{From Right Field is a column for Magic players on a budget or players who don’t want to play netdecks. The decks are designed to let the budget-conscious player be competitive in local, Saturday tournaments. They are not decks that will qualify a player for The Pro Tour. As such, the decks written about in this column are, almost by necessity, rogue decks. They contain, at most, eight to twelve rares. When they do contain rares, those cards will either be cheap rares or staples of which new players should be trying to collect a set of four, such as Wildfire, Forge[/author]“]Battlefield [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author], or Birds of Paradise. The decks are also tested by the author, who isn’t very good at playing Magic. His playtest partners, however, are excellent. He will never claim that a deck has an 85% winning percentage against the entire field. He will also let you know when the decks are just plain lousy. Readers should never consider these decks “set in stone” or “done.” If you think you can change some cards to make them better, well, you probably can, and the author encourages you to do so.}
If you’ve never seen Office Space, you owe it to yourself to go out right now and buy it, especially if you work in a cube farm like I do. Don’t rent Office Space. Own it. You will watch it enough to justify buying it. If you’ve already seen it or you actually own it, you should be loaning it to people who need to be enlightened and entertained.
I mention this landmark work of workplace cinema because, much like Ron Livingston’s character Peter Gibbons, I was thinking about what I’d do if I had a million dollars in the bank and didn’t need a craptastic job where people are actually encouraged to yell at me. Much like Peter, I’d like to stay home and watch movies. I’m way, way behind on my movie watching. I’d also read. And I would most certainly play a lot of Magic. I might even play enough to get good at it.
Alas, I don’t have a million bucks, and I am stuck in this cubicle he11. Fortunately, I still get to play Magic. I also watch t.v.
“There oughta be a time machine where you can go back and just shut up.” – Chris, Everybody Hates Chris
If you don’t know me, my name is Chris, and like the kid on the t.v. show, everybody hates me. It’s okay, though. Often, I hate me, too. Like when I decide that I’m going to make a deck based around a preconstructed deck, and I have no idea in what direction to go while simultaneously having this nagging feeling that I’m beating my head against a spiked wall because it’s going to end up stinking no matter what I do.
On the other hand, if I do it, you won’t have to. You’re welcome.
The Ravnica precon that I chose to modify this time is the Boros Guild (R/W) precon. The unmodified decklist is:
23 Lands
10 Mountain
10 Plains
2 Boros Garrison
1 Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion
25 Creatures
2 War-Torch Goblin
2 Viashino Slasher
2 Ordruun Commando
1 Greater Forgeling
2 Nightguard Patrol
1 Screeching Griffin
2 Boros Swiftblade
3 Thundersong Trumpeter
3 Skyknight Legionnaire
2 Flame-Kin Zealot
1 Agrus Kos, Wojek Veteran
3 Boros Recruit
1 Boros Guildmage
12 Other Spells
2 Dogpile
2 Cleansing Beam
1 Bathe in Light
2 Lightning Helix
2 Rally the Righteous
1 Terrarion
1 Cyclopean Snare
1 Sunforger
I honestly don’t know what to make of this. It has a little bit of this and a splash of that, hold the mayo.
“Then, why’d you pick this, you rube?”
There are several reasons. You can decide which ones you like and/or think are true. Let’s see, I’d already done the Golgari Guild deck, and JMS has done the Selesnya Guild deck on the Hasbro/Wizards site. That left only two other precons. As everyone should know by now, I am White. Like a polar bear eating marshmallows in a blizzard. Or like a list of potential Supreme Court nominees. Buying two of the Boros precons would give me two Sunforgers, four Lightning Helixes, six Skyknight Legionnaires, twenty Mountains, and twenty Plains. Also, the little man who lives in my brain told me to. So, I went to the MTGO store, bought two of the decks and a few tickets.
The End.
Ha ha ha ha ha! Not really! There’s more article to come. Now, sit down, and enjoy it, or I’ll send Rosie O’Donnell to your house to sing. In her lingerie.
On quitting smoking: “[W]e heard somewhere to try carrot sticks. We tried it, but we couldn’t get the d*mn things to light.” – Earl, My Name is Earl
Given that I was a bit confrogulated as to what to do with the deck, I thought I’d play some preliminary games with the deck just to see what it felt like. Hopefully, it would guide me as to how exactly I should smoosh the two together.
Perusing the decklist, one thing that I do like about it is that, unlike other precons, it seems to know that its job is to swing with men.
