Burning Desire

[ELD]

Having just returned from my weekly tourny at scholar's I ask  the magic community its opinion on what is perhaps the best deck in the format - Burning Desire.  I wonder if it will recieve the same kind of static that GAT generated.  I found it extremely forgiving and easy to play.  In several games I made mistakes and still won.  Let me give a basis for comparison.  

For the last few weeks I've been playing a new deck without any playtesting.  I have literally been building stuff in the hour before the rounds start and just trying to come up with some fun builds.  First was a Neo GAT build that I came up with out of no where.  I took out the 4 AK and an Intuition for 4 Dryad and a Gush.  The deck still had two intuition to fetch the DA which was great for making the Dryads gro.  (If anyone else has tried this I'd like to know they are doing with it) It preformed as I hoped, as I won against Hulk and did well against the rest of the field.  The matches were generally decided by skill here.  If I outplayed my opponent I could make up for a slow start.  In other cases I had to shift into high gear early and make some risky plays to be aggresive and try and end the game when I wasn't getting a control draw.  Verdict-Skill

The next week I ran stoopid madness.  Unfortunately, there were no primers up yet and I made the deck by porting my UG from type 2.  It had more burn and little blue, but I mulliganed agressively to make up for this.  It seemed to me that the outcome had alot to do with luck.  Most of the games were over by turn 3 as I drew hands that allowed for 1st turn angry wurms and I drew multiple L.E.D.'s and lotus often.  Verdict-Luck

And now to this week.  Burning Desire.  It seemed to me that the deck was much easier to run than anything I've been running lately.  You have a clear goal.  You go for it.  If you get stopped you still have a chance of going for it again.  Against aggro it's pretty much entirely on you.  If you play right you just win.  Against control you need to be a little less reckless, but Duress tends to be enough to win.  I found I could make mistakes and still win the game.  That is disconcerting when talking about combo.  Traditionally Combo has been all about making the best decisions over the few turns that the game lasts.  If you play perfect you have a good shot.  If you muck even one thing up though, it compromises your chances.  Not so with this deck.  It reminds me of the forgiving nature of Gush in GAT.  It allowed you to get back the right color of mana and draw cards (like the Chromatic Sphere)  With some decks it's all about Skill, some it's about Luck.  Burning Desire seems to be all about the extreme brokeness of the deck and little else.  While this has never bothered me, I do know how angry magic players can get, so I ask how does everyone else view this.  Will we be seeing people getting dissed for winning tournaments by "better" players who didn't even top 8?    

Peace,
Eric
ELD

[MoreFling]

With burning desire you can make a lot of decision, but only one is the most optimal one. Even if you go for another option, you can still win because the deck is just loaded with broken stuff, which is the nature of the deck.

However, it's not even close to the stupidness of GAT.

[CyberKnight]

Although burning desire is indeed broken, there are (at least) three differences with GAT:

1: GAT could be played succesfully without power. It would lose a little bit of its speed, but it would still be a killing machine you had to watch out for. So GAT was available to more (unpowered) players.

2: GAT packed more resistance (FoW, misdirection, counterspells, dazes in GAT VS 3-4 duress in desire).

3: Wizards didn't print a 0-mana deck hoser (chalise of the void) in the next set after GAT became popular.

So let's just wait and see what becomes of this deck after mirrodin is allowed in type 1.

Just my $0.02

[Smmenen]

Just becuase a deck is forgiving, which I am not even inclined to beleive that Burning Desire is in a high powered/experienced metagame, I certainly would not say that it is an easy deck to play - far from it.  GroAtog was intuitive and obvoius to play beyond people doing bad things like casting Gush with no men on the board.  Burning Desire is a chaotic mess in terms of theoretical understanding.  My ariticle tried to cabin some of this chaos, but at the expense of having people go through the learning process themselves.  

Steve

[Jacob Orlove]

Quote 3: Wizards didn't print a 0-mana deck hoser (chalise of the void) in the next set after GAT became popular.

So let's just wait and see what becomes of this deck after mirrodin is allowed in type 1.

Exactly. Post-mirrodin, anyone can run 4x Chalice MD or SB, and the best decks (wMUD and NeoKeeper) certainly will. But the "low-skill" players you're referring to will most likely not want to run Burning Desire, when it can just get hosed so easily by a card that every deck can run 4 of and that they can play turn 1 no matter what else they draw.

[VideoGameBoy]

Quote (ELD @ Sep. 29 2003,22:48)And now to this week.  Burning Desire.  It seemed to me that the deck was much easier to run than anything I've been running lately.  You have a clear goal.  You go for it.  If you get stopped you still have a chance of going for it again.  Against aggro it's pretty much entirely on you.  If you play right you just win.  Against control you need to be a little less reckless, but Duress tends to be enough to win.  I found I could make mistakes and still win the game.  That is disconcerting when talking about combo.  Traditionally Combo has been all about making the best decisions over the few turns that the game lasts.  If you play perfect you have a good shot.  If you muck even one thing up though, it compromises your chances.  Not so with this deck.  It reminds me of the forgiving nature of Gush in GAT.  It allowed you to get back the right color of mana and draw cards (like the Chromatic Sphere)  With some decks it's all about Skill, some it's about Luck.  Burning Desire seems to be all about the extreme brokeness of the deck and little else.  While this has never bothered me, I do know how angry magic players can get, so I ask how does everyone else view this.  Will we be seeing people getting dissed for winning tournaments by "better" players who didn't even top 8?

How would you characterize your meta?  Predominantly scrubby and non-powered, or lean, mean, and powered?  Long.dec absolutely cleans the floor in scrubby metas - but this is no different than other tuned and powered lists, from Mask to Stax or Dragon.  

You have to understand that this deck is now highly tuned and tested, and as such is now approaching idiot-proof.  There finally exists sufficient articles and discussion on this deck to substantially lower the once staggering learning curve that was once required to grasp the concepts needed to weild the deck effectively.

The deck has existed for 4 months now, and the global metagame still seems to be healthy and diverse, with combo, control, and aggro each having their turns in the spotlight.  I think you are letting your surprise at a deck that can run 4 x LED and 4 x Chromatic Sphere and still win distort your perception a little bit - just because this deck packs near the entire restricted list and playsets of other cards that probably warrant restriction doesn't mean it is any more degenerate than decks with playsets of Workshops or Bazaars.

So far, I have not seen anybody win/T8 a tournament with Long.dec who wasn't a sterling player (i.e., usually top seeds in tournaments they attend).

[ELD]

The Scholar's meta is full powered (and full proxie).  It changes rapidly from week to week.  I will concede that it isn't (sorry guys) particularly lean and certainly not mean.  Alot of people have pet projects that they test out and try and tune them.  It does make a sideboard a dangerous thing as all of a sudden you have no problem boarding 4x Card that hoses your face.  It has prepared me very well for the other tournaments that I attend though.  This week I played against,

Goblin's (welder main to screw with stax and some artifact hate thrown in)
Goblin Sligh (similar to the T8 build from worlds)
PT funk (12 discard, negator, hyppie, shade, deed, man lands)
White Weenie (a bit of a mismatch)
and UrPhid in the finals (swarm for game)

I managed to dodge hulk entirely.  The majority of the field is justifiably aggro as I tend to play control along with some other players who tend to make it to the finals on a regular basis.  

I'm no slouch (well according to my rating at least) but it did seem pretty easy to run.  I have found it to be consistant as well.  It has proven to be more consistant than stax.  It proved much more powerful than anything running bazzars.  On the whole it's an amazing deck and not overly difficult to run.  I'll say this, it's much easier to win with than non combo Keeper.  (which I've played with alot and done very well with)  It is however, possible to butcher things pretty badly.  

As for Chalice, here's something to think about.  If you board in 4 of them in a 60 card deck you have a 40% chance of drawing one in your first 7 cards.  If you paris until you get one or down to one card while trying, you have a 87% chance of drawing one.  If you are willing to paris to 4 you have about a 79% chance of drawing a chalice.  My point, if you paris aggresively, you have around twice the odds of drawing chalice than someone who won't throw back a solid opening hand with no chalice.  Against this deck, going first, I think I'll be throwing back some hands. (especially w/o force of will)

Thanks for all the replies

Peace,
Eric
ELD