Burning Wish Outside of Pure Combo Decks

[Onslaught]

With the unrestriction of Burning Wish, the card was "solved" pretty quickly by the Burning Oath list that Steve popularized. It has established itself as a tier one deck in the Vintage Gauntlet and has been the most consistently successful combo deck this year. Perhaps as a result of this early success, Burning Wish innovation was sorta left at "ok, THE Burning Wish deck has been found."

I really hate when people are coy about decks or have a "heh...wait and see" attitude about decks, but out of respect for the deck's creator (he will be using it at Ovinogeddon later this month) I don't want to divulge too many details. But that's beside the point anyway, the main takeaway from my games against him was that Burning Wish in a control shell is not only viable - it's extremely powerful. It gives you the flexibility of a combo kill in a deck that otherwise wouldn't want to waste space on it. It gives you easy access to silver bullets (game one and beyond) for some major blowout scenarios. It "saves space" main deck moving some bombs to the board like Tinker and Will, while at the same time letting you find them much faster.

A hard control deck playing all the artifact mana and virtually zero dead draws with 3-4 copies of Burning Wish is something that should have a lot more representation than it does at the moment, and I hope to see it do well at Ovinogeddon later this month.

[Grand Inquisitor]

As an early fan of Wish, I'm always keeping it on my radar.  There are a few things that make it difficult in the current meta:

(1) Shops really punish the additional cost and the anti-shop cards you can fetch with it all have their problems
(2) There's no great Dredge hoser, especially in URB
(3) The choice to go outside 2-3 colors really gets rewarded more heavily by a combo approach since you can fire/forget on a big card and not worry about your manabase as much
(4) The rules change that you can't get any RFG'd card with wishes really limits the broken lines you could do before

Still, I see lots of potential.  It's a broken card and if I had more time to invest in deck building, I'd certainly look here.

FWIW, I admit I totally underestimated the combined design elements of Wish along with Oath and better expansion in the new Long lists.  Burning Wish really allows them to dodge traditional hate while employing lots of lines of play.

Also, there are other adopters...
http://morphling.de/printview.php?c=1742&d=1

[Onslaught]

http://morphling.de/printview.php?c=1742&d=1

Nice! I really should use Morphling.de search more often, that is really similar to what I've been testing lately and it gives me some new insights.

Repeal is probably the most underrated card in Vintage, it sees such sparse use in our meta while the Europeans seemingly run it whenever they can. Besides giving you outs against esoteric cards like Stony Silence, Blood Moon, and so on - it is also a Storm enabler in a Burning Wish deck. Would I ever run Tendrils or even ETW in a pretty heavy control deck that skewed less towards Drain Tendrils and more towards Bomberman or something? Of course not. But with the Wish flexibility you have access to something like midgame Mox, Repeal, Mox, Hurk's or Rebuild yourself, redrop a few artifacts, wish for Tendrils without muddling the deck with any dedicated combo pieces/combo kills. I currently run x2 Repeal but I never dislike drawing it and should probably find room for a third copy.

That is a really tight list, I have Lotus Petal in mine but not Mana Vault, but I like going all in on the acceleration. In many ways this archetype reminds me of a Gushless Gush deck, if that makes sense. You can usurp the Almost Blue manabase (Academy, LOA, lots of Islands, full artifact mana including Petal) as well as the Repeals, and you still have the combo kill but in a much more compact package than Talrand or something like that. I have Night's Whisper in mine at the moment as well, it's really just a crazy fun deck to look at on paper. Night's Whisper, AK, and Repeals over things like Bob, Gush, Jace, etc - it's whacky and it works.

[DuKeLiO]

One year ago I wrote a primer on the deck, but it went unobserved beacuse it was written in spanish:
 
http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=44728.0

One of my friends and me played the deck some months ago on BoM in Anecy. Both run X-2 one day (top16) and dropping early the other, tha I think it is not a bad result for a deck only played by two people.
We also were testing the 4 Pulverize sideboarding plan against MUD, that seems fine, beacuse the deck can rebuild a good game state after Pulverize, but it weakens a littel the manabase for games 1.
I found the sinergy about Intution and Burning Wish -> Yawgmoth's Will very powerfull, so I maximized it playing 3 Intuitions and 4 Burning Wish.

I have also tried some others approachs with the Burning Wish, using Fact or Fiction or a more control oriented deck (Burning Keeper). The Fact or Fiction build were worse than the Intuition-AK one beacuse it ahs less sinergy, and the Burning Keeper build is waiting some improves, beacuse I think I tested too many new things in the deck and them dilutes the result too much. Also I thing the Burning Keeper isn't a deck to play in my meta in Madrid, beacuse is a deck very good against MUD and Ichorid, and there aren't too much here.

If there are interest in the primer about the deck, maybe I can spend two hours in tranlate it to english.

