The term ‘Burn’ used in describes deck archetypes in various formats of Magic tells the strategy to kill your opponents via direct damage spells and cheap-casting and Hasty creatures. The deck is then backed up by some enchantments that also deals damage or enhances the damage output of your spells. For today’s card feature, I will talk about the Dominaria Saga card that is a rendition of Furnace of Rath wayback in Tempest. The card is The Flame of Keld.

Sage type of cards is somewhat an interesting version of the usual Enchantments. That is because in certain turns the card does different effects. This first time The Flame of Keld enters the battlefield, it will discard your hand which is a negative effect if it is played in the early turns or the deck has a lot of high-casting cards. You then have to lower the curve of your spells so as playing this Saga would not be a drawback.

The effect gets you to draw two cards, which is a good refill once you’ve casted your early threats and burn spells. The third effect is the most interesting although you have to wait until your next turn for it to tick up to the third lore counter.

The Burn deck build is usually Mono Red but then let us check for other options. There is already a Blue Red Wizards deck in the metagame and that could be our core reference. We could just cut some of high-cost critters and focus on the haste-and-burn plan and which we will also gain value from the Prowess ability. Here below is the first version of the deck (base list found in MTG Goldfish):

Creatures (21)
4 Bomat Courier
4 Ghitu Lavarunner
4 Soul-Scar Mage
4 Spellweaver Eternal
4 Adeliz, the Cinder Wind
1 Nimble Obstructionist

Spells (21)
1 Refuse/Cooperate
1 Insult/Injury
4 Opt
4 Shock
4 Lightning Strike
4 Wizard’s Lightning
3 The Flame of Keld

Lands (18)
4 Spirebluff Canal
4 Sulfur Falls
7 Mountain
3 Island

We have twelve one-drops and four two-drops for efficiency of the deck’s one-two punch. Adeliz is the best three-drop to hit in the air and gets your Wizard dudes Prowess anthem for each burn spell casts. Nimble Obstructionist is your support card that can counter a Chainwhirler’s etb trigger and can be a flashy 3/1 flyer if needed. Refuse/Cooperate might be very situational but is also an additional damage, and also Cooperate gets you to copy your succeeding Burn spells and to be able to finish the job quickly. Insult/Injury can get you to deal explosive damage if your first two drops aren’t answered and would be more brutal if there is an Adeliz in play.

I might get to build this and test on our next playtest session but for now, feel free to send me comments and suggestions for the deck including other spell and creature options you might have in mind.

That is a wrap for this card feature: The Flame of Keld. Until the next post and thanks for reading.

Dominaria is already out and the Standard format is very much enjoying the synergies of cards in this recent and flashback set of Magic. We see already a majority of the dominating decks that use the new cards such as Blue White Control and B/W Aggro but we are still open to other specific cards in the set that are still open for a build around archetype. The card that I will write about today is Song of Freyalise.

This Saga enchantment actually benefits in Green’s nature of producing token creatures such as Saprolings. It turns all of your critters into mana dudes wherein you can produce a huge amount of mana in order to ramp up to your biggies such as Verdant Force or a kicked Verix Bladewing. It looks ordinary and creature curve dependent but wait until you get it to Lore Counter number 3. The simple singing while ‘cooking’ (I referred it to producing mana), turns into a pseudo-anthem effect.

Here is a Red Green build based on the enchantment and benefits that enchantment:

1 Cultivator of Blades
3 Druid of the Cowl
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Verix Bladewing
2 Verdant Force
3 Rishkar, Peema Renegade
2 Grand Warlord Radha
2 Siege-Gang Commander
2 Glorybringer
(23)

1 Jaya Ballard
(1)

4 Fight with Fire
2 Jaya’s Immolating Inferno
4 Saproling Migration
4 Song of Freyalise
(14)

4 Rootbound Crag
2 Sheltered Thicket
9 Forest
7 Mountain
(22)