~~Introduction~~
Noble's Commons-and-Uncommons restriction was designed to lead to innovation and creative deck building. We've seen this in full effect over the last two years! While a number of decks from other formats ported over to Noble with relatively few changes, there are a variety of new and exciting archetypes that have not existed before in other formats. These can be considered "signature decks" of the format, and include powerhouse lists like Abiding Grace, Esper Kitty, and the subject of today's article, Cracked Burn. These types of decklists are the ones that get me excited for the format, as they indicate that we have stumbled upon something new, refreshing, and original.
In order to fully understand Cracked Burn, we should really come at it from an angle of "Tempo". Tempo is the concept of achieving mana efficiency over our opponent by spending less mana on average on each exchange over the course of the game. Classic Tempo strategies in other formats include Faeries in Pauper, which leverages cards like Spellstutter Sprite to counter an opponent's spell while also creating a flying attacker - effectively 4 mana's worth of value on a 2-mana card. Another great example is Daze, which spends zero mana to answer a spell the opponent spent mana on. This principle of mana efficient is key to understanding why Cracked Burn works, and indeed, it is almost correct to refer to Cracked Burn as "mono-red tempo". Of course, it doesn't contain traditional counter spells, but it is purposefully designed to "trade up" on every axis.
~~A brief history of Cracked Burn:~~
The first true "best aggro deck" of the Noble format was a deck affectionately known as Mono Red Dargo, which was entirely built around enabling the 7/5 Trample commander staple, Dargo the Shipwrecker. It ran a diverse threat suite of Kuldrotha Rebirth, Dragon's Rage Channeler, Voldaren Epicure, and Dargo the Shipwrecker; alongside lots of artifacts to sac to Dargo's ability that drew a card as they left the battlefield, and typically 7x burn spells.
The deck was powerful, resilient, and never ran out of cards; but ultimately fell from favor as Karakas grew in metagame prevalence. Still, it was the initial stirrings of a burn-like deck with a high amount of card-draw and selection, and indeed performed excellently at early tournaments.
The next successor was a deck amusingly known as 12-blast, running 4 each Galvanic Blast, Shrapnel Blast, and Goblin Blast-Runner. This list, which handily 3-0'd a tournament, revolved very heavily around putting artifacts into play; and indeed, the 3 namesake cards are just about the only non-artifacts in the deck! Cards like Sokenzan Smelter created powerful late-game board states to break stalls. This deck was as fast as Dargo, and more difficult to answer, but ultimately was weak to fog effects. There was no "plan b" to beat combos, just "jam and hope that it works", and it folded to spells like Constant Mists and Spore Frog; in addition to being weaker to artifact hate.
This eventually evolved into a deck I called Blood Burn, which was an evolution of Pauper's Kuldrotha Burn decklist. Blood Burn was on Dragon's Rage Channeler and Swiftspear as the two premier threats, and ran a diverse suite of burn spells to situationally always have the "best option" in hand. Blood Burn was powerful and relentless, and is very close to the final Cracked Burn list, but had very little game against prison pieces Abiding Grace and cards like Counterbalance. It was the first variant to toy with Wasteland as a disruptor, but failed to really leverage the colorless mana or the full tempo advantage.
What finally made Cracked Burn click was the realization that Wasteland triggers Goblin Blast-Runner. I wanted to put those two cards in a deck together, and trigger Blast-Runner every single turn. This eventually led to the decklist you see today!
~~The Cracked Burn Decklist~~
Let's look at a decklist for Cracked Burn:
One of the defining facets of tempo decks are their win conditions. There are three main "threats" for the list, Dragon's Rage Channeler, Goblin Blast-Runner, and Kumano Faces Kakazan.
All three of these cards are, in a word, efficient. DRC is a 1 mana flying 3/3 that offers card selection, and is therefore easily up 1-2 mana on any opposing creature, as nothing really compares with it in terms of versatility or raw statline. Goblin Blast-Runner is a 1 mana 3/2 with Menace most of the time. The regular going rate for that statline is 3 mana, meaning you're up 2 mana by casting and enabling Blast-Runner. Finally, Kumano has three effects: a ping, a counter, and a hasty 2/2, all for the cost of 1 mana. As each of these effects are worth about a mana by themselves, it's safe to say that Kumano gives us three mana's worth of card. All three of these threats at 2+toughness are furthermore not easily answered by sweepers, and our opponent will have to spend 1-for-1 removal to answer them, denying them the ability to "catch back up".
By playing this threat suite, we are aiming for *hyper-efficiency* more than hyper-aggression. These are not Monastery Swiftspear or Goblin Guide, these are threats with haste that end the game as fast as possible. Rather, they are slow threats that are very mana-efficient, and generate an insane amount of value by staying in play.
