With the competitive Standard season out of the way (with the notable exception of Grand Prix: Atlanta), only scattered Friday Night Magic tournaments will compose the last remaining days of the Odyssey Block. Even for a format that has been played for nearly a year, there still is a little room for creativity. Ironically, though, that creativity comes from the past.

At the beginning of the Standard season, there were two distinctly different Wake decks. The first, Cunning Wake, relied on Mirari, Mirari's Wake, and Cunning Wish to generate a large number of instants, which would eventually overwhelm the opponent. Burning Wake, the other, was designed to get out a Mirari's Wake, play Burning Wish for Firecat Blitz, and then attack the opponent with a large number of 2/2 hasted cats.

By the Chicago Masters, though, Burning Wake had fallen out of favor. The deck simply could not hold its own against control decks, and was eliminated from Standard entirely. Those players were forced to go to the Cunning version, leaving Burning Wake out of the metagame.

Jumping ahead six months, Standard has changed yet again. This time, a whole new base set is replacing Seventh Edition. With it comes changes to the metagame; changes that just may bring Burning Wake back.

First off, Eighth Edition brings back the Invasion taplands. Many people complained that Burning Wake's mana base was far too inconsistent for the deck to be good - and indeed, most of the early versions ran only a single Mountain that was all but necessary to win the game. Shivan Oasis helps to remedy this. In addition, Fertile Ground has joined with Rampant Growth in Eighth Edition, creating another cheap way to get red mana without drawing a Mountain, as well as giving the deck further access to white and blue.

Also, the control decks that once haunted Burning Wake are the ones that took the biggest losses from Eighth Edition. After a decade, Counterspell is finally retiring to Extended, as are Memory Lapse and Force Spike. So control archetypes look a lot less attractive, as evidenced by Psychatog's disappearance at the World Championships. Fewer control decks in the metagame equal better times for Burning Wake.

If the reduction of good counterspells is not enough, another Eighth Edition card helps out Burning Wake even more: Obliterate. Control decks, as well as Cunning Wake, require a highly developed mana base. Obliterate ruins that without any doubts. Plus, it has incredible synergy with Mirari's Wake, allowing the deck to blow up the world for only four mana.

Additionally, Scourge has helped out Burning Wake since the deck went into hiding. Decree of Justice plays off the same incredible synergy that Firecat Blitz did with Mirari's Wake. This time, though, the tokens are permanent, and fly over the competition. Furthermore, cycling a Decree of Justice prevents it from being countered, giving Burning Wake yet another way of playing around control.

Burning Wake
4 Burning Wish
3 Compulsion
4 Fertile Ground
3 Moment's Peace
3 Quiet Speculation
3 Rampant Growth
3 Deep Analysis
3 Wrath of God
4 Mirari's Wake
3 Decree of Justice
2 Obliterate
4 Flooded Strand
4 Shivan Oasis
3 Island
3 Mountain
3 Plains
8 Forest

Sideboard:
1 Ancestral Tribute
4 Chastise
1 Creeping Mold
1 Decree of Justice
1 Nostalgic Dreams
1 Obliterate
4 Sphere of Law
1 Time Stretch
1 Wrath of God

Just as how new cards have been introduced to Standard since Burning Wake has been played, so have the decks. The recent World Championships reinforce this point, with Goblins, R/G Beats, U/G Madness, Cunning Wake, and Astral Slide all taking up a large part of the metagame. Here is how Burning Wake plays against each of those:

Goblins
Standard's new top beatdown deck is rather weak against Burning Wake. In the first game, Moment's Peace and Wrath of God are extremely important, helping to slow the Goblin onslaught. If these two cards stall out the game for long enough, then a Burning Wish for Ancestral Tribute should buy enough time to find a way of killing them. That said, sometimes the Goblin player will draw a fast hand while the proper answers (Wrath, Peace, and Quiet Speculation) do not come up. In that case, there really is not much the Wake player can do.

Sideboard: -1 Compulsion, -1 Deep Analysis; +4 Sphere of Law

Sideboarding drastically alters the face of this matchup. With Goblins bringing in Sulfuric Vortex, Ancestral Tribute no longer necessarily owns the game. In addition, it slowly wears Burning Wake away with damage that you can't escape with Moment's Peace or Wrath of God.

