Chandra, Fire of Kaladesh - Everyone and Everything Burns

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Ruiner
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Post by Ruiner » 3 years ago

Chandra, Fire of Kaladesh - Everyone and Everything Burns

Chandra, Fire of Kaladesh
Approximate Total Cost:

About the deck

This is a fairly straight forward and very aggressive Chandra themed burn deck. With a number of the cards in the deck you will do a fair amount of damage to yourself but the planeswalkers help to break the symmetry a bit. This deck lives by the idea that you are are in the game as long as you have 1 Life remaining. You have to embrace the high risk but high reward mentality. Sometimes you will drop the table low and it will enable someone else to take everyone out including you, you can't win them all. I really enjoy the pressure this kind of deck puts on the board and games do not tend to drag on when I play this deck.

Typically you will want to get Chandra, Fire of Kaladesh // Chandra, Roaring Flame on the board on turn 2 or 3 depending on acceleration you get. Generally on the following turn you will begin by swinging Chandra at one of your opponents that does not have a blocker. In your second main phase, you will play a red spell (hopefully) which untaps Chandra and then she should tap and deal a point of damage to a second player, which will transform her. Keep in mind that you can play a spell that does 2 damage to all creatures/players and then in response tap Chandra to deal the point of damage, transforming her before the original spell goes off so she does not take the damage. Once she is transformed, you will use her +1 ability to deal 2 damage to a third player. This results in spreading the damage around a bit but it isn't super significant amounts. However, any little bit you can drop everyone that is not you by can be significant in the end. All of this can change depending on priorities, if there is a player you really need gone much quicker than the others you can pile all of the damage onto that player, such as a blue/control player or someone who combos out of nowhere. If it is unlikely that your commander will get to swing for combat damage, you will just have to cast two red spells in one turn to transform her, which isn't all that difficult.

As far as non-land permanents are concerned, this deck is mostly non-creature as well which usually results in opponents not having enough removal that affects you unless they are running a greater than average amount of wipes like Austere Command or Merciless Eviction. I try to keep the amount of creatures at a minimum in this deck, they have to do something pretty special since I tend to kill my own fairly often. I have ran more creature heavy in the past, but still less than 10 creatures at the most and just ended up replacing them with other things as time has gone on.

Opponents have to play the balancing act of trying to drop your life total while also stopping any number of Chandra planeswalkers from hitting their ultimate abilities since most are pretty great to some degree. This can give you a bit of resilience depending on what your opponents are playing, while you continue to just burn everyone and everything.

Chandra's Regulator and Repeated Reverberation can result in some absolutely disgusting turns if used when one of your planeswalkers activates an ultimate. Rings of Brighthearth could easily be in the deck, I used to run it before I replaced it with Chandra's Regulator, but it would not hurt to have both clearly.

Getting a Furnace of Rath type of damage multiplier effect into play can be absolutely brutal. I have had Turn Two Chandra, Fire of Kaladesh // Chandra, Roaring Flame, followed by Turn Three Furnace of Rath (prior to transforming Chandra), into Turn Four Ensnaring Bridge and that line of play is tough to deal with if people are not drawing the right removal. Once you start getting emblems into play from some of the Chandras, the damage starts really rolling. These multipliers make cards like Price of Progress and Acidic Soil potential game enders.

You can have more defensive artifacts/enchantments if you feel that creatures are still getting through too often. I've run Smoke at various times in the past to great effect and Portcullis can also be great. I've never had it in this deck but Silent Arbiter could also be a worthwhile creature to try since it is largely unaffected by a lot of the AOE damage you are throwing down.

Alternative Commanders

Torbran, Thane of Red Fell is clearly a popular commander for this style. Once transformed, Chandra does have more staying power than Torbran and her ultimate can be backbreaking but having a damage increaser in your command zone can certainly be worthwhile. It would change things up a bit using Torbran but he does lend himself towards burn.

Neheb, the Eternal is also a great massive burn damage monored commander. I've seen decks led by Neheb do some scary stuff.

Further Notes

Repercussion should probably be in this deck. I had previously excluded it just because I had a few more creatures a few years ago and just getting chipped for more damage didn't seem worth the increased risk.

I'll update all of the above with more details as time goes on.
Last edited by Ruiner 10 months ago, edited 10 times in total.

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Ruiner
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Post by Ruiner » 3 years ago

Made some quick updates to the deck:

Added Cards
+1 Toralf, God of Fury // Toralf's Hammer - This seems like an obvious card to add. I'm fairly certain it will be effective.
+1 Dual Strike - A cheap copy effect that hits a huge variety of cards and the fortell ability isn't too shabby either.
+1 Ruby Medallion - This was swapped in place of Fire Diamond and should be more efficient overall.

Removed Cards
-1 Torpor Orb
-1 Cursed Totem
-1 Fire Diamond

Not super thrilled about losing the two stax artifacts but it should hopefully work out okay with the added offensive cards.

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Post by Ruiner » 2 years ago

I haven't actually played this deck a ton lately, and haven't even really gotten to see the cards I added in the last update in action, but there are a number of cards that have been released fairly recently that I've just updated the deck with that I think will be excellent additions.

