Budget Magic: Firebending Student (Standard)
Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Budget Magic! This week, we're heading to Standard to see just how busted Firebending Student can be on a budget. The two-drop's ability to make firebending mana equal to its power when it attacks has the potential to do some super-explosive things, like winning the game as early as Turn 3! Just how strong is this new version of Mono-Red in Standard? How much mana can we make with Firebending Student? Let's get to the video and find out!
Budget Magic: Firebending Student
The Deck
Firebending Student is a mono-red aggro deck that's actually sort of a combo deck in disguise. It offers the ability to get super-fast kills but also rewards patience because if we can wait until our opponent taps out, there's a pretty good chance we can kill them with just a single attack!
Our deck today is built around two two-drops: Firebending Student and Slickshot Show-Off. You probably know Slickshot—the Bird Wizard has been in Standard seemingly for forever now, getting +2/+0 whenever we cast a noncreature spell and also having plot, which is incredibly relevant. Ideally, we'll plot Slickshot Show-Off so we can play it for free on a future turn, when we are ready to go for the win and have all of our mana available, to cast a bunch of spells and pump its power.
On the other hand, Firebending Student is brand new, coming to Standard in Avatar, and the card reads pretty busted. The two-mana 1/2 prowess has firebending X, where X is its power, meaning it makes a massive amount of mana whenever it attacks. Our deck is overloaded with pump spells to grow Firebending Student's power. This means it's sometimes making 20+ extra mana as soon as Turn 3, which is wild. With our best draws, Firebending Student can kill our opponent all by itself as early as Turn 3!
The biggest upside of both of these cards is how fast they pressure our opponent. Both die to removal, but if our opponent doesn't have removal, either card has the potential to win the game as early as Turn 3, which puts our opponent to the test: either have removal or probably die! The biggest tension in the deck is figuring out how to play these cards. Do you run them out on Turn 2? Wait until the opponent taps out? While the answer mostly depends on the situation and matchup, this decision is the biggest one the deck faces, and it often determines whether we win or lose the game.
We also have two one-drop creatures to help fill out the curve and ensure that we have something on the battlefield to target with all of our pump spells, which we'll talk about in a minute. Fire Nation Cadets is interesting. We do have a few Lessons in the deck to turn on its firebending ability, and it does give us a mana sink if we manage to make a massive amount of firebending mana, but in general, it's mostly just curve filler. On the other hand, Frantic Scapegoat might be one of the best cards in our deck, as strange as it sounds. The one-mana 1/1 haster suspects itself when it enters, giving it menace and "I can't block," and when another creature enters, we can move the suspicion over to it instead. While this ability doesn't sound that exciting, giving Firebending Student or, in some cases, Slickshot Show-Off menace is actually a huge deal. While we do have some trample in our deck, both of our big payoffs can be blocked (although Slickshot's flying does help). And when we have our big pump-spell turn, we want to make sure we can actually hit our opponent for lethal damage, not just make a massive creature that gets blocked by a Spyglass Siren. The menace Frantic Scapegoat offers is another way to get our creatures past our opponent's defenses, making it great in our deck.
Next up, we have a ton of pump spells to grow the power of Firebending Student and Slickshot Show-Off. The two most important pump spells in our deck are Felonious Rage and Wild Ride, which give not only a power boost but also haste. This allows us to play Firebending Student on Turn 3, use one of these cards to give it haste, go to combat, attack to make a bunch more mana with Firebending Student, and use it to cast more pump spells to win us the game.
When it comes to actually getting our opponent's life total down to zero, our two best pump spells are Dreadmaw's Ire and Bulk Up. Dreadmaw's Ire is important because it offers trample, giving us another way to win through blockers. Here, it's worth mentioning that since Dreadmaw's Ire only buffs an attacking creature, the most common timing for casting it is with Firebending Student's "firebending X" trigger on the stack, which will allow us to grow the Student, give it trample, and also turn Dreadmaw's Ire into a weird ritual where it actually generates mana.
Meanwhile, Bulk Up is absurd in our deck and is how we can win as early as Turn 3. For two mana, the instant doubles the power of a target creature, and we can flash it back for six mana. The main idea is that we can pump our Firebending Student, use Bulk Up to double its power, go to combat, attack to make a bunch of firebending mana, and then flash back Bulk Up to double its power again, which should make Firebending Student super lethal, especially if we have some evasion. It also allows for some super-fast kills with Slickshot Show-Off. Here are a couple of quick examples.
- Turn 2, play Firebending Student. Turn 3, go to combat and attack. With Firebending Student's trigger on the stack, cast Dreadmaw's Ire to make Student a 4/5 with trample. Before the trigger resolves, cast Bulk Up to make Student a 10/6. Let the firebending trigger resolve to make 10 mana, then flash back Bulk Up to double Firebending Student's power again. With prowess, this makes it a 22-power trampler attacking on Turn 3!
