Burn is not an amazing strategy against ramp and control. They don't have (credible) small creatures to get 2:1 card advantage. They don't have medium sized creatures, to 1:1 with cards like bolt or kicked burst. They do have large creatures, that would require multiple spells to take down, or planeswalkers which often require multiple burn spells to answer. All you can do is throw some burn at them, and hope it's enough before you are burned out yourself from their nonbasic lands or 6/6s.
Currently, I'm siding out Lightning Bolts and Arc Trails, to bring in countermagic. I leave in Staggershock, because:
1) It's an instant
2) It does the most damage per card
3) It does the best job charging up an Ascension. (1 card charge)
One strategy certain other people advocated just playing a milling strategy main-deck, over the burn strategy.
This involves playing a kill package of:
4x Archive Trap (3UU, instant, mill 13. Trap cost: 0. Trap condition: they searched their library)
4x Trapmaker's Snare. (1U, instant, tutor for a trap)
1-2x Ravenous Trap (2BB, instant, remove a graveyard from the game. Trap cost: 0. Trap condition: they had 3 cards go to their graveyard from anywhere)
This can kill through anything, including reshuffle effects(Eldrazi). They are milled before the trigger goes onto the stack, so you do all your milling, then Ravenous Trap them in response (with the reshuffles on the stack). Then they reshuffle their empty graveyard into their (empty?) library.
One advantage of this plan is that a single Trapmaker's Snare is lethal with a charged PA. You search for two Archive Traps, then cast the two archive traps, which are doubled, giving you a mill for 52, which is plenty to kill anyone.
Valakut gets alot less dangerous when there are suddenly 2-3 valakuts, and 6-8 mountains in your deck.
Mindbreak Trap, which I'm already sideboarding, and bringing in for these matchups, is a trap, which gives some minor utililty with Trapmaker's Snare.
Currently, I have to resolve 5 burn spells to kill my opponent. (4 damage each). With Archive Trap, I'd have to resolve perhaps 3, depending on the game state.
Archive Trap does cost 5 to hardcast, instead of 3 for Staggershock, but the trap cost for Archive Trap is not that hard to trigger.
UW Control: Trinket Mage, Squadron Hawk, typically 1-4 fetchlands.
UB Control: Trinket Mage, typically 1-4 fetchlands.
RG Valakut: Every spell in their deck other than Explore? 8-12 fetchlands, Cultivate, Growth Spasm, Khalni Heart Expedition, Primeval Titan, Green Sun's Zenith.
There is some probability of having a turn 2-3 kill with this orientation. You can just have 4 Archive Traps, or 3 Archive Traps and one Trapmaker's Snare. Or probably even 2 Traps and 2 Snares. This is pretty unlikely, but it does just win the game. There is probably some interesting math here... To complicated for me to do in any reasonable time frame. Basically what we'd want to know is how many cards we have to see to see 4 of our 8 Archive + Snare, since that would give us how many cards we need in order to kill our opponent, without any Ascension help. A charged Ascension needs only 2 Traps, or 1 Snare, and you'll be saving these until that time.
The downside of these cards is that they have no effect on the board state. Burn can try to kill planeswalkers (and fail), but they do take up less space as a kill condition.
4x Archive Trap
4x Trapmakers Snare
3x Mindbreak Trap
1x Ravenous Trap
3x something (Pyroclasm, Flashfreeze, Mana Leak)
This lets me bring in 12 mill + counter for my 12 burn spells. having a sideboard against aggro could be good, and pyroclasm is pretty good at that. I don't have much else to take out against control/ramp, so i don't think I could use the 3-4 more counters I could want to bring in. (Bounce is not great against Ramp, but necessary against Control)
One advantage this plan has is that it is very blue. I swap out red for blue, and that is a plan that follows my current mana base quite well. Swapping out blue for red does not work terribly well with the mana base, which some other sideboard strategies employ.
I have quite a few potential sideboard strategies. I'm not sure which way to go.
Echo Mage in for PA(Blue vs. Red, Creature vs. Enchantment, can target their spells, can block KFW)
Kiln Fiend for PA (Ultra-aggro, creature vs enchantment, can kill quickly with burn support)
Sphynx for burn (creature vs non, blue vs red, non-targetable)
Counters for burn (current plan - losing the long game)
Mill for burn (blue vs red, instant vs enchantment, 1-3 spells to victory)
Land disruption (one of: spreading seas, demolish, tech edge) for burn.
What do you think?
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