Introduction
Ask any Legacy player if there’s a deck you could play in Legacy without spending a ton of money, they’ll tell you Burn. They would probably laugh a bit after that, because Burn has the stigma of being somewhat of a ‘dumb’ deck. The idea that many people have when they think of burn is ‘go face with everything and maybe you’ll win’. While that’s a way to play burn, the deck has many intricacies that separates a child piloting their first deck from a seasoned red mage. When do you go face, when do you use your burn as removal? How do you squeeze the most damage out of not only the first turn, but also the turns after that? Creature or burn? When do you Eidolon? Burn is more complex than it looks at first glance, and it’s a lot of fun to play. Besides: it’s the cheapest Legacy deck there is.
Budget
Price: ~ 150 EUR / 200 USD
Updated February 2023
Most recent deck lists: here.
How does Burn work?
While Burn is a deck that’s kind of self-explanatory, there are some things to be said. First of all: you’re an aggro deck. Mulligans matter a lot. If your opening hand contains three or more lands, ship it. If your hand contains no lands, ship it. You have to be efficient and fast. Legacy is not a joke format where you can durdle around for a turn or 2 and expect to win.
From the first turn, you need a strategy on how you can get the most damage out of the cards in your hand and you’ll have to think past that. There are almost no hands that contain 20 or more damage unless your opponent does nothing, so you have to come up with a plan to get the most out of your cards. Which cards do you play and when do you play them? Fireblast is a great cards, but sacrificing 2 Mountains means you need a plan for if it gets countered. Eidolon is great, but what if your opponent’s board is better and their life total isn’t that low yet?
Lastly, you’re almost always the beatdown. There are some decks that are faster than you, but you don’t have a lot of tools to beat those decks. These include:
- Storm
- Reanimator
- Oops! All Spells!
- Turbo Depths
First of all, unless they have to mulligan a lot, these decks are most likely going to take the first game. After sideboarding there’s some things you’re going to need. Leyline of the Void, for example (against Reanimator and Oops) or something like Dead//Gone vs Depths. Storm can be very hard, though an early Eidolon hurts them a lot.
Acquiring Burn
While this section might be interesting with many decks, there’s not a lot to say here with burn. I’m going to be blunt: either you buy it or you don’t. There aren’t any budget concessions here if you’re serious about playing Legacy. The most expensive card in the deck is currently Eidolon of the Great Revel, and until that’s being reprinted, this will be the only card that exceeds 10 EUR/USD. With these price tags, Legacy Burn is cheaper than almost any Modern deck.
Upgrade paths
I don’t want to downplay this deck, but like the section before, unfortunately this isn’t really interesting either. Since there are no really expensive cards in Burn, the upgrade paths are all very steep. If you own burn, you have some interesting format staples like Lightning Bolt and many of the sideboard cards. This is convenient, but it doesn’t open any obvious door towards another deck that says “hey, with just 100 extra EUR/USD, you’ll also be able to play this!”.
Additional Resources
For discussion and inspiration, there’s a Discord server: here.