Burial Rite is great—not so much in two-deck tournaments where Blood players are everywhere—but it’s an incredible pick for SVO, ladder, or any three-deck environment. Like any good Shadow deck, draw is money.
In the most minimalistic terms possible, the power cards of Burial Rite (BR) Shadow are Myroel, Septic Shrink, and Metatron going second. It goes without saying there are many other strong cards in the deck, some of which are so impactful they could be considered power cards themselves, but henceforth power cards will be simply referring to the aforementioned three.
These are the cards that generally make or break your game. The standard burn plan is to win by our 7PP post-Myroel turn via monstrous non-interactable damage from Myroel’s leader effect, Septic Shrink, and Storm followers.Regardless of whichever matchup-dependent lines we are taking early, the ultimate goal of Burial Rite Shadow is to hit these power cards and deal as much lasting damage as possible. The “way we win” is to deal tons of burn damage—our practical win condition is to draw our best cards.
These resource cards are so broken and so important going first. When I go first with an early BR follower and one of these, I feel like I’ve already won. As important as it is to bury enough times, invoke Lakandula, and deal chip damage, it’s at least equally if not more important to draw as much as safely possible to hit our power cards as often as we can. A 1-drop into draw on turn 2 going first is a “last resort,” not the default line to look for. Ideally you want to invoke Lakandula on turn 3 while putting followers on the board, then play out your resource cards on turn 4. It depends on when and how you can invoke and whether any followers you play are likely to stick. If you need more options and information right away to figure out what to do with your hand, play a draw spell earlier. Similarly if your board will likely be cleared no matter what, try to fit in guaranteed draw spells on turn 2 or 3 instead of hoping they stick. The sequencing of invoke on 3 into draw on 4 or draw on 3 and invoke on 4 will depend on your hand and the matchup.Note that I don’t consider Call of the Great Arm to be a resource card in the same fashion. That’s for a simple reason—on its own, it does nothing to help us find our power cards. The only time Call of the Great Arm is particularly useful early in the game is to recycle or invoke with Ghosthound or Leeds. We value cards because they are strong, not because they are playable. Call has great utility as a 1PP BR, but it is a dangerous mistake to confuse it for being a resource card like Night Terrors, and even more dangerous to keep it in the mulligan without Ghosthound or Leeds. Burying for fun without making progress on finding power cards and without deliberate invoke turns is a surefire way to tank your winrate and convince yourself the deck must be weak.
From here until Mulligan, the information is based on pre-mini. Spectral Stomp obviously is good. What is said about the other cards remains true, but realistically deck space has become much tighter now due to running three Stomps. Most techs outside of your pick of resource cards are generally mediocre at best now.
I consider these 36 cards to be core, but it’s possible to run just two Sin Hunters. In general this is the strongest skeleton for the deck. The more you deviate from this, the weaker the deck will be.
These are the techs that are at least somewhat viable. To be fully honest, some of these are basically not viable, but it’s still appropriate to mention them.Each card will be rated based on Median Performance (Med) and Niche Performance (Niche). Med is a representation of roughly how good you can expect drawing the card to be in a variety of scenarios, while Niche describes how impactful the card can potentially be on its most optimal turns or in its best circumstances. You will find that some cards have a lower Niche than Med, this simply means the card is played for its good “day-to-day” usage rather than being clutch in specific scenarios.I will discuss Tyrant and GTA first since they are the most intimidating techs to see, and there is some important context to establish with GTA specifically.
The median impact of drawing Tyrant is negative, but there are some games versus a ton of healing or games without Myroel where it becomes your only out.It’s mainly the Mysteria matchup if they have double Craig where Tyrant shines the most, but it can occasionally be good anywhere. Generally you will have 20 Shadows by or during your actual turn 7, the possible exception being if you took extremely aggressive lines aiming for an earlier lethal.Going first is when we actually expect to reach turn 7, and going first is also when we get to play the most resource cards. You can reliably draw at least half your deck by turn 7, so you can expect to see Tyrant roughly half the time when going first. Having such a game-changing option available so often at the cost of one deck slot is incredibly strong.
Tyrant is a card that always gives you some way to win regardless of matchup so I value it greatly as a one-of especially for SVO. There are arguable pros and cons in both directions for Tyrant in closed list versus open list—even if your opponent knows your list, they might put too much respect on what is ultimately still a one-of and opt into a defensive line that isn’t their highest-percentage line. Either way, it’s a safety net win condition that overall helps more than it hurts despite technically not being a useful card in most games.Since Tyrant is so expensive, there may also be moments where you can’t connect face with it through Wards. In practice this only becomes a problem against Discard Dragon and occasionally against Mysteria. In the majority of games where I’ve wanted and drawn Tyrant, which is already a fraction of a fraction of all games, there wasn’t a problem with using it. It’s not easy for most opponents to Ward up, heal sufficiently, and threaten lethal all at once.