The next and most important piece of the deck to discuss is the mana denial package, Wasteland and Crack the Earth. These two cards are both key at enabling our creatures, and important for gaining mana and card advantage over our opponent.
Consider the effect of Wasteland. How much mana would you be willing to pay for that effect? An equivalent card in fact already exists, Raze, which costs 1 mana. However, wasteland is quite a bit more powerful than Raze. Raze is both losing a land, and a spell, in order to achieve the wasteland effect. An extra card in hand (or a draw-2, a card that replaces itself and draws a card) is historically worth 2-3 mana. Wasteland is therefore achieving 2-3 mana's worth of advantage, just by activating it. Note that this is only a good effect if you are applying pressure, as it buys you time to deal damage to your opponent while they are taking turns to re-deploy their mana. Wastelanding without a creature on board just sets your own gameplan back, and puts your and your opponent directly at parity…indeed, it can also put you behind, if they have resolved a threat and you have not. It's important to always think about who is gaining the advantage due to less lands on the table anytime you are wastelanding; but of course, this deck is designed to fully leverage the abilities of Wasteland in our favor, and at its best, wasteland can act like a "time walk" for our deck by giving us an extra turn without opposing interaction.
A similarly powerful card is Crack the Earth, the core piece of this deck and the namesake card. Our goal in casting Crack the Earth is *always* to make our opponent sac a land while we sacrifice something either negligible like a blood token or an extra land, or even something advantageous like an Experimental Synthesizer. In the best scenarios, Crack the Earth is like another 4 copies of Wasteland - it's a Stone Rain, which is a 3-mana card, which we are casting it for a single mana. Crack the Earth requires some enabling - you have to ensure that your opponent is saccing something high-value, like a land or a strong creature; and NOT something low-impact, like a Thraben Inspector or a Clue token.
Wasteland and Crack the Earth further exaggerate their mana value by also creating an effect known as *virtual card advantage*. Our opponent may be unable to cast the majority of the spells in their hand, or be unable to double-spell, because our mana denial package has kept them on 1 or 2 lands, when they have 3-mana spells to cast. Note that they do both also cost our deck resources, which means that we are pushed towards running an extremely low mana curve in order to leverage these two cards!
A final note on these two powerful cards - they're also perfectly synergistic with our threat package. Wasteland and Crack the Earth both trigger Blast-Runner and help feed difficult card types into the graveyard for DRC, and Kumano Faces Kakazan can continue to accumulate value while we don't have any lands in play. The combination of these threats alongside Wasteland and Crack the Earth can create an extreme situation where our opponent is forced to spend 5+ mana to catch up, but can't even cast their spells because their lands are being destroyed.
There is one last card in the deck that should be considered a "key" piece, and that is Experimental Synthesizer. Synthisizer, when applied correctly, is effectively a 1-mana card that impulse-draws 2 cards. This effect already exists, and is appropriately costed at 2 mana: the spell Reckless Impulse. This deck seeks to use and abuse Synthesizer to gain that 1 mana's worth of advantage, while also providing a valuable artifact to sacrifice for our Goblin Blast-Runners and Crack the Earths. Synthesizer is particularly effective in this deck because our curve is going to literally stop at 2, which means almost every possible card exiled to it can be cast with just a single mountain available. Furthermore, DRC allows you to filter expensive cards from the top of your library in order to guaruntee that the Synth exiles a card you can cast.
We've now identified the core cards in the deck: DRC, Goblin Blast-Runner, Kumano Faces Kakazan, Crack the Earth, Wasteland, and Experimental Synthesizer. We're now going to look at the rest of the spells in the deck, which are support pieces for this powerful core.
The list runs a set of burn spells, all of which are specifically chosen for both efficiency and synergy with the other cards in the list: Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Lava Dart, and Shrapnel Blast. Contrary to what you may think, these cards are not mostly in the deck to "go face". Rather, they are cost-efficient removal spells aimed at removing blockers for our creatures and anything that our opponents might sacrifice over a land when we cast Crack the Earth.
Lightning Bolt is, simply put, the best in its class. Instant speed three damage to any target is unmatched in the history of the game. I don't believe lightning bolt needs an introduction, or justification for its inclusion in ANY red deck. It easily trades up on mana when removing a creature, and if there are no creatures to remove, it can be saved to end the game unexpectedly.
Chain Lightning is really just Lightning Bolt #2 in this list - but importantly, it is also a Sorcery, helping fill a critical card type for Dragon's Rage Channeler, and only costs 1 mana. 4 Bolt and 4 Chain Lightning means that the potency of our late-game draws is extremely high; and it is not unreasonable for the deck to deal 12+ damage over a single turn.
