For those of you just tuning in, my last article detailed the basic theory and deck construction of Classic-legal Burning Tendrils. Please take a look at the article before reading further.

Let’s also revisit the deck list:

Playing The Deck

Burning Tendrils is a fairly straight-forward deck to play; it certainly pales in comparison to the complexities of current Vintage combo. Nonetheless, there are certainly complexities to even basic deck function, and things only get more convoluted when you’ve got a real opponent instead of a goldfish.

Let’s take a look at the basic game plan. Burning Tendrils wins via a buildup of Storm count to an adequate number, capped with either Tendrils Of Agony or Empty The Warrens. Tendrils offers the main win condition, as it enables you to defeat your opponent on the spot. Warrens offers an alternative for when your Tendrils has been stripped away, is unable to target your opponent (i.e. True Believer in play), or you cannot generate the proper Storm count to finish the job. While it is sometimes necessary, the Warrens approach is a particularly weak game-plan, as it allows your opponent at least an entire turn to react to you and still leaves you with a post-combo empty hand. Pyroclasm, Infest, or various Wrath effects are heart-breakers, so it is important to recognize when this plan is correct to use over the Tendrils win. Sometimes it’s just plain better to fire off an inferior Tendrils, and use the extra life you gain to build up to a second, smaller winning one.

Simplified, this build of Burning Tendrils wins via:

• Playing out a permanent mana source.
• Playing acceleration.
• Finding and playing Mind’s Desire.

This should always be your goal. You have many ways of getting to the Desire, but the Desire should almost universally be the desired result when you begin to combo off. The redundancy of the deck design allows virtually any decent Desire to find you the cards and resources to win. This brings up a few important notes:

• It is nearly impossible for this build to win via Tendrils without Desire. The reason is that it forgoes use of Chromatic Sphere and Star, as well as any other blue draw past Serum Visions, making it very unlikely that you can chain enough spells together to be lethal with Tendrils.
• You typically need to see a Storm count of 4+ before you play out your Mind’s Desire. Simple math rules the day here; a Storm count of four gets you five cards from Desire, and leaves you needing to generate another five Storm as well as find your win. When you take into account possibly drawing into a land and generating another card from your tutored win condition, this represents your bleeding-edge win. It goes without saying that more Storm is better, and I typically try to generate a count of five before finding my Desire.
• Conversely, a lesser Storm count or no access to Mind’s Desire (or Desire mana) is usually where Empty The Warrens shines. There will be times where you can only manage three Storm count before your Wish resolves, or where you find yourself with less than six (or a lack of blue) mana after resolving your Wish. Finding Warrens instead is perfectly solid here in the right match-up. Control usually has a difficult time dealing with 8+ goblins at once. This can be a headache for some aggro builds as well.
• Tendrils Of Agony or any of your Mind’s Desires are almost always dead cards in hand. The reason is the interaction with Lion’s Eye Diamond, which is often your only blue mana source. Again, without the Chromatics, you’ll often have to Wish or tutor for Desire while sacrificing your LED in response for the mana to play it if you want to have a relevant win. By the time you table enough permanent mana sources to generate two blue mana along with whatever you need to make the other four for Desire, it’s probably way too late. Conversely, if you’re looking at an opening hand that contains one of these and no Chrome Mox to pitch it to, strongly consider a mulligan.

Mulligans

Combo decks are, perhaps more than any other archetype, victim to mulligans at a very common rate. Where the aggro deck has a diverse game plan and the control deck seeks to react to its’ opponent, the combo deck, as discussed before, is designed to sculpt the perfect winning hand. By nature, this will require a very solid understanding of what the ‘perfect’ hand is, and the chances of finding what you need to make that hand a reality. In plain terms, figure out what you want to see in your hand, and mulligan aggressively to get it. If you look back to your win requirements, you want a hand that can generate:

• A Storm count of 4+
• A Wish or Tutor
• Enough mana for the Wish/Tutor, plus Mind’s Desire

Your Vampiric Tutors and Serum Visions become the crucial key to mulligan decision. You will rarely see a hand that has the perfect blend of mana, acceleration, and tutor capability. If you do, just win. More often, though you’ll be missing a key element. To that extent, I follow two basic guidelines:

1. Mulligan any hand that contains no permanent mana sources.
2. If you’re missing one of the three key elements (permanent mana, acceleration, tutor), mulligan any hand that does not have Vampiric Tutor or Serum Visions.