Med: 1/10 Niche: 10/10
There’s nothing that really says controversy like GTA. As a win condition, GTA is only real in a small number of matchups, but its performance often depends on the opponent more than it depends on you.GTA causes followers that are played from the hand to transform into ghosts, but their Fanfare effects and any other effects that would be triggered by them entering play still activate. Followers put into play via effects like Majestic Sorcery will not be transformed.Overall, GTA doesn’t impress me in most contexts, but if you have severe doubts about the skill of your opponents, then it’s still viable. For the longest time while I was spamming Burial Rite with a variety of different lists, I had not actually used GTA a singular time. It took well over a week before I willingly chose to go for a GTA line, and it didn’t even work. In most versions of the deck, it’s impossible to actually decide ahead of time to go for GTA since you can’t just know if you’re going to have GTA buried + a 7PP Ceridwen ready to play. If you draw one Ceridwen and never crystallize her, you are stopping yourself from winning the normal way via burn damage in favor of a triple gamble:
If this sounds more reasonable to you than winning with standard lines, reconsider the way you’ve been playing the standard lines. The hallmark of a strong or even a decent Burial Rite player is the understanding that GTA is, in most cases, at best unnecessary and at worst another card that does nothing when drawn. No card is more of a crutch in the current meta than GTA in Burial Rite. This may or may not change after the mini-expansion depending on how the meta shifts, since GTA as a card and as a win condition are highly meta-dependent.In any case, there are some differences that affect your turn-to-turn play when you’ve decided to go for GTA, primarily that you might leave unthreatening followers alive on purpose so they get transformed and effectively pseudo-board lock the opponent on the GTA turn. Especially against Mysteria, if you are going the GTA route, you need to do everything you can to make sure their graveyard is griefed. Sometimes you will have to abstain from evolving Myroel to accomplish this.To maximize GTA as a win condition tends to be very all-in and incredibly risky even against opponents with a diverse range of skill. In terms of early- and mid-game confidence for opting into GTA as a line that could come to fruition, the way to make that reliable is to make your whole deck less reliable by playing more copies of GTA. If you think Starsitter or Fallen Sergeant don’t do enough, randomly drawing GTA is so much worse.GTA is effective when the immediate end-of-turn transform or the subsequent passive transform on the opponent’s turn prevents them from dealing enough damage to win. The most obvious matchup where this shines is against Mars, where the ghosts don’t even get buffed by the amulet and there’s no way to pull off a Valiant Fencer combo. It can work against Mysteria, assuming you can reach 7PP before Mysteria could have possibly sent their large followers to the graveyard, which usually happens if you go second with Metatron, though Burial Rite is quite favored in that scenario regardless. GTA can remove a tough Noir & Blanc board against Discard Dragon, but if there’s any class that can easily clear GTA while remaining healthy, it’s Dragon. Depending on how fast and healthy the Discard player is, playing GTA might only be delaying the inevitable. It doesn’t feel like a genuine winning play, against a strong player a lot needs to go right for GTA to even matter. If the player isn’t strong, you are automatically disadvantaged via your deck being less consistent than it should be if you are running multiple GTA.Chess Rune and Wrath Blood can potentially dish out a ton of damage before you ever get the chance to summon GTA, despite it being effective on paper against Mystic King and Garodeth. Between the two, there's a better chance of a successful GTA game against Wrath if anything, but you still can’t avoid playing an early Ceridwen to stabilize.All considered, I would still maintain that Mars Sword is the only matchup where GTA is legitimately good. Even that changes somewhat if Mars plays Metatron.We aren’t done with GTA just yet. See him again in the matchups section.
Med: 2/10 Niche: 7/10
You can almost imagine Starsitter to be a 1/2 Wayfaring Goblin specifically in this deck. She doesn’t draw a real card, but generating a neutral follower that can always be safely buried means it’s far easier and more consistent to assemble a strong early-game sequence given that your hand size starts off small, and it won’t be necessary to play a numbers game weighing the risk-reward of burying other BR cards.It can’t be understated either that simply being a 1PP 1/2 that is reliably +0 to hand size has incredible use cases for a deck with “six Soul Conversions.” For instance, having any 1-drop at all opens up 1 + Night Terrors at the start of turn 4 going second to dig for Metatron, 1 + Corral Souls is a valuable resource play in general, but it can be especially useful to clear Raging Commander through one 1/1 Ward from Castle. In general, this deck performs far more consistently when you are solo keeping a draw spell going first, and it’s the sort of keep you would have to make regardless of your list because it’s that strong. It’s quite useful then to play Starsitter, whose existence makes all draw spells better.Being a neutral follower with the generated Herald also being neutral results in more consistent plays with Call of the Great Arm since it only pulls Shadowcraft followers. It becomes very easy to guarantee yourself a potent curve with many burials and cycles, which then results in a much smoother game. Having Ghosthound + Call or Leeds + Call is already strong, but then to have Starsitter on top takes the hand to another level. Starsitter doesn’t even need to be played in this case, simply drawing her at all and burying her as a neutral follower will often result in guaranteed Call pulls.The common complaint regarding Starsitter is that she is a low-impact card outside of being played within the first three turns going first, and this is somewhat true but as is frequent in modern media, it’s an incomplete truth that doesn’t fill the whole picture.Starsitter is a card that is consistently good. The most vulnerable turns of Burial Rite are turns 1-3 where your hand size and options are limited and you have the least information with which to make informed discards. In this portion of the game where the risk of bricking is at its highest, drawing Starsitter can be actively helpful via improving draw spells and Call of the Great Arm which are already cards you generally want to see early. If your foundation is established, that is you can rapidly cycle through your deck without taking too much early damage, your chance of winning is already high. Although she’s not a card that changes matchups by herself, the mere fact that she helps the deck remain consistent in the riskiest stage of the game is in itself very relevant. It’s worth noting however that even as a 1-drop, Starsitter is generally too slow to keep going second since you are on a very strict timer to assemble your power cards and perform enough burials.
Med: 5/10 Niche: 5/10
Freyja searches for any follower with a trait, so she will always find some useful follower, but it usually won’t be Myroel. On turn 4 going second, she effectively costs 1PP, so you can play Night Terrors on her to dig for Metatron or other combo pieces. Like Starsitter, being a neutral follower has some inherent synergy with Call of the Great Arm.The main issue with Freyja is simply that her usability is almost exactly the same as the other 2PP options that search Myroel consistently while Freyja does not. If you’re running what is almost always just a 2PP follower, it’s greatly preferable to have some more substantial impact than this.
