Card in Review - Tamanoa

If you think of a burn deck, you've probably got a very specific picture in your head. Get as many 3-damage-for-1-mana spells as you can in a single deck and round it out with some classics like Fireblast and Ball Lightning: you're trying to go as fast as possible here. Cards like Jackal Pup, Flame Rift and Barbarian Ring damage you while you're at it? Hey, no problem, so long as your opponent's life total hits 0 faster. There might not be much in the way of complexity involved, but the purest burn deck is going to be speed, speed, speed - and to hell with the consequences.

Why only have one way of doing things, though? By gum, if No-mar decks can make do without Dromar and Necro decks can exist without Necropotence, then there must be a way to do Burn without a self-destructive bent.

The answer to all of your woes, and then some, exist in an unassuming Coldsnap rare - Tamanoa. Ol' Tammy is kind of an odd card, being part of a horizontal cycle of three-coloured rare creatures, three of which are legendary and two of which are not (including Tamanoa, to the frustration of EDH players everywhere.) While its body is nothing special, being a 2/4 for three coloured mana, its ability is fuel for great degeneracy - any damage dealt by your noncreature cards makes you gain that much life.

Legendary or not, Tamanoa's ability is simply begging to be built around. Note that she doesn't just give lifelink to your burn spells, but any card so long as it isn't a creature - artifacts, planeswalkers, even lands! Turning Lightning Bolt into a half-price Lightning Helix is nifty enough, but surely there are more exciting things to be done with an ability that open-ended.

Pay to Play

Since Tamanoa's life-gaining capabilities extend even to lands, the various painlands - Brushland, Karplusan Forest and Battlefield Forge - lose their already-modest drawbacks. You tap for a coloured mana and take one damage, but since a noncreature card dealt damage, you then gain one life back. Have two or more Tamanoa out and tapping your lands will actually gain you life. City of Brass, Tarnished Citadel and Grand Coliseum likewise provide pain-free rainbow mana, but note that the same can't be said for Mana Confluence, which requires the payment of life instead of dealing damage. The already-stellar Ancient Tomb makes 2 mana with no drawback, and various "pinging" lands - Desert, Shivan Gorge, Keldon Necropolis, Barbarian Ring and Keldon Megaliths, to name a few - pick up a nice little upside.

Need to get a little more ahead? Those big X-spells aren't going to be all that impressive if you're relying on one land per turn, after all. Talisman of Impulse and Talisman of Unity become better than the signets if you'd like to pay less than 3 for a mana rock. Meanwhile, the almighty Mana Crypt becomes the best mox there ever was once its drawback is nullified.


Share the Love

So not only does Tamanoa gain you life for damaging your opponent, but also for damaging yourself. That said, your opponent usually can't say the same, so how do we capitalize on this fact? Breaking symmetrical effects! My favourite example is Manabarbs, which becomes much more impressive when the effect is one-sided, but Overabundance, Primal Order and Spiteful Visions can wreak havoc as well. Spellshock and Ankh of Mishra hurt your opponent for trying to answer your threats or even putting a land into play, something which most (foolish) players consider to be a sacred act. Combine the Ankh with something like New Frontiers or even Path to Exile and watch your foe squirm.

Acidic Soil and Price of Progress become cheap one-sided burn spells, easily able to knock out a quarter of your opponents's health or more. But of course, in each of these cases, not only is the damage dealt to you immediately undone - you gain more life the more damage your opponents take!


Clean Slate

As most burn players know, of course, you can't just throw fire at your opponent's face all day and hope things will turn out all right. More often than not you'll need some burn to deal with opposing creatures, and Tamanoa has no problem accommodating. Perhaps most exciting is Pyrohemia - you can repeatedly scorch everything, depending on how much mana you have, though you might be limited to 3 damage per turn if you want Tamanoa to stick around. Since the point dealt to you is undone, each activation will gain you a minimum of 2 life from pinging your opponent and the Tamanoa itself. But this life gain is apt to only go up the more creatures there are in play!

Too slow? You can swing some serious numbers around with Blasphemous Act, gaining 13 life for each creature in play. Still not enough? How about 20 apiece from Star of Extinction? That should put you comfortably out of reach for most creature-based strategies. Other good candidates include Earthquake, Aurelia's Fury and Chain Reaction. Comeuppance is spiffy in that not only does it prevent all damage you'd take in a turn and blast the respective sources, but you even gain a like amount of life, Reverse Damage-style. The effectiveness of Hurricane can vary, but rest assured it will always leave your Tamanoa unharmed while clearing the board of flyers.

If your opponent's playing around a boardwipe, you can keep creatures out of your hair for the long-term with deterrents like Powerstone Minefield and Lightmine Field. Even if the attackers are too big to be dropped, the life you gain should offset some of the incoming damage.

Considering you're relying on a creature's ability here, are you a little hesitant to just throw damage around the board willy-nilly? Don't worry, our goal here is to turn global effects into one-sided affairs, and the buck doesn't have to stop at punisher cards. Tamanoa's the right colours to pick up a Shield of the Oversoul, giving you an indestructible 4/6 flyer who can bring down a Serra and eat two Blasphemous Acts without even blinking. If you're concerned for your whole team (and for less mana, and without risking card disadvantage, and...) you can drop Mark of Asylum instead. Since the damage dealt to them is prevented, you won't gain any life from Tamanoa on their account, sure. But see if you care when you're the only one holding any creatures!


