Boros, Beats, Battlestar Galactica

[hamfactorial]

Since we're all talking theory, I've been considering a change. Seeker of the Way is a nice creature, but it has a lot of overlap with Monastery Swiftspear, and the two fight each other re. the spell count. If he connects with lifelink, I feel great. Most times he's a 2/2, and a worse Kor Firewalker. I want to cut him.

Volcanic Fallout is another great card, but sometimes the 3 CMC hurts me (Elves + Merfolk getting their dudes to 3/3, Affinity does a lot of damage before I get to turn 3).

This is the swap I want to test -

-4 Seeker of the Way
+4 Pyroclasm
-4 Volcanic Fallout
+4 Char

Pyroclasm does the job of Fallout, minus the self damage, and I can play it earlier. It's not uncounterable, or an instant, but the speed may make up the difference, giving me an edge against swarm aggro.

Char gives me a lot of extra damage to the face, and I'm still taking the 2 damage that Volcanic Fallout used to do.

Relying on Pyroclasm against Delver/YP decks opens me up to Spell Snare, but I think I can play around it with smart Lightning Helix / Boros Charm use.

[Valdarith]

I think part of the problem is that you're running too many 4 ofs. In particular, 4 Boros Charm seems really out of place here. Wrath effects are few and far between in this format and you'd be better served to dedicate those slots toward something else since I can't imagine the double strike mode coming into play too much with your creatures being so small. I can't say what that is since I have no experience with your deck, but with enough thought I'm sure you could find a better substitute.

[hamfactorial]

I agree re. Boros Charm. I often board it out for SB hate because it's usually just a 4 damage Lava Spike. I used double strike once against the Bogles deck on Sunday, and occasionally it makes my stuff indestructible against Tron's Oblivion Stones, but it's usually just a finisher.

The deck is so swingy relative to the metagame that I don't get the chance to really tune it well. One week it crushes, the next it's guaranteed 0-4 drop. The 4-ofs are a symptom of that. When the deck is good, I just want to play the hyper-consistent version and collect easy tickets.

But, in the interest of being a better deck builder, I'll trim the 4-ofs down and see what that lets me include. Isochron Scepter I'd certainly like to play as a 1-of, for example.

[Valdarith]

Have you given any thought to being a really aggressive Blood Moon deck? This deck seems perfect for that kind of strategy if you adjust the lands a little. It's not like you care about it being dead to Burn with you maindecking four Kor Firewalker.

I just get the feeling you really want to be playing a big mean hate deck.

[hamfactorial]

Certainly! I love a good Blood Moon, and I have plenty of ways to get Plains out to play KFW on time.

That means PtE goes away, but that's fine as long as I can find enough game to not scoop G1 to Twin.

[Valdarith]

Well, you could play Chained to the Rocks, but it's not instant speed so that could be an issue. You could play Hushwing Gryff if you really wanted to hose Twin specifically, and it's also great against Anafenza CoCo. Or you could just go with your previous plan and play Char.

[hamfactorial]

There's always that

If I wanted to screw with Twin, I'd play maindeck Auriok Champion since I can burn out the Pestermites.

[Valdarith]

[deck]
4 figure of destiny
4 seeker of the way
4 kor firewalker
4 boros reckoner

4 lightning bolt
4 lightning helix
3 pyroclasm
3 blood moon
4 char
2 chandra, pyromaster

4 Arid mesa
4 windswept heath
4 flooded strand
3 sacred foundry
2 clifftop retreat
6 plains
1 mountain

2 chained to the rocks
2 stony silence
3 rending volley
2 jötun grunt
1 spellskite
2 celestial purge
3 volcanic fallout
[/deck]

Just threw the sideboard together based on what I know you like. One thing I overlooked is that you're light on threats when you board out Kor Firewalker.

[hamfactorial]

I like those Reckoners, I remember them fondly from Days of Standard Past.

I also like that you went higher on land, I saw all the 3 drops and got nervous until I counted.

