facebook
Cyber Week Sale ends Sunday

CoolStuffInc.com

MTG Avatar: The Last Airbender available now!
  
Account Meeple
Location IconLocations
Account MeepleLogin
0 Item
Advanced Search
Cyber Week Sale ends Sunday
   Sign In
Create Account
Main » Articles » Taking Boros Burn Further in Standard

Taking Boros Burn Further in Standard

Michael Flores
Posted on September 2, 2025
 Reddit

You might have seen this deck a few weeks ago in a Roman Fusco article:

Boros Burn | Edge of Eternities Standard | Mike Flores

Card Display

Buy This Deck Export text Export Arena

... Which was my main everyday grinding deck at the time.

Boros Burn / or Boros Aggro (especially then) was getting essentially no press coverage, but it seemed pretty good to me.

The plan even then was refreshingly uncomplicated. Boltwave the face. Lace together some good spells and a Slickshot Show-Off. Speaking of showing off, let the opponent know about this new card from Edge of Eternities:

Nova Hellkite

Nova Hellkite is this kind of weird split card. At three mana, it's more-or-less a clunkier (but powerful) big burn card. Would you pay three mana to deal four to the face? This is just the umpteenth iteration of "a little bit worse, but for redundancy" ...

You pay two mana for a Lightning Strike, right? Even though you have Lightning Helix in the very same deck? The first half of Nova Hellkite is kinda sorta a Boros Charm, but with upside.

Bartolome del Presidio
Lightstall Inquisitor
Spyglass Siren

There are any number of potential creatures that might be lying around, even after turn three! You dip your toe in the water for Boros Charm but you kind of stay for the Lava Dart add-on. It's less an exciting bit of card advantage and more a gotcha that frustrates an opponent who didn't see it coming, but either way, Nova Hellkite was performing for me at the time.

The only thing "wrong" with this card is sometimes you'll be tempted to leave especially a Llanowar Elves alone because you can get rid of it for free "next turn" ... but next turn that might result in your having a bigger problem on your hands if you don't deal with it right now. What you want is your opponent frustratingly tapped out for a 1/1 Mossborn Hydra; not with a 2/2 or even 4/4 Hydra in play

Did I say "only"? That was a lie.

Screaming Nemesis

The real potential downside of this card is that it's not an optional effect. If the opponent's only creature is a Screaming Nemesis, you're pinging that for one; probably not killing it; and getting your Lightning Helixes turned off for the rest of the game.

Speaking of Screaming Nemesis, this original Boros deck had a cool one-two punch that you won't see in most builds.

Fanatical Firebrand

The little Goblin Pirate is not the most exciting creature you can play in these colors, but beyond its baseline function of "terrible Mogg Fanatic" it has the secret extra mode of "terrible Seal of Fire". So after turn three you'll often leave it back to shoot at your own Screaming Nemesis! The dangerous situation for a lot aggro decks is the turn they first tap out for Screaming Nemesis. They might even get in for three damage! But what they really want is to set up that "no life gain" emblem; which is hard to do if you're tapped out. I found very little to be more gratifying than eating the opponent's Get Lost (which would be more card advantage for me later) while triggering the emblem. Or playing Screaming Nemesis into a stupid main deck Authority of the Consuls, putting the life gain trigger on the stack, and giving Fanatical Firebrand a great little send-off.

Starting Town
Starting Town
Starting Town

Though he credits me, Starting Town in this deck was actually Roman's own innovation. I had started my build from a CovertGoBlue video, and beloved CGB played Restless Bivouac in those slots. I played probably a hundred games with this first version of Boros and maybe activated Restless Bivouac three times. The option to have your land enter the battlefield untapped was much more valuable than the potential attacker, even with Starting Town's obvious failings at some points of the game.

I'd probably have still been grinding away with the Nova Hellkite build of Boros Burn if I hadn't seen this Tweet:

I just spent half the article talking about Nova Hellkite and Fanatical Firebrand, and those are the cards Roman cut on his successful box run!

This is obviously more of a beatdown deck than a Burn deck; even though both builds have elements of both points of view.

Hired Claw
Emberheart Challenger

These are just higher quality cards that we have seen in earlier decks. In fact, we see them in successful decks even now, in the post-Heartfire Hero metagame because MONO-Red is one of the two main decks people are succeeding with. What should be obvious is that if you don't have any (or much) drag from your mana base, Red-White is just better than Mono-Red. You get Lightning Helix and Boros Charm, a more flexible sideboard, and of course a little something to stick on your Emberheart Challenger:

Sheltered By Ghosts

... Which is the best-worst card in the deck. This card is so bad against Control. Awful when the opponent removes all of your creatures, and potentially disastrous in multiples. It's even worse in multiples in your opening hand because you will probably keep a hand with two Sheltered By Ghosts and only one or two creatures because sometimes that's a super blowout!