A Planeswalk to Remember

Noncreature cards run the gamut for what that could entail, though the one getting the most ink for closing out games lately could well be those shamelessly cash-grabbing planeswalkers! Any time a planeswalker throws damage around, you'll gain a like amount of life. Most relevant in this category is likely the various Chandras, which range from pretty good to pretty coasters. Most impressively, Chandra, Flamecaller can dump X damage on each creature, though Torch of Defiance and Pyromaster can still sling direct damage around, and their abilities work nicely with other burn spells. If you can afford the mana cost, Ugin, the Spirit Dragon comes with a Lightning Helix every turn, and Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh can immediately throw out a 7-point Death Grasp.


Teamanoa

Since Tamanoa's ability ignores creatures, it might be tempting to ignore creature cards for the most part. But they can be necessary in holding down the fort while you're setting up, and even if her ability doesn't apply, there are many who work nicely with your key card. Since you plan on gaining life, probably a lot of it and in several batches, any creature that works with lifegain effects will synergize nicely. Ajani's Pridemate is the budget option, quickly gaining you an enormous beater that can survive any number of Pyrohemia activations. Ageless Entity and Voracious Wurm perform similarly but are mostly inferior options - Archangel of Thune is the best of the lot, being a flyer that pumps your whole army instead. If you're throwing around burn spells, Fire Servant helps give them more punch, and Soulfire Grand Master doubles your lifegain while even providing an outlet for card advantage.


Drawbacks? What drawbacks?

When it comes down to it, running Tamanoa with Manabarbs is essentially removing the enchantment's drawback, in a roundabout way. After all, that's what turning a symmetrical effect into a non-symmetrical one would entail. So what else can have its balancing factor shaved off? Perhaps nothing else as drastically effective, and you won't find much without starting to splash other colours, but there are some interesting options.

Char essentially becomes a less colour-heavy Flame Javelin, which is vital when building around a three-colour card, once the damage it deals to you is negated. Perhaps more exciting is Madcap Experiment, which so long as it doesn't empty your life total all in one go (unlikely with how much you'll be gaining!) all of that backlash it hits you with will immediately be undone. Not a bad savings to fish out an Armageddon Clock, Pyromancer's Gauntlet, Pyromancer's Goggles or Sphinx-Bone Wand, eh?

Looking to do something other than damage? After all, you're unlikely to field a burn spell big enough to pick off that Terra Stomper your opponent hurried out. For such a case, you could consider Aftershock, which is perhaps the most versatile red removal spell for the acceptable caveat of 3 damage. But why accept any sort of caveat? Since you're running those Cities of Brass anyways, adding a splash of black lets you run Ashes to Ashes, which can remove two creatures from the game for only three mana. Eager to close out the game? Try the big bad enchantment Anthem of Rakdos, which becomes extra exciting when it multiplies all of your attackers' power by 2(X+2) for no drawback.

Reverse Psychology

What's the goal of direct damage? Getting your opponent to zero life, right? What if you were to do just the opposite?

Well, not in the long term: eventually you'll fry them down to nothing. But Tamanoa works oddly well with a small-ish subset of cards that make your opponent gain life. Chief among them is the classic Fiery Justice: for the same cost as Tamanoa herself, you get to split up 5 damage however you like. Your opponent gets 5 life out of it, but the drawback is softened somewhat when you do, too. What to do after you spot-removed his whole board? Why, Kavu Predator just got a nice boost from it, too. Even without the Justice, his ability is nice for punishing decks that try to stave off direct damage through life gain.

You can double down on the dual-strategy by running Punishing Fire, which is a direct damage spell that can recur itself every time you tap that Grove of the Burnwillows you're fielding. Your opponent gains 1 life, but you gain 2 and pick off a creature. Sounds like a fair trade, wouldn't you say?

C-C-C-Combo Maker

Putting your opponent in a tight spot with Manabarbs or the like is fun, but Chinese water torture isn't really a burn deck's style. While it's mostly got synergy out the yin-yang, I'd say Tamanoa also has a few true combos.

Most direct, perhaps, is its perfect mirroring of Searing Meditation. The moment you gain life for any reason - which, remember, can involve even just tapping a painland - you can pay two mana to Shock something. Which immediately gains you 2 more life. Pay another two mana, rinse and repeat. Maybe two damage for two mana isn't the most impressive return, but when you can dump all of your mana into it every turn, the game shouldn't last long.

A more recent, and more flashy, trick would be combining Tamanoa with Form of the Dinosaur. Each turn, you completely annihilate a creature, taking its power in damage but gaining a staggering 15 life. 15 life each turn! Add in Repercussion while you're at it and you'll probably kill your opponent on the first trigger. Rarely has Magic so skillfully portrayed the joy of being a Tyrannosaurus meting out martial law.

Another recent addition to Tamanoa's book of tricks relies on the fact that if she's doing her thing, you're gaining life - like, a lot of life. Hopefully enough that you can drop Aetherflux Reservoir and immediately activate it. Yes, 50 life is a lot to pay, but guess what? You'll immediately gain it back when it does 50 damage. Sounds like overkill, until you drop it in a crowded multiplayer game. This might have better application in an EDH or two-headed giant game, where you have a higher starting life total to build off (as well as a higher life total to deplete on your opponent's side of things!)

What's a shared weakness of red burn decks and white life gain decks? No easy way to draw cards - and wouldn't you know it, if you're piloting Tamanoa, you're kind of using both. Thankfully, Well of Lost Dreams is a good fit. Every bit of damage is a source of life gain and hence a potential source of cards. Especially efficient are things like City of Brass and other painlands, which functionally say "Tap: Draw a card." Who needs Library of Alexandria, anyway? The Talismans from Mirrodin are artifact versions of the same, Pristine Talisman is one mana more but actually increases your life total while it's at it, and the mighty Ancient Tomb actually taps to draw two cards! Think they're going to print a land like that anytime soon?