Remember, this deck isn’t a draw deck; it’s a tutor deck. What you see in your opening hand is what you get, and you’re basically in top deck mode from the get-go. It just follows basic common sense that if your hand doesn’t offer you a win or an option, you shouldn’t be keeping it. That said, I mentioned the two rules above as guidelines, because you will come across exceptions, and you’ll also have to weigh your choices based on what knowledge exists of your current match.

Practical Examples

In order to illustrate everything we’ve learned, I shuffled up the deck several times and noted some opening draws for analysis (discarding any hands with no permanent mana sources.) I then mulliganed if necessary and played out the hands. I included some failed attempts as well to get an idea of the full scope of the deck and the directions different decisions can take you.

HAND 1

Verdict: Ship it.

MULLIGAN 1
City Of Brass, Serum Visions, Lion’s Eye Diamond, Duress, Dark Ritual, Chrome Mox

This is better. We have draw, protection, mana, and acceleration.

Turn 1:
Play City Of Brass. Tap for Blue. Play Serum Visions, drawing Serum Visions and revealing Duress and Rite Of Flame.

Not bad. We’re still moving forward, and we have more search for the following turn. Duress goes to the bottom; Rite Of Flame stays on top. All we need is a tutor.

Turn 2:
Draw Rite Of Flame. Tap City for blue. Play Serum Visions, drawing Vampiric Tutor and revealing Forbidden Orchard and Duress.

There it is. We should be able to win next turn. Both cards go to the bottom, and we play Chrome Mox (imprinting Duress), and play Vampiric Tutor, putting Burning Wish on top of the deck.

Turn 3:
Draw Burning wish. Play Lion’s Eye Diamond (1 Storm). Tap Chrome Mox to play Dark Ritual (2 Storm, BBB floating.) Tap City for red, play Rite Of Flame (3 Storm, RRBBB floating.) Play Burning Wish for Mind’s Desire, retaining priority to sacrifice LED for blue (4 Storm, UUUBBB floating.) Play Mind’s Desire (5 Storm, nothing floating), revealing Rite Of Flame, Serum Visions, Chrome Mox, Infernal Tutor, Gemstone Mine.

This isn’t the best place to be, but it’s not bad. Since we haven’t played a land this turn, we can play out the Gemstone Mine, Rite Of Flame and Chrome Mox, , getting us to a seven Storm count and RRR floating. Now, we’re at the mercy of our Serum Visions to find us a source of black mana.
Play Serum Visions (8 Storm, RRR floating), drawing Cabal Ritual and revealing Burning Wish and Chrome Mox.

There it is. From here, we tap the Gemstone mine for B, and play the Cabal Ritual (9 Storm, RRBBBBB floating) and the Hell-bent Infernal Tutor (10 Storm) to find Tendrils Of Agony. We play the Tendrils for 22 damage.

HAND 2

This is a slightly tougher hand to figure out. The total lack of acceleration should be cause to immediately ship the hand back for six more. Adding to the problem are the Tendrils and Desire, which are essentially dead cards unless you find a Chrome Mox. However, you have two lands, and you also have protection, draw, and a tutor.

My feeling is that this hand could be a keeper based on the correct circumstances. The strong filtering power of Serum Visions means that you will most likely draw some acceleration off the top, and be able to line up more for the next turn. Duress buys you some time too. While you do face an uphill battle with this hand, you’re in a good position to make a play by turn three or four.