Med: 2/10 Niche: 2/10
The main issue with Azvaldt is simply that it’s not a follower. It’s an overall +1 albeit after a couple of turns if it wasn’t played exactly on turn 4 going second. The immediate countdown reduction actually saves Azvaldt from being a straight-up terrible choice because having two amulets along with your Metatron on turn 4 easily opens the door for the opponent to pseudo-board lock and give you no chance to use Myroel’s evolve effect. If it wasn’t for the countdown reduction, it could actually be detrimental to use Azvaldt in the same game as Ceridwen when going second.Fallen Sergeant is a simple 2PP 2/2 but needs to die before the turn you expect to play Myroel, since the search only occurs at the beginning of your next turn. There’s a bit more room for the opponent to potentially deny the Myroel search, but as an individual card, simply being a follower already puts Fallen Sergeant above Azvaldt. Having Sergeant in the Reanimate pool for Myroel gives you some more chance of refilling your hand with another follower, which may occasionally prove helpful when pushing for lethal on 7PP simply by having an easy burial target.When it comes to either Myroel tutor, the reality is you can only dedicate one slot total to whichever tutor you choose because that’s the only way to guarantee drawing Myroel. Having something close to four Myroels in the deck when she is such a crucial card is nice, but having only one tutor means we can’t stop combo keeping Myroel in the mulligan.What does this mean in regards to Myroel tutors? It means these cards need to remain functional in the deck even if you ended up keeping Myroel, or if you’ve drawn Myroel already in general. In this case, drawing Azvaldt is worse than drawing Tyrant. While Tyrant would at least have niche playability, a redundant Azvaldt has zero playability in this deck despite equally clogging your hand as a non-follower. Ultimately you are still running three Myroel and one tutor, so it’s far more likely that you will draw Myroel first as opposed to only finding Myroel thanks to your tutor.It’s possible for the opponent to transform Sergeant and deny the Last Words, so against an unknown Rune, you simply have to manually destroy him. This is already assuming you’ve drawn Sergeant but won’t draw Myroel naturally, so it’s incredibly rare for this to be a real problem. Depending on the opponent’s deck, it may not even be worth it for them to play Winged Inversion on Sergeant just to gamble that you won’t have Myroel anyway.The main issue with running Myroel tutors is that the slot is generally even stronger with another resource card on top of the six draw spells. If the tutors are best going first anyway, just run something like Orthrus or Huginn & Muninn instead.
Azvaldt:
Med: 2/10 Niche: 1/10
Fallen Sergeant:
Med: 4/10 Niche: 1/10
She has some potential with Spectral Stomp, occupying the same slot as Orthrus or H&M.Right now Sweetsoul is decent, but what the deck needs more of is not necessarily more 2PP BR. The risk points of Burial Rite are:
I feel the tech slots for this deck ought to address at least some of these risk points. Sweetsoul is not a bad card, but she is simply more of what the deck already has without being more capable of drawing specific cards. Redundancy can be good in a card game, but not when BR as a mechanic is not a strenuous quest like Last Words or Evolve count, and especially not when there are cards that address the deck’s potential shortcomings.You might argue that being a 2PP BR helps you not get rolled on board because that can invoke Lakandula, but if we are really talking about increasing Lakandula invokes, what is truly relevant is 1PP BR. That is to say, as long as we are already running all the 1PP BR’s that we can, having Sweetsoul instead of some other tech is not going to have a meaningful impact on the frequency of early Lakandula. Sweetsoul will make the difference sometimes, but I would argue the difference she makes is both too small and too infrequent compared to what some of the other techs offer.The main niche for Sweetsoul pre-mini is to heal a bit more against Vengeance. If you’re planning to bring Burial Rite to SVO however, you would often ban Blood anyway. Even in the mirror, having more card draw, access to card draw, or go-first aggression is more effective. If the opponent plays Myroel first, you can’t even heal with Sweetsoul before they pop off again because you don’t really have a choice but to still play your own Myroel. On turn 5 going first it’s unlikely for multiple heals with Sweetsoul to be your best line because you ought to be playing aggressively, and in general she isn’t very useful unless you are already ahead.That being said, this will likely change with Spectral Stomp simply due to all <=2PP BR cards becoming better due to Stomp existing, assuming that it’s good.
Med: 5/10 Niche: 4/10
This is a great resource card if you invoke Lakandula on turn 2 or 3. Orthrus is nice because she offers an excellent reward for simply doing what the deck already wants to do. The window where Orthrus shines is slightly narrow since she is a bit costly at 3PP, but the improvement she makes to your hand quality in one instant cannot be understated. You stack one BR and draw two cards, but those cards are always Shadow followers, and what you are replacing is a useless Lakandula in your hand instead of a follower on board.In general, having Orthrus in your hand makes turn 2 invoke much stronger.With two random Shadow followers, you are extremely likely to either draw a playable follow-up for the next turn or more of your power cards. The truly unfortunate draws would be another Lakandula—but running Orthrus already encourages you to invoke him early and often—or something like GTA. This is something to consider when opting into Orthrus, because while her reward can be great, it’s still a very committal turn where you are necessarily expecting good pulls. To play Orthrus and end up with nothing is incredibly bad, so I think running Orthrus would be one reason not to play GTA and vice versa. You might think that GTA being an extra 7PP+ target for Orthrus would be a good thing, but to have both naturally drawn on an early turn that you would play Orthrus is extremely rare. Alternatively you could run more GTA and more Orthrus, but then you would be forced to cut Corral Souls and the whole deck just becomes clunkier and weaker overall with fewer opportunities to play to the matchup or take opportunistic lines.The most immediate counterargument would be the following: in the matchups where GTA is actually good, it’s also good if Orthrus draws GTA. This statement in a vacuum is technically true, but you have to remember Orthrus makes you marginally more likely to draw GTA in all matchups, not just the ones in which he’s good. Most of the time, drawing GTA is not useful already, but to draw him off a committal resource card exacerbates this problem. Orthrus basically makes you draw all of your Shadow followers marginally more often, and this is good for Myroel, Septic Shrink, Leeds, and Ghosthound. This is almost always bad for GTA.
