Madness Burn

Madness Burn is a black-red deck that gets paid for discarding its own cards. Cheap draw spells such as Faithless Looting and Grab the Prize pitch Fiery Temper, Alms of the Vein, and Kitchen Imp, which come right back as spells, and Sneaky Snacker climbs out of the graveyard to attack in the air, until burn, life drain, and small fliers close the game. It is a narrow slice of the field at 0.7%, but it is a live choice right now: AlessandroPiraccini took second place at the September 17 Pauper Challenge with this same core, the deck put three pilots into the Top 32 at Paupergeddon Summer in Lucca on July 11, and 5-0 league runs have kept coming through September.

The deck beats creature decks that race on the board with small bodies, where its burn doubles as removal and its life drain flips the race, the slower control and value decks that give burn and drain time to add up before their card advantage matters. It is favored against Mono Red Madness, Jeskai Ephemerate, Black Sacrifice, and Cycle Storm, and slightly favored against Jund Wildfire and Ephemerate Tron.

It struggles against ramp decks that go over the top with creatures too large to burn and life totals too high to drain in time, against combo decks that ignore the board and win before the damage adds up, and against the aggro and tempo decks that either go wider than a few fliers can hold off or interact cheaply with small fliers and the graveyard they come back from. It is slightly unfavored against Elves and Familiars, and unfavored against Monster Tron, Mono Blue Faeries, Spy Combo, Gruul Ponza, Mono Red Rally, Naya Gates, Gruul Ramp, Ruby Storm, and Bogles.

Every discard in this deck is a spell in disguise. Faithless Looting, Grab the Prize, and Highway Robbery refill your hand, and the cards you throw away to them are the ones you actually want to cast: Fiery Temper burns, Alms of the Vein drains, and Kitchen Imp attacks the moment it is pitched, all for a fraction of their printed costs, while Sneaky Snacker goes to the graveyard so it can come back to the battlefield. The single most important thing you do as the pilot is keep an outlet in hand with the right mana still untapped when it resolves, so that nothing you discard is wasted, and keep the burn pointed at the opponent's face unless a creature genuinely stands in the way.

The engine is the cheap draw spells plus Blood tokens. Faithless Looting, Grab the Prize, and Highway Robbery each draw two while asking for a discard, and Voldaren Epicure and Vampire's Kiss leave behind Blood tokens that discard at instant speed for one mana. Each discard is where the profit lives: Fiery Temper, Alms of the Vein, and Kitchen Imp resolve for a single mana off their madness triggers, and Sneaky Snacker returns from the graveyard tapped whenever you draw your third card in a turn. One outlet is really two or three spells' worth of action.

A typical game opens with Voldaren Epicure pinging on entry and a Jagged Barrens doing the same, so the life-total math starts before the engine does. The middle turns are the outlets firing: draw spells pitch madness cards, Kitchen Imp and take to the air, and each three-point burn or drain lands a turn earlier than its printed cost would allow. The close is a matter of counting: and win in combat, while , , , and finish from range once the opponent is low.

Voldaren Epicure

The turn-one play the deck wants most. A 1/1 for one mana that deals 1 damage to each opponent on entry and leaves behind a Blood token, which costs one mana, a tap, a discard, and its own sacrifice to draw a card. The body chips in for a point or two before it trades, but the token is the real prize: it is a discard outlet that works at instant speed, on either player's turn, which is exactly what a hand full of madness cards needs. The ping also makes progress toward the 13-life threshold that lets Razortrap Gorge enter untapped.

Faithless Looting

The best outlet in the deck: one mana to draw two and discard two, which means two madness triggers in one resolution if you have the mana to pay for them, or one madness cast plus binning a Sneaky Snacker. It also counts as two of the three draws that bring a buried Snacker back. Late in the game the flashback from the graveyard is the deck's main mana sink, turning a flooded board into another round of pitched spells, though it is the first thing graveyard exile takes away.

Grab the Prize

The discard here is part of the cost, so it happens as you cast the spell and a pitched madness card resolves before Grab the Prize itself does. On resolution you draw two, and if the discarded card was not a land the spell deals 2 damage to each opponent. Pitching Fiery Temper is the signature play: Temper's 3 damage plus Grab's own 2 is 5 damage for three mana in total, with two fresh cards in hand. Grab is also the cleanest way to return Sneaky Snacker, since your draw step plus its two draws reaches the third draw of the turn.

