Creatures - 16
2 Grim Lavamancer
3 Kiln Fiend
2 Chandra's Phoenix
1 Chandra's Spitfire
3 Pilgrim's Eye
1 Cyclops Gladiator
1 Firewing Phoenix
2 Fire Servant
1 Inferno Titan
Other Spells - 20
1 Flame Slash
2 Pillar of Flame
1 Searing Spear
1 Wild Guess
2 Browbeat
1 Flamebreak
2 Flames of the Firebrand
1 Seismic Assault
2 Chandra's Outrage
2 Furnace of Rath
2 Cone of Flame
3 Disintegrate
Land - 24
24 Mountain
I know, this decklist looks bizarre, and I’m not even sure how to label the deck. I guess I would call it an aggro/combo deck, with some control capabilities. Your early game will usually consist of playing cat and mouse with your opponent over Kiln Fiend. If you can get a good hit in early with it, go for it if your opponent is tapped out. If your opponent wants to kill it with removal, that’s ok because that means there’s less removal for your later threats. Or another option for them would be to just sit on the board and do nothing but cause a stalemate, in which case let them.
The biggest thing to keep in mind with this deck is that it’s a red deck. Focus on your opponent’s life total, and you basically need to ignore yours, because as long as your opponent hits 0 life before you do, that’s all that matters. Playing Firewave is almost like playing chess, in that you need to come up with a plan for a few turns ahead, and make sure that your plan will drop your opponent to 0 before they do to you.
Later in the game, drop a damage doubler like Fire Servant (who becomes better in this format due to less removal) or Furnace of Rath (be careful with this one). Then use the damage doubler to find a way to make your opponent’s life total 0.
Ok, I’ll address the elephant in the room, or elephant in the decklist in this case. I tried a variety of builds before I reached this build. I tried a low mana curve aggressive build, I tried build with a longer game in mind, kinda like Born of Flame. My results were just sad, losing to the core decklist of Deadwalkers. Then I thought, “why not try running Pilgrim’s Eye? It’s not like the deck could be performing any worse for me.”
It turns out Pilgrim’s Eye was a major key for this deck, filling in an… interesting niche role. Because of Seismic Assault, this deck doesn’t really want to drop more than 5 land (6 if you draw the Titan). Another exception to this is if dropping more than 5 lands lets you make plays that can win you the game (again, think back to my chess analogy). Pilgrim’s Eye has a surprising amount of synergy with the other cards. It helps you to not miss a land drop, it gets you fuel for Seismic Assault and Wild Guess, which in turn help fuel Grim Lavamancer. It can also ping in the air (remember, every point of damage is going to count for this deck), or act as a much needed chump blocker so you can survive to the next turn where you can pull out your win (this is especially true if you just dropped Furnace of Rath).
One of the other odd looking things about this deck is the lack of Arsonists, which seems really strange. However, I don’t find myself missing them. They are good cards for sure, but I just can’t justify running them in this build (in the low mana curve build, they’d be in for sure). For this build, I want my creatures to pose huge threats and attract early game removal (Pilgrim’s Eye notwithstanding, but I already discussed that), because that will draw removal away from the game ending threats of Fire Servant and Inferno Titan. Goblin Arsonist doesn’t draw removal, in fact it does the opposite. Your opponent can just ignore it and get pinged for a few turns with few consequences. With the frame of mind I’m playing this deck with, Goblin Arsonist just doesn’t fit in that frame for me.