(Geez, I really hate that phrase. How about, instead, we say “dance with men”? That’s much better, isn’t it?)
Look at the creatures. Swiftblade? Beat. Skyknight? Beat. Zealot? Beat. Dave Kos, Lite-Jazz Veteran? Beat, beat, and beat. Sure, the Trumpeter is a bit controllish, but it’s controllish in that “Get out of my boy’s way so he can beat you about your head and neck.” The spells have the same sort of single-mindedness. Sure, there’s Bathe in Light and Cyclopean Snare, but, really, those are there to get the damage through. You have to be careful when looking at some spells because you can convince yourself that almost anything is a control spell. “Lightning Helix? Of course, it’s a control spell. It controls whether my opponent’s creature is on the board or not.”
So, what did I learn from my preliminary games with the unadulterated Boros Guild deck? I think I’ll do this, Esquire magazine style:
What I’ve Learned – Chris Romeo, cad & curmudgeon, Knoxville, TN, November, 2004
Sunforger is wrong, just so very wrong. For R/W, you can tutor for about eleventy-million cards in Magic and play them right then. There are almost too many choices. Of course, I guess you’re limited by what you actually have in your deck. Still, what you can have in your deck is sick.
Mike Flores is absolutely right about Lightning Helix. Obviously, I are a jenius for agreeing with him. It’s not so much that I’m agreeing as that I’ve seen it in action for myself. For two mana, you can get a six-point life swing, clear the path for an attacker, or just cast a really neat gold spell.
The Trumpeter isn’t all that hot. It essentially serves as a Puppeteer for colors that could simply remove a creature. I’d rather play Pacifism or Faith’s Fetters. What I’d really like to be able to do is trade for Devouring Light.
What would you have if you had Lightning Elemental, but it wasn’t as good? You’d have Ordruun Commando. Essentially, the Commando is the Elemental without haste and with the ability to suck up White mana in exchange for preventing damage to him. That’s right, for W, you can keep him from dying to a 1/1. For WW, you can keep him from dying to a 2/1. And for WWW, you can waste an entire turn saving this guy when you could be casting something else.
Never underestimate a woman’s power. Boros Guildmage seems to be the best of the Guildmages that I’ve actually used. (I haven’t looking into the Selesnya G-Mage yet.) With such inexpensive and powerful activated abilities, she can do some real damage and mess up some combat math, that is for sure.
Why aren’t the uncommon Guild lands Legendary? After all, they are named permanents. Not that I mind. Maybe, as my friend Bill Bryant says, it’s not that they’re singular, Legendary places. Maybe they’re franchises. Like Denny’s.
After taking what I learned, I made the first version of the new deck. If you remember the rules, this first modified version includes only cards found in the two precons and nothing else.
Boros! Boros! Boros! V.1.0
24 Lands
10 Mountain
10 Plains
2 Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion
2 Boros Garrison
24 Creatures
2 Agrus Kos, Wojek Veteran
2 Boros Guildmage
4 Boros Recruit
4 Boros Swiftblade
4 Flame-Kin Zealot
4 Nightguard Patrol
4 Skyknight Legionnaire
12 other Spells
2 Bathe in Light
4 Lightning Helix
4 Rally the Righteous
2 Sunforger
Where did Dogpile and Cleansing Beam go? They’re sitting this one out. Cleansing Beam is great but too expensive. You can’t grab it with the Sunforger. However, as an instant-speed, near-Pyroclasm that could potentially wipe out your opponent’s side while leaving yours intact, it’s a potential game changer. Dogpile is just too situational. It’s expensive if you don’t have Sunforger on a creature, and often ends up being one or two damage when it is. I’d rather have extra Bathe in Lights and Rally the Righteous.
By the way, you’re not asking why I’m using all four Lightning Helixes, are you? I didn’t think so.
“I didn’t know you won a beauty contest.”
