Home Tabletop Magic the Gathering – Sweet Revenge event deck: A burning sensation

Magic the Gathering – Sweet Revenge event deck: A burning sensation

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Every set of cards, Wizards of the Coasts releases two Event Decks. These 60-card decks include a sideboard of 15 cards and are made to be ready for Friday Night Magic. Here is one of the M13 event decks, a red blue deck full of shenanigans.

Let us start with the flagship of this deck: Burning Vengeance. Doesn’t seem that threatening right? This deck uses a plethora of cards with flashback, making sure you can trigger your enchantment as often as possible. Take Think Twice for example. Many players will cast this spell and then cast it for its flashback cost the next turn with no qualms. You get two cards off one card, which isn’t bad, is it? What about two free damage as well? Geistflame is a great answer to that turn one Birds of Paradise, and you can leave it in your graveyard until you have one or more Burning Vengeances on the board. Then suddenly paying four mana for one damage doesn’t seem like such a bad thing.

For example. Turn one: Geistflame. Turn two: Think Twice. Turn three: Burning Vengeance. Turn four: Geistflame if you hit land number four, or Think Twice if not. Draw a card, do two damage. Now your set up is ready to lay waste to your opponent.

In case you have some rubbish cards in your hand, such as extra lands, Faithless Looting helps you to dig for an answer. Even if you discard one of your spells, you can choose two with flashback, ready to fuel your damage. For some protection from those aggro decks with multiple creatures, Slagstorm is a great way to wipe the board, even if it doesn’t have flashback, its strength makes it impossible to ignore.

The deck also runs a full set of Fettergeists, which are pretty cheap flyers. This spirit can survive a Slagstorm and is also great at offence and defence. Just make sure you don’t cast too many creatures, or the cost of keeping it alive is going to immobilise your spell slinging.

Main Deck

60 cards

Darkslick Shores
Desolate Lighthouse
Evolving Wilds
Island
Mountain
Sulfur Falls
Swamp


24 lands
Armored Skaab
Fettergeist
Firewing Phoenix


7 creatures
Burning Vengeance
Desperate Ravings
Faithless Looting
Forbidden Alchemy
Geistflame
Pillar of Flame
Red Sun’s Zenith
Rolling Temblor
Silent Departure
Slagstorm
Think Twice


29 other spells

Sideboard

Arc Trail
Bloodcrazed Neonate
Dismember
Screeching Skaab
Secrets of the Dead


15 sideboard cards

The sideboard contains alternatives rather than answers to the current metagame. If your opponent runs few threats, both Screeching Skaab and Bloodcrazed Neonate can be used to press the attack in the early game.

If you are in for a longer game, Secrets of the Dead allows your flashback spells to net you card advantage so that you have more threats and answers available. Just remember that running it with Burning Vengeance might make your deck too slow.

When it came to additions, I though of Snapcaster Mage. He fits the bill, as he gives any instant or sorcery in your graveyard flashback, giving you an extra edge with anything from recasting Pillars of Flame, to another Slagstorm with your Burning Vengeance triggering.

He also allows you to pay the original mana cost to flashback cards that already have flashback. This makes a huge difference with a card like Geistflame or Forbidden Alchemy. Sadly, Snappy costs $22 each, making a set of him quite the investment. If you enjoy the nefarious evil of control and using blue, Snapcaster Mage adds so much power to your deck, and is worth the investment.

I was highly surprised that the deck didn’t make use of Dream Twist. It fills your graveyard (or your opponent’s if you want to disrupt the Ponder your opponent just cast) and has the cheapest flashback cost, which is usually the biggest drawback of the flashback mechanic. If you enjoy the burn route, Devil’s Play can burn for X and has flashback, meaning you can burn them for lots off the same card twice and trigger your Burning Vengeance.

While you might never cast Increasing Vengeance for its Flashback, being able to copy a spell can really help in a pinch. If you feel the cost of flashback is too high, Altar of the Lost generates mana just for flashback and can help with colour fixing for those spells that use a different colour for their flashback costs. Charmbreaker Devils are a great end game strategy, as you will often have a few instants and sorceries without flashback left in your graveyard. They can also finish a game in one turn with enough cheap spells, and they survive a Slagstorm too.

Runic Repetition allows you to get even more out of that poor card you already cast twice and exiled. You slave-driver! Mystic Retrieval allows you to get any instant or sorcery back in your hand, in case you don’t want to flashback that card just yet. If you enjoy filling your graveyard quickly, Jace, Memory Adept can either dump 10 cards into your graveyard, or you can draw a card and target yourself so that you place one card into the graveyard. Just don’t mill yourself to death!

Sweet Revenge includes cards worth $32.70 (~R267.00) and retails for around R260, which is odd, as event decks often provide much more value than the price. It isn’t the most efficient event deck I have ever played with and working out which direction to take it (as can be seen by the vast number of recommended cards) and how to upgrade it might be difficult for those getting into Friday Night Magic.

It really could have had another Sulfur Falls or two to sweeten the pot and it would really help with the mana base. Hopefully Return to Ravnica brings back the odd but amazing Izzet guild, which is a red and blue guild. The nice thing about (most) red and blue cards is that they are relatively cheap cards, meaning changes won’t break the bank. If you enjoy the way this deck works, buy it, some card protectors and come join me at FNM.

Last Updated: January 3, 2017

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