The reason I decided to put together Burn in paper is because I just felt very nostalgic about the archetype. The first competitive deck I played was Red Deck Wins during Lorwyn/Shards of Alara Standard, which the local tournament organiser would lend to me for Regionals and PTQs, and I have fond memories of pointing Flame Javelins at my opponents’ faces.

In terms of Modern, Burn has funnily enough been a deck that I have never played at a major tournament before, yet it is the deck that I have played the most of after Dredge, as it was my second-choice deck for three major tournaments (Pro Tour Oath of the Gatewatch, Pro Tour Rivals of Ixalan and Grand Prix Brisbane). For each of these three tournaments, I was so close to playing Burn, and I had brought a physical copy of the deck to each event, but ended up never pulling the trigger. Now that I have put together the deck in paper for myself, I have vowed to play it in a major tournament at some point in the future. 

The great strength of Burn is that it is proactive. Even if you are paired against a bad matchup or your opponent has a good opening hand, you can come out victorious with a quick start and/or taking advantage of them stumbling. However, you do also want to play to this strength. Burn can play a controlling game well, especially against creature decks, but ultimately your goal in most games is to try to get their life total to zero as quickly as possible.

Think very carefully about how you want to sequence your spells. The games where you draw well, it often feels very easy, and it doesn’t matter much what you do, but it’s the tight games where each of your decisions can matter significantly. Questions may come about whether you should kill their creature or go to their face, or cast a Searing Blaze on turn two when you don’t have another land in hand versus holding it to try to hit a better creature in the future etc.

There is no “right” answer to these questions as they are all contextual, but you just need to think carefully about them. My general rule of thumb is to always ask yourself what your path to victory is, and the whole idea is to try to kill them before they kill you.

Try to interact with their threats as minimally as you can get away with, as interacting with them will only slow you down and eat at your own resources. Also, if you are missing certain pieces right now, think about what your outs are and which you have the highest percentage chance to topdeck into, and plan accordingly e.g. putting yourself in a position to topdeck a land for Searing Blaze to win the game is better than putting yourself in a position where you need to draw a one-or-two-mana three-damage burn-spell to win the game (twenty lands versus fourteen burn-spells). 

I almost always keep a hand with two or three lands. One land hands are too risky unless they have multiple one-drop creatures, and you are on the draw, but even then I would learn towards shipping the hand back.

Four land hands are also too risky as it’s just too difficult to put together twenty damage through them as it relies on you to almost never draw another land afterwards.

You may be able to keep four land hands in post-board games if you have a key sideboard card and/or a canopy-land to draw off later. However, it is worth noting that taking mulligans is punishing with Burn as you need a high density of spells to win most games.

When your opponent starts to play bigger creatures than you, there is a temptation to attack into them and finish it off with a burn spell. However, assuming their life total is somewhat low, you are almost certainly better off focusing on burning them out and using your creatures to chump block their bigger creatures if the game turns into a race.

Be careful of how you sequence your lands.

Against other aggressive decks, your life total may be a priority, in which you want to conserve as much of your life as possible and fetch for basic Mountains.

However, against slower decks or combo decks where your life total does not matter as much, you want to maximize your options and have as many colored sources available, for example you may want to sacrifice your Sunbaked Canyon and still have a white source to cast a Boros Charm if you draw into it.

You generally want to play Goblin Guide before Monastery Swiftspear on turn one, as it is likely the better play to maximize damage output. However, it does depend on the context. If you are on the draw, you may want to play a turn one Monastery Swiftspear if you know your opponent will play a 3/3 on their second turn, and you have the ability to play two burn spells on your second turn to swing back with a 3/4 Swiftspear. 

If your opponent has a Kor Firewalker or Sanctifier en-Vec in play that you would like to get rid of, you can attack with one of your creatures, and if they choose to block with it, you can then cast Skullcrack and their creature will die as the Protection from Red prevents damage from being dealt, but Skullcrack makes it so that damage can no longer be prevented.