“Every time I walk out my door I win a beauty contest.” – Earl and Joy, My Name is Earl
Game 1: Wow, here’s how you want to start your testing: mulligan to four. His deck was a W/g Spirit deck. Through smart play and auspicious topdecking, I was able to drag the game out for sixteen turns thanks to a ground stall and my boys having First Strike (or being able to get it from the Boros Guildmage). Then, he got Kami of the Painted Road, cast a Spirit, gave his Kami protection from White which made it immune to my side of the board, and went in for the win. (0-1)
Game 2: Excellent. More mulligan happiness. However, I only went down to five this time. Score! He was playing a G/B Dredge deck. Dredge is typically going to beat something like this because the Dredger is always able to bring back a solid creature while I’m praying for topdecking anything but land. The Boros deck stayed in it thanks to First Strike, Double Strike, and, of course, Lucky Strike, the smooth, mellow taste that underachieving college grads prefer. Another ground stall ensued. Had he not had Golgari Germination, though, I could have used Bathe in Light to make an alpha strike. However, he did, I didn’t, and I lost again. (0-2)
Game 3: Okay, something has to be done about these ground stalls. This was a G/b/w deck that featured a very large Vinelasher Kudzu who eventually wore a set of Pollenbright Wings, thus, breaking the aforementioned ground stall. This, of course, meant lotsa li’l Saproling tokens that I couldn’t get through. (Should I add Cleansing Beam back in?) Also, it would have been nice to be able to do something about the Kudzu. (0-3)
Game 4: I got him to six. Then, Glare of Subdual hit. Since there was nothing I could do about it, I lost. (0-4)
Game 5: My first Skyknight Legionnaire! Do you think it’s coincidental that I also won my first game with it? I think not. (1-4)
Which reminds me of one of my favorite philosophy jokes:
The Dalai Lama and Rene Descartes go to their first baseball game. They decide to get a hot dog like everyone else. The hot dog vendor asks the Dalai Lama, “How’d you like yours?”
The Dalai Lama says, “Make me one with everything.”
The vendor turns to Descartes and asks, “You want the same?”
Descartes says, “I think not,” and he disappears.
Game 6: This was a G/w/r Snakes deck. The only non-Snake creature that I saw was Selesnya Evangel. First Strike will trump 1/1 Snake tokens. I finally got a Sunforger, too. But it met with an untimely Naturalize-d demise. Oh, I got Skyknight Legionnaire again. I won. Hmmmm . . . is there a correlation? (2-4)
Game 7: A turn-three Skyknight Legionnaire meant, well, you know what it meant, don’t you? (3-4)
Game 8: When you beat a Black deck (this one splashing some Green) that has Kokusho in it, and you end the game at more than twenty life, you know things are going well. In this game, I cast not one but three Legionnaires. Two were hastily dispatched to my graveyard by Rend Fleshes, but not before doing two damage each through the air. On the heels of a Boros Recruit and a Boros Swiftblade, he was on his own heels. With him at one and me at twenty-one, I cast the Helix during my upkeep, and that was that. (4-4)
Game 9: I wanted to win this game so badly. It would guarantee a .500 finish for the first ten games. Alas, I should have known it was not to be, not when he had two Overgrown Tombs and a third-turn Cranial Extraction taking my Lightning Helixes. However, I pounded and pounded until he was at seven. That was when he got Vitu-Ghazi, the City-Tree. My attack ground to a halt. I drew Bathe in Light, but I didn’t have enough damage on board. All I needed was another random creature or Rally the Righteous. I’d have been able to get everything through since all of his creatures, including the Grave-Shell Scarabs, were Green. Alas, he got more of his good stuff than I could simply let through before I got either another creature or a Rally. (4-5)
Game 10: I shouldn’t truly care whether this deck finishes its first ten games at or over .500, but I do. I’m a competitive guy. Sure, if I finish 4-6, it lets me know that the deck needs serious work. It’s just data. Dadburnit, though, I wanna win. I didn’t think I’d come out on top when his Seedborn Muse came down a turn early thanks to a Sakura-Tribe Elder. She picked up a Loxodon Warhammer. I had two Nightguard Patrols which, gladly, trump the Muse but only if the Patrols stay put. Within a few turns, I had two Skyknight Legionnaires. A Flame-Kin Zealot added to some of the flying damage for a turn, but he soon had a Taproot Kami that took up the Warhammer. Through judicious use of Sunhome and Rally the Righteous, I was able to take out the Kami and then swing for the win. *whew* (5-5)
Where do we go from here? Honestly, it’s hard for me to tell. Looking at those first four games, I know that many of the losses were due to ground stalls. It would be easy to just drop the Boros Recruits for Suntail Hawks and/or Lantern Kamis. Flying almost always trumps First Strike because flying is an evasion ability. On the other hand, as long as I have a land that produces colored mana, I can cast the Recruit on turn one. The Hawk and Kami require White mana. I think I’ll risk it. The benefits outweigh the drawbacks.
