My Pauper Burn deck Isn't so different from most other people's Burn decks.

Burn | Pauper | Michael Flores

• Creatures (11)
• 3 Kessig Flamebreather
• 4 Sneaky Snacker
• 4 Guttersnipe

• Instants (19)
• 4 Lava Dart
• 4 Lightning Bolt
• 4 Sazacap's Brew
• 4 Fiery Temper
• 3 Fireblast

• Sorceries (12)
• 4 Faithless Looting
• 4 Grab the Prize
• 4 Highway Robbery

• Lands (18)
• 18 Mountain

• Sideboard (15)
• 2 End the Festivities
• 4 Pyroblast
• 1 Red Elemental Blast
• 4 Cast Into the Fire
• 4 Searing Blaze

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The Basics: How Does Pauper Burn Work?

Like the Burn decks of other formats, Pauper Burn seeks to reduce the opponent's life total to zero utilizing a combination of creature attacking and direct damage. The unique lever of the format is that it leans more into discard and the Madness mechanic to pull off its mischief.

Most Pauper Burn decks get the party started at one mana with Voldaren Epicure.

This card does a lot of things, and some of them quite well.

First and foremost, it's a 1-drop. Meaning you don't have to waste your first turn's mana as often as my deck (which doesn't play an offensive 1-drop). I ended up cutting Voldaren Epicure because I was siding it out a lot, and I felt I got more matchup coverage with Sazacap's Brew (more on that later).

The Blood token that Voldaren Epicure makes is a teenie weenie discard outlet... Kind of like an extra Faithless Looting. In a pinch this can make for the card you need to trigger Sneaky Snacker, or at least get a discount on Fiery Temper.

But I cut it!

Most decks in Pauper can out-class a 1/1 for one mana pretty quickly, so the body wasn't doing that much. Though I guess chump blocking a Tolarian Terror can be pretty good. It wasn't winning the close games, and it wasn't pouring on a ton of damage even when it came out on the first turn. So: Vampire Down.

The unique core of the deck comes from these cards:

All these cards allow you to turn a card in hand (or sometimes a land in play) into more cards. Each has its own especial properties. Faithless Looting has Flashback; so, even though it is arguably the least exciting of the group, it gives you more oomph against Counterspell decks in the middle turns.

Highway Robbery is super flexible. You don't have to discard. Like ever. You probably want to, but unlike Grab the Prize or Sazacap's Brew, you don't have to discard as an additional cost.

In some ways, Highway Robbery is the most robust among the core trio against Counterspell decks. Of course, in long games you can turn a land in play into spells, which makes Highway Robbery even more flexible.

Grab the Prize is by far the most exciting. Grab? Two. Grab + Fiery Temper? Five. Grab + Fiery Temper with Guttersnipe in play? I have an Ivy League education and can't possibly count that high!

Grab the Prize is great in this deck because you don't have to discard Fiery Temper to make it look good. Lava Dart is always great and it is arguably the best pair to Sneaky Snacker (though anything with Sneaky Snacker is usually pretty good).

There's a secret to Grab the Prize, though. While it is the most exciting of the core trio, generally, it is the only one that doesn't really improve your hand. Both Faithless Looting and Highway Robbery routinely turn excess Mountains into burn spells. However, if you're discarding a Mountain to a Grab the Prize... I just don't love your chances to win the game, if that tracks.

More on this kind of spell in a bit...

Not What, But Who

Kessig Flamebreather is not very good. He's not terrible, but he's no Guttersnipe. On the other hand, you can only play so many copies of Guttersnipe, and Flamebreather comes down a turn earlier.

I think the average Pauper Burn deck plays four copies of Kessig Flamebreather, but I only have three to make room for the maximum number of the three-mana version.

Guttersnipe is single-handedly the reason to play Pauper Burn. The Madness elements are cool. You are playing a Mono-Red Burn deck that often feels like it has better card drawing than a Blue deck. That feels very powerful... But you still kind of have the ceiling of dealing three damage or whatever.

Guttersnipe breaks every rule of decorum and forces you to re-think everything you know about card advantage. Casting anything with Guttersnipe in play can start to look lethal. I think the most common amount of damage it will do on turn four if you untap with it in play is eighteen, usually sacrificing all four Mountains you have in play.

A lowly Lava Dart will do six damage if you have a Guttersnipe for one Red mana and the additional cost of a Mountain you're not going to need next turn. Lightning Bolt deals five. Fireblast six.

