I think that’s somewhat myopic, to be frank. Burn may not have the best Dredge matchup, but it’s not a terrible one, and they can pack hate just as easily as any other deck. When we look beyond that, we also see a deck that pummels Death’s Shadow, Infect, Lantern Control, and Tron (which are doing stuff right now), and can hang with the likes of Bant Eldrazi and BGx, which constitutes the majority of the Tier 1 metagame at the moment. If Ad Nauseam and Dredge are its only commonly played bad matchups (and the latter can be mitigated through hate), I’d say Burn’s in a pretty good place right now.

Roland,

I’m of the very biased opinion that Burn can’t be taken seriously in the metagame while Dredge is around in large numbers. This thinking might not be as universal as I think it is, so I possibly should have mentioned that in the article. I’m not entirely sure what the public consensus is regarding Burn, from the discussions I’ve had and what I’ve seen in the community for the past few weeks it seems that the “Burn is bad while Dredge is good” thinking is common, but again, that doesn’t stop a player from picking up Burn and doing well with it regardless.

Hope that helps?
Trevor

Got me, I guess. ‘Strict upgrade’ for you is like ‘gunslinging’ for me. Hope you made it past the first paragraph!

While the term is a colloquialism, I do see a difference between the two. Blossoming Defense does what Apostle’s Blessing does 80% of the time but better, so it is a ‘strict upgrade’. Something else like Might of Old Krosa vs. Groundswell is just an ‘upgrade’, as they do similar things but different enough that they can’t be compared on the exact same metric.

Not sure if wanted an elaboration, but there it is 🙂