Sheltered By Ghosts absolutely buries opposing aggro decks, especially those whose creatures are small enough to manage with your Shocks. It's terrible in mid-game situations where you're nominally "winning" but your only attacker still has 1 toughness and your opponent realizes you're not willing to trade in combat. What Ward?

But yeah, it feels like the best in a lot of situations. Still, I think if you're going to play Roman's build in Best-of-One you should consider the 4th Lightning Helix and only three Sheltered By Ghosts. Lightning Helix gives you much of the same coverage with far less downside risk.

This is the other card I thought was worth talking about:

Greasewrench Goblin

What a glow-up Jackal Pup got, am I right?

Greasewrench Goblin is a perfectly serviceable card that is kind of the worst one to have a Sheltered By Ghosts on, but sometimes digs you out of a close game with its Exhaust ability. In the Best-of-Three world, it's also the first man off the deck in most situations.

I found it surprisingly good in the mirror, where I just sandbagged some lands and needed to get over the finish line. It's a little bit worse than Hired Claw on turn one, but in the Nova Hellkite world we talked about earlier, just gives you some redundancy at that mana point you probably appreciate. Is it better than Fanatical Firebrand? Well, it certainly has a second point of power.

But you know what's not in our Boros decks?

Lightstall Inquisitor

Jackal Pup
Savannah Lions

There are a couple of reasons for this; most notably that it's a less consistent 1-drop. In the same way Boros decks of years past might opt for the clearly inferior Jackal Pup over the somehow-available Savannah Lions, we don't play Lightstall Inquisitor because it's kind of a bad card if you can only play it on turn three.

I've played a ton against Lightstall Inquisitor though, and found it thoroughly unimpressive. The body is often just irrelevant. Like we noted earlier, often it would just die to my Nova Hellkite ping. In control I'd sometimes love that it gave me an eight-card hand. Yes, I'll be happy to set aside this Meticulous Archive (meaning no ill fate on the trigger whatsoever), and a potential bonus for my Consult the Star Charts instead.

Maybe the card is okay in a Pixie deck where you get the trigger over and over or another kind of White Weenie, but don't be tempted by its "better than Greasewrench Goblin" power and toughness. This card isn't good enough for Boros.

Roman's box-winning build has become my primary daily grinding deck. Not that I don't appreciate what Nova Hellkite and buddies did for me... The lower casting costs have just led to more consistent earning. I put together a sideboard because Roman wanted to play Boros in paper. Here's the full deck + guide:

Boros Burn | EOE Standard | Michael Flores

Card Display

Buy This Deck Export text Export Arena

One thing I'd think about doing (per earlier) is playing 4 Lightning Helix in the main, which would result in swapping the one in the sideboard for the 4th Sheltered by Ghosts.

Izzet:

One of the things I thought a lot about was what our enchantment / artifact hate was going to be. I settled on Cathar Commando because we'd invariably be siding out cards that dealt damage for cards that (at least potentially) didn't deal damage. At some point you're taking out all your Boros Charms for Get Losts and you're wondering why you can't deal 20 anymore. Cathar Commando is kind of a little more expensive but has a very decent amount of power.

Devout Decree, despite dealing no damage, is just a great catch-all for the current meta. It's not only a killer of huge monsters or any size Vivi; but comes in handy against Dimir.

Dimir:

You'll notice that Sheltered By Ghosts is coming out a lot, even against decks where you'll want to race, or who have difficult-to-destroy permanents like Enduring Curiosity. That's because the downside risk is too great, especially in matchups where the opponent might be siding in even more point removal, or those who start out with Nowhere to Run.

Roman asked why we have a Banishing Light instead of just a Get Lost (or maybe 4 Get Losts). The answer is I wanted to be able to Exile Enduring Curiosity AND these creature-on-creature sideboarded games will often come down to resources, and I didn't want to give too many away with sideboard cards.

Speaking of resources...

Mirror / Mono-Red:

Control:

I was really excited for Count on Luck. There aren't a lot of decks that can play that card. If we're going for hyper-trades with cards like Seam Rip, we want a source of card advantage to go along with our lean mana efficiency, and Count on Luck seemed perfect for this purpose.

Landfall:

Landfall is an important matchup for three-game Standard, because of their transformative sideboard. There is no way for it not to suck, but between Banishing Light and Cathar Commando, hopefully we can mitigate just how many Dragons they have to kill us with (hopefully zero).

LOVE

MIKE

Send us your cards, we'll do the rest. Ship It. No Fees. Fast Payment. Full Service Selling!

TAGS articles, standard, sideboard, constructed, decklist, michael flores, eoe standard, 09022025

Recent Articles

View Archive
Sell your cards and minis 25% credit bonus