In this case, my first turn Serum Visions found me Chain Of Vapor, Duress, and Cabal Ritual, which are possibly the worst cards we could draw into. We could fend off an opponent for a few rounds with multiple Duress and Chain Of Vapor, but realistically, we need to find a pretty serious boost to get going. At this point, it is clear this was a bad hand to play, and I threw it away.

Verdict: If this is the first game of the match and you have no information, ship this hand. For game two or three, keep the hand if you are facing a slower clock with little disruption, or straight aggro like Affinity. Be wary of hard-core control or decks that run trouble permanents like Chalice Of The Void or Glowrider.

HAND 3

This is as close to a God-hand as you get. Win immediately.

Turn 1:
Play both Lion’s Eye Diamonds (2 Storm.) Play Gemstone Mine, tapping for R to play Rite Of Flame (3 Storm, RR floating.) Play Chrome Mox (4 Storm, RR floating), imprinting Serum Visions. Play Burning Wish for Mind’s Desire (5 Storm), sacrificing both LED for UUUUUU. Play Desire (6 Storm), revealing Infernal Tutor, Dark Ritual, Cabal Ritual, Dark Ritual, Rite Of Flame, and Gemstone Mine. Play Rite and all three Rituals (9 Storm, RRRBBBBBBBBBBB floating), then play Infernal Tutor to get and Play tendrils Of Agony for 22 damage.

This hand was a no-brainer, and pretty perfectly illustrates the draw this deck was designed to find. It contains equal parts mana, acceleration, and tutors, and is only beatable if the Desire comes up a lemon. Incidentally, looking at a hand like this on the play, it isn’t a bad time to go for Empty The Warrens instead of Mind’s Desire with your Burning Wish. Your opponent is just not going to be able to deal with twelve goblins swinging in on turn two (barring some crazy Dark Ritual/Infest shenanigans), and you’re guaranteed not to fizzle off of a bad Desire. Again, though, it’s crucial to use available information. If you beat your opponent game one in a similar fashion, he may be able to take twelve to the face on turn two, drop a land, and then untap next turn to Pyroclasm away your board, leaving you without any hand or board position. Use your information wisely.

HAND 4

This hand is amazing, and very deceptive. It’s a very tempting hand to keep, with massive mana potential and the tutor and draw you need to get going. However, the value of the hand drops dramatically as your only permanent mana source is Chrome Mox, which should be an automatic signal to throw it back. Realistically, this is a high-risk selection, but these are the types of hands Burning Tendrils loves to exploit. Here’s why:

• Multiple tools for digging. Both A Serum Visions and a Vamp Tutor mean you have game. To play it safe, you need to use the Vamp to find a land, but that still leaves you a strong play in Serum Visions next turn.
• Huge mana production. You have so much acceleration here that all you realistically need is to see any one tutor to win out, and you have good odds to find one in your second turn.

This deck absolutely thrives off of this combination. Let’s play it out.

Turn 1:
Play Chrome Mox, imprinting Dark Ritual. Tap the Mox to play Vampiric Tutor, putting Gemstone Mine on top of your deck.

This hurts your acceleration a bit, but in this deck, LED is stronger than the Ritual more often than not. (The real downer is that the Gemstone Mine was on top of the deck anyway!)

Turn 2:
Draw and play Gemstone Mine. Tap for blue to play Serum Visions, drawing Echoing Truth and revealing Serum Visions and Lion’s Eye Diamond.

Ugh. This is not what we wanted to see here. However, we’re not dead in the water, and we now have some protection if we need it. We’ll put the Serum Visions on top and the LED on the bottom.

Turn 3:
Draw and play Serum Visions, drawing Serum Visions and revealing Duress and Mind’s Desire.

