Shahrazad and the General State of Burn Decks

[Ripcord728]

When used correctly, Shahrazad is a sorcery for WW that deals potentially 10 damage to the dome.  Graveyard hate isn't bad in this metagame, so a few maindeck Tormod's Crypts aren't necessarily dead cards.  But even with such a strong 4-of, can a burn deck be viable?

[Nantuko Rice]

hmmm, interesting idea. shahrazad may be very effective against decks that require certain cards from their deck that may become unavailable by casting this spell. those decks may fall victim to the consistency (i mean multiple 4 of's) of burn decks. however i do believe ur initial post is lacking in content, could you please expand more on your idea?

sample deck? we do have a RW burn deck running around sometimes, but i think it needs to be reworked to support shahrazad.

[pyr0ma5ta]

Interesting.  A burn deck with 4x Shaharazad and some Tormod's Crypt?  Pretty sure every time you cast Shaharazad, however, your opponent will sigh hugely.

[Mantis]

So if I see this correctly, the Shahrazad subgames start with 20 life? Aren't you afraid that time will round out if you play like 4~6 games every round? I'm concerned you will have to make a lot of draws which pretty much sucks. But a card that costs WW and deals 10 damage does have potential.

To address the question, I'm not sure. I have been surprised by sligh more than once. And when your opponent is at 10 life due to Shahrazad your Lightning Bolts and Chain Lightnings suddenly are effective.

[cssamerican]

Here is the problem with Shahrazad; anybody that can will forfeit the sub-game. There is no need to risk losing your win condition or drawing due to time constraints since losing some life really isn't that threatening. The faulty assumption people make here is that they think Shahrazad will net them ten points of damage to their opponent's dome, and then they will burn them out for the rest relatively quickly. When in actuality Shahrazad will likely never generate more than seven points of damage (Since you should have already hit them with some burn) and in many cases it will be less than that. Shahrazad damage potential gets progressively weaker as your opponent's life total drops, so the longer the game goes the less threatening it actually is, in fact it can't even kill your opponent because of the half your life rounded up clause. On top of all this, you have to have access to two off-color sources of mana to even play it, which again increases the chances it will likely be played even later in the game when it is at its weakest.

[Machinus]

Here is the problem with Shahrazad; anybody that can will forfeit the sub-game. There is no need to risk losing your win condition or drawing due to time constraints since losing some life really isn't that threatening. The faulty assumption people make here is that they think Shahrazad will net them ten points of damage to their opponent's dome, and then they will burn them out for the rest relatively quickly. When in actuality Shahrazad will likely never generate more than seven points of damage (Since you should have already hit them with some burn) and in many cases it will be less than that. Shahrazad damage potential gets progressively weaker as your opponent's life total drops, so the longer the game goes the less threatening it actually is, in fact it can't even kill your opponent because of the half your life rounded up clause. On top of all this, you have to have access to two off-color sources of mana to even play it, which again increases the chances it will likely be played even later in the game when it is at its weakest.

As silly as a deck like this would be, I think the concession would be benefit. Also, the life loss is quite threatening in the early game, when it would be the strongest play.

The way this deck would operate optimally would be like this: play like a Boros deck, with a lot of fast 1-drops, and cast Shahrazad as soon as possible. Save burn until after the Sharazad resolves. If opponents forfeit the subgame, Shahrazad is a very good burn spell, dealing between 5-10 damage for WW.

The benefit that Boros gets from playing with Shahrazad is that it is a consistent, redundant aggro deck. Therefore it will mulligan less, and generate tempo early every game. With a consistent manabase and very low curve, Boros/Shahrazad would punish decks for running artifact mana and draw spells, and decks that rely on tutoring and broken openings. If your opponent casts moxes, fetchlands, brainstorms, FoW, or restricted cards like Tinker, Recall, Lotus, etc., the won't have access to them in the subgame. By tutoring out all the broken cards and casting them, the library becomes much weaker, and the Shahrazad deck will therefore be weaker as well. A very redundant and extremely cheap aggro deck would be able to use Shahrazad effectively.

The problems with this strategy involve the fact that you have to win the original game. Imagine Shahrazad just said WW, Sorcery, Deal 7 damage. Would it be good? I am not sure if this spell would make Boros viable.

[The Atog Lord]

Imagine Shahrazad just said WW, Sorcery, Deal 7 damage.

There's already a card that does 5 damage for 1R (having an artifact out isn't too bad). And there's another card that lets you sac a guy for 4 damage. And those cards still aren't seeing play.

[CCClark]

As an owner of 19 Shaharzads (yes 19, it's my fav card), I have tried and tried to find a way to abuse the card since it's unbanning.    The only thing I have found it to be of any use for is putting hurt on combo and some control decks with few kill conditions.   It's practically a dead card against an aggro deck that's already redundant.   I did have a lil luck with a mill type deck using T crypts to remove things from the game in sub-games, but it wasn't even Legacy worthy. 

