Friday Night Magic: The Winner’s Circle #12

Hi everybody! Bill Carrig here again with another edition of the Winner’s Circle. This week, Joe Steet finished in the coveted 1st place spot. Joe has been a FNM tournament main stay for a while now and he’s also a Magic Judge!

Joe piloted a Red/White deck called Borors Burn this past week. Check it out:

4 Shock
4 Young Pyromancer
4 Magma Jet
4 Lightning Strike
4 Boros Charm
4 Annihilating Fire
4 Toil//Trouble
4 Warleaders Helix
2 Spark Trooper
4 Sacred Foundry
4 Temple of Triumph
4 Boros Guildgate
10 Mountain

Sideboard
4 Anger of the Gods
4 Boros Reckoner
2 Wear//Tear
2 Spark Trooper
3 Chandra’s Phoenix

Bill: Wow! I like this deck a lot. It seems like every week we get something different topping out at FNM and this is definitely the first time for a burn deck of any type. So what can you tell me about this deck?

Joe: My deck is a fairly dedicated pure burn deck. I’m running only six creatures in the main deck and then 28 burn spells. Although it is very straightforward, it isn’t especially easy to pilot. It requires a decent sense of how much punishment the other decks are able to spit out. I want to be burning my opponents face off and only removing their creatures when absolutely necessary. Additionally against decks with counter magic, you need a good sense of which burn spells to try and resolve when to maximize the damage.

Bill: Well it certainly seems like it worked well for you on Friday. Did you run into any bad draws over the course of the event?

Joe: This deck ran extremely well the entire night. Hitting the right mix of spells and land virtually every game! After each round I asked my opponent if they wanted to play another game or two just for fun. Because of how fast my deck plays, I usually got in 4 or 5 more games and still reported fairly early into the round. Out of the 15-20 games I played over the course of the night, I only lost 2. Both to my round 4 opponent who was playing a really well built mill deck.

Bill: Yes, I think I’ve seen that mill deck floating around the top tables. It’s very scary. One of these days, it will probably win the whole thing! So maybe mill or control is a bad matchup for you. What are the good matchups for this deck?

Joe: My deck fares very well against any kind of mid-range deck. If they can’t apply a ton of early pressure or don’t have counter spells to rely on late game, I can simply throw all my burn spells at their face and usually end the game on turn 5.

Bill: Wow! This deck consistently kills on turn 5 with a decent draw. That’s really good in the current standard format. Most decks are not that fast, so this is very impressive. I imagine it’s not all a matter of just casting your spells though. Did you come up on any tricky plays on Friday?

Joe: The deck is fairly simple, so there’s not a huge amount of tricky plays possible, but I did have two moves that I especially enjoyed: One player tapped out and played a Jace, Architect of Thought and used his -2 ability to gain some cards. I actually split the piles into 3 cards and 0 cards. He took that pile of 3. I untapped and cast Trouble for 7 damage to kill them. In another game, I had one opponent tap out to play a Jace, Memory Adept. I responded by revealing the 4 Boros Charms in my hand. 16 damage! He scooped.

Bill: Awesome! Quad Boros Charm for the win! It’s like your deck decided to give you a present or something.

Joe: Well, this FNM happened to fall on my birthday, so I guess this deck did give me some gifts! I was really happy to also win first place. That really helped to make it a special day!

Bill: That’s so cool! Happy Birthday Joe! And congratulations too! This Friday is our last week of our December to Remember promotion. We will have an even BIGGER prize for FNM this week. Stay tuned for the announcement on that. I’ll see you all again this Friday and one of you in the Winner’s Circle!