Med: 7/10 Niche: 8/10
The rarest resource card to see, but it’s still a resource card so it can’t be that bad. It doesn’t draw immediately so you can’t fish for a 1PP card to play immediately on turn 4 going first and you can’t invoke. Not burying on top of drawing two is really great safety so you won’t have to bury multiple times going first until you have a ton of information.Orthrus pulling exclusively Shadow followers makes her better at drawing power cards outright, but H&M is more reliably slammable on curve going first at which point drawing a spell instead is even better.Neither Orthrus nor H&M are necessarily great post-Myroel since Orthrus would be really inefficient damage, but it’s still some damage if it’s a rare second post-Myroel turn lethal angle. Both cards offer more steam when necessary, but Orthrus is still usually better at that stage. Pulling followers only is generally more useful late-game in a scenario where you would be playing a 3PP resource card to begin with.H&M can feasibly bring you to X = 5 Last Words, especially if you also run Loyal Ghost Pup. The main advantage of this would be clearing Noir & Blanc with either Cerb or H&M.
Med: 8/10Niche: 7/10
Being a 1-drop that is guaranteed to give you a draw spell target the following turn whether it lives or not is cute. In that sense, Ghost Pup can be a 1-drop that helps go-first consistency in a different way compared to Starsitter. On its own Ghost Pup is a -1, but we ought to be hard keeping resource cards going first to begin with, so it’s just good with cards we already always want to see.In several matchups it’s very important to be aggressive going first while still playing draw spells by turn 4 and Ghost Pup fits nicely with that plan.It makes the most sense to run Ghost Pup if you are also running H&M with the goal of sometimes reaching X = 5.I haven’t played enough with this card to rate it based on experience, but it’s promising in a list with H&M.
Ghosthound, Leeds, and Ceridwen are your core BR cards that are always useful. Even if you keep them, it doesn’t mean you have to play them right away. Going first you will often pass turn 1, and in some situations you might even pass turn 2 despite having playable cards on both turns.
Corral Souls is less flexible so it’s a first-exclusive keep, but Night Terrors you can combo with Ghosthound or Leeds going second. The less early pressure the opponent has, the more willing you should be to keep Night Terrors.If you combo Ghosthound + Night Terrors going second, don’t always slam Ghosthound on 1 without thinking. The strength of this keep is that you can play these cards whenever you want and they will remain playable for the entire early-game, even if you never play them until the start of turn 4, you are digging deep for Metatron while hitting BR goals.Night Terrors is honestly so strong that you can consider keeping it in any situation. 1st/Combo with early BR is the more agreeable approach, but seriously, Soul Conversion is too good.
Orthrus is also a resource card made for going first, but how often you keep her will depend on your list. Since I still play six draw spells and have Orthrus in addition to that, I only combo keep her with an early BR setup going first against decks that either do not exert early pressure or do not demand more important early cards.
Keep Call + Ghosthound or Leeds and either recycle your BR follower or make an invoke play. Having a solid BR follower already means you have many good options for using Call. It’s a card with excellent utility, but you must have a robust cheap BR follower to take advantage of that.
Cerberus is a 2/2 that maintains +0 in card advantage and doesn’t change the number of followers in your hand. You have more time going first before you need to have your power cards, so Cerb is great for applying early pressure and contesting the board while keeping your hand healthy. The 1PP dogs are great for going wide, and they can frequently be used as draw fodder on turn 4 or 5. A lot of decks will choose not to full clear anyway if you go wide.Against Vengeance, having a bit more healing from Coco can be quite relevant, and you often get to play Cerb into an empty board even going second.
Starsitter being an alternative Wayfaring Goblin but with a 1/2 statline makes her great going first in general. With fewer cards, it does make a difference to have a free safe burial target such that we don’t have to bury anything more important. In many matchups, having an extra body from the start of the game to push damage, contest the board, and be a target for draw spells all while being a +0 on its own is incredibly nice.
Keep Septic Shrink with any BR card that you would keep normally. If you’re committed to burying something early, you might as well bury the follower we always want in the graveyard.If you feel confident in winning as long as you have your damage, you could even solo keep. It’s most reasonable to do this going second against a deck that won’t pressure early.
Nothing to see here.
Keep Myroel with two good cards going first or one good card going second. The more draw you run, the less you should keep Myroel going first. With six draw spells and two Orthrus, we don’t usually need to combo keep Myroel going first.
You can play BR’s more aggressively or actively going second, and going first you should generally aim for what is most consistent and least risky.
The goal is to make sure we can invoke when we want to and draw as much as we can. Nut curves with turn 4 Septic are possible for sure, but there are some signs to identify how feasible that is.Here’s a hot list of what to do going first. It’s a broad guideline but an excellent place to start:
Just pass! If we play a Ghosthound now, there is no guarantee Leeds + Ghosthound is going to be properly playable. With no Cerb and no Call there’s no need to rush. We only stand to potentially have a bricked hand two turns from now if we play Ghosthound here. It’s very possible, depending on what we draw and how that influences the rest of the game, that playing Ghosthound on turn 1 here could be a game-losing blunder. Make no mistake, early decisions like this can have a profound impact on what is or isn’t possible down the line. If turn 3 and 4 are much worse because of what we did on turn 1, that will have massive consequences on how many cards we can ultimately draw and how close we can actually get to our power cards.