Shrapnel Blast, similar to Bolt, is an instant that is far above rate. 5 damage is worth two cards or three mana, easily; and this deck gets to capitalize on the "sacrifice an artifact" clause to enable our Synthesizers and Blast-Runners. Shrapnel Blast also allows us to have a critical density of cards that can sacrifice Synthesizer for value, and it sacrifices as part of the cost, not the resolution, of the spell. There are virtually no creatures in the format that Blast doesn't kill. Finally, Shrapnel Blast is just a fantastic finisher for "reach" in the deck, when it becomes difficult to close in the endgame. 2 blasts is 10 damage. 10 damage!! As a 2 mana spell, however, it is limited as a 3x to reduce our chances of drawing it at the wrong time.
The final removal spell is Lava Dart. Dart fills a key role in the list - it's a 2-for-1, inherently, provided we are OK with sacrificing the mountain; it helps put cards in the graveyard for DRC, it sacrifices a permanent for Blast-Runner, and it can kill two creatures by itself, enabling for Crack the Earth to target lands like we designed.
The last three spells in the deck are really just "glue" cards - cards that make expendable artifacts that sacrifice themselves for value. Mishra's Bauble, Voldaren Epicure, and Implement of Combustion are the cards of choice for being 0- and 1-mana enablers for Blast Runner, Shrapnel Blast, and Crack the Earth, while being very low opportunity cost and working towards our ultimate win by dealing damage to our opponent as they cycle through the board. They also help us make use of excess colorless mana in matchups where our opponent is mostly on basics and wasteland isn't as effective.
Speaking of mana bases, the maindeck is on very few lands - 14 colored sources - and 4 of those lands are Great Furnaces which can be sacrificed to Shrapnel Blast. 14 is a low number, however, there is enough selection and cards that replace themselves that the deck can run off of very little mana. See my article on mana bases to learn why 14 is the correct number!
The sideboard really just continues the trends of the main deck - super efficient answers to the format. The one card that deserves to be mentioned is Cast Into the Fire. This spell is not the most efficient, but the ability to exile an artifact OR pick off two x/1 creatures offers a high degree of flexibility, and exiling artifact duals in particular can put your opponent far behind if they've targeted it with Cleansing Wildfire.
~~Why play Cracked Burn over Regular Burn?~~
Simply put, Cracked Burn has both higher overall card quality, and multiple axes of attack, which make it more favored in a diverse meta. DRC and Epicure both provide card selection in addition to damage; Kumano is like a Goblin Guides with multiple upsides rather than a downside; albeit slower. Synth can both present a threat, and draw multiple other spells. But the biggest single card quality increase is Shrapnel Blast, which compares favorably with even old staples like Fireblast for raw damage from a single card.
The second reason to play Cracked Burn is that the mana denial strategy makes matchups that are almost unwinnable for classic burn builds, almost unloseable. It is all too easy to deny an opponent the ability to even cast a Counterbalance or a Weather the Storm. Lands-based prison decks which can prevent all damage through spells like Glacial Chasm, now get shut down by wasteland. Big-mana fast decks like Initiative Aggro or Storm can be wastelanded out of casting their spells before even getting off the ground. Remember, Cracked Burn can still apply fast pressure backed by burn spells; it just has an additional aspect to the strategy which synergizes with and enables the aggression. If lightning bolting your opponent to death isn't a strong gameplan, a regular Burn deck is left dead in the water. Cracked Burn still has a chance at winning those games by leaning hard into the resource denial plan to lock the opponent out!
~~Cards that didn't make the deck:~~
Monastery Swiftspear. Swifty is perhaps the most iconic Burn creature of all time, so it stands to reason that any red deck would want to play it. So where is Swifty in Cracked Burn?
Simply put, our threats are better, and they're also better in the deck. DRC and Blast-Runner both represent 3 power for 1 mana with very little input, and they both have evasion, which is enormous upside in a token-heavy format. Kumano has a plethora of other effects in addition to the base-2/2 stats. Additionally, Wasteland and Crack the Earth make it actively difficult to cast more than 1 spell a turn, even for our deck, which means that we'll have a hard time getting more value out of Swifty than just a 2/3.
Dargo, the Shipwrecker. Dargo is a great payoff for running lots of artifacts, and 7/5 trample is a hell of a statline. The issue with Dargo in this deck is that it doesn't play well with Wasteland. Casting a 1-mana Dargo involves saccing 3+ artifacts, and this deck really wants to sac exactly one per turn in order to not blow our ability to pump Blast-Runner on subsequent turns.
Galvanic Blast: blast is undeniably excellent; however, this deck does not really leave artifacts in play, they mostly cycle out of play in order to pump Blast-Runner or get value off of Crack the Earth. Galvanic Blast would be just a 2-damage spell most games, which is not ideal.
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