All the card-drawing/card-filtering spells that might be setting up some other spells (especially Fiery Temper and Lava Dart) are increasingly impressive. If you ever want to feel like you're "playing a different format" than everyone else in the tournament, try untapping with Guttersnipe sometime. They're playing Pauper. You're playing Storm.

The first thing I wanted to do when I started playing Pauper was cut Sneaky Snacker from the Burn deck. It didn't take me long to realize I knew nothing about the format. This isn't the best Sneaky Snacker deck (among other things you can't actually cast it), but Snacker does a great job in diversifying your Madness / discard payoffs. It's also a different color than the rest of your deck, which can give you a little play against cards like Prismatic Strands.

Weren't You Going to Tell Us What's Different About Your Pauper Burn Deck?

The main difference, other than toggling some three-ofs versus four-ofs, is replacing Voldaren Epicure with Sazacap's Brew.

First and foremost, this expands the core filtering/discard portion of the deck... And also adds an instant speed component. Occasionally you'll Gift the opponent a tapped Fish and deal some extra damage. But none of that is why I made this small change.

One of the best combo decks in Pauper involves decking yourself with Balustrade Spy, putting 20+ creatures into your graveyard, and flashing back Dread Return to kill the opponent with a single Lotleth Giant trigger.

That deck is potentially quite fast. Turn four kills are common and turn three kills possible. But not against Sazacap's Brew.

Imagine the opponent has no cards in their deck and moves in for the Flashback kill. You Sazacap's Brew them and they die in response! How cool is that?

Again, you get to sometimes make a Sneaky Snacker on the opponent's end step, and sometimes get two more damage in a surprising way... But it's the free kills that get the ball rolling. These changes make for a more cohesive and powerful sideboard than most other Burn decks.

The Sideboard, In Detail

The biggest thing this build gets back from Sazacap's Brew is three or four sideboard slots. Most Burn decks play something like Tormod's Crypt or Relic of Progenitus. I've heard that Relic of Progenitus is "good" because it is kind of effective against Tolarian Terror decks... But it also sucks.

You are a deck full of Lava Darts. You can't actually cast your Sneaky Snackers. Relic of Progenitus can be really problematic in terms of a card you just have in your deck.

Back when I was playing graveyard hate, I went with Faerie Macabre. None of the cards is perfect, but the big difference between Faerie Macabre and any of the Artifacts is that one of them doesn't get trumped by Masked Vandal.

Yes, the opponent can take a Faerie Macabre with Mesmeric Fiend, but a 1/1 is trivial to destroy on demand. Hoping to go off on the back of a Mesmeric Fiend offers Wall Spy players a very different level of confidence than actually exiling a hate artifact forever with a Changeling.

Getting those sideboard slots back allows this build to hyper-specialize against a wide variety of opponents. The deck is already good at killing creatures if that's what you want to do. But against go-wide decks and small creatures?

Elves? Faeries? They're in trouble.

Creatures in general?

What in the world might a Burn deck ever want but to blow up your creature (or more than one creature) and hug the opposing player's face for 1-3 additional damage? You absolutely murder decks like Faeries, where almost every sideboard card is an upgrade that suddenly becomes un-hitched from dependence on synergies.

It was only in playing from the Blue decks' sides that I really came to learn how bad Blasts are for the Red sideboard. The Blue decks upgrade with Blasts. They just want Counterspells and now they get them for instead of . They simultaneously get to upgrade a terrible card like Deem Inferior with an instant speed Vindicate for .

The Red decks don't get nearly that kind of an upgrade. Blasts are mana efficient but they don't do anything the Red Decks really want to do. They don't deal damage. They don't draw cards. They do keep a Terror off your back (and that's kind of important) but in the abstract no one signed up for that.

A good way to think about it is that a well-placed Blast (say one that prevents a Tolarian Terror from resolving) might prevent the opponent from beating you. But in a queer way, every Blast you draw makes actually winning more and more distant.

I've had some quite serious personal setbacks that have kept me from playing much Pauper the last couple of weeks. But I still love the format, and hope I can figure out a way to get back up into the League standings. As I do so, I'm reminded of the first deck I fell in love with in this wonderful format. Please cheer me on as I leave smoking craters where previously there were opponents standing in my way.

LOVE

MIKE