Next up is the Nightguard Patrol. Again, First Strike is nice, but flying is better. So is coming out a turn earlier. Out go the Patrols; in come Leonin Skyhunters. With these two changes, more Plains are needed, too. I dropped a Mountain and added a Plains.
Agrus Kos is a card I’m still not sure about. Partly this is because, in all of the games I’ve played so far, he’s never hit the board. At the same time, for a deck with Sunforger, there really aren’t many White and/or Red instants. I’d love to add in some removal such as Fiery Conclusion, Yamabushi’s Flame, Shock, or Devouring Light. Heck, even Chastise and Curtain of Light wouldn’t stink. I’m also scared of maindeck artifacts such as Umezawa’s Jitte. Hearth Kami could easily be a maindeck card. I could also see Samurai of the Pale Curtain to combat all of that Dredging. If I start too far down that road, though, I’ll end up with a R/W Kamigawa Block deck that just throws in a couple of great Ravnica cards. That might be a great deck, but this exercise is supposed to give us a deck that focuses on Ravnica. If it can’t be done, then it can’t.
That leads us to:
Boros! Boros! Boros! V.2.0
24 Lands
10 Mountain
12 Plains
2 Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion
24 Creatures
2 Suntail Hawk
2 Lantern Kami
4 Leonin Skyhunter
2 Boros Guildmage
4 Boros Swiftblade
4 Skyknight Legionnaire
4 Flame-Kin Zealot
2 Agrus Kos, Wojek Veteran
12 Other Spells
3 Bathe in Light
4 Lightning Helix
3 Rally the Righteous
2 Sunforger
I already owned the Hawks, Lanterns, Leonin Skyhunters, and the extra Bathe in Light, so they cost me no extra tickets. If you don’t own them, the Skyhunters should not be more than one ticket for a set. The Bathe in Light you’d want to get as a package with the commons for a ticket. (You’d probably also round out that trade with some other commons that might end up in the deck like Shock, Holy Day, and Pacifism.) Two tickets would be more than generous for those cards.
“If you snatch enough purses, you learn a few things about mace.” – Earl, My Name is Earl
Game 11: When his Last Gasps killed my first two creatures (a Leonin Skyhunter and a Skyknight Legionnaire), I figured I’d never pull out of it. However, I did. His control ran out, and my creatures (and Bathe in Light) didn’t. (1-0)
Game 12: I played against my first actual Wizards employee (contract writers like JMS, not included). You know, one of the folks with the Wizards icon by their name? Anyway, he had this great idea of using Peace of Mind, Searing Meditation, and, when it hit his ‘yard, Firemane Angel. Fortunately for me, I had fliers on turn 1 (Suntail Hawk), turn 2 (Skyhunter), turn 3 (Legionnaire), and turn 4 (Skyhunter and Lantern Kami). He was able to take out a couple of the 2/2 fliers, but I was holding Rally the Righteous. On my turn, I swung for ten and ended the game. I know what’s what, though. Had he been able to untap, that would have ended my game. He would have been gaining life and taking out my guys. (2-0)
Game 13: I am not one of those people who hates people who complain about mana $crew. Being hosed for mana when you’ve designed your deck properly just plain $ucks. Go ahead: complain. What I hate is people who complain when mana $crew hurts the but who don’t notice when it helps them, as if they only lose to it; it never helps them win. My opponent was playing a U/B deck and missed land drops on his third and fourth turns. Meanwhile, I didn’t miss a creature or land drop, got a fourth-turn Flame-Kin Zealot, and ended the game on the next turn thanks to Sunhome. (3-0)
Game 14: This person was trying a U/B milling deck with a little Kiri-Onna action to control the creatures. This works fine as a control mechanism if (a) the creatures you’re bouncing don’t have Haste like Skyknight Legionnaire does and (b) your opponent doesn’t have Sunforger as I did. (4-0)
Game 15: Call me butter ’cause I’m on a roll. This was a U/B Rat-Ninja deck complete with Umezawa’s Jitte. At one point, he even had the Jitte on a Sengir Vampire. However, I had held a Lightning Helix, just waiting to get another. I did. When he took off the second counter to have the Vampire go from being a 6/6 to an 8/8, I hit it with both Helixes. No Vampire and no Jitte counters. After that, I let my double-striking Boros Swiftblades hold the ground (with some help from Bathe in Light) while the fliers did their thing. (5-0)