[Valdarith]

I went a little psycho on white sources at 23. Could probably afford to go to 20. You need 22 colored for Reckoner, so maybe Ghost Quarter could be lands 23 and 24.

If you want to get away from Pyroclasm maindeck, this is a great shell for Lavamancer.

[hamfactorial]

I'm going to test it while the meta is still ripe for abuse

[Toddington]

Shoutout: http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/article.a ... m+Yurchick

[hamfactorial]

errbody loves my 4-ofs

[Toddington]

And again: http://www.starcitygames.com/article/30 ... Scale.html

[hamfactorial]

My Burn goes to 11

[RedNihilist]

That deck is almost shifting to Skred, Val.

[GoblinWarchief]

You should try playing Norin Soul Sisters. Maybe I should put it in a new thread, but since it's red/white for now i share her my current list:

[deck]

4 Norin the Wary
4 Champion of the Parish
4 Soul's Attendant
3 Soul's Warden
3 Ajani's Pridemate
3 Ranger of Eos
2 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
2 Purphoros, God of the Forge
1 Legion Loyalist
1 Heliod's Pilgrim

3 Lightning Bolt
2 Path to Exile
2 Chained to the Rocks
2 Genesis Chamber
2 Spirit Bonds
1 Return to the Ranks

4 Arid Mesa
4 Sacred Foundry
4 Plains
3 Mountain
2 Clifftop Retreat
2 Cavern of Souls
1 Eiganjo Castle
1 Battlefield Forge
[/deck]

Sideboard is not set in stone but it obviously includes red and white bombs like blood moon, stony silence and rest in peace, more removal (other paths/bonfire of the damned), wear/tear, burrenton forge tender ...
The deck is fun to play and quite competitive because it is good at any stage of the game. You can have an insanely fast start with turn one champion of the parish, turn two champion plus norin, which means that at the end of turn two you will have a 4/4 and a 3/3 that continue growing. You can play the control role because you have good removals and usually are favored in the long game since few things can keep up with norin triggers that make tokens, gain life, deal damages or make your creatures bigger every turn. Ranger of Eos is especially insane here because the one drop you search will end up being an infinitely large creature.
The problems are consistency (you can have draws with all "combo"cards and no norin, or just small creatures removal and then flood out.... but usually you should be able to execute a cohesive and powerful gameplan) and other combo decks which are problematic to beat since you usually don't have an extremely fast clock or a lot of disruption. Twin is very beatable though, especially if you play auriok champion that i don't own at the moment.

[hamfactorial]

You dudes can post all the Boros decks you like, I'm happy to discuss any of them.

[Whole]

so was reading Adrian Sullivan's article and noticed your deck posted. Seems exactly like my kind of deck. Look forward to playing it.

[hamfactorial]

Happy to hear your testing results after you get the cards together.

[Whole]

Tried to be a cheap pleb and play stone rain instead of Molten Rain. Lost to Tron by 2 damage after I stone rained him. Immediately spent 4 dollars on molten rains LOL

[hamfactorial]

LOL! Ya blew it

[Whole]

lol @ this burn matchup. that is all i can say

[hamfactorial]

Yes, it stomps all over Burn and many other decks as a fun bonus.

Here's a slightly different take that I've been testing.

[deck]Baby Boros Blood Moon Remix[/deck]

[Whole]

What do you typically name with Runed Halo out the board?

[Valdarith]

Deceiver Exarch. Primeval Titan.

[Valdarith]

Sideboard does need work though.

[hamfactorial]

What do you typically name with Runed Halo out the board?

Miscellaneous stuff that I can't easily deal with. It's very good against Bogles, pretty good against Burn, good against Scapeshift. It fills some good gaps against random stuff I can't dedicate SB spots to.

[Valdarith]

You need more artifact hate.

[Valdarith]

I know you're running maindeck Pyroclasm for Affinity, but there are plenty of other artifacts you're going to want to deal with in postboard games. Blood Moon isn't enough against Amulet.

