I tend to give too little credit to PTQ players.
As my longtime readers are aware, I can never take too many opportunities to remind people that almost everyone (including myself) is terrible at Magic. I think it’s an important perspective to maintain, because it keeps our minds constantly focused on how we can improve in order to, well, stop being terrible. But not everyone is awful, and sometimes even awful players have moments of incredible insight. These aren’t necessarily just “Friggorid” moments, either – and before my inbox gets besieged with hate mail, this is not a bag on Rizzo, who is one of the greatest writers the Magic community has ever produced – but can be subtle alterations to a decklist that greatly improve its winning percentage against the entire format. It can be a piece of severely underutilized technology like Chalice of the Void or Destructive Flow today, or a simple shift in numbers like running the full four Keigas and Melokus in Kamigawa-Ravnica Standard Tron.
These decks win blue envelopes, and then technology evolves to try and beat those decks, and then people start doing crazy but correct things like running Bonesplitters in their 2005-era RDW decks, or Cremate and Vedalken Shackles in their 2005-era Psychatog decks, or Granite Shard in their 2005-era Vintage Workshop decks, or whatever. Innovative and intelligent PTQ players are able to collectively engineer their creations to accomplish certain goals X, Y, and Z extremely well, and tend to win PTQs because doing X, Y, and Z plugs a certain hole in the metagame.
The consequence of that kind of long PTQ season, though, is that the more decks evolve to handle certain very specific problems effectively, the more profitable it is to bring on the beats. Well-designed aggressive decks present a broad range of threats that are not answered by one or two very narrowly-applied strategies.
Richard and I recently designed a Flow deck that was bashing every single deck that had taken a blue envelope over the last three weeks – including other Flow decks – but it absolutely positively could not handle a stock Boros list. It occurred to us that we ought to debut the Flow deck, wait a week or two until it was everywhere, and just start swinging with Creature-Cats until we took the finals. I employed a more or less similar strategy last Extended season, playing Heartbeat when all anyone cared about doing was returning three lands from their graveyard to their hand and / or stopping someone from doing the same.
Judging by the recent trends away from raw-power decks like TEPS and towards metagame scalpels like Flow and Flores’ G/W concoction, we might be at a similar point in the season now. I’ve seen a lot of innovation in just a few weeks, from Alex Kim Cephalid Breakfast to Elemental Bidding to even my sixth-round-PTQ-opponent’s three-color Tog with maindeck Dark Confidants. I’ll give credit where it’s due, and there’s a lot I think can be done with that list. I therefore want to present an option for those who want nothing more than to turn men sideways, and cast just enough spells to avoid dying in the process.
A word on this deck first, though. Unlike the Tron deck, which Richard and I had been sculpting more or less every day for a month, I have done minimal playtesting with the creation I’m about to present. Because of that, some suggestions of mine might actually be downright stupid. If they are, please let me know in the forums, and especially let me know why something might not be working as intended. I’m not attempting to present the exact 75 cards that you ought to bring to the table. Rather, I want to provide some food for thought and a decent skeleton that other designers can build upon after me.
At the same time, I am basing this deck on sound theories and ideas that I’ve had when testing Tron over the last month. I’d be helping someone else playtest and jot down a few notes about how I think a stock list could be better, or some problems that certain cards or sideboarding strategies would take care of. I’ve talked to other very good players who have said these strategies have worked for them. So please don’t think I’m just writing down everything that comes to me. I’ve got enough faith in this list that I can promise you it won’t be a waste of time to proxy it up and battle a few matches.
This is my baby Boros, which I like for several reasons. It’s largely based on Pat Sullivan’s California PTQ list, as well as some standard Tsuyoshi Fujita principles for building aggressive decks. It’s designed for a metagame where Tron, TEPS, Aggro-Loam, and Flow comprise about sixty percent of the field, with the ten or so other mainstream Tier 2 strategies rounding out the other forty.
Creatures (22)
- 3 Isamaru, Hound of Konda
- 4 Savannah Lions
- 4 Soltari Priest
- 4 Kird Ape
- 4 Grim Lavamancer
- 3 Tin Street Hooligan
Lands (20)
Spells (18)
Sideboard
I am still a big believer in Sudden Shock. Now that its presence isn’t ubiquitous, Tog decks are rearing their heads again, and I would just as soon have maindeck answers to everybody’s favorite toothy animal. Killing Ravager is also nice, as is having uncounterable burn for the last few points of damage. I am sure y’all are glad that you have great StarCityGames writers like myself to reiterate to you the reasons people started putting that card in their decks in the first place, especially when those reasons have been common knowledge since about October. Jesus, I’ve gone downhill*. But stylish and trendy self-depreciation aside, I’m not sold on cutting this card just yet. It does what it does very well.
Rift Bolt and Reckless Charge are there because they offer the most damage we can get for a single mana – three and five respectively (and six if you have four mana) – without having to resort to real winners like Spark Elemental. It’s unfortunate that we can’t target Soltari Priest with Reckless Charge, since he’s the man that most wants the big Stim-Pak, but we can’t all be Dirk Diggler. The Charge also has a flashback cost that is much more reasonable than Firebolt, and it gives the deck some badly-needed natural resistance to Wrath and Explosives. Rift Bolt is also unusually good in concert with Orim’s Chant, and I’m surprised it hasn’t been seeing more play in general. It’s still one mana for three damage, right? Add in the fact that it gets around Chalice of the Void to a degree, and you have a spell that I want in my sixty cards.