Things are taking a turn for the worse. At this point, we’re probably not going to recover this one. It’s unlucky that we’ve seen nearly a quarter of the deck and no tutor. We also face the fact that to play our final Serum Visions next turn; we’ll lose our source of multi-colored mana. Regardless, we’ll take a final stab by putting both Duress and Desire on the bottom of the deck.

Turn 4:
Draw and Play Serum Visions, drawing Burning Wish and revealing Dark Ritual and Sins Of The Past.

Things just didn’t pull together in time. If this had come off of the Serum Visions played last turn, we could have easily put the Ritual on the top of the library, untapped, and played out the pair of Rite, LED, Ritual, and Wish, floating eight mana and looking at a Storm count of five. As it is, we’re stuck with no red mana source to get our Rites online, and no business in black. This hand is a bust, and further illustrates the importance of permanent mana in your opening hand. While it is possible to make a play without a land, it often gets you into trouble. This also shows you that the luck of the draw will come into play, and with a combo deck, it will have much more drastic consequences than might otherwise be experienced.

HAND 5

This is a solid, engaging hand. You have a mix of everything; protection in the Duress, filter effects in the Serum Visions and Vamp Tutor, a permanent mana source, and some acceleration. This is certainly not an easy hand to play either; one mana source and limited acceleration will mean some footwork to make this work. Interestingly, this draw offers us a choice of game-plans. If we can find a tutor and a second mana source, we can run out a quick Empty The Warrens and hope to win in a few attack steps, or we can spend a little more effort setting up and win immediately with Tendrils. Again, available information is going to be critical in deciding which method is better. Note that we also have tree good first-turn plays, in Serum Visions, Vampiric Tutor, and Duress. That is the hallmark of a great hand from this deck.

Turn 1:
Play City Of Brass. Tap for blue to play Serum Visions, drawing Chrome Mox and revealing Lion’s Eye Diamond and Mind’s Desire.

I decided to go with the Serum Visions over the Vampiric Tutor for two reasons. First, no matter which game plan I choose, I need two cards- a mana source, and a tutor. Using the Visions first lets me see which of the two I will come across first, and then allow me the flexibility of finding the second with the Vamp.

The second reason is an interesting occurrence- Mind’s Desire in hand, and all black acceleration. This is the primary reason Sins Of The Past exists in the main deck. The synergy between Sins, Lion’s Eye Diamond, and Infernal Tutor is tremendous in this deck; the LED will put the Desire in the yard, and give the Infernal Tutor I find with my Vampiric Tutor Hell-Bent to find my Sins Of The Past to target the Desire with. The lack of red mana means that we won’t be looking for a Burning Wish any time soon anyway. I know have a fantastic game-plan that will allow me to thin the deck more than a Wish-based strategy to make my Desire even stronger than normal.

I put the LED on top of my library, and the Mind’s Desire on the bottom.

Turn 2:
Draw LED. Tap the City to play Vampiric Tutor, putting Infernal Tutor on top of the library.

It’s a shame we can’t wait until the next turn’s upkeep to use the Vamp Tutor, but that will leave us one mana short of Sins. Besides, I think we’ll have enough Storm to make this work.

Turn 3:
Draw Infernal Tutor. Play LED (1 Storm) and Chrome Mox (2 Storm) imprinting Duress. Tap the City to play Dark Ritual (3 Storm, BBB floating) and Cabal Ritual (4 Storm, BBBB floating.) Play Infernal Tutor for Sins Of The Past (5 Storm, BB floating), sacrificing LED in response for BBB and discarding Mind’s Desire. Tap Chrome Mox (5 Storm, BBBBBB floating) to play Sins Of The Past targeting the Mind’s Desire in your graveyard (6 Storm.) Play the Mind’s Desire (7 Storm), revealing Echoing Truth, Duress, Infernal Tutor, Burning Wish, Chrome Mox, Burning Wish, and Serum Visions.