Madness Burn is a linear, tempo-positive aggro deck with low inevitability and only burn as interaction: every spell is a threat or an outlet that turns discards into one, the engine is built to convert mana into damage faster than the opponent converts it into board, and if the game goes long the burn simply runs out. That fixes the default. In nearly every matchup class you are the beatdown, and the question is only which axis the race is fought on: the raw speed of the two clocks, whether the graveyard survives, how cheaply the opponent handles small fliers, and whether their interaction feeds the madness plan or attacks it.

Vs. Aggro. The role is decided by whose clock is faster, and it is the one class where you sometimes have to be the control. Against a deck that curves out faster than yours, point Lightning Bolt and Fiery Temper at the creatures that matter, and lean on Alms of the Vein and Vampire's Kiss to swing the life totals until your fliers take over. Against a slower creature deck, ignore the ground entirely: Sneaky Snacker and Kitchen Imp attack over a board of small blockers, and the burn stays aimed at the face.

Vs. Midrange. You are the beatdown. Their plan is to trade removal for your threats one for one, and that is a trade you win because Sneaky Snacker returns from the graveyard on any turn you draw your third card and the madness cards resolve at a discount their answers never match. The demonstrating play is pitching Fiery Temper to Grab the Prize and sending both at the opponent's face while their removal has nothing worth hitting. Cheap answers to small fliers are the axis to watch; if they have plenty, the fliers become bait and the burn becomes the plan.

Vs. Control. Unambiguously the beatdown, and the clock is on you: with low inevitability, every turn a control deck gets to draw cards is a turn closer to the point where their answers outnumber your threats. Opposing discard is a gift here because a discarded Fiery Temper or Alms of the Vein is cast for its madness cost anyway, so the play is to deploy threats every turn and hold Blood tokens to cast at the end of their turn, where sorcery-speed answers and lifegain arrive too late. Counterspells hurt most on the outlets, so bait them with the least valuable one.

1. Hold Blood tokens to crack on the opponent's turn, pitching madness cards for surprise casts. The Blood draw is an instant-speed outlet, and a card cast off its madness trigger ignores sorcery timing, so even Alms of the Vein becomes an end-of-turn play. That leaves your own turn's mana free for threats and outlets, and it lets you pass with Lightning Bolt mana up without wasting it. With Voldaren Epicure on turn one and a Swamp on turn two, pass with both lands untapped and Bolt in hand; if nothing needs a Bolt during their turn, crack the Blood at their end step with the Mountain, pitch Alms, and pay the black from the Swamp for a three-point drain that was never exposed to a sorcery-speed answer. Vampire's Kiss tokens do the same job for Fiery Temper in response to an attack.

2. Discard Sneaky Snacker to the first outlet you see; it only ever enters play from the graveyard. The deck has no blue source, so a copy in hand is the worst card you can hold and a copy in the graveyard is one of the best. The draw step is already the first draw of the turn, so any draw-two spell on your own turn reaches the third draw and brings it back tapped for free. When an outlet asks for a discard and Snacker is in hand, it is the pitch before any madness card, since the madness card costs mana to cast and the Snacker costs nothing.

3. Sequence lands and spells so the madness cost is still payable at the moment the outlet resolves. Madness gives you one window: the card is cast as it is discarded or it goes to the graveyard for nothing. Tapping out for the outlet first turns Fiery Temper, Alms of the Vein, and Kitchen Imp into dead discards, which is why the deck needs red and black together by turn two. A hand of Jagged Barrens, Mountain, Swamp, Grab the Prize, Kitchen Imp, and Vampire's Kiss shows the order. The Barrens takes the empty first turn and pings for 1, Mountain into Kiss drains 2 on turn two, and on turn three the Swamp comes down but Grab the Prize is paid with the Mountain and the Barrens, so the Swamp's black mana is still open when the pitched Imp's trigger resolves and the Imp attacks in the air at once. Paying for Grab with the Swamp and the Barrens instead would have buried the Imp.