Game 16: Now this is simply scary. I got a fourth-turn kill with this deck. He was obviously setting up something big. On turn one, I dropped a Plains and a Suntail Hawk. On his first turn, it was Forge[/author]“]Battlefield [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author] and Sensei’s Divining Top. I swung, dropping him to nineteen, played a Mountain, and cast a Boros Swiftblade on my second turn. He played a Plains, used the activated ability on his Top, and passed the turn. On my third turn, I dropped a Mountain, cast a Skyknight Legionnaire, and swung for five. He had a massive third turn. He dropped a Shivan Reef, played two Seething Songs, and cast Form of the Dragon. I got one of those arrogant, too-early “gg” comments. I responded with “Good game” since it would soon be. On my fourth turn, I attacked with the only two creatures that I could attack with, the fliers, and cast Rally the Righteous. “Good game,” indeed. (6-0)
Game 17: Okay, I’m going to chalk this one up to the lateness of the hour (going on 4 AM; I was up with a bad case of something intestinal). He was playing a Glare deck. However, between two Flame-Kin Zealots, the Boros Guildmage, and the Skyknight Legionnaire, I got him to three. However, he had dropped the Seedborn Muse the turn before. I was able to get a Lantern Kami through for the next two turns. Then, he launched an alpha strike. Why do I think I could have won? I was holding Sunforger the entire time. When he was at three, I could have dropped it and equipped someone. Then, I could have used my mana on the next turn to go get a Lightning Helix. Instead, I kept casting critters. My bad. That’s okay, though. I learned a lesson. Besides, you wouldn’t have trusted me if this had been 7-0, would you? (6-1)
Game 18: I was scared very early in this one. I had fliers on each of the first three turns, but he dispatched them all with a Heartbeat of Spring-fueled Brightflame that got him so high on life that he could have been a Woodstock-era hippie. I kept grabbing creature after creature and then a Sunforger. He found Searing Meditation, and I presumed it was all over. I mean, you have a card like that, you must have tons of lifegaining cards, right? That’s why you don’t presume. When you do, you make a “pres” out of “u” and “me,” or whatever that silly cliché is. Anyway, he started being able to hold me off thanks to two Faith’s Fetters which not only shut down the Sunforger and then Sunhome but also gained him life which he used, thanks to the Meditation, to off two of my creatures. We were in topdeck mode, and mine were better. With him at three life, I got Suntail Hawk, Leonin Skyhunter, and then, for good measure, Bathe in Light, just in case I needed to save someone. (7-1)
Game 19: There it is. A G/B Golgari deck. A second-turn Shambling Shell and a third-turn Stinkweed Imp were pretty much all she wrote for me. (7-2)
Game 20: I was wondering when I’d meet up with mono-Blue. I understand that Ravnica is new online and that many of the cards are quite good. I just figured I’d see mono-Blue in the Casual Decks room more often. I did not see Meloku in this one, which doesn’t mean he didn’t have it, just that I didn’t see it. There was, of course, some countermagic including the new one from Ravnica, Remand. And the deck had Keiga. Again, Bathe in Light saved the day. When I killed Meloku, I was able to keep him from taking anything of mine by giving it protection from Blue. After that, a swarm of weenies backed up at last by Flame-Kin Zealot ended the game. (8-2)
Whoa.
Simply, “whoa.” Eight and two? How’d I do that? Even in the Casual Decks room, that’s awfully good. Maybe Red and White are really that good together. Still, it seems to be missing something. That something is Shock. Agrus Kos is the easy pick to drop because it has never been a factor in any game. Still, that’s only two Shocks. For the third, I’m dropping a Plains. Given how we’re lowering the mana curve, that should not be a problem. I only worry about going down to twenty-two creatures.
Boros! Boros! Boros! V.3.0
23 Lands
10 Mountain
11 Plains
2 Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion
22 Creatures
2 Suntail Hawk
2 Lantern Kami
4 Leonin Skyhunter
2 Boros Guildmage
4 Boros Swiftblade
4 Skyknight Legionnaire
4 Flame-Kin Zealot
15 Other Spells
3 Bathe in Light
4 Lightning Helix
3 Rally the Righteous
2 Sunforger
3 Shock
Like all of the other changes I’ve made, I already had those. However, you should be able to pick those and the other new commons up for a ticket. Version 3.0 is what I’ll be working on next week. Did the addition of Shock and the removal of Agrus Kos negatively affect the deck? We’ll see next week.
As usual, you’ve been a great audience. Don’t miss Earl and Chris.
Chris Romeo
CBRomeo-at-Travelers-dot-com