Orim’s Chant might raise a few eyebrows, but it’s quite frankly just completely insane. For one thing, it lets you take Molten Rain out of the deck and thereby reduce the number of lands we have to play. That’s handy because it fulfills every single function Molten Rain would, except that it’s strictly better. That two mana you save generally means that you can deploy a critter that turn where you wouldn’t otherwise, so the two damage from Rain Rain Go Away is irrelevant most of the time. The strict card disadvantage usually doesn’t matter because you’re gaining virtual card advantage back by playing fewer lands. Meanwhile, as opposed to it being completely kold to Remand like Molten Rain is, Chant is basically immune to everyone’s favorite best counterspell in the format that isn’t a permanent. Chant also almost always just beats TEPS when you draw it, unlike Molten Rain, which might not even get cast before it’s too late. All you have to do is identify the fundamental turn on which the game is about to swing, and cast Chant on the upkeep of said turn. Hopefully the tempo loss will be enough to carry the game in your favor. It gets even better when you draw several of these
Tin Street Hooligan makes the Tron matchups much easier by either Time Walking / Color-Screwing them off a Signet or by eliminating a problematic Chalice at one that would otherwise shut down your deck. It also helps against the aggro-Rock type decks that rely upon sticking an Equipment and going to town, and can randomly ruin a TEPS player’s plans by destroying an Egg / Sphere / Star / Whatever that they’re relying upon to do their color-math.
Of course, of equal concern is what is not in the deck, and I am sure that I raised one or two eyebrows with my particular choices.
I just don’t think Silver Knight is that good anymore. Trinket-Angel is going to crush this deck anyway, no matter how many Pro-Red guys it has. If we’re already basically all-in on Soltari Priest anyway, I would rather have a Tin-Street that could maybe kill an Explosives at an opportune time, deal with a Pithing Needle on a relevant Grim Lavamancer, or blow up a key land. Against Aggro-Loam, the Protection from Red is nice but is not going to do a whole lot against straight-up bigger creatures. Priest is the man we want after a Devastating Dreams. In the mirror he’s obviously a good man, but this deck is not all that tight in that matchup anyway due to cards like Reckless Charge and Orim’s Chant. I don’t usually worry about mirrors that probably won’t come up all that often and are usually very draw-dependent even if they do.
Pyrite Spellbomb isn’t good anymore for similar reasons: nobody plays Boros, and you’re not beating Trinket Angel.
I don’t like Lava Dart because I generally don’t want to cast a burn spell on turn 1 even if I can. Against Elves or Birds, you want to kill them as late as possible before the other deck’s fundamental turn so as to have a minimal impact on your own development. If you kill a Birds on your turn 1, then you’ve spent an entire turn negating an entire turn (one land drop) of their development. If you can do it on turn 2, though – for example, by pinging it with a Lavamancer you dropped on turn 1 instead – you haven’t really sacrificed much (there’s not a lot Birds decks are doing with three mana generally) but have put yourself up an entire half-turn. Even better, you can disregard it, play men and Charges and burn spells, and then negate the turn that you lost with a one-mana Orim’s Chant on turn 3 or so. Now, Lava Dart is in fact plenty good against decks like Stuart Wright FDW or other general aggressive strategies, but usually the men you can kill with Lava Dart aren’t that relevant anyway by the time you get to the point where you can afford to sacrifice a land.
Only 20 land: Nothing really costs more than two. Why increase your chances of drawing dead? The Ghost Quarter is there in the sideboard for matchups where you need more lands to flashback Reckless Charge, hardcast Rift Bolt, and use Krosan Grip early on in the game. Why handicap yourself in the first game, particularly when America’s #1 men’s magazine is also very good against Tron and Affinity and TEPS even when it doesn’t tap for mana?
I’ve already started talking about Ghost Quarter, so I might as well move to the rest of the sideboard.
The Condemn / Cloak plan is straight out of the Patrick Sullivan handbook, and is basically the best strategy I’ve seen for the mirror. Basically, since the matchup is all about Cloaks and Pro-Red guys, just use Condemn to own their cloaked Pro-Red guys and cast your Cloaks through their burn. Cloak is also good against all mid-range decks, and Condemn is the high nut against Aggro-Loam, so it’s not just as if you’re devoting seven slots to one matchup.
One Ancient Grudge is really random, I know. I wanted four ways to kill artifacts at instant speed out of the sideboard, and three ways to deal with Worship from Flores’ deck. This left me one slot, and Ancient Grudge was the best card to fill it.
Krosan Grip is necessary not only against Scepter, but also is incredibly good (obviously) against Chalice. It gives you a fighting chance against Trinket Angel, particularly if they don’t know it’s coming, and serves to Kill Em Dead any pesky enchantments like Sphere of Law that shouldn’t ever be played but always are anyway.
Jotun Grunt is a bit more of an experiment. Obviously he’s the high nut against Aggro Loam and Ichorid, but he also seems really strong with Reckless Charge against Wrath decks. He’s a big man that you can bring in against Rock-style midrange control, and is a giant house in the mirror just because of his sheer size. I can’t think of a better Armadillo Cloak target, and so many creatures are dying left and right that graveyards tend to stay full.
Like I said before, ship any comments about the deck to either the forums or my inbox. By the time this article gets posted I’ll be in Geneva, so I probably won’t be able to reply for a little while. I’ll try to tackle everyone’s questions sooner rather than later, though. Also, to answer something that’s been posed to me several times over the last several days: Yes, I think Gifts-Chalice-Tron is still the best deck. I would put a Plains Ravnica-Dual in the board that produces a third color of mana so that Explosives can destroy Destructive Flow, and I’d replace the Nomad Stadium with a Flagstones of Trokair, but other than that I still think the list is tight. To anyone who decides to play it this weekend, good luck.
Zac
*Obligatory irony-on-several-levels-denoting asterisk