The following turn, we topdeck Ceridwen like a gamer. When you don’t have Septic yet, there’s no need to make Ceridwen count down as fast as possible. I decided to play her this turn, but after the Ghosthound. Her “natural” countdown would be at 4 on turn 5. What I’m looking for is just enough flexibility to dig for Septic and bury her before Ceridwen pops. Playing Ceridwen at all on this turn would mean it’s not aimed for the Myroel turn, but you can expect Dragon to have ramped at least twice by turn 5. I want Ceridwen to pop on turn 5 with Septic buried and force Dragon to play Drazael instead of discarding or ramping as I hopefully follow up with Myroel. Again, it would be problematic if Ceridwen pops just a tad too early if Septic isn’t buried yet. 4 Natural countdown by turn 5 is not a bad amount of leeway considering no draw spells have been seen yet and I am extremely likely to find some within three turns from now. This way I am able to at least not have it pop by the beginning of turn 5 by delaying with spells that I expect to find within the next few turns, but I can still easily pop it on demand during turn 5 if I want.Double Ghosthound is fine on this turn as well, but depending on the order in which we draw more BR or our first draw spells, it could get awkward from here if Ceridwen is not on the board already. I think the only play here that is truly wrong would be starting with Ceridwen.
That’s a comedically well-timed Night Terrors, but when you see this position, you should know you’ve almost certainly won.
It’s a straightforward invoke on 3 with followers into spam resource cards on turn 4 angle. These are the turns you live for.Well hang on a second, what if we did play the Ghosthound on turn 1?Our sequence of draws was Ceridwen -> Sin Hunter -> Night Terrors with the opponent AFK ramping on 3.We were fortunate enough to hit an easy burial target and our cheapest resource card, so it’s safe to say we would not have been punished in this case. Is this line where we passed turn 1 any weaker? No, but it’s absolutely possible to imagine a series of draws where playing the Ghosthound on 1, effectively using a 1PP BR without contributing to a go-first invoke, could have resulted in an awkward hand by turns 3 and 4.Given that we are going first against Dragon, almost anything would have been serviceable, with one of the few awkward topdeck sequences being Myroel -> spells. In general, when going first with a hand of multiple cheap BR followers, you want to avoid burying your other BR’s as much as possible and simply chain invoke + bury Lakandulas. Just because we wouldn’t have been punished this time doesn’t mean taking the line that was more risky with almost no benefit was correct.We could have pushed one more damage. On average, that one damage never comes close to being as impactful as your hand being screwed over due to draw order. The way to protect yourself from any kind of draw order is to not recklessly play 1PP BR’s. If you would have played Ghosthound on turn 1, I can almost guarantee you have not had good experiences with this deck. The reason is because you are making unforced mistakes from turn 1.In any case, the more important timely invokes are, the more important it is to be mindful of when you play your 1PP BR’s.The point is, you only stand to lose by playing 1PP BR’s recklessly when going first. Why take any risk at all when you can guarantee or at least have an extremely high chance of having a smooth game?Of course, the main reason this would change is if you have Call. With Call, you can afford to be more active with Ghosthound in particular.
Anyway, here we are at the start of turn 5. We have a lovely full hand and we were fortunate enough to find Myroel and Septic in the top half of our deck. It’s very convenient that Ceridwen is still at CD1 here so we can bury a potential Septic Shrink between the card draw we spammed on turn 4 plus the natural draw on 5.We ended up having one extra CD to play with by the end of turn 4 because we hit two card draw spells. I think playing the Ceridwen on turn 2 but after the Ghosthound is the best compromise that allows me to adjust based on draws, but double Ghosthound on 2 into Ceridwen on 3 is clearly a great line as well. Again the line we absolutely had to avoid was Ceridwen first when we didn’t have Septic yet. As for what we actually do on this turn, first off do not get baited by that glowing Call of the Great Arm. Call is excellent to start turn 7 with, and our optimal play here has no room for it.
Playing Sin Hunter and Cerb + Mimi is the maximum amount of pressure. What we want to avoid at all costs is a turn where Dragon can happily continue discarding and ramping. This is a board they can never ignore, and this is the power of spawning Septic Shrink on turn 5 against Dragon specifically. If we spawn her on turn 4 for example, it’s still nice damage but they’re always going to jam Si Long either way. Shrink is far more annoying here alongside the Sin Hunter.
Maybe it sounds ironic, but going second is much more straightforward for Burial Rite than going first. With one extra card and therefore immediately more options for what to bury and more information on how you can still invoke, it’s much easier to figure out what you’re doing on each turn.Where the goal going first is to remain consistent and avoid unnecessary risk, the goal going second is to dig very aggressively for power cards while staying alive. Against some decks this means Corral Souls and Orthrus will be much harder to play. Turn 1 BR is often fine going second especially in matchups where you really need to contest the board.The reason we need to cycle so aggressively going second is because we have less time to assemble our power cards. We need Metatron by 2PP remaining on turn 4, and both Myroel and Septic Shrink available immediately after on turn 5. By comparison, we have until turn 6 going first for only Myroel and Septic Shrink and that’s without needing to spend 2PP on Metatron and while having a much easier time playing all our resource cards. Going second while hitting everything is just stronger, but going first is definitely easier to mess up.You will frequently have more resources in hand on 7PP post-Myroel going first than the same 7PP turn going second, which is not surprising given we are comparing actual turn 7 with multiple potential turns to safely draw versus turn 6 with a large chunk of our total PP spent being taken up by Metatron and Myroel. There’s very little time to fit in any resource card that isn’t as cheap as Night Terrors. 1 + Corral Souls or Orthrus on 3 going second is a deceivingly relevant line to cash in the draw on one of the only opportunities we have. This is only if you happen to draw those resource cards though, typically in a list with 7-8 strong resource cards you wouldn’t keep any of them going second besides potentially Night Terrors.In summary, we need to:
We have assembled the trifecta through our keep and early draws. With only 1 BR performed, we need to play Ceridwen + Call -> Metatron.