[hamfactorial]

You need more artifact hate.

I left out artifact hate for a reason, I'll explain it here and we can discuss it.

I had some Wear / Tears and Stony Silence for a time, but they were only making my favorable Affinity matchup better.

To stop Tron, I need to play Stony Silence on turn 2 consistently on the play, which commits me to playing 3-4 of them for reliability. They're crappy on the draw, and a terrible topdeck.

Tron's threats are Wurmcoil and Karn, plus a backup plan of Emrakul. Stony Silence does nothing but put a speedbump in front of their ramp, and is completely dead once they've gotten the Urza lands online.

I can PtE the Wurmcoil Engines, so I'm not very scared of that (backup plan isi a big first striking FoD). Karn is a pain, but weak to a Runed Halo since he has to -3 to get rid of it, putting him at 3 loyalty for an easy kill.

Emrakul is a bastard, but if they've ramped him out I'm probably already dead.

Other than Tron, what artifacts do you fear in the current meta?

[Valdarith]

Amulet of Vigor, Cranial Plating, Spellskite, (Bl)inkmoth Nexus, Wurmcoil Engine. But especially the first three.

My opinion is that you're playing the best sideboarding color in the game but you're not diversifying your sideboard in spite of that fact. You could do a LOT better than Torpor Orb or Runed Halo. You may also want to consider increasing your land count to run Ghost Quarter in the maindeck to hedge against Tron and Amulet, both of which are terrible matchups for you. You could just concede the former match, but the latter sees far too much play for me to ignore.

[Valdarith]

tl;dr your sideboard cards are far too narrow.

[Valdarith]

You could always just run a transformative sideboard to combat your bad matchups. You're already a hatebear deck, but a very narrow one that only destroys a few specific matchups. Perhaps build your sideboard to address your bad matchups, but do so in a way that you have some cards that come in to address at least two and preferably three matchups.

[Shadowlink]

Hey all, I'm really liking the new ways this deck has evolved since I first started reading this thread. I originally made my own variant of this deck as a way to fight my local meta, but since then its evolved to the point where I'm hoping it may be competitive at a PPTQ or higher level. I thought I'd post it here and see what you all think.

[deck]4x Figure of Destiny
2x Grim Lavamancer
3x Dark Confidant
2x Soulfire Grand Master
2x Brimaz, King of Oreskos
1x Olivia Voldaren

4x Lightning Bolt
4x Lightning Helix
3x Kolaghan’s Command
4x Crackling Doom
3x Terminate
4x Inquisition of Kozilek
1x Slaughter Pact

3x Plains
2x Mountain
1x Swamp
4x Arid Mesa
2x Bloodstained Mire
2x Marsh Flats
4x Sacred Foundry
2x Godless Shrine
1x Blood Crypt
2x Clifftop Retreat

Sideboard
4x Kor Firewalker
3x Fulminator Mage
2x Volcanic Fallout
2x Rest in Peace
2x Stony Silence
2x Blood Moon[/deck]

The shift from pure boros to a mardu shell was from a desire to run Crackling Doom, and so far its been incredible. The card completely hoses boggles and infect, and causes other decks a lot of problems as well. Kolaghan's Command also continues the shift from a pure agro deck into a more value oriented / semi mid-range version. The land base is still a work in progress, I would like to try a couple filter lands, but don't own any yet.

I tried submitting this as a deck and nothing I do seems to make it work. If any of the mods see it and want to fix it, that would be great.

[Valdarith]

You should take a look at the Mardu thread.

[Valdarith]

viewtopic.php?f=40&t=3098

[Shadowlink]

Unfortunately the mardu thread seems to have a lot less interest, and posts from 4 months ago are pretty far removed from the current meta. If this isn't the place to discuss my deck though, I understand. I'll try posting it there and see if it generates any discussion.

[hamfactorial]

I'll join the discussion there!

[Shadowlink]

That'd be great Ham, I would love your input.