young pyro

A couple notes on your card selections. With the upcoming release of theros, there's better direct damage cards like Magma jet. it's a solid 2 damage and scry 2.  Anger of the gods is almost just flat better than annihilating fire.  It's only draw back is sorcery.

Dump, ultmiate price and vile rebirth, they aren't doing much for you here.  I'd recommend trying to get some desecation demons and a couple phurous (red god) when the new set comes out.

I know you said budget, but thoughtseize is better than duress if you can get them. Same for the shocks, blood crypts will help you a lot here.

Scourge of Valkas and Shivan Dragon really won't help you much.  Scourge is alright, but only really works if you have other dragons in play or ways to clone it to get the ETB damage effect repeated.

If you're really looking for creatures to add, Ogre Battledriver is a decent option as it lets your tokens come in as 3/1s rather than just as 1/1s... this can be relevant for both attacking and defending.

I don't like either of those options really. Wild Guess requires you to have cards in hand so it's a dead draw if you're handless and Dragon mantle can replaces itself, but doesn't provide card advantage.  It provides a mediocre pump ability.  If you need a mana dump you're better off with something like Hammer of Porphuros and it makes land draws later in the game live draws instead of mana flooding.

If you need card draw on color then something like read the bones is probably good.  Also if you get a hold of Porphuros, God of fiery stuff then you might consider something like Xathrid necro along side young pyro.

Just from personal experience, I've found that running 1-ofs is a bit pointless. The odds that you'll get it when you need it are ridiculously slim. If a card is important enough to include, you'll probably wanna run at LEAST 2, more than likely 3. And for staples, you'll want to go for the full playset.

Also, your  curve has room for a good finisher. Chaos Imps or Stormbreath Dragon are suggestions that I've received. With the sheer amount of spells you'll be playing, Guttersnipe looks good, and Purphoros, God of the Forge can really put some pain on the opponent with your token generation.

Last edited by Leaite (2013-09-27 09:37:34)

Nevermind the fact that if you have a bunch of tokens out, the opponent could actually just win the game by wiping the board...

If you're after a low-mana intensive draw option in R/B, Read the Bones is your work-horse.  It essentially lets you drill four cards into the deck, something blue is happy to pay six mana to do these days (Opportunity).

I didn't mean in just one shot.  If you're sitting on more than 3-4 tokens then you should've been swinging or something.  My point was that a control deck would happily wipe the board, ding you for 4-5 care of Dark Prophecy and just let you rebuild only to repeat.  If you're down any life from Shocks/other causes, that could easily be the move needed to finish you off.

Simply put, I don't think Dark Prophecy is all that good.  I would rather run Underworld Connections all day, every day.  At least then you get the choice of whether you lose life or not.  It's also a LOT easier to cast as a BB requirement is considerably easier to get consistently than BBB.

It's going to depend on the deck you're running.  Underworld Connections will provide a more consistent card draw that extends as far as you would like to take it.  However, there are two drawbacks, the BB in the mana cost AND that it's a permanent that is vulnerable on the field.  Read the Bones will dig four cards into the library and has the easier mana cost, all while not being vulnerable to anything on the board; however, it's at sorcery speed, meaning you have to do it on your turn rather than in your opponent's end-step.

They're comparable spells, again, it's going to come down to what you really want.