[StanleyAugust]

One year ago I wrote a primer on the deck, but it went unobserved beacuse it was written in spanish:
 
http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=44728.0

One of my friends and me played the deck some months ago on BoM in Anecy. Both run X-2 one day (top16) and dropping early the other, tha I think it is not a bad result for a deck only played by two people.
We also were testing the 4 Pulverize sideboarding plan against MUD, that seems fine, beacuse the deck can rebuild a good game state after Pulverize, but it weakens a littel the manabase for games 1.
I found the sinergy about Intution and Burning Wish -> Yawgmoth's Will very powerfull, so I maximized it playing 3 Intuitions and 4 Burning Wish.

I have also tried some others approachs with the Burning Wish, using Fact or Fiction or a more control oriented deck (Burning Keeper). The Fact or Fiction build were worse than the Intuition-AK one beacuse it ahs less sinergy, and the Burning Keeper build is waiting some improves, beacuse I think I tested too many new things in the deck and them dilutes the result too much. Also I thing the Burning Keeper isn't a deck to play in my meta in Madrid, beacuse is a deck very good against MUD and Ichorid, and there aren't too much here.

If there are interest in the primer about the deck, maybe I can spend two hours in tranlate it to english.

I read it using google translate and that was pretty easy to understand, though of course not perfect. But I don't think it's worth translating it yourself. Thanks for the read anyway.

[Onslaught]

One year ago I wrote a primer on the deck, but it went unobserved beacuse it was written in spanish:
 
http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=44728.0

If there are interest in the primer about the deck, maybe I can spend two hours in tranlate it to english.

I didn't know you had an account here, awesome! Your name has stuck out to me ever since seeing the Scavening Ooze x2/Snapcaster Mage x4 Keeper lists with x3 Duress. I was surprised to see your name attached to the Burning Wish list posted by Grand Inquisitor earlier in the thread, and if you have the spare time I'd love to see a translation of your primer (perhaps with any new insights from the time it was written until now?)

I'm still using a x4 Ingot Chewer based sideboard in my current build (3 Intuition/4 AK/2 Night's Whisper/2 Snapcaster/0 Jace), but I'd definitely like to test your Pulverize plan some more.

[Smmenen]

FWIW, I admit I totally underestimated the combined design elements of Wish along with Oath and better expansion in the new Long lists.  Burning Wish really allows them to dodge traditional hate while employing lots of lines of play.

That would have been nice to hear -- a year ago :p

But I do appreciate that you are man enough to admit it now.  

On topic, Heiner had built a really powerful Burning Wish control deck in the spirit of The Shining that is worth a look. 

[cvarosky80]

FWIW, I admit I totally underestimated the combined design elements of Wish along with Oath and better expansion in the new Long lists.  Burning Wish really allows them to dodge traditional hate while employing lots of lines of play.

That would have been nice to hear -- a year ago :p

But I do appreciate that you are man enough to admit it now.  

On topic, Heiner had built a really powerful Burning Wish control deck in the spirit of The Shining that is worth a look. 

The Shining? May I ask what that is?

[Smmenen]

A Carsten Kotter Type 1 deck from way back when.  Look in my article archive or do web searches.

[JACO]

A Carsten Kotter Type 1 deck from way back when.  Look in my article archive or do web searches.

Or more precisely: http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/vintage/5415-The-Vintage-World-Championships-Metagame-Part-II.html

CTRL+F: The Shining

[cvarosky80]

A Carsten Kotter Type 1 deck from way back when.  Look in my article archive or do web searches.

Or more precisely: http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/vintage/5415-The-Vintage-World-Championships-Metagame-Part-II.html

CTRL+F: The Shining

Thank you, Jaco.

[zeus-online]

.

[DuKeLiO]

With the easy access to Yawgmoth's Will, Tinker and Tendrils, the Burning Wish decks will never be a pure control deck. My Burning Robadeck build is really a very agresive deck.

I also have tried more controlish decks, like a Keeper with the Wish and the Rest in Peace/Helm combo. It is more on the side of the control than the other deck, but I can force fast kills with tinker. But the deck is rough already and it needs more tunning:

RIPBurningKeeper

4 Force of Will
3 Mana Drain
3 Mental Misstep
3 Jace the Mindsculptor
1 Brainstorm
1 Ponder
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Thirst for Knowledge

3 Rest in Peace

1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor

4 Burning Wish
1 Ancient Grudge
1 Gorilla Shaman
1 Lightning Bolt

1 Helm of Obedience
1 Blightsteel Colossus

1 Black Lotus
1 Mana Crypt
1 Sol Ring
5 Mox
1 Library of Alexandria
1 Strip Mine
3 Wasteland
1 Tropical Island
1 Underground Sea
2 Tundra
2 Volcanic Island
4 Fetchs
4 City of Brass

SB:
1 Balance
1 Tinker
1 Hull Breach
1 Deep Analisys
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Toughtseize
...