Is Fiery Gambit the Best Magic the Gathering Burn Spell Ever? You'll Have to Flip to Find Out!

by  R.A. Rowell; Co-Owner of Intent-sive Nature & the Brand Shamans network

Flipping coins isn’t something you ordinarily do in Magic: the Gathering. The most famous, and expensive, card that involves a coin flip is Mana Crypt. But there’s another card that packs a lot of punch if you happen to call three coin flips in a row. It’s called Fiery Gambit, and it’s a rare from Mirrodin. After being worth a dollar for years, players are finally beginning to buy this card out due to the fact that there’s a fun little combo deck you can build with it.

The main card you play alongside Fiery Gambit is another Mirrodin rare, Krark’s Thumb. This Legendary artifact allows you to flip two coins every time that you would flip one and ignore one of them. This is pretty handy, obviously, when dealing with any sort of coin flip card. In the case of Fiery Gambit, it has three different effects based on how many coin flips you call correctly.

For one flip, you deal 3 damage to a target creature. For two flips, you deal 6 damage to each opponent and deal 3 damage to a target creature. But for three flips, you get to untap all your lands and draw 9 cards, plus the other two effects. For only 3 mana, that’s an amazing deal, if you happen to get 3 flips called correctly. But if you decide to flip and fail, you get absolutely no effect out of it. It’s quite a gamble, but it can be well worth it. Seriously, drawing nine cards in a burn deck and essentially getting a second turn is about the greatest effect you could ever get for 3 mana. And you still get to deal an additional 9 damage!

Heck, if you just call two flips correctly, you’re already dealing with one of the best burn spells in all of Magic. It’s the randomness of this card that makes it so fun. If you happen to run four copies of this card in a deck, along with Krark’s Thumb, and some other burn spells, you could actually have a really fun combo deck that could win every once in awhile. There is this Fiery Gambit Wins decklist on Tappedout.net, but it’s hardly the best list you could run. It has the right idea, though. But we'd play a deck more like this:

Fiery Gambit Wins?

Land (24)

4x Battlefield Forge
4x Clifftop Retreat
12x Mountain
4x Plains

Creature (8)

4x Stuffy Doll
4x Boros Reckoner

Instant (8)

4x Lightning Bolt
4x Boros Charm

Sorcery (16)

2x Blasphemous Act
4x Fiery Gambit
4x Lava Spike
2x Mana Clash
4x Rift Bolt

Artifact (4)

4x Krark's Thumb


The list on Tappedout only ran 18 lands, so that count really needed to be bumped up. White mana is added to be able to include Boros Charm as a direct burn spell. A big creature addition in Boros Reckoner can also be cast with either red or white mana. The creature line-up was a bit strange, and Stuffy Doll was a much better inclusion than Creepy Doll.

Stuffy Doll and Boros Reckoner do very similar things in this deck. Both can be targeted with damage and throw it right back at an opponent. Stuffy Doll has the advantage of being indestructible and Reckoner also makes a good defensive and offensive threat. It also doesn’t hurt that Stuffy Doll can also tap to deal 1 damage to itself, and therefore, to your opponent. Guttersnipe was a cute inclusion in the original list, but it wasn’t going to be a consistent enough threat to be worth running

Also, having both of these creatures in the deck allows replacing two copies of the inconsistent, but cute, flip-happy Mana Clash with two copies of Blasphemous Act. Not only is Act a solid board-wipe that has been played alongside Boros Reckoner in competitive play, but it also works really well with Stuffy Doll. Mana Clash still remains in the deck simply because we have the benefit of Krark’s Thumb being able to help us decide when we want to end the Mana Clash damage. It can do a ton of damage for only a single Red mana. You just have to be careful how and when you use it.

The overall burn package has been improved, too. Not only do we have Boros Charm that can serve multiple roles in this deck, but now we also have Rift Bolt that can hit either creatures or players and a full playset of Lava Spike for direct damage. The 4 Krark’s Thumbs remain just for the benefit of Fiery Gambit and the 2 copies of Mana Clash. The cool thing is that you may only ever need to get one flip for Fiery Gambit to be effective because now you can just throw that 3 damage to a creature at your Doll or Reckoner and redirect it to your opponent’s face.

Is this a competitive deck? I highly doubt it. It’s pretty slow and the earliest that you’ll get a creature online is turn 3. It is a Modern-legal deck, and if you were to open it up to Legacy, you could even replace the Rift Bolts with Chain Lightnings. You probably wouldn’t play this deck at a competitive tournament. But at the kitchen table and in other casual environments, this deck can be a fun way to win a game of Magic. Perhaps it won’t match up well with top burn decks piloted by Pro Tour players, but you can build this deck without breaking the bank. Most of the deck are cards that you would play in a top-tier Modern burn deck anyway. So,  why not have a little fun and give this Fiery Gambit Wins strategy a try?

If you have any suggestions on how to improve this deck, or have another crazy strategy you'd like us to look at, leave a comment below.

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