- Turn 2, plot Slickshot Show-Off. Turn 3, play Slickshot for free. Play a Wild Ride, which will pump Slickshot to a 6/2. Cast Bulk Up. Slickshot Show-Off's trigger will resolve first, pumping it to an 8/2; then, its power will double up to 16, which isn't quite lethal but still an absurd amount of damage on Turn 3, especially without any extra mana from Firebending Student.
Basically, Bulk Up can deal an insane amount of damage super quickly. And after playing with it a bunch, I found myself surprised that no one had really been playing with the card even though it was released a year ago in Foundations. It feels super strong!
To put our deck into overdrive, we also have Leyline of Resonance to double all of our pump spells. The enchantment can do some incredibly explosive things. We had multiple games where it let us deal over 100 damage on Turn 3, which is wild—although I'm actually not sure it's worth playing thanks to how the Avatar Standard meta has evolved. Boomerang Basics is everywhere, being one of the most played cards in the entire format. And getting [[Leyline of Resonance] bounced is pretty brutal since we only have 20 lands in our deck and aren't likely to get up to four mana to cast it very quickly. While it is super fun in the deck when it works, from a more competitive perspective, I'm planning on cutting it until the number of bounce spells in the meta drops a bit.
Rounding out the deck are a couple of Lessons. Firebending Lesson gives us a pseudo–Burst Lightning that can't hit face but does help turn on Fire Nation Cadets. Meanwhile, Redirect Lightning is our plan for protecting our creatures from removal. If our opponent tries to kill our Slickshot Show-Off or Firebending Student, we can pay five life and one mana, and redirect that removal spell to one of our opponent's creatures or, in a pinch, one of our less important creatures. It's also worth mentioning that we can always just cast Redirect Lightning to change the target of our of our pump spells, just to trigger prowess on Firebending Student and Slickshot Show-Off to force through even more damage, which is a line that comes up more than you'd probably think. One quick word of warning about Redirect Lightning: it's sometimes worse against control than you would think. If we want to redirect a removal spell, we do need another legal target. I had a couple of games against control where we had a Redirect Lightning in hand but nothing to redirect to since our opponent didn't play any creatures, which was annoying. So, try to keep a Frantic Scapegoat or Fire Nation Cadets around as a redirection target just in case!
Wrap-Up
Record-wise, we went 7-5 with the deck for a 58% win percentage, which is pretty solid in general and doubly so for a budget deck. We saw the deck do some incredibly explosive things—dealing hundreds of damage and making 20+ extra mana on Turn 3—which is pretty crazy!
While I think the deck is solid in its current format, I'd make a few changes now that I've played it a bunch. First, as I mentioned a minute ago, Leyline of Resonance has to go—it just lines up too poorly with the Boomerang Basics meta. I'd drop it and replace it with the rest of the Redirect Lightnings from the sideboard for more protection. This also has the upside of decreasing the budget a bit, especially on Arena, where we'd go from 16 total rares down to 12. The other change I'd make is dropping Fire Nation Cadets and Firebending Lesson for Burst Lightning and...something? Fire Nation Cadets just didn't feel strong enough. The games where it was good (when we made absurd mana with Firebending Student) were games we were winning anyway, and it just felt like a filler one-drop in a lot of games. Pick your favorite red aggro one-drop to replace it. Hired Claw is a solid option if you have room for more rares, and Frenzied Goblin is an interesting lower-rarity possibility since we can pay for its ability with firebending mana to make Firebending Student unblockable.
One last thing I wanted to mention about the deck is that it rewards patience. The deck doesn't have that many threats, and you will lose if you just run out Firebending Student and Slickshot Show-Off into removal. While there are matchups where it's correct to just dump your hand as quickly as possible, like Simic, the right plan against more removal-heavy decks is usually to play it slow, plot your Slickshot Show-Offs, build up resources, and wait for your opponent to tap out before playing your threats. Because the deck can often win in a single turn if undisrupted, all we really need is for our opponent to get greedy and tap down to steal a win, even with our opponent at 20 life. So, play your Slickshots and Students carefully—slowly, even—rather than just running them out to their demise if you want to win with the deck.
So, should you play Firebending Student in Avatar Standard? I think the answer is yes! Mono-Red is traditionally a strong budget archetype, and Firebending Student carries on the tradition, with a bit of a combo feel thrown in as a bonus! If you like being aggressive and slinging spells, this might be the perfect Avatar Standard budget deck for you!
Firebending Student 2.0
Finally, here's a build of the deck incorporating the changes we just talked about. This is what I would play if I were recording with the deck today, and as a bonus, the budget drops slightly on Magic Arena, from 16 rares down to 14.
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today. As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