You’re safe with Serum Visions and Infernal Tutor in your reveals, as the Visions will either draw you a land you can play or something to imprint on your Chrome Mox, and the Tutor will get you the LED to cover the rest of the cost of Tendrils. As it happens, I play out the Serum Visions, drawing Gemstone Mine and revealing Serum Visions and Burning Wish. I play the Mine, find the LED and play it, and play out the rest of the cards revealed by Desire, culminating in using a Wish to grab the winning Tendrils, which I play for 32 points of damage.

SIDEBOARDING AND MATCH-UPS

The final piece of the equation is how well Burning Tendrils can handle its’ respective matchups against the current Classic field. The nature of combo makes it the beat-down deck in nearly every matchup; for that reason, the protection slots in the deck are designed to do nothing more than buy a crucial turn or two, which is usually all this deck needs to win. Again, I point back to my last article and my theory of using a full eight slots for any specific function you need, in order to guarantee one in every starting hand. This is the reason I built eight slots into this build. To review:

PROTECTION
4x Duress
3x Chain Of Vapor
1x Echoing Truth

I call this a ‘Modular Protection’ structure. Main-deck, you have a 50/50 blend of anti-control cards in Duress, and anti-permanent/aggro cards in the Chains and Truth. Look back at the sideboard:

There is a simple elegance in the configuration. Against control, you can simply pull the bounce out of the main-deck to replace with the Xantid Swarms. Against aggro and decks packing permanent hate, the Duress can come out in favor of the last Chain, the two Truths, and whatever fourth card best fits the bill. In either case, your Burning Wishes will augment these slots with access to the other tools (Shattering Spree, Hull Breach, Infest, and Pyroclasm.) This represents the majority of your sideboard strategy; as the rest of the slots are Wish-able win conditions or combo enablers. It is a fairly clear path to follow with little deviation.

Let’s look at the match-ups:

Affinity

OUT:
-4x Duress

IN:
+1x Chain Of Vapor
+2x Echoing Truth
+1x Pyroclasm

My sideboard strategy is simply to bring in the bounce. Your aim is to trip up the Affinity player by bouncing a key permanent at a key time, such as hitting the Cranial Plating-equipped creature at the beginning of the attack phase. Remember, you’re just buying time to develop a win for the most part. I leave the Shattering Spree in the board as a Wish target, and will occasionally run out a Wish and sacrifice an LED for a Spree in a pinch, which can be devastating if the Affinity player has seen nothing but artifact lands. I find the Pyroclasm fits the fourth slot better than Infest or Hull Breach, simply because you can often 2-for-1 a Disciple and Frogmite without having to dip into a Dark Ritual.

Aggro (Haterade, R/G Beats, Goblins)

OUT:
-4x Duress

IN:
+1x Chain Of Vapor
+2x Echoing Truth
+1x Hull Breach (R/G) or Infest (Haterade)

I use nearly the same strategy as Affinity. R/G builds will usually bring in a combination of Chalice Of The Void and/or Pyrostatic Pillar, so Hull Breach gives you the most bang for the buck. Against Haterade, you’ll see Chalice and occasionally Rule Of Law join the Glowriders and True Believers. I leave the Hull Breach in the board to have better odds of accessing it, and take the Infest to leave quick access to the cheaper Pyroclasm in a pinch. Again, due to the lack of acceleration in these decks, you typically can sit back until your opponent plays out a threat on turn two, bounce it during his end step, and win out on your next turn. Speed is still key.

Madness variants

OUT:
-1x Echoing Truth
-3x Chain Of Vapor

IN:
+4x Xantid Swarm

Most Madness builds run main-deck Circular Logic, and will seek to augment them with some combination of various counters and Stifle from the board. Since you’re not worried about the speed of this match-up, feel free to get in with Duress to strip out the counters, and table the Swarms the turn before you plan on making your play. (Some builds will contain Umezawa’s Jitte or Swords To Plowshares, so keep that in mind when playing the Swarms, even though most Madness players will board out removal.) You can often take time to sculpt a better hand if the board position isn’t particularly threatening.