As for the burn decks the problem coming up is can you win the sub-game?  Granted it's not such a big deal to lose it when you're playing a ton of burn, but if you can't win in a subgame there's no point in going into it.   I see Shaharzads as only a way to disrupt combo and control and even then it's iffy.   If you're winning the subgames, what's so wrong with just winning the main one in the first place.    I can't see it being played unless combo makes a serious comeback like the Academy days and that's probably not going to happen.

[Ripcord728]

How do you compare potentially 10 damage to 4 or 5 damage that requires you to sacrifice a permanent you may or may not have access to?

Burn has been mocked for a long time, despite some very solid cards that have come out for it recently.  Genju of the Spires on a basic mountain is a strong clock for many decks.  Pyrostatic Pillar is going to deal a lot of damage over the course of the game.  As far as hate, there's Red Elemental Blast and artifact destruction cards such as Rack and Ruin and Shattering Spree (see Guildpact Spoiler) and obviously a wealth of Welder removal.  TMWA (The Mountains Win Again, a similar red/white deck) even maindecked Tormod's Crypts, so we see that they're not dead cards even if Shahrazad is countered or not drawn.

I think it's time for a decklist.

[Robert the Swordsman]

Alright, so in a subgame, each player starts with twenty life.

If they (for some peculiar reason) do not immediately concede, you deal them twenty points of damage and they'll go back to the original game with only ten life...

...wouldn't it be better to simply NOT play Shahrazad and deal them twenty points of damage?

[HuntedWumpus]

For the reasons already mentioned there is really no reason at all to play Shahrazad in a burn deck. You are doing two things to the deck that are entirely against the idea of a burn deck.

1) Burn deck are designed to draw EXTREMELY consistently. They do this by having a simple game plan with many redundant cards, rather all the cards in the deck essentially perform the same function of dealing direct damage to a target, or "punishing" the opponent for advancements in board position or hand size. Adding Shahrazad complicates a game plan that does better in the simple form.

2) Unbreakably hard mana base. Why would you want to try and crack it.

If you are looking for a  high damage card that is not used enough, IMO, though i haven't really tested burn thoroughly enough recently to really say; try shrapnel Blast. Between the artifact lands, and blowing up and ankh or scroll/scepter that has already done its job you should not have a problem being short of a target to sac.

[Ripcord728]

You have clearly not played burn in a very long time.

[Robert the Swordsman]

You have clearly not played burn in a very long time.

This statement does not change the fact that, by playing Shahrazad, you must deal thirty points of damage to win as opposed to twenty.

In this case, Shahrazad does NOT read "WW: ten damage", but rather "WW: target opponent gains ten life".

[Ripcord728]

When you play Shahrazad, you draw 7 new cards to use for the subgame.

[Nantuko Rice]

the reason he plays shahrazad is because it's one card that does two things
(a) disruption
(b) deals damage (alot of it)
so it would be reasonable that playing this card in perhaps a Boros Deck Wins (R/W Burn/Weenie Deck) could be interesting

[cherub_daemon]

I love the heck out of Shaharazad and burn, taken separately, but for many of the reasons stated above, I think Shaharazad is a bad move in a burn deck. It's really just a manabase/redundancy thing.

In a heavily red deck, you will probably not want to run a large number of white sources, if you want to maintain the density of threats required of a burn deck. So when you find WW, you will have reduced the number of white sources available to you in the subgame by 2; this reduction in sources becomes more dire if you used fetchlands or other means to find that WW.

"But,", you may say, "I don't care about finding WW in the subgame, I just want to burn him out there." Well, you just made that job harder, too. Why? Because now you have three deader-than-fried-chicken Shaharazads cluttering up your deck.

The response to this may be, "Well, my opponent will just concede anyway." Why should he? If he thinks that will decrease his chances of winning the main game, there's no reason to--and if I was staring down a burn deck with a full hand, I would almost certainly take my chances. 

As to the point of Shaharazad for disruption, I agree that there is probably some deck out there which would like one, even if only in the board to be wished in for some odd, not-currently-envisioned-by-me circumstance.

As to the notion of a Boros+Shah Vintage port, I'm not feeling it--seems like it would be RW Fish with a shoddy disruption package. I would love nothing more , though, than to be completely proven wrong.

[cssamerican]

The response to this may be, "Well, my opponent will just concede anyway." Why should he? If he thinks that will decrease his chances of winning the main game, there's no reason to--and if I was staring down a burn deck with a full hand, I would almost certainly take my chances. 

Because the original post was alluding to running Tormod's Crypt in an effort to remove enough of your opponent's deck in the sub-game to make it more difficult for them to win in the main-game. Even still, decks that win via Yawgmoth's Will would be stupid to blow thier main win condition on the sub-game because it would make it very difficult or impossible to win the main game without those power cards. Once cards are removed from the game in the sub-game they are no longer playable in the main game.

