bite (there are 6 total copies with the 2 Expansion / Explosion ).
Overall, I am satisfied with the list, but will test the 8 wizards version later down the line, as suggested by Flooremoji. The only card that has underperformed has been Flame of Keld as the punisher aspect of the deck is filling up our hand.
Flame will become 1 copy of Angrath, the Flame-Chained as per the suggestion of multimedia.
The deck is incredibly fun to play - one game I resolved 3 Theater of Horrors , the amount of CA was insane.
multimedia says... #2
Hey, Angrath, the Flame-Chained has good interaction with Theater of Horrors . These two can be a mid/late game card advantage engine. His +1 can be a repeatable no mana cost spectacle enabler, that's good with Skewer and Stage.
January 23, 2019 10:18 a.m.