Mono-Black/ Discard

OUT:
No Changes
IN:
No Changes

What does change in this match-up is your primary goal. Unless you see an immediate win in your opening hand, you should immediately aim to play Empty The Warrens for as many tokens as you can reasonably get within the first two turns. Typically, if the Mono-Black player has anything on the ground, it’s Ravenous Rats, Chittering Rats, or Mesmeric Fiend. You can easily overwhelm these creatures with an early horde of goblins. The key is ‘early’ here, as your hand will begin to disappear in direct proportion to how many turns the game lasts.

Control (Fish, Mono-U, Counterbalance, ScepterChant, etc.)

OUT:
-1x Echoing Truth
-3x Chain Of Vapor

IN:
+4 Xantid Swarm

Your boarding plan is nearly identical to Madness; you’ll be facing a ton of counters, and you need to plan accordingly. Counterbalance and Scepter-Chant decks provide a faster threat to you; if either can table their respective namesakes, the game is nearly always over on the spot. Pray that you hit an early Duress, because Xantid Swarm doesn’t stop Counterbalance and can’t attack under Orim’s Chant. If you get a player who fears your combo and rushes to play these out early and without protection, you can augment your anti-counter measures by bringing back in Chain Of Vapor, removing your two extra Mind’s Desires and your Sins Of The Past. Again, the sooner you can win, the easier it will be. Here, again, you should tend to favor the Empty The Warrens approach if you think your opponent is passing on mass removal like Wrath Of God for pinpoint cards like Swords To Plowshares.

Fish will have Meddling Mages to contend with, but can come in with some pesky permanents like Chalice, Rule Of Law, and True Believer, so be careful and possibly use the same extended board plan as with ScepterChant and Counterbalance decks. This can be tricky; Fish tends to run less in the way of traditional counters in favor of better threats, and will nearly always have room to pull out removal to bring in these threats. You also have a much harder time going the Empty The Warrens route, because Fish routinely plays out early creatures with enough toughness to slowly pick off your goblins and still stay standing. You’ll need to do the math and hope for a high-enough Storm count to be able to create an overwhelming number of tokens, or to just win via Tendrils. In either case, do it very quickly. This can be a tough battle.

Ironically, the most concentrated control decks such as Mono-U and U/W Control will typically be the easiest of the control match-ups. The reason is that these decks have the slowest clocks of any you’ll face (often waiting until very late in the game to finally drop Exalted Angel or a suitably large Decree Of Justice), coupled with next to no permanent sources of disruption. Here you’ll exercise your purest anti-control strategy, winning as quickly as possible via Tendrils or a careful early Empty The Warrens. Post-board, Rule Of Law will frequently come in, and occasionally Chalice as well; depending on how things look, board accordingly as above. Most often, however, it’s just a matter of hitting Duress and/or Xantid Swarm and winning as soon as possible.

Combo (Storm, Dragon, Salvagers, CarrionHulk)

Storm Combo (TEPS, Tendrils variants, Sensei Sensei)

OUT:
No Changes

IN:
No Changes

You’re really riding on the back of Duress here. For the most part, your bounce spells are dead, at best forcing an Ill-timed use of Chromatic Star or Sensei’s Divining Top. Use your Duresses to gauge where your opponent is at; if he has disruption or counters, nail them. Otherwise, look for the weak link (such as tons of acceleration but only one tutor or draw spell) and take it out. You’re in race mode.

Dragon/Salvagers

OUT:
-1x Sins Of The Past
-2x Mind’s Desire

IN:
+1x Chain Of Vapor
+2x Echoing Truth

This is a bit easier, though still no cake walk. Both decks require interaction with permanents, which means your bounce spells can still work to your benefit. Against Dragon, you remove any tutors or animate spells with Duress; if the Dragon player starts to go off, wait for the ‘comes-into-play’ trigger of the Dragon to go on the stack after the first animation in the cycle, and then aim your bounce at it. Your bounce will resolve first, returning the Dragon to your opponent’s hand; the trigger will then resolve, removing all of his permanents from the game.