[BigMac]

I would say, build a black and white control deck with maindeck 4 tormyds crypt, never a bad card, 4 withered wretch, some discard, vindicate, cranial extraction and some fast big critters. Grinning demon and Juzam Djinn Come to mind as well as nantuko shade. Wasteland and Stripmine together with balance and stp form the basis of this deck. Sharazaad is just a bonus on this strategy. When they want to play you have a very good chance of removing some key cards from the game giving you a better chance of winning the first game. When conceding you only need to do 10 points of damage with some fatties. Considering you have very few creatures in vintage this should not be a big problem. So play sharazaad before attack fase with 1 or two critters on the board and you will be a force to be reckoned with. You almost force your opponent to play the second game this way.

People saying the card gets worse in late game because it only does 7 damage or less later in the game forget that the number the other people are getting on is 7 or 8. That is two less points you need to do damage. And lets face it, if i could i would be doing 7-10 damage for 2 mana any time in a game.

[cherub_daemon]

The response to this may be, "Well, my opponent will just concede anyway." Why should he? If he thinks that will decrease his chances of winning the main game, there's no reason to--and if I was staring down a burn deck with a full hand, I would almost certainly take my chances. 

Because the original post was alluding to running Tormod's Crypt in an effort to remove enough of your opponent's deck in the sub-game to make it more difficult for them to win in the main-game. Even still, decks that win via Yawgmoth's Will would be stupid to blow thier main win condition on the sub-game because it would make it very difficult or impossible to win the main game without those power cards. Once cards are removed from the game in the sub-game they are no longer playable in the main game.

I must admit, I forgot about Will...which was sort of like forgetting a 400 lb. gorilla in your bathtub. Upon reflection, however, I'm not so sure that it matters. The decks most notable for "winning with Will" (storm combo) are more than likely just doing your job (being a non-interactive, balls-to-the-wall damage dealer) better than you. So while they may scoop the subgame, it probably won't save you, especially given that you now have a large number of non-threats (Shahrazad, and Tormod's) in what really will need to be a threat-dense deck. Essentially, my message is that by diluting a sub-Tier 1 deck with somewhat flaky tech, you're not solving its problems.

I was keeping in mind the clarification about card removal in the subgame, however. To me, it seems that down this path lies the best means of abusing Shahrazad, and not the variable (if possibly large) amount of damage it does on the back end. What this does is put less emphasis on playing a color that Shaharazad is not in (red), lowers the number of threats needed, allowing you to put more focus on other disruption, and enables greater possible synergy with the Crypt/other graveyard removal. You're using Shaharazad to make "remove from game" ablilities nasty...the problem is, this basically dictates that your kill condition be deck removal, which seems damn dicey without a combo in mind.

I wonder if Shaharazad could be used as a reset button in a deck-removal combo deck? Like, "Oops, I didn't go off...well, time to try again!" Sensei and Dragon can't really spare the slots, though...anyone got anything here?

[dskippy0]

Here is the problem with Shahrazad; anybody that can will forfeit the sub-game. There is no need to risk losing your win condition or drawing due to time constraints since losing some life really isn't that threatening.

I've run into similar problems but I think it's a little more complex. The problem is that Shahrazad is essentially a punisher card. Assuming you can win a subgame the card reads "Remove a few cards from your opponents library unless that player pays half his life." This means you essentially get damage when you need removal and removal when you need damage. It depends on your deck construction and theirs but some times half their life is that big of a deal. Playing a second turn Shahrazad before you attack with two Lions is a big deal if you can burn them turn three. So in the subgame their going to let you remove a couple cards so they can win. On the other hand if they're playing Oath and you swords a critter they just cocede and win the main game with 10 life.

I think a lot of the time it's also based a lot of your own build. If you run a lot of burn and weenies with Shahrazad, you're going to struggle to win subgames and no one will concede them (forget about time limits for a moment) since you can't threaten the deck. If you run a ton of Crypts, Swords, etc. They'll just concede immediately since losing 10 life against your weak control deck is no big deal.

Finding the right balance is hard and I think it's not likely viable as a competative deck given what's out there. Cards like Disintegrate are a big help with this problem, since then can attack as removal threats for Welders, Fish critters, etc. in the subgame but deal the final burn to the dome in the main game.

Problem is Disintegrate isn't powerful enough. It's exactly the kind of card Shahrazad needs though. Maybe if more removal/burn cards are release that have some power, Shahrazad will be more viable. Either that or really some removal spells that remove lots of cards like "Sorcery: Remove all your opponents library from the game. They can't lose by drawing this turn. Return that library to the game at end of turn". Yes silly I know, but you can see something like this getting printed as an anti-draw/control card. And in a sub game you could just play it and concede and then they're screwed.

So I don't think Shahrazad is powerful enough for competative play right now, but I think removal/burn is the right direction and more powerful cards along these lines might be printed. Who knows?

-mike

p.s.

... in fact it can't even kill your opponent because of the half your life rounded up clause.

No actually losing half your life rounded up means Shahrazad does kill you. When you're at 1 life, half your life is 0.5 life. Half your life rounded up is 1 life. You'd lose 1 life if you were at 1 life.