Hello everybody and welcome back to another article of Brawl Haul! Core Set 2021 is finally here which means there is a whole bunch of new toys to try messing around with. A lot of the cards show promise and I am stoked trying to utilize each of them to their best capabilities in the next couple of months. With all that being said, let us jump into this week’s brew, featuring Chandra, Heart of Fire! Oh, we're giving away a couple of pre-release codes too. You'll find more information on that later in this article!

Overview

The main point of this deck is to keep the board relatively clean and burn the opponent, whether it be through our minions getting in for chip damage, firing a bunch of instants at the opponent, or using Chandra’s abilities to burn them down. 

What does Chandra, Heart of Fire, do for the Deck?

The strongest parts about this Chandra are both of her upticks, one of which gives a ton of fuel for our deck while the other helps us stabilize and sometimes pushing damage. Both of these abilities help the deck an absurd amount as it. Her ultimate is decent and it does just win the game if it resolves, but it is not as important to the deck as the other abilities. The first uptick is absurdly good for this deck as just being able to see an additional 3 cards per turn will often give us enough burn to just finish the opponent off.

Chip Damage

Like any other form of burn deck, we need to rely on creatures to get in with chip damage throughout the match. Almost all of them either get pumped by casting instant or sorceries or synergize well with these effects. The creatures that are the best for getting chip damage are Burning Prophet, Erratic Cyclops, Spellgorger Weird, and Chandra’s Incinerator.

     

Burning Prophet is deceptively good for our deck as it lets us filter our draws very well. With some of the other cards in the deck, we can chain the top cards of our deck to get a lot of card advantage. Erratic Cyclops is able to chunk people for a huge amount of damage and was able to overrun the opponent several times due to cards like Volcanic Salvo and Finale of Promise. Spellgorger Weird just grows quickly and can become a hassle for the opponent to remove. There are several other cards with similar effects as Spellgorger Weird and all of them tend to do a fairly solid job at this. Finally, there is Chandra’s Incinerator, which makes our face damage also able to clear the opponent’s board. Combined with the fact it can often come down for 3-4 mana, it is a great threat and is often a massive threat that forces the opponent to remove it.

Keeping the Board Clean

Since there are not a lot of burn spells that can target the opponent, we need to rely on our creatures most of the time in order to get in with damage. This means that almost all of our spells are used as removal to make sure we can get in for damage, with the best ones being Fire Prophecy, Chandra’s Triumph, Blitz of the Thunder Raptor, and Flame Sweep.

     

Fire Prophecy is a great removal spell since it is already an ornate removal spell, but it also lets us clean out our hand of a dead card. There is not much else to say about it honestly, its just an efficient removal spell. Chandra’s Triumph is able to remove almost every threat the opponent can play in the early game as we often have a Chandra in play. Blitz of the Thunder Raptor just hits like a truck and it is easily the strongest removal spell later on in the game. Flame Sweep is one of the few sweepers we have in our deck and is one-sided since all of our creatures would either get pumped up and not die or just already be large enough to not be killed.

Closing Out the Game

Like always, there are a few cards in the deck designed to just kill the opponent as soon as we get close to the late game. While our commander can do a decent job at closing out the game, Fiery Emancipation, Experimental Frenzy, and Chandra, Awakened Inferno all do a great job at killing the opponent.

   

Fiery Emancipation has easily been one of the most fun cards I’ve played with from Core Set 2021. Unsurprisingly, dealing three times the damage you are supposed to do ends games incredibly fast and with the help of some of the larger burn spells, it is very well possible to just target the opponent for 20+ damage out of the middle of nowhere. Experimental Frenzy does not directly kill the opponent but gives us enough pseudo card draw to close out the game. Chandra, Awakened Inferno is a slow way of killing the opponent but most decks cannot deal with the continuous pings. Her not being able to be countered is great as it is one of our only ways of closing out games against control decks.

Other Notable Cards

Like always there are a few cards that stand out for being incredibly strong while not fitting in with the rest of the themes of the deck. Once again Leyline of Combustion puts in a ton of work for the deck, while this deck also had a lot of success with Repeated Reverberation and Finale of Promise.

   

Leyline of Combustion is slowly becoming one of my favorite cards to include in any aggressive decks as the ability to punish people for trying to interact with our board is absurdly good. It also works well with Fiery Emancipation, hitting people for almost 1/4th of their starting life total for targeting any of our permanents. Repeated Reverberation is a strong finisher and works great with our X spells and just our normal removal spells as repeating a spell twice more is well worth the four mana. Speaking of X spells, Finale of Promise puts in a ton of work for the deck as being able to repeat the effect of our instants and sorceries is amazing, especially if we are able to pay ten for X. Both Repeated Reverberation and Finale of Promise also work fantastic with each other and can lead to some very silly scenarios.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Unsurprisingly, due to the amount of removal the deck has, the deck has a pretty solid time against aggressive decks. More often than not we can stabilize against them and start to push ahead with our planeswalkers. 

Our deck starts to fall apart against control decks as they can often get rid of the tools that let us win later on in the late game. If our planeswalkers or our enchantments get countered, we can struggle with finishing the opponent off.

The Decklist

Here is a link to this week's decklist!

Wrap Up

When browsing through all the commanders released this set, both the new Chandras stuck out to me as fun build-around cards. More importantly I also really wanted to use Fiery Emancipation in a deck. Its such a fun card to play and just swing in for a truckload and definitely affected my choice when it came to testing decks to write about. It is absurdly satisfying and I cannot recommend it enough.

Easily my favorite part of playing card games is brewing new decks when expansions are released. While this set did not bring as many interesting choices as I felt that Ikoria brought, there are still plenty of sweet cards I plan on getting to throughout the upcoming months. A lot of the commanders did not stick out to me, but there were a ton of cards in the 59 that feel like they would be a blast to take a swing at, specifically the new five-color shrine, which unfortunately cannot be a commander. Anyway, that is all I have to say for this week, until next time, good luck brewing!

Core Set 2021 Pre-Release Giveaway

We've got two pre-release codes for MTG Arena that we're giving away! Interested? Here's what you need to know and how to enter.

  • We'll be picking two winners. Each winner will receive 1 pre-release code for MTG Arena.
  • You can only redeem 1 pre-release code for each set on MTG Arena.
  • A pre-release code gives you 6 card packs for a set. These ones are for Core Set 2021.

Do you want to enter? Cool! Tell us in the comments below your answer to the following.

What commander in M21 have you been looking forward to the most? Be sure to tell us why and not just list the name!

We'll be picking winners this Sunday, so you have until Saturday at 11:59 PM Eastern to get your answer in. We'll announce the winners in a future Brawl Haul and in the comments here. Winners will be sent a direct message on the site with their code.