Against Salvagers, you’ll have a tougher time. Again, Duress is key in removing any tutors that can find a missing piece of the combo. If your opponent goes for the quick Tomb Of Urami approach, your bounce will be golden, often netting a 3-for-1 and acting as Wrath Of God and Armageddon all in one. If they table an Auriok Salvagers for the combo win, however, you’re at a disadvantage, but your bounce can be very strong. First, look at the board and your opponent’s graveyard; the two typical wins are through a recursion of Pyrite Spellbomb after generating a ton of mana from Lion’s Eye Diamond, or by tabling a Disciple Of The Vault and repeatedly sacrificing the LED. It will be clear which direction your opponent is going. In either case, you need to bounce the Salvagers at a point when your opponent cannot re-cast it; occasionally, you can catch the Salvagers player after he has sacrificed an LED several times, but has neglected to create any white mana, which will result in a large mana burn. It can be risky to wait, though, so unless your opponent has shown a tendency to forget his white mana, I suggest you bounce early, and hope that you’ve bought a turn or two to set up your own win.

CarrionHulk

OUT:
-1x Sins Of The Past
-2x Mind’s Desire

IN:
+1x Chain Of Vapor
+2x Echoing Truth

This is, in my opinion, the hardest combo deck to deal with for Burning Tendrils. The reason is that usually as soon as your opponent can get a Protean Hulk reanimated, there isn’t a thing you can do to stop the combo that will result in enough disruption to save you.

In general, the deck uses tons of quick effects like Careful Study to mill a Protean Hulk into the graveyard, and there are typically two win variants from there; one uses normal reanimation effects in Necromancy and Footsteps Of The Goryo, which will bring the Hulk back until end of turn, at which point it leaves play and triggers it’s effect, returning a ton of free artifact creatures, Disciple Of The Vault, and a sacrifice outlet like Carrion Feeder to immediately create a massive life loss. The other version uses Shallow Grave, relying on either a flashed-back Cabal Therapy or a Carrion Feeder in play to sacrifice the Hulk before it is removed from the game, with the same result as above.

Here, you want to pray for Duress to hammer any reanimation effects or tutors before they come online, leaving your opponent with no outs. Your bounce will be fairly worthless, unless your opponent is either relying on the end-of-turn trigger in the case of the first configuration (just bounce the Hulk before that happens), or on a Carrion Feeder in the case of the second configuration (which you bounce in response to the reanimation of the Hulk, hoping your opponent doesn’t have the mana to immediately re-cast it.) It’s not an easy match at all, since this deck is very frequently as fast as you are and harder to disrupt.

(As a final note, if you see a lot of graveyard-based combo, I would recommend adding a play-set of Extirpate to the sideboard if you can fit it. It smashes Dragon, Salvagers, and Hulk in short order, and on the back of Tormod’s Crypt and Leyline Of The Void may soon prove to leave Storm-based decks as the only viable combo in the format.)

IN CLOSING

There it is. Burning Tendrils is a fairly straight-forward deck to play, but it will absolutely require you to know the cards and the odds of drawing them at any given time. It demands a very aggressive mulligan use, but will reward you with a very quick timer, and a very flexible path to victory. The speed of the deck and the high amount of protection cards help to make it very resilient to counters and permanent hate, it can completely ignore graveyard hate, and can easily side-step cards like Cranial Extraction and Extirpate with multiple win-conditions in multiple locations, and multiple ways to find them. Rarely will you come across a deck in Classic that plays more broken cards in such a broken manner. With a good pilot and proper practice, Burning Tendrils has the potential to utterly destroy the field.

Good luck!

--DJ