However, Burning Wake has an equally powerful, if not stronger, card in Sphere of Law. Replacing four slow, reactive cards, they virtually lock up the Goblin player. Only a few cards can actually deal damage with a Sphere in play; of those, Volcanic Hammer and Goblin Burrows only hit for one and two, respectively. Also, a Goblin player can sacrifice multiple creatures to Goblin Sledder to punch in a few points of damage, and Goblin Piledriver is quite capable of dealing lots of damage in front of the Sphere. Even so, Wrath of God and Moment's Peace stop that.

This changes how the Burning Wake player actually wins the game as well. If Goblins plays a third-turn Sulfuric Vortex and Wake follows it up with a third-turn Sphere (thanks to Rampant Growth and Fertile Ground), then they will die in ten turns. Additionally, unlike many other decks, Goblins has no way of taking out Wake after sideboarding, allowing the enchantment to work without worry of removal. All this makes for a difficult time for the Goblin player.

R/G Beats
In many ways, R/G Beats is the same matchup as Goblins in the first game. However, with R/G opting for green fatties instead of hasted Goblins, Burning Wake has plenty of time to set up and win the game. Quiet Speculation for Moment's Peace, Wrath of God, and Burning Wish for Ancestral Tribute all help to stall out the game for long enough to do this.

Sideboard: -1 Compulsion, -1 Deep Analysis, -2 Obliterate; +4 Chastise

Unlike with Goblins, though, Sphere of Law simply does not do enough to go into the deck for game two. Instead, Chastise works to remove big green creatures and buys time for the deck to set up. Unfortunately, Sulfuric Vortex's second ability prevents Chastise from being fully effective. In addition, R/G's Naturalize can make Mirari's Wakes transient.

Even with the first game working out in Burning Wake's favor, the difficulty of the second and third turn the matchup to a bad one. However, with Standard more heavily favoring Goblins right now and R/G's popularity diminishing as a result, this is acceptable.

U/G Madness
When playing against U/G Madness, just keeping alive should be the goal. Although this goes for Goblins and R/G Beats as well, this is done for a different purpose versus Madness: Obliterate. With U/G running an already-poor mana base, Obliterate magnifies this problem and cannot be touched by Circular Logic and Mana Leak. Since Wake rebuilds quicker, eventually U/G will be at the wrong end of angel or soldier tokens.

However, getting to that spot is tricky. Multiple counters from Madness make safely playing Moment's Peace and Wrath of God impossible. If they do draw more than one Logic or Mana Leak, then Burning Wake is in an incredibly bad position.

Sideboard: -1 Compulsion, -2 Deep Analysis, -1 Decree of Justice; +4 Chastise

Things do get better after sideboarding when Chastise comes in. With no Sulfuric Vortex around a big Wurms attacking, Chastise is exceptionally strong, giving Wake more ways of staying alive to cast Obliterate. Unfortunately, playing Obliterate almost becomes a necessity in games two and three, though, because of sideboarded Rays of Revelation and potentially more counterspells, giving an overall bad taste to the matchup.

Cunning Wake
Burning Wake has an enormous reliance on Mirari's Wake. Cunning Wake can and will exploit this by fetching a Ray of Revelation from the sideboard and playing it twice. This fact alone makes playing against another Wake deck a dangerous proposition. Fortunately, there is one bright spot in Obliterate, which severely disrupts their combo. However, opposing Mirari's Wakes negates the powerful outcome.

Sideboard: No Changes

With the sideboard already loaded with Burning Wish targets and anti-creature cards, there simply is not enough room to play the necessary Naturalizes needed to combat Cunning Wake. If there is any bright spot coming to games two and three, though, it is that the opposing Wake player likely will not have anything to sideboard in either, for the same reasons as before - but that fact hardly makes up for the poor game one performance by Burning Wake.

Astral Slide
Being a deck with little to no disruption, Astral Slide gives Burning Wake plenty of time to set up and win. Unless the Slide player can race with some Lightning Rifts or runs maindeck Wipe Cleans, then the first game ends with Mirari's Wake and Burning Wish for Firecat Blitz. If the cards are not drawn, then Quiet Speculation for three Deep Analyses or Compulsion will find them.

Sideboard: No Changes

After sideboarding, Astral Slide will no doubt have access to Wipe Clean. Even so, winning is not too difficult, still going for Mirari's Wake and Burning Wish. However, in order to play around Wipe Clean, do not Burning Wish for the Blitz until the Wake has been in play for a few turns. Other than that, the matchup is academic.

In the end, Burning Wake is not a Tier One deck in Standard, and probably should not even be considered with Atlanta in mind. However, in a long, monotonous summer for Standard, it does provide for some originality, setting up huge wins with the power of cards that will rotate out in October.

William Spaniel
williamjspaniel@yahoo.com