Added Cards
+1 Bloodthirsty Adversary - Psyched about this card. The ability to reuse the plethora of cheap burn and/or copy spells in the deck (or possibly even something like Chaos Warp or a draw effect) should be pretty good. Leaving behind a body is a plus.
+1 Ardent Elementalist - Finally red gets a good Archaeomancer effect. Being able to reuse any of the numerous instants and/or sorceries in the decks is great and it's a body to block something once it has done it's job. This should be pretty solid.
+1 Red Dragon - Another mass damage effect, that is fairly efficient on cost, being the equivalent of an mass burn spell where X = 4, that also leaves a sizable body that can start swinging the turn afterwards.
+1 Crackle with Power - The math on this generally makes it better than most of the other mass damage spells that hit players while leaving me undamaged. At X=1 it isn't so impressive, but still better than a fireball for 5 mana, at X =2 you are spending 8 mana to deal 10 damage to two players which seems solid, and then if you happen to get up to X=3 for 11 mana you are hitting three players for 15 damage which will hopefully be game ending at that point. It certainly warrants giving a shot.

Removed Cards
-1 Chandra Nalaar - I've had this card in the deck since the beginning, it's the original Chandra after all. It's never been the most efficient but there is the nostalgia factor. It was time to lay it to rest though. Maybe nostalgia will get me to add it back in later.
-1 Gauntlet of Power - This card is great with big X spells but it never felt great taking a turn off to play it and there is the risk of accelerating an opponent. I think dropping this will be the right call.
-1 Banefire - Losing a potentially uncounterable X damage spell may be a mistake depending on how control decks are faring in a game, but I needed to make room to try some other cards that also deal some significant damage.
-1 Comet Storm - I traded this straight up for Crackle with Power, which should be better in almost every case.

Hopefully I'll get some games in soon with this deck to test out all of the above changes but I think they'll be some positive improvements overall.

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Post by Ruiner » 2 years ago

Played a game last night and Red Dragon definitely was a worthy inclusion. Doing 4 to each opponent and then being a good blocker was totally worth it just to buy me time against some scary dragons from an The Ur-Dragon player for a turn until I was able to drop Ensnaring Bridge which no one was able to draw into removal for for the rest of the game. Maybe one day I'll actually get to attack with him!

I managed to get both my commander and Chandra, Torch of Defiance's ultimates off in one turn, which is always silly.

Ended the game with an absurd flashback of Ignite the Future. The three cards I ended up being able to cast from exile for free were Flame Rift, Fork, and Reverberate. My friend to my right instantly started cracking up when he saw the three cards revealed. Combined with Torch of Defiance's emblem, that was a heck of a vicious turn.

This deck doesn't always do amazing, but it was . . . on fire last night.

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Ruiner
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Post by Ruiner » 2 years ago

Made a few changes I think should work out well:

Added Cards
+1 Chandra, Dressed to Kill - Only costs 3 mana and every single ability is useful to some degree. Solid newish card for this deck.
+1 Mizzix's Mastery - Not sure why I overlooked this previously but it seems to have some good potential with all of the burn spells in the deck. Overloading this could definitely be a game ender depending on the state of my graveyard.
+1 Invoke Calamity - A new card from the latest set, similar to Mizzix's Mastery, but on a smaller scale, I figure it's worth trying at least,

Removed Cards
-1 Ardent Elementalist - I like this card but I realized, in this particular deck, Mizzix's Mastery is better for a similar role.
-1 Brash Taunter - In theory it can be decent with the sweepers in the deck, but five mana plus another card before it even does anything has seemed a little slow. I might try it out again in the future. If I was running more big damage cards I'd probably be more happy with it.
-1 Toralf, God of Fury // Toralf's Hammer - I needed to remove something else to try new cards and I think this card is way better leading a deck, or would be better if I had some other changes. A lot of the cards in this deck just do damage straight to people's faces, making Toralf's potential not as fully utilized as it could be.

Hoping to try out these changes in a game or two this weekend.

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Ruiner
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Post by Ruiner » 1 year ago

Made a few quick changes due to some recent-ish cards being released:

Added Cards
+1 Luxior, Giada's Gift: This card feels like it was made for this deck. Turning a Chandra into a creature to prevent people directly attacking her could be great. It opens her up to targeted creature removal, but I'll take that risk when people can't stop her from using an ultimate just by swinging.
+1 Delayed Blast Fireball: Great efficient burn card.
+1 Wild Magic Surge: A bit of a gamble, but it's efficient removal.

Removed Cards
-1 Court of Ire: This card just does not do enough in my experience on average. Sometimes it has been great but sometimes it just a 5 mana enchantment that shocks people because your odds of regaining The Monarch status are super terrible.
-1 Pyromancer's Gauntlet: This card has won me games but it does have a decently high mana cost and I had to find room to try new stuff.
-1 Jaya's Immolating Inferno: This is another game winning card, but it is not always the most reliable. I can always add it back in later if I start to miss it.

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Post by Ruiner » 11 months ago

Made a few changes with cards from the latest set:

Added Cards
+1 Wrenn's Resolve - Solid new "draw" spell that will probably be a staple in any monored deck.
+1 Rowan's Talent - This will probably be a staple for any deck heavy on planeswalkers or with a planeswalker commander like this deck. Copying some of the ultimate abilities on planeswalkers in this deck can be pretty punishing.
+1 Solphim, Mayhem Dominus - A solid damage multiplier.

Removed Cards
-1 Roiling Vortex - It's decent, but situational.
-1 Stranglehold - This is pretty much a staple for monored decks, but I needed to remove something and this was what I settled on. Stopping opposing ramp/tutors in general is very strong, I'm hoping the increase in damage from Rowan's Talent balances it out.
-1 Torbran, Thane of Red Fell - It's a good card but Solphim seems stronger overall and I only need so many of these damage increasers.


I really wanted to try to find room for Chandra, Hope's Beacon, since it is a new Chandra and the static ability is solid, but at 6 mana, that feels like a lot for a Fork effect when her activated abilities aren't particularly impressive for this deck. I think it's still a decent card for some decks but probably better in a less aggressive deck than this.

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