Magic the Gathering: M14 Intro Pack - Fire Surge Review

One thing I can promise is this will be shorter than the Bestial Strength article.  This will also have a video at the end as I'd like to stick to format.  Let us get into the Fire Surge Intro Pack.

  Unlike the Bestial Strength deck, I'll skip my background into MTG and go straight into the details.
Color breakdown is simple here.  The main portion is red, with 37 cards split between 16 Mountains and 21 Red spells, while the remaining 23 are split between 10 Islands and 12 Spells, and the Staff of the Flame Magus being the odd man out.  Although it retains the same land total as the Bestial Strength deck, this is more tolerable as there are 2 copies of Opportunity to draw, unlike the one copy of Into the Wilds or even Garruk's Horde you would need to draw to maybe increase the options you have in your hand (well effectively anyway).  That may be my classic blind dumb luck though, but you can safely swap a few lands out for other cards, just know that in terms of mana potential, there are cards with fire-breathing in here.  In any case the choice of splashing in blue was a wise one, as typically speaking they can balance each other out quite well in a deck with red providing the damage and blue the utility.
  That being said, the two rares of the deck, Chandra's Phoenix and Shivan Dragon are both good choices for the deck when you weigh in the set list, and even then for a core set they both are still solid choices.

Sorry for the glare on Chandra's Phoenix, but these two are another classic example of well executed artwork.

     In terms of the rest of the deck, outside of a complaint about not putting a copy or two of shock in, it is an okay deck with the set list.  Phantom Warrior and Shiv's Embrace are a good combo, and worse case lucky scenario you have three Lava Axes to use in this deck, so it isn't short in burn spell damage.  Trained Condor works well with the non-flier red cards like Regathan Firecat for example, and overall the deck has nice synergy between the two colors, more so than the Bestial Strength deck which was more reliant on the green chunk than the black cards splashed in.

Some personal favorites from the deck.  More cool artwork.

Potential/Card Choice:  9.5/10
     Again, like the Bestial Strength deck, not much I can fault for it when you look at the set list, apart from Shock.  They did go more for burn spell damage over creature damage it seems when you see the other cards in set though.
Balance/Practicality:  9.5/10
     The deck overall works for what it is.  So far I haven't had much problem outside of my own bad luck shuffles with what is in it.
Cost:   10/10
     It is okay for what it is, like the Bestial Strength deck.

Overall Average Score:    9.7/10
     Much like the Bestial Strength deck, this deck is a good base to leap off of if you are getting into Magic, or want to work off a generic blue/red deck as opposed to the more specialized Izzet deck from Return to Ravnica block.

Video of the opening: