Today we continue our look into our series of mono coloured decks for the Historic format, to give you something to try out while the world is still lockdown. In our previous article, we had a look at Mono Black Devotion, which I’ll leave a link to here if you missed. Today, it is the turn of the Red section of the colour pie to show you a deck I like to call Trigger Burn.

As many of you will know, I love me a good old Burn deck. It is my favourite architype in most formats, whether that be Standard, Pioneer, Modern, Pauper or Legacy, so it only seems right that I brew a Burn deck for this series of articles. And we aren’t talking Red Deck Wins here. This is a legitimate Burn deck; all be it with a twist.

What’s that twist I here you cry into the crushing void that is the internet? Well that’s where the ‘Trigger’ part of the deck comes in.

Firebrand Archer, Electrostatic Field and Thermo-Alchemist are creatures that all have something in common. No, its not that they are all two drop (although that is also true). No, it’s the fact that each one of them has a trigger effect whenever you cast an Instant or Sorcery, that cause an additional damage to your opponent. These “pingers” as we call them, might not seem too impressive on their own but can quickly rack up a decent amount of damage output if left unchecked.

This is basically the same tactic the Pauper Burn uses, and that is one of the best decks in the format. The added benefit here is that we get to add even more redundancy in the form of Electrostatic Field. Additionally, Electrostatic Field and Thermo-Alchemistalso make for some great blockers thanks to their large toughness, so other aggressive decks will struggle to get in on the ground.

As you can imagine, the rest of our non-land cards a whole selection of Burn spells with which to reduce your opponent’s life total to zero in record time. Now for this build of the deck I have decided to go ultra-budget and include only Common and Uncommon cards, so as to make it super easy to build for yourselves. However, if you want to upgrade the deck with some snazzy Rares like Bonecrusher Giant, then please be my guest.

Shock and Pillar of Flame are both one mana two damage spells (that scale up to Lightning Bolt/Lava Spike if we have a pinger), but don’t feel you have to cast them on turn one. Try and wait if you can to get down one of your creatures, or use it to trigger Spectacle on either Light Up the Stage or Skewer the Critics. Lightning Strike and Magma Jet are both decent two mana damage spells, with the Jet sacrificing one damage for the added benefit of some card filtering. Finally, Slaying Fire is a completely underrated card and a powerhouse in this deck that can finish matches out of know where.

As for the mana base. Sixteen Mountains and a playset of Ramunap Ruins for some extra midgame damage should do nicely. As for a Sideboard, we are doing the usual plan of covering as many bases as possible. Tormod’s Crypt is our go to answer to silly Graveyard tricks, while Lava Coil and Abrade give us some more specific removal options for returning creatures and Artifact respectively. Flame Sweep helps us keep the board clear when it comes to go wide decks, while Claim the Firstborn and Act of Treason allow us to turn our opponent best threat against them.

And that about does it for Historic Trigger Burn. What do you think about today’s deck? Is this what you want to play, or have you a different brew you want to try out? Please let me know in the comments below, and while you’re there you could like and subscribe to keep up to date with all we do here at Master of Magics.

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