Avoid evolving on turn 5 going first if at all possible. Against slower decks and particularly Mysteria you can even leave followers on the board in favor of saving the evolve and drawing cards and/or going face. If you ever evolve on turn 5 going first, you should only be evolving face with a strong possibility of turn 6 lethal. Myroel will clear everything, and slower decks may not even benefit from taking a free hit on your face. It’s all about maximizing draw and damage on your own side.
In this example, I didn’t have Metatron so on turn 4 I simply went wide with Cerb + dogs and evolved face with my Starsitter on board. The objective was to somehow survive until turn 7 which would give me a chance to win, and between Coco healing a bit plus the opponent being baited into full clearing with Orthrus evolve, they ended up being literally 1 off lethal two turns later. Even if they had ignored some of my board, it’s not realistic for me to have lethal first without ramping.
With Myroel leader effect active, all BR effects deal 2 damage to all enemies. This means any 1PP BR can become an efficient source of damage especially if they can dig for more damage themselves or be targeted by Corral Souls.Corral Souls is 2PP 2 damage, but it’s damage that can be evolved, can be targeted by Tyrant, and draws two cards. Do not underestimate how valuable Corral Souls can be on your 7PP follow-up. Ultimately you are digging for the most efficient damage sources in your deck, those primarily being 1PP BR and Sin Hunter. It’s common to have 20 shadows by or during turn 7 so Corral Souls as a single card that both digs and provides a target for Tyrant is very clutch.On the extreme end, triple 1PP BR into double Sin Hunter evolve is 6 + 6 + 2 = 14 damage assuming no Ceridwen. This is not even super unlikely considering how many cards you can draw before the Myroel turn and the 1PP BRs can draw or contribute to each other. Ideally you want to be saving these highly-efficient 1PP 2 damage cards for your 7PP turn whenever possible on turn 5.Generally you can expect 11-14 damage on your post-Myroel 7PP turn assuming you have an evolution point and there is no Ceridwen on board. Tyrant raises the upper limit to 17 damage with 1PP BR + Sin Hunter evolve + Tyrant. Going first, you will have drawn roughly half your deck if not more by this point so you can expect to see Tyrant roughly half the time. If you’ve drawn a lot, it’s inevitable that you have a lot of shadows as well. At a mere 1 damage deficit for 16 damage, you can go Ghosthound or Mimi + Corral Souls (evolve) -> Tyrant, digging two to three cards deeper for it and generating some last-minute shadows.Tyrant may not always be necessary and it certainly can be an early brick, but the more efficiently you play, the stronger Tyrant becomes and the more frequently it will be a real option. This is why one Tyrant is overwhelmingly popular among strong Burial Rite players.Each Ceridwen that pops on this turn is an additional 3 damage. If you anticipate burst healing, you can aim for a post-Myroel Ceridwen pop. Unless you are popping early with a massive aggro push going first, Ceridwen is generally contributing just the 3 damage and it’s only a matter of how it’s positioned. Under the assumption that the size of the Myroel board will not be a factor and that the pop will only deal 3 damage anyway, you only stand to gain by positioning the pop to be on your post-Myroel turn. In an extreme scenario, you can even OTK with the 17 damage Tyrant combo plus the Ceridwen. If you are cycling through the deck rapidly and have the means to position a turn 7 Ceridwen pop, there is really no reason not to go for this. Usually it won’t matter, but sometimes it will be a game-changer specifically against Mysteria with double Craig. Again, let me be clear: this is a setup that you can go for with no loss. If you are drawing a lot as you should be going first, you will find Tyrant roughly half the time. You might as well give yourself a chance to OTK.Now, I say roughly half the time, but yes some of your “draws” during the game will strictly not be Tyrant. You will also have typically drawn more than half your deck partway through turn 7. It’s a fair approximation to make.This scenario generally applies going first where you will have the most opportunity to play resource cards. Going second, you won’t have Tyrant active on turn 6 despite possibly being on 7PP. If you survive to see turn 7, then Tyrant gaming becomes possible—to have an OTK-positioned Ceridwen however, it would have to be played on turn 4 with no additional CD reduction on the turn plus less than three burials performed on turn 6. Keep in mind, this is all assuming you don’t have lethal on turn 6 to begin with. The great thing about Ceridwen and running the six draw spells in addition to the standard BR cards is that you have control over when it pops via drawing cards with or without burying at your own discretion.
This is a great example to illustrate the importance of board space with regards to dealing damage. It’s useful to be familiar with these situations as they can occur somewhat frequently against various Rune decks. Septic Shrink is indeed in the graveyard.It’s technically not guaranteed lethal, but it is likely.Basically the trick is to start with Corral Souls on the Myroel and triple trade the ghosts and Fallen Angel into the 3/3 all before we play any BR. This is all to create board space.Burying three times will deal 6 damage and pop both Ceridwens, dealing another 6 damage. To achieve lethal, we have at least two possibilities:
In either case, the utility of Call being a one board space BR that doesn’t actually take up that space is clearly apparent.This example is interesting since it’s essentially guaranteed that our evolution point will never matter. Sin Hunter is also never relevant since we must still pop one Ceridwen, but Corral Souls for space + two BR + one Ceridwen pop + Sin Hunter evolve is only 12 damage with 1PP remaining, so we would need the third 1PP BR regardless. At that point, the second Ceridwen would pop and it’s lethal with our second Corral Souls already.
It’s an expected rough matchup. Going first is optimal but Wrath has a far better chance going second. Howling Demon may be the fattest defense differential, but we actually want to force Wrath to play Howling Demon since the worst scenario is them safely playing Vania Fell Transform on 5. If Wrath gets to play Rhapsody you can just go next, and that’s totally possible if they go first.It’s vital to deal as much chip damage as possible to Wrath because if they are free to play Vania Fell Transformation on turn 5 without the threat of being set extremely low, we will almost certainly die on turn 6. Going second, it just isn’t feasible to force them to not play Vania. The burden of dealing damage going first isn’t too severe, since we don’t even need to have lethal, generally we only need to threaten setting them to 1 unless they play Howling Demon. Depending on their hand, a slightly higher health total might still put Garodeth off the table.Turn 6 Garodeth might not be lethal if Wrath didn’t go first and especially if they didn’t play Vania on 5. This is actually not a bad matchup for Lunelle since the additional bit of damage going second plus the wide board clear can not only stabilize easily but also deal just enough damage for even Howling Demon -> Garodeth to potentially be lethal. Veight is more healing and draw, but it’s easy to create a wide board that will push damage again to offset that healing, plus Veight doesn’t deal the extra bit of face damage to threaten the same lethals in two turns. Unfortunately if we aren’t dealing enough damage by turn 5, Veight into Vania going second is still doomsday.It’s important regardless to top off our defense with turn 5 Septic Shrink if possible. Wrath in particular is a great matchup for Shrink + Sin Hunter on 5. The ideal scenario is being healthy enough to survive most Garodeth combos after their turn 5 and them needing a bunch more healing to survive the post-Myroel turn.This is a matchup where turn 1 Ghosthound can really make a big difference in terms of Wrath’s health total and is incredibly valuable for contesting the board in general. Burial Rite typically has an easy time preventing Wrath from getting any value out of an early Steamrolling Tank so the self-damage can add up quickly. Ghosthound slightly drops in value by turn 3 since even a tempo Raging Commander can clear it along with anything else with 1 defense. It’s here that Angelic Starsitter and Coco can really shine with their 1/2 statline.Definitely aim for turn 3 invoke. Going second, 1 + Corral Souls on 3 to clear Raging Commander through one 1/1 Ward can be relevant.
Mulligan difference: Hard keep CerberusAfter all these years, some things never change. Very frequently the counterplay to Vengeance is to plan out a multi-turn lethal where you do not let them enter natural Vengeance until you are ready to burst them down in one turn from 11-14 defense.We are beyond human. We see Myroel on turn 6, and we don’t play it.
We take a defensive line on turn 6 instead of jamming Myroel because it’s written plain on their face that’s what they’re looking for. With a CD4 Ceridwen and Septic Shrink in the graveyard, we are primed to deal 12 damage next turn with Myroel evolve + Call, plus an extra 2 from the Mimi on board for 14 total.
It’s really ideal if we can set and burst from 13-14, any lower and we might get bodied by Razory Claw. At the very least, on 6PP they can’t Galom + Marron evolve if they have to Razory first.For the Vengeance side, they generally want to be in Vengeance on turn 6 every game to begin with, so if you see they have manually activated for turn 6 then you simply have to race. It’s not too bad unless they’ve been hitting all game long.Try to deny targets for Room Service Demon going into Vengeance’s turn 5. Force them to have Waltz. This sometimes goes hand-in-hand with leaving them outside of natural Vengeance anyway.In general, most Burial Rite players struggle in this matchup when they effectively give the opponent lethal by just autopiloting their damage. If you properly play around Vengeance and force the Vengeance player to simply have everything off their draws alone, the matchup is really playable.Heal with Septic Shrink and Coco wherever possible. Always try to save a 1PP BR to combine with turn 6 Myroel and a Ceridwen pop for your 7PP burst turn. Do not be afraid to trade off your own Septic Shrink to prevent her from dealing damage and activating Vengeance.Going second, we need to be careful about turn 4 Galom since she makes Metatron unplayable without additional removal.
Both Burial Rite and Mysteria are generally stronger and faster on average when going second. Generally, Mysteria needs double Craig along with their full combo setup. It’s far easier to pull that off going second between the extra card, Angel’s Blessing, and having the chance to evolve Originator twice.Even if Mysteria heals with double Craig, if they don’t have lethal next turn, we can just clear and set up lethal again. This is the crucial importance of running multiple resource cards. It’s completely impossible to keep going after the first post-Myroel turn if we don’t run at the bare minimum six or seven cards that draw two.Chip damage that doesn’t take Mysteria below 15 defense generally won’t be real if they haven’t evolved Duo yet. If you can get them below 15 however, you can even opt to go face with Corral ghosts for example while ignoring their board.When going first, always give yourself a chance to OTK on 7. We’re already unfavored from going first in this matchup on top of assuming they have literally everything—even then, we still have just under a 50% chance to scam them with a Tyrant OTK. The most contentious part of this combo is drawing Tyrant by turn 7, which going first should happen roughly half the time. We need a Ceridwen by turn 4 or 5 that we intend to pop on 7, one Sin Hunter by turn 7, and one 1PP BR that we can save. While drawing deeply as we should, this is really not rare at all. Mysteria would need not just the double Craig and full combo by turn 7, but an additional Exchange Party to spend on turn 6 creating a wall of Wards while still having lethal in hand after healing infinite. It’s a lot to ask in a scenario where they are already favored by going second.When we go second, it’s more difficult for Mysteria to have turn 7 lethal simply because they aren’t going second. They may evolve Originator on 5 and save Duo until after the Myroel turn to make sure no healing is wasted—it’s the best line to stay alive but this makes turn 7 lethal almost impossible which generally means they will die over two turns anyway.Be careful about playing double Ceridwen going second against Rune in general. If you play Metatron and she doesn’t take damage, Mysteria can easily not trade with Originator or not evolve with Duo and leave you with only two board slots and no way to evolve Myroel.If you run GTA, he can potentially shine here, but only if you are already going second with Metatron, in other words if you are already favored! Turn 6 GTA is almost certain to nail at least one if not two crucial Mysteria followers. Going first however, Mysteria could easily have an established graveyard before your turn 7 especially if they keep Anne in the mulligan.The most concerning thing for Mysteria versus GTA is not even the names, it’s the potential lack of workable board space if they have too many followers sitting around at the end of turn 6. Then even if they play Majestic and hit Duo (+ Grea), you can have GTA survive if you pre-evolved to 12 defense and they would never have lethal if multiple ghosts are clogging their board.I do want to stress this though: it’s really not up to you whether GTA works or not unless you go second with Metatron. Mysteria has the capacity to play around GTA, and frankly depending on their draw, they might render it useless entirely by accident. There’s a reason why almost none of the strong Burial Rite players are running GTA despite playing in formats where Mysteria is more popular.
It’s a classic Chess Rune matchup, you know the drill.Particularly when going first, track their Pawn count and aim to deny stacking on turn ~5 via killing off your followers or otherwise leaving no targets.When going second, we often have to just jam Metatron Myroel and try to kill them first. It’s difficult to deny Pawn count while simultaneously setting up two-turn lethal going second.Burial Rite is pretty good at preventing chip damage from enemy followers surviving on board. Mind your invokes, anticipate Rook. 1 + Corral Souls on turn 3 second is a real option.If King doesn’t cost 5 at the start of turn 6, they probably lost already.If King does cost 5 on turn 6, they still lose if you have lethal by your post-Myroel turn and if they do not have lethal immediately. Before considering Coco or Septic Shrink from hand, Chess needs some combination of multiple Knights connecting face or spellboost damage spells to reach lethal with full board King + evolve being 14 damage to start.If the opponent has been playing a ton of spells, beware of sudden burst on board supplemented with Crushing Rain, Raining Blades, and Knight. Sometimes there’s no real solution—you should still deny 8/8 Pawns if you can—but you may occasionally benefit from Coco or Septic Shrink from hand.
It comes down to board space, but we can destroy our own followers. There are a lot of strange lines you may have to take in this matchup depending on what exactly is going on, but you have so much time that there’s really nothing to worry about.Call of the Great Arm being a BR that only needs one board space is really valuable for popping Ceridwen and escaping pseudo-board lock scenarios. To properly lock Septic Shrink, the opponent specifically needs Greater Will. Usually it will be pretty easy to exhaust Seven Forces resources simply by playing efficiently and having the minimum mindfulness of board space.
It's a race unless you hit them with GTA, then it's usually just a win.Avoid having three followers at a time on early turns so you don’t get bodied by Vanguard + Flame Soldier. Try not to let them have a damaged follower on board going into turn 4 going first.Generally aim for turn 3 invoke going first and try to do so without leaving three followers.Manually blocking your board slots to prevent Lakandula from invoking so your last copy can be used on the following turn can occasionally be useful in this matchup. By letting your last invoke happen on a turn where it actually helps, you could go face with an extra follower instead of trading.
Our number one priority is to disrupt Discard’s ability to AFK ramp and discard. To that end, we want Ceridwen popping on turn 5 and invoke on 3 -> resource card on 4 going first. Why are we destroying some of our own board on turn 4 if we are trying to pressure them? Because unless we draw, it’s beyond unreasonable to have any proper follow-up on the turn that actually matters: turn 5. This is the key point to attack Discard Dragon. If we force out a Drazael here, we usually win.By the way, do you know why Corral Souls is good on turn 4? One reason is because if we have any other draw spells by then, we can just target the ghosts! We don’t even need to destroy that much of our board! Lose one follower, draw two to six cards, most often drawing four! While going first! Sounds good to me! You’d be amazed how many people don’t realize this.The difficulty of this matchup was never Drazael, it’s the Noir & Blanc boards which are not really possible to clear without an evolution point, and even if you have one, it’s still rough to get through two. We need to be in a winning position before Discard gets to this point. This is why it is so crucial to have Ceridwen popping on turn 5, it’s just too hard to have enough pressure otherwise. A full or nearly full board that doesn’t have at least Septic Shrink on it can pretty easily be ignored and locked. On turn 5, you must ensure Dragon can’t get away with ignoring you.Of all matchups, this is the one where GTA is the biggest bait. It’s not like Mysteria where it’s good sometimes, nor even like Wrath where it might be good if the opponent is trolling. Against Dragon, it is strictly bad for multiple reasons.
Mulligan difference: Septic Shrink 1stIt is the primeira liga. Usually whoever plays Myroel first has a massive advantage, but it’s possible to smorc going first and threaten lethal on turn 6. It’s hard for the second player to clear multiple followers while evolving Metatron, but it’s also hard for either player to stick any early board against Lakandula invokes.Septic Shrink being a 3/4 is really strong against Burial Rite’s turn 4 second. You want to keep a Shrink in hand going first to keep this line alive. Having other followers in play along with the Septic Shrink makes Leeds or Lakandula not a guaranteed clear. This often means playing draw on turn 3, anticipating that the opponent would clear with Lakandula anyway, then going Septic Shrink + Ghosthound on 4 with at least 3 BR performed at the start of turn.If you go second, just hope the opponent doesn’t do the above or you win the coinflip and snipe the Shrink. If you pass those checks, you should win by playing the first Myroel.The first player should only be evolving on turn 5 to deal damage for turn 6 lethal. When going second without Metatron, you can try to swing the board and make an aggressive play on turn 4 to bait a defensive evolve. Then there’s a chance for the first player to not have lethal on their post-Myroel turn.
Burial Rite is strong in 3-deck, and especially in SVO. It’s certainly not too late to learn it since the deck looks to be strong again next month after the mini-expansion drops. The new Spectral Stomp may affect the deck build and result in more standardized lists, but all the concepts and lines